With regards to the foreign ownership laws by its neighboring Asian countries, the Philippines is lacking initiatives on amending its laws to respond to the current global trading.  According to The Chamber of Real Estate & Builders’ Associations, Inc. (CREBA), it is time for Philippine lawmakers to review the existing foreign ownership laws of the Philippines. For CREBA, they believe that allowing foreigners to own land in the Philippines will encourage foreign investors to put bigger and more substantial investments in the Philippines and attract the much-needed capital that will create a butterfly in the country. CREBA also stated that foreign investment will also promote additional opportunities for local businesses and employment and raise additional government revenues from taxes.

The Philippines is becoming a prime medical tourism destination for Americans and foreign nationals as healthcare costs in the U.S. and around the world continue to rise.  The Philippine Department of Tourism reports that the number of overseas patients visiting the Philippines is increasing by as much as 88%, from 60,000 clients in 2007 to 600,000 in 2009. The Philippine Medical Tourism industry has registered a gross revenue of $350 million since it’s establishment in 2006. Furthermore, the DOT expects a $3 billion profit by 2015, with as much as 1,000,000 foreign patients arriving annually.

Manpower resources are one of the Philippines’ greatest exports. Presently, over eleven percent of the population are employed as Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) and Filipino communities are found in almost every industrialized nation in the world. The OFW diaspora regularly injects dollars into the economy in the form of remittances from Filipino professionals working abroad sending money home to their families. This has assisted the Philippine government immensely, and kept the local economy afloat.

SVEG Visa for the Philippines

As the Philippine BPO Industry expands, foreign investors continue to inject capital and resources into the economy, resulting in job creation for the local work force. A key to this unprecedented growth is the recently developed SVEG, short for Special Visa for Employment Generation, a non-immigrant visa which is enabling foreigners to create  business opportunities in the Philippine market.

Foreigners or non-Philippine nationals arriving in the Philippines as tourists, employees, for medical attention, investors or retirees must comply with Philippine Immigration Law which is enforced by the Philippine Bureau of Immigration. K&C assists individuals with obtaining visas and work permits with the Philippines Bureau of Immigration and the Department of Labor and Employment.

K&C will perform the following:

• Determine appropriate type of Visa (Investor, Working, Permanent)
• Process all documents with Bureau of Immigration (BI)
• Process all documents with Department of Labor & Employment (DOLE)