Monthly Archives: October 2014

MANILA, Philippines – President Aquino will not get the kind of emergency powers he wants Congress to grant him to deal with a supposed electricity shortage in Luzon in the summer of 2015, the chairman of the House energy committee said yesterday.

The Philippine economy is expected to outperform its peers in the region this year and next, Maybank Kim Eng said in a report Monday. “The Philippines is expected to outperform its group with growth of 6.2 percent [for 2014] and 6.3 percent [2015],” Maybank said. The Malaysia bank said its forecasts were in line with…

MANILA, Philippines – The government hopes to declare 404 barangays nationwide as child labor-free before President Aquino’s term ends in 2016, Labor Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz said yesterday.

MANILA, Philippines – A woman who allegedly pretended to be a man on social media and tried to extort money from a student was arrested in an entrapment operation in Manila Saturday.

News is that Malacañang will rebid the CALAX (Cavite-Laguna Expressway) or do the work itself. This is to avoid howls of favoring any party. Either way, President Noynoy Aquino likely will get the flak.

MANILA, Philippines – While the world is focusing on global hunger and malnutrition, another ugly “monster” has emerged. Obesity, a new form of malnutrition, has surfaced as an urgent challenge affecting several countries.

WASHINGTON – Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen sounded an alarm Friday about widening economic inequality in the United States, suggesting that America’s longstanding identity as a land of opportunity was at stake.

MANILA, Philippines – The private sector has committed to create 100,000 jobs a year for five years through a dualized training system (DTS) in an effort to reduce youth unemployment.

The Philippines called on parliamentarians attending the 131st Inter-Parliamentarian Union (IPU) to address the plight of domestic workers, majority of whom are women and girls on October 15.

MANILA, Philippines – The economic and fiscal reforms instituted by former President and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo continues to benefit the country and help protect it from external challenges, a former finance chief said yesterday.

There is something special about sipping coffee on a Sunday morning. It’s stress-free, even totally relaxing. Far from the reaches of our employers and clients, we may stumble into a thought that we are all employers. And, perhaps, this question: “Is there anything we’ve overlooked for our household staff, like Social Security System, PhilHealth, and…

MANILA, Philippines–Crop biotechnology has significantly reduced the amount of chemical pesticide spraying worldwide by 474 million kilograms, or 9 percent, over the past 15 years, according to a report by PG Economics, a UK-based advisory and consultancy services provider specializing on plant biotechnology, agricultural production systems, agricultural markets and policy.

When a colleague is mean to you, it can be hard to know how to respond. Some people are tempted to let aggressive behavior slide in the hopes that the person will stop. Others find themselves fighting back. When you’re being treated poorly by a coworker how can you change the dynamic? And if the…

Providing the poor with equal access to economic opportunities and basic services, like health in education, is the key to reducing inequality and poverty in the Philippines and other East Asian countries, the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) said Wednesday.

The growing number of child labor in the country is a living testimony that poverty remains a critical social problem that needs to be addressed, according to Prof. Federico Macaranas.

In today’s lightning fast, roller-coaster business environment, the concept of solely developing deep expertise in one skillset in order to sequentially climb each rung of the career ladder to get to the top is an anachronism. Yet many organizations and employees are still in the dark, mistakenly believing that supporting this strategy leads to the…

The Philippine agriculture sector is expected to benefit from the upcoming ASEAN economic community integration provided that the government and the agriculture sector players have sufficient preparations.

But gulf between rich and poor remains wide, says Credit Suisse MANILA, Philippines–The gap between rich and poor Filipinos remains wide even as wealth inequality in the country has been rapidly declining in recent years, according Credit Suisse Group.

Businessmen and government officials have opposing views regarding the port congestion in Manila, with the former belying the latter’s claim that the problem has already been fully addressed.

MANILA, Philippines – It has been a year since a magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck Bohol, killing 222 people and destroying over 14,500 structures. But four months since the Department of Interior and Local Government turned over to the Bohol provincial government P2.3 billion in additional funds for the rebuilding or repair of government offices and…

Regardless of what Malaysia-based Indian BPO firm Aegis claims, the Philippines remains a top destination for corporations that outsource their business processes. The Oxford Business Group said in a report a week ago that the BPO industry in the Philippines “hit an all-time high in August, following a decade of phenomenal growth that has seen…

MANILA – Container cargo traffic fell in the first half of the year as a result of the truck ban policy of the city government of Manila. Data from the Philippine Ports Authority (PPA) show that container traffic was down by 2.95 percent to 2.58 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) in the January to June…

The year 2015 is nigh, the target year set in the United Nations Millennium Declaration of 2000 for reducing extreme poverty and achieving other important objectives known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The Philippines is among the countries that have accepted the MDGs.

Demand for high and low-skilled workers could increase by about 60 percent when ASEAN integration takes effect next year, a joint study by the International Labor Organization (ILO) and Asian Development Bank (ADB) concluded.

MANILA, Philippines – Roughly one out of every three Filipino children is drowning in abject poverty, according to the government’s think tank. The key findings of the study conducted by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) show that both the number and severity of poverty among Filipino children have been increasing through the years.

WASHINGTON – The Philippines has taken significant strides toward reducing child labor, according to a new report from the United States Labor Department.

The more that poverty is scientifically quantified, the more it can be understood, and thereby better dealt with. Poverty is not static. It can change quickly, upward or downward, and can change at different rates in different locations. SWS has discovered this from quarterly surveys in four broad geographic areas of the Philippines. Other institutions…

MANILA — Just because the Philippines is the last country on Earth to refuse to allow divorce for most of its citizens, that doesn’t mean Filipinos don’t fall out of love with one another.

The Philippine Institute of Development Studies (PIDS) has urged the government to further improve the country’s infrastructure and make the Philippines a competitive hub to tap into the regional and global production networks.

What would you do if you had a working prototype of a revolutionary tablet computer that was receiving rave reviews well before Apple came out with its iPad? Cancel further funding for the project in favor of developing an updated version of an existing company product? In hindsight that seems crazy, but it’s exactly what…