|
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  MANILA, Philippines (Update 1, 4:36 p.m.) — Eleven of the cities in Southeast Asia with cleanest air are in the Philippines, with Calamba in Laguna taking the top spot.
This is according to Switzerland-based IQ AirVisual and Greenpeace’s 2018 Air Quality Report, which measured the amount of fine particulate matter known as PM2.5 (µg/m³) in cities in 73 countries. PM2.5 is a particulate matter (ambient airborne particles), which measures up to 2.5 microns in size and causes a wide range of short and long term health effects. Common sources of PM include combustion as well as through other pollutants reacting in the atmosphere. The Philippines ranked 48th on the list with an average of 14.6 µg/m³ of PM2.5, classified as “moderate.” The country fared better than its Southeast Asia counterparts such as Singapore, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia. Read more: Philippine Star  MANILA, Philippines–Seventeen tycoons from the Philippines led by property tycoon Manuel Villar Jr. landed on Forbes Magazine’s 2019 list of the wealthiest people on the planet.
Villar topped the list of billionaires from the Philippines for the first time. Read more: Philippine Daily Inquirer |
ABOUT PTIC TAIPEI
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
March 2019
|