PNoy closes door on income tax cuts

President Benigno Aquino III’s position on proposals to lower income tax rates remains unchanged despite speculations about his supposed backroom talks with leaders of Congress. 

At the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines’ annual presidential forum held in Parañaque City on Tuesday, Aquino reiterated his campaign promise that his administration will not impose any new taxes. 

“By reviewing the concept of income tax, it cannot be taken as a singular activity. There is a reduction in revenue, there has to be compensation elsewhere,” he said regarding the legislative proposals by Senator Sonny Angara and Marikina Rep. Miro Quimbo. 

Quimbo earlier said the proposal would pass in the present 16th Congress, noting the President has given instructions to study a revised measure. 

However, Aquino said passing the measure will result in “unintended consequences that we’d rather not undergo... We’re still operating under a budget deficit.” 

The President has said that lowering the income tax rates will reduce revenues, and might force the government to raise the existing value-added tax from 12 to 14 percent. 

Image by: www.gmanetwork.com

Money to burn?

With the Comelec citing a Supreme Court ruling that all but made futile the filing of any case against any candidate engaged in premature campaigning, tarpaulins of all shapes and sizes promoting the administration’s presidential and vice presidential candidates in the 2016 elections have sprouted like mushrooms all over Metro Manila. For tarpaulin printers, happy days are here again with the extended seven-month campaign period announced by the Comelec from October this year to April 2016. Whatever happened to the common posters areas intended to bridge the gap between candidates who have money to burn and those who have not?

 

 

 

(Text and photo by JhDodson)

Growth accelerating in Q3

Despite lingering financial volatility, economic growth could have accelerated in the third quarter from the previous six months on the back of sustained domestic demand, Budget Secretary Florencio Abad said. 

“I can say with confidence that third quarter growth will be better than first half growth,” Abad said. 

Economic growth – as measured by gross domestic product (GDP) – slowed to 5.3 percent in the first semester even after it picked up to 5.6 percent in the second quarter from five percent in the first three months. 

Abad, the chairman of the interagency Development Budget Coordinating Committee (DBCC), earlier said the government is sticking to its seven to eight percent growth goal this year even as he admitted reaching it is a “challenge.

” The third-quarter GDP data will be reported next month.

Asked what could have driven the July-September growth, Abad particularly cited stronger government spending during the period. Treasury data showed state expenditures rose nine percent year-on-year in the first half.

This paled in comparison with an average of 20-percent expansion in July and August. The fiscal performance for September has yet to be released. 

Private spending could have also contributed, Abad said, pointing to traditional drivers of overseas Filipino remittances and receipts from business process outsourcing (BPO) industry.

From January to August, remittances grew 4.01 percent to P16.21 billion, central bank data showed. Large dollar inflows and BPO earnings give Filipino families more money to spend and invest, helping boost growth.

On the flip side, Abad said exports and imports, which are also “significant drivers” of GDP, likely dragged growth. For the first eight months, exports were down 4.4 percent, while imports inched up 0.1 percent as of July. “I’m not too sure how these sub-sectors performed in the context of global slowdown and uncertainties, but with a low inflation regime…, third quarter still should be better than the first half,” the budget chief explained. 

Earlier, Abad said economic managers are no longer meeting this year to review macroeconomic targets and would likely wait until full-year growth data is available. 

Image by: www.customstoday.com.pk

It's a bird

 

IT’S A BIRD, it’s a plane, it’s Superman? Nope. It’s just the Philippine Navy’s spanking new AW109 attack helicopter catching the rapt attention of a vendor in Manila during a flight. The chopper is detailed with the frigate BRP Ramon Alcaraz. 

Guinness' longest baguette is from Italy

MILAN — A judge from Guinness World Records has certified a 400-foot-long baguette baked at the Milan Expo 2015 World’s Fair as the longest in the world.

 Some 60 French and Italian bakers worked nearly seven hours Oct. 18 to bake the French bread characterized by its soft middle and crusty exterior, methodically moving a specially designed portable oven along the length of the doughy preparation.

The bakers worked at a rate of 66 feet an hour, their progress complicated by working outdoors and the biggest challenge to avoid any breakage.

 “It’s very difficult to do a big baguette because we are outside, you know, the temperature, it’s cold and we are outside so for the dough it’s not easy,” said Dominique Anract, one of the bakers and owner of the La Pompadour bakery in Paris. Putting a plastic cover over the dough helped.

The Italian maker of Nutella, Ferrero, backed the enterprise to beat the 364-foot record held by a French supermarket chain. Once certified as a record-breaker, the baguette was cut and smeared with Nutella to share with the hundreds of Expo goers who celebrated the record.

It was at least the fourth world record declared during the six-month Expo, which closes Oct. 31, including the longest pizza at 1.5954 kilometers, or nearly a mile long.

Image by www.usnews.com

San Miguel sues PSALM for 'plunder’

San Miguel Energy Corp. (SMEC) has filed in the Department of Justice (DOJ) a plunder complaint against the head of the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. (PSALM) and officials of two other private energy firms accused of entering into an alleged anomalous deal in 2009 that supposedly resulted in government losses of P14 billion.

In a 20-page complaint-affidavit filed on Oct. 21, SMEC general manager Elenita Go charged PSALM president and chief executive officer Lourdes Alzona; Suguru Tsuzaki, president of Team Philippines Energy Corp. (TPEC); Koichi Tamura, executive vice president of Team Sual Corp. (TSC), and several John and Jane Does with plunder as defined under Republic Act No. 7080 and violation of Section 3(e) of RA No. 3019, or the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act.

Go said the case involved the allegedly illegal grant of the so-called “excess capacity” of the Sual Power Station to TPEC, which enabled it to receive around P17.3 billion at the expense of the government and SMEC.

In June 2009, PSALM entered into a memorandum of agreement (MOA) with TPEC and TSC, which served as the independent power producer (IPP), for the coal-fired Sual Power Station in Pangasinan.

The MOA, according to the complaint, gave birth to the concept of “excess capacity” wherein it was agreed that the “contracted capacity” would be 500 megawatts net per unit while the “nominal excess capacity” would be 100 MW per unit.

TSC shall be entitled by itself and/or through TPEC to market, offer, sell or supply the nominal excess capacity to any customer, independent of and without payment of any fee to PSALM and/or the National Power Corp. (Napocor).

In August 2009, SMEC won the bidding as the IPP administrator for the 1,000-MW contracted capacity of the power station.

Image by rappler.com