WHEN it comes to corruption, the Philippines is only better than three of its neighbors in Southeast Asia—Timor–Leste, Cambodia and Burma—after having scored 2.4 and ranking 139th place to the bottom in the 2009 Corruption Perception Index (CPI) recently released by Transparency International.

Timor Leste scored 2.2, Cambodia 2.0 and Burma 1.4. The Philippines shares its score of 2.4 with Pakistan and Bangladesh.

The 2009 CPI includes 180 countries, the same number as the 2008 CPI.

WITH fuel supply still at low levels, local oil companies said on Tuesday they had no choice but to reflect the surge in world oil prices by increasing their own.

Their announcement of a price increase came a day after the government issued Executive Order (EO) 845 lifting the oil-price freeze the government issued through EO 839, and which capped prices at October 15 levels to ease the public burden in the wake of back-to-back typhoons in Luzon.

THE country’s balance of payments (BOP) surplus of $4.17 billion in the first 10 months has already hit the low end of this year’s target, boosting the likelihood the high end of the range, or $5 billion, will be met by year-end.

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said on Tuesday the $4.17-billion level was 12 times larger than a year earlier when this stood at only $345 million.