The 9 Richest Filipinos Are Wealthier Than Half the Philippine Population
The wealth gap in the Philippines can sometimes be dumbfounding, especially if we look at the numbers. Apparently, the nine richest Filipinos are now wealthier than 55 million members of our 113-million-strong population, according to non-profit organization Oxfam.
Oxfam Pilipinas Executive Director Erika Geronimo says that the wealth of the Philippines' richest have increased by 43.5 percent since 2012. These are classified as those who are worth $5 million (P278.24 million) and above. "Inequality experienced in the Philippines is starker with the nine richest Filipinos having more wealth than the bottom half (55 million) of the population," she noted.
As it stands, the 2022 Forbes Richest Filipinos list looks like this:
1| Sy siblings (net worth: $12.6 billion)
2| Manuel Villar (net worth: $7.8 billion)
3| Enrique Razon Jr (net worth: $5.6 billion)
4| Lance Gokongwei and siblings (net worth: $3.1 billion)
5| Aboitiz family (net worth: $2.9 billion)
6| Isidro Consunji and siblings (net worth: $2.9 billion)
7| Tony Tan Caktiong and family (net worth: $2.6 billion)
8| Jaime Zobel de Ayala and family (net worth: $2.55 billion)
9| Ramon Ang (net worth: $2.45 billion)
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Combined, thats about $42.5 billion, or roughly P2.3 trillion. The increase in wealth of a country's richest people follows a global trend. Global data shows that the richest one percent of the world have amassed two-thirds of new wealth generated since 2020, earning an equivalent of $42 trillion. The World Bank suggests that this period has seen the biggest increase in global inequality since World War II, as well.
“Taxing the super-rich and big corporations is the door out of today’s overlapping crises. It’s time we demolish the convenient myth that tax cuts for the richest result in their wealth somehow ‘trickling down’ to everyone else,” Geronimo expressed.
According to Oxfam, taxing the rich can definitely address our local wealth gap. For instance, our very own Makabayan bloc of the House of Representatives has already refiled its Super-Rich Tax bill. Here, billionaires would get a one-to-three percent tax that could raise about P236.7 billion annually from just the top 50 richest Filipinos. It could ideally increase the Philippines' health budget by 40 percent, as well.
"The very existence of booming billionaires and record profits, while most people face austerity, rising poverty and a cost-of-living crisis, is evidence of an economic system that fails to deliver for humanity. For too long, governments, international financial institutions and elites have misled the world with a fictional story about trickle-down economics, in which low tax and high gains for a few would ultimately benefit us all," the report reads.
