Government economic managers have updated their economic assumptions for the year, taking into account the latest developments in other countries that are expected to affect the flow of funds into the Philippines.

MANILA, Philippines – Even if some sectors believe that the P125 minimum-wage hike is “justifiable,” the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) said wage hikes in the Philippines have not breached the P27 mark in more than two decades.

CEBU, Philippines – Overseas Filipino workers abroad are facing not only opportunities but also threats, a labor diplomat said.

The Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) is looking at the possibility that the Philippines can capture 50 percent of the global seafarer’s demand by 2016.

DAVAO CITY — Sugar supply has been declining worldwide not because more people are consuming more sugar. As global demand is now outpacing sugar supply and production worldwide, sugar prices have been rising to levels not seen since the historic highs of 1975 and 1982.

MANILA, Philippines – Isuzu Corp. Philippines said they will shut down their operations today (April 18) until the beginning of May because of parts supply problems.

MANILA, Philippines – The political turmoil in the Middle East and the nuclear crisis in Japan are likely to translate to high unemployment rate in the country with a high number of overseas Filipinos expected to return to the Philippines.

TOYOTA Motor Philippines Corp. (TMPC) said the crisis in Japan will not have a significant impact on its financial performance even as the company implemented a two-week holiday to monitor its supply.

MANILA, Philippines – Registered investments surged 123 percent to P144.822 billion in the first quarter of the year as more new projects continued to pour in, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) reported over the weekend.

Less than a year after the last elections, partisan politics uniquely practiced in the Philippines, is rearing its ugly head again. This is the kind of politics that seeks to advance or protect personal or group interests at the expense of the truth or the common good by the “systematic organization of hatreds” as Henry…

THE Philippines is “close” in achieving most of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015, according to a new World Bank report.

MANILA, Philippines –  US air traffic controllers falling

MANILA, Philippines – The Social Security System (SSS), will put in place “deliberate structural changes” to be able to provide additional benefits to members.

MANILA, Philippines – The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has slashed the projected growth in the amount of money sent home by Filipinos abroad this year and sees further slowdown next year due to the ongoing tensions in Middle East and North African (MENA) states as well as the magnitude 8.9 earthquake and killer tsunami…

MANILA, Philippines – The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) sees the country’s strong economic momentum stretching until next year on the back of robust domestic demand and rising capital formation.

If there’s anything the reported Willie Revillame controversy did, it gave him international notoriety. Arriving from a trip to the United States and Canada, I could not believe how many Asian publications carried the story on the reported child abuse in Revillame’s TV program. What it actually did was to highlight the despicable number of…

BRANDS SUAREZ CHALLENGE OF BIR AUDIT AS ‘OBFUSCATION’ The Palace cried harassment and branded as “political obfuscation” the suggestion of oppositionist Quezon Rep. Danilo Suarez for President Aquino and the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) to check the financial books of companies of big businessmen who are members of Aquino-backer Makati Business Club (MBC).

ILOILO CITY—Scrap, suspend or reduce taxes on petroleum products but don’t raise wages.

MANILA, Philippines—With most of their crops already contaminated with radiation, Japan has opted to import more fruit and vegetables from abroad such as bananas from the Philippines.

NATIVIDAD, Pangasinan , Philippines  – It’s summer, and expect some parts of the country’s vanishing forests to go up in smoke because of fires.

MANILA, Philippines—Washington is “watching very closely” the HIV-AIDS problem in the Philippines, one of its closest allies in Asia, according to the country head of the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

European Union (EU) officials yesterday announced they would provide an initial fund of 35 million euro to help poor Filipinos gain free access to contraceptives and strongly backed the controversial Reproductive Health bill, which has been vehemently opposed by the dominant Roman Catholic Church.

House Assistant Majority Leader and Davao City Rep. Karlo Alexei Nograles yesterday bewailed attempts to link the worsening hunger in the country with the absence of a law that supports the use of contraceptives through the so-called Reproductive Health law, as he pointed out that the government’s failure to properly manage and harness its rich…

A direct challenge has been flung by a minority leader at President Aquino, which may well be the warm-up from the political opposition in the House of Representatives that had earlier announced a full-scale offensive against the Aquino administration.

With the latest Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey showing a drop of 11 percent of Filipinos still dreaming of better lives under the Aquino administration, a member of the House minority bloc yesterday was prompted to declare that more and more Filipinos are becoming disillusioned with the government of President Aquino, disappointed with his campaign…

AN assessment of the economic impact caused by the oil price increases in Central Visayas will be included in the review for wage hike petitions presented by labor groups, the Regional Tripartite Wages and Productivity Board in Central Visayas (RTWPB-7) said yesterday.

European Union officials announced on Friday they would provide an initial fund of 35 million Euros to help poor Filipinos gain free access to contraceptives and strongly backed the controversial Reproductive Health bill.

This week we read about a confidential administration report, prepared by the National Intelligence Coordination Agency, that warned of a “looming rice crisis” as part of a broader economic debacle caused by rising global food prices. This food price inflation—as my fellow columnist Ric Saludo warns in another broadsheet—is likely to be the real culprit…

With hundreds of thousands of our overseas Filipino workers displaced by the contagion of unrest in the Middle East, North Africa and the triple whammy that hit Japan, the government is hard put at not only repatriating them but also looking for alternative destinations for their re-deployment.