Home of the Richest and the Poorest

Henry Sy is still the Philippines’ richest with a net worth of $9.1 billion. At 87 years old, the owner of SM Investment Corps. (SMIC) and Banco De Oro still holds the top spot after five consecutive years, ranking him as the 116th Richest Man in the World according to Forbes Asia.

To date, there are now 15 billionaires in the Philippines, four more than the previous year. The growth according to Forbes Asia 2012 is due to “an ongoing consumer boom, a surge in tourism and outsourcing, a stock market which gained 17 percent in the past year and economic growth of 6.4 percent in the last quarter.”

Nonetheless, Forbes’ claim in the growth of the nation’s economy does not seem to reflect in the state of living of the non-wealthy. As the nationwide survey conducted by the Social Weather Station in March 2012 found out, 11.1 million Filipino households rate themselves poor, a great increase from last year’s 9.1 million.

Unemployment rate procured in the same period by the same organization also increased by four million. However, the government claimed otherwise, saying employment increased by 1.1 million during the first quarter of this year, a result obtained by the National Statistics Office on Labor Force. C