Recovery from the pandemic-induced recession will entail not only fast-tracking mass vaccination and sustaining infrastructure development but also some more additional reforms pushed by President Duterte’s economic team on Monday. Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III told the virtual forum that earlier reforms put in place by the Duterte administration eased COVID-19’s impact on the Philippine…
Technology giant Microsoft Corp. said over benefited from its digital skills training program during the COVID-19 pandemic. Launched last year, the initiative reached over people from and involved online courses from GitHub, LinkedIn and Microsoft in the areas of customer service, project management and data analysis. “Skills will be the new currency in the postpandemic…
Aboitiz-led Union Bank of the Philippines has invested some P1.9 billion to create new products and platforms that would contribute to social sustainability metrics amid the prolonged coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. This investment has, in turn, allowed the bank develop over 100 products and platforms that benefit the bank’s stakeholders and customers, Unionbank head of sustainability…
Aboitiz-led UnionBank of the Philippines (UBP) grew its first quarter net profit by 79 percent year-on-year to P4.7 billion on the back of higher interest earnings and hefty trading gains. This performance translated to a robust return on equity of 18.1 percent, the bank told the Philippine Stock Exchange on Friday. “Our strong financial performance…
When we think of titans of the startup sphere, we think Jobs, Gates, Musk, Zuckerberg—men who founded some of the largest tech companies in the world. The situation is not different in the Philippines, where some of the most successful startups were also founded by men. While this may have led to the perception…
The country’s oldest conglomerate Ayala Corp. has contributed a total of P13.1 billion so far in the intervention efforts against the COVID-19 pandemic, more than half of which were from its property crown jewel Ayala Land Inc. (ALI) “With the steady rollout of our ambitious national vaccination program, of which the Ayala group and especially…
Property giant SM Prime Holdings provided about P23 billion worth of rental concessions last year to help shopping mall tenants across the country stay afloat amid lockdown restrictions imposed by the government to curb the COVID-19 pandemic. “We are continuously assisting our business partners, most especially our mall tenants, who are badly affected by community…
Converge ICT Solutions Inc. is securing crucial internet capacity via an upcoming international submarine cable system that is being built by global technology giants. In a stock exchange filing on Wednesday, Converge announced plans to invest over in the project known as the Bifrost Cable System, a 15,000-kilometer undersea cable project from Singapore to the…
The Board of Investments (BOI) saw a 66-percent increase in investment commitments from January to March to P138 billion from P83 billion in the same period last year, a top official said in a recent online briefing with Chinese companies, as he encouraged firms that were already in the Philippines to expand and diversify their…
Agriculture is the mother of all professions. It is the undisputed foundation of all economies because no economy will survive without food. PAA is pleased to support the Inquirer’s Project Rebound to emphasize the critical role of the agriculture sector in achieving food security in the Philippines during this pandemic period and beyond. Roberto Ranola,…