Champagne corks pop in Manila in echo of Marcos era

MANILA, Mar 13: On Saturday nights, Manila's urban elite throng the invitation-only VVIP room at Embassy nightclub, where foie gras and a flute of champagne are the de rigeur accompaniments to checking out the dance floor.

Imelda, the shopaholic wife of strongman President Ferdinand Marcos, made conspicuous consumption fashionable in the Philippines in the 1970s and 1980s when the phrase ''Imeldific'' was coined to describe acts of excess.

But her fall from grace after Marcos was ousted in 1986, a succession of coups and a sickly economy made worse by the Asian financial crisis reined in the spending.

Now, according to executives in luxury hotels, upscale boutiques and sports car dealerships, the good times are back.

''It's a return to yuppiedom,'' Tim Yap, one of Embassy's co-owners, told Reuters. ''Right now, the young generation is a generation that works really hard and wants to reward itself.'' Across the Philippines' sprawling capital city, the small ranks of the wealthy are increasing as record remittances from nearly 9 million Filipinos -- driven abroad by poverty and a lack of opportunity -- fuel consumer demand and a property boom.

A record 14 billion dollar worth of inflows last year helped swell the wallets of real estate magnets, retail chiefs and entrepreneurs back home and pushed the stock market up around 42 per cent.

''The economy is doing well,'' said Manuel Salak, county manager of ING Bank in the Philippines. ''There is stability and more optimism and more investments are being made.'' Despite recent global market turbulence, the Philippine index <.psi> is up 2.7 per cent so far this year and projected remittances of 14.7 billion dollar are expected to shield the domestic economy from future stock exchange swoons.

Optimism among Philippine companies is at a record high and top executives and entrepreneurs are buying new motors and diamond encrusted necklaces at up to 5 million pesos a pop.

''There is a lot of confidence in the future so people are not afraid to spend, they can see that it's going to get better,'' said one of Manila's top jewellery dealers, whose sales are up 15 per cent on last year.

''We forecast even better times,'' said the jeweller, who declined to be identified.

Driven by Chinese industrialisation, Asia is minting ''high-net-worth individuals'' -- people with more than 1 million dollar in financial assets excluding their homes -- at the fastest pace in the world.

But the Philippines, where political turmoil and a heavy debt burden have kept the economy limping behind fast-paced neighbours, was mostly under the radar for private bankers. There is a clutch of super wealthy people such as Lucio Tan, the Philippines' richest man according to Forbes magazine with a net worth estimated at 1.7 billion dollar, but they are a miniscule part of an 87 million population, nearly half of whom live on less than 2 dollar a day.

There is no official data on the number of middle-income and high-income people living in the Philippines but in Indonesia, Southeast Asia's largest economy, high-net-worth individuals accounted for just 0.01 per cent of the adult population in 2005, according to a joint study by Merrill Lynch and Capgemini.

With wealth increasing and new investment opportunities opening up in the Philippines, the so-called ''suitcase bankers'' are now flying in, booking out rooms in the capital's swankiest hotels as they comb Manila for business.

''My competitors are back,'' said Salak. ''You see the business class section of Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines full now.'' The middle class is also expanding as booming outsourcing centres hire thousands of 20-somethings. Entry level wages have risen as much as 69 per cent since 2003 and the extra cash is frequently spent on eating out, clothes and nightclubbing.

''They are not going to go out and buy Louis Vuitton all of a sudden but they are looking at good brands,'' said Vladimir Bunoan, editor of Personal Fortune, a new magazine aimed at young managers in the outsourcing sector.

''There is quite a number of people out there with enough money, I think, to spend on Starbucks everyday.

After the Marcoses, the wealthy adopted a low profile. Kidnap fears and a degree of guilt about having so much money in a poor country kept many of the traditionally rich families circumspect.

But up and coming business people, many of whom are too young to remember the Marcos era, want to party and pamper, like peers in Hong Kong, Singapore and Shanghai.

''The younger generation, without connoting anything negative, is more passionate, is more brash,'' said Wellington Soong, President of Jaguar Philippines, which sold 60 Jaguars and Land Rovers in 2006 and aims to sell 100 this year.

''Wealth is acquired at a faster rate. The impatience can be seen in their behaviour.'' Over at Embassy, where Imelda's grandson promotes Monday nights and the lady herself recently appeared for a twirl across the tiles, Yap said consciences were not bothered by the yawning gap between rich and poor in the city.

''There is this mindset, which I think is so passe, that says: ''The country is in shambles and the country is having a hard time and you are out there partying''.

But this generation is guiltless when it comes to that.''

REUTERS