CENTRAL bank officials believe that now or anytime soon is the opportune time to come out with a new retail treasury bond sale program for overseas Filipino workers, when interest rates are low and investor sentiment still sharp.

A senior monetary official said Treasury chief Omar Cruz’s ambivalence on it at present may sharpen appetite for the IOUs last issued in 2004. But the opportunity could pass soon and the national coffers would end up none the richer for it.

“It’s a pity. Now is the best time to do it when interest rates are better than borrowing overseas,” an official, requesting anonymity, said.

According to the official, while Cruz is correct in gauging the depth of the appetite first and on addressing among others tax and registry issues, the opportunity cannot last forever.

The planned RTBs are to be sold exclusively to OFWs and their families and the proceeds spent on infrastructure projects planned between now and 2010.

The matter of denominating the IOUs in local currency, in US dollars or in the European Union’s euro has not yet been determined.

An earlier report said the final choice will depend on where the greatest amount of interest will be, given that OFW concentrations can be found almost anywhere in the world.

According to the Department of Finance, the first RTBs were issued in 2001 and then again in 2002, and these together sold for a total P100 billion.

Later in 2002, three- and five-year RTBs were sold at a cost of 10.75 percent paid every quarter raising another P63 billion.

The last one was a five-year IOU issued in 2004 that cost the government significantly more at 7.28 percent versus only 5.875 percent some three years earlier.

Interest rates at present are still moving down, making the timing of the issuance of yet another batch of RBTs all the more important, according to officials.

Changes in the mode of paying RTB investors have also been adopted to pave the way for semiannual rather than quarterly payments, they added.

According to officials, OFWs are a potent force who’re able to send $12 billion worth of overseas earnings a year, or the equivalent of some 10 percent of total output of the gross national product.

Although less than 40 percent of OFW families actually save a part of their earnings in the form of bank deposit accounts, the number that do invest in more sophisticated financial instruments are much smaller. Still, some officials believe their ranks are swelling.

Deputy Bangko Sentral governor Diwa Guinigundo said the financial sophistication of OFWs has increased significantly over the past few years and the next hurdle was to get them to invest and to borrow in still higher numbers to take advantage of the multiplier effect.

CENTRAL bank officials believe that now or anytime soon is the opportune time to come out with a new retail treasury bond sale program for overseas Filipino workers, when interest rates are low and investor sentiment still sharp.

FILIPINOS may be tremendously benefiting from $12 billion worth of annual remittances sent by relatives working abroad, but seen from a broader scale there could be blips that might weigh down on income equality, local employment and country competitiveness, a labor economist said Friday.

IF done in a clean and honest manner, the coming midterm election could be a good barometer of the real pulse of the people on such issues as Charter change and the legitimacy of the Arroyo administration, the vice president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) said on Sunday. 

THE high cost of raw materials and the high demand for services have prompted Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corp.’s mother company to hold off any major investments in the country for the meantime, Edgar Chua, the company country chairman, told reporters on Saturday.

LUZON and the Visayas appear to be attractive sites for companies planning to put up ethanol distilleries following the enactment of the alternative fuels law, according to the Department of Agriculture.

THE almost traditionally debt-laden National Power Corporation always needs money, so why is Malacañang demanding that it hand over its 2005 dividends of P2.6 billion, especially at this time when the Palace continues to claim government has so much funds it is running out its ears?

WORRIED it would open the door to further “tinkering of similar money and other funds,” Anakpawis party-list Reps. Crispin Beltran and Rafael Mariano have called for an investigation into the plan of the Presidential Commission on Good Government to use the P1.9-billion dividend of Coconut Industry Investment Fund (CIIF) for undisclosed projects.