Philippines tops global rankings in investor relations, debt transparency

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines ranked first in investor relations country scores coming from third place in 2023 based on an assessment from Washington-based think tank Institute of International Finance (IIF).

In the IIF Investor Relations and Debt Transparency Report released July 4, the Philippines garnered a score of 48.8 of 50, an improvement from last year’s score of 47.8 and the highest among the 50 countries sampled.

The Philippines ranks first in the 2024 Investor Relations and Debt Transparency Report released in July 2024.

Following the Philippines, countries receiving the highest scores were Indonesia with 48.7; Türkiye with 48.3; Brazil with 47.5 and Hungary with 47.2.

The Philippines jumped from 12th place in 2022 to 3rd place in 2023 out of 41 emerging markets and developing countries assessed.

The scores were weighted based on 23 criteria that investors value as important, such as practices of regular self-assessment, dissemination of macroeconomic data and policy information, the quality of investor relations website and the availability of feedback and communication channels.

According to the think tank, the countries that achieved the high IR scores showcase "robust practice and effective engagement with international creditors."

Debt transparency score

Subsets of the Investor Relations score are on debt transparency and on environmental, social and governance data and policy dissemination.

The Philippines also achieved the highest score in debt transparency posting a 12.5 score tying with Indonesia. It is followed by Türkiye with 12.3, Uruguay with 12.0 and Brazil with 11.8.

This is based on evaluation of how well a country or organization discloses and manages debt-relation information, with a maximum score of 13.

It also measures countries' adherence to the International Monetary Fund's standards on how data is disclosed and distributed as well as the accessibility of macroeconomic and ESG data.

"Countries with strong investor relations and debt transparency practices are realizing the benefits, seeing higher sovereign credit ratings and improved capital flows," the IIF authors said.