PBBM leads launch of ₧74-B food project By Samuel P. Medenilla
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RESIDENT Ferdinand Marcos led the launch of the P74-billion Reducing Food Insecurity and Undernutrition with Electronic Vouchers (REFUEL) Project, which will raise the number of household beneficiaries of the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s (DSWD) food aid program to 750,000 by next year. The project is being funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Agence Française de Développement, and the OPEC Fund to scale up the Walang
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Gutom Program (WGP) of DSWD. Created through Executive Order No. 44 in 2023, the WGP provides monthly P3,000 electronic food credits to low-income households. DSWD was initially targeting 300,000 household beneficiaries for WGP this year, which is expected to be increased by 150,000 next year. Under the REFUEL project, DSWD will include an additional 300,000 beneficiaries for WGP in 2026. By 2027, the number of WGP beneficiaries is expected to reach 1 million. “By next year, more than 600,000 [households] will become beneficiaries of the Walang Gutom
Program,” he said in Filipino at the launch of REFUEL at San Andres Sports Complex in Manila on Thursday. The decision to raise the number of program beneficiaries comes after DSWD observed the country’s hunger rate slowed to 41.5 percent in March from the 48.7 percent in October, a situation Marcos attributed to the nationwide rollout of the WGP. “I think, after this year, we will see it go down even further. Slowly, my dream, as well as the dream of all Filipinos, that no family should go hungry here, is coming true,” the chief executive said. With good nutrition, Marcos
said the children of the beneficiary households will not suffer from stunting and have better academic performance. The World Health Organization defines stunting as the impaired growth and development of children due to malnutrition. “One of the main reasons children can’t study well is because they are sick. It’s very simple. So... They are sick because the food they eat is [of[ poor [quality],” Marcos said. “So we make sure that our students are given enough food so that they can study well, train well, and be successful in their work,” he added.
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BIR TARGETS BIG ONLINE FIRMS FOR TAX EVASION www.businessmirror.com.ph
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Friday, October 17, 2025 Vol. 21 No. 9
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By Reine Juvierre S. Alberto @reine_alberto
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HE Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) will run after large-scale online businesses suspected of underreporting sales, with tax evasion charges to be filed against those proven to have dodged taxes. In a televised news program on Thursday, Romeo D. Lumagui Jr. said the BIR is investigating to verify whether their declared sales match the actual transactions after receiving complaints from other largescale online businesses. “We have received reports about businesses with sales reaching hundreds of millions or even billions of pesos, but paying very little in taxes,” Lumagui said, noting that the probe does not target See “BIR,” A2
BRACE FOR POSSIBLE BPO JOBS ‘MASSACRE,’ GOVT ADVISED By Justine Xyrah Garcia
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F a proposed US law takes effect, it could unleash a “massacre of jobs” in the country’s business process outsourcing (BPO) industry, the Center for Trade Union and Human Rights (CTUHR) has warned, as it urged the Marcos administration to prepare for this. In a statement late Wednesday, the group said the government must be ready to protect Filipino call center workers who could be hit hard by the Keep Call Centers in America Act of 2025. “If the projected massacre of jobs pushes through, the government should ensure that employers follow a fair and proper process in removing employees
from work. Workers must be given sufficient notice and proper compensation. The US bill and [artificial intelligence] must not be invoked to justify unjust terminations,” CTUHR said. The bill, filed by US Senators Ruben Gallego and Jim Justice, seeks to discourage outsourcing by creating a public list of call center firms that move at least 30 percent of their operations abroad. Those companies could lose access to federal grants and loans, face penalties if they continue outsourcing while holding federal contracts, and lose priority in government bidding. One year after its passage, US customers will also have the right to know whether the See “Brace,” A2
THE WEIGHTING GAME Vehicles from Tacloban bound for Samar queue along the iconic San Juanico Bridge, a 2.16-km span linking Leyte and Samar—once the country’s longest bridge over water before being surpassed by the 8.9-km Cebu-Cordova Link Expressway in 2022. The DPWH regional office has unveiled an “ambitious” plan to restore the bridge’s 33-ton load capacity before the end of 2025. Since May 15, 2025, the bridge has been limited to vehicles weighing 3 tons or less due to structural concerns, disrupting vital commerce in Eastern Visayas. NONIE REYES
‘Top FDI sources of PHL must include EU’ By Andrea E. San Juan
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HE European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines (ECCP) said the European Union is aiming to become one of the Philippines’s top five sources of foreign investments and urged the Southeast Asian nation to improve the implementation of reforms. “When it comes to FDI [foreign direct investments], Europe is not the top five. It’s our goal to bring Europe to the top five,” ECCP President Paolo Duarte said during the EuropeanPhilippines Business Dialogue forum on Thursday in Makati City. Evariste Cagatan, Board of Investments (BOI) Executive Director for Investment Promotion Services, said during the same forum that investment promotion agen-
cies (IPAs) greenlit investments of more than P480 billion in the first half of 2025. Of the total investments in the pipeline in 2025, however, Cagatan said about 20 percent were from Singapore, South Korea, the United States, China, and Japan. “While we have introduced the necessary reforms to support the implementation of the strategy, what needs to be done now is we execute and harvest the fruits of those policy reforms,” said Cagatan. She acknowledged that the Philippines still needs to attract investments from European firms, saying “because it’s not as much as we would want to.” “But you have seen the complementation between our target priority growth areas and where Europe is very strong,” she added.
Duarte pointed out the importance of the “execution” part of the existing reforms of the Philippines which aim to liberalize the economy to make it more attractive for investors. “So, we are not asking for more reforms. We are asking for the execution of the existing reforms. I think that’s where we need to make the biggest effort,” he said. “Out of the European investments in Asean, only 4 percent landed in the Philippines,” he added. The ECCP chief called on the Philippine government and the private sector to make this 4 percent a “bigger number.” In pursuit of growing Europeansourced investments in the Philippines, Duarte underscored the importance of the free trade agreement (FTA) between the Philippines and the EU.
Next week, the EU and the Philippines will have their fourth round of negotiations for the EU-PH FTA. Duarte said the EU side will be flying to Cebu next week to give their feedback, to provide the “real sentiment of the European industries in the country.” “To see where we have opportunities, where we see the reforms being executed, where we see also the pain points. There are pain points that we need to address, because to advance the FTA, we need to be transparent,” added the ECCP President. Data from the BOI showed that total trade between the Philippines and the EU amounted to $15.54 billion in 2024. Of which, $8.07 billion are Philippine exports to the 27-member bloc while $7.46 billion are imports from the EU.
PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 58.0660 n JAPAN 0.3844 n UK 77.7968 n HK 7.4688 n CHINA 8.1464 n SINGAPORE 44.8109 n AUSTRALIA 37.8010 n EU 67.6179 n KOREA 0.0409 n SAUDI ARABIA 15.4830 Source: BSP (October 16, 2025)