The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business

By Luis Leoncio  The Philippines is seeking the support of Japan for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) proposal to raise to 40 percent from 30 percent the currency swap through an International Monetary Fund (IMF) that will be free from the multilateral agency’s lending conditions. 

State pension fund Social Security System (SSS) urged private firms to design benefit programs that will meet their workers’ needs aside from the social protection provided by state-run pension funds. 

By Riza Lozada  Metrobank Group thrift bank unit Philippine Savings Bank (PSBank) reported its net income grew by nearly a fifth in the first quarter from a year ago mainly as a result of the growth in its core revenues, composed of net interest income and fee based earnings and the bank’s operational efficiency. 

The Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP), through its corporate social responsibility initiative, DBP Endowment for Education Program (Deep), has benefitted 3,567 poor but brilliant Filipino students nearly nine years since its inception in 2008. 

House Speaker Pantaleon D. Alvarez asked concerned House committees to require the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) to submit the list of proposed projects of all government agencies to Congress prior to its approval since the annual national budget emanates from the House. 

The Duterte administration will exercise fiscal prudence and responsibility to ensure that its unmatched public investments in infrastructure would create a lot more jobs and business opportunities, which, in turn, would sustain the country’s growth momentum and accelerate poverty reduction. 

Motorists will soon have another option avoiding a congested Daang Maharlika in Bulacan, with the new 9.62-kilometer Pulilan-Baliuag Diversion Road that is now being paved by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH). 

Senator Leila M. de Lima has expressed serious concerns over the $167-billion infrastructure project of the Duterte administration that would be financed through foreign loans, mostly coming from the Chinese government. 

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? 

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 …