RP to salvage reputation among foreign investors
RP to salvage reputation among foreign investors
MANILA (AFP): The Philippines is to launch a campaign to salvage its reputation among overseas investors following a court ruling that scuppered a Malaysian company's investment plans, Foreign Secretary Domingo Siazon said yesterday.
Siazon said he would meet Malaysian Foreign Minister Abdullah Badawi and his counterparts from major investing countries such as Japan and the United States to assure them that the ruling was an isolated case.
The Philippine official said he would make the same assurance to the European Union during a meeting between Asian and European foreign ministers in Singapore this week.
The Philippine Supreme Court on Feb. 3 declared void the sale of a 51-percent stake in the historic Manila Hotel to Malaysia's Renong Overseas Corp. Sdn. Bhd., saying such sites must remain under Filipino control.
The Filipino justices, invoking a "national patrimony" clause in the constitution, ordered the government to sell the five-star hotel to a Filipino consortium led by Filipino-Chinese businessman Emilio Yap which had lost out to Renong in the September 1995 auction.
"We're talking individually" with foreign officials, Siazon told reporters.
"I'll be meeting with Minister Badawi again to express the same view and we will have to make this view known to other countries which normally give us large investments."
The Manila Hotel decision triggered criticism from the business community and drew a sharp rebuke from President Fidel Ramos, who described it as judicial intrusion in the government's policy-making functions.
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said last weekend that Malaysian investors, among the most aggressive in the Philippines, would be forced to scale down their investments.
Siazon estimated that the Philippines' infrastructure required US$5 billion over the next 10 years.
"Where is that money coming from?" he asked, adding that official development assistance could account for only $2.5 billion.
"So we still have the other half from private sources, so unless you can assure investors that the level playing field is there, they will not come," he said.
Siazon, who described the effects of the court ruling as "bad," warned that the Philippines could lose out to other countries in the region as an investment site.
The executive and legislative branches of government would meet to define which government assets belong to the national patrimony "to prevent a repetition" of the Manila Hotel controversy, he said.
The government is selling state-run and controlled assets to shore up its fiscal position and scrap costly subsidies. Next in line are the power generating plants of National Power Corp.