ALEX BY A BREEZE Alex Eala makes it look so easy advancing to the third round of women’s singles tennis action in the Hangzhou 19th Asian Games with her 6-0, 6-0 rout of Pakistan’s Sarah Ibrahim Khan on Monday at the HOC Tennis Centre in Hangzhou, China. Story on B8. NONILON REYES (CANON EOS R6)
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Investments in MIF could go to flagship works
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NVESTORS looking to park their funds in the Maharlika Investment Fund (MIF) will find that some of these investments will find their way into the Infrastructure Flagship Projects (IFPs), according to the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda). In a budget hearing at the Senate on Monday, Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Arsenio M. Balisacan said 52 projects are undergoing preparation and another 40 are currently in pre-preparation stages such as going through pre-feasibility studies. This already represents more than half of the 197 IFPs, which also include 68 projects from the previous administration’s list; 28 which have been approved for implementation; and nine that are seeking government approval.
“Maharlika can participate and that’s the decision of the Board, the management of Maharlika. It’s a potential [investment of MIF],” Balisacan said. In a presentation, Balisacan said efforts to boost the IFPs have been supported by the Neda through the Investment Coordination Committee (ICC) which evaluates projects and programs before submitting to the Neda Board for approval. In the first semester of 2023, the ICC and Neda Board approved a total of 16 projects and requests for restructuring with an estimated cost of P468.2 billion. Of these, 12 are infrastructure projects, four are non-infrastructure projects. Of the 12 infrastructure projects, nine are financed through Official
Development Assistance (ODA), two through Public Private Partnership (PPP), and one is locally funded. The four non-infrastructure projects are all financed through ODA. Apart from the ICC, Neda said that together with the Department of Finance, it has spearheaded efforts to amend the Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) Law, as well as its Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRR). Neda also released the updated ICC guidelines on processing PPP proposals for Neda Board/ICC evaluation and approval. The new procedures aim to significantly reduce processing time for the evaluation and approval of Neda Board/ICC projects. Neda also submitted the 2022 Official Development Assistance (ODA) Portfolio Review to Congress. Based
on the data, active ODA portfolio amounted to $32.4 billion, which is a marginal 0.50-percent increase from $32.24 billion in 2021. For 2024, Neda’s proposed budget is P12.21 billion. Broken down, the lion’s share of the budget goes to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) at P8.94 billion, followed by the Neda Office of the Secretary at P2.06 billion. The remaining P1.21 billion or 9.94 percent of the Neda is shared by six attached agencies—the Commission on Population and Development; the PPP Center; Tariff Commission; Philippine National Volunteer Coordinating Agency; Philippine Statistical Research and Training Institute; and the Philippine Institute for Development Studies. Cai U. Ordinario
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Q3 GROWTH TO ‘SLOW’ ON BSP’S TIGHT POLICY w
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Tuesday, September 26, 2023 Vol. 18 No. 344
By Cai U. Ordinario
PHL eyes $.2B from first sale of RDBs
@caiordinario
T
HE tight monetary policy of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) is expected to adversely affect the economy’s performance in the third quarter, according to a United Kingdom-based think tank.
On Monday, Oxford Economics said based on its trackers, the country’s GDP growth may slow to a range of 4 to 5 percent in the third quarter of this year. The think tank said the data from its trackers is near Oxford Economics’ own growth forecast of 4.3 percent in the third quarter. “The Philippines and Indonesia are Asean’s two more domestically focused economies and the two where policy rates have been hiked well above the neutral rate. Our trackers suggest the impact on growth of tight policy continues to be more severe in the former than the latter,” Oxford Economics said. While the Philippine economy’s growth on a quarter-on-quarter basis may represent a reversal from the contraction posted in the second quarter, the impact of high interest rates may extend beyond the third quarter, the think tank said. “We think it will struggle to regain much more momentum, as the lagged impact of monetary tightening weighs further,” Oxford Economics said.
Moody’s Analytics
MEANWHILE, Moody’s Analytics said the Philippines, Indonesia, and Japan all maintained interest rates last week but all of the monetary authorities in these countries have given an “uncertain outlook.”
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T
HE Marcos Jr. administration plans to raise at least $200 million from its first sale of retail dollar bonds (RDBs)— the second for the Philippines—to meet the state’s financing needs. The Bureau of the Treasury (BTr) issued a notice of offering on Tuesday for the country’s issuance of 5.5year RDBs due 2029. The Treasury disclosed that its minimum target amount is set at $200 million. Finance officials have earlier disclosed that the national government is eyeing to raise at least $1 billion from the second round of RDBs to be offered by the country. In its maiden sale of RDBs in October 2021, the Philippines raised a total of $1.593 billion, almost four times bigger than its initial target amount. The Treasury has scheduled the auction date and start of public offer for the RDBs on September 27. The public offer would end on October 6 with the issue date scheduled on October 11, according to the notice of offering.
ROLLBACK, FINALLY Industry experts anticipate a decrease of less than one peso per liter in diesel and kerosene prices, marking the first rollback in nearly 11 weeks. Diesel and gasoline prices are poised to decline by P0.20 to P0.40 per liter, while kerosene prices are estimated to drop by P0.50 to P0.70 per liter. Story in A4 Economy, “11-week oil price hike streak ends, but increases still possible until December.” ROY DOMINGO
See “PHL,” A2
NEDA: 3, 4 DECADES BEFORE WE SEE ‘AGING PHL’
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T will take three to four decades more before the Philippines becomes what is called “an aging society,” according to the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda). In a budget hearing at the Senate on Monday, Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Arsenio M. Balisacan said an aging society means a country has more seniors compared to the labor force. The median age of Filipinos is 25.3 years old, based on data from the 2020 Census of Population and Housing released by the Philippine
Statistics Authority (PSA). “[Aging occurs] when you have all these above 60 will grow much faster than the working population,” Balisacan said. “That [aging Philippines] will take a long time. The median age now is just in the 20s, low 20s so we can worry about that three decades, four decades from now when we are much richer.” The opportunity that a young population presents to economies, Balisacan said, is faster economic growth. Based on the history of the country’s peers, when they started reaping the demographic dividend, their economic growth increased by
2 to 3 percentage points. Balisacan said this rate of growth was sustained not only for a number of years but at least two to as long as four decades, depending on the country. “What’s happening now is, Mr. Chair, [what we call the] working age group is now growing faster, [it] started to grow faster than the overall population which means that in our population there are now more working class. Now, in the history of our neighbors, when that is happening, [that’s what they call the] demographic dividend,” Balisacan explained. See “NEDA,” A2
See “Q3 Growth,” A2
PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 56.8370 n JAPAN 0.3833 n UK 69.5855 n HK 7.2685 n CHINA 7.7880 n SINGAPORE 41.6175 n AUSTRALIA 36.6144 n EU 60.5257 n KOREA 0.0426 n SAUDI ARABIA 15.1533 Source: BSP (September 25, 2023)