Oct 092013
 
(NEDA logo)

(NEDA logo)

MANILA  (Mabuhay) – The Philippines is backing calls for the United Nations to adopt a wider definition of poverty meant to fine-tune efforts by governments around the world to bring down the number of poor people.

“We strongly support the push for the inclusion of multidimensional poverty measures in the menu of performance indicators for post-2015 development agenda,” Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan said in a statement he delivered during a meeting on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) held at the 68th UN General Assembly last September 24 in New York City.

Balisacan, who is also director-general of the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), said the multidimensional poverty index (MPI) is “an extremely useful complement to income poverty based on, say, $1.25 per person per day poverty line.”

In pushing for the MPI, Balisacan cited the Philippine experience, wherein poverty data has defied government efforts – such as the conditional cash transfer program—to improve the lives of the poor.

Despite the country’s above-target economic growth, the number of poor Filipinos hardly changed at a fourth of the population, he said.

But if a more inclusive definition of poverty was used – as was done in a 2011 study – economic growth however has led to the reduction in extreme forms of poverty, Balisacan said.

“This tells me, as a policymaker, that multidimensional poverty measurement is highly relevant and extremely useful for our efforts to substantially reduce poverty in the Philippines and, I believe, elsewhere,” he said.

Balisacan said adopting MPI however would require governments “to invest in good-quality data critical for informing policy decisions and monitoring progress in poverty reduction.”

“We support the call for data revolution. As yet, despite the tremendous improvement in information technology and the international community’s zeal to ‘accelerate MDG progress,’ there is a dearth of data that can be used to measure multidimensional poverty,” he added. (MNS)

Jun 292013
 
Maybank mulls IPO option

MANILA, Philippines – The board of Maybank Philippines Inc. (MPI) is studying options for the planned initial public offering (IPO) of the bank in the near term, a top official said. Maybank Philippines president Herminio Famatigan Jr. said, “the board level discussions are ongoing now in terms of when we need to do that. When you do an IPO you obviously want to do it and get the interest of the market. You line up all options available to you.” “They are now exploring all possibilities on how to conduct the IPO which under the law should be done by all foreign bank subsidiaries before end-2015,” he said. “We still have up to the end of 2015 to do that.  There are so many possibilities. We can do an IPO or we can end up buying or merging with a bank that is listed. It’s another option to comply with the existing laws but not in the very near future,” he said. He said they have not selected a financial advisor yet for the IPO but they may consider their subsidiary Maybank ATR Kim Eng Capital Partners Inc. to take the lead in the fundraising exercise. However, Famatigan said they have to study carefully which is the most appropriate IPO scheme to undertake. Business ( Article MRec ), pagematch: 1, sectionmatch: 1 “There’s no rush for us to do it. 2015 is still 2 1/2 years away,” he said. Early this year, Malayan Banking Berhad (Maybank) said they would list Read More …