MANILA, Philippines – Poverty figures released the other day were only up to the first semester of 2012, and the situation is getting better, Malacañang said yesterday. Read the rest of this entry »

When it rains, it pours.

Coming on the heels of a report from the National Statistical Coordination Board that poverty alleviation in the country remains a pipe dream is an observation—from a government think tank no less—that job-creation facilitation programs are not enough to prop up employment in the Philippines. Read the rest of this entry »

NEDA DIRECTOR General Arsi Balisacan and the Philippine Statistical System, particularly the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) and the National Statistics Office (NSO), are to be congratulated for a more timely release of the country’s poverty statistics. Read the rest of this entry »

IT’S back to the drawing board for the government’s development planners following the findings of the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) that the administration’s poverty-reduction program has failed. Read the rest of this entry »

On the average, 28 out of 100 Filipinos live in poverty ,unchanged for the past six years. This translates to 26 million very poor Filipinos. “The poverty rate would have been higher if not for the implementation of the conditional cash transfer program,” NEDA Director General Arsenio Balisacan said. Read the rest of this entry »

A CHAPTER of the IMF’s World Economic Outlook released last week and presented at a series of seminars in Manila analyzes growth takeoffs in dynamic emerging markets and developing economies during the past 60 years. The chapter considers the economic and structural conditions and policies of emerging markets and developing countries that have taken off and thus provides key policy lessons for dynamic economies like the Philippines, on how to sustain its growth takeoff. The summary of the chapter below is a more selective and cross country companion piece to last month’s column sustaining the growth takeoff I. Read the rest of this entry »

THE government is yet to make a significant headway in reducing poverty in the Philippines based on a report released by the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) on Tuesday. Read the rest of this entry »

The disclosure by the Bureau of Internal Revenue of the list of top individual income tax payers only served to mislead ordinary citizens on the behavior of the rich and famous insofar as paying the correct taxes is concerned. The list did not capture the true amounts that individuals—tycoons and business executives in particular—actually paid in taxes in 2011. In fact, what it suggested was that Commissioner Kim Henares was just trying to please President Aquino. The top income tax payer for 2011 on the list made public by the BIR was one Kristina Bernadette Cojuangco Aquino (aka the celebrity Kris Aquino, the President’s youngest sister), who paid P49.8 million. In contrast, the Philippines’ richest individual, mall tycoon Henry Sy, is 15th in the list, with P16.5 million. Read the rest of this entry »

Mayors planning to extend VAT-exemption to subdivisions on their association dues, consider this as fair warning.

BIR Commissioner Kim Jacinto-Henares has said she would not hesitate to publish the names of mayors who succumb to popular calls from homeowners’ associations to exempt their monthly dues from the expanded value-added taxation. Read the rest of this entry »