The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business

Top health-and-beauty store chain Watsons knows you’ve got so much on your plate that you sometimes forget to give yourself some TLC. You’ve been juggling work and play, trying to cover as much ground as possible that you tend to spread yourself too thin. This would eventually take a toll on your well-being.

Since it first aired on Philippine television in May 1978, the Japanese animated series Voltes V has become a significant cultural phenomenon in the country, figuring prominently in the lives of Generation X-ers, and even millennials.

Painter Danilo Arriola shows his fascination and skill with chiaroscuro—that painting technique highlighting the stark contrast between light and dark—in his third solo exhibit, titled A Place in the Sun, which is now on view at the ArtistSpace gallery of the Ayala Museum in Makati City until September 6, 2017.

By Luis Leoncio  A trade group estimates that some P904.6 bilion worth of products were smuggled into the country during the administration of former President Benigno Aquino III, specifically from 2011 to 2015. 

By Riza Lozada  Despite an offer from global ride-sharing firm Uber to pay a P10-million fine, regulator Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) stood its ground in imposing a one-month suspension on the company and even encouraged transport network vehicle services (TNVS) accredited by Uber to jump to its competitors. 

Economic observers are confident that the Philippine economy will hit the target range of 6.5-percent to 7.5-percent growth this year after the government announced a 6.5-percent gross domestic product (GDP) expansion in the second quarter. 

Economic managers made a bold prediction to foreign investors in a Singaporean forum that the Philippines is slated to become Asia’s next economic powerhouse. 

The Department of Finance (DOF) said it appreciates the decision of the US government’s Millenium Challenge Corp. (MCC) to reopen a $434 -million (P2.17-billion) grant, but the conditions attached to it would have to be reviewed. 

Telecommunications companies in Southeast Asia need to invest more in spectrum and new services to meet the explosive data and bandwidth demand in the smartphone era, a new study from Standard & Poors (S&P) Global Ratings showed.

By Riza Lozada The Department of Energy (DOE) and the Consunji group’s Semirara Mining and Power Corporation (SMPC) made a pact to facilitate the development of a mine-mouth power plant in the province of Antique to ensure the acceleration of total electrification of the country.