The Asian Development Bank (ADB) downgraded its growth forecast for the Philippines as the nation struggled in containing the coronavirus outbreak that hampered economic recovery. Based on ADB’s Asian Development Outlook update, the Manila-based multilateral institution has projected that the...
GOVERNANCE MATTERS Former Vice President Jejomar Binay Government officials should learn to speak with one voice. This is a basic communication principle that should have been in place nine months ago, when government, after much reluctance, acknowledged the existence of a health crisis. The number...
OF TREES AND FOREST Former Senate President Manny Villar Nelson Mandela, revolutionary, political leader, and former president of South Africa, once said: “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” And I absolutely agree. I think that education is our most...
GOVERNANCE MATTERS Former Vice President Jejomar Binay The secretary of justice, asked to comment about the resurgence of extra-judicial killings with lawyers as victims, admitted having difficulty in investigating and prosecuting the killers and the masterminds. He described the killings as...
OF TREES AND FOREST Former Senate President Manny Villar It’s going to be a different holiday season this year. Countries around the world are grappling with a dilemma of whether to relax pandemic restrictions to allow people to celebrate the holidays. On one hand, there is fear that relaxing...
GOVERNANCE MATTERS Former Vice President Jejomar Binay A threat to withhold funding for the University of the Philippines (UP) has been made apparently in response to a call for an “academic strike.” It appears irrelevant that the call was originally made not by UP by its affluent neighbor...
What can you give to President Duterte this Christmas? Four empowered Filipino women who are based in Australia have thought of possible gifts for President Duterte during the holidays. These women are: Mrs. Oceania Olivia Rosete Wheeler, Mrs. Australasia Kristine Aseron Santos, Mrs. Australia...
OF TREES AND FOREST Former Senate President Manny Villar As the nation continues to grapple with a pandemic that has affected more than 406,000 Filipinos and has claimed the lives of more than 7,700, a cavalcade of typhoons and severe tropical storms have battered our country in a span of weeks....
GOVERNANCE MATTERS Former Vice President Jejomar Binay As I write this column, Typhoon Ulysses has transformed Cagayan and Isabela, the home province of my mother, into an ocean of tears and tragedy. Prior to its arrival, the typhoon ravaged towns and cities already reeling from the devastation...
Filinvest Development Corporation (FDC), the Gotianun family’s holding firm, reported a three percent improvement in attributable net income to P8.9 billion in the first nine months of 2020 from the P8.6 billion earned in the same period last year. In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock...
Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III said they are evaluating this year’s national budget to determine whether there is need to augment it to help the victims of the recent typhoons that ravaged Luzon and parts of the Visayas. “We are in the process of evaluating the damage of the series...
OF TREES AND FOREST Former Senate President Manny Villar Major TV networks in the US have projected that former Vice President Joseph Biden will become the 46th president of the United States. And while President Donald Trump has so far refused to concede as he exhausts legal remedies, world...
