THE country’s real-estate tycoons stand to benefit from the decision of China to open up to the region its property management and development sector as part of its offer under the trade in services chapter of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean)-China free-trade agreement (FTA).

Ramon Kabigting, director of the Bureau of International Trade Relations, said this means that the likes of Ayala Land Inc. and Filinvest, among others, can now look at development projects and take advantage of China’s huge land mass and the world’s biggest market of over 1.2 billion.

“We do have a lot of players who can do that [property management and development],” Kabigting said.

Already, Kabigting said he was informed by some trade officials that tycoon Lucio Tan is now at development projects in Daliang, a Chinese northern seaport.

China also offered to open up to Asean its transport and auxiliary services, Kabigting said.

He said this also presents strong good business opportunities for the Philippine private sector since China is pushing its interland transport system.

This, Kabigting said, would mean heightened activities, trucking, buses, maintenance, repair and warehouses.

“That is a very big business now,” he said.

The staged FTA of the Asean and China is already concluded, except the chapter on trade in investments.

The chapters on the trade in goods and services are already being implemented.

Kabigting said the Asean is hoping to finish its FTA negotiations with China, as well as its other dialogue partners Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand within the year.

The deal with Korea is also a staged FTA and the chapter on trade in goods has been finished already.

Japan, Australia and New Zealand, on the other hand, are negotiating an all-encompassing FTA document.

Manila has already finished its bilateral FTA with Tokyo, called the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (Jpepa), which is now up for Senate ratification.

Kabigting said that if the Asean concludes a regional FTA with Japan, this agreement’s implementation will be going ahead of the Jpepa if it remains hanging in the Senate.

TARGETING to lower power rates through competition and at the same time rake in much-needed revenues, President Arroyo, in a briefing with economic managers Monday, directed the Department of Energy (DOE) and its attached agencies to implement open access in private and publicly owned ecozones and speed up the privatization of the generation and transmission assets of the government.

THE Department of Justice (DOJ) has affirmed the authority of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to supervise the operations and limit the volume of minerals to be extracted by small-scale mining firms.

THE Department of Agriculture (DA) is now pinpointing up to 80,000 hectares of farmland in Visayas and Mindanao where palay could be planted up to mid-September to offset the projected losses in palay production in Luzon due to the dry spell.

SORSOGON CITY—Every year, the red-tide phenomenon infecting Sorsogon Bay since late last year,  feared to stay on for the next 25 years, would be costing this city P100 million in lost income and other economic benefits.

THE country’s real-estate tycoons stand to benefit from the decision of China to open up to the region its property management and development sector as part of its offer under the trade in services chapter of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean)-China free-trade agreement (FTA).

THE United States government has given the Philippines a sugar quota allocation of 142,160 metric tons (MT) of raw cane sugar for fiscal year (FY) 2008 which starts from October 1 this year up to September 30 next year.