Dominguez urges PH-Japan “demographic partnership”

Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III–DOF photo

MANILA, Philippines—With more industries now open to bigger foreign investor participation, President Rodrigo Duterte’s chief economic manager has urged what he called a “demographic partnership” between the Philippines and Japan.

By demographic partnership, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III meant that “Japan will provide the research, technology, and resources, while the Philippines will do the marketing and manufacturing side by lending the skills of its young, talented workforce to this envisioned new era of economic cooperation between the two countries.”

The proposal was again pitched by Dominguez to Japanese Foreign Affairs Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi when they met in Tokyo last week, the Department of Finance (DOF) said in a statement on Monday (May 2). He earlier proposed the same to Japan Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki when they met on the sidelines of the World Bank-International Monetary Bank (WB-IMF) spring meetings in Washington last month.

For Dominguez, the proposed partnership will also help both countries weather the spillover effects from Vladimir Putin’s campaign to destroy Ukraine on the global economy for the long term.

Dominguez told Hayashi that a demographic partnership between the two nations was “more feasible with the recent enactment of three Philippine laws that further liberalized the economy and opened-wide the country to foreign investors.”

The Philippine finance chief was referring to the recently approved amendments to the previously antiquated laws on foreign investments, public services, and retail trade liberalization, which Duterte’s economic managers had lobbied for in lieu of amending the foreign ownership restrictions enshrined in the 1987 Constitution.

These laws opened up the airline, media, retail, private transportation, renewable energy, as well as telecommunications sectors, among others, to more foreign capital.

For the part of Japan, Hayashi told Dominguez that the Japanese government intended to “continue strengthening its cooperation with the Philippines, especially on infrastructure development.”

At present, Japan was financing through low-interest, concessional loans the construction of the Philippines’ first subway system, a number of long-haul railway projects, as well as other big-ticket infrastructure supportive of the Duterte administration’s ambitious “Build, Build, Build” program.

Japan was the Philippines’ top official development assistance (ODA) partner, with loans and grants totaling $10.4 billion or nearly two-fifths of the total ODA portfolio as of mid-2021, the DOF noted.

TSB