The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business

Whiskey lovers, rejoice: Makati Shangri-La Manila is elevating the art of whiskey consumption with Sage Bar’s Bottle Keep Cabinet Service, through which guests can enjoy their favorite bottles from the bar’s selection of prized spirits.

By Luis Leoncio  President Duterte’s economic managers have abandoned the proposed increase in the value-added tax as a means to make up for revenues to be lost with the plan to lower income and corporate taxes.

Infrastructure would be treated as “public goods, not commodities for profit,” Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III has said, revealing a policy shift in the Duterte administration to push projects that proved to ne sluggish in the previous administration. 

The Coordination Committee-Cabinet Committee (ICC-CabCom) recommended 10 projects worth P136.44 billion for National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) Board’s approval in its first meeting under President Duterte’s administration. 

By Luis Leoncio Despite posting a 6-percent growth, the Philippines’s relatively high gross international reserve (GIR) of $85.49 billion in July was still considered a “laggard” in Asia, mainly as a result of the low foreign-capital inflow. 

By Riza Lozada  The local bourse has noted a boom in online stock trading as the number of online stock market accounts continued to grow in 2015, posting an increase of 35.6 percent to 236,669 from the 2014 count of 174,592. Since 2010, the number of online accounts has now registered a 46.1 percent compounded annual growth rate. 

Effective August 1, Cecilia C. Borromeo will serve as officer-in-charge of Land Bank of the Philippines (LandBank), the leading government financial institution that carries out a development mandate anchored on promoting inclusive economic growth especially in the countryside. 

Throwing out the opposition of the Philippine Competition Commission, the Court of Appeals (CA) approved Globe Telecom’s urgent motion to consolidate its petition with Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT).

Brothers Tyler and Tyreke Ang had a fun idea last summer: both signed up as kiddie managers at their favorite jolly place, Jollibee.

We were seething when one North American economy had sealed its decaying hospital waste in huge metal containers and shipped them over to our pristine shores. Our emotions ranged from being insulted and branded an international dump to being the clueless recipient of toxic waste that absolutely had neither economic value nor any utility, save for spreading illnesses and deadly …