ABSTRACT
The tertiary and quaternary services sector has been the arena of globalization par excellence. Services now account for nearly a quarter of the value of world trade (Avila 1998: 1). Around the world, international investment has always been prominent in finance, insurance and transport but in recent decades it has also involved information technology, the mass media of communications, advertising, the real estate industry and some community services.The colonial past of the Philippines meant that a number of foreign firms were well entrenched in finance and insurance by the time of independence, but thereafter economic nationalism imposed barriers to protect the sector for citizens (Arroyo 1984). Some of those barriers began to fall with deregulation and trade liberalization under President Ramos, and the unilateral reductions in several industries were greater than Philippine commitments to the ASEAN Framework Agreement on Services of 1995 (Avila 1998). (This is meant to complement liberalization of merchandise trade, with priority for financial services, tourism, telecommunications and air and maritime transport.) Other factors in increasing foreign presence have been the sheer scale of the investments required and the impossibility of a small country being able to keep up with technical change with its own resources.
