FOREIGN SALES of Philippine goods grew for the 11th straight month last October, but the double-digit increase in merchandise imports drove the monthly trade gap to its biggest on record, the government reported yesterday. Read the full story.
The Generation Y, where the much debated‑about millennials belong to, is said to be the most entrepreneurial generation. A big chunk of this demographic prefers running their own businesses rather than working for an established company.
Research conducted by the team behind Bizcool, an e‑Learning platform launched just last November, led to the same conclusion.
The results of the study, which tapped 500 respondents with age ranging from 18 to 45 years old, showed that 65.2% or 326 respondents are “extremely” into running their own business.
“[A large] demographic of the millennials, they extremely value entrepreneurship, but we don’t have enough access to education. Workshops cost around ₱3,000 for a three‑hour workshop, but it’s still not that intensive,” Bizcool CEO Marvin Perol told the media in an interview.
With such premise came the idea of launching the platform, which aims to bring “affordable and accessible” education about entrepreneurship to the digital space.
Bizcool offers 11 online courses covering fundamental information on establishing and operating a business. Its courses include “My Coffee Shop,” “My Bakeshop,” “My Eatery,” and “My Online Store,” which all cover the kinds of businesses that respondents of the study think are the most ideal ventures.
Each course, which can be availed at a starting rate of ₱1,129, includes five modules, 38 tutorial videos, 41 PDF files, and three worksheets on average.
Perol, who owns a video equipment‑rental business, said the platform aims to help budding entrepreneurs address such perennial concerns as lack of capital through reading materials on how to raise funds and how to create a business plan and financial forecast.
“We’re targeting individuals who are not very particular with academic portfolio, they want to really jump into business right now, that’s their personality profile. But we are continuously studying the market,” he said.
But while many millennials are keen to build their own business, Vincent Velasquez, a college professor and co‑founder, said they dismiss the idea of learning the ropes of entrepreneurship through a conventional, classroom‑setting manner.
This is why the team assured that the contents of the modules for each course are “less academic and more practical” while retaining the theoretical lessons of entrepreneurship.
“Somehow, along the way, in doing our research we had an insight that millennials are not necessarily into studying, they just want to put up their own business, so we wanted to include less academic, more practical tools and concepts that they can really apply,” Velasquez said.
“For the most part we consulted entrepreneurs and business consultants, so for every product we conducted research for the content,” he added.
JJ Ingco, co‑founder who also teaches in a university, said the workshops will also be their marketing tools to attract more people to enrol in the digital courses.
“We’re in the business of creating e‑Learning products. However, when it (Bizcool) was made, we found out that social aspect was something important as well to people, because for the longest time, we learned through schools and that transition from personal or social aspects to digital is quite drastic at this point in time,” Ingco said.
The team currently focuses on gaining traction in Metro Manila to expand the business to the whole Southeast Asia and eventually become the edtech industry’s Uber or Alibaba.
“We want to build a community of startups. Eventually we want to be an ecosystem builder, we want to get these educators, investors to come in to the platform and increase our value over time. We have two types of users—the students and contributors and educators,” Perol said.
FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENTS (FDI) to the Philippines surged in September amid sustained optimism from offshore investors, with both intercompany lending and equity capital picking up from a year ago, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported yesterday.
Net FDI jumped 61.8% to $754 million that month from the $466-million inflow in September 2016, although it was 37.3% less than August’s $1.203-billion tally.
The central bank attributed the strong growth in investment flows to robust investor confidence in the Philippines in the face of “strong macroeconomic fundamentals” and “high growth prospects.”
Inflows in September, in turn, helped fuel rapid economic expansion in the third quarter that clocked 6.9%, beating market expectations amid increased investments that made up for softer consumer spending growth in the same period.
FDIs are a key source of capital for the local economy, generating more jobs for Filipinos as these flows fuel business expansion.
September also saw the Senate Committee on Ways and Means approving its version of the first of up to five planned tax reform packages, four months after a counterpart measure cleared the House of Representatives on May 31, bringing the priority measure closer to the January 2018 implementation targeted by the Department of Finance.
The same month saw the United States Congress also extend the government debt limit for three months and provide some $15 billion in much-needed hurricane-related aid.
Foreign investors continued to pour more funds into their local affiliates in September, with placements in the latters’ debt instruments nearly doubling to $513 million from $293 million a year ago.
Net equity placements went up a third to $182 million from $138 million year on year.
Gross equity inflows reached $194 million, partly offset by $12 million in capital withdrawn. That compared to $157 million gross inflows a year ago, against $19 million in outbound funds.
More companies also chose to reinvest earnings that month at $59 million, 68% more than the $35 million the year prior.
The United States, Singapore, the Netherlands, China and Japan were the biggest sources of foreign capital in September, with funds going to construction; professional, scientific and technical sector; manufacturing; real estate; as well as accommodation and food service, the BSP said.
September’s FDI tally pulled the nine-month haul to $5.839 billion, close to matching the $5.85 billion in investments received in the year-ago nine-month period. Bigger inflows over the past few months are placing the current figure on track to match 2016’s total investments.
Security Bank Corp. economist Angelo B. Taningco said the latest FDI tally reflects positive market sentiment towards the “medium- to long-term prospects” of the Philippine economy, fuelled by optimism over the tax reform and public infrastructure spending plans of the administration.
“I believe the BSP’s $8-billion target for the year is feasible, as I expect FDI net inflows to remain buoyant for the last three months of the year,” he said in an e-mail.
As of its June review, the central bank expected net FDI inflows to slightly surpass the $7.93 billion recorded in 2016 to hit a fresh record high. — Melissa Luz T. Lopez
