The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business

The feeling heightens as soon as summer starts to creep in and the sun splashes blinding streams of light through glass windows.

Based on reports from very reliable sources and conversations with insiders, the fact is there is an air of optimism in the camp of presidential candidate and former Interior Secretary Mar Roxas. 

What Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Deputy Governor Nestor Espenilla, Jr. disclosed about the need to increase the monetary penalties that the BSP can impose on errant banks based on the amount involved in an irregularity just goes to show that many of the rules and sanctions in place in the banking system are past their usefulness. 

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) maintained its key policy rates, saying last Friday that economic indicators continue to remain appropriate, even as average inflation in the first quarter of 2016 remains below the government’s target of two percent to four percent growth. 

Sy-led Banco de Oro Unibank Inc. (BDO) is targeting a 4 percent rise in net income this year to P26 billion, to be buoyed by the strength of the domestic economy, as well as core businesses, namely deposits and loans. 

The Construction Materials Retail Price Index (CMRPI), on an annual basis in the National Capital Region, moved up by 0.8 percent in March, but it declined by 0.4 percent in February, while it increased by 0.1 percent in the same month last year, it was learned recently. 

The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) said funding for proposed projects under the FY 2017 Bottom-up Budgeting (BuB) Program will total P35 billion, up by P10.3 billion from this year’s BuB budget. 

The inaugural Global Infrastructure Forum 2016, held recently in Washington, D.C., brings together for the first time the leaders of the multilateral development banks (MDBs) —the African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, European Investment Bank, Inter-American Development Bank Group, Islamic Development Bank, New Development Bank, and the World Bank Group—as …

The Department of Agrarian Reform’s (DAR) National Project Coordinating Office (NPCO) recently turned over nine of the 58 subprojects funded by the second Agrarian Reform Community Project (ARCP) to Barangays Matacong, San Ramon and San Isidro in San Lorenzo Ruiz; San Felipe in Basud; and Malancao-Basud in Labo, all in Camarines Norte. 

President Aquino inaugurated last Monday the Baybay diversion road project, which aims to minimize traffic congestion in the city proper and reduce the travel time from Maasin City to the cities of Tacloban and Ormoc, Leyte.