The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business

By Luis Leoncio  Standard & Poor’s Global Ratings said the low income level in the Philippines, owing to high unemployment (6. 5 percent) and underemployment (21 percent), remains a key constraint to its economic resilience despite a prosperous economy. 

Nine of the Philippines’s biggest firms have made it to Forbes’s biggest 2,000 companies in the world in terms of market capitalization. 

By Riza Lozada  Vicious competition is preventing the Philippines’s two major telecommunications firms from interconnecting their broadband networks, which has proved to be a major hindrance to improving Internet connection in the country, Oxford Business Group (OBG) has confirmed.

By Jerry Maglunog  In terms of economic management, President Aquino was a dismal failure despite leaving at least P160-billion savings in the National Treasury, according to former Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno. 

Social watchdogs said the outgoing administration failed to improve the lives of Filipinos despite the strong economic growth posted during President Aquino’s term that averaged above 6 percent yearly.

By Riza Lozada Property-based Metro Pacific Investments Corp. (MPIC) and the Ty family’s GT Capital Holdings Inc (GT Capital) entered into an investment deal worth P22 billion that will raise GT Capital’s stake in MPIC. 

Communications giant Globe Telecom is investing close to $500 million (P23.5 billion) over five years beginning 2016 to expand its corporate data network to meet the ever-increasing bandwidth requirements of corporate and enterprise clients.

The Lucio Tan group’s Asia Brewery Inc., producer of the famous Tanduay rum since 1937, signed a joint venture agreement with famous Dutch brewer Heineken International B.V. for the local production and distribution of the premium beer and cider drinks under the famous Heineken brand for a still-undisclosed amount.

Effective this school year, at least 3,200 public elementary pupils from Pandacan in Manila and San Pascual municipality in Batangas will enjoy learning from well-trained teachers in world-class computer laboratories. 

Rather than focus on those we’ve voted into office and upon whom we’ve surrendered our future and the powers of the governed, allow us to reflect inwardly instead, if only to see in our vote the mirror image of ourselves.