MANILA, PHILIPPINES- THE global financial crisis is starting to have an impact on the funeral business in the Philippines, with the industry reporting a rise in a preference for modest send-offs, it was reported on Friday.

Funerals, whether for rich or poor, tend to be lavish affairs with no expense spared in this South-east Asian Roman Catholic country.

However, people are starting to cut down on costs, Renato Dychangco, president of the Philippine Mortuary Association (PMA), told the BusinessWorld newspaper.

'Here in the Philippines, most of the people are in the lower to middle classes,' he told the paper.

'So with their buying power squeezed, they have to cut back on expenses and some of that includes funeral spending,' Mr Dychangco said.

However, Mr Antonio Puyat, chief operating officer of Loyola Memorial Park, one of Manila's biggest funeral homes, said scrimping on funerals had not 'plunged to the bare-bones level'.

'Filipinos are not spending heavily on burials, unlike the Chinese, but they make sure that while the service is modest, it is dignified,' Mr Puyat told the paper.

La Funeraria Paz assistant vice-president Renato Tanquintic said that while business was good he had noticed 'upscale clients reducing spending'. 'Times are hard,' he told the paper.

'Market behaviour has changed. For example, some of our repeat customers who used to shell out about 500,000 pesos (S$14,827) for funerals are only willing to spend half that now,' he was quoted as saying.

Burial is still the more popular form of funeral in the country, despite the fact that it costs more than cremation, said Mr Dychangco.

'People in the provinces still prefer burial over cremation because land is widely available outside urban areas,' he said.

'It's hard to get burial plots in the cities, which is why you see columbariums and crematoriums cropping up,' he said.

'The Philippines, being a Christian country, is accustomed to burials.

Cremations are not yet widely accepted,' he added.