PE Analysis
Political
-Strong ties with the US (economic, commercial, security), plans to expand cooperation

-Tensions between Philippines and China over the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea

- Aquino administration is politically stable but faces strong opposition to reforms and anti-corruption measures. President has a large majority in the House of Representatives but lacks this majority in the senate. Good plans for strong governance, anti-corruption initiatives, poverty reduction, and law enforcement.
Economic -Improved Economic Indicators
- Debt to GDP ratio dropped to 51.09% from last year's 52.4%, due to the government's "debt measures.”
- Despite global economic slowdown, strong earnings from Filipinos working overseas are expected. BSP data showed remittances reaching $16.53 billion in October, up 7% from $15.45 last year, and projected to reach $23 billion by year’s end. The Philippines in the fourth largest remittance-receving country after India, China, and Mexico.
- Lower fiscal deficit (96.254 billion) compared to last year (267.328 billion) (Jan-Nov)
- Low percentage of older people but has a large young working population. Median age is estimated to be 21.7 years. This provides a significant boost in our labor force but unemployment is still high at 6.4%, and stands at 17.38% for youth aged 15-24.

-Strong BPO sector, but low research and development spending impedes progress
IT and BPO activities accounted for 4.8% of GDP in 2010. Government invests in development of call center industry. However, a large part of R&D expenditure comes from the private sector (60% in 2010) while only .14% from the government.

Country suffers from an unfavorable business environment
-World Bank’s Doing Business 2012 report: Philippines is 136th out of 183 economies, behind every East Asian nation except Cambodia. Starting a business in the Philippines takes 35 compared to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development average of 13 days. Government needs to work towards simplifying processes and removing impediments to business investment.

Appendix on SWS:
Surveys conducted by the Social Weather Stations (SWS) have shown that the optimism of the quality of life and economic conditions in the next twelve months hit the highest level so far. For the 3rd quarter, 39% expected the quality of life in the Philippines to improve while only 9% expected it to worsen, figures displaying slight improvements from the same time period last year. 35% expect the economy will improve while only 14% expect the economy will worsen. 26% believe that there is improved quality of life in the country, the highest under the current administration since it started in September last year, sustained by the accelerated high government spending and satisfaction with President Aquino’s leadership.

Appendix on the Effectiveness of Mobile Technology/Social Media
Filipinos love to share their mobile phone photos
Study by Nokia: 70% of Filipinos take photos with mobile devices at least once a week, 31% take daily
50% regularly upload on social media platforms
Pictures of friends (59%) and children (45%) were most popular.
49% take pictures of themselves, 44% post online.

Masses favor mobile phones for internet use
Survey by Smart:
Web-enabled phones are most popular way of accessing internet, especially for low-income consumers.
9.5 million internet users, 100 million mobile phone subscriptions in 2010 Philippine Internet Statistics
Philippine Internet Statistics: 29.7% of total population has access to the internet as of 2010; mostly single, under 30 belonging to class D, common uses across all age groups: chatting, email and social networking Most popular sites: FB, Yahoo mail, Google, Youtube, Friendster, Blogger, Wikipedia, Multiply, Twitter (4/9 of these are social networking sites) 90.3% of Filipinos on Blogger read blogs, 65.8% write them. 86.4% upload on Flicker 98.6% watch videos on Youtube 83.1% of all Filipinos online belong to a social networking site