Monthly Archives: November 2010

VICE President Jejomar Binay yesterday asked the customs bureau to reconsider its plan to charge an additional $1 to $2 fee for departing airline passengers to cover for the payment of the overtime of its employees.

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

The Philippine export sector is poised to cut its three-year growth target, amid concern that last Wednesday’s decision by the Federal Reserve to flood the US market with more money would further spur the appreciation of Asian currencies like the peso. In a press conference, Sergio Ortiz-Luis Jr., Philippine Exporters Confederation Inc. (Philexport) president, said…

THE Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) are now pushing in for Filipinos who are “knowledge workers rather than mere manual workers.” According to Labor Secretary Rosalinda Dimapilis-Baldoz, this type of work is what Filipino workers should expect in the future.

The Aquino administration needs to deal with this matter with a little more urgency — if that is at all possible. Next year it is nearly certain that Luzon will suffer from prolonged rotating brownouts. That will be because the demand for power will overtake the existing generating capacity to meet that demand. Should some…

MANILA, Philippines – The Philippines ranked 97th out of 169 countries in the United Nations Development Program (UNDP)’s annual Human Development Report, which measures quality of life.

MANILA, Philippines – The export sector is expecting a slower growth in the next three years due to the continued strengthening of the peso against the dollar.

MANILA, Philippines – The Philippines and the European Union are set to sign a Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) as the government indicated interest in engaging in serious negotiation for a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Europe, according to a visiting European parliamentarian.

Our article “Why we can’t catch up with our Asian neighbors” is still getting me a lot of responses. This one comes from an old friend, Edu Manzano, former ABS-CBN talk show host, and here are Edu’s comments:

I AM not altogether against the conditional cash transfer (CCT) program as a component of the government’s poverty alleviation agenda.

CASH TRANSFER PROGRAM WHO ARE the poor? Where are they? Ofelia walks every day with her children to the forest to gather hearts of banana plants that she can sell so there is some money to send her children to school. Nena has to make a choice daily between eating three times a day and…

MANILA, Philippines — Eight people got burned to death while five others were injured in a two-hour blaze that destroyed a two-story commercial building at the public market of Cagayan de Oro City early Saturday morning, the local fire marshal said.

SAN PEDRO, Laguna, Philippines—At least 106 workers are losing their jobs in a Japanese car parts firm just after entering into a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with the firm, a labor organization said.

BPO firms start feeling pinch of strong currency MANILA, Philippines—With the peso breaching the 42-to-a-dollar level, export growth may be halved over the next three years, forcing more companies in the sector to downsize and even close shop.

PHILIPPINE Long Distance Telephone Co. said Thursday it planned to cut nearly 1,200 jobs after intensifying competition led the phone operator to its slowest profit growth in six quarters.

MANILA, Philippines – The government is targetting a four fold increase in foreign direct investment (FDI) four times in the next three years to $8 billion.

Manila (5 November) — As recent reports show the huge increase in the overseas remittance by Filipino maritime workers, Senator Edgardo J. Angara renews his call for better protection for their welfare.

HANOI – China’s rise has altered the dynamics within the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and across Asia, as was on display at recently concluded summits in Hanoi.

President Benigno Aquino III’s promise of change is likely to follow the same path as that of US President Barack Obama, according to a US-led multinational risk consultancy firm doing intelligence work for the world’s top corporations and embassies in Manila.

THE Philippines has become less business-friendly for local firms mostly because of its poor score in terms of dealing with construction permits, according to a report issued by the World Bank and its private-sector investment arm, the International Finance Corp. (IFC). In their report titled “Doing Business 2011,” the multilateral lenders said the country’s ranking…

The objections of some opposition congressmen to the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD)’s proposed P21-billion Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) budget are largely on the question of absorption capability rather than on policy. At the end of the three-year period in 2010, the P3 billion program that was started by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo sometime…

MANILA, Philippines – The anticipated implementation of open access in the electric power industry will be realized by the third quarter of 2011, a top energy official said.

Manila (4 November) — The Department of Labor and Employment and its tripartite partners in the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry has agreed on the creation of a voluntary code of industry best practices which can best address the difficulties that workers and employees in this booming industry face.

MANILA, Philippines—Where will P1 million get you if you don’t have a job? The ground crew union of Philippine Airlines (PAL) Thursday said it was fighting for job security and not for a higher separation pay, in response to the PAL management announcement that retrenched employees would be getting almost P1 million in separation benefits.

THE LABOR department has vowed to reinforce centers for overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) by deploying more employees abroad. This was one of the policy pronouncements in a document prepared by the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) for President Benigno S. C. Aquino III’s report on his first 100 days in office.

Support for regional recovery needed — ADB ASIAN policymakers should come up with policies that support the region’s economic recovery, and make governments more responsive and resilient to future crises, Asian Development Bank (ADB) President Haruhiko Kuroda said yesterday.

DOING business remains tough in the Philippines and easier in its Asian neighbors Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, the latest report by World Bank (WB) subsidiary International Finance Corp.  (IFC) revealed.

THE PHILIPPINES kept its spot in the bottom 10 of the World Economic Forum’s ranking of the world’s leading financial systems and capital markets for 2010.

THE GOVERNMENT was advised yesterday to further simplify business registration and tax payment processes to arrest the decline in the country’s competitiveness ranking recorded at the end of the previous administration.

The military yesterday claimed to have uncovered another purging campaign by the communist New People’s Army (NPA), targeting former rebels in the Visayas region, as revealed by captured documents and communist leaders in Negros areas.