PSE chief confident of market recovery from Mideast woes

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April 11, 2026 | 12:00am

MANILA, Philippines — Philippine Stock Exchange Inc. (PSE) president and chief executive officer Ramon Monzon is optimistic the country will eventually get over the hump caused by the ongoing Middle East conflict, enabling the local stock market to flourish once more.

“Structurally, I think the Philippine economy is in a better position to weather this particular problem. And so I’m confident that we will really be able to get over this problem and recover, as far as the economy and the markets are concerned,” Monzon said in a CNBC interview yesterday.

Monzon said the Philippines is in a very different situation from the oil crisis it experienced in the 1970s.

“At that time, if you remember, we practically went bankrupt in 1983 with the oil price shocks. But what makes it very different now, as far as the Philippines is concerned, is number one, our gross international reserves are able to, at a level, cover at least seven months of export compared to two months in the 1970s,” Monzon said.

 “While our debt is elevated at 63 percent debt to GDP rate, however, what the bright aspect there is that only about 20 percent of our debt is denominated in foreign currency. So we should not be affected that much with the depreciation. Second, 91 percent of our debt are fixed interest rates and 81 percent are long term,” he said.

So far, the local stock market has been on an upward trajectory since the announcement of a two-week ceasefire between the United States and Iran.

“Our market has been up for the last three days, obviously, reacting very positively to the ceasefire. So again, that demonstrates the resilience for the Philippine market,” Monzon said.

“But having said that, I was bothered by the news report I read that the World Bank has projected a lower GDP growth for the Philippines of 3.7 percent from its original projection of 5.3 percent last January. And I think a big reason for that is they’re projecting some problems we might have on inflation, especially on food, because other than the oil impact of this war, there’s obviously some very adverse impact on the fertilizer shipments and costs,” he said.

For Monzon, it is not so much inflation that affects the market, but the expectation.

“For example, there are expectations that the lending rates will go down. It’s good for the market,” he said.

Monzon said a depreciating foreign exchange also signals uncertainty on the market and affects adversely the investor sentiment.

Still, Monzon remains hopeful a recovery is on its way soon.

“I mean, markets always recover. May take time, different times for different markets, but all markets have a history of recovering from their lows,” he said.

Despite current uncertainties, the PSE chief also remains confident on hitting the exchange’s capital raising target for the year.

“I’ve set the target of P170 billion capital raising at the beginning of the year. And since this conflict has arisen, I’ve been asked the question, are you going to lower your estimate for the capital raising targets. And I said, no, I’m sticking to the target,” Monzon said.

“Where am I coming from? Well, like I said, I see more IPOs (initial public offerings) when the market stabilizes. But more than that, we don’t have only IPOs, but we have a lot of follow-on offerings that we expect to see in the market. And so again, I’m an eternal optimist. I’m still confident that we will reach that capital raising target I’ve set at the beginning of the year,” he said.