BusinessWorld May 6, 2021 | 7:53 pm The GOVERNMENT needs to review the foreign investment restrictions on digital platforms to remove obstacles to their growth, a researcher for the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) said. Aiken Larisa Serzo, a consultant with the University of the Philippines Law Center, said digital platforms are classified as mass media or service providers under the telecommunications industry, subjecting them to foreign equity restrictions. “Various pronouncements have set a rule wherein if you’re an internet business, communicating any message to the public, whether or not you’re the author of those messages, is mass media, and thus, subject to the foreign equity restriction of 100%,” Ms. Serzo said in a PIDS statement.