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The administration’s economic man­agers have formally guaranteed “so­cial-protection initiatives” to shield the poor and low-income households from the impact of the proposed ad­justments in excise fuel taxes under the initial comprehensive tax-reform program that the government submit­ted last September to Congress for its approval.

The Department of Finance (DOF) will expand the val­ue-added tax (VAT) base and raise the excise tax on diesel to recoup losses from the pro­posed reforms on corporate and income taxes that would result in the reduced tariff payments of wage earners and business firms.

Of 149 countries in the world, the Philippines is the 60th most prosperous, based on the criteria of Brit­ish think tank Legatum In­stitute in its yearly ranking called the Prosperity Index.

Outside the blunt rhetorics of Presi­dent Duterte about targeting both drug addicts and traffickers in his determined campaign against narcotics, the National Eco­nomic and Development Authority (Neda) had told a United Nations (UN) com­mittee that his administration is actually investing heavily on the rehabilitation of ille­gal-drug dependents.

By Riza Lozada Liberty Telecoms Holdings Inc. (LIB) shares have stopped trading at the bourse following the firm’s voluntary delisting as a result of the P70-billion megadeal involving Philippine Long Distance Telecommunications Inc. (PLDT), Globe Telecoms and San Mi­guel Corp. (SMC) in which assets of LIB, which is a unit of SMC, were in­volved.

Listed Benguet Corp., the oldest mining firm in the country said the minor and intermit­tent mine tailings leak in An­tamok, Benguet has been put under control.

By Riza Lozada The inflation rate in October 2016 remained at 2.6 percent, the same pace as in September, and is within the outlook of of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipina (BSP) in the near term.

An official of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) has won the 2016 Outstanding Social Worker of the Philippines award in the field of Health and Medical Services.

The country’s strong mac­roeconomic fundamentals along with the high liquid­ity system in the economy and improvement of asset quality continue to back the country’s banking system, Moody’s Investors Service said.

By Luis Leoncio Leakages from tax perks giv­en to corporations average P100 billion annually, com­pared to only P5 billion in revenues lost through inefficient collections from exemptions of se­nior citizens based, according to computations of the Department of Finance (DOF) in its studies on ways to plug loopholes in the tax system.