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By Luis Leoncio The government crackdown on giant mining companies has started, with Environment Secretary Regina Lopez initially putting  in the firing line the Tampakan gold and copper mine operated by Sagittarius Mines Inc., and the Semirara open-pit coal mine, in response to demands by various agencies.    

The Duterte administration’s efforts to end Metro Manila’s monstrous traffic problem received a huge boost after Japan approved a $2.4-billion (P112.8-billion) loan to fund the Metro Rail Transit (MRT) 7 project that will connect Manila to Bulacan and decongest the capital.  

A budget watchdog is demanding an end to the country’s automatic debt payments that give priority to debt servicing over allocations for vital social and economic services.   

By Riza Lozada Ayala Corp. seeks to become the first homegrown vehicle manufacturer initially through the production of electric vehicles targeting the Southeast Asian market.   

By Luis Leoncio  President Duterte’s economic managers have abandoned the proposed increase in the value-added tax as a means to make up for revenues to be lost with the plan to lower income and corporate taxes.

Infrastructure would be treated as “public goods, not commodities for profit,” Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III has said, revealing a policy shift in the Duterte administration to push projects that proved to ne sluggish in the previous administration. 

The Coordination Committee-Cabinet Committee (ICC-CabCom) recommended 10 projects worth P136.44 billion for National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) Board’s approval in its first meeting under President Duterte’s administration. 

By Luis Leoncio Despite posting a 6-percent growth, the Philippines’s relatively high gross international reserve (GIR) of $85.49 billion in July was still considered a “laggard” in Asia, mainly as a result of the low foreign-capital inflow. 

By Luis Leoncio  A government study has confirmed that proceeds from the controversial road-users tax or the motor vehicle users charge (MVUC), considered the third-biggest source of tax revenue for the government that some legislators have long wanted to review since these were “prone to corruption,” are, indeed, not being efficiently used.

The once-impoverished sectors of the economy are fast catching up, with the economy of the Bicol provinces, which used to be among the poorest in the country, recording the fastest growth among the regions last year, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority.