Business and Economy « Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism

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Sweat of the Sierra Madre

by Ed Lingao

The Lematin River forms the western arm of the proposed Laiban Dam watershed and reservoir. This river supports seven of the eight barangays that will be submerged when the dam project finally pushes through.

Read more... | Posted Sunday, July 12th, 2009

Laiban dam a template?

New joint-venture rules allow
little oversight, more abuse

by Roel Landingin

Last of Two Parts The first part of this report reveals how secrecy and precipitate haste mark the tender by the state-run Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) for the P52-billion Liban Dam project in Tanay, Rizal. THE PROPOSED joint-venture deal between San Miguel Corporation and the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) to build [...]

Read more... | Posted Monday, July 6th, 2009

Secrecy, rush mark tender
of biggest MWSS dam project

by Roel Landingin

THE GOVERNMENT is giving bidders only five working days to initiate a challenge to the unsolicited proposal of San Miguel Corporation – the food-beverage giant controlled by Marcos crony Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco Jr. – to build the P52-billion Laiban dam in Rizal province, potentially one of the biggest infrastructure projects to be launched by the Arroyo administration.

Read more... | Posted Sunday, July 5th, 2009

Partners’ squabbles sideline bigger security, tech issues

by Ed Lingao

THEIR PLANNED joint venture now hangs by a thin thread, but squabbling partners Barbados-registered Smartmatic International and local counterpart Total Information Management Corporation (TIM) have also yet to tie down many loose ends in their winning bid to automate the 2010 elections.

Chief among the concerns are security issues now being raised by computer experts, nongovernmental groups, and even members of the Commission on Elections Advisory Council (CAC) that oversaw the protracted, if transparent, bidding process. These unresolved security issues have raised the specter of an automated exercise where the cheating will not just be as fast as the counting, but harder to detect as well.

Read more... | Posted Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

Good-bye automated elections?

Testy, costly arbitration in S’pore looms for squabbling contractors

by Malou Mangahas and Ed Lingao

THE COURT and not the boardroom looks like the next destination of the two proponents of the yet unborn joint venture project that was supposed to give the Philippines its first national automated elections in May 2010.

The parties call their differences “irreconcilable,” and by the letter of the existing Joint Venture Agreement (JVA), the conflict may be resolved only through tedious and costly arbitration in Singapore, under the commercial arbitration rules of the Singapore Chamber of Commerce.

Read more... | Posted Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

‘Dubious’ oil price hikes hurt the poorest most

by Karol Anne M. Iligan

NELSON MARTINEZ has only one child, but he says getting by each day has become even tougher because oil price hikes have diminished his earnings.

The 46-year-old who drives his own jeepney for a living complains, “It’s the little people who have been hit, and it’s hitting us hardest in the pocket.”

Read more... | Posted Monday, August 4th, 2008

The economy

Misplaced government spending worsens woes

by Jaileen F. Jimeno and Karol Anne M. Ilagan

IF THIS country were a family, it is unhealthy, lacking in education and employment opportunities, is deep in debt and spends its limited budget on the wrong things.

This is despite the fact that the head of this household called the Philippines is someone whose expertise is economics.

Read more... | Posted Monday, August 4th, 2008

Romulo L. Neri: Can golf, realpolitik work at SSS?

by Alecks P. Pabico

BACK IN May, speculations were rife that Romulo L. Neri was returning to the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) as director general and socioeconomic planning secretary by August. The nasty rumor had so distressed some at NEDA that on a bulletin board next to the ground floor elevator lobby that had been turned into a sort of freedom wall was posted this note from an anonymous commenter:

“I don’t think bringing back Neri to NEDA will be good for the agency. We are now finding out that he maintained a group of advisers/consultants in the likes of Jun Lozada who seemed to act as fixers/moderators of greed. Imagine that! Neri seemed to be running another office corresponding with NEDA staffs whose sole purpose was to take charge of the wheeling and dealing in government. Shall we allow that again?”

Read more... | Posted Wednesday, July 16th, 2008

Meet the Packers

by Tita C. Valderama

THE MAN behind Bloombury Investment Ltd.’s supposed foreign partner has in recent months launched aggressive moves to expand his inherited multibillion-dollar gaming and media empire.

But he has done so at a time when his rank on the lists of Australia’s richest billionaires lists has been sliding steadily.

Read more... | Posted Tuesday, July 1st, 2008

Whither the MDGs?

by Leonor Magtolis Briones

For the last several months we have been swimming in an alphabet soup of acronyms — NBN, ZTE, NEDA, FG, FGI, to name a few. And more keep pouring in; these days, the most oft-repeated one is NFA, or the National Food Authority. Yet what we should have been repeating like a mantra is MDG and its plural form, which stands for Millennium Development Goals. In 2000, the Philippines became one of the signatories to the Millennium Declaration, thereby sealing its commitment to meeting by 2015 eight goals that address development concerns worldwide. Last year marked the midpoint in the period allotted to the achievement of these MDGs.

Read more... | Posted Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008

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