INFLATION IN FEB. MAY REVERT TO TARGET By Bianca Cuaresma
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@BcuaresmaBM
HE growth of local consumer prices may have reverted to within-target range in as early as Febuary this year, based on the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’s (BSP) forecast for the February inflation. As announced by the Central Bank on Thursday afternoon, the BSP Department of Economic Research projects February inflation to settle anywhere between 3.7 and 4.5 percent. “Higher domestic oil prices and the upward adjustment in electricity rates provided upside price pressures to inflation during the month. These may be partly offset by lower prices of rice and other agricultural commodities given the appreciation of the peso and ample supply particularly of rice following the recent
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harvest and arrival of rice imports,” the BSP said in a statement. “Looking ahead, the BSP will continue to be watchful of evolving price trends to ensure that the monetarypolicy stance remains appropriate to maintaining price stability that is conducive to a balanced and sustainable growth of the economy and employment,” it added. Should inflation fall to the floor of the BSP’s forecast range for February, the local price growth will fall to its lowest expansion since January 2018, when it hit 3.4 percent. Meanwhile, if inflation hits the BSP forecast ceiling, it will be an acceleration from the 4.4-percent inflation seen in January this year. In their February meeting, the Monetary Board scaled back their inflation forecast to 3.1 percent on average for this year, down from the 3.2-percent forecast announced by the BSP in their
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n Friday, March 1, 2019 Vol. 14 No. 142
DOLE-Ecop accord on contractuals hangs T
By Samuel P. Medenilla
@sam_medenilla
HE Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) has junked its proposed memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Employers Confederation of the Philippines (Ecop), which would have fasttracked the regularization of over 200,000 contractual workers. Labor Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III said he opted to scrap the accord, which was supposed to be signed in February, due to opposition of labor groups. Without the MOU, he said the workers it was supposed to cover
may now have to wait longer before they could be absorbed by their companies. “Since they [labor groups] were the ones who complained against it [MOU], they will be the ones to explain [the delays] to the [affected]
workers,” Bello told reporters in a previous interview.
Still hopeful
DESPITE Bello’s latest pronouncement, Ecop remains optimistic the MOU will still be eventually signed.
“Since they [labor groups] were the ones who complained against it [MOU], they will be the ones to explain [the delays] to the [affected] workers.”—Bello
Ecop President Sergio OrtizLuis told the BusinessMirror in a phone interview he spoke earlier with the labor chief, who conceded they were indeed facing a problem in implementing the MOU due to opposition from labor groups. However, his impression is that DOLE could still implement it later. “It is just postponed and undergoing further study,” Ortiz-Luis said.
By Elijah Felice E. Rosales @alyasjah
HE Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has vowed to set a suggested retail price for cement next week to prevent local manufacturers from taking advantage of the protectionist regime on the commodity. Trade Secretary Ramon M. Lopez recently told reporters that the SRP is in compliance with his promise to do so. The SRP will be in place for as long as the safeguard duty of P210 per metric ton is imposed on imported cement. The SRP is intended to ensure prices of cement are stable and reasonable under a biased regime against imports. “We knew their [prevailing prices], so those are what we will review in setting the SRP. As I said before, we will peg it from December and base the SRP from that,” Lopez said. Asked about the probable range of the SRP, he said it could be around P220 per bag, as this is the average price of cement before the safeguard measure was placed. “We are not saying that [we will place only one SRP for all brands] because each province has different logistics costs. I think cement is cheaper in Cebu, but not in some
PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 52.0060
BUSINESS NEWS SOURCE OF THE YEAR
Solar Para sa Bayan franchise a power industry bane Dr. Jesus Lim Arranza
Make Sense
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LTHOUGH I had already expressed earlier my apprehensions on the ill effects of granting Solar Para sa Bayan (SPSB) a congressional franchise to operate and provide supposedly cheap renewable electricity to communities unserved or underserved by other power companies, my aversions were strengthened upon hearing the concerns of the other power industry stakeholders and Senate Committee on Energy Chairman Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian himself during the last Senate hearing on the SPSB franchise.
See “Dole-Ecop,” A2
Continued on A11
Govt mulling over cutting exports target
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economies. Countries that posted a score of 100 and topped the index were European countries—Belgium, Denmark, France, Latvia, Luxembourg and Sweden. “Change is happening, but not fast enough, and 2.7 billion women are still legally barred from having the same choice of jobs as men.
HE gover nment m ight lower its exports target in response to recent developments on both the domestic and global scale. Senen M. Perlada, director of the Department of Trade and Industry’s Export Marketing Bureau, said the trade conflict between the United States and China is now taking a toll on Philippine exports. He argued this has been evident in the export figures for 2018—a decline of nearly 2 percent—on the back of tempered performance from the semiconductor industry. Merchandise exports for the whole of last year fell 1.8 percent to $67.48 billion, from $68.71 billion in 2017, according to data from the Philippine Statistics Authority. “There has been an idea floating around if we are [going to] change or revise the target,” Perlada said in an interview with reporters. However, Perlada said he is personally against revising the target, as the figures are still way ahead of the objectives under the Philippine Development Plan 2017-2022. The target for exports of goods this year is at $51.2 billion to $52.7 billion; for exports of services it is $42.6 billion to $43.7 billion, according to data from the PDP.
See “Pinays,” A12
See “Exports,” A12
“We are not saying that [we will place only one SRP for all brands] because each province has different logistics costs. I think cement is cheaper in Cebu, but not in some northern parts of Luzon. In Metro Manila P220 is the prevailing price per bag. What we will impose is SRP per brand.”—Lopez
northern parts of Luzon. In Metro Manila P220 is the prevailing price per bag. What we will impose is SRP per brand,” Lopez said. Lopez decided to put an SRP on cement to see how the implementation of a safeguard duty will impact on supply. He said “unreasonable” price increases are indications of supply shortages. The DTI slapped a provisional tax on imported cement after the domestic industry supposedly got injured from the surge in imports from 2013 to 2017. Market share of imports rose to 15 percent in 2017, from 0.02 percent in 2013, according to figures from the DTI. Further, sales of the local industry reportedly fell 12 percent, or P11.1 billion, in 2017, as manufacturers were compelled to reduce prices by almost 10 percent to compete with imports.
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DTI to set suggested retail price for cement to prevent profiteering
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December meeting. For 2020, the inflation forecast is broadly unchanged at 3 percent. The reduction in the forecast for this year was hinged on three things: lower oil prices in the global market, base effects and the expectation of lower global nonoil prices. The BSP also said that as inflation conditions turn favorable, the Monetary Board decided in February that current monetary-policy settings are already appropriate, as previous monetary responses continue to work their way through the economy. The BSP in 2018 let out a series of monetary-policy hikes—a total of 175 basis points—to bring inflation back to more normalized levels. The BSP is set to have its next monetary-policy meeting on March 21, under a new Monetary Board chairman following the death of BSP Governor Nestor A. Espenilla Jr.
THIS is the Nlex Harbor Link Segment 10, a 5.65-kilometer elevated expressway traversing Nlex from MacArthur Highway in Karuhatan, Valenzuela City, passing through Malabon City and C-3 Road in Caloocan, which was inaugurated on Thursday (February 28). This road is expected to reduce bottlenecks in Metro Manila by reducing the number of vehicles passing through some secondary roads. It is expected to benefit an initial 30,000 vehicles per day. Story in “Companies,” page B1. PHOTO COURTESY NLEX CORPORATION
Pinays face barriers in business, law–WB By Cai U. Ordinario @caiordinario
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HE Philippines may be regarded as one of the best places to be a woman, but Filipinas continue to face barriers in business and law compared to their counterparts in the region and in the world, according to the
latest report from the World Bank. In a report, titled “Women, Business and the Law 2019: A Decade of Reforms,” the World Bank said the Philippines only scored 81.25 out of 100 in the index. This placed the Philippines only fourth in Southeast Asia in terms of the index. Overall, the Philippines and Puerto Rico ranked 21st out of 187
n JAPAN 0.4686 n UK 69.2044 n HK 6.6254 n CHINA 7.7789 n SINGAPORE 38.5773 n AUSTRALIA 37.1167 n EU 59.1412 n SAUDI ARABIA 13.8675
Source: BSP (28 February 2019 )