Producing food isn’t a quick or a necessarily very wealthy opportunity but it’s still a good one to consider.

Building decent housing is also something that helps the investor, helps the tenants and helps the community as well.

I would avoid money lending like the plague myself, however. Money lending is a really specialized occupation … the boombi’s territory in my view and a good way to get yourself ’salvaged” (Filipino slang for getting taken out in the woods and hacked to oieces). Some people thrive on it though.

I will admit I have seen few opportunities for making money in the Philippines but I have heard of a few. Currently my wife and I are trying to buy a piece of land, 1 3/4 hectare with 98 coconut trees on it (actually I plan to put it in mine and my sons name). It will cost around $2000US and we are told will make a minimum of $1000US a year if we harvest the copra ourselves every 2 1/2 months. It is off the road a ways but right on a nice creek and corners her parents land. Now if I could just find and afford 20 more like that.
I forget but isn’t there a law that one person can’t own more than a certain amount of land there? It really is a shame, I saw acres and acres of land not being used while I was traveling to and around Calamba. I’ve been told that often the family gets in trouble and cuts the coconut trees to pay bills then it just sits unused, they don’t even plant them back.
The other opportunities I am aware of are as you mentioned rental houses especially boarding houses near a school and loaning money as secured loans.

I’ve mentoned severla time sbefore our “vegetable ladies”, the “Gulay Girls” who come to our house several times aweek. They travel more thna 70km, one way, with vegetables, fruits and specialty meat items and sell essentially only to their “sukis” … regular customers … in other words thye don’t go up and down the street “hawking” they just vist their regulars and then go home.

Now I’m happy that they come, but I never see them withut thinking why on earth doesn’t somebody local do the same thing? There are anumber of families right here on my street whos have able-bodied, educated people at home but no plan for life except to wait for remittance from a relative in Canda or Saudi or whereever. It mystifies me why folks want to sit and look at opportunity instead of seizing upon it.

That’s part of the reason I’ve been writing this series of articles … I have obne or two more in mind … to try and ‘air the laundry’ so to speak and perhaps educate myself better … becuase from the outside looking in, it is a mystery to me.

My wife and I are investigating various business opportunities in the Philippines. We have to agree with you that there are opportunities there for anyone with the determination to pursue them. I was reading last night that according to the recent Bureau of Statistics census that the number of Koreans coming to the Philippines has finally exceeded the number of Americans. Many Koreans are setting up businesses there. I read about a Korean has set up an organic strawberry plantation in Negros Oriental, the only one in the Philippines. No one ever thought to grow strawberries there before.

One thing I’ve noticed in the Philippines is that if someone in the family is successful or gets a job as an OFW they are expected to give money to the other family members. So once the other family members are ” on the payroll ” there’s no need to try and find work or set up a little business. The successful one becomes financially drained because they have no funds to re-invest. The ones they helped often will never return the favour. If the successful filipino/filipina doesn’t continue sending money they are regarded as greedy monsters. So for many filipinos it boils down to what’s the point of working hard because you’ll just end up with nothing in the long run.

My wife told me about one exception in her town. The woman started as a teacher and then set up several sideline businesses. Now retired she owns a lot of land and recently built a large American standard luxury home with her own cash. She never helped her family except for her children despite pressures to do so. I think few filipinos cannot resist such pressures and the fruits of their hard work is lost.

the “crab mentality” is the most dreaded term for me, i share your sentiment and am too wondering for the past decades as to why there are so many filipino have this mentality, instead of pushing one to achieve a better outcome, filipinos pull them down, instead of mimicking one’s success, pinoy would bad mouth for one’s fall , i would not say that this kind of behavior confined only in the philippines as there are many pinoy who is living in other parts of the world with the same mentality.

I remember a few years back, there’s one well known pinoy migrated to the states and a few years later he came back home because his “friends” in the states bad mouth about him and his business, until he went bankrupt.

oh well.. i guess it runs in the blood.. lol

So, we’re growing a new crop, making jobs, going green, and progressing.

There’s plans on the table for tourism for the province, too. With that, I hope they respect our barangay’s NIMBY point of view!