Equity

Creating better jobs for Filipinos and reducing the underemployment rate by half to about 10 per cent over the next two years would help the Philippines achieve the nearly impossible 2015 Millennium Development Goal on poverty reduction, the country’s top economic manager said.

AS PRESIDENT Aquino marks the mid-point of his term, his forthcoming State of the Nation Address (SONA) is going to get more attention, and the hype from both sides of the political arena will be even more intense and exaggerated than usual. To try to keep things on a relatively even keel, the Movement for…

THE PHILIPPINES lags behind its neighbors in providing social protection, particularly for the poor, an Asian Development Bank (ADB) study showed.

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MANILA, Philippines – Despite robust economic growth so far this year and a series of international credit rating upgrades, inclusive growth and poverty alleviation still elude the Philippines.

MANILA, Philippines – Combined earnings of all locally-listed firms climbed in the first quarter on strong performance of the retail, banking and infrastructure sectors.

All poor families covered by 2015 State subsidy to the poor via the conditional cash transfer (CCT) program will further go up so that practically all of them are covered in two years’ time, Budget Secretary Florencio Abad said on Monday.

MANILA, Philippines – Individuals whose taxes are automatically deducted from their salaries are increasingly paying a larger share of income taxes than the self-employed and professionals, according to the Department of Finance (DOF).

GENEVA – Inequality is on the rise in most advanced economies, the International Labor Organization lamented Monday, decrying surging executive compensation and large companies hording profits rather than investing.

Jobs Where Women Earn More Even with more women settling into the role of family breadwinner, the gender pay gap only rarely settles in their favor.

Holding firm Ayala Corp. has overtaken erstwhile leader San Miguel Corp. in the executive compensation race for 2012. Ayala chief executive Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala, his younger brother and president Fernando Zobel, and fellow management committee members John Eric Francia, Delfin Gonzalez Jr., Solomon Hermosura and John Philip Orbeta took home P398 million in…

Geneva – The world has made dramatic progress in improving health in the poorest countries and narrowing the gaps between countries with the best and worst health status in the past two decades, according to the World Health Statistics 2013.

MANILA, Philippines – Poverty figures released the other day were only up to the first semester of 2012, and the situation is getting better, Malacañang said yesterday.

When it rains, it pours. Coming on the heels of a report from the National Statistical Coordination Board that poverty alleviation in the country remains a pipe dream is an observation—from a government think tank no less—that job-creation facilitation programs are not enough to prop up employment in the Philippines.

NEDA DIRECTOR General Arsi Balisacan and the Philippine Statistical System, particularly the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) and the National Statistics Office (NSO), are to be congratulated for a more timely release of the country’s poverty statistics.

IT’S back to the drawing board for the government’s development planners following the findings of the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) that the administration’s poverty-reduction program has failed.

On the average, 28 out of 100 Filipinos live in poverty ,unchanged for the past six years. This translates to 26 million very poor Filipinos. “The poverty rate would have been higher if not for the implementation of the conditional cash transfer program,” NEDA Director General Arsenio Balisacan said.

A CHAPTER of the IMF’s World Economic Outlook released last week and presented at a series of seminars in Manila analyzes growth takeoffs in dynamic emerging markets and developing economies during the past 60 years. The chapter considers the economic and structural conditions and policies of emerging markets and developing countries that have taken off…

THE government is yet to make a significant headway in reducing poverty in the Philippines based on a report released by the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) on Tuesday.

The disclosure by the Bureau of Internal Revenue of the list of top individual income tax payers only served to mislead ordinary citizens on the behavior of the rich and famous insofar as paying the correct taxes is concerned. The list did not capture the true amounts that individuals—tycoons and business executives in particular—actually paid…

Mayors planning to extend VAT-exemption to subdivisions on their association dues, consider this as fair warning. BIR Commissioner Kim Jacinto-Henares has said she would not hesitate to publish the names of mayors who succumb to popular calls from homeowners’ associations to exempt their monthly dues from the expanded value-added taxation.

The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) should extend the period of assistance given to current beneficiaries of its conditional cash transfer program instead of adding more families to the program, the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) said in a statement.

The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) should consider an extended period of assistance to current beneficiaries of the Conditional Cash-Transfer Program instead of increasing the number of its beneficiaries, according to a study undertaken by researchers from government think tank Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS).

MANILA – Optimism is soaring that the Philippines is finally becoming an Asian tiger economy, but critics caution a tiny elite that has long dominated is amassing most of the new wealth while the poor miss out.

The Philippines has just achieved another key milestone — an upgrade to “investment grade” status. Investment grade typically ushers two possible benefits. First, the country’s risk premium (the extra interest rate that international lenders charge for relatively weaker macroeconomic fundamentals like tax collection, debt sustainability and low and stable inflation) could decrease, which means there…

Inequality has been a drag on the pace of improvement in human development in the Philippines, according to data in the latest Human Development Report of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

MANILA, Philippines (Xinhua) – The government today assured that it will double its efforts to ensure human development in the country through various programs and initiatives that will benefit the poor.

MANILA, Philippines – The Philippines’ progress in improving the quality of Filipinos’ lives has been slow as indicated in its Human Development Index (HDI) score, and performance in meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

MANILA – Teachers pay more taxes than doctors or lawyers in some areas, fiscal authorities on Monday said, adding that this discrepancy raises the absurd conclusion that those practicing medicine or law are minimum wage earners.

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.