At a party packed with people who know a thing or two about winning, Ayala’s big boss had a rather inconvenient question for his fellow corporate titans. Everyone wants to bag the next big deal, but does the Philippines even have what it takes to attract those investments in the first place?

“We need, I think, an honest conversation among ourselves and with our partners in the public sector of whether we have the talent, whether we have the infrastructure, whether we have the energy, whether we have the regulatory environment and institutional stability needed to attract long-term investment,” Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala (JAZA) said on Thursday, October 15.

Quite the conversation starter for a night of cocktails, buttered scallops, honeyed sausage tarts, and plenty of schmoozing and boozing at the Makati Business Club’s (MBC) 45th anniversary bash.

But he did, after all, have quite the audience. Among those gathered at the Grand Hyatt Manila were MBC chairman and former Shell Philippines chief Edgar Chua, Aboitiz InfraCapital’s Cosette Canilao, PHINMA’s Ramon del Rosario Jr., shipping magnate Doris Magsaysay Ho, and former Microsoft Philippines CEO Peter Maquera. 

And he sure had their ear.

“As global companies diversify their supply chains, we should think beyond which company, industrial park, or sector secures the next investment. A more important question to ask is whether the Philippines itself is winning,” the Ayala chairman said.

And if the country as a whole is to win, JAZA argued, his fellow “fierce competitors in the marketplace” had to work together on the things that make the country attractive to investors in the first place.

“We will not always agree. We will have different interests and conflicting views on policy, but we can agree on many of the first principles and, more importantly, identify practical areas where we could all make progress together,” he added.

And who better to ask a roomful of business rivals to play nice than JAZA? His uncle Enrique Zobel co-founded MBC and his father served as a longtime trustee. Even in BGC, a little beyond the Makati business district the family helped build, he was hardly away from home.

The Philippines has advantages, he said, including its young population, digital economy, and manufacturing base. But actually turning those into better jobs and better lives require businesses to cooperate on shared concerns, like education and affordable electricity. A promising country on paper would only get everyone so far.

Infrastructure projects also needed to be built properly, with “every project and peso fully accountable for.” He didn’t mention corruption, but he didn’t have to, with the headlines still fresh in every businessman and investor’s mind. (READ: Flood control corruption cleanup spooks investors, drags PH growth – World Bank)

Even on the sidelines, the investment chatter wasn’t particularly upbeat. An MBC member familiar with the Jefferies-Regis Partners Philippines Conference, which brought together blue-chip companies and institutional investors earlier this week, told Rappler that turnout was thinner than expected this year, with fewer foreign investors making the trip to Manila. (READ: [READOUT] What a stickier inflation wave could mean for businesses)

A worrying sign, they reckoned. The broader numbers haven’t exactly been encouraging either. Net foreign direct investment inflows fell 23.9% to $4.071 billion in the first seven months of 2026, according to data from the central bank.

Could AI and Pax Silica offer some hope? JAZA did mention the US-led technology supply chain initiative in passing as a “major initiative.”

But the AI pitch has its share of skeptics at the club. An MBC member told Rappler that earlier meetings had revealed disagreements, with some eager to back AI and hyperscale data centers, while others questioned their enormous water and electricity needs, and whether they would actually bring enough jobs for Filipinos.

One participant even reportedly brandished Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, which raises concerns about AI’s implications for workers, inequality, and the environment.

It’s not every day someone brings the Pope to a data center debate. – Rappler.com