Are France’s notoriously tough labor unions finally stepping back from the barricades? For years, they’ve fiercely resisted any effort to scale back the welfare state and relax rigid labor laws—even after unions in Germany and elsewhere started accepting such changes.

Monetary officials still see no immediate inflation threat The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas on Thursday slashed the interest rate on special deposit accounts to help curb the appreciation of the peso.

The government will complete the distribution of cash grants to poor families throughout the country before March 29 to avoid being accused of using the program to further the election chances of administration candidates.

BAGUIO CITY (PIA) – – Four out of every 10 young Filipino students plan to work abroad after graduation, the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) Policy Center’s Pinoy Youth Barometer project reveals.

MANILA, Philippines—Nearly two thirds of people in the Asia-Pacific region have no clean, piped water at home despite the region’s strong economic growth, according to a major report released on Wednesday.

VARIOUS TOOLS, such as tweaks to reserve requirements and special deposit accounts (SDA), will be reviewed by the Monetary Board when it meets today, a member of the policy-making body said yesterday.

WHAT USED to be only talked about in hushed tones and academic circles is now generally acknowledged: most of the country’s impressive economic gains have been going to the elite. Former NEDA chief Cielito Habito was reported as having said: “… something is structurally wrong. The oligarchy has too much control of the country’s resources.”…

IN HIS speech at the Euromoney Philippine Investment Forum on Monday, President Aquino unveiled three priorities of his administration: agriculture, tourism, and infrastructure. I agree with the priorities, but why is manufacturing not mentioned? Manufacturing, whose share to total economic output is almost twice that of agriculture, is and could be a major contributor to…

THE INTERNATIONAL Monetary Fund (IMF) has cited several reforms implemented by the Aquino administration, saying these could boost investments which are key to sustaining the growth momentum of the economy.

THE PHILIPPINES is poised to be the standout in Southeast Asia yet again, leading the pack in terms of economic growth and investor confidence, Standard Chartered Bank has projected.

(Updated 4:35 p.m.) Pro-reproductive health (RH) groups on Wednesday questioned the independence of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV), which is accredited by Comelec as its citizens’ arm, due to its close links with the Catholic Church.

English professors love to catch the errors students make in their term papers, and they love nothing better than to catch mixed metaphors. The “friends and survivors” of Calvin College English department collected this list of mixed metaphors and posted them on their web site:

MANILA, Philippines – The country needs to attract more domestic and foreign investments if it wants to sustain its better-than-expected 6.6% growth last year, economists and analysts said on Tuesday.

MANILA, Philippines – Foreign direct investments (FDI) breached the $2-billion mark last year, the first time it did so in the past five years, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported yesterday.

MANILA, Philippines – Fifteen of the 33 senatorial candidates have statistical chances of winning in the May elections, a majority of them from the administration-led coalition Team PNoy, according to results of the latest survey by Pulse Asia. Re-electionist senators Loren Legarda, Francis Escudero and Alan Peter Cayetano topped the pre-election survey anew, which was…

AN estimated 233 million women in their fertile years will lack access to modern contraception by 2015, up from 221 million in 2010, according to a UN funded study.

Countries expecting increases in foreign fund inflows, particularly the Philipines, should allow some appreciation in their local currencies, the International Monetary Fund believes.

MANILA, Philippines – The two million domestic helpers or kasambahay nationwide will receive a minimum wage and enjoy other rights starting May.

IN 2011, Education Secretary Armin Luistro said that the Department of Education (DepEd) lacks 66,800 classrooms. He and our nation’s leaders promised that the classrooms shortage in the Philippines would be solved by 2014. At the rate, the present administration is moving, I have a nagging feeling that the school infrastructure crisis won’t be solved…

MORE Filipinos each year are being robbed of cash through otherwise legitimate transactions such as automated teller machine (ATM) withdrawals, credit-card purchases and online banking, as fraud has increased alongside the country’s growing prosperity.

The Philippines surpassed Malaysia and Singapore in a 2012 Japanese survey of most profitable firms in the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), President Aquino disclosed on Tuesday.

MARKET PLAYERS yesterday called on the government to ensure that the country’s growth momentum is sustained by focusing not just on achieving a faster pace but also on “growing better.”

A trans-Atlantic spat between Europe’s fiscal enforcer Olli Rehn and feted U.S. economist Paul Krugman is beginning to turn ugly, inflamed by recent dire forecasts for eurozone growth and unemployment.

THE Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) said the government’s Conditional Cash-Transfer (CCT) Program will continue but no money will be released for the duration of a ban on disbursement of public funds during the campaign period for the May midterm elections. It added that the move would shield the CCT Program from politics.…

President Barack Obama pledged during his January 2013 State of the Union address that the United States would join with its allies to “eradicate” extreme poverty over the “next two decades” by connecting more people to the global economy and empowering women.

MAJORITY, if not all, of the 800,000 Filipinos based in Sabah may be sent back to the Philippines on the premise that they had acquired their Malaysian citizenship illegally over the past 20 years under a controversial systematic granting of citizenship to foreigners dubbed Project IC (identity cards). Project IC, which is blamed on former…

ENTERTAINMENT Gateway Group Inc. (EGG), a subsidiary of Globe Telecom, together with the Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO) has come up with text-based 1343 Action Line Against Human Trafficking to combat the growing number of the said criminal activities in the country.

It is not correct to say that the 40 richest Filipino families own 76 percent of our nation’s gross domestic product (GDP). I have recently been widely misquoted as having said so. What I did say, and had first explained in this space nine months ago (“Economic growth for all,” 6/26/12), was that the growth…

Philippine consumer prices is seen to climb slightly in 2013 as the inflation rate is expected to average at 3.8 percent, according to the latest report of the state think tank Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS).

THE CENTRAL BANK must put more teeth in its foreign exchange policy, economists yesterday urged, before an overvalued peso causes the collapse of local industry.