Speech of Finance Secretary Cesar V Pursima
Forbes Philippines Launch
Good evening everyone!
Former President Ramos, Senate President Drilon, Former Chief Justice Panganiban, Senator Osmeña, Governor Tetangco. If I greet all the luminaries here today, I’ll need more than five minutes to greet them.
To me, Forbes is synonymous to success, entrepreneurship, opportunity, and hopefully good taxpayers. In fact, I was with Commissioner Henares just before this event and I was asking her if she was invited to this event. She said no. And I said, I probably know the reason. So hopefully the Forbes Philippines edition will be unique in the sense that it will not only have the Forbes richest list, or the Forbes most powerful women, and I see several of the ones in Asia here, but hopefully there will also be a Forbes top taxpayer list. Then, I think Forbes becomes relevant also to the host country.
But kidding aside, I looked at the list of 37 or so countries that have an edition of Forbes. And, we looked at the growth rate of those countries around the world. We realized that the average growth rate of those countries is 2.9%, which is higher than the average world GDP growth rate of 2.3%1
So I think the presence of Forbes in the Philippines augurs well because they’ve shown that they know how to pick countries. They are present in four of the ten ASEAN countries.2 In fact, they are in the largest ASEAN markets. Since 2010, the number of ASEAN billionaires has actually increased from 25 to 82. And the number of Philippine billionaires increased from 2 to 11. Most of them are here today.
As I was mentioning, when I was talking to Commissioner Kim Henares, she said why don’t we do an ad comparing the Forbes list and the top taxpayers list? Maybe we can gain some insights. I told her not to publish tomorrow because they might not invite me again.
But anyway, the Philippines and ASEAN, over the next five to ten years, will be an area of high growth and economic activity. The fundamentals are good. Thanks to the Central Bankers of the region who have done a good job since 1997, among them of course is Governor Tetangco.
But more than the Central Bankers and more than the governments of the region, I think it is you, the business people that we should thank. And I think Forbes really is a celebration of your success, a celebration of your risk taking and recognition of your contribution to the economies of various countries where Forbes is in.
So I hope that with the presence of Forbes in the Philippines, you will even increase your risk appetite, you will even increase your entrepreneurial activity so that we will create more opportunities for every Filipino. And hopefully we achieve the full potential of the country.
So again, congratulations and thank you for having me here!
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