If you want to run a business in the Philippines you need to spend about a quarter of your management time on local regulatory issues.
A friend who has spent twenty years in the Philippines building up a sucessful business which is respected locally is seriously thinking of relocating his IT business to Cambodia, although English is not so widely spoken there, because the legal climate is so much more friendly to foreign investment there.
Part of the problem in the Philippines is simply that there are far too many laws; a legacy from the Spanish era.
Another friend sent five months obtaining permission to put a fence round the steps to his office to stop tramps sleeping there; he had to obtain 23 separate approvals.
Then we have the whole area of the anti-dummy law, the laws limiting foreign ownership, the awful complication of the Customs, and so on.
Most companies look at the Philippines and say to themselves, "Is it worth it?"
