Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo Friday said it is time for the country's business community to invest more at home as the country's most influential business club has predicted a bright economic perspective this year.

Addressing a business group, Arroyo said now it is the right time to expand and invest as interest rates are at an all-time low and capital inputs and raw materials are cheap because of the strong peso.

"It is really a great time to start a business and you have the market with you, the strong, sustainable middle-class represented by the families of our overseas Filipinos," she said.

Arroyo also said the increased remittances of some 8 million overseas Filipino workers have grown to close to 13 billion U.S. dollars as compared with 7 billion U.S. dollars six years ago when she started her term.

These remittances have been driving market spending particularly in malls and the real estate industry, she said.

The Makati Business Club (MBC), the most influential business club in the Philippines, said Thursday business outlook for 2007 is the brightest in 11 years, with 81 percent of the respondents in a survey conducted among MBC members believing the economic growth this year would exceed last year's 5.4 percent.

The percentage of optimistic respondents this year (81 percent) was eclipsed only by that of July 1996, when 93.9 percent of those surveyed said the economic growth that year would be higher than in 1995.

Last year, only half of the respondents in the MBC survey expected the economic growth in 2006 would exceed that of the previous year.

Source: Xinhua