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By Riza Lozada Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang will push 30 new initiatives during the 31st Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Summit and Related Meetings slated this week.

By Riza Lozada Multilateral lender Asian Development Bank (ADB) recently approved a $100 million loan to set up systems that will speed up the country’s infrastructure buildup.

By Luis Leoncio The government has assured the business sector is open to team-ups on big-ticket infrastructure under the “Build, Build, Build” program through solicited and unsolicited proposals for public-private partnerships (PPP) or joint ventures (JV) under terms that would prove most beneficial to the Filipino people.

The Senate will seek the scrapping of the excise tax on petroleum products under the Tax Reform Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) since the proposed P6 per liter increase will prove burdensome to consumers, Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto said.

The Philippines slipped to 113th place out of 190 economies in the Doing Business Report 2018 of the World Bank from 99th place a year ago.

At the recent summit in Tokyo between President Duterte and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe the Japanese government reaffirmed its commitment to provide economic cooperation worth 1 trillion over the next five years.

By Riza Lozada State pension fund Social Security System (SSS) said it reassigned four officials who are the subject of complaints of profiting from their posts.

The government has tapped Chinese billionaire tycoon Jack Ma to help local micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to improve their access to technology to spur their development.

By Luis Leoncio The Mining Industry Coordinating Council (MICC) has started a “fact-finding and science-based” review of mining operations across the country for the first time since the inception of this multisectoral oversight body five years ago, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said.

Subic Bay International Terminal Corp. (SBITC), a unit of International Container Terminal Services Inc. (ICTSI), operating the container terminals of the Subic Bay Freeport, supports the waiver of the $200 or P10,000 accreditation fee by the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) for new logistics firms that will transact and do business at the Freeport.