Philippine Dealing & Exchange Corporation (PDEx) is targeting listing P600 billion worth of fixed income securities this year, 50 percent more than last year’s target and 67 percent higher than the P360 billion realized in 2024.

In an interview at the sidelines of the Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines inaugural meeting, PDEx President Antonino Nakpil said “our budget is P600 billion but we may be refocusing it again.”

“We’re not sure of the P600 billion. We may be refocusing and we’ll see whether it’s reachable this year because some of our assumptions last year like all the maturing bonds that they will refinance were not realized. So we’ll see what’s the likelihood that they’ll be coming,” Nakpil said, adding that most of the bonds that they are expecting this year will be for refinancing.

"We’ll see in February. These guys are the ones who were planning late last year and they’re coming in this first quarter of 2025. So we’ll see them starting in February. I think we have three or four to start now,” he said.

Nakpil also said the issuers are still the same, mostly bank and some real estate companies. However, he said PDEx will continue pushing for the bond issuances of micro, small and medium enterprises as this is its advocacy.

“We will try a new type of digitalization. We’ll try to digitalize the process and then we’ll aim for smaller amounts--which is what the micro, small and medium scale like,” he added.

However, he stressed that there is the possibility that the PDEx will tweak its P600 billion target downward in consideration of concerns over geopolitical issues and the movement of interest rates.

“Everyone’s looking at geopolitical stuff. No one wants to make any plans. What we are finding out is that everybody talks about inflation, interest rates are going here or there,” Nakpil said.