AMID RICE CRISIS: PINOYS TO SCRIMP ON CELL
PHONE LOAD
MANILA, APRIL 23, 2008 (STAR)
Filipinos are seen spending less on “load” and more on “carbo loading” amid the
rice crisis.
Catanduanes Rep. Joseph Santiago yesterday said he sees ordinary Filipinos spending less on mobile telephone prepaid call and text credits and other forms of “highly discretionary spending” in the coming months as consumers struggle to cope with the looming rice shortage and soaring food prices.
“Telecommunication service providers will definitely encounter a significant decline in prepaid load sales going forward, as households scramble to adjust their budgets to allow more spending for costlier food,” Santiago, former chief of the National Telecommunications Commission, said in a statement.
“In fact, retailers are already getting squeezed. Many sari-sari stores that used to sell up to P3,000 worth of load every day now manage to sell only P1,000 daily,” said Santiago.
“In hard times, highly arbitrary and optional consumer spending are usually the first to go,” added the chairman of the House committee on information and communications technology.
Retail sales of prepaid call and text credits, made popular by the “pasaload” scheme, have been a powerful revenue driver for telecommunication service providers that, in turn, have been key generators of economic activity nationwide.
Santiago said he sees the country’s two leading mobile telephone service providers – Smart Communications Inc. and Globe Telecom Inc. – stepping up their promotional activities in the months ahead to cope with the potential slowdown.
Santiago, however, said he still sees Smart and Globe picking up new subscribers.
“Their subscribers will continue to grow, but ‘the law of large numbers’ will keep them from increasing their subscribers at last year’s rate of 25 to 30 percent,” he said.
Smart and Globe expect to add a combined four to five million in new users this year.
The Philippines has been established as the world’s text messaging capital largely because of the mobile telephone boom.
The country had a total of 50.3 million mobile telephone users at the end of 2007, or around 57 percent of the national population of 88.7 million.
The average Filipino mobile telephone user sends 10 to 15 text messages every day. This implies that a total of 755 million text messages are sent daily.