(SPOT.ph) The country is on its way to recovery from the pandemic, and its wealthiest residents are feeling it more than ever now that their riches skyrocket to new heights as confirmed in Forbes' annual list of top Philippine billionaires for 2023.
The combined wealth of the Philippines’ 50 richest has increased to U.S. $80 billion (P4.5 trillion) from U.S. $72 billion in 2022, according to Forbes. That's almost 85% of the record P5.268 trillion budget to run the Philippines this year.
Still too big of a number to comprehend? Let's turn to Taylor Swift to get a sense of just how stacked they are.
SPOT.ph translated the wealth of the Philippines' richest to The Eras Tour concert tickets. For ease, we took the Singapore show's most expensive ticket, VIP 1: It’s Been A Long Time Coming Package at SGD $1,228 and used that to compare. That’s roughly US $910 or P51,160. For the top 1% though? That's spare change.
Sy siblings placed first in Forbes' list with $14.4 billion (P809 billion)—that’s enough to give 15 concert tickets each to the 1,454,664 Spotify users in Quezon City who has streamed Taylor Swift in the past month.
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Here’s how many The Eras Tour VIP Packages the top 10 richest in the Philippines can buy:
- Sy siblings – $14.4 billion (P809 billion) – 15,824,175 VIP Packages
- Manuel Villar – $9.7 billion (P545 billion) – 10,659,340 VIP Packages
- Enrique Razon Jr. – $8.1 billion (P455 billion) – 8,901,098 VIP Packages
- Ramon Ang – $3.4 billion (P191 billion) – 3,736,263 VIP Packages
- Tony Tan Caktiong and family – $3.2 billion (P179 billion) – 3,516,483 VIP Packages
- Aboitiz family – $3.15 billion (P177 billion) – 3,461,538 VIP Packages
- Lance Gokongwei and siblings – $3 billion (P168 billion) – 3,296,703 VIP Packages
- Isidro Consunji and siblings – $2.9 billion (P163 billion) – 3,186,813 VIP Packages
- Jaime Zobel de Ayala and family – $2.8 billion (P157 billion) – 3,076,923 VIP Packages
- Lucio Tan – $2.6 billion (P146 billion) – 2,857,142 VIP Packages
Forbes' list is mostly composed of the same mentioned billionaires from 2022, just in different order. Sy siblings, Manuel Villar, and Enrique Razon Jr. stand in a league of their own, with almost a whopping $5 billion lead over fourth placer Ramon Ang.
Only Andrew Tan has been bumped off the list to the 11th spot, but even he can still buy 2,637,362 VIP Packages for The Eras Tour.
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