How to create an effective compliance policy By Henry J. Schumacher
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n my last column I asked the question whether compliance management is really needed and referred to the Kobe Steel story as a tragic example of how compliance failures risk the future of a company.
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Admittedly, today’s business environment is highly regulated, fraught with risk, and operates with global scale and diversity. All those forces work against the goal of straightforward, effective policies that can apply across the corporate enterprise as needed. So companies have to have compliance officers and they must find a way to consult with business operating units to identify risks and objectives, and then create policies that are fit for the purpose. Compliance officers must systemize the creation and adoption of policies, even as the substance of those policies becomes ever more specific and granular. And compliance officers must directly report to the Supervisory Board to avoid “glitches.”
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Tuesday, October 24, 2017 Vol. 13 No. 13
Competition body to pursue review of ₧70-B telco deal
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OINTING out what it described as “slow, expensive and poor”state of the Internet in the Philippines, the Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) said it will continue to push for the review of the P70-billion deal among telco operators in the country, even with the unfavorable decision from the Court of Appeals (CA).
In a 54-page decision, the appellate court affirmed the legality of the P70-billion buyout deal entered into by PLDT Inc. and Globe Telecom Inc. involving the telco assets of San
Miguel Corp. (SMC). Parties involved in the case—including the PCC—have yet to receive the official copy of the CA decision. “Rest assured, however, that we
A year after the sale, the public continues to complain of slow, expensive and poor quality of Internet and mobile services.”—PCC
will take the appropriate legal steps to move this multibillion-peso acquisition case forward,” the competition watchdog said on Monday. The antitrust body added it is not abandoning its stand that the deal, See “Telco deal,” A2
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Upper middle-income status within grasp Manny B. Villar
THE ENTREPRENEUR Conclusion
A
s I mentioned earlier, the classification is based on the average income distribution throughout the country. It does not differentiate, in the case of the Philippines, the total income of each region. Actually, Metro Manila can now join the upper middleincome economies. GNI per capita for each region in the Philippines is not available, but data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) available online show figures about GDP per capita, which are lower because these do not include overseas income. Continued on A8
THINK TANK SEES ABOVE 7% BMReports GDP GROWTH IN JULY TO DEC. ON EXPORT, REMITTANCE HIKE Why poverty prevails despite robust growth By Cai U. Ordinario
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@cuo_bm
he upswing in remittances and export recovery could push the country’s GDP growth to above 7 percent in the second semester of the year, according to a local private think tank. In its latest Market Call report, the Capital Markets Development Initiative (CMDI) of the First Metro Investment Corp. and University of Asia and the Pacific said the economy likely expanded by at least 6.5 percent in the third quarter. The think tank maintained the economy is still on track of posting a growth of 6.7 percent to 7.1 percent in the last two quarters, which is well within the government’s full-year GDP target of 6.5 percent to 7.5 percent. “Despite much political noise
within and outside the Philippines, we don’t see much change in the growth narrative, as the economy continues to emit bright lights,” the CMDI said. The CMDI added the 12-percent increase in remittances in the second quarter and the double-digit hike in government spending between May and August boosted GDP growth. The think tank said the depreciation of the peso will also ramp up remittances and overall consumption spending in the second half of the year. In terms of government spending, the CMDI expects it to hit a 20-percent growth toward the end of the year, notwithstanding a high base posted in 2016. “This, combined with a rebound in private construction, should boost total construction spending, Continued on A12
PESO exchange rates n US 51.5080
By Michael M. Alunan
Special to the BusinessMirror
A
Part Two
GRICULTURE has been growing every year, except a few stagnant years. But how come agriculture, as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), has steadily been declining? So, has the sector been growing or collapsing?
Agri collapsing as percentage of GDP RECORDS from the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) show that agriculture as a percentage of GDP has been dropping from 31 percent in the late1960s to 29 percent in 1971, 23.5 percent in 1980, 22.47 percent in
A vendor in Manila feeds her baby on their makeshift home and store on the streets of Santa Cruz, Manila. The inability of the government to apply reforms in agriculture is expected to breed massive rural poverty, rural-to-urban migration, and the formation of slum dwellings, criminality, drugs, prostitution, social unrest and a host of other problems plaguing Philippine society. NONIE REYES
1990, 17.5 percent in 2005, 15 percent in 2012, 10 percent in 2014 and 9.7 percent in 2016. To find sustainable solutions, problems must be recognized first, because it is unfair to blame the Department of Agriculture (DA) if much of agriculture’s woes are carryover problems from decades of neglect. But the public must be vigilant and critical constructively from hereon, particularly conflicting tricky policy issues. It is therefore advisable to scrutinize agriculture in the past. Former Neda Secretary Arsenio M. Balisacan, a “povertologist” when he was still with UP Diliman, produced a study, titled “Philippine Agriculture: Are We Ready for Competition?,” which made poignant revelations of the Philippines as a
n japan 0.4524 n UK 67.9288 n HK 6.6018 n CHINA 7.7813 n singapore 37.8262 n australia 40.2741 n EU 60.6043 n SAUDI arabia 13.7347
Continued on A2
Source: BSP (23 October 2017 )