Monthly Archives: August 2010

MANILA, Philippines – The Court of Appeals (CA) has dismissed the predatory pricing charges against Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corp., and the rest of the Big 3 oil companies.

MANILA, Philippines – Energy Secretary Jose Rene Almendras said the sale of the 982.1 megawatt Agus-Pulangi complex in Mindanao would likely be scrapped.

MANILA, Philippines – The Aquino administration will make sure tax leakages are plugged before new revenue measures are imposed. Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima made the assurance as foregone revenues due to collection loopholes have reportedly reached an alarming P250 billion.

MANILA, Philippines—The World Bank has cited the failure of the Philippines to translate growth of its economy over the years into poverty reduction, saying this is a key hurdle to improving the country’s competitiveness.

MANILA, Philippines – Social media is changing the lay of the land, and with the change comes evolving customer behavior that necessitates organizations to prioritize engagement.

The Philippine equities market is back on the radar screen of investors, as foreign buying in the stock market reached P15.7 billion in the first half of the year, up 89 percent from P8.3 billion year-on-year, PSE president Val Suarez said Wednesday.

PRESIDENT Benigno Aquino III said Wednesday the government might open the airline market to more competition if the workers in Philippine Airlines struck and crippled the nation’s largest carrier.

MEMBERS OF the Pag-IBIG Fund who missed out on the monthly payments for their housing loans have until Sept. 30 to avail of the agency’s latest loan restructuring and penalty condonation program.

MANILA (PNA) — The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) urged on Wednesday the Social Security System (SSS) to immediately give back to its member-borrowers some P980 million in individual loan over-payments.

A report released by the Center for Reproductive Rights revived an ongoing debate about reproductive health, particularly abortion. Now the Philippines whirls in a Roe-v-Wade-type of environment: to ban or to decriminalize? Pro-life advocates bill abortion as a desecration of the human dignity of life. The CRR report bills the ban on abortion as an…

THE OMBUDSMAN has asked nine agencies to withhold salaries of officers and employees who failed to liquidate cash advances. Total unliquidated cash advances amounted to P2.4 billion, according to a statement issued by the state graft buster yesterday.

In 1991, the Local Government Code of the Philippines was passed, paving the way for the most sweeping fiscal decentralization reform in the country. Eighteen years later, what have we learned? At best, there has been no serious deterioration in the delivery of local public services; in fact, there were a few well-performing ones among…

THE PHILIPPINES will do well to increase its presence in the global supply chain for solar electronics, an industry group said yesterday. This fast-growing segment will be among the new niches to be recommended for government support in an industry road map slated for completion by October, Semiconductor and Electronics Industries in the Philippines, Inc.…

JUSTICE Secretary Leila de Lima on Tuesday said she plans to create a special team of prosecutors to solely handle the investigation of cases of extrajudicial killings that became rampant during the Arroyo administration.

AT A TIME when the world’s top billionaires have begun to seriously invest in charity, a new form of philanthropy is being cooked up as a tool to uplift the Philippines’ quality of education and create a domestic high-value technology industry.

ECONOMIC leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) will assess the implementation of the free-trade agreements (FTAs) signed with dialogue partners like China, Japan, South Korea, India and Australia-New Zealand to align trade policies in preparation for the establishment of a single market economy by 2015.

MANILA, Philippines – The days of viewing pornography through e-mail attachments and USB flash drives for minors may soon be over.

MANILA, Philippines – President Benigno Aquino is calling for the abolition of the Sangguniang Kabataan (SK), saying it has not proven itself to be effective. The move will also save the government billions of pesos in expenses, officials say, adding that the youth could have a voice through a seat in the barangay council instead.

MANILA, Philippines – The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) is confident that foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows would pick up in the second half of the year after plunging sharply in the first five months of the year due to jitters about the debt crisis in Europe as well as the outcome of the first…

MANILA, Philippines – Business process outsourcing (BPO) executives have ranked government corruption as one of the major risks associated with doing business in the Philippines.

LEGAZPI CITY, Philippines – Seven people died and another sustained injuries when they were electrocuted while digging a septic tank in Sorsogon City on Monday, authorities said.

MANILA, Philippines—Two government owned and controlled corporations (GOCCs), whose executives have been listed as among the highest paid officials in the country, are among those losing state-run firms, a government official told a Senate hearing on Tuesday.

MANILA, Philippines – The management of Philippine Airlines and the PAL Flight Attendants and Stewards Association (FASAP) failed to break the deadlock with both sides unwilling to change their stance.

MANILA, Philippines—Overseas Filipino workers have been doing more for the country other than sending remittances that virtually keep the Philippines afloat.

QUEZON CITY, Philippines – The European Union through its Manila office, the Delegation of the European Union in the Philippines, and Dinteg, the Cordillera Indigenous Peoples’ Legal Rights Center, recently launched a five-year project that will enhance the capacity of indigenous peoples for a more consolidated political participation and representation in development.

Cultural differences play a role when it comes to physically disciplining children Thirty years ago, the United Nations ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child – a document that spells out the basic human rights of children, and states that children need special protection and care.

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Speaking of the poor, one of the biggest anomalies being perpetrated by management of shopping centers is the “contractualization” of labor.

The Court of Appeals has upheld the magna carta for people with disability, including its provision that grants disabled people 20 percent discount on purchases of medicines from any drugstore in the country.

FEMALE ‘LINGAM’ IN CEBU CITY? It is not just the lingam massage that is gaining popularity in Cebu City. Some female Asian tourists have been flocking to massage parlors in Cebu City that offer a different kind of service called “yoni,” according to Rene Joseph Bullecer of Aids Free Philippines.