Investors warned against investments that promise high returns

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ILOILO CITY — While the public is encouraged to make investments, experts warned anew that they should be careful in choosing where to put their hard-earned money.

Securities and Exchange Commissioner Manuel Gaite, in a press conference following the concluding session of the two-day workshop on infrastructure and capital markets of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) July 23-24, said that ordinary households and even overseas Filipino workers should “be careful with invests that are promising very high returns.”

“Even if they are registered with SEC as ordinary corporation but don’t have secondary license to go into selling securities, they are not authorized. It can be registered as an ordinary corporation but in order to sell securities they need a secondary license because they need to disclose to us what their business is,” Gaite stressed.

“Before you invest in any entity, just make sure that the entity that is handling the investment is registered with the SEC, BSP (Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas) Undersecretary Gil S. Beltran,” said.

Beltran said that they are “moving around the country trying to educate the people on the merits of investing in financial instruments aside from deposits.

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“Deposits have very low interest rate and short term money. What we want is longer term money, which is usually invested in mutual funds, equities, stock market,” he added.

Nonetheless, Gaite said that ordinary households may invest in mutual funds where resources are being pooled and managed by fund manager.

Once gathered the fund can be invested in equities or bond market, especially for infrastructure funds.