Central bank-led capitalism, remittances, and rentier consolidations in the Philippines

IF 3.4 2区社会学 Q1 GEOGRAPHY

Geoforum Pub Date : 2025-06-28 DOI:10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104347

Kenneth Cardenas

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

From 2001, remittances from overseas Filipinos allowed the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) to amass record US dollar reserves through market operations, and to successfully target inflation while keeping policy rates low. This saw a dramatic shift in the country’s political-economic position, historically marked by balance-of-payments crises and external indebtedness.

These conditions of low interest rates and dollar surpluses allowed the largest Philippine conglomerates to retire foreign and/or dollar-denominated debt in favor of longer-term, lower-rate, domestic, and/or peso-denominated debt. The market for these new issuances, in turn, was an oligopsony composed of the banking affiliates of the same conglomerates and their trust operations. This created new inter-conglomerate dependencies scaffolded by this shift in the debt market, and by BSP regulations limiting related party lending.

Meanwhile, the real estate arms of the same conglomerates expanded their underregulated quasi-lending activities, allowing for high rates of return from and the displacement of risk onto homebuyers. Much of the demand for real estate is driven by the same remittances from overseas Filipinos.

These developments have had the cumulative effect of supporting the maturation of a domestic capitalist class, and its consolidation around rentier advantages in banking, real estate, and infrastructure. The BSP has successfully managed risks that in the past have led to crises for domestic capitalists, and recent downturns have disrupted neither their composition nor their core interests. However, this system is also displacing risk onto a precarious homebuyer class, and creating new risks from the consolidation of an interdependent, value-extracting oligopoly.

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中央银行主导的资本主义、汇款和菲律宾的食利者整合

从2001年开始，海外菲律宾人的汇款使菲律宾中央银行（BSP）通过市场操作积累了创纪录的美元储备，并在保持低政策利率的同时成功地实现了通胀目标。这见证了该国政治经济地位的戏剧性转变，历史上以国际收支危机和外债为标志。这些低利率和美元盈余的条件使菲律宾最大的企业集团能够偿还外国和/或美元计价的债务，转而购买长期、低利率、国内和/或比索计价的债务。而这些新发行债券的市场则是由同一大企业集团旗下的银行子公司及其信托业务组成的寡头垄断市场。债务市场的转变和BSP限制关联方贷款的规定，造成了新的企业集团间的依赖关系。与此同时，这些企业集团旗下的房地产部门扩大了监管不足的准贷款活动，从而获得了高回报率，并将风险转嫁给了购房者。对房地产的需求很大程度上是由海外菲律宾人的汇款推动的。这些发展产生了累积效应，支持了国内资产阶级的成熟，并巩固了银行、房地产和基础设施的食利者优势。BSP成功地管理了过去给国内资本家带来危机的风险，最近的经济衰退既没有破坏他们的构成，也没有破坏他们的核心利益。然而，这一体系也将风险转移给了不稳定的购房者阶层，并从相互依赖的、榨取价值的寡头垄断的巩固中创造了新的风险。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Geoforum GEOGRAPHY-

CiteScore

7.30

自引率

5.70%

发文量

201

期刊介绍： Geoforum is an international, inter-disciplinary journal, global in outlook, and integrative in approach. The broad focus of Geoforum is the organisation of economic, political, social and environmental systems through space and over time. Areas of study range from the analysis of the global political economy and environment, through national systems of regulation and governance, to urban and regional development, local economic and urban planning and resources management. The journal also includes a Critical Review section which features critical assessments of research in all the above areas.