The ‘Delta pandemic’ and the 2022 polls
The near riot caused by people flooding vaccination centers a day before Metro Manila and Calabarzon went into…
Anatomy of greed: Equity fraud threatens to erode investors’ confidence in the stock market
They say that money is the root of all evil. Its intoxicating allure drives wily people to engage…
Australian lawmaker tags Dito Telecom a ‘Trojan Horse’
I was among many people who were utterly disappointed that President Duterte’s last State of the Nation Address…
Budget delays hijack pandemic, critical projects
The legislative arm of government has been clamoring for the timely and efficient release of funds meant for…
The unsinkable virus
The global and local threat of the Covid-19 remains critically high, despite the availability of vaccines meant to…
My friendship with PNoy
I met PNoy—the late former President Benigno Simeon Aquino III—during the tumultuous years following his father’s death on August…
Long-drawn COA action on tax-credit schemes questioned
For a surprisingly long time, the Philippines has relied on the use of tax credit certificates as incentives…
Hall of blame in Luzon power mess
For once, I couldn’t agree more with Sen. Manny Pacquiao when he jabbed at Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi’s…
Xi’s one-way bromance with Duterte, and the great ‘debate’
Palace spokesman Harry Roque must be feeling unhappily isolated when his challenge to debate with former Supreme Court…
PHL’s political, economic, and risk outlook
For the past two years, global economic growth has been stifled by the pandemic. Covid-19 has wreaked havoc…
EWC, energy firms, ready for post-Covid economic rebound
The Philippine unit of Energy World Corp. (EWC) of Australia, which is in the final touches of building…
Riding out the pandemic: To each his own
IN his recent televised public address, President Duterte told us not to worry about the pandemic. The government…
A year of ‘excellently’ living dangerously
IT has been more than a year since the pandemic started wreaking havoc around the world. While other…
A year of ‘excellently’ living dangerously
IT has been more than a year since the pandemic started wreaking havoc around the world. While other…
Calax Sta. Rosa-Silang section stuck in ROW issues
IN November last year, Sen. Panfilo Lacson flagged a road infrastructure project that he said then “leads to…
China fortifies foothold on PHL’s telecoms
A Filipino-American reader residing in Daly City in California, USA, sent me a long message unleashing a mouthful…
‘Railroad robbery’
Investigating what went terribly wrong in the procurement process of Light Rail Transit-2 (LRT-2) was one of the…
The anatomy of fake news
There was this sense of elation that I felt on Monday when, at exactly 9:40 a.m., the first…
Bulacan airport project deserves full government support
“A controversial project…” I can only shake my head when some media entities describe San Miguel Corp’s P1.5-trillion…
Bully behavior
IN business, competition is always a good thing. The more competitors there are, the more each business organization…
Cashless payment, courier services–finding opportunities in crisis
Not everybody loses during crises. It’s been an established business phenomenon that someone is sure to gain for…
Charm, not Cha-cha: Can we trust Velasco’s Congress?
Keeping the wheels of commerce humming is a tall order amid a worldwide pandemic. Many businesses have been…
Biden faces a divided America
By the time this piece sees print, Joe Biden would have been inaugurated (Wednesday noon, January 20, 2021)…
Is the government serious in having ‘green’ power in our energy mix?
By 2040, the Philippines would have lessened its greenhouse gas emissions by 30% if the draft text of…
2020
This and future generations would not be wrong to consider 2020 as the year, to quote wartime US…
Drop it, Donald!
Conspiracy theories surrounding elections have a way of sounding crazy everywhere. In the Philippines, in election after election…
Life after the pandemic-driven debts
Global investment banking giant Goldman Sachs economists Andrew Tilton, Danny Suwanapruti, and Jonathan Sequeira have painted a shiny…
Defending the forest
IT looks like the Duterte administration—probably alarmed at how ill-prepared its different agencies were in responding to the…
PHL drowns in the flood of cyclical neglect
Members of both houses of Congress are pushing for “the widespread probe on severe flooding” caused by Typhoon…
Surveys and their subliminal bias
DO you believe in surveys? Can surveys be trusted? For the longest time, I couldn’t make heads or…
PHL needs to avert energy crisis
What is mind-boggling is how the government can wave an SOS flag to new LNG investors to come in, even as it drags its feet on giving the go-signal to the LNG Pagbilao Project that is already prepared, ready and able to provide power to the country.
Ramon Ang’s ‘Midas touch’
Ramon See Ang, president and chief executive officer of Top Frontier Investment Holdings Inc., the largest shareholder of…
The ‘Chinafication’ of Philippine telecom
Dito Telecommunity, the third telco to challenge the so-called duopoly of Globe Telecom and Smart Communications Inc., says…
Sleeping with the enemy
“Dumb.” Former Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio couldn’t have chosen a better word to describe the decision of…
Swimming in debt
When President Duterte steps down in 2022, one of his legacies to the country would be a pool…
Where in the world is President Duterte?
Nearly six months of struggling with the pandemic, the Philippines has yet to get a reprieve from the…
When the message is massaged
Two words recently sent into a tailspin a nation that has been reeling for almost half a year…
Sputnik V vaccine: Is it really the answer?
For an administration that has placed all its marbles on the development of Covid-19 vaccine, the announcement of…
ROW issue a bane for business with infra components
Probably inspired by the closure of ABS-CBN through his allies in Congress, President Duterte warned telecommunication firms Globe…
Will the curtain stay closed on ABS-CBN?
What I personally believe is a done deal has come to pass. From where I sit, ABS-CBN, which…
Cyberspace control, China’s potent weapon
IN a rare broadside against China, Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro L. Locsin Jr. on July 3 warned the…
5G race, into the homestretch
Imagine this: Hundreds of drones, each one tinier than a grain of rice, being intravenously injected into your…
Nuke power in PHL back on the agenda
One of President Duterte’s “achievements” during his official visit to Russia on October 2, 2019, was a memorandum…
Third telco threat and national security
Will the entry of a third telecom player in the country bring about the much-needed reform in the…
What’s in store for commerce after lockdown
Conclusion IF there’s one good thing that came out of the monthslong quarantine, it’s the rise of many…
What’s in store for commerce after lockdown
First of two parts The government has finally eased the restrictions it imposed during what could be the…
The pandemic diaries
The Philippines now faces the ignominy of being dead-last among countries considered safest in Asia-Pacific in the wake…
The pandemic diaries
Unless things turn out for the worse, it looks like the country is about to face the new…
The pandemic diaries
It’s been almost eight weeks since we were all placed under house arrest. The pandemic, the cause of…
The pandemic diaries
The pandemic wreaking health havoc worldwide has likewise rewritten how global business works. It is now unsure how…
The pandemic diaries
AS of April 15, 2020, the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases worldwide has reached 1,998,111 with the death…
Perfect economic storm
Covid-19 undoubtedly brought about catastrophic human miseries around the world. But its economic fallout is even more mind-boggling…
The calvary of our health workers
After dismissing Covid-19 as something that would simply go away, President Duterte sought and got from Congress additional…
The smell of death
Surreal. The past few weeks have seen the world as we know it turned upside down. The usual…
Outbreak
“IN every epoch, maybe noong una, Bubonic Plague, mga gago tao noon, tamang tama lang. Tapos ’yung Spanish…
House probes PSALM books; SMC cries foul
Our exposé on the inability by the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. (PSALM) to collect overdue…
ChinaTel disenfranchisement
AS I have previously written, it doesn’t take might and power to overhaul the country’s Jurassic telecom infrastructure.…
PHL’s feeble response to COVID-19
While the whole world tries to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), the Duterte administration has…
Ippas’ and electric co-ops’ P59.23-billion obligation plunges PSALM into debt
The inability to collect overdue accounts from independent power producer administrators (Ippas) and electric cooperatives has sunk the…
China-made viruses
AN old joke narrates that if Adam and Eve were Chinese, we would not have inherited the sin…
The elite and Duterte’s chicken
A contract is a covenant between two people or entities embarking on a common, mutually beneficial goal. Once signed,…
Draped in a veil of gray
Without traffic, our house is only a 15-minute drive to Tagaytay. The road to that cool and popular…
Whispering hope
I’m quite sure that majority of us had a merry and joyful Christmas celebration yesterday. This, despite the…
Manila Water, Maynilad woes still not water under the bridge
The move is just like the scene of firemen containing the blaze. Water concessionaires Manila Water Co. and…
Government legal goofs boost Manila Water, Maynilad bottomline
Years ago, to justify her ostentatious lifestyle, Imelda Romualdez Marcos declared that the Philippines is “a rich country…
Sulu natural gas find, bigger than Malampaya’s
Amid the gaffes of the administration of President Duterte—from his failed drug war which his men are now…
Peco, on the death throes
Philippine commerce is replete with stories of failed family businesses that in their time reigned supreme. We can…
China Telecom’s tower inside PHL military camp, act of treason?
Perhaps today’s youth should watch the movie Midway, which is still showing in theaters as I write this.…
Lending trap
It may not be an exaggeration to say that probably more than half of the Philippine population today…
Court turns off Peco power
Iloilo City Mayor Jerry Treñas has had enough. Citing his duty to protect the people of Iloilo, he…
Mining turns to bamboo for help
Mining, the most hated, despised (name all the words in the dictionary that means despicable) industry in the…
The abominable online lending trap
IN the last two weeks, I’ve received text messages on almost daily basis coming from a certain Qsms,…
SMC’s elevated steel expressway, Edsa’s ultimate solution?
IN his campaign sorties, in television and print interviews, and in various social-media platforms, then-presidential candidate and Davao…
Alternative energy sources badly needed
The attack on Saudi Aramco’s oil production infrastructure accentuates the susceptibility of the world’s oil supply to sabotage.…
The curious case of the mining audit
The long-delayed publication of the mining audit by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), which should…
Miners cry injustice
Our previous topic has virtually opened a Pandora’s box and generated feelings of frustration and hopelessness among the…
Mining industry in limbo
In February 2017, the government shut down the operations of 27 mining companies in various areas of the…
PPPs to hasten Philippine economic growth
Two major infrastructure projects have been placed in succession in the pipeline to finally address the country’s airport…
The dark side of black sand mining
There is no such thing as a free lunch, economist Milton Friedman and other finance experts say. Perhaps…
US-China trade war: Opportunity in crisis?
You’ve heard it often enough in local business circles: “When America sneezes, the Philippines gets pneumonia.” But what…
Thirsty still
I’m amazed at how many of my readers seem to have not gotten over the issue of water…
Shit matters
The government’s unrelenting and unapologetic war on drugs has now taken center stage with the United Nations Human…
Solution to the water crisis starts with us
I must have struck a sensitive chord among readers of this column who have flooded my e-mail with…
Dry taps on a rainy day
Heavy rains submerged a large swath of Metro Manila on Monday with most homes having to endure a…
Hong Kong protest: Edsa, version 2019
Picture this: A young Hong Kong male activist in a gas mask swatting back with a tennis racket…
Philippines, which way?
I turned a year older today. Although grateful to God that I’m blessed with a caring and supportive…
Otso Diretso
‘ONE whiff of corruption,” President Duterte warned government officials and employees at the start of his administration, “and…
Comelec now solely elections keeper
SINCE 2010, the Commission on Elections has worked together with technology provider Smartmatic to administer the country’s automated…
Looming power crisis
One of the follies of the late president Cory Aquino was her decision, largely influenced by her trusted…
Dire water future?
Does El Niño cause water shortage? No, but we and the concessionaires allowed by law to distribute water…
Water crisis: Should we blame it on the rain?
It’s funny and, at same time, surprising that all of the entities involved in the country’s water distribution…
Peco and common tower: A tale of two disputes
Two pressing business issues that BusinessWise has been following since last year are still very much in coffee-shop…
My friend Nesting
All of my friends, except him, call me by my second name “Val.” He called me by my…
Rice Tariffication Law, a death knell to PHL’s rice industry
It’s sad to reminisce the time when the country basked in the glory of being Asia’s agricultural hotshot.…
EWC’s LNG Pagbilao project back on track
With the clock ticking fast and before the Shell-operated Malampaya gas field runs out of reserves, the government…
Chinese invasion: Filipino workers settle for crumbs
ABANDONING his child is probably the worst thing a father can do. What is even more reprehensible is…
More cell towers a boon for PHL telco industry
It’ll be interesting to watch how incoming Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Secretary Gregorio B. Honasan…
The unsinkable Catholic Church
President Rodrigo Duterte’s denigration of the Catholic Church is but a part of his idiotic ambition to destroy…
Peco’s alibis
AS the Panay Electric Co. counts down its last few days as Iloilo City’s lone electricity provider—a distinction…
Pardo airs ‘cautious optimism’: PSEi will rebound next year
IF we go by the Skirt Length Theory, share prices in our stock market will be sky-high, piercing…