The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business

By Luis Leoncio The sudden termination last Tuesday of negotiations for what had promised to be a blockbuster deal between GMA Network Inc. (GMA) and San Miguel Corp. President and Vice Chairman Ramon S. Ang has sparked a bitter word war between the two camps over who’s to blame for the turn of events.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that at least P19 billion of this year’s P62.3-billion budget for the Aquino administration’s key anti-poverty program, called conditional cash transfer (CCT), did not go to intended beneficiaries—the poorest of the poor among the country’s 100 million population.

Puerto Princesa, Philippines—China is pressing ahead with the construction of artificial islands on at least two reefs that are also claimed by the Philippines in an increasingly tense territorial dispute, Filipino officials said.

By Katy Daigle / The Associated Press New Delhi—Global resolve to rescue impoverished children from lives of squalor, disease and hunger has fallen short, with economic development in many countries still leaving millions of the most vulnerable behind, according to a just-released report of the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (Unicef, now simply translated as United Nations Children’s Fund).

The cliché derogatory line about the importance of the economy to political realities and to fiscal governance was once eloquently encompassed in the single, rather crude declaration, “It’s the economy, stupid!” The term, uncouth and rather degrading to those it is addressed, those being a government official on one end, and the public on the other, in a good number …

Picked during a meeting of Women Elders in Action (WE*ACT), the defunct organization to which I belonged, to attend a video presentation on the Alberta Tar (Oil) Sands development, I had acquiesced but added that I didn’t know how to find Coast Salish territory, where it would be held.

Finally, it has dawned on Vice President Jejomar Binay that he can never be “The One,” as far as President Aquino is concerned. He was just deluding himself thinking the President would eventually choose him over Interior Secretary Mar Roxas due to his close ties with the Aquino family.

There is something wrong with the way the government is handling the country’s rice problem. There is the problem of two overlords in the agriculture department, Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala and ex-Sen. Kiko Pangilinan. Their functions overlap and this includes even the matter of who should be the “issuing authority” on the imports of rice.

The combined net income of companies listed at the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) grew 13.9 percent in the first quarter to P158.28 billion, from P138.96 billion in the same period last year. The increase was mostly driven by significant profit gains in the property and services sectors.

By Riza Lozada The absence of an all-purpose reinsurer for the operator of the electricity network National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) has contributed to the high cost of electricity, as natural accidents that result in damages in the transmission grid are always charged to electricity users, instead of the state-operated insurer.