Urgent appeal for presidential decision My last column requested that the President immediately appoint the new members of the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC). Further, I strongly recommend that Doris Magsaysay-Ho be reinstated as one of the three ABAC members. She provides continuity and is responsible for making labor mobility a focus item. ABAC meets…

MANILA, Philippines – The International Monetary Fund (IMF) stressed the need for emerging economies in Asia including the Philippines to start tightening its accommodative monetary and fiscal policies in light of emerging signs of inflationary pressures as well as strong influx of capital brought about by the robust economic growth in the region.

CHIEF Justice Renato Corona has vowed to defend the Constitution and the rule of law following the attacks on the Supreme Court and the judiciary’s independence, integrity and power of judicial review.

Oct. 21–The multisectoral Fair Trade Alliance (FairTrade) asked the Aquino administration to flesh out its industrial policy amid what the group called as the new government’s “bothersome” pronouncements. “The bigger challenge of the Aquino administration is the overhaul of the trade and development policy regime that has been in place in the last three decades,”…

SIXTEEN mining firms looking to operate in Mindanao raised concerns that illegal small-scale miners will fill in the void created by the open-pit mining ban imposed by the provincial government. The ban is contained in the province’s new Environment Code, which took effect on Monday.

THE Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) asked President Benigno Aquino 3rd on Wednesday to review the amnesty given to the rebel soldiers who took part in three mutinies against the previous Arroyo administration.

3M households lack food once in 3 months – SWS Some 3 million families, or 15.9 percent of the total in the Philippines, are experiencing hunger at least once in three months, the latest Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey revealed.

ACCESS to budget information in the country is transparent but not enough to trickle down to the common Juan dela Cruz, an international study revealed. The International Budget Partnership (IBP) in its Open Budget Survey 2010 gave the Philippines a score of 55 out of 100, indicating that the government provides the public with “only…

In any debate, the debaters first agree on what to debate about. In the public debate about K+12, many participants have differing ideas about what exactly DepEd has embarked on.

MANILA, Philippines – “Big Business” has come out loudly and strongly in support of the Department of Education (DepEd) and its move to implement the ambitious K+12 Basic Education Curriculum (BEC) plan which will add two years in the BEC and transform the current six years of elementary and four years of high school to…

(Part II of a series on P-Noy’s K-12 Education Plan) In 1990, three major global and national programs affecting the Philippine educational system were launched: The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), Education For All (EFA) and the Senate Congressional Commission (EDCOM) to survey the status of all schools in the Philippines from…

The next few days, analysts say, will make or break French President Nicolas Sarkozy. I hasten to add that the next few days will make or break the French economy.

BAGUIO CITY, Philippines – The ranking of the Philippines in the World Press Freedom Index has dropped to 156 this year from 122 in 2009 mainly because of the massacre of 32 journalists in Maguindanao in November last year.

MANILA, Philippines – Opposition congressmen want to meddle in the implementation of President Aquino’s P21-billion conditional cash transfer (CCT) program after failing to convince the House of Representatives to cut the funds by P6 billion.

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MANILA, Philippines – Chief Justice Renato Corona has defended the Supreme Court (SC) in exercising its constitutional duty to review actions of the Palace and Congress, saying it is not stepping on the powers of the two other co-equal branches of government.

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As part of a crackdown on credit cards and store cards, the Government is considering capping interest rates in a bid to get the consumer a fairer deal.

“Honey, I’m going to the office,” is a remark we may not hear as much if more people have their way. Three out of five workers around the world said they don’t need to be in the office to be productive, according to a study out yesterday from Cisco. The “Cisco Connected World Report” collected…

THE Philippines is the world’s sixth most climate-vulnerable country with its fast-growing population exposed to flood, drought, storms and sea-level rise, according to an index of 170 nations released early this week.

The combined net earnings of listed firms in the first half of 2010 increased by 20.1 percent to P232.2 billion from P193.36 billion year-on-year while consolidated revenues of listed companies also rose by 20.1 percent, reaching P1.57 trillion as compared with P1.31 trillion in the previous year.

The World Bank (WB) has proposed that the government increase excise taxes and reduce tax incentives as a way for the Aquino administration to set in order the fiscal situation which remains hounded with record-high shortfalls.

Food manufacturer CDO-Foodsphere Inc. has teamed up with the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP), a non-profit corporate foundation established by prominent businessmen led by PLDT chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan, for a supplemental feeding program to save indigent children out of malnutrition in a pilot site in the northern part of Metro Manila. Odyssey Foundation…

Prices of commodities including petroleum are beginning to spike upward again, which could derail global economic recovery and affect growth in the Philippines, according to economists.

In its Global Gender Gap 2010 Report, released last week, the World Economic Forum ranked the Philippines 9th among nearly 200 countries in gender equity. The Philippines is also Asia’s highest-ranking country (followed by Sri Lanka at 16, and Mongolia at 27). It ranks 1st on both education and health among Asian countries, and boasts…

Though it may sometimes feel like it, having credit card debt to mend is not a dead end. In fact, just as there are myriad ways to fall into debt, there are many ways in which indebted consumers can traverse this roadblock. They should not, therefore, jump to dire conclusions or panic and take drastic…

MANILA, Philippines — The World Health Organizations (WHO) has called on all governments to expand their education and training programs, along with measures to improve recruitment, performance, and retention of healthcare workers, especially in rural and underserved areas.

Brussels, 19 October 2010 (ITUC OnLine): Maintaining biodiversity is a central issue for working people and their communities around the planet, including through the creation of decent jobs, protection of livelihoods and ensuring resilience to climate change, according to the ITUC in its submission to biodiversity talks currently underway in Nagoya, Japan.  

The Philippines gained more foreign exchange in the first nine months of the year that the balance of payments (BOP) surplus widened to $6.54 billion.

THE Aquino administration will adopt a five-year poverty reduction masterplan that aims to slash the country’s poverty incidence to 24 percent by 2015, presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda said.