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Did you
know 1:
Globe
Telecom’s hub centers have daily revolving funds. This
means that if clients don’t pay them in cash to settle
bills or whatever, then a Globe hub can’t make good on
G-cash cash-out transactions either.
Said
another way, if you need to withdraw G-cash worth
P2,000 and the hub center has already paid off its last
P2,000 to the person before you, then you’ll just have
to come back later in the day or do your business
elsewhere.
Did you
know 2:
There are Italian tiles in the parking lot of
UST Hospital.
It turns
out the parking lot used to be part of the hospital
complex that housed the nuns before that section was
torn down as part of a renovation program that failed to
get off the ground.
Did you
know 3:
A relatively well-known real estate company has a bad
reputation among overseas Filipino workers for a
particular housing project.
It turns
out the company cannot turn over the individual titles
to buyers because the master title is mortgaged to a
bank-sister company. It also turns out the company
didn’t get the proper permits from the government’s
regulatory housing agency either.
Did you
know 4:
There are so many finance companies under the radar in
Hong Kong that cater specifically to Filipinos in desperate need of emergency cash
to send home but who can’t access the banking system.
The
rates are atrocious, sometimes reaching 15 percent a
month, for these so-called clean loans. The only
collateral asked is the OFW’s passport.
All is
not well for the automotive assembly industry. While
sales has continued to grow, albeit in single-digit
figures, the number of cars that are locally assembled
has drop. In large part, this is because of the
zero-percent to 5-percent tariff now imposed on cars
that are imported from other ASEAN countries or from
sister-companies within the region.
Starting
next year, the tariff for such imported completely built
units or CBUs will be zero. This means car prices should
drop or the margins of car dealers will go down with it.
That’s the positive side.
On the
negative side, the rise in imported CBUs means there’s
less completely knocked down, or CKDs, that are
assembled locally. Fact is, CKDs are projected to
account for only 30 percent of total cars sold locally
by 2009. This means Japanese car companies with existing
factories in the Philippines will be further downsizing
their operations (read: they don’t need that many
people on their payroll anymore) and will be ordering
less now from Philippine-based spare parts
manufacturers, which have their own employees to worry
about.
To a
large extent, the salvation of the car spare parts
industry is to sell more of their stuff abroad. But that
means competing with other car spare parts industries
within the region as well. |
