any trader from the Philippines?

Quote from polpolik:

So you do have the cell# then? I thought no one could find a phone number? Send a text message or give them a call. I tried the swift trading site but the "locations" link is non-functional.
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I just came across it today. I might try texting or calling them later.
 
Quote from reg:

Being the most corrupt country in Asia certainly has its disadvantages. :D
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i disagree. as least you know where you stand in a corrupt country thats openly corrupt. they dont try to hide it and at least on that principle you can get things done.

compared to the eu and uk where months of red tape and legal nonsense is common place its a wonder any business can work at all.
also the corruption in the western world is rife except its a more higher level of corruption and political back handers going on.

i peronally admire the open way of corruption in asia.

embrace it and use it with your business.
 
@Tleilaxu Mentat
Give them a call and keep us posted :D

I found their address in Manila:
Marc 2000 Bldg office 9d
1973 Taft Ave. cor Quirino
Malate
Manila
 
Quote from reg:

Being the most corrupt country in Asia certainly has its disadvantages. :D
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I knew some totally ignorant dude would bring that up sooner or later :p. Only if you believe the parachute journalists and armchair analysts who never even visited the country. Did you even read how awesomely scientific that survey was conducted? Guess not. Here's news for you: corruption is present everywhere in Asia, the only problem is the perception is worse here only because we have the freest press in the region. Bad news is strictly controlled in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, China, Vietnam & other states with authoritarian/totalitarian governments. Heck, it even extends to tourism promotion. Just compare the # of investors & tourists in, say, Thailand vis-a-vis the Philippines. The ones with more natural resources and better tourist spots loses out to the one who has a bigger advertising & promotion budget. It's all just a matter of perception & putting up the best PR spin on things.

Amazingly, even the dumbass PM of Cambodia seems to think his country is better off than the Philippines, just because of the # of bad news he reads about it in the papers & sees on CNN. Of course, in his country, merely talking about corruption would throw you into the gulag. ROTFLMAO. Hey, if you want to fry your noodle basking in the Reality Distortion Field™ , be my guest. :D

We live here, so we know the real score.
 
Quote from Tleilaxu Mentat:

We live here, so we know the real score.
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I have lived there, and I too know the real score.
Admitting one's shortcomings and finding productive ways to overcome it is not the Filipino's strongest trait, so I am not at all surprised with regards to your response.
By the way, the information about the Philippines being Asia's most corrupt country did not come from CNN, but from businessmen who actually did/do business there.
You can hide the dirt under the rug and pretend that everything's fine, but I can assure you it isn't.
In fact, maybe you can start this little exercise of admitting you're wrong everytime you're wrong and facing reality - this will certainly go a long way in helping you in your (wannabe) prop trading career.
Good luck - I have a feeling you're going to need a lot of it.
 
unfortunately, being born and raised here, req, you're right. No one ever admits to the problems around here. I don't know how the country can fix the problems when it's denying it has problems to begin with.

"oh it ain't that bad" is the offical line from the politicians and the apologists.

I went away for 10 years and came back only to see a worse environment than what i had left.
 
one thing i witnessed the other week just summed up things here in the philippines.

i was in a cab at makati avanue heading towards the shopping malls at glorietta.

the cab driver for a few seconds went in the oncoming traffic lane and then swerved back into the correct lane.

the policeman correctly pulls him over and asks for the licence.
the taxi driver complies and is told his licence will be kept and sent to batangas traffic department. the taxi driver will have an official small fine of a200 peso but cannot drive around for a week or so until he collects the licence and pays the fine there.
therefore no income and a pain in the arse etc etc.

however he is informed the following:

he can give the policeman 500 peso and his licence will be given back to him and he can carry on driving.
the taxi driver agrees and the transaction takes place.
according to the taxi driver that was his earnings barely for the day after all expeneses.

unbelievably this all took place virtually outside the national police commission building whose sign at the front just says and i quote' the police policing the police'.

the irony of this whole situation is amazing.

whats worse is that i could understand in some bizarre way the policeman trying to rip me off or some other ' rich' filipino but to do this to an ordinary guy breaking his neck to earn 400/500 peso for 24 hours work i find disgusting.

these guys wont even help their fellow countrymen.

now im not saying this is a reflection of all filipinos because it is not but it is a reflection of the way official business does seem to conduct itself when some people are given a little power and a position of authority.

it gives them a purpopse to make money on the side.
 
Hello Everyone:

it is so late (2:30AM Monday in LA) here where i'm at but i've been meaning to post my random thoughts for a couple of days now since i found this thread, but it's been a busy weekend, so...

i'll just post a quickie and will post more, but only if this is not going to turn into a personal-attack thread. i would just like to post my opinion and i wish everyone will do the same. we can disagree all we want, and i think what will most likely happen is that no one is really gonna change anyone's mind :D now that that's off my chest...

the claim is that the philippines is the most corrupt country in asia - hmmnn... hard for me to argue that, since i've never been to the other asian countries (except for stopovers in HK, korea and japan). i heard that malaysia is pretty corrupt, as well. but if the philippines is the most corrupt by some accepted metrics, so be it. just how bad is the situation there? life must be miserable, yea?

i left the philippines when i was young, and started going for vacation every year starting in 1996. some years, i went for twice a year. i stopped for a year or 2 when i got with my gf, but i started going again when i had an opportunity to open a small business with a partner in october 2005. i brought my gf there last august, and she had a great time. we went to bohol and ate good food in rockwell, she went shopping everywhere and kept telling me things are so cheap, haha.

my opinion is that the philippines has gone through a whole transition in the past 10 years. If in 1998, you were to say to a local filipino that a president would be ousted and put in jail because he was corrupt, what do u think the response would be? If you were to say to someone back then that a mayor (pasay city) and the entire office would be fired because of underhanded waste management contracts, what do you think the response would be? police officers getting busted for extortion on a rich japanese (or some foreign national)?

i think that part of why this is happening is the internet, with so much ease of reporting, everyone's in the spotlight and can't get away quite so easily.

The-Beaker talks about the cab driver who had to bribe the policeman, but whose fault was it? if the cab driver didn't commit that traffic violation, he would not have to bribe. i've only been stopped for running a red light eventhough i drive all the time when i go there (it was still yellow when i was in the middle, but whatever...) the policeman said the same thing, i can pick my california drivers license at the precint, and i politely asked if i can take care of it there because i'm on vacation and can't really afford to use up too much of my time. he said it's up to me (he calls me boss, D ). i gave him 500pesos, boy, was he happy!! and me? i was very happy that i didn't have to waste my time driving all over town to pick up my license, all for the cost of $10. i'm not making this up, but the cousin of the guy i rent the car from got a ticket within a few days of this, and his ticket fine written on the ticket is 1500pesos. i forgot the violation, but when he was telling me this, i asked him why he didn't just bribe the policeman, and he said he didn't agree with the violation. i thought to myself, well, you're really smart, now you gotta drive to wherever that precint is and pay 1500pesos, which i'm sure could have been handled for may be 300pesos (more or less, depending on how you talk to the police guy)

i used to travel a lot when i was working for an investment firm as an IT professional, and i was sent 3 different times to London. one time, my bags were searched. unpacked on the tables underwear and all. of course they didn't find anything, but you know having all your stuff out there then having to repack everything in a hurry, kinda sucks... my bags/luggages have never been searched when i go to the philippines. in my passport, i always enclose a $10 bill, and i get smiles and thanks from the customs people there. the only time i didn't do this was when i flew PAL and ended up at that new airport in January of 1999. the customs area was out in the open. you know the way i look at it, the $10 is nothing to me, but it's a nice gift to my friend there at the customs and the idea is lost on most people. they think i'm bribing them, but they have a job and a salary. i'm bribing them so that they don't do their job. their job is to search your luggages (just like in london).

in 1997 (my 2nd trip), i went with a bunch of my high school friends from here in LA to the philippines, and we thought we had this contact who was connected. the guy picks us up in the baggage pick up area (between immigration and customs) and as we were passing the customs, no one put any money in the passports. my bags weren't searched (some comment that i was a US citizen), but my friends who knew the contact, their bags were searched. they had some dentures stuff, an old computer, blah blah blah. my other friend who goes home a lot finally handed $10 to the customs guy, then it stopped. total tax bill? about $80 from what i remember. the customs guy apologized and said he can't do anything about those because they've been "tagged". the money is paid at the window and goes to the philippine tax collectors.... my point is that you can bribe the customs worker (or think of it as a gift) so he doesn't do his job for the philippine tax administration, or you can let him do his job, but you have to make sure you don't have anything in your bags that you'll end up paying more.

i'm gonna stop here for now, coz it's really late, but i'll post more thoughts tomorrow... i have a lot more to say, but as you can see, i'm just presenting them and we can agree to disagree.

Life is not Black & White. we're not gonna live forever, and just with trading, we have to push every edge we see in front of us.
 
Quote from reg:

I have lived there, and I too know the real score.
Admitting one's shortcomings and finding productive ways to overcome it is not the Filipino's strongest trait, so I am not at all surprised with regards to your response.
By the way, the information about the Philippines being Asia's most corrupt country did not come from CNN, but from businessmen who actually did/do business there.
You can hide the dirt under the rug and pretend that everything's fine, but I can assure you it isn't.
In fact, maybe you can start this little exercise of admitting you're wrong everytime you're wrong and facing reality - this will certainly go a long way in helping you in your (wannabe) prop trading career.
Good luck - I have a feeling you're going to need a lot of it.
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For how long? Several days like the armchair analysts? :p Try to say the same thing in an authoritarian/totalitarian country and let's see if you could leave it as easily. :D I didn't say there was no corruption in the country, in fact, it's rampant in government offices, but it's much more easily publicized than in states with controlled and/or nonexistent press or opposition parties. If you even read the methodology used in this unscientific survey you would have known that of the 1500 businessmen, only 100 or so even visited the country recently, so is their judgement much more important than people who actually live here and deal with the situation everyday? The press, if you don't realize it yet, needs to publicize and propagate bad news in order to earn money, so the perception that these businessmen get from reading newspapers and watching CNN naturally would be much more negative in a country where the media is free and unhampered. If it's a matter of perception, rankings & numbers mean little. The public sector is corrupt, the private sector not so, and I haven't read or heard anyone denying its existence, but like all surveys based on perception influenced greatly by media, it must be understood in the proper context. We don't need foreign businessmen w/ superiority complexes to pontificate on us (by the way, how many billions in $$ have been siphoned off American taxpayers by the current White House gang with proven links to oil & military-industrial oligarchs?)

You obviously have reading comprehension problems if you say I was sweeping the dirt under the rug :p. Hey, you're the one who started this OT post, the rest of it is unfortunately baseless personal attacks resorted to by someone who already lost the argument. Cheers.


A more balanced perspective:


http://www.inquirerbloggers.net/mon...upt-tell-me-something-we-don’t-already-know…/


PERC did not pretend to do anything more than polling resident businessmen on their perception of corrupt practices. The Philippines-based businessmen were not talking when they were asked about the Ombudsman’s claims, their own day-to-day business dealings with the government, the kickbacks they have to pay to get contracts approved and their experiences through the bureaucratic mill and with the powerbrokers facilitating the transactions in the back rooms. The businessmen and government officials, including the Ombudsman, did not speak the same language about corruption.

The survey asked expat businessmen about the effectiveness of the judiciary in fighting corruption and the average citizen’s tolerant attitude toward corruption as part of the business environment in which they are operating. Their feedback: “t is bad and has been bad all along. People are just growing tired of the action and insincerity of leading officials when they promise to fight corruption.”

In an interview with the Inquirer, PERC’s managing director Robert Broadfoot said the respondents cited the unresolved plunder case against deposed President Joseph Estrada. He said the case “has been dragging for years.” He added, “then there’s the opposition’s charges (on corruption and electoral fraud) against President Arroyo.”

The businessmen did not cite specific cases of corruption that victimized them. But the judicial environment in which corruption cases are dragging forms part of the perception. The expats are not in the business of blowing the whistle. It would be making them vulnerable to retaliation and harassment from the government. This is why they are talking about the judicial environment.

But Estrada’s case is not exactly “old news,” as some local Filipino businessmen would like to look at it dismissively. His case is a prime example of “undelivered” results.

An official of the Bankers Association of the Philippines commented that foreign businessmen might have made conclusions based on certain high-profile cases. “Corruption is endemic all around Asia,” the official said. “It’s just that there have been cases here in the limelight, like the Piatco case,”referring to the unresolved controversy over Terminal 3 of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport. The Supreme Court and the Senate "blue ribbon" committee on investigation have found the Piatco contract to be a corrupt transaction, and the contract has gone into international arbitration, indicating the government’s incapacity to carry out the prosecution of corruption.

Even though these cases are long pending, they nevertheless form part of the perception. Perceptions are dangerous because they are important in making investment decisions, more than official statistics showing an increase in the number of convictions in corruption cases. Even though businessmen are not disclosing specific corrupt practices directly affecting them, it is the “unstated” that determines the damning perceptions in the surveys.
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http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=55111
 
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