Banking & Finance

By Riza Lozada The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) will speed up the streamlining of processes for the documentary requirements of micro, small and medium-scale enterprises (MSMEs) renewing business permits following the congressional approval and implementation of the first package of the tax reform law.

Regulator Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp (PDIC) earned P34.5 million from the sale of 18 corporate and closed banks’ properties during a recent public bidding at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) – Cebu Regional Office.

The operations of the Overseas Filipino Bank (OFB) which will target some 10 million Filipinos working overseas will likely start in February after policy-making Monetary Board (MB) approved the Land Bank of the Philippines’ (Landbank) recent acquisition of the thrift bank.

State-owned Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP) seeks to expand its presence in the retail banking segment by targeting one million new depositors in the next five years, DBP President and Chief Executive Officer Cecilia Borromeo said.

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) is confident of within-target inflation in the near term after the December 2017 inflation was steady at 3.3 percent, bringing the average rate this year to 3.2 percent.

Credit watchdog Moody’s Investors Service said the Asian Liquidity Stress Indicator (Asian LSI), which measures the strength of financial system in the region, decreased in November 2017 to 26.4 percent from 27.6 percent in October.

Telecom giant Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) financial technology unit FINTQ and affiliate Smart’s Voyager Innovations are targeting to include 30 million Filipinos into the financial system by 2020 through a project in collaboration with the Liga ng mga Barangay (Liga), the association of local government units with the largest membership representing barangays nationwide.

The regulator Governance Commission for Government –owned and/or –controlled corporations (GCG) and the Institute of Corporate Directors (ICD) gave the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp. (PDIC) the highest score in the Corporate Governance Scorecard for GOCCs for 2016.

By Riza Lozada Universal bank BDO Unibank Inc. is pioneering the issuance of so-called green bonds after re- cently raising $150 million from process.

By Riza Lozada The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) was awarded as the sole FOI Champion agency for its outstanding commitment in ensuring transparency in public service in the recently concluded 2017 Freedom of Information (FOI) annual awards. Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno along with Undersecretary Lilia Guillermo, received the award in behalf of the agency during the recognition ceremony …