Monthly Archives: June 2009

NEW YORK – The world’s population of millionaires shrank dramatically last year as the global economic crisis took its toll on the wealthy, according to a report by Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management and consulting firm Capgemini.

MANILA, Philippines – Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council Chairman Vice President Noli de Castro said the Philippines is looking to complete the housing backlog of close to 3.8 million, as more potential buyers have been flooding the mass housing market.

MANILA, Philippines – Exports are expected to decrease by up to 30 percent this year as consumer demand from the Philippines’ major markets are projected to drop further, an economist said yesterday.

MANILA, Philippines – Pangasinan Rep. Mark Cojuangco said his proposal to revive the Bataan nuclear plant should not be turned into a “political and an emotional issue.”

MANILA, Philippines—The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia should revoke its new immigration policy that blacklists foreign workers who run away from their usually abusive employers, an alliance of overseas Filipino workers’ organizations in the Middle East said Thursday.

MANILA – The slowing growth pace of exports, remittances, and foreign direct investments (FDI) will pull the country’s economic growth to a range of -1 and 1 percent this year, an economist said Thursday.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development says the world economy is near the bottom of the worst recession in post-war history.

The US and European Union (EU) have filed complaints that China is unfairly limiting its raw material exports.

MANILA, Philippines – Some P30 billion in unpaid premiums from various government agencies and units are hampering the operations of the Government Service Insurance System as well as its ability to pay out benefits.

MANILA, Philippines — The lead proponent in the revival of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) at the House of Representatives appealed to critics to keep politics out of his initiative and see it as the only viable answer to the country’s looming energy woes in the coming years.

MANILA, Philippines–The rapidly changing weather pattern blamed on global warming is hurting the fishing industry, depriving fishermen and their families not only of income but also their own places to live.

MANILA, Philippines – The Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) is running after an estimated P30 billion in arrears and remittances from government-owned agencies and local government units (LGUs).

“We cannot equip the youth of the future with the tools of the past,” wrote former DepEd Undersecretary and UNESCO Principal Director Victor Ordoñez in his blog shortly before he died. These words will continue to outlive him, because they express both the problem of and the solution to our educational situation today.

MANILA, Philippines – The government may opt to secure a 100-percent stake in the once-privately held Metro Rail Transit Corp. (MRTC) after it has already acquired a 75-percent controlling stake through state-owned banks Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP) and the Land Bank of the Philippines (Landbank), a Finance official has said.

MANILA, Philippines – The country’s banking industry is forecasting lending activities to slow down this year as borrowers cut back on loans.

ALARMED by the impact of the global economic turmoil, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is pushing the Philippines to create a task force headed by the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) to respond to the global economic crisis.

JUST when the Filipino masses were wondering how the economic meltdown was shaping up with regard to them—with mixed signals coming from various quarters on the issue—along comes Paul Roebuck, chief executive officer of BBDO Gurrero/Proximity Philippines with glad tidings. 

At the Philconsa monthly meeting on Tuesday night, former President Joseph Estrada identified the 10 most serious violations of the Constitution by President Gloria Arroyo.

Recently, the United States passed a credit card law as part of its wide-ranging reforms in the finance industry. This law is to curb abuses by banks who are the major credit card issuers. Here in the Philippines, with our mass of consumers with relatively low purchasing power, the menace of credit card debt and…

Filipino workers who will run away from their employers in Saudi Arabia will be banned from returning to the country to work, a local migrant group said yesterday.

GENEVA – After all is said and done, now comes the hard part. At the conclusion of the three-day Job Summit organized by the International Labor Organization (ILO), member-states agreed in principle to adopt a Global Jobs Pact, which puts jobs creation and social protection at the core of stimulus packages.

MANILA, Philippines – The Ayala Group has turned more upbeat on the high-end property market given a recent resurgence in demand from discerning buyers, encouraging the rollout of upscale projects for the rest of this year.

President Arroyo has lifted the order limiting the Order 807 repealing Letter of Instruction No. 58 issued by the late President Ferdinand Marcos which had limited the area for plantations of export-quality bananas to 26,250 hectares nationwide.

MANILA, Philippines – Instead of going on work stoppage, disgruntled workers are now mounting on-line protests to express their grievances against “abusive” employers.

MANILA, Philippines – The Bangko Sentral of Pilipinas (BSP) said yesterday that its budget deficit had soared 556.2 percent year on year in the first five months as it increased spending to stave off recession.

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO, Philippines — A Korean foreman at the Hanjin shipyard in Subic Bay Freeport was held by company officials after he hit a Filipino worker with a steel flashlight on the face and head on Tuesday.

An employers group urged lawmarkers to train their sights on measures that would mitigate the impact of the ongoing crisis – especially in terms of saving business and jobs – instead of pursuing bills that would deny enterprises the needed flexibility in the employment and deployment of their workforce.

The Philippine National Police and the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) yesterday signed a memorandum of undertaking (MoU) on the commission’s visitorial powers over PNP-operated jails and detention facilities at the PNP Museum at Camp Crame, Quezon City to mark the second anniversary of the activation of the PNP Human Rights Affairs Ofice (HRAO).

DEMAND for high-end real-estate projects in the domestic market is recovering after a slump last year, the Philippines’ biggest property developer said Tuesday.

DOMESTIC trade flows in the Philippines dropped nearly a fifth in the first quarter of the year from a year ago, the National Statistics Office (NSO) said.