The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
President Rodrigo Duterte last week named former Army Brigadier General Danilo Lim as chairman of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA).
Points of View & Perspectives
May, 2017
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28 May
Just this one spot: Not simply a wondrous sight
How easy it sounds as if that spot on earth, where one might be instantly implanted, were the most wondrous sight. Consider romps on meadows that the Green Mountains let nestle on their bosom—the little I learned from browsing through Wikipedia on the state of Vermont, cloud shapes like grazing sheep, mountain mist on waist of giant firs, descending in …
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28 May
Military rule raises instability—IBON
The Duterte administration’s declaration of martial law in Mindanao increases political instability in the country, research group IBON said, and will not help the economy, which is already slowing as it is. While the 1987 Constitution provides for such a declaration, its indiscriminate use gives the impression of an authoritarian government arbitrarily using power for self-serving ends. According to IBON, …
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21 May
Why are DOTr and Transco competing with the private sector?
Has the “contractor mentality” syndrome overcome certain quarters in the Administration? Has the syndrome driven government to ease out key private sector participants in infrastructure development?
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21 May
A burdensome statistic: The graying population
Fragile as falling feather to my mind, that is, I had once offered to help lift her cart when it sank into a mound of softened snow on a curb, but she declined graciously, telling me she had done this countless of times since her husband died two decades ago—a rueful smile lighting up her side-upturned face from the crook …
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14 May
When beauty can be hazardous
Swans, for me, would have remained the images I conjured from art and literature—early on in the fairy tale, “Ugly Duckling”, and later, “Swan Lake”, the ballet (my first at the CCP in the 70’s with Russian prima ballerina, Maya Plisetskaya)—if a friend and I hadn’t chanced upon a herd by the entrance of Stanley Park on my first visit …
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14 May
Mall war heats up in CDO
The “war” among shopping malls in Cagayan de Oro City (CDO), which is the trading capital of Northern Mindanao, intensified with the recent opening of the 15.2-hectare Shoe Mart (SM) in the city’s downtown area along Claro M. Recto Avenue.
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7 May
Much valued beginnings
I had squealed childlike at a cock’s midday crow— fortunately, a friend and I had sauntered to a rather isolated bend in Centre Island along the banks of Lake Ontario from across Toronto’s skyline, or else, recognizing an elderly Filipina that I am, selfie-driven millennials, who crowded scenic nooks like a willow-draped bridge, would have smirked, understandably, at my inappropriate, …
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7 May
Agriculture sector remains an economic laggard
Despite the government’s attempt to develop other industries as economic drivers, the agriculture sector remains central to the Philippine economy.
