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Colossal Deception: How Foreigners Control Our Telecoms Sector
A Case Study Of Corruption, Cronyism And Regulatory Capture In The Philippines
By Rigoberto D. Tiglao
The book exposes one of the biggest deceptions ever foisted on the Philippine nation, the total domination of our telecommunications industry by foreigners and its deliberate concealment. This is a grave violation of the Philippine Constitution, a fact that was ignored by the Aquino administration when it chose to side with foreign interests instead of following a Supreme Court order to stop the foreign control of a strategic public utility.
While claiming to be majority-owned by Filipinos, the reality is that the biggest stockholder of Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co., which operates Smart Communications, is the Indonesian billionaire and former Suharto crony Anthoni Salim with his minor partner the giant Japanese telco NTT. Globe Telecom's biggest stockholder on the other hand is the Singaporean state firm Singtel. With their lucrative duopoly the foreign firms have remitted out of the Philippines gargantuan profits totaling $9 billion from 2000 to 2015.
How are these foreign firms able to bypass the constitutional limit on foreign control of public utilities with little resistance from the Philippine body politic? This book exposes the chicanery behind the acquisition of the country's biggest corporations, the corruption and cronyism that had allowed this to happen, and the pernicious plot to amend the Constitution to perpetuate the foreign control of companies over vital sectors of our economy.
By Rigoberto D. Tiglao
The book exposes one of the biggest deceptions ever foisted on the Philippine nation, the total domination of our telecommunications industry by foreigners and its deliberate concealment. This is a grave violation of the Philippine Constitution, a fact that was ignored by the Aquino administration when it chose to side with foreign interests instead of following a Supreme Court order to stop the foreign control of a strategic public utility.
While claiming to be majority-owned by Filipinos, the reality is that the biggest stockholder of Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co., which operates Smart Communications, is the Indonesian billionaire and former Suharto crony Anthoni Salim with his minor partner the giant Japanese telco NTT. Globe Telecom's biggest stockholder on the other hand is the Singaporean state firm Singtel. With their lucrative duopoly the foreign firms have remitted out of the Philippines gargantuan profits totaling $9 billion from 2000 to 2015.
How are these foreign firms able to bypass the constitutional limit on foreign control of public utilities with little resistance from the Philippine body politic? This book exposes the chicanery behind the acquisition of the country's biggest corporations, the corruption and cronyism that had allowed this to happen, and the pernicious plot to amend the Constitution to perpetuate the foreign control of companies over vital sectors of our economy.
- GenresNonfiction
197 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 17, 2017
23 people are currently reading
87 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 16, 2022
This book unsuccessfully pretends to focus on foreign ownership while really means to brainwash readers into thinking the Marcoses were ousted solely because of a feud with the Aquinos. Sinister intentions of this author to deny Philippine history. Reader beware.
May 29, 2022
Another eye-opening book I have read and it's about how foreigners control our Telecom and power sectors despite of the provisions of our Constitution that restrict foreign firms from dominating our public utility.
I have heard many complaints quite often about how poor services offered by our telecommunication providers available in the Philippines are so frustrating especially when what you do for a living is primarily earned on-line that would make this internet connectivity a necessity in everyday's life. In a world that more and more are going on-line, this industry has been significant for economic growth of a nation that the Philippines is struggling to be on par with the neighboring countries by being one of the lowest average internet connection speed among asian countries.
From what I know, this is the first published book by Rigoberto Tiglao and the shortest of his presently three books. What I only intended to read all along was his most popular book "Debunked" but during my reading of it, I was so impressed of how informative and unconventional the book was from its way of narrating the succeeding event to its most detail that I decided to buy the rest of his books. Looking at the cover of this book, I was expecting less interesting subjects compared to the other two. Although I was from when it reached on the technical details, I still consider this as one of the valuable books I've ever read.
This book didn't really interest me initially as much as I did to the rest of his books as I really don't care who owns the Telcos and power sector in the country as much as they provide good services to me and to the people. But after reading this book, I realized what this controlling of utility firms does with the quality of services such as the internet speed in the whole nation. The quality does not improve much as compared to the other asian countries because the firms do not have a will to improve for the sake of public service.
The public utility in the Philippines has been more on business profit than public service. One of the reasons is that its unpatriotic inclination set-up. Unlike the other asian countries which their public utility are state-owned, the Philippines had to sell their own to private sector since the economic meltdown in 1980s due to the global debt crisis and consequently the rise of insurgency. Private corporation's basic mission is more on generating profits than improving public service that would supposedly to improve its infrastructure for the convenience of the consumers. What's more unpatriotic is that foreign firms structurally control our Public utilities despite of our constitution that limits the foreign ownership by 40%. Another reason is that the duopoly market structure. Since there is no competition, the two firms, Globe and PLDT, could just negotiate a good deal for their mutual self-interest. Since the internet connectivity has become necessity for the average filipino people, the two firms could still do very well without utilizing their profits of spending it more to infrastructure improvement for the efficiency of the service.
Moving forward, President Duterte recently signed into law amending the Foreign Investment Act (FIA) allowing foreign investors to own telecommunications up to 100%. As to my view, this amendment may attract more foreign firms to consider investing in the Philippines, thus providing more competition to force the duopoly of Globe and PLDT to improve their facilities as what happened after joining the DITO Corporation in the game. It would be patriotic to persist on the 40% restriction and even going after unlawful acquisition of public utilities by foreign firms to eventually bring them back to the state or citizens but doing so would first invite more political pressure and consequently economic instability before it would finally settle that the Philippines cannot afford now that we are just starting to recover from pandemic. Owing to this pandemic situation, the Philippines chose a path of compromisation and decided this amendment hoping that this would be crucial for economic recovery from this economic contraction caused by pandemic lockdowns.
I have heard many complaints quite often about how poor services offered by our telecommunication providers available in the Philippines are so frustrating especially when what you do for a living is primarily earned on-line that would make this internet connectivity a necessity in everyday's life. In a world that more and more are going on-line, this industry has been significant for economic growth of a nation that the Philippines is struggling to be on par with the neighboring countries by being one of the lowest average internet connection speed among asian countries.
From what I know, this is the first published book by Rigoberto Tiglao and the shortest of his presently three books. What I only intended to read all along was his most popular book "Debunked" but during my reading of it, I was so impressed of how informative and unconventional the book was from its way of narrating the succeeding event to its most detail that I decided to buy the rest of his books. Looking at the cover of this book, I was expecting less interesting subjects compared to the other two. Although I was from when it reached on the technical details, I still consider this as one of the valuable books I've ever read.
This book didn't really interest me initially as much as I did to the rest of his books as I really don't care who owns the Telcos and power sector in the country as much as they provide good services to me and to the people. But after reading this book, I realized what this controlling of utility firms does with the quality of services such as the internet speed in the whole nation. The quality does not improve much as compared to the other asian countries because the firms do not have a will to improve for the sake of public service.
The public utility in the Philippines has been more on business profit than public service. One of the reasons is that its unpatriotic inclination set-up. Unlike the other asian countries which their public utility are state-owned, the Philippines had to sell their own to private sector since the economic meltdown in 1980s due to the global debt crisis and consequently the rise of insurgency. Private corporation's basic mission is more on generating profits than improving public service that would supposedly to improve its infrastructure for the convenience of the consumers. What's more unpatriotic is that foreign firms structurally control our Public utilities despite of our constitution that limits the foreign ownership by 40%. Another reason is that the duopoly market structure. Since there is no competition, the two firms, Globe and PLDT, could just negotiate a good deal for their mutual self-interest. Since the internet connectivity has become necessity for the average filipino people, the two firms could still do very well without utilizing their profits of spending it more to infrastructure improvement for the efficiency of the service.
Moving forward, President Duterte recently signed into law amending the Foreign Investment Act (FIA) allowing foreign investors to own telecommunications up to 100%. As to my view, this amendment may attract more foreign firms to consider investing in the Philippines, thus providing more competition to force the duopoly of Globe and PLDT to improve their facilities as what happened after joining the DITO Corporation in the game. It would be patriotic to persist on the 40% restriction and even going after unlawful acquisition of public utilities by foreign firms to eventually bring them back to the state or citizens but doing so would first invite more political pressure and consequently economic instability before it would finally settle that the Philippines cannot afford now that we are just starting to recover from pandemic. Owing to this pandemic situation, the Philippines chose a path of compromisation and decided this amendment hoping that this would be crucial for economic recovery from this economic contraction caused by pandemic lockdowns.
September 18, 2022
In summary of what I remember, it presented how foreigners circumvented the 40/60 Constitutional restriction via corporate layering, political maneuvering among others to control the important utilities in the country including communications, media and power generation. These industries that are vital to the country should be controlled by the Filipino people but in reality are foreign-controlled. Then, it says the country is lagging behind not because of the restrictions of FDI as he presented in his case studies but due to being behind on the ease of doing business in the country. Filipinos should start going back to being nationalistic instead of championing globalization to bring the country to progress.
May 19, 2022
"A well-researched work and must-read for any Filipino Nationalist"
Reading this book reinforced my long-held view that nationalism is dying in the Philippines.
Even though the Supreme Court still holds firm to the principles of our nationalist constitution, the majority of the Filipinos are unaware that most of the big conglomerates in the country are now owned by foreigners. I believe this lack of awareness or concern about what is happening in the country was intentionally done by the ruling class and enforced up by misguided government policies that slowly eroded our pride or concern for our country. We are now so divided, that nationalism is somehow a taboo topic for the youth or a divisive issue between pro or anti-government people. One can't even have a conversation now about issues of national concern without being labeled as an activist, a "yellow" sympathizer, or worse a Communist—these labels effectively drown the conversation. Instead of the local media (including the local Communist Party) exposing this blatant disregard of our constitution, they somehow pick only on China.
China will take over the country, they say.
But foreigners have long dominated key industries that were reserved for Filipinos by the Constitution and the local elite was complicit in it. In a way, F. Sionil Jose was right in pointing out that unless we also have a core of nationalist industrialists in the country instead of an elite that are extractive in the way they increase their wealth, the country's progress will be very slow. Salaries will continue to be depressed and we are just going to be consumers of excess products from more industrialized countries and exporters of our skilled labor force, furthering the brain drain phenomenon.
Something must be done to reverse this trend of indifference to our country, and it is something each one of us can help bring about.
Reading this book reinforced my long-held view that nationalism is dying in the Philippines.
Even though the Supreme Court still holds firm to the principles of our nationalist constitution, the majority of the Filipinos are unaware that most of the big conglomerates in the country are now owned by foreigners. I believe this lack of awareness or concern about what is happening in the country was intentionally done by the ruling class and enforced up by misguided government policies that slowly eroded our pride or concern for our country. We are now so divided, that nationalism is somehow a taboo topic for the youth or a divisive issue between pro or anti-government people. One can't even have a conversation now about issues of national concern without being labeled as an activist, a "yellow" sympathizer, or worse a Communist—these labels effectively drown the conversation. Instead of the local media (including the local Communist Party) exposing this blatant disregard of our constitution, they somehow pick only on China.
China will take over the country, they say.
But foreigners have long dominated key industries that were reserved for Filipinos by the Constitution and the local elite was complicit in it. In a way, F. Sionil Jose was right in pointing out that unless we also have a core of nationalist industrialists in the country instead of an elite that are extractive in the way they increase their wealth, the country's progress will be very slow. Salaries will continue to be depressed and we are just going to be consumers of excess products from more industrialized countries and exporters of our skilled labor force, furthering the brain drain phenomenon.
Something must be done to reverse this trend of indifference to our country, and it is something each one of us can help bring about.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews