This writer is in Singapore for a week to attend the Singapore International Reinsurance Conference. As a non-life insurance company executive, we must meet our international partners with whom we reinsure our business.

The Insurance Code of the Philippines prohibits a non-life insurance company from retaining more than 20 percent of its net worth for a single risk. Engaging reinsurers becomes mandatory when accepting huge risks, such as energy and infrastructure projects totaling billions.

Consequentially, our foreign partners had tons of questions about how the Philippines is doing, based mostly on what they see on the news. The reinsurers for marine insurance all had their prepared questions on the conflict in the West Philippine Sea. Quite a number were concerned we would not be accepting business involving sea vessels and ships since it appeared that the Chinese were intercepting and intentionally ramming our boats.

This is interesting to note, considering that we Filipinos know that such events happen outside the sea lanes of our inter-island vessels. But in the eyes of the foreign businessmen, the Chinese vessels appeared to be more intrusive.

In response, the boats involved in these conflicts were government-owned vessels, which are insured by the GSIS, not private companies, and boats that were minuscule fishing boats that may not have any insurance at all. Then again, this discussion should be unnecessary, but thanks to the brash activities of the Chinese Coast Guard, we need to dispel these unwarranted causes of concern.

The good news is that in the economic briefings I attended, it came out that the Philippines has good prospects in the years to come. It was noted that the Philippines is in recovery toward its pre-pandemic growth trend. Our services sector is gaining ground, and the world is familiar with the stability of our economy, thanks to the strong remittances of our OFWs. The Philippines' Gross Domestic Product growth is shown to be higher than our neighbors, and we must thank the administration's economic team for this.

In our personal meetings with reinsurers, our team boasted of government spending to boost our economy and develop the country's infrastructure. What we learned from the typhoons that hit us is that we need more flood control projects to protect our people. Knowing that the Philippines is an agricultural country, we discussed the preparation of new products, such as crop insurance, which should grant protection to our farmers and their produce.