Originally Posted by JohnnyV13
Scho63, I am in a company that has a call center in the Philippines. All of the founders, including me, are either immigrants from the Philippines or are a child of a Philippine immigrant.
As for costs, the effective buying power of a dollar is approximately 7 to 1, while the exchange rate is a soft peg that hovers around 50 pesos to the dollar. However, this isn’t uniform. Cars and electronics might cost even more in the Philippines due to lack of a strong ddistribution channels, while food, clothes, housing, and personal services are dirt cheap.
Makati is an elite area. It’s pretty much the Wall Street of the Philippines and is part of Metro Manila. You will be able to get around quite easily speaking English. Not only are street signs in English, store sale signs are in English. College courses are taught in English, so most managers and educated professionals will be fluent. In fact, in business meetings, you will see people speaking Tagalog before the meeting, when the meeting starts they switch to English, and after the meeting they switch to Tagalog. Given the wealth of makati, almost everyone will speak American. Heck, all kinds of businessmen will want to exchange cards with u bc everyone wants to make American contacts.
You can hire a full time maid for less than $50 a week, who will cook and clean your place. However, it’s very close to the equator, so it’s hot and humid as hell. December is the best time to go as it is relatively cool. But it’s soon followed by monsoon season which can have very heavy rain.
Makati is on the main island of Luzon, and there are beautiful beaches all over the Philippines (7,000 islands). It’s a heavily catholic country with around 89% identifying themselves that way. Thus, it’s a place where abortion and s illegal and the Catholic c church is still fighting any public programs to teach use of birth control.
The place is endemically corrupt. Locals will typically bribe police to get out of tickets, or will bribe the tax man. You will often have to pay bribes to low level regulators to just do their jobs. One typical scam is for customs officials to plant a bullet in your baggage, and you have to pay a bribe to avoid charges for attempting to bring in contraband. This trick is often pulled on Filipino guest workers returning from well paid jobs abroad.
However, your Chinese friend should have all of that figured out if he’s regularly doing business there. For example, my first cousin runs 14 casinos for the company that holds the gaming license in the Philippines. He has concierges meet any high roller at the airport to help them get through customs (I do not know, but I presume this includes a standing bribe to customs officials).
However, American tourists and American businessmen are pretty much immune from customs scams bc the government doesn’t tolerate it.
As for your business, the Philippines doesn’t allow foreign ownership of real property. However, you can own condos where the overall property is held by a Philippine citizen. To do the business you’re talking about, you will need a local (Filipino) partner. The law might have changed, that was the rule cited to me by the sales staff of a condominium in Tagaytay (a nice area in the mountains with an average daily temperature of 67 degrees year round).
Manila is a cosmopolitan city with all the amenities available (presuming u have $$$), but the Philippines is a shockingly poor country. It has roughly the same population as Mexico with only 1/3 the gdp. Though Manila does a pretty good job of hiding them from view while driving along the main thoroughfares, the poor live in shantytowns.
Traffic in metro Manila is horrendous. Though, if you’ve been to Hong Kong it won’t be anything you don’t expect. Heck, Hong Kong traffic is worse than Manila.
|