FORMER President Fidel V. Ramos keynotes the International Conference on the Implications of the Asean Charter for East Asian Integration at the Sofitel Philippine Plaza Hotel. Another speaker, Michael Clancy of the Philippine Business Leaders’ Forum, said the Philippines is no longer attracting foreign direct investments owing to corruption and Manila’s over reliance on “bad” loans from China.  --ROY DOMINGO

A FOREIGN business group said Wednesday the controversy on the national broadband deal only confirms investors’ long-held sentiment on the worsening corruption cases in the Philippines, and noted that, as a result, foreign business interests are shifting to other Southeast Asian countries like Malaysia and Thailand.

The weak United States dollar, the country’s low investment rate and the fiscal reforms implemented by the government are among the reasons why the Philippine peso is overvalued by 9 percent to 10 percent, according to government think tank Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS).

GLOBAL inflationary pressures will result in a higher inflation rate for the Philippines in 2008, according to Josef T. Yap, president of the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS). The average rate, he predicted, will be steady at 5 percent, still within the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’s (BSP) more optimistic forecast of 3 percent to 5 percent inflation rate.

THE domestic borrowing activities of the national government (NG) increased by P19 billion in December 2007, but its debt-reduction program that year allowed the overall NG debt level to fall by 1 percent to only P3.712 trillion.

This corresponded to the period when Governor Amando Tetangco Jr. of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) asked Finance Secretary Margarito Teves to increase his domestic or peso borrowings and help the BSP deal more effectively with the strengthening peso.

WHILE civil-society groups recognized the signing of the P1.23-trillion national budget for 2008 as a major gain because of the people’s participation in it, they called on the people to be vigilant and continue guarding the fund so as to end, and not just moderate, the corruption which usually occurs during spending.

TWO Filipinos made it to the elite list of the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Forum of Young Global Leaders for 2008, a unique multistakeholder community of the world’s most extraordinary young leaders committed to devoting some of their knowledge and energy to collectively work toward a better future.

THE Philippines has qualified to apply for a large-scale grant funding with the US Millennium Challenge Corp. (MCC) for programs aimed at spurring economic growth and poverty reduction.

At the conclusion of its March board meeting, the MCC board of directors announced in a statement on Wednesday that the Philippines has been selected “as eligible to apply for an MCC compact,” based on independent indicators that measure good governance, investment in its people, and policies that encourage economic freedom.

THE government is no longer keen on coming up with a trigger mechanism for the reduction of tariffs imposed on wheat products, thinking that such initiative will hardly make an impact in terms of shielding consumers from the high cost of these commodities in the world market.

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Biggest construction fair. Worldbex Services International, Asia’s premier organizer of the biggest and most attended construction trade fairs in the region, formally opened the 13th Philippine World Building and Construction Exposition, or Worldbex 2008, at the World Trade Center. It will run until March 16. --RHOY COBILLA