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A BOY reacts
to the heat of the fire as he cooks on the side street of
Delpan Bridge in Tondo, Manila. The International Monetary
Fund and World Bank recently warned that soaring prices of
food would swell the ranks of the hungry in poor nations.
--NONIE REYES |
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Prices put RP at great fiscal risk |
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SINGAPORE—The Philippines is more at risk than Indonesia as
record food and energy prices threaten budget targets and
cause currencies to decline, according to Thomas Byrne,
senior vice president at Moody’s Investors Service.
Both the
peso and the rupiah fell in March as investors from Deutsche
Asset Management to Fortis Investments trimmed bond holdings
in Southeast Asia on concern inflation will erode returns.
President Arroyo has said she may abandon plans to balance
the budget, while
Indonesia
widened its 2008 deficit target on the rising cost of
subsidizing prices. |
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Oil
prices rise to record at mid-$112 |
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VIENNA,
Austria—Oil
prices rose to an intraday trading record above $112 a
barrel Tuesday after the US dollar fell further and crude
supplies to the US and elsewhere were disrupted.
Crude was
supported by news of disruptions to crude supplies, though
analysts said the interruptions were minor. |
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Access cards to replace P18.25 NCR rice |
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THE
government will pull out rice selling at P18.25 per kilo
from public markets in Metro Manila in the next two to three
weeks but will continue the sale of P25-per-kilo
commercial-grade rice, Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap said
Tuesday.
Yap said in
an interview after the Cabinet meeting at the Department of
Justice (DOJ) that with the withdrawal of cheap National
Food Authority (NFA) rice from public markets, the
government will embark on a pilot test of “family access
cards” in select food-poor communities in Metro Manila to
improve the NFA rice distribution and deter domestic
hoarding. |
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Teves bullish more countries to back rice-pooling scheme |
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WASHINGTON,
D.C.—The Philippines has started the ball rolling for
countries with excess rice supply to share some of their
bounty with their less fortunate neighbors in
Asia.
Finance
Secretary Margarito Teves said he advanced the proposal
before World Bank president Robert B. Zoellick as members of
the 185-member International Monetary Fund winded down their
annual spring meetings here. |
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Changing seasons, uncertain harvests |
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BENGUET—Fruit
and vegetable farming for Crispolo Galasa, 47, is an annual
routine. The time to plant, harvest or change the crops had
been an agenda he knows by heart.
All of a
sudden, however, the whole schedule is in a mess. His
decades of experience as a farmer can no longer serve as a
point of reference as the weather nowadays is no longer easy
to predict. |
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BIR
e-Filing extended on technical snags |
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THE Bureau
of Internal Revenue (BIR) has extended to April 17 the
deadline for the filing of income taxes to selected
companies—with mining firms given till April 30—after the
agency experienced problems in its electronic filing and
payment systems (eFPs).
In Revenue
Memorandum Circular 32-2008 released Tuesday, the deadline
for most companies to file their income taxes, the BIR said
it had to make the extensions to April 17, but only to those
companies that are enrolled in the electronic-payment
systems. |
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MORE STORIES ... |
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THIS is the
trading post in the town of Atok, salad bowl of the
Philippines. Benguet Gov. Nestor Fongwan said their
vegetables have hurdled standards for the international
market and will start exporting soon to Japan and Taiwan. In
parts of the region, however, vegetable farmers complain of
uncertain harvests owing to unpredictable weather.
--MAURICIO VICTA |
