MANILA, Philippines — The country’s inflation rate is already on a “downward trajectory” and is seen to ease this year, National Economic Development Authority (Neda) Secretary Arsenio Balisacan said on Thursday. “We are actively monitoring the situation and implementing the necessary measures to ensure that by the end of the year, we should be on…
Two years ago, the COVID-19 pandemic came to the fore, drastically disrupting all sectors of Philippine society. But even before the pandemic, the country has already been experiencing two ongoing crises: hunger and malnutrition. It may seem like a good sign that the Philippines was not identified as among the countries with “the likelihood of…
Industry-led advocacy group Philippine Business for Education (PBEd) has thrown its support behind the JobsNext bill, which aims to promote lifelong learning to enable the workforce to take on jobs of the future. The JobsNext bill, filed by Quezon City Rep. Patrick Michael Vargas, seeks Based on International Labour Organization (2020) estimates, approximately 7.2 million…
At present, the Philippines has around 26 million students. But the number of stakeholders—the people also involved in these students’ education—goes far beyond that. Family life and child development specialist Teacher Tina Zamora pegs the number of education stakeholders to a whopping 90 million, out of the country’s population of 115 million. Zamora said in…
Micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) comprise 99.5 percent of business enterprises in the Philippines. The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI)’s 2020 MSME statistics show that the MSME sector accounted for more than 60 percent of jobs in the country. Further, the United Nations points to MSMEs as key to our country’s inclusive recovery…
Much has been written about the pandemic’s impact on Asian consumers: how they embraced new ways of shopping, as well as how retailers and consumer goods companies were forced to quickly adapt their business models. Now, the focus has shifted to whether many of these patterns and preferences will endure once the pandemic abates, and…
Looking for ways to meet diverse customer demands? Get to know these top personality-driven consumers dominating the market this 2022 and see how your business can adjust sales and marketing strategies based on their needs. Research group EuroMonitor International says consumers are influenced by a slew of factors—from online product reviews, convenient shopping platforms to…
This is a pivotal time for Philippine brands who are seeking to transition or lead in e-commerce. Regardless of size and scale, they face a tremendous opportunity to reach new markets for significant growth at this point in time: the Philippines is the fastest-growing e-commerce market in Southeast Asia and the value of its digital…
Digital is increasingly becoming the name of the game. From television channels entering into the streaming service fight to daily broadsheets getting their own apps, more and more industries have realized that the new business battleground is our devices. As Forbes stated in 2021: “An entirely new game is being played. In this new game,…
What do micro, small and medium-sized enterprise (MSME) lifelines and the trajectory that the Department of Finance (DOF) wants to take have in common? The guests of the third and final leg of Inquirer Project Rebound’s MSMEs webinar series unanimously agree that both are anchored in financial technology (fintech). For MSMEs, the steady increase of…