A think tank backed by the state-owned University of the Philippines said proposals to again increase the sales tax or the value added tax (VAT) to 15 percent from the current 12 percent to resolve the back-to-back budget blowouts last year and this year of around P300 billion a year may further increase the number of Filipinos living below the poverty level. Read the rest of this entry »

The government’s own statistics office confirmed what the Palace has been trying to dispute which was election spending as the main driver of the relatively high 7.3 percent growth in the first quarter. Read the rest of this entry »

AQUINO TOLD

MANILA, Philippines—A labor group has urged apparent President-apparent Benigno Aquino III to persuade American lawmakers to pass a bill that seeks to revive the textile and apparel trade between the United States and the Philippines, and create thousands of new jobs in both countries. Read the rest of this entry »

Neither the many congressmen who went to the Smartmatic plant in Sta. Rosa, Cabuyao, for a testing of the precint count optical scan (PCOS) machines under controlled surroundings, nor the camp of former President Joseph Estrada were impressed or convinced that the automated election system, as programmed by Smartmatic, has yielded accurate results, and was fraud-free. Read the rest of this entry »

Millions of Filipino children and youth are in one or more ways suffering the ill effects of poverty. Malnutrition, lack of access to good quality education and health care, parental neglect, exposure to domestic violence and drug abuse, sexual abuse and other forms of exploitation, are more common than most of us would like to think. Read the rest of this entry »

CABUYAO, Laguna , Philippines  – There may have been no “hocus-PCOS” after all.

A staunch ally of deposed President Joseph Estrada said Smartmatic had successfully demonstrated that it was “not possible” to tinker with the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines to manipulate the results of the country’s first automated elections. Read the rest of this entry »

MANILA, Philippines – Monetary authorities are expected to review the country’s latest inflation forecast during the meeting of the central bank’s Monetary Board on June 3 in light of the stronger-than-expected gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the first quarter of the year. Read the rest of this entry »