PRA Chairman Paul Santos was quoted by Retail Asia saying that the current minimum investment for foreign retailers in the local retail market “will invite not the big foreign retailers that the law presumably wanted to invite into the country.”
But Santos explained that foreign retailers are not too concerned about capitalization requirements as they are with incentives and the economic environment that would allow their business to grow. But the law is expected to attract small and medium-sale foreign retailers not the big foreign retailers.
For example, the article noted that in Thailand, they have the equivalent retail trade restrictions on foreigners, but still a lot of foreign retailers doing business in Thailand because of its higher GDP compared to the Philippines. Foreigners still decide to do business in Thailand, simply because they think they can make money because the market can obviously afford what they’re selling.
Although retail sales in 2022 was definitely a lot better than the 2021 and 2020, the level of increase was still lower than the pre-pandemic 2019 figures. The domestic industry, however, was hoping of growing sales by 5 to 5.5 percent in 2023. Retailers also immediately adopted their operations making their products available in the online platforms with the adoption of cloud solutions, facilitating an increasing pace in automation.