Monthly Archives: June 2011

A CRITIC of the 10-year-old Electric Power Reform Act said Tuesday that law had failed to lower electricity rates and instead resulted in higher power bills.

CEBU, Philippines – Individuals with Human Immuno-deficiency Virus, transgenders and homosexuals are being harassed and maligned for being different and for being HIV positive, but they are fighting against it.

STATE-RUN Social Security System (SSS) has expanded the range of cut-off dates for contribution and loan remittances of members and employers to eliminate long queues during payment deadlines.

DAVAO CITY: Two people, including a Chinese, were killed during an accident inside a gold mine in southern Philippines, police said Tuesday. The disaster happened inside a small-scale mining shaft in Del Pilar village in Agusan del Norte province late Saturday, according to Chief Superintendent Reynaldo Rafal, police chief for Caraga region where Agusan del…

The Philippine economy operates in the wide world of international trade in goods and in the movement of economic resources. The extent of this role in trade has risen and provides a promising future. This much can be discerned from the recently rebased national income series based the constant prices of 2000.

Beyond the subsidy called Feed-in Tariff, there are other things that ought to be looked at before we agree to allow them to put additional burdens on our power users. For instance, it is not clear, the position paper of the Foundation for Economic Freedom (FEF) observes, what is it exactly that the envisioned FIT…

MANILA, Philippines – Inflation rose to a 13-month high of 4.5 percent in May from the revised 4.3 percent in April as price pressures continued to build up, the National Statistics Office (NSO) reported yesterday.

The culture of impunity in cases of extra-judicial killings has never gone away, even with a new leadership in government.

MANILA, Philippines –  The House committee on ways and means yesterday approved the proposed Investments and Incentives Code of the Philippines, one of 23 priority bills of the Aquino administration that aims to enhance the economy’s global competitiveness through investment promotion and industrial development activities.

MANILA, Philippines –  The public school system lacks 143,281 classrooms this year, Aurora Rep. Juan Edgardo Angara said yesterday.

MANILA, Philippines—Keeping tax financing out of its economic-management strategy could cost the government its commitments on education, maternal and reproductive health, and poverty reduction, according to economists.

Metro Manila has become the center of the business process outsourcing (BPO) world, an industry expert said at a conference on services exports.

MANILA, Philippines (Mindanao Examiner / June 7, 2011) – The House of Representatives passed on third and final reading a bill that would compel credit card firms to clearly indicate in their billing statements the high price that cardholders would have to pay, should they decide to settle only the minimum monthly amount due, and…

THE International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are urging the government to review its fiscal incentives program, saying it is redundant and stops it from raising more revenue.

THE higher quality of the Filipino workers being sent abroad made up for the 8-percent drop in the total number dispatched in the first four months, and at the same time raised the amount they remitted during the period, an official said Monday.

MANILA, Philippines – Labor chief Rosalinda Baldoz today announced that the Hong Kong labor department has increased the minimum allowable increase (MAW) and food allowance for foreign domestic helpers.

MANILA, Philippines — A joint panel in the Senate has formally endorsed for plenary approval  the controversial Reproductive Health bill aimed at providing informed choice and equal access to all methods of family planning.

MANILA, Philippines – The scheduled review of the Japan Philippine Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA) is still in limbo because the two governments cannot agree on a meeting yet.

MANILA, Philippines – British-owned Standard Chartered Bank revised upwards its 2011 economic growth forecast for the Philippines to 5.7 percent from the original 5.4 percent.

THE International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank prodded the Philippines to reform its fiscal incentive system amid a redundancy that has rendered tax administration inefficient in raising revenues.

PRESIDENT Benigno Aquino 3rd on Monday signed into law the Government-Owned and Controlled Corporations Governance Act of 2011 that seeks to reform the operations of GOCCs by curbing the excesses in the pay and perks of its officials.

LOS BAÑOS, Laguna ,Philippines  – Many of the country’s lakes are dying. And it is just a matter of time before they meet their “ecological doom” if nothing is done now – and fast – to save them.

BECAUSE of the greed and insensitivity of many of the lucky few Filipinos who have been made officers and board members of government owned and controlled corporations (GOCCs), the public pressured their lawmakers to pass a law to prevent GOCCs from being made a milking cow by their officials.

MANILA, Philippines – We live in a world of rapidly changing media and technology, a world where kids are far more tech-savvy than their parents are and where social media can be equally harmful as it is beneficial. And with sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube, it has become even harder for parents to…

MORE big names were implicated by former Solicitor General Francisco Chavez in connection with the plunder charges he filed against former President and now Pampanga representative Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, former Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo, former Health Secretary now Civil Service Commission(CSC) chairman Francisco Duque III and former Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) administrator Virgilio…

MANILA, Philippines – The World Bank has ranked the Philippines among the best performers in the services exports, particularly in the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector, but urged further reforms in the travel and tourism sector if the country intends to sustain growth moving forward.

TWENTY-FIVE percent of private schools nationwide—or one in four—are considered “colorum” schools or those that have not registered with the Department of Education (DepEd), it was learned on Monday.

MANILA, Philippines – A stay-in worker died when a fire broke out at a clothing store along Aurora Boulevard in Cubao, Quezon City before dawn yesterday.

Some readers have asked why we chose eight officials as hardworking public servants. Here’s why: Justice Secretary Leila de Lima is definitely the most hardworking member of the Cabinet. She’s all over the place from visiting the site of the Ampatuan Massacre, the nurse rape victim in Maguindanao to the ocular inspection of the Luneta…

NO FORESIGHT: Another illustration of how slow officialdom thinks and acts is the recurring problem of lack of classrooms and teachers cropping up every start of the school year.