‘Crowdfunding’ tapped to aid Cordillera MSMEs
BAGUIO CITY—Using social media-inspired “crowdfunding” techniques, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is helping match investors with micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and business startups in the Cordillera, an official said on Friday. During a capital market roadshow here, Vicente Graciano Felizmenio Jr., SEC director for markets and security regulations, said his agency was negotiating to include state insurers like the Government Services Insurance System and the Maharlika Investment Corp., administrator of the country’s first sovereign wealth fund, among possible sources of capital for MSMEs in the country. The government is tapping this “alternative mechanism” to address an MSME fund gap of $220 billion, based on a March to April 2020 survey conducted by the Asian Development Bank, he said. MSME businessmen, he said, make up 98 to 99 percent of the country’s business landscape. As of 2021, the Cordillera has 22,493 MSMEs, of which 1,270 are classified as small enterprises and 28 are medium-scale businesses, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority. Many more microentrepreneurs and startup businesses may not have been included in that list. About 140 small businesses from the Cordillera and Ilocos regions, which joined the roadshow, were introduced to stock brokerage firms and professional fund managers who function as authorized and regulated “crowdfunding intermediaries” for the SEC’s “crowdfunding portal.” Crowdfunding started out as an online practice of different groups of people and organizations who finance projects like a movie or who donate money for ailing children and individuals. The same principle applies to government crowdfunding, which allows capitalists to connect with and scrutinize the projects being developed by small businesses. However, these transactions are overseen by heavily regulated “crowdfunding intermediaries” to protect the interests of both entrepreneurs and investors, Felizmenio said. High-value farming SEC has also invited local investment managers to join the portal because of potential investments that are distinct to the provinces, he said at a news conference held on the sidelines of the roadshow. For example, the bulk of registered small businesses in the Cordillera provinces are engaged in high-value farming and other agricultural ventures, Regina Cajucom-De Guzman, SEC Cordillera director, told reporters. Benguet province, and border towns in Ifugao and Mountain Province, generate 80 percent of the salad vegetable supplies in Metro Manila like cabbage, lettuce, cauliflower, broccoli, carrots and beans. So a likely small and medium business project that could draw as much as P500 million in capital is a
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