Bangko Sentral backs telco, retail liberalization

LIBERALIZING the telecommunications industry should benefit the financial sector via the availability of improved services and technology, the chief of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas ( BSP) said on Monday.

“The BSP fully supports an initiative to open up the telecommunications business so that there will be more competition and better service delivery which will benefit the whole financial system,” central bank Governor Nestor Espenilla Jr. said.

Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia earlier this year said the Duterte administration wanted to raise the foreign ownership cap for public utilities to 70 percent from 40 percent, particularly for telcos “where we are really deficient”.

Espenilla concurred, saying that consumer distrust of current telco services is “partly founded on the matter of reliability of services.”

“So even though there is capability … if it cannot be depended upon then people will hesitate to move to a different way of doing financial services,” he added.

Espenilla also expressed support for a futher opening up of the retail sector, noting that it is “a pain point for our approach of promoting digital delivery of financial services because of infrastructural issues.”

As part of planned changes to the Foreign Investment Negative List, Pernia has said that the paid- up capital requirement for foreign retail investors would be lowered to $ 200,000 from $ 2.5 million.