STIFFER PENALTIES are needed against airlines providing substandard service, the Transportation Secretary said, following the series of flight delays and cancellations that marred Cebu Pacific Air’s operations during the holidays.
Jan 072015
BusinessWorld Online: Economy
Jan 072015
THE HOLIDAYS and gift-giving season may be over for some but it seems it is just getting started as far as our tax officials are concerned. As a belated gift to the hardworking employees making their contributions to the economic growth of our country, the Secretary of Finance, upon recommendation by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, issued Revenue Regulations (RR) No. 1-2015 dated 5 January 2015. The RR expands the list of tax-exempt benefits to include those benefits received by an employee by virtue of collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) and productivity incentive schemes to the extent of P10,000 per employee per taxable year. De minimis benefits are facilities and privileges of relatively small value and provided by an employer to employees merely as a means to promote their health, good will, contentment, or efficiency. These benefits are exempt from withholding tax on compensation (WTC) and fringe benefits tax (FBT).
Jan 052015
THE MUCH-AWAITED groundbreaking for the new terminal at Mactan-Cebu International Airport (MCIA) will not go through in January due to delays in the relocation of Philippine Air Force’s (PAF) Cebu facility, the head of Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Center said on Monday.
Jan 052015
CEBU CITY — The first leg of the Cebu provincial government’s Suroy-Suroy sa Sugbo tourism program will be counting on the Public Works department to speedily construct a temporary steel bridge to secure the road link to the storm-ravaged towns of southern Cebu.
Jan 042015
DAVAO CITY — The Regional Development Council of Davao is pushing for a separate contract award for the Francisco Bangoy International Airport in this city instead of bundling the project with other airports under the public-private partnership (PPP) program.
Jan 042015
THE TRANSPORTATION department wants a January signing for an agreement covering the building of a second common station near SM City North EDSA, connecting Metro Rail Transit Line 7 (MRT-7) and Light Rail Transit 1 (LRT-1), in a move it hopes will help resolve a contract dispute with SM Prime Holdings, Inc.
Jan 042015
IN A PREVIOUS column (http://www.bworldonline.com/content.php?section=Economy&title=the-oecd-action-plan-on-base-erosion-and-profit-shifting&id=99561), we wrote about the general framework of the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) initiative, why addressing BEPS is a key priority for many governments across the globe, and the 15-point BEPS Action Plan drafted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The Action Plan aims to ensure that profits are taxed where economic activities generating the profits are performed and where value is created. In this column, we tackle the OECD Report on Action 1, which addresses the tax challenges of the digital economy.
Dec 292014
APPROVED INVESTMENTS in the manufacturing sector surged 77.5% this year, featuring broad-based growth across all the manufacturing sub-sectors, the Board of Investments (BoI) said on Monday.
Dec 292014
CONSTRUCTION of a fifth terminal at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) is expected to start in 2016, the Transportation department said, with plans for a third runway now on hold on the advice of consultants studying the project.
Dec 292014
THE LAST nine days produced a 10-percentage-point rise in the yard utilization of Manila’s ports, according to the ports task force, as containers continued to pile up while shippers observed the long holidays, though congestion remained well below the worst-case projection of 106%.