Nothing and I believe this has happened to some foreigners, there of course is nothing the foreigner could do legally speaking. However most of the filipino partners are eigther in love or have no idea what running a business is all about. It's not strange to see when a foriegner dies the filipino spouse can not run the business due to a lack of business skills etc.

 

Up to a point else where there seems to be more incentive for foriegners to run small businesses mostly without ghosting, however I expect that many countries within the third world may have similar restrictive methods if not the same.

I think a lot of this restriction was initialy imposed because of Chinese businessmen taking over many areas of comerce here in the Philippines. Many Chinese Filippinos run some very good businesses here.

 

some might say they run most things

The Philippines' 40 Richest sorted by Rank - Forbes.com

I guess it is down to the lack of middle class in (originally) rural society. I am a strong believer in giving attention to entrepreneurship in schools (and Chinese language ). I can understand the need to protect your own people but at some point you need to become competitive and just protectionist measures won't do in the long run.

All the best to the Philippines and the Filipino's.

 

I think that in the future the situation will change, there is every indication that more thouht is being placed on foriegners and starting businesses this new incentive of employ 10 Filipino's is the tip of the iceburg hopefully. these threads - post 42 (third comment)

 

yes I read that, don't get me wrong I am not particular worried about foreigners who want to do bussiness, just that I think it is an opportunity for the country. Creating jobs and more money/business/knowledge flow to the country.

 

It helps eradicate poverty also

 

That was also the only logic I could come up with for disallowing foreign ownership of businesses...fear of foreign competition by big Philippine businesses. And I can see why companies like PLDT would not want highly capitlized, well-organized, customer/solutions driven, technologically superior foreign organizations entering this market. PLDT wouldn't stand a chance! lol

But, the resulting improved service and lower costs sure would be good for everybody else, wouldn't it? ;-)

I guess fundamentally, when you come from an open and free market, one that spends taxpayer money to woo foreign businesses and investors...one that even provides financial incentives for foreign businesses to locate there...it is hard to understand why any economy would want to put up roadblocks to foreign investment in their country...

 

hmmm, I blame my bad English skills as I think I miss something here.

It is no problem for foreigners to invest in the PI and run business here at all, and the investment is not that high. That is totally legal and there are many examples even here in Dumaguete.

However it is not possible for tourists. But that's no difference to Germany and I don't think I can open a business in the US as a german tourist.

Guru, a few years back was actually a big international company interested to build a new telephone network as well as being an IP on international standard. They stepped back cause there is not much money to make for that huge investment they had to make. 15 Peso unlimited txting does not pay multi-billion investment just in Metro-Manila, and the local provider are still good enough to support international companies with thousands of employees with enough bandwidth to run business successful

 

Rhoody,

A Philippine corporation can be no more than 40% owned by non-Filipinos (with the limited exception of "export" companies which may be 100% foreigner-owned). A telecom would not qualify to be an export company. So, according to my understanding it would need to be at least 60% owned by Philippine-national investors. A company like SBC or Vodafone or Deutche Telecom would need a Philippine partner(s) who would have to put up a majority stake if they chose to enter this market. I would think they would view that as a major deterrent.

As far as working, I think you are right that work visas are possible for foreign nationals and I was under the impression that they were not that hard to acquire but the employees would need to be of the relatively highly-compensated variety. (The figure P50,000/month stands out in my mind.)

I'm not sure what businesses you have in mind as examples, but perhaps they are "Export Companies". A business that sells its products or services to customers outside the Philippines or a tourist business qualifies for the Export Company exemption and may be legally 100% foreigner owned. (However, Export Companies cannot own land as that would be unconstitutional for a foreigner to wholly own land.) Examples of Export Companies include: Call Centers, Business Process Outsourcing companies, Resorts, furniture manufacturers who sell their products exclusively overseas, etc.