The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) have signed a memorandum of agreement establishing a secure data-sharing framework aimed at improving the accuracy, completeness, and timeliness of the country's foreign direct investment (FDI) statistics to support evidence-based policymaking and enhance the Philippines' investment climate.

The signing, witnessed and championed by Finance Secretary Frederick Go, formalizes closer collaboration among the three agencies to produce more comprehensive and internationally aligned FDI statistics. According to officials, Go initiated discussions among the agencies several months ago to strengthen the country's FDI reporting system.

"Finance Secretary Frederick Go, the brains of this undertaking, months ago called us agencies to work together to identify areas for improvement in the compilation of foreign direct investment statistics and to address existing gaps aimed at strengthening the reporting mechanism necessary for evidence-based decision-making," PSA Undersecretary Claire Dennis S. Mapa said.

Under the agreement, the SEC will provide corporate registration records to the PSA and BSP through its SEC Swift Corporate and Other Records Exchange (SCORE) Protocol and SEC API Marketplace, enabling the secure exchange of investment-related information.

The PSA will serve as the central repository of FDI data, while the BSP will continue to compile and publish the country's official FDI statistics.

The enhanced data-sharing system is expected to improve the quality and coverage of FDI statistics by integrating enterprise-level information with existing reporting mechanisms while incorporating safeguards to protect confidential information in compliance with the Data Privacy Act.

BSP data showed that FDI net inflows reached $7.8 billion from January to December 2025, a 17.1-percent decline from the previous year and the lowest annual level since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, mainly due to governance concerns that weighed on investor sentiment. In April this year, net inflows fell to $250 million, the lowest monthly level in a decade and down 58.8 percent from $607 million a year earlier.

Go has been vocal about reinvigorating FDI inflows into the country, primarily through negotiating double taxation agreements with 10 countries. The Bureau of Internal Revenue reported earlier this week that work has begun on adopting the Global Minimum Tax, an Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) framework that Go also believes will attract more foreign investments by enhancing the ease of doing business, which, in turn, should create more jobs for Filipinos.

“[W]e know that we need help on investments. We have a lot of domestic investors, but I think why the Philippines has not been up to speed is because we lack foreign direct investments,” he told reporters last month.