Anvil Business Club visits DBP, CEO Rey David urges

Anvil Executive Club, the business organization of young Filipino Chinese entrepreneurs and professionals, recently held its monthly Anvil Exchange Forum at the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP) head office in the Philippines' financial district of Makati City with DBP President & CEO Reynaldo David as Guest Speaker. 78 Anvil officers and members heard David’s speech and held a lively one-hour Open Forum on wide-ranging economic, finance and development economic issues concerning the Philippines. In his speech, former Citibank New York Vice-President/Treasurer David cited Anvil Business Club as a training ground for the country’s future business leaders and urged them to be idealistic catalysts of progress in the Philippines. He shared the priority goals of DBP and how this institution hopes to help stimulate socio-economic and environmental development nationwide. David encouraged the Anvil members and the country’s young entrepreneurs to be “our active partners in nation-building and economic development”.
The official channel for World Bank, Asian Development Bank loans and other official development assistance (ODA) funds, DBP has total assets of P157 billion pesos, has P54.9 billion pesos now available for lending, plus additional P 42.66 billion pesos available in tranches in 2005. David described the total P97 billion pesos available for lending as “the total stock market dealings of the Philippines in the last three years”. David predicted strong economic growth momentum this year for the Philippines and the success of the government’s fiscal and tax reforms. David challenged the Anvil members and the private sector to go into vital rural infrastructure development, power projects, environmental projects, agro-industrial, education, health care, community development and other ventures which shall help accelerate Philippine progress. Three biggest international credit ratings agencies had recently downgraded the Philippines, but David said fiscal reforms and economic recovery will soon change that.
Anvil Business Club was founded in 1991 as the "Anvil Executive Club" and was formally launched in Malacañang Palace with then President Corazon C. Aquino as Guest Speaker. Among the speakers in its prestigious Anvil Exchange Forum every month included top international and local tycoons, all Philippine Presidents, various government leaders, scholars and other achievers.
Anvil Business Club seeks to promote entrepreneurial courage, professional excellence, leadership and civic consciousness. Anvil Business Club strongly advocates the promotion of a strong entrepreneurial culture nationwide, in order to reduce mass poverty, social injustice and to ensure that the country’s economy will be truly globally competitive.
The first project of the new 2005 Anvil Business Club Board of Directors was to cancel the annual 2004 Christmas dinner reception and all officers pledged personal funds which were all donated to Quezon/Aurora typhoon victims, which were turned over in a formal ceremony through Philippine National Red Cross Chairman and Senator Richard Gordon.
Anvil Business Club officers and members represent the cream of the crop of the ethnic Chinese minority of the Philippines, which has been described by international media as "the most entrepreneurial sector of Philippine society". Unofficial estimates state that the ethnic Chinese comprise no more than two percent of the total Philippine population of 84 million people. The Philippines and Indonesia have the smallest proportion of ethnic Chinese in their national populations, in contrast to Chinese-majority Singapore, as well as Malaysia and Thailand which also have substantial Chinese populations. In fact, Prime Minister Thaksin Sinawatra is a fourth-generation ethnic Chinese and a telecommunications billionaire, while his two most immediate predecessor Prime Ministers were also ethnic Chinese.