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CIELITO F. HABITO

No Free Lunch: Sustaining steam

February 11, 2020

As we look to the year ahead, our main challenge on the economic front is to regain the momentum our economy had begun to build after 2012, a momentum that appears to have slowly dissipated in the last three years. We've seen this shift in momentum in terms of my usual PiTiK test of presyo, trabaho and kita-price stability, job generation, and incomes.

SAMIRA GUTOC

A Girl from Marawi: 4Ps, People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace

February 09, 2020

Racial discrimination should be fought against. This is the advocacy of Muslim communities who have suffered more intense profiling post 9-11. Now sadly it is the Chinese who are suffering the brunt with the NCov scare.

CIELITO F. HABITO

No Free Lunch: The bigger virus damage

February 07, 2020

From what we're seeing, the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) could well hit the global economy far more severely than global public health itself. As of this writing, deaths directly attributed to the disease have been tallied at 493, all but two of them in China (the Philippines and Hong Kong have one each), out of 24,643 confirmed cases now in 28 countries. But less than 1 percent (243) of these are outside of China. Based on these numbers, the mortality rate is 2 percent. Critical cases number 3,223 (13 percent), while 1,039 (4.2 percent) have so far recovered.

CIELITO F. HABITO

No Free Lunch: Cloudy crystal balls

February 04, 2020

With the January 2020 update of its World Economic Outlook, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) officially downgraded its original global economic growth forecast for 2019 for the sixth time in as many quarters. From its original bullish forecast of 3.9 percent for 2019 global GDP growth issued in early 2018, IMF had lowered this to 3.7 percent by October 2018, to 3.5 percent by the start of last year, further down to 3.3 percent in April, 3.2 percent by July and 3.0 percent by October. Now they say it will be only 2.9 percent, a full percentage point below their original forecast - and the jury is still out. It won't be until April when the actual final figure based on complete 2019 data will come out. If it's any indication, the final growth figure for 2018 released in April 2019 ended up still lower than their last revised projection in January 2019.

EDILBERTO C. DE JESUS

Business Matters: Wasting opportunities

February 01, 2020

Media reports and independent research, using government and police records, had earlier flagged many of the key issues raised in Vice President Leni Robredo's Icad (Inter-Agency Committee on Anti-Illegal Drugs) Report on the Drug War. They bear repeating. Still unsettled after three years, they explain why a task initially promised for completion in six months cannot be delivered, as President Duterte has admitted, even after six years.

SAMIRA GUTOC

A Girl from Marawi: Anti-coronavirus effort in Mindanao

February 01, 2020

Public exposure is a way of life for me and so extra precautionary measures are necessary for this time of coronavirus threat. Airports and terminals among others must have more information education and communication (IEC) mechanisms ie billboards, infomercials.

CIELITO F. HABITO

No Free Lunch: Marcoeconomic Policy 101

January 31, 2020

Should government keep its hands off the economy and leave economic players and the markets alone, as conservatives (notably Republicans in the United States) tend to uphold? This traditional laissez-faire philosophy, from that French phrase that means "leave alone," argues that economies and businesses function best with no government intervention.

RONALD U. MENDOZA AND TRISTAN CANARE

Herd Behavior and Approval Bubbles: A Closer Look at Duterte's Popularity

January 29, 2020

According to data released in January 2020, the Philippines' President Rodrigo Duterte received a record-high satisfaction rating in the fourth quarter of 2019 - an "excellent" net satisfaction rating of +7, much higher than his +65 rating in September 2019, and eclipsing his previous high of +68 recorded in the second quarter of 2019. The survey results immediately generated much punditry on what this means for government policy - divisive and controversial as some of these policies may be. And yet, based on our empirical examination of potential drivers of net presidential satisfaction, we found very little correlation between economic policy outcomes and presidential approval, despite economic outcomes like inflation and wages topping the concerns of citizens consistently across different surveys.

CIELITO F. HABITO

No Free Lunch: Thunberg vs Trump

January 28, 2020

With the theme "Stakeholders for a Cohesive and Sustainable World," billionaires, world leaders and other movers and shakers gathered last week at the ski resort town of Davos, Switzerland, for the 50th World Economic Forum (WEF). The annual meeting has been described as the place where billionaires tell millionaires how the middle classes should live their lives. It is remarkable that WEF's organizers chose to focus this year's discussions on cohesion and sustainability, even as its participants tend to be seen as the very impediments to the chosen themes. They even invited Greta Thunberg, the now-famous Swedish youngster who has gained worldwide prominence for scolding world leaders in various forums for lack of meaningful action on climate change.

SAMIRA GUTOC

A Girl from Marawi: Job-Hunting is an Art

January 26, 2020

Cash is hard up for many this January, start of the year after December shopping and parties. Incoming graduation ceremonies in Mindanao such as Mindanao State University- Main campus are sending off many youngblood anew to the jungle of job-hunting and joblessness. To compound the hardship for those affected by calamity like Taal, there are no more documents or anything to help one recover financially.