 MANILA, Philippines — State-run Land Bank of the Philippines was named as “Asia’s Most Inclusive Bank” at the 2019 Financial Insights Innovation Awards (FIIA) by the International Data Corp., for its innovations that promoted financial inclusion in the Philippines.
Landbank said the award, given during a ceremony held recently at the Marina Bay Sands Convention Center in Singapore, was conferred in recognition of the bank’s Digital Onboarding System (DOBS). Out of 110 entries, Landbank is one of the 13 awardees and the only Philippine bank recognized in this year’s FIIA. The DOBS is a web application launched by Landbank in 2018 to reduce the time needed to open accounts and to simplify the account enrollment process for clients. “This project is a significant step towards streamlining our processes and making our branches more IT (information technology)-centric. DOBS will likewise play a central role in bringing our services to more unbanked and unserved areas, as we pursue our vision of promoting inclusive growth in the countryside,” said Landbank executive vice president Alan Bornas, who received the award. Read more: The Philippine Star  Hong Kong (CNN)President Donald Trump has warned that US tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese exports are unlikely to go away anytime soon — even if the two countries reach a deal to end their trade war.
"We're not talking about removing them, we're talking about leaving them for a substantial period of time," Trump said Wednesday. "Because we have to make sure that if we do the deal with China that China lives by the deal because they've had a lot of problems living by certain deals." The United States and China, the world's two biggest economies, are trying to negotiate a resolution to their trade dispute that escalated dramatically last year with both sides imposing new tariffs on huge portions of each other's exports. Read more: CNN Photo: CNN MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines is among the countries in Asia Pacific that is least exposed to a fall in Chinese demand arising from the trade war between the US and China, according to Moody’s Investors Service.
In a report, the debt watcher said the Philippines may post a softer decline in gross domestic product (GDP) growth amid the weakening global output, particularly the slowdown in China. Moody’s said the Philippines is ranked sixth least exposed to a fall in Chinese demand after Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Indonesia, while Hong Kong, Mongolia, Singapore, Vietnam and Taiwan are among the most exposed to a sustained slowdown in China. Read more: Philippine Star  Manila, March 16 (CNA) Officials from Taiwan and the Philippines broke ground Friday on a demonstration mushroom farm in the country's Baguio City, as part of a joint collaboration aimed at helping the Southeast Asian nation gain a deeper understanding of Taiwan's agricultural development and its mushroom industry.
The project, the first of its kind to be established by the two countries, aims to assist the Philippines with its button mushroom cultivation and also to explore export opportunities for Taiwan's agricultural equipment and materials. Read more: Focus Taiwan  Manila, March 13 (CNA) Taiwan will have to compete with China, the United States and countries in Europe if it plans to hire Filipinos as English language teachers, a Filipino-Chinese educator said recently.
The incentives to work in the U.S. are strong and include the possibility of obtaining a green card, while teacher salaries in China are also competitive, said Wilfred U. Tiu (張漢威), president of Trinity University of Asia in the Philippines. In the U.S., Filipinos do not have to struggle with a language barrier like they do in Taiwan and many of them have relatives there, Tiu said in an interview with CNA. He said schools in the U.S. and Europe are hiring many Filipinos to teach English, and demand is growing in the China market. Read More: Focus Taiwan  Despite a fall of US$500 (S$678) in average monthly rental prices, rents paid by expatriates in Singapore are still among the top 10 highest in Asia, a study by ECA International has shown.
According to the expatriate management and human resource consultancy, the average rental price of an unfurnished, mid-market, 3-bedroom apartment in areas commonly inhabited by international executives in Singapore was US$4,215 a month in September 2018. This is a drop of 1.3% compared to the previous year, and US$500 lower than in 2016. “Reductions in the population of non-residents in Singapore, a key driver of rental demand, has led to continued drops in rental prices for expatriates,” said Lee Quane, regional director – Asia at ECA International. Read More: Business Insider Singapore  According to JLL’s latest research, in 2019, Asia Pacific is the only region expecting growth in hotel transaction volumes, anticipating a total of USD 9.5 billion – a 15% lift from 2018. Developers and private equity firms were the biggest buyers in 2018, acquiring more than half of all the properties traded. Building on 2018, investment momentum is expected to accelerate as investors look to sell assets and ride the anticipated tourist boom. JLL expects that the most notable buyers in 2019 will be Pan-Asian private equity funds that raised capital last year but have yet to deploy it. These investors are considering putting their money on countries like Japan whose hotel market has become enticing and will remain buoyed by the Rugby World Cup and the Tokyo Olympics; Japan has already seen an 8.7% growth in tourism year-on-year. Meanwhile, Singapore’s hotel market has pulled in 7.0% more tourists last year and in China, tourism demand outstrips supply.
The growth of the tourism industry in these countries has also incited international and domestic investors to take notice of other Asian neighbours, including the Philippines. In 2018, there were 7.1 million international tourists who visited the Philippines, a 7.7% rise compared to 2017. Read more: Philippine Daily Inquirer Photo Source: Flickr  MANILA, Philippines – Property developer DoubleDragon Properties Corp. has teamed up with Alsons group to build a new industrial warehousing hub in Davao City, the fourth in its growing chain of portfolio of CentralHub-branded industrial property assets.
This Davao site, which will create 40,392 square meters of leasable industrial warehouse space by 2020, also marks the debut of DoubleDragon’s industrial leasing subsidiary CentralHub Industrial Centers Inc. in Mindanao... By 2020, the Company aims to complete at least 100,000 square meters of leasable industrial warehouse space across these sites. Beyond 2020, these eight CentralHub warehouse complexes can expand its leasable space to 400,000 square meters. Each hub will contain modern standardized multi-use warehouses suited for commissaries, cold storage, light manufacturing, and logistic distribution centers. Read more: Philippine Daily Inquirer Asia is the biggest hub for billionaires, with their number in the region set to rise above 1,000 by 2023, accounting for more than a third of the world’s billionaire population of 2,696.
Echoing the trends seen in previous editions of The Wealth Report, Asian countries will see the biggest growth in UHNWIs over the next five years. India leads with 39% growth, followed by the Philippines (38%) and China (35%). Of the 59 countries and territories in our forecasts, eight of the top ten countries by future growth are in Asia, with Romania and Ukraine taking the remaining spots. Read more: Knight Frank  Manila is the hottest luxury home market in the world, beating out the likes of Boston, Tokyo and Paris, property consultancy Knight Frank said.
Luxury prices shot up 11 per cent in 2018, as the capital city of the Philippines got a boost from a robust economy, shortage of luxury homes and increased appetite for them by wealthy foreigners living there. The ranking of 100 cities is based solely on how much their luxury home prices increased last year. Read more: Yahoo Philippines |
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The Philippine Trade & Investment Center in Taipei is the Commercial Affairs Section of the Manila Economic and Cultural Office and the representative office of the Philippine Department of Trade & Industry in Taiwan Archives
May 2019
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