The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has partnered with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) and the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) for the sharing of corporate data to improve the measurement of foreign direct investments (FDI) in the country.
The three agencies signed an agreement which seeks to establish a framework for collaboration and data sharing on FDI compilation, aligned with international standards that integrate both bank-reported and enterprise-sourced data. It also aims to address the potential underreporting of FDI data in the country.
‘Data must become insight. Insight must drive better policy. Better policy must translate into greater investor confidence, more investments, more jobs, and stronger economic growth… May this partnership remind us that when institutions work as one, we make better decisions, build greater trust, and create more opportunities for every Filipino,’ SEC Chairman Francis E. Lim said.
Under the agreement, the SEC will provide the PSA and the BSP with corporate data and documents, including audited financial statements, general information sheets and articles of partnership of companies.
Corporate data will then be transmitted periodically through a central repository managed by the PSA.
The corporate regulator will also provide access to the SEC Application Program Interface endpoints for retrieving specific data of companies covered by the agreement.
Corporate documents will be provided through the Swift Corporate and Other Records Exchange Protocol, or the SEC SCORE Protocol-the agency’s online platform that facilitates the request and provision of corporate documents between the SEC and other government agencies.
In turn, the central bank will furnish the SEC with copies of statistics, analyses and studies generated from the FDI data compilation it obtained from the SEC.
The partnership formalizes the directive of the Department of Finance to the SEC in a meeting in June 2025 to provide company registration records to the PSA and BSP, free of charge, to support FDI data compilation.
‘That meeting underscored a simple but powerful truth: if the Philippines is to compete more effectively for investments, we must tell our story with accuracy, consistency, and credibility,’ Lim said.
Since the meeting, the SEC has transmitted data covering over 16,000 registered corporations and partnerships with FDIs and has provided information on the country’s largest corporations to support the Coordinated Direct Investment Survey, a global data collection initiative on direct investment positions led by the International Monetary Fund.