Maniolas

The skyline of Makati City’s business district. Chewy Chua/CC BY-NC-SA MANILA, Philippines — Job portal JobStreet Philippines revealed the t10 highest-paying fields of employment for young Filipinos, with information technology-related positions leading the list. The 2015 Annual Salary Report report listed the 10 best-paid jobs under three position levels—junior executives or those with one to four years’ experience, supervisors or those with more than four years of experience and those in management posts. Regardless of their companies’ industries, Jobstreet said that jobs related to IT and computer network or database administration take the top two spots across all position levels. Mobile users may switch to Desktop Site to view the charts Another specialization placed in the top 10 for all position levels is customer service, while the fields of electrical and communications engineering, sales or telesales and training and development figure in two of the three position levels. Data for the Jobstreet report was culled from average salary offers for jobs in Philippines-based companies posted on the portal. The website said the report is to “help candidates and employees gauge if they are getting paid competitively while advising them of which jobs are generous in terms of compensation.”

MANILA, Philippines – The growth in bank lending and domestic liquidity continued to ease in January but the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas said both remains supportive of the robust economic growth. “The sustained expansion in bank lending amid adequate liquidity continues to provide a meaningful boost to domestic economic activity,” the central bank said. While lending by universal and commercial banks minus their placements with the BSP increased 17.3 percent to P4.39 trillion in January, it was slower than the revised 19.9 percent expansion in December. Together with placements with the central bank, lending climbed 16.6 percent to P4.66 trillion, also a deceleration from the 19.1-percent growth in December. Loans for production activities continued to make up bulk of the borrowings at 90.3 percent, while household loans accounts for 7.5 percent. Majority of the credit financed real estate (P780.91 billion); manufacturing (P691.38 billion); wholesale and retail trade (P627.19 billion); electricity, gas and water (P456.13 billion); and financial intermediation (P389.76 billion) activities during the month. Business ( Article MRec ), pagematch: 1, sectionmatch: 1 Consumer loans also jumped 20.5 percent to P337.03 billion on the back of a 25.7-percent climb in auto loans to P116.9 billion and a 83.2-percent surge in other loans to P58.44 billion. Credit card loans also increased 4.4 percent to P161.69 billion during the period. Meanwhile, M3 — the broadest measure of domestic liquidity — rose by 7.7 percent to P7.5 trillion, slower than the 11.3-percent expansion seen in December. The BSP said the increase in money Read More …

The air traffic congestion at NAIA produces the same, if not greater, negative impact on economic growth as the more visible Manila port congestion. A good international airport as the country’s gateway is essential to economic growth. NAIA’s congestion, like the Manila port congestion, constricts our economic growth. That 6.1 percent growth last year may have been seven percent if we did not have all these congestion problems at the airport, at the Manila port and at EDSA. It isn’t as if the NAIA congestion happened overnight. Our officials knew about it but did nothing. I showed last Friday that the Official Gazette published a Mar Roxas press release of three years ago that recognized the problem and announced, indeed promised, quick solutions. Mar left DOTC and Sec Jun Abaya miserably failed to follow up. The numbers from MIAA itself shows the number of aircraft movements (excluding military and general aviation) have remained static over the last three years. It was 235,517 in 2012, 236,870 in 2013 and 236,589 in 2014. The number of domestic flights declined 4.1 percent to 149,421 last year from the year-ago figure of 155,832. On the other hand, international flights increased 9.9 percent to 87,629 from 79,685. That shows foreign investor and tourism interest in the country. Passenger growth in terms of passenger volume managed to inch up by 3.1 percent last year, likely because foreign airlines are using larger capacity aircraft. MIAA data showed the number of domestic and international passengers reached 32 million last year Read More …

MANILA, Philippines – Infrastructure giant Metro Pacific Investments Corp. (MPIC) is suggesting that a station be constructed in the middle of SM North EDSA and Trinoma Mall to end the impasse on the proposed Metro Rail Transit (MRT) and Light Rail Transit (LRT) common station. MPIC chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan said in an interview with reporters that the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) should consider putting a common station in the middle of the two malls. “That is what we suggested. There could be one exit to Trinoma and one exit to SM,”  Pangilinan  said. Transportation Secretary Joseph Emilio Abaya has been pushing for the construction of a second common station in front of SM North EDSA that would interconnect LRT-1 and the proposed P63-billion MRT-7 of Universal LRT Corp. (ULC) owned by San Miguel Holdings Corp. of diversified conglomerate San Miguel Corp. (SMC). The DOTC has earlier picked Trinoma Mall of conglomerate Ayala Corp. as the site of the P1.4-billion common station to house MRT-3 along EDSA and LRT-1 from Taft Ave. The transfer of the proposed  common station to the Trinoma Mall instead of SM Business ( Article MRec ), pagematch: 1, sectionmatch: 1 City North EDSA is still pending with the Supreme Court. SM Prime has obtained a temporary restraining order (TRO) from the Supreme Court preventing the DOTC from transferring the location of the common train station in front of Trinoma Mall instead of SM City North EDSA based on an agreement in 2009 MPIC Read More …

MANILA, Philippines – Smart Communications Inc., the wireless arm of dominant carrier Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT), has extended its Free Internet promo by two more weeks. In its Twitter account @SMARTCares, Smart announced that the Free Internet promo has been extended until March 15 after expiring yesterday. However, the extension only covers prepaid subscribers of Smart and Talk N’ Text, while subscribers of Sun Cellular would no longer be covered by  Internet promo. “The Free Internet is available until March 15 for Smart prepaid and Talk N’ Text subscribers only,” Smart said in its Twitter account. This is the fourth time that the promo has been extended. The promo was launched last Sept. 26, covering postpaid subscribers and was supposed to expire last Nov. 30. However, the promo was expanded last Oct. 2 to cover all 69 million Smart, Talk ‘N’ Text and Sun Cellular subscribers nationwide and the deadline was extended to Jan. 5 and then to Feb. 5. The deadline was extended further to Feb. 28 and now to March 15. Business ( Article MRec ), pagematch: 1, sectionmatch: 1 Last Feb. 5, Smart and Sun Cellular executive vice president and head of the wireless consumer business Charles Lim announced that the Free Internet promo had been extended and expanded to include video streaming. “We are excited to expand the Smart Free Internet promo to include video streaming, since we all know how much Filipinos enjoy watching videos online. This is still part of the formula Read More …