Gov’t loses P144 B in 2011 due to tax perks in ecozones

By Zinnia B. Dela Peña (The Philippine Star) | Updated March 27, 2014 - 12:00am

MANILA, Philippines - The government lost at least P144 billion from the income tax holidays enjoyed by domestic and foreign firms in free ports or economic zones in 2011, the Department of Finance said.

The amount accounted for 1.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), 9.3 percent of government’s total expenditures and 10.6 percent of state revenues in 2011.

These figures, the Finance Department said, were conservative as the Tax Expenditure Report covered only 29 percent of all investment promotion agency – registered firms.
“With the current tax incentives system that has been largely unaccounted and uncoordinated, the government loses billions of pesos in revenues every year which could have helped improve our fiscal position,” Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima said as he urged lawmakers to speed up the approval of key economic reforms particularly the fiscal incentives rationalization bill that has been pending for more than 15 years.

The bill, which has been certified a priority measure by the Aquino administration, aims to establish a transparent and accountable system for the grant of incentives.

It seeks to remove various incentives granted to businesses that are deemed either excessive or no longer necessary as the government aims to achieve sustainable inclusive growth.

 

Internal Revenue commissioner Kim Henares earlier said the government would generate as much as P19 billion in additional revenues with the rationalization of tax breaks.

Purisima is also pushing for the immediate passage of the Tax Incentives Management and Transparency Act (TIMTA) and the Fiscal Incentives Rationalization Reform (FIR) bill.

The TIMTA will give the government the necessary tools to account for the magnitude of government support given to a certain sector and the appropriateness of using tax incentives in achieving socioeconomic goals while the FIR coordinates and organizes the grant of incentives to different sectors that has been largely unfettered over the last few years.

“Tax incentives distort the tax structure of the Philippine economy. Through these twin fiscal incentives reform measures, in the long term the government will enhance the country’s fiscal capacity to continue to build on its macroeconomic fundamentals, level the playing field and improve competitiveness and investment opportunities. Accounting for tax incentives needs to be transparent, and these tax incentives need to be granted properly,” Purisima said.

Visually impaired Pinoys to hit over 2 M this year – study

By Sheila Crisostomo (The Philippine Star) | Updated March 26, 2014 - 12:00am

 

MANILA, Philippines - More than two million Filipinos are projected to develop visual impairment this year due to various reasons, ranging from chronic illnesses to aging, an expert from the Philippine Academy of Opthalmology (PAO) said yesterday.

In a press briefing, PAO member Carlos Emmanuel Chua noted that based on research of the Sentro Oftalmologico Jose Rizal of the Philippine General Hospital in 2012 and 2013, around 2.4 million individuals will be visually impaired this year.

Of this figure, 312,000 individuals will go blind due to cataract, refractive error, glaucoma and diabetes.

Chua also noted that the top causes of visual impairment include error of refraction, cataract, glaucoma, retinopathy and maculopathies, particularly diabetes and hypertension.

“Poorly controlled diabetes mellitus is estimated to blind 40,419 individuals in 2014 and cause visual impairment in around 151,570 individuals,” said Chua, an adult and pediatric ophthalmologist at the St. Luke’s Medical Center (SLMC).

According to Pearl Tamesis-Villalon, former PAO president and SLMC Quezon City-Retina Section head, it is important to manage diabetes to prevent the development of diabetic retinopathy.

 

“It is one of the many complications of diabetes. It primarily affects retinal microvasculature, destroying its walls (causing) fluid leakage and accumulation in retinal tissue causing edema,” Villalon explained.

She also noted that the Philippines has the ninth largest diabetic population in the world, affecting some 7.8 million Filipinos by 2030.

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of permanent visual impairment or severe vision loss in people above 50 in western countries, she added.

Age is the most important risk factor, followed by modifiable risk factors like lack of antioxidant, smoking, excessive ultra violet exposure and systemic conditions such as high cholesterol and obesity.
Prevalence is higher among Europeans at 12.3 percent against Asians at 7.4 percent.

“But numbers are expected to rise sharply in Asia as the region comprises 60 percent of the world population,” Villalon added.

To enhance diagnosis and treatment of blindness-causing eye diseases, the Eye Institute of SLMC inked yesterday a memorandum of agreement with Novartis Healthcare Philippines.

Under the agreement, Novartis will provide free Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) to 360 qualified patients of SLMC Eye Institute in Quezon City and Global City from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31 this year.

To qualify, a patient should be currently on the Novartis medication Ranibizumab, which is indicated for the treatment of neovascular or wet AMD, a visual impairment due to diabetic macular edema and macular edema secondary to retinal vein occlusion.

According to SLMC-Global City Eye Institute head Noel Chua, “OCT is a non-invasive imaging test that uses light waves to take cross-section pictures of your retina, the light-sensitive tissue lining the back of the eye.”

 “It enables the ophthalmologist to map and measure the thickness of each of the retina’s distinctive layers. These measurements help with the early detection, diagnosis and treatment guidance for retinal conditions and diseases,” Chua added.

553,706 college students to graduate

By Helen Flores (The Philippine Star) | Updated March 26, 2014 - 12:00am

 

MANILA, Philippines - Over half a million graduates will be added to the labor force this year, the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) reported yesterday.

Data from CHED show that 553,706 college students will graduate this school year.
Topping the list are graduates of Business Administration and related courses (142,061), followed by Medical and Allied disciplines (110,280), Information Technology (68,178), Education and Teacher Training (65,092), Engineering and Technology (61,786) and other disciplines (26,298).

A total of 18,725 are graduates of Maritime followed by Social and Behavioral Science (13,144); Agriculture, Forestry, Fisheries and Veterinary Medicine (9,109); Service Trades (8,283); Mass Communication and Documentation (6,153); Humanities (5,362); Natural Science (4,171); and Law and Jurisprudence (2,870).

Graduates of Architectural and Town Planning number 2,268 followed by Mathematics majors (2,094), general courses (1,863), Religion and Theology (1,280) and Trade, Craft and Industrial (403).

‘Entrepreneurship solution to joblessness’

 

Following reports on joblessness, Sen. Paolo Benigno Aquino IV said yesterday that youth entrepreneurship is the key to addressing unemployment for the 15- to 24-year-old segment, the number of whom continues to rise annually.

The Senate is in the process of studying several bills on youth entrepreneurship to help address the problem of unemployed youth.

But “with the slow pace of the country’s legislative mill, it will take months or years before these measures are enacted into law. That’s why the government needs to take the initiative and start these programs right away,” Aquino said.

Aquino believes that the government’s push for inclusive growth will not take off unless the problems of youth unemployment and underemployment are immediately addressed.– With Marvin Sy

Gov’t launches health program for 14.7 M poor families

By Delon Porcalla (The Philippine Star) | Updated March 25, 2014 - 12:00am

MANILA, Philippines - The government launched yesterday a comprehensive health program aimed at providing primary healthcare to 14.7 million indigent families.

President Aquino, along with officials of the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) and the Department of Health (DOH), led the launching of a multi-sectoral advocacy campaign dubbed “Alaga ka para sa Maayos na Buhay” (Alaga Ka) at the Quezon City Memorial Circle.

In his speech, Aquino invited the attendees – some 2,000 poor families from different parts of Metro Manila – to partake of and utilize the benefits offered by Alaga Ka.

“It is the primary objective of the Alaga Ka program to open the eyes of our fellowmen, especially the 14.7 million indigent families, about the services being offered by our very own DOH and PhilHealth,” Aquino said.

The beneficiaries will receive micronutrient supplements, maternal and neonatal care package and family planning.

They will also get free treatment package for tuberculosis from government hospitals.

 

“The services here are crystal clear: We firmly believe that prevention is better than cure. Instead of being content with curing the illness, we are giving Filipinos the capacity to prevent illnesses and stop it from spreading further,” Aquino said.

The President was joined by Health Secretary Enrique Ona, PhilHealth president and CEO Alexander Padilla, Education Secretary Armin Luistro and Quezon City Mayor Herbert Bautista.

Aquino said PhilHealth and other government agencies providing health services have been able to keep up with the demand for universal health care because of proper management of the government’s resources.

“Among the benefits that are included in this service are health-risk counseling and cancer screening, and the assurance that beneficiary-families will be able to consult and see a doctor every year,” he said.
He added that even the legislative branch pitched in and helped by passing the Sin Tax Reform and Responsible Parenthood laws that greatly helped in providing better and more expanded health services to the people.

The most popular Filipino in world history

Earlier this month, the Pantheon project website of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab went live. Pantheon, or at least its first version, is an impressive but necessarily incomplete attempt to measure “the global popularity of historical characters” (this and other project-descriptive quotes are from the Methods section of the website). It uses two measures.

By the “sophisticated” measure Pantheon calls the Historical Popularity Index (HPI), the most popular person in history is the great philosopher Aristotle, followed closely by his famous teacher Plato. Jesus Christ only comes third—allowing the New York Times Magazine to reference John Lennon’s infamous quote in its story on Pantheon: “Who’s More Famous than Jesus?”

But who are the most popular Filipinos according to Pantheon?

Finding the answer is a simple matter of clicking on the right links. A word, however, about the limitations of the Pantheon project.

The MIT Media Lab’s Macro Connections group made four crucial assumptions when it developed the project. First, Pantheon would focus on “cultural production,” not culture understood in its broad sense of information. Second, it would use “biographies of notable historical characters” as proxy for cultural production. Third, it would narrow the project’s scope to global culture, “meaning the subset of cultural production that has broken the barriers of space, time and language.” And fourth, the main source for the biographies of globally notable historical characters would be Wikipedia. Or, to be more specific: “The Pantheon 1.0 data was curated by the creators of Pantheon and gathers information on the 11,340 biographies that have presence in more than 25 languages in the Wikipedia (as of May 2013).” (Another data source is Charles Murray’s “Human Achievement: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800BC to 1950.”)

The first measure of historical popularity is simple enough: “The simpler of the two measures, which we denote as L, is the number of different Wikipedia language editions that have an article about a historical character.”

By this measure, Cory Aquino is the most popular of the 18 Filipinos who meet the threshold criterion of presence in more than 25 Wikipedia editions, with 76. (Eight of these editions are in various Philippine languages, such as Kapampangan and Tagalog; the rest are in foreign languages such as Catala and Svenska, and in English of course.)

Gloria Arroyo is a distant second, with 60. (The same eight Philippine editions carry her biographical entry. She is in at least one Wikipedia edition where Cory is not: Afrikaans.)

To correct for certain basic and inherent biases, Pantheon also uses the HPI measure. “The most sophisticated measure, which we name the Historical Popularity Index (HPI) corrects L by adding information on the age of the historical character—as a proxy for breaking the barrier of time-the concentration of PageViews among different languages—to discount characters with PageViews mostly in a few languages—the coefficient of variation in PageViews—to discount characters that have short periods of popularity—and the number of non-english Wikipedia pageviews—to reduce any English bias even further.”

By this second measure, Ferdinand Marcos is the most popular Filipino, with an HPI of 24.424, followed by Jose Rizal, with an HPI of 24.018. 

Marcos has 53 Wikipedia editions to his name, while Rizal (classified by Pantheon under the anodyne term “social activist”) has 51. Lapu-Lapu, classified like 13 other Filipinos in the list as “politician,” has an HPI of 23.509, with 28 Wikipedia editions.

What does this all mean?

The Pantheon website, at pantheon.media.mit.edu, opens with a stark reminder to its visitors that “Small differences in ranking (i.e., who is first, second or tenth) are not statistically meaningful and should not be used to draw strong conclusions about the popularity of similarly ranked individuals,” and that “Individuals are mapped to their places of birth according to present-day national boundaries, not national identities.”

The second reminder explains why Lapu-Lapu, who would likely be horrified if he heard himself being referred to by a Spanish king’s name, is classified as Filipino—and why Austria claims the dubious honor of hosting Adolf Hitler as its most popular native son. (Hitler also comes second among the 2,529 politicians included in Pantheon, next only to Julius Caesar.)

The first reminder suggests that patterns in ranking, not who came in “first, second or tenth”), may provide the better source of meaning.

Of the 18 Filipinos on the list, only three are social activists: Rizal, Andres Bonifacio and Marcelo del Pilar. One is a boxer: Manny Pacquiao (naturally enough), with 39 Wikipedia editions to his name—and 25.71 million page views in the six years between January 2008 and December 2013. (Rizal is a far second, with 7.08 million page views.) The rest are politicians: Marcos, Lapu-Lapu, Arroyo, Emilio Aquinaldo, Cory, Imelda Marcos, Manuel L. Quezon, Joseph Estrada, Fidel Ramos, Noynoy Aquino, Manuel Roxas, Diosdado Macapagal, Ramon Magsaysay and Ninoy Aquino. (Through a fluke, Ramos appears twice, under his own name and under “Presidency of Fidel V. Ramos.)

We can talk all day about the biases and promises of Wikipedia (for my money, it is the best source on Philippine election data), but the picture Pantheon paints is dismaying indeed: If Philippine “cultural production” is limited largely to our political personalities, what kind of culture are we producing?

On Twitter: @jnery_newsstand

By John Nery
Philippine Daily Inquirer

PHL needs to create 14.6 million jobs by 2016–WB report

Informal workers, or Filipinos who are employed without contracts or have fixed incomes, comprise the majority of the country’s current work force, according to the World Bank.

In the recent Philippine Economic Update, the World Bank said there are around 28 million informal workers and they comprise 75 percent of those who are employed.

Informal workers include, but are not limited to, street vendors and those who provide various services in the outsourcing, transportation and tourism industries, among others. They usually get paid low wages and generate low or minimal incomes.

“The informal sector is not necessarily equivalent to bad jobs. Nor can all jobs in the formal sector be considered good jobs. Moving to a formal sector job is not always the better choice.

People can choose to work in the informal sector and can still be better off. Jobs created in the informal sector are as important as jobs generated by big firms. What can be bad about the informal sector is when workers want to move up the job ladder, but cannot do so because of structural barriers,” the World Bank said.

The number of informal sector workers compounds the job generation challenge of the Philippines. The World Bank earlier noted that the country needs to create 14.6 million jobs by 2016.

However, even with this, the World Bank estimates that by 2016, around 12.4 million Filipinos would still be unemployed, underemployed, or would have to work in the informal sector.

Data showed that around 10 million Filipinos are either unemployed or underemployed. There are around 3 million unemployed and 7 million underemployed Filipinos.

“Under  the current high-growth scenario and the removal of key binding constraints in fast-growing sectors [e.g., skills constraint so that the business-process outsourcing  industry can accelerate its annual growth from  20  percent to  30  percent,  and  power  and  other  constraints  so  that  the manufacturing sector  can  see  a  doubling  of  employment],  the formal  sector  will  be  able  to  provide good  jobs  to  around 2.2  million  people  in  the  next  four  years  [or  550,000  every year between 2013 and 2016], or around double the current figure,” the bank said.

Due to this, the World Bank said the government must expand the formal sector employment faster while rapidly increasing the incomes of the informally employed.

The bank believes there is a window of opportunity for the Philippines to undertake these efforts. The country’s strong macroeconomic fundamentals, political stability and a popular government can implement much-needed reforms.

Further, the bank said the country can also benefit from the global and regional economic rebalancing and the strong growth prospects of a dynamic East Asia region.

The World Bank also said aging populations abroad offer new opportunities to the country’s young and dynamic labor force, while sectors that had previously been dominated  by  monopolies, such  as  telecommunication  and  air transport,  are  now demonstrably benefiting from past reform efforts that opened them up to competition.

“The Aquino government has demonstrated that it is not afraid to tackle vested interests in  areas  that  had  previously  been  too  sensitive  to reform,” the World Bank said.

“The government now needs to maximize the chances that the country will follow a more inclusive growth path and meet the jobs challenge  by accelerating  reforms  to  protect  property  rights, promote more competition and simplify regulations to trigger more private investments by firms of all sizes, while sustainably ramping up public investments in infrastructure, education and health,” it added.

Apart from the jobs challenge, World Bank estimated the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) to reach 6.6 percent in 2014 and 6.9 percent in 2015, depending on the pace of Supertyphoon Yolanda reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts.

The bank’s pre-Yolanda forecast puts the Philippines’s GDP growth at 6.7 percent in 2014 and 6.8 percent in 2015.

The bank also said a key challenge of the reconstruction process is to develop and enforce explicit standards for “building back better”—for safe and resilient buildings and infrastructure.

source:  Business Mirror

Mining returns for gov’t ‘must be twofold’

A CABINET OFFICIAL said he would push mining companies to pay bigger shares of their revenue to the government even though the industry maintains that taxes are already too high and higher ones could kill the business.

Taxation of Philippine miners is a thorny issue that has delayed development of the country’s vast mineral resources. President Benigno S. C. Aquino III, seeking to raise revenue from mining, has met stiff resistance.

Finance Secretary Cesar V. Purisima told the Reuters ASEAN Summit yesterday that the government should be getting one-half of gross revenue from mining.

Last year, according to a government agency, direct state revenue from mining was worth only 2% of total output, though miners also pay corporate income tax of 32% and other fees.

“Where I start is 50-50,” Mr. Purisima told the summit, held at the Reuters office in Manila. “The return of the government must be twofold -- as owner of the mineral, and two, as a taxing authority.”

Still, Mr. Purisima said it was the Philippine Congress that would decide the revenue-sharing formula, taking into account the industry’s position.

Within the next year, he said, the government is committed to getting tax legislation passed that features “a fair sharing where both the one who took risk, the mining company, and the one who owns the assets, are fairly rewarded.”

Current mining laws, including income tax holidays for start-up projects, have not created a win-win situation for the government and industry, Mr. Purisima said.

Government statistics show mining has been declining as a source of revenue. Taxes, fees and royalties from mining in the first nine months of last year came to P1.55 billion, only about 8% of the P18.8 billion collected in all of 2012, according to the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB).

With nine million hectares of highly mineralized areas, the Philippines is believed to have some of the world’s biggest reserves of nickel, gold, and copper.

Last year, the government valued the Southeast Asian country’s untapped mineral deposits at about $850 billion. But investments and mineral production have slowed in the last three years as inconsistent policies and tax uncertainty have deterred investors. Mining investments between January and September last year totalled $787 million, according to MGB. That compared with $807.7 million for all of 2012 and $1.15 billion in 2011.

Miners say their risks are greater than elsewhere, and investments in infrastructure such as power and roads are costlier in less developed countries such as the Philippines. Given higher costs, they expect a higher rate of return from investing.

Anti-mining groups, including Roman Catholic Church leaders, say local communities have not benefitted from mining revenue and have been left with denuded mountains and silted rivers.

“We don’t want a situation where we’ll end up with holes in the midst of communities and once the rich minerals are gone and prices are down, they leave and the people will have nothing there,” Mr. Purisima said.

“That’s why we’d like to do it in the manner they do it in Canada and more advanced countries, where there is really a plan at the beginning on how to restore the environment they have,” he said. -- Reuters

source:  Businessworld

PCSO helps Aklan, opens new branch and more

LAST Saturday it was my pleasure to visit Aklan to present the province, represented by Gov. Florencio Miraflores, with almost P6 million in assistance funds from the fundraising done by the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) during the last holiday season.
 

The “Pamaskong Handog ng PCSO: Nine Days of Christmas” last December set aside a certain percentage from lotto tickets sold during a specified period for donation to provinces hardest-hit by Supertyphoon Yolanda (international code name Haiyan).

Meanwhile, PCSO Director Mabel V. Mamba will be in Malaybalay City, Bukidnon, on Monday to open the PCSO’s 38th branch.

This extends the reach of our agency in Northern Mindanao and relieves the residents there of having to travel to Davao City or Cagayan de Oro City, where the PCSO’s older branches in Mindanao are located, to file their medical-assistance requests.

To the initial 25 branches that the PCSO had in 2010, when the current PCSO board under Chairman Margarita Juico came in, we have added 13 branches since 2012, three of those in the first quarter of 2014—Ilocos Norte, Capiz and Bukidnon.

Other branches that might open in the next 12 to 18 months include Catanduanes, Oriental Mindoro, Romblon, Northern Samar, Antique, Zamboanga del Norte, Lanao del Norte and Davao Oriental. The PCSO aims to have a branch in each of the country’s 81 provinces by 2016.

To cut costs and provide more for charity, the PCSO cooperates with local government units (LGUs) for office space on their properties to establish PCSO branches. As of end-2013, 43 percent, or 15 branches, are now on LGU sites rent-free or for a nominal rent of P1 per year, resulting in savings of P6.9 million.

As the government’s charity agency, the PCSO provides valuable and essential services to the public by way of financial assistance for medical- and health care-related needs. Now celebrating its 80th anniversary, the PCSO also holds medical missions; donates ambulances, mobile clinics, medical equipment and medicines; funds hospitals, orphanages and other social-welfare institutions; and provides assistance in times of calamities and national emergencies.

As part of its calamity-relief efforts, the PCSO also distributes relief goods; family emergency-medicine kits; and comfort packs comprising a blanket, sleeping mat and mosquito net that may be used in shelters. The agency has also donated equipment, such as power generators and water-treatment plants. During such times, PCSO employees also lend a helping hand by making personal donations of food, water, clothes and other items for distribution in affected areas.

In order to make these and other services readily accessible to the public, especially to our fellow Filipinos in remote rural areas, the PCSO also has a presence via satellite clinics and rural health units, in addition to its plans of opening more branches nationwide.

How are all these social programs funded? The PCSO generates revenue by holding lottery and other games. In 2013 lotto games earned P29.68 billion, despite the challenges posed by natural calamities, power outages and other externalities.

While lotto and its variants are the PCSO’s most popular games, the agency’s Lotto Express posted 85-percent growth last year and generated P1.9 billion in sales, almost double its 2012 earnings of P1 billion.

To boost revenue growth, the PCSO also plans to expand its Lotto outlet network. In 2013 there were 6,805 outlets, a 15-percent increase from the number of outlets in 2012, while there were 934 Lotto Express outlets, a 75-percent increase from 2012.

To make it easier and more convenient for the public to buy Lotto tickets regularly, the PCSO is in talks with other government agencies, including Philippine Post, the Land Transportation Office and the Armed Forces of the Philippines, to have Lotto outlets within their offices around the country.

Lotto jackpots generate much excitement. The bigger the jackpot, the more people buy tickets, including those who don’t regularly play Lotto. Last July the highest jackpot amount was P178.8 million, which went to one winner. There were three other jackpots higher than P100 million, while seven were between P95 million and P73 million. In total, there were 87 jackpot winners for various lotto games in 2013.

As the PCSO celebrates its 80th year this year—a significant milestone by any standard—we thank the public for their continued trust in and strong support of PCSO games, by which we are able to help our fellow Filipinos and provide hope and care where it is most needed.

Atty. Rojas is the vice chairman and general manager of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office.

source:  Business Mirror by Atty. Jose Ferdinand M. Rojas II / Rising Sun

BIR targets P10-B taxes in Pampanga, P21B in CL

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO —Gov. Lilia Pineda has underscored the sustained improvement of businesses in Pampanga, and described it as a major contributor to the target collection of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) of P21 billion in taxes in Central Luzon this year.

Pineda said, “Pampanga is continuously growing in business and other areas crucial to nation-building.”

The governor was a guest at the annual district tax kick-off campaign at the SM City Pampanga here on Wednesday afternoon.

She joined the BIR Revenue Region 4 (RR4) during the launch of the 2014 tax campaign and information drive a month after a similar campaign was held in nearby Angeles City.

Pineda lauded the small and big businesses in the province and her 2 million constituents for “the successes we have both in the public and private sectors.”

Pineda said, “Pampanga’s significant role in generating taxes is most evident, as the BIR is seen to collect some P10 billion from Pampanga.”

“It’s almost half of the target of the BIR in the whole Central Luzon region,” Pineda said.

The two-term governor cited the recent report of the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) that said Pampanga is among the 10 most-developed provinces in the country.  She added that total investment in the province was pegged at P95 billion in 2012.

The total investment in Pampanga is at least 76 percent of investments in Central Luzon, the report said.

BIR Regional Director Araceli L. Francisco urged taxpayers “to register, file and pay” (RFP) their tax obligations on or before the deadline on April 15.

The BIR recently released its new campaign jingle and theme “I Love the Philippines, I Pay My Taxes Right, It’s As Easy as R(egister), F(ile), P(ay).”

Earlier, the BIR-RR4 also presented the Electronic Certificate Authorizing Registration (eCAR), a Web-based system that automates the generation of barcoded Certificate Authorizing Registration (CAR), which aims to reduce losses arising from spurious CARs for all kinds of one-time transactions, the Electronic Tax Information Systems (eTIS), the Implementation of Internal Revenue Stamps Integrated System (IRSIS) on the use of secured stamps for cigarettes, the Invigorated Run After Tax Evaders (RATE) program, Oplan  Kandado; The Integrity Management Program (IMP), the Re-engineering of other Business Processes, Electronic Official Registry Book (eORB), e-Linkage with the Bureau of Treasury; The Automated Revenue Allotment Computation, the Forfeited Asset Management System, the Automated Issuance of Tax Clearance for Bidding Purposes, Online Accreditation of Importers and Brokers, the Online System for Accreditation of Printers, which is part of the Taxpayer Registration Information Update, the Electronic BIR Forms (eBIR Forms), the Strategic Performance Management System, the Workflow Management System, the Exchange of Information Program, the Procurement, Payment, Inventory and Distribution Monitoring System and the Career Pathing. 

On February 19  the BIR-RR4 also launched its Regional Tax Campaign Program at the Marquee Mall in Angeles City.

source:  Business Mirror

So you still want to be President of the Phl?

What do our country’s three former Presidents — Fidel V. Ramos (FVR), Joseph “Erap” Estrada and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA) – have in common? All three of them are receiving a measly P8,000 a month in government pension.

Their counterparts, former presidents of the United States like father and son George H. W. Bush and George W. ”Dubya” Bush, and Bill Clinton are in much better care from their former bosses, the American taxpayers.

Under the US Former Presidents Act (FPA), the annual budget provides for payment of their pension, funding support for office rentals and staff, travel funds, mailing privileges and security service.
According to US Congressional Research Service, the FPA was enacted to “maintain the dignity” of the Office of the President. This US law provides their former President — and his or her spouse — certain benefits to help him respond to post-presidency mail and speaking requests, among other informal public duties often required of a former president.

Prior to the enactment of the FPA in 1958, former Presidents leaving office received no pension or other federal assistance. Living US ex-presidents currently receive annual pension of $199,700 in 2013, or about $16,667 a month. This is said to be equal the pay scale for Cabinet secretaries at executive level I in the US. The pension is in addition to benefits provided pursuant to the FPA such as Secret Service protection and financial “transition” benefits to assist them cope with post-presidential life.
Pursuant to the FPA, former US Presidents are eligible for benefits unless they hold an appointive or elective office or position in the federal government. On January 10, 2013, President Barack Obama signed the Former Presidents Protection Act of 2012 (PL 112-257) which extended lifetime Secret Service protection to former presidents and their children instead of the previous limit to 10 years.

Some critics in the US of the FPA noted it “subsidizes Presidents who are not struggling financially. Others argued that although a former President is not in a formal public position, he remains a public figure and should be provided a pension and benefits that permit him to perform duties that emerge as a result of his public status.”

The US Congress though has the authority to reduce, increase, or maintain the pension and benefits provided to former presidents of their government.

Although he is not aware if we have a law like the FPA, Budget and Management Secretary Florencio Abad confirmed the country’s former presidents get a “minimum pension and security but not at the level that US presidents get.”

If you visit the office of FVR at RPDev in Makati City, the former President posted at the wall beside his receiving room the replicas of the green checks from the Land Bank of the Philippines issued to him as pension with title in bold blue letters: “Sweldo, sweet sweldo.” Below it, it states: “Monthly pension of FVR as President of the Philippines from July, 1998 to date.”

It is not as if they need money. All three former presidents are financially well off to take care of their needs. In fact, P8,000 could be just a drop in the bucket.

All our former presidents, as well as the incumbent President Benigno “Noy” Aquino III, come from well-to-do families, even before being elected into office.

FVR has been financially solid and a resident of posh Alabang Village before he went to Malacañang. Erap is a self-made multi-millionaire even before he became mayor of San Juan City out of his personal earnings as one of the highest paid actors in our country. GMA has likewise been financially stable with her family living at the exclusive village in La Vista, Quezon City.

GMA’s late father, former President Diosdado Macapagal, who campaigned as the “poor boy from Lubao,” was actually wealthy already when he got elected to the highest post of the land.

Still, it is shocking to learn that our former Presidents get only this much pension. Is this how we value and treat our former presidents? Tsk, tsk, tsk…

It cannot be denied, however, our three living ex-Presidents are now in their twilight years. Incidentally, all three are celebrating their birthdays one after the other.

FVR just turned 86 years old last Wednesday. On April 5, ailing GMA will turn 67 years old and will have to celebrate in her hospital detention at the Veterans Memorial Medical Center in Quezon City. Her request to spend her birthday in her hometown in Lubao, Pampanga, has been recently denied by the Sandiganbayan. And on April 19, Erap turns 77.

Except for FVR, ex-Presidents Erap and GMA though are still serving public offices. Estrada is currently mayor of the City of Manila while GMA is on her second term as congresswoman in the second district of Pampanga.

Since he stepped down from office in June 1998, FVR retired from public service. He has kept himself busy publishing books of his speeches, traveling for speaking engagements here and abroad and writing a weekly column for Manila Bulletin. For all intents and purposes, FVR is earning income from all these activities he has been doing after his presidency.

At least in the case of FVR, he gets separate monthly pension after he retired from the military. This is from the Armed Forces of the Philippines Savings and Loan Association Inc. (AFP-SLAI) where his last post in the military was chief of staff of the AFP.

Both ex-Presidents Erap and GMA are getting paid again as public servants. As mayor, ex-President Estrada gets at least P67,000 a month in salary. As congresswoman, ex-President GMA gets about P90,000 a month.

President Aquino is currently receiving a monthly salary pegged at P95,000 a month – quite a jump from P57,750 in monthly salary that his immediate predecessor got as chief executive. Despite this salary upgrade, P-Noy will also get the same amount of pension in July 2016.

So those with moist eyes to succeed P-Noy in office, do you still want to become President of the Philippines?

COMMONSENSE By Marichu A. Villanueva (The Philippine Star)

Saudi tourism sector to create 1.8 M jobs by 2020

RIYADH (Xinhua) - Saudi tourism sector is set to create around 1.3 million jobs by 2015 and 1.8 million by 2020, Arab News reported on Sunday.

Arab News quoted the annual report of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA) for 2012-13 as saying that the tourism sector plans to increase 1.3 million job opportunities by 2015 and 1.8 million by 2020 in tourism sub-sectors and indirect jobs in areas induced by tourism-related activity.

The number of direct jobs in the tourism sector in 2012 amounted to about 709,000, an increase of 5.9 percent from the previous year, among which Saudization percentage reached about 26. 7 percent compared to 26.4 percent in the previous year, said the report.

The share of domestic tourism in the country's GDP in 2012 increased by 6.8 percent compared to 2011, and the percentage of the non-oil sector's contribution to the GDP touched slightly higher with an "added-value" from 7.3 percent to 7.4 percent.

According to the recent report of Al Hayat newspaper, Saudi Arabia's tourism depends mainly on local tourists, attracting foreign tourists comes as part of the country's future plans. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is one of the top countries in the world in religious tourism.

Saudi Arabia offers both natural and historical wonders, from the mountain resorts of Taif and the majesty of ancient Nabatean tombs to the multicolored coral reefs of the Red Sea. 

source:  Philippine Star