The shift to a market-oriented credit and financial policy was expected to spur rural financing by the private sector that would help usher growth in the agriculture and rural areas. However, the rural areas have continued to suffer from the lack of access to financial services of banks. Despite...

Private firms invest in physical capital and human resource but they are also advised to invest in innovations to be more productive and profitable. Innovations refer to the development, deployment, and economic utilization of new products, processes, and services. It is important for firms to...

The Port of Manila, the largest seaport in the country, has been recognized as the most widely used port in the Greater Capital Region with utilization rate of 71.6 percent compared to only 2.3 percent and 6.1 percent utilization of Batangas and Subic Ports, respectively (NEDA 2012). The ports...

When poor households face catastrophic events, they do not have any means for risk protection. Access to formal risk protection schemes such as insurance may be a more effective means to minimize the poor households' losses but traditional mainstream insurance has bypassed informal workers and...

The monetary approach to the balance of payments (BOP) takes the view that domestic credit is exogenous to BOP and that it is deteriorated by the excess money, which results from domestic credit expansion. This article determines whether in fact the assertion is true. Utilizing the method...

To evaluate the effectiveness of approaches to improve policies toward the development of small and medium enterprises, this article assesses the efficiency of directed credit programs and the impact of a liberalized design of a specific project.

Despite the government’s credit program approach, access of poor households to microfinancial services has remained limited. This paper explains the microfinance policy environment in the Philippines and evaluates the institutional and financial capacity/performance constraints of MFIs. This...

This paper discusses financial reform and development in the Philippines during the past one and a half decades and the challenges facing the financial sector in the light of greater international financial integration. Issues on prudential regulation and how it can be improved and strengthened...

This paper reports the empirical results of an attempt to develop a statistical classification system for rural banks using common financial ratios as predictor variables. Though it provides a formal and fast way to classify banks, the classical techniques utilized in this paper should not be...

One of the issues contending the rural borrowers, who are composed of small entrepreneurs, fishermen and farmers, is the access to financial services of formal financial institutions. With this fact on hand, this article discusses the issue within the framework of asymmetry of information...