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By Riza Lozada The government has lined up measures, including subsidizing electricity costs in economic zones, to address business concerns about the high cost of electricity in the country, particularly during the shutdown of the Malampaya natural-gas facility.

The Duterte administration’s plan to increase borrowings from the domestic debt market this year won’t crowd out medium, small and micro enterprises (MSMEs), Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said.

Majority or 86 per­cent of Filipino households re­main without a bank account or what it terms as “unbanked” despite efforts of local banks to spread their branches nationwide, the Consumer Finance Survey conducted from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas July 2014 to end-January 2015 showed.

Malaysia’s ef­forts to di­versify its e c o n omy and focus on high-end manufacturing and ser­vices are helping the country to realize its aim of becoming a global­ly competitive trading nation, Wan Latiff Wan Musa, Deputy CEO, Ma­laysia External Trade De­velopment Corp. (MA­TRADE) told Oxford Business Group’s online news portal, Global Plat­form.

The visit of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was all about strengthening friendship between the Philip­pines and Japan that was given deeper meaning during Abe’s itinerary in Davao City, home­town of President Duterte.

Former finance secretaries and heads of the National Eco­nomic Development Authority (Neda) strongly supported and pushed for the approval of the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (Train) bill, which seeks to legislate fiscal reforms that the Duterte administration had sought to achieve its vision of inclusive growth.

By Luis Leoncio  As if to stress its fierce opposition to the move in Congress to grant an across-the-board pension increase for Social Security System (SSS) retirees without a corresponding increase in member contributions, the Department of Finance (DOF) is now citing the proposal, and an earlier recommendation for a two-year moratorium on land conversion, as the biggest threats to …

A shutdown for almost three weeks of the Malampaya natural-gas facility off Palawan next month will result in higher electricity prices on top of a likely power shortage in February, simulations at the Department of Energy (DOE) showed. 

By Riza Lozada  The Supreme Court (SC) has left to corporate regulator Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) the nationality question that has long hounded telecommunications giant Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT), despite clearing an SEC memorandum that applied the 60:40 rule only on voting shares. 

Here’s a first for the Philippines: the administration is considering the use of drones, among other measures, to monitor the progress—or lack of it—of its infrastructure-buildup strategy and to keep such public works projects free from graft and corruption.