DOTr doesn’t want to admit that jeepney fare hikes are coming

January 7, 2024

COMMENTARY

There is much to improve in making public mass transport safer, cleaner and more convenient but ‘modernization’ by making transport profitable for private capital is the wrong direction.

The right size for development?

March 9, 2023

The Marcos Jr administration’s rightsizing program goes in the direction of further weakening the government just when it is so needed to become bigger and better to transform the economy to serve the public interest.

“Wage hikes are harmful”: Kung ayaw maraming dahilan

March 6, 2023

It’s perplexing for the economic team to speak about workers and their wages as if they are a burden to the economy. It’s people who most of all create value in the economy and for whom the economy is for.

Will World Economic Forum folks believe Bongbong?

January 16, 2023

The administration’s trip is a self-serving junket at the people’s expense. If Marcos Jr speaks about so-called economic gains, he will be speaking untruths.

CREATE’s three mistakes

February 7, 2021

From a development perspective, the fundamental problem is that CREATE asks the wrong question: what CIT will attract foreign investment? This puts us in a mindless race-to-the-bottom where our fiscal policy is defined by what corporations want rather than what national development and upholding social and economic rights demands.

With Duterte’s TRAIN, poor pay higher taxes so rich can take home more

December 13, 2017

By Sonny Africa The Duterte administration’s Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) bill reportedly due for ratification by Congress this week burdens the poor with higher consumption taxes so that the rich can have higher take-home pay. The Department of Finance (DOF) used income tax gains for a few middle-class families as a smokescreen […]

Economic rights violations also worsen under Duterte admin

December 10, 2017

IBON Features – Contempt for human rights is fast becoming a Duterte administration trademark. Over 10,000 people, mostly poor, have reportedly been executed in its war against drugs. Extrajudicial killings, harassment and intimidation, illegal arrests and forced evacuation of communities have continued and recently started escalating. The victims include many opposing the government’s anti-people policies. Authoritarianism […]

2017 SONA: Change is not always for the better

July 25, 2017

Sonny Africa Among Pres. Rodrigo Duterte’s idiosyncrasies is preferring a vulgar stream-of-consciousness approach in his speeches. This is even for the annual state of the nation address (SONA) at the opening of Congress which is undoubtedly the government’s highest-profile policy speech of the year. The president’s choice is a matter of style but then this […]

President’s SONA can unite, but will likely divide

July 24, 2017

Sonny Africa Pres. Rodrigo Duterte started his term as a potentially powerful unifier of the nation, but he is now unfortunately its biggest source of division. Last year, he spoke of resuming peace talks with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), bringing all Moro groups together in an undivided peace process, and upholding […]