Quake casualties count: 38 dead, 478 injured
A MAN looks at the wreckage of an Iranian missile that landed near the West Bank city of Jericho, Monday, June 8, 2026. AP PHOTO/MAHMOUD ILLEAN
By Jonathan L. Mayuga
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HE casualty count in the magnitude 7.8 offshore earthquake near Maasim, Sarangani, continued to rise on Tuesday as first responders stepped up search and rescue in severely affected areas. This as strong, successive aftershocks continue to rock Southern Mindanao, compelling residents to camp outside their homes as a safety precaution. The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) issued a Situational Report at 6 a.m. on Tuesday say-
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ing the earthquake, the strongest since the 1976 Moro Gulf earthquake and tsunami event, affected 19,529 families or 88,000 persons in 51 barangays in 23 cities and municipalities across 9 provinces in 4 Mindanao regions. So far, over 32,000 persons have been reported displaced; the evacuees are being provided with support in 39 different centers. The OCD, which acts as Secretariat of NDRRMC, said reports from local DRRMC indicate the death toll is now 38, with 478 injured and 4 persons reported missing. The Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP), led by Officer-in-Charge Fire Chief
Superintendent Wilberto Rico Neil A Kwan Tiu, activated its Emergency Operations Center (EOC) in Manila. BFP Regions 11 and 12 are currently on Code Red or full alert status starting on June 8. Fire personnel are working with local disaster reduction and management offices, helping clear debris, monitor evacuation centers, and assess damage to infrastructure. Teams have successfully evacuated a total of 969 individuals in the affected areas.
Sarangani hard-hit
SARANGANI has reported one of the worst battered places in
southern Mindanao, sustaining five dead and damage to a score of buildings and infrastructure. The municipality of Malapatan, 49 kilometers southwest of General Santos City and just across the bay east of the epicenter in Maasim town, also in Sarangani province, also recorded 70 injuries to landslide, building debris and traffic accident. The highway leading to and going outside the town sustained damage in sections of it in four barangays. Almost all the town’s major buildings and infrastructure posted partial to heavy damage, from school buildings, barangay and población See “Casualties,” A17
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UNDEREMPLOYMENT UP TO NEARLY 3-YEAR HIGH www.businessmirror.com.ph
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Wednesday, June 10, 2026 Vol. 21 No. 239
P25.00 nationwide | 2 sections 28 pages | 7 DAYS A WEEK
By Justine Xyrah Garcia
HE first visible impact of the Middle East conflict on the Philippine labor market may be showing up not in outright job losses but in shrinking incomes and reduced work opportunities, as underemployment climbed to a nearly three-year high in April, economists said.
On Tuesday, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported that 7.41 million of the country’s 48.89 million employed Filipinos were under-
employed: these are workers who wanted additional working hours, another job, or a new job with longer hours. See “Underemployment,” A2
D.O.T. TO CONTINUE GLOBAL TOURISM PUSH AMID M.E. CRISIS By Ma. Stella F. Arnaldo Special to the BusinessMirror
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HE campaign to keep the Philippines top of mind in foreign markets will continue despite the Department of Tourism’s (DOT) current direction to encourage more Filipinos to travel domestically due to the Middle East crisis. In an interview with the BusinessMirror, Acting Tourism Secretary Ma. Bernadita AngaraMathay said the agency will “definitely” continue to advertise the Philippines especially in
its key markets abroad. “That’s why we’re trying to get BINI,” a popular Filipino girl group, who, she said, can probably collaborate with a popular Korean artist on a song, or put Korean lyrics to one of the group’s most popular hits and sing it. This will hopefully encourage more Koreans to visit the Philippines. BINI recently made their international debut at the worldfamous Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in California. The DOT has a P1 billion branding budget this year, double from 2025’s allocation. This See “Crisis,” A16
QUAKE AFTERMATH A man walks past a damaged building in General Santos City on Monday, June 8, 2026, after a powerful 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck off Mindanao. In the background, an Iglesia Ni Cristo church building shows limited visible damage. The quake—among the strongest to hit the country in decades—left at least 37 people dead, injured hundreds, damaged thousands of homes and buildings, and displaced more than 32,000 residents across southern Philippines. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. deployed top defense-mitigation officials from Manila to help oversee search and rescue, the distribution of tens of thousands of food packs and construction materials to quake victims and assess damage to bridges, roads and other infrastructure. AP
‘Current account mgt a formidable task’ By Andrea E. San Juan
A JUST ENERGY TRANSITION Members of the NGO Forum on ADB and allied civil society organizations unfurl a banner reading “ADB, Stop Fueling the Crisis” at the culmination of a CSO-media roundtable on ADB’s ACEF and the global energy crisis, alongside the launch of a report titled, “Financing the Transition, Silencing the Defenders,” on Tuesday. Event gathered journalists, environmental advocates, and civil society representatives to discuss the global energy crisis and the Asian Development Bank’s role in Asia’s energy transition. The banner unfurling was a collective call for ADB to phase out support for fossil fuel-dependent and environmentally harmful energy projects and to prioritize a just, inclusive, and communitycentered energy transition. NONOY LACZA
WEAK industrial base and underdeveloped agriculture, combined with excessive dependence on low-productivity services, have made it difficult for the Philippines to manage its current account (CA), a “crucial” measure of an economy’s health and its relationship with the global economy. The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) highlighted this in a book titled, “Current Account Dynamics and the Philippine Economy: Developments and Prospects,” which it launched recently. The central bank said managing the current account is “becoming increasingly challenging” for the Philippines, particularly due to the pattern of its economic development diverging sharply from the traditional industrialization route followed by many successful East Asian economies, which evolved from agriculture to industry on the way to a services-dominated economy.
“This ‘premature de-industrialization’ of the economy, characterized by a weak industrial base and underdeveloped agriculture, combined with excessive dependence on lowproductivity services, presents various challenges for CA management in the country,” the BSP book noted. Despite the resilient remittance inflows and the “booming” information technology and business process management (IT-BPM) industry, the book noted that long-standing trade deficits in goods suggest that its structural weaknesses persist. With the global landscape rapidly changing, the BSP underscored the increased uncertainty in international trade policy, particularly from major economies such as the United States through the announced tariffs as well as global trade volatility which it said may result in a larger current account deficit. Moreover, the BSP said the new US tariffs imposed on Philippine exports could prove to be “hurdles” for exporters, as they worry about
a drop in American demand due to higher prices, being “outcompeted” by other countries, and losing market share if costs are added to the prices of their products. The book noted that the global landscape is marked by so-called “megatrends.” These include the digitalization and automation (Industry 4.0) that put the employability of overseas Filipino (OF) workers as well as of those doing routine BPO operations in question, power shifts in the global economy towards Asia, and the “imperative” to green industrial production, the BSP added. “These forces pose both challenges and opportunities for the Philippines, requiring a proactive and flexible policy response to achieve a sustainable CA balance,” the central bank underscored.
Recommendations
GIVEN these challenges, the book outlined recommendations to manage the country’s current account.
On top of the list is the need to maintain fiscal discipline. In particular, the BSP underscored the importance of freeing up fiscal pace for “growth-enhancing” public investment in activities, such as workforce upskilling and reskilling as well as research and development (R&D) that will benefit productive sectors of the economy without furthering external imbalances and reinforcing the dependence on external borrowing. “Maintain prudent debt management and strengthen fiscal transparency to improve national savings and achieve a healthy current account balance,” it added. Another proposed solution is to adopt a “forward-looking” exchange rate management. The BSP said it will still need to rely on a mix of “macroprudential” instruments, foreign exchange trading intervention and “deliberate” monetary policy responses to moderate extreme exchange rate swings and avert currency appreciation that could strain export See “Task,” A2
PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 61.6680 n JAPAN 0.3851 n UK 82.2898 n HK 7.8695 n CHINA 9.0899 n SINGAPORE 47.8975 n AUSTRALIA 43.4574 n EU 71.1464 n KOREA 0.0404 n SAUDI ARABIA 16.4264 Source: BSP (June 9, 2026)