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By Jerry Maglunog and Luis Leoncio  Alarm bells have sounded in the local banking sector over the money-laundering scandal involving the $81-million hacked from the deposits of the Bank of Bangadesh in New York and channeled into local banks and casinos. 

The Philippines continues to waste its huge labor power that is the envy of other developing countries by not producing enough jobs, despite the stellar growth of its economy over the past few years, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has noted in a periodic review. Government attention has been called to this phenomenon several times by University of the Philippines …

By Riza Lozada  The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has turned down a petition of the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) for an exemption on ownership limits on financial markets in its planned merger with the Philippine Dealing Systems Holdings Corp (PDS), effectively putting in limbo the consolidation of the local equities and fixed-income or bond market. 

By Luis Leoncio Whoever wins as president in next month’s elections, investors face “some uncertainty” on the country, according to the United Kingdom-based political risk analysis firm Global Risks Insight (GRI). 

By Luis Leoncio  Perceptions of pervasive corruption continue to haunt the Philippines in the international community, which is why the business community in Australia is reported to have felt generally relieved that the planned telecommunications venture between local conglomerate San Miguel Corp. (SMC) and Australian giant Telstra has been aborted. 

By Lito U. Gagni As the hearings in the Senate wound up last week, with a pivotal closed-door session that the key player, Maia Santos Dequito, head of the Jupiter branch of Rizal Commercial Banking Corp., sought and which the Senate probers grudgingly granted, several questions deemed crucial to unravelling the mess that brought down Bangladesh’s central bank head remained …

Even the government think tank Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) says proposals to amend the personal income-tax schedule “appear to be well-justified,” if they are accompanied by measures that would allow the government to recover the revenue loss from lower income taxes. 

By Jerry Maglunog Financial authorities have softened their stand on the country’s strict Bank-Secrecy Law as a result of the $81-million online heist involving funds of the Bangladesh central bank routed to the country.

By Luis Leoncio  For the past five years it has been in power, the Aquino administration spent an estimated P260 billion on the agriculture sector without producing substantial results in terms of the country’s farm output, according to former Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno. 

By Luis Leoncio  The government continues to pay non-productive loans that did not benefit the economy. and of the total P214.5 billion scheduled debt servicing for this year, some P3.7 billion will go to the interest and principal payments of five questionable and illegitimate loans, the Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC) said.