MEDIUM RARE
In her 2021 book, The Madness of Crowds, the novelist Louise Penny writes: “What’s a year? Why do we need a new year? Is the old one broken?” Not all memories are good, but the following list shows that as in using a stairway, there’s always an upstairs and a downstairs.
On Dec. 22, President Duterte announced, “Depleted na ang funds ng Pilipinas.”
That may well be the case, but read through these November-December 2021 headlines to decide how bad or good the year has been.
Dec. 27 – Private hospitals call a PhilHealth holiday. From Jan. 1-5, 2022 patients will have to work out their own reimbursements.
Dec. 28 – Government signs $300M loan for vax boosters.
PH secures $80M loan from World Bank.
Dec. 25 – UN to raise $107.2M for Odette victims.
Dec. 21 – Retirement savings program for OFW’s and retirees grew 62%.
Ocean-based industries fell by 32.6% to P617.2B.
France commits the equivalent of P14B in loans for disaster risk reduction.
Agri exports grew 29.7%, imports by 70.3.
Remittances up by 5.3% to $26B in October.
Peso returned to 49:$1 in December.
Gov’t debt balloons to P11.97T.
Factory output at 8-month high.
Gov’t gross borrowings in October dropped 78% to P146B.
Aboitiz Group’s digital unit will spend P6B to build 1,000 cell sites in ’22.
Bank loans grew 3.5% (P9.3T) in October.
All up: Alliance Global Group, by 173% to P17.3B; First Gen by 11% to P10.3B; Lopez Holdings reversed P491M loss to net P2.25B; AllHome up 22%, to P973M; DMCI Homes surged 692% to P4B; Pilipinas Shell, P3.4B net; Phoenix Petroleum, P170M; Puregold by 14%.
San Miguel Food and Beverages earned 68% to P24.2B; San Miguel Corp. tripled net income from P10.7B last year to P34.2B in 9 months; Converge, 76.4% to P18.8B; Ayala Corp. 70% to P19.4B; Landbank 21.2% to P13.8B; Robinsons Land’s real estate arm declared P616M cash dividend; DMCI posted record P13.5B net; Petron earned P4.97B; airline ticket sales (inbound) soared 57%; dollar reserves rose to $108B in November.
Bad bank loans ratio shrank by 4.43% in September. On the other hand, government will borrow P30B from small investors.
Expect a silver lining of 20 million new basic bank depositors by end-2021, an increase of 3.3 million.