ONLY around half the country’s savings actually get invested in productive undertakings but even then, the little set aside by Filipino savers helps expand the economy by more than 5 percent every year, the Department of Finance reported on Monday.

Finance Undersecretary Gil Beltran said, “Imagine the impact on growth when all of the country’s national savings of 29.1 percent did get to be invested in something that magnifies the country’s low investment to capital output ratio.” Beltran heads the department’s financial policy planning unit.

“The reality is, only some 15 percent to 16 percent of the nation’s savings get invested. If we could raise that by a significant degree, a 7-percent growth should be easy to sustain,” he added.

He said the national savings rate has not budged an inch from its 2005 level of 29.1 percent and has obstinately remained at this level still as at the end of last year. As a result, Manila ranks low in the regional totem pole of savers, as its neighbors typically achieve savings rates in the high 30s and even at the 40s level.

Thus, the country’s investment-to-capital-output ratio got nailed at 4 percent in the past 20 years. This means each peso worth of investments is only able to generate output, measured as the gross domestic product, equal to only 4 centavos and not any higher, according to Beltran.

Still, he held out hope of better savings rates over the near term, particularly when the capital market development schemes of the government begin to bear fruit.

The broad aim of the Capital Market Development Council is to have a sufficiently developed one where the total savings of more Filipinos is large enough and cheap enough for long-horizon investors and entrepreneurs to tap without paying an arm and a leg for it, he said.

The Philippines has one of the least-developed capital markets in the region, so that long gestation projects still get funded almost exclusively by banks.

But he didn’t say if they knew why Filipinos do not invest their savings, and what role having liquid resources for the future over the bleakness of the economic terrain plays in all of these.

THE government has once again declared the bidding for the 25-year concession of the National Transmission Corp. (Transco) a failure after only one of three prequalified bidders submitted a bid.

THE Senate ratified Monday night a bicameral conference committee report on a proposed remedial legislation granting a one-time amnesty on certain tax and duty liabilities incurred by investor-locators in special economic zones subsequently created outside the Subic freeport.

THERE are potential risks of a financial crisis arising from the inadequacy of regulatory oversight over the activities of financial conglomerates (FCs), mostly universal banks, operating in the country, a financial market policy group said Monday.

THERE are no difficult barriers for government to target and actually achieve higher levels of growth with positive factors propping the local economy, a noted economist said on Monday.

AS the threat of a bird flu hovers above the region, the Department of Budget and Management said Monday that a P122.8-million “bird flu” fund in the soon-to-be-signed national  budget for 2007 will be made  available to the Department  of Agriculture for surveillance and quarantine

ONLY around half the country’s savings actually get invested in productive undertakings but even then, the little set aside by Filipino savers helps expand the economy by more than 5 percent every year, the Department of Finance reported on Monday.

FIRST Pacific Co. Ltd. of Hong Kong did not yield its right to match the P25.2-billion bid of a Singaporean company for the government’s slightly over 46 percent stake in Philippine Telecommunications Investment Corp. (PTIC).