Future is theirs. A grade-school student of St. Paul’s College signs on a pledge wall set up for “Wardens of the World” as a symbolic gesture of students’ commitment to care for the environment. The occasion is the Philips and World Wildlife Fund interactive exhibit on energy management and climate-change awareness activity. --NONOY LACZA

AMID warnings by experts that growth was not sustainable and questions about revisions in data, the country made economic history with the better-than-expected gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 7.3 percent in 2007 and 7.4 percent in the fourth quarter of last year.

EXPORTERS lobbied Thursday to get a slice of the vaunted P75-billion economic-stimulus package presented by presidential adviser Joey Salceda, and Senate President Manuel Villar Jr. advised its proponents to get congressional fiat as the budget bill had already been passed. In the end, however, concerned Cabinet members decided that the whole problem of providing an economic safety net for the impact of a recession in the United States was simply a matter of tweaking and repackaging the 2008 General Appropriations Bill.

CITING conflicting and disagreeable statements from government officials on the insertions and realignments and reduction in interest payments on debts, budget “warriors” warned Thursday against a possible veto or calibrated fund release by President Arroyo of the 2008 budget.

INEFFECTIVE regulation of where political parties secure money and inconsistency in monitoring government-owned and -operated corporations kicked down the Philippines among countries with weak governance.

THE Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) decided to do an interest-rate cut of its own Thursday, but at a shallower 25 basis points rather than the 50-basis-point reduction the market expected.

The decision brought the BSP’s overnight borrowing rate to 5 percent and its overnight lending rate to 7 percent from 5.25 percent and 7.25 percent, respectively.

The Senate is not keen on endorsing nuclear power, Sen. Miriam Santiago said yesterday, even as she admitted that senators reached a consensus to speed up the passage of the renewable energy bill as soon as plenary debates on the measure start next week.

Santiago, principal sponsor of the proposed Renewable Energy Act, disclosed at the sidelines of the Energy Summit yesterday that she saw no problem getting the bill passed in the Senate “because more than a majority of the senators are themselves authors of the various renewable energy bills.”

THE sharp rise in oil prices has placed subsidies at the center of the agenda, particularly in developing markets, Neil Atkinson, senior consultant of KBC Market Services, said Thursday.

“With the high price of oil, the cost of subsidies is now very significant,” he told attendees of the 2008 Philippine Energy Summit, raising the question of whether giving out subsidies is sustainable, and what reform or abolition would achieve.

CALLING it part of her economic stimulus strategy, President Arroyo on Thursday ordered a 100-fold fund increase for an educational program that gives cash to qualified poor families on condition that they send their children to school and provide them regular health care.

EDUCATION Secretary Jesli Lapus said on Thursday the government’s suspended cybereducation project may be downscaled so that it can finally take off.

Lapus told reporters at the First Biennial National Congress on Education that an information technology group from the Ateneo de Manila University is studying the cybereducation project in terms of scale, scope and the technology to be used.

The Philippine embassy in Washington will spend $500,000 in the next six months to pay for the services of a law firm which will help lobby for the benefits of the Filipino World War II veterans under the proposed Filipino Veterans Equity Act of 2007.

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