Monthly Archives: November 2010

As chairman of the Zuellig Family Foundation I hosted the annual Health Outlook Forum last month. One of the facilitators of the break out session on “ICT in Health” was Dr. Emmanuel C. Lallana, CEO of ideacorp. Secretary Ona considered this topic one of the most significant items he would focus on during his incumbency.…

MANILA, Philippines – The non-performing loans (NPL) ratio of the country’s universal and commercial banks improved to 3.11 percent in September from the previous month’s and year ago ratio of 3.25 percent, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported over the weekend.

MANILA, Philippines – The Philippines should shift its focus to addressing non-tariff barriers (NTB) and sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) which are being used by importing countries to deter competition and act as disguised restriction to market access.

The Manila Times today begins to serialize Mr. Monsod’s assessment of the May 2010 automated polls, which was delivered on November 9, 2010, at the Ateneo de Manila Rockwell campus in Rockwell, Makati City, as a lecture, under the Jaime V. Ongpin Foundation Lecture Series.

MANILA, Philippines—The Department of Labor’s decision allowing the retrenchment of 2,600 Philippine Airlines workers should not be considered as a “green light” by other companies to violate labor rights, particularly contracting out jobs, Labor Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz said.

MANILA, Philippines — With over 17 million Filipino smokers around, it is no wonder that cigarette butts are the number 2 in the list of the country’s top polluters.

Families of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) who commit suicide are now entitled to insurance benefits, insurance companies said this weekend. The provision for suicides has been included in the compulsory insurance policy recently implemented by the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) in line with Republic Act 10022, which requires all recruitment agencies to provide workers…

BELOW is the keynote speech I delivered during the National Conference on Information Technology Education with the theme “Building an IT Enabled Nation” on October 21, 2010 at La Carmela de Boracay Convention Center, Station 2, Boracay, Malay, Aklan. The speech is 1,852 words long and takes up three columns. Last Sunday’s issue (November 7)…

MANILA, Philippines—Filipinos spend more than an hour each day on their social networks, talking to “friends” they are not even close to and reading updates that they don’t consider all that important or relevant.

THE MOST important legislative issue that both chambers of Congress will tackle after a long break is the 2011 budget. While the House of Representatives has already passed the proposed Appropriations Act, members of the House are engrossed with negotiating for additional allocations for their pet concerns.

THE WAY we in the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) will fulfill our mandate in public-expenditure management will help make or break the Aquino administration’s vision for the country.

BAGAC, Bataan, Philippines  – A medical expert appealed to the Department of Health (DOH) to implement programs that would arrest the increasing maternal deaths in the country.

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

YOKOHAMA, Japan—The Department of Trade and Industry and Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (Meti) will be holding a series of meetings to discuss ways to help foreign nurses, especially Filipinos, pass the Japanese nursing licensure examination.

MANILA, Philippines—Another activist has been killed under the Aquino administration, leaving militants angry that the President’s assurances to do something about the killings have so far come to naught. Carlos Rodriguez, the President of the Nagkakaisang Lakas ng Manggagawa ng Calamba Water District and an officer of Courage, was gunned down in Laguna on Friday…

MANILA, Philippines—The Philippines toppling India as the world’s top destination for offshore business process outsourcing (BPO)? Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago thinks so, drawing from a recent visit to India where the industry was supposedly abuzz about the Philippines surging past the South Asian nation in five years.

In a bid to make overseas Filipino workers understand the laws of their host countries, the Department of Labor and Employment ordered Philippine Overseas Labor Offices (POLOs) to develop clear “FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)” for them.

WORKERS in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry are unprotected as the Philippines is set to become the call center capital of the world.

Local labor officials and government prosecutors in the Bicol region have teamed up to fight human trafficking, illegal recruitment and child labor.

College application deadlines are fast-approaching for most families. (For the 10% of kids who’ve applied early decision and early action, that deadline has passed, and now they wait until December to hear.  And if they don’t get in “early” they still have a few weeks to submit more applications by the January 1st due-date.)

Two miners in Benguet province were rescued unhurt five hours after they were trapped in a tunnel, police said Saturday.

CIELITO HABITO’S October 26 column, “Securing our economic future” just jumps off the page. It’s so optimistic and vibrant. And very true.

MADRID—World tourism has returned to levels last seen before the global financial meltdown in late 2008, with the Asia-Pacific region leading the way, the UN World Tourism Organization said Wednesday.

ANNUAL GLOBAL losses from natural disasters, excluding the impact of climate change, could triple to $185 billion by the end of the century, a joint report from the World Bank and the United Nations (UN) released Thursday night showed.

MANILA, Philippines – They call it the “pirate alley,” for reasons clear to any seafarer who has ever sailed from the Middle East and India en route to Europe.

THE Philippines’ business process outsourcing (BPO) sector would slightly miss its yearend growth target, according to Canada-based XMG Global Inc. In a statement, XMG said the Philippine BPO industry would end the year with a 23-percent growth to $8.85-billion in revenues, or 7.1 percent of the global pie.

MANILA, Philippines – Family, health, and religion or spiritual work are the top 3 things that make Filipino men and women happy, according to a poll conducted by the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) to determine the Philippine Happiness Index (PHI) for 2010.

DESPITE resources provided by the government in srecent years, the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) said the deteriorating quality of faculty members in the country’s college and university are still among the factors affecting the quality of tertiary education.

The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) will deploy 1,800 traffic enforcers metro-wide on Monday to ensure the full implementation of the number coding scheme on public utility buses (PUBs).

Labor Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz yesterday said that the pay rules governing a regular holiday, as well as core labor standards apply to all workers in the private sector on Nov. 16, 2010, being a national holiday in celebration of Eid’l-Adha which President Aquino declared.