By: John Carlo Tria THE Trump-China “trade war” has created enough consequences by raising tariffs on many goods. Trump’s moves have provoked similar retaliatory moves by China, the world’s second-largest economy. Overall, this will slow global growth. Already, major economies are forecasting slower growth as a result of lower trade volumes between the US and
September 12, 2019
By: John Carlo Tria OUR recent rice supply crisis of 2018 already taught us bitter lessons. That a slight uptick in retail rice prices pushes inflation up. Average retail prices rose by about ten pesos per kilo, pushing inflation up to about 6%. Thus, last week’s inflation drop to about 1.7% was prompted by the
September 11, 2019
By: John Carlo Tria IT IS CLEAR to many that a new age of tourism is upon us. With a record 7.1 million tourists visiting us in 2018, the crowd of Korean, Chinese and Japanese tourists filling our tourist spots bodes well for an economy that will need more revenue to fuel and expand our
August 24, 2019
By: John Carlo Tria LET’S face it. At barely 1 percent, our agriculture performance last year looked like we were in the past administration. Senator Kiko Pangilinan seems to have forgotten that when he was PNOYs Agriculture czar, our performance was actually worse than it is today. Back then, excuses were often made, citing the
August 16, 2019
By: John Carlo Tria THE recent State of the Nation Address allowed us to take a look at new laws that the previous congress passed which I believe will change the game in business by allowing new forms of collateral for loans and spur new technology innovation. Republic Act 11057 (Personal Property Security Act) simplifies
July 31, 2019
By: John Carlo Tria UNLIKE past administrations, the tenor of the State of the Nation Address (SONA) has gone beyond what a President wishes for Congress to do for his administration, or to trumpet what his administration has done. Often as it was then, we saw presidents trying to impress congress, the gallery filled with
July 26, 2019
By: John Carlo Tria WITH the impending start of Congress next week much of the discussions surrounding it fall on who the next speaker of the House of Representatives will be. This brings to light the role of the opposition, or what is left of it. With diminished numbers in both houses of congress, the
July 20, 2019
By: John Carlo Tria IN MAINSTREAM media, and especially among the throng of intellectuals who like talking about foreign policy and things like that, the “Iceland” resolution of the United Nations Human Rights Council, a special body under the United Nations, narrowly passed a resolution seeking to investigate claims of human rights violations in the
July 19, 2019
By: John Carlo Tria THE reality of the thousands of foreign workers setting up in the country, many doing offshore gaming or Philippine Offshore Gaming Operations (POGO) is upon us. We see them in malls and in many of our public spaces, use our road systems and infrastructure such as hotels. It’s about time they
July 5, 2019
By: John Carlo Tria A PIECE of news not so widely read was the self rated poverty survey of the Social Weather Stations, which some argue is more accurate than governments own poverty statistics. The number improved further to 38% from the previous period, marking an all time low. When we join this with the
June 28, 2019
Better revenue for poverty reduction Record revenue collections this year from both Customs and the BIR already show that government is much more serious in plugging revenue loopholes that were once exploited by smugglers and tax evaders. We hope that the trend continues and that eventually, tax cheating and smuggling will no longer be as
May 31, 2019