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By Luis Leoncio After revealing that the Aqui­no administration incurred a record P4.16-trillion debt in just five years, the Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC) is now demanding that the gov­ernment make a public ac­counting on how it used the borrowings to improve the lives of the Filipino people.

Steps to be taken by the successor of President Aquino would be pivotal for the country’s effort to join the ranks of Asian ti­gers, an economic expert both said.

Shopping-mall mogul Henry Sy Sr. continues his rise on the prestigious list of Forbes World’s Billionaires’ List, climbing to 71st place from 73rd in 2015, despite his net worth falling to $12.9 billion from last year’s $14.2 billion.

By Riza Lozada  Malacañang’s “undue haste” in merging the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP) with Land Bank of the Philippines (LandBank or LBP) has raised suspicions of a possible cover-up of irregularities involving billions of pesos of behest loans and other anomalies in one or both of the two state-owned banks.

By Luis Leoncio  Budget Secretary Florencio “Butch” Abad’s Bottom-Up Budgeting (BuB), which is being described by the Aquino administration as a budget-reform package, has been “exposed” as a “brazen tool” of political patronage in a study by University of the Philippines (UP) School of Economics Prof. Benjamin Diokno.

By Jerry Maglunog  The Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) is looking into reports that credit cards are now being used to launder dirty money.

By Riza Lozada An influential foreign trade group said the government “must” require the use of the precious frequency band available for fast Internet transmissions and “compel” companies that have it but are not using it “to give it up.”

Business confidence is on a slide, according to a Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) quarterly survey, which showed that the overall confidence index (CI) fell to 41.9 percent in the first quarter from 51.3 percent in the final quarter of last year, partly due to uncertainties as a result of the expected change in administration after the national elections in …

Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala has come up with an agricultural initiative whose impact, four years after a touch-and-go game on the intricacies of the business, has produced what could become his legacy to the country’s efforts at financial inclusion.

By Riza Lozada Fierce telecommunications rivals Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) and Globe Telecom appear to have temporarily set aside their “differences” and joined forces to denounce the “anti-competition act” of San Miguel Corp. (SMC) in refusing to share the 700-megahertz (MHz) band needed to upgrade the country’s Internet connections.