THE Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) is looking into the rice cartel, long believed to be in existence, but has been relatively unchecked by the government until now, when there appears to be increasing interest among the public to help stop anticompetitive practices of corporations.
MALACAÑANG said on Wednesday the Philippines is setting aside temporarily the United Nations Permanent Court of Arbitration’s (PCA) ruling in favor of the Philippines in the territorial dispute in the South China Sea, to take advantage of economic benefits resulting from better relations with China.
The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) has issued the guidelines for processing and disbursing of payments to claims for reimbursement from the government’s Legal Defense Fund (LDF).
Following the publication of the implementing rules and regulations (IRR) of Republic Act (RA) 10754, or an Act Expanding the Benefits and Privileges of Persons With Disability (PWDs), the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) said PWDs can start enjoying the value-added tax (VAT) exemption in the purchase of certain goods and services on December 23.
The Department of Tourism (DOT) expects hundreds of billions in investments in the tourism industry in the next five years, after the long-awaited implementing rules and regulations (IRR) of Republic Act 9353, or the Tourism Act of 2009, was finally issued.
President Duterte is endorsing the lifting of restrictions on foreign ownership of public utilities—now a subject of deliberations on the proposed changes in the Constitution in Congress—but would not allow foreigners to own land.
THE Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) has clarified the tax treatment of salaries paid by the government to its personnel who are engaged under a contract of service or job-order arrangement.
There appears to be a growing support from several sectors, including former government officials, labor practitioners and academe, on the proposal of the government for a “middle ground” on the issue of whether to completely abolish contractualization, as promised by President Duterte in his election campaign.
IT appears President Duterte’s directive against Commission on Higher Education (CHED) Chairman Patricia Licuanan not to attend anymore Cabinet meetings is not yet definitive enough for her to leave her post voluntarily.
Malacañang on Tuesday said President Duterte had already asked for Commission on Higher Education (CHED) Chairman Patricia B. Licuanan to resign as early as August this year, but she did not heed his request, resulting in their “irreconcilable differences” since.
PRESIDENT Duterte has also asked Commission on Higher Education (CHED) Chairman Patricia B. Licuanan not to attend Cabinet meetings anymore, fueling speculations that he is also asking for her resignation.
THE Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor) announced on Wednesday the revival of the “Botika ng Bayan” project that will provide free medicine to poor patients in government hospitals.
THE Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) will convene labor groups on Monday to craft a unified position on the issue of contractualization or endo.
The Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) has asked the Court of Appeals (CA) to uphold its decision denying the writ of preliminary injunction prayed for by Globe Telecom to stop the commission from reviewing the P70-billion buyout deal involving Globe, PLDT and San Miguel Corp.
The lack of information among consumers about their rights and the ways to demand that these rights be observed have resulted in weak enforcement of consumer-protection laws.
Despite President Duterte’s avowed policy to go after tax evaders and make them pay by whatever means necessary, the government has yet to successfully prosecute tax-evasion cases, much less obtain a final conviction against a tax evader.
Malacañang on Tuesday said the government expects bigger volume of bilateral trade between China and the Philippines, and more soft loans for infrastructure, when President Duterte makes an official visit there next week.
A tobacco company on Monday supported the smoking ban in all public places, which is being planned to be implemented throughout the country by President Duterte before the end of the month.
The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) signed on Monday a memorandum of agreement requiring mandatory registration for a taxpayer identification number (TIN) from sole proprietorships and partnerships seeking to register under the Philippine Business Registry (PBR).
Some 1,000 labor union leaders rallied at Liwasang Bonifacio and marched toward the central office of the Department of Labor and Employment in Manila on Friday to demand that President Duterte make good on his promise to end contractualization.
THE Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) has asked the Court of Appeals (CA) to declare the P70-billion buyout by PLDT and Globe of San Miguel Corp.’s (SMC) telecommunications subsidiaries as void and for the whole transaction to be undone.
CONGRESS should grant the emergency powers sought by President Duterte soonest to address the traffic problem in Metro Manila, which is only expected to get worse with the coming Christmas season and the continuing increase in construction activities.
President Duterte said yesterday he would work for better cooperation with Hanoi in maritime security and law enforcement against illegal drugs when he makes a two-day official visit to Vietnam.
The Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) on Wednesday asserted its mandate to promote competition in Philippine industries, and recommended the lifting of some restrictions on foreign ownership enjoyed by certain industries to benefit consumers.
The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) has thanked the House of Representatives for its assurance to pass before the year-end the P3.35-trillion national budget for 2017
THE Office of the President on Friday ordered the strict enforcement of the law banning public officials and employees from casinos and other gambling places.
With Manila’s shift in foreign policy further toward Beijing, more foreign direct investments (FDI) are expected by Philippine businesses from China, which poured less investments to the Philippines in the Aquino administration compared to its fellow developing countries in Asia.
THE peace negotiations between the government and the National Democratic Front (NDF) have resumed in Manila this week. The two parties will continue their discussions in the Philippines on various issues, such as establishing a bilateral ceasefire, before a new round of talks in Oslo in October.
National government spending for July, the first month of the Duterte administration, amounted to P220.9 billion, or a growth of 4.9 percent from spending during the same month in 2015.
CHIEF Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador S. Panelo said on Tuesday that the ouster of Sen. Leila M. de Lima from the chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Justice is proof of her abuse of power to further her political ends, as he denied that President Duterte directed his allies to remove her from the said committee.
Cabinet Secretary Leoncio B. Evasco Jr. is open to the petition of Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC) to stop the automatic appropriations for debt servicing in the annual national budget, officials of the FDC said on Monday.
THE ruling party PDP-Laban defended President Duterte’s pro-China and seeming anti-United States foreign policy as his way of protecting the national interest and keeping the Philippines out of the “line of fire,” amid the brewing political rivalry between the two superpowers.
BUSINESSMIRROR columnist and lawyer Teodoro “Teddyboy” Locsin Jr. has been appointed as the Philippines’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations (UN), replacing Ambassador Lourdes O. Yparraguirre.
Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador S. Panelo urged Congress on Friday to give President Duterte the emergency powers he requested to solve the traffic problem in Metro Manila, as congressional hearings on pending bills regarding the emergency powers have been suspended.
President Duterte has asserted the Philippines’s exclusive economic rights over areas in the West Philippine Sea which are within the country’s 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone.
MALACAÑANG on Tuesday backtracked from President Duterte’s earlier pronouncement to kick out American troops from Mindanao, saying he was only warning them against a possible backlash from the Muslims because of their “unatoned” atrocities in the past.
PRESIDENT Duterte said on Monday the US Special Forces in Mindanao must leave because they will only worsen the security situation there.
THE government has already obligated P1.38 trillion of the P3.002-trillion national budget for 2016 as of end-August, the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) said on Sunday.
MALACAÑANG reiterated its warning that it will close down companies that continue to practice illegal contractualization.
MALACAÑANG said on Sunday the most important message delivered by President Duterte to the international community during his first foreign trip last week was the assertion the Philippines will follow its own foreign policy.
THE proponent of the arbitration case filed by the Philippines against China to resolve the territorial dispute in the South China Sea on Friday said he would nominate US President Barack Obama for the highest civil award being given by the Philippine government strongly supporting the enforcement of the verdict issued by the United Nations’ Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA).
THE ruling party PDP-Laban on Wednesday maintained the declaration of a state of national emergency throughout the country is not equivalent to martial law, amid speculations that Memorandum Circular (MC) 3, issued by President Duterte, could result in unlawful warrantless arrests.
PDP-Laban Policy Study Group Head Jose Antonio Goitia said in a statement that Mr. Duterte, as a lawyer and former prosecutor, knows the bounds of his power and his duty to ensure that all laws shall be faithfully executed.
President Duterte on Monday said nobody among his fellow heads of state attending the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Leaders’ Summit in Lao PDR can meddle in Philippine affairs or lecture him on human-rights issues in the country.
MALACAÑANG on Sunday downplayed the travel advisories issued against the Philippines after the bombing in Davao last Saturday, noting these were standard procedures made by foreign countries to protect their citizens from harm.
AN expert on labor relations on Friday said the government needs to “overhaul” the labor laws to accomplish President Duterte’s directive to end contractualization and provide security of tenure to Filipino workers.
President Duterte could declare special holidays in Metro Manila in January to ease the traffic when the Philippines hosts the Miss Universe 2017 beauty pageant, which is expected to “put the Philippines on the map” of the best tourist destinations worldwide.
President Duterte on Wednesday said the government intends to put up a bank exclusively for overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), as he urged OFWs laid off from their jobs in Saudi Arabia to start small businesses here using capital to be borrowed from the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).
The proposed mandatory catastrophe insurance for all households and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) has been shelved, an official of the Insurance Commission (IC) said.
PRESIDENT Duterte has again appealed to Beijing to allow fishermen to fish in the disputed territories and urged the Chinese people to treat Filipinos as their brothers.
MALACAÑANG already has a draft of the exceptions to the freedom of information, with the list of privileged information running to a total of 166 kinds of documents and information that cannot be divulged to the public.
MALACAÑANG on Friday brushed aside renewed calls in China for the Philippines to abandon the arbitration ruling in its favor, even as President Duterte reiterated that any bilateral negotiations will not go beyond “the four corners” of the ruling.
Labor Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III put on Wednesday a P50,000 bounty for informants who will lead to the successful arrest of illegal recruiters.
PRESIDENT Duterte yesterday declared as vacant all appointive positions in the government, as he acknowledged that more than 50 days into his assumption of office, there is still corruption.
The Tax Management Association of the Philippines (TMAP) on Friday said the tax administration in the proposed federal system of government should be simplified to encourage more voluntary compliance and preserve the ease of doing business, even after the proposed shift.
PRESIDENT Duterte will not raise the issue of the territorial dispute in the South China Sea during the Asean Summit in Lao PDR next month, stressing that he would wait for a more friendly atmosphere before starting the official bilateral negotiations with China.
MALACAÑANG is unfazzed by the protest rally staged by human-rights victims during the Marcos era, and will push through with the burial of former President Ferdinand E. Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.
THE Philippines should now muster the support of the international community in changing the mind-set of the Chinese people over their “ownership” of the South China Sea before their government would comply with the recent arbitration ruling in the Philippines’s favor, the architect of the Manila’s arbitration case said.
More than 60 mergers and acquisitions (M&A) have already been reviewed in the past year as the Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) begins to enforce the landmark antitrust law of the country.
Internal Revenue Commissioner Caesar R. Dulay has issued a gag order to all officials and employees of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) on matters relating to tax policies, unless approved for publication by him.
President Duterte has urged suspected tax evaders to pay their correct taxes or they will be subjected to police visit, much like “Oplan Tokhang,” a campaign launched by the Philippine National Police to stop the drug menace in the country.
Internal Revenue Commissioner Caear R. Dulay has ordered the Bureau of Internal Revenue’s (BIR) Internal Affairs Service to resolve all pending cases of graft and corruption against BIR officials and employees.
WHEN President Duterte appointed lawyer Caesar R. Dulay to the crucial position of Internal Revenue commissioner, nobody could recognize his name, not even his fraternity brothers from the College of Law of Ateneo de Manila University.
Labor Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III announced on Thursday the approval of P500 million in emergency financial assistance to the overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) laid off in Saudi Arabia.
PRESIDENT Duterte on Wednesday night defended his war against drugs, amid allegations of human-rights violations in the killings of suspected drug pushers.
President Duterte said he would ignore the rules of the Commission on Audit (COA) in the procurement of equipment and medical facilities for the military, saying the lowest bids for these contracts are not necessarily the most advantageous to the government.
The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) has imposed a moratorium on the processing of new applicants for contractors and subcontractors, as the Duterte administration prepares to stop contractualization.
MALACAÑANG has blamed the lack of awareness among Filipinos for the low approval rating of the proposal for Charter change as shown in a recent survey by Pulse Asia.
The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) has come up with a figure for Sen. Emmanuel D. Pacquiao to think about—P1 billion in settlement if he chooses to have a compromise deal for his P2.26-billion tax-deficiency collection case now pending with the Court of Tax Appeals (CTA).
INTERNAL Revenue Commis-sioner Caesar R. Dulay has a bold plan to ride on the record-high popularity of President Duterte to collect the various tax due the government through voluntary compliance, and make up for foregone revenues expected from the proposed lowering of personal and corporate income-
tax rates.
PRESIDENTIAL Adviser on the Peace Process Jesus G. Dureza said on Sunday he will recommend the reinstatement of the government’s cease-fire against the New People’s Army (NPA), following the cease-fire declaration of the communist rebels during the weekend.
Despite the new memorandum circular issued by Internal Revenue Commissioner Caesar R. Dulay restoring the tax-exemption privilege of nonstock, nonprofit educational institutions, there are still some who are questioning his imposition of a onetime requirement for the exemption to apply.
ANOTHER consumer-advocacy group on Friday asked President Duterte to address the proliferation of substandard cement and to hold accountable those behind it before the government undertakes its record spending on infrastructure starting next year.
Internal Revenue Commissioner Caesar R. Dulay has effectively revoked a memorandum order issued by his predecessor, which required nonstock, nonprofit educational institutions to renew every three years their constitutionally granted tax exemption.
President Duterte said he would send drug addicts to military installations for rehabilitation, as government-run rehabilitation centers throughout the country no longer have room for some 170,000 drug pushers and addicts who voluntarily surrendered to the police during the first one month of the Duterte administration.
The government can revoke the permits given to private corporations to develop and manage huge portions of the Laguna de Bay, as hinted by President Duterte in his State of the Nation Address (Sona) on Monday, but such move could affect the supply of freshwater fish from the lake.
The government will maintain current fiscal and monetary policies, increase infrastructure spending, create more jobs and cut income taxes to boost economic growth in the next six years, President Duterte said in his first State of the Nation Address (Sona) on Monday.
MALACAÑANG has confirmed that former President Fidel V. Ramos has accepted President Duterte’s offer for him to head the country’s backchannel talks with China on joint exploration and exploitation of natural resources in disputed territories in the South China Sea.
The Tax Management Association of the Philippines (TMAP) will visit Internal Revenue Commissioner Caesar R. Dulay next week to appeal the millions of pesos in value-added tax (VAT) refunds of corporate taxpayers denied to them by the previous administration without leaving any judicial or administrative recourse.
The Tax Management Association of the Philippines (TMAP) presented to the Duterte administration a list of revenue regulations that the group believes should be revoked for being “antibusiness”.
Philippine franchisers must continually cope with the advancement of technology to finally realize the goal of making the Philippines a hub for franchising in Asia, participants at the Franchise Asia Philippines 2016 conference said.
The two-week old Duterte administration is currently collecting information on government’s various projects to get the “lay of the land” of the country’s affairs that will be reported in President Duterte’s first State of the Nation Address (Sona) on July 25.
The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), in a statement, said Dulay met with the various business groups just last week when they also ventilated their concerns on tax collection and administration. In that meeting, Dulay received the collective support of the various business groupings, whose cooperation should “significantly improve, if not fully attain, the revenue collection goal for this year.”
PRESIDENT Duterte has vowed to investigate the intelligence and discretionary funds of local government units (LGUs) amid his observation of a worsening garbage collection and disposal problem throughout the country.
Social Welfare and Development Secretary Judy M. Taguiwalo said on Friday her transition team will look into the P6.3 billion in unliquidated funds for the Conditional Cash-Transfer (CCT) Program of the Aquino administration in 2015. In a news statement released to Palace reporters, Taguiwalo cited a recent audit by the Commission on Audit (COA) indicating some P6.3 billion in unliquidated funds for the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) administered by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).
By David Cagahastian
By David Cagahastian @davecaga
Internal Revenue Commissioner Cesar R. Dulay has backtracked on his decision to recall all “midnight appointments” made by his predecessor, as he upheld the appointments approved by former Finance Secretary Cesar V. Purisima during his last month in office.
MALACAÑANG on Friday said it would wait and study the upcoming ruling of the United Nations’ Permanent Court of Arbitration on the South China Sea dispute before deciding on what to do with a likely favorable decision.
The fate of the coco-levy fund and all its proceeds, including the shares of stocks of farmers in government-controlled United Coconut Planters Bank (UCPB), is now in the hands of President Duterte.
PRESIDENT Duterte will soon sign the executive order (EO) that allows freedom of information over government transactions in the Executive branch.
Lawmakers will continue to get funding for their “pet projects” in their districts during the Duterte administration.
Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Center Executive Director Andre C. Palacios will keep his post, according to National Economic and Development Authority Director General Ernesto M. Pernia.
PRESIDENT Duterte on Monday issued Executive Order (EO) 1 reorganizing several agencies that deal with poverty under the office of the Cabinet secretary. This makes the government’s program against poverty properly coordinated.
PRESIDENT Duterte will still push for a legislated Freedom of Information (FOI) law, even as Malacañang prepares the executive order (EO) to enforce the right of citizens to information on government transactions.
THE Duterte administration will create a Presidential Task Force on Media Killings to investigate the killings of journalists, Communications Secretary Martin M. Andanar announced on Sunday.
Aside from his avowed policies against crime, corruption, illegal drugs and other kinds of vices, President Rodrigo R. Duterte on Thursday also declared his policy against online- gambling operators, while promising to allocate government revenues from gaming for health services to the poor.
President-elect Rodrigo R. Duterte said he would refrain from commenting on the territorial dispute in the South China Sea, pending the decision on the case filed by the Philippines before the United Nations (UN) Permanent Court of Arbitration, which is expected to be out in July.
PRESIDENT-elect Rodrigo R. Duterte has made known the intent to put the liquidity-boosting Conditional Cash-Transfer (CCT) Program under review as soon as he takes the helm of the government in a few days, and set the ground under which the P65-billion-a-year exercise may be withdrawn.
Internal Revenue Commissioner Kim S. Jacinto-Henares has closed yet another loop-hole taxpayers use to invalidate tax-deficiency assessments against them that should have already become final and executory.
