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SC justice: I never endorsed renovation Second of Two Parts Supreme Court Associate Justice Marvic Mario Victor Leonen had wan-ted the cottage assigned to him in Baguio City renovated according to his specifications, but budget restrictions prevented him from having his way, a source in the court told The Manila Times. Marvic Leonen Leonen was assigned Cottage G in the Supreme Court Compound, which used to be designated to Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio. Supreme Court magistrates and their staff stay in the compound’s cottages during the court’s annual Summer Session in Baguio. Leonen had requested the court to have Cottage G renovated, and on November 18 submitted an estimate of P4,970,623.71 for the project to the court’s Maintenance Division. The blueprint of the cottage that The Manila Times was able to obtain shows it has three floors with three living areas, a basement, six bedrooms and a master bedroom with study room, four toilets and bath, several lanai, and ...

The private sector will sign today, November 27, a deal with the government to buy up to 3 million doses of the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) vaccine developed by the British pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca. Presidential Adviser for Entrepreneurship and Go Negosyo founder Jose Maria “Joey” Concepcion 3rd will sign the agreement on behalf of the private sector. Concepcion said the P600-million deal will help more than 1 million Filipinos. “We’re targeting 2.5 million to 3 million doses which will help 1.5 million people in the upper end of the range since the vaccine requires two doses. We want to ensure that the Philippines will not be left behind when the vaccines come out in 2021,” Concepcion said. The doses will be donated to the Department of Health (DoH), which will handle its distribution. Concepcion said half of the donations will be set aside for government frontliners, and the other half for regular and contractual employees in private companies. Secretary Carlito ...

The country’s balance of payments (BoP) posted a 10-year high surplus of $3.43 billion in October, bringing the year-to-date tally to more than $10 billion, according to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP). Central bank data released on Thursday showed that the amount was wider than the $2.10-billion and $163-million surpluses a month and a year ago, respectively. It was also the biggest since the $3.95-billion surplus in November 2010. In a statement, the Bangko Sentral said the October surplus “reflected mainly the BSP’s income from its investments abroad, the national government’s foreign currency deposits with the BSP, and inflows from the BSP’s foreign exchange operations.” It was partly offset by the government’s foreign debt service, it added. The latest monthly amount boosted the surplus to $10.31 billion in the first 10 months, higher than the $5.73-billion surplus in the same period in 2019. The tally is still larger than the BSP’s revised forecast of a $600-million s...

The coronavirus pandemic caused delays in the government’s massive infrastructure program rollout, a key official of the program said on Thursday. “It (pandemic) had a huge impact. We practically lost at least six months for infrastructure. MANILA TIMES FORUM (From top left) Presidential Adviser on Flagship Programs and Projects and President and Chief Executive Officer of the Bases Conversion and Development Authority Vivencio ‘Vince’ Dizon; PDP Architects CEO Cathy Saldaña; Manila Times President and CEO Dante ‘Klink’ Ang 2nd; and Damosa Land Inc. Vice President Ricardo ‘Cary’ Lagdameo talk about ‘Maximizing and Monetizing: Structures and Spaces’ during the Manila Times online forum on Nov. 26, 2020. SCREENGRAB FROM FACEBOOK LIVE And when I say infrastructure, I’m not just talking about public infrastructure. Our private sector partners have also lost that amount of time or maybe even more in terms of development,” said Presidential Adviser on Flagship Program and Projects and B...

Foreign portfolio investments returned to the positive territory in October after recording net inflows for the first time in eight months, data from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) showed on Thursday. Last month’s $439.46-million net inflows of these investments, or “hot money” — so called because of how easily these go in and out of the economy — reversed September’s $493.65-million net outflows. The latest amount was the widest since the $762.82-million inflows in January last year and higher than the year-ago inflows of $104.53 million. The October inflows resulted from inflows of $1.35 billion and outflows of $913.49 million. In a statement, the BSP said the $1.35-billion registered investments for the 10th month were more than double or 127.8 percent bigger than the $594.02 million recorded last month. The bulk, or 78.8 percent, of these investments were placed in Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE)-listed securities: information technology companies; banks; holding firms;...

A UNIVERSITY of the Philippines (UP) Manila graduate topped this year’s Physician Licensure Examination, nine years after acing the nursing board exams. Jomel Garcia Lapides had a rating of 88.67 percent, the highest among the more than 3,500 who took the tests, according to the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC), which released the results Thursday. Lapides was also No. 1 in the Nurses Licensure Examination in 2011, when he garnered 88.40 percent. Tiffany Grace Uy, also a UP Manila graduate who went viral in 2015 for having the highest grade point average in the state university’s history, was in fifth place with 88.08 percent. Uy graduated magna cum laude from the UP College of Medicine last July.| Patrick Joseph Amunategui Mabugat from University of Saint La Salle and Adrian Emmanuel Diago Tevez from University of Santo Tomas (UST) shared the second spot with 88.58 percent. Henrick Ryan Chua Fong of UST was third with 88.33 percent. Cebu Institute of Medicine had a 100-...

The Philippine economy could shrink by 9.9 percent this year before bouncing back in 2021, a local bank executive said on Thursday. “Our forecast for Philippine economic growth is that for full-year 2020, we’re still expecting a -9.9 percent,” Raul Martin Pedro, Security Bank Corp. executive vice president and treasurer, said at a forum. According to him, fourth-quarter numbers would be not significantly better, since these would come from the 11.5-percent contraction of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) in the third quarter. “If we look at the nominal levels of economic activity, we would be hovering around P4.1 to P4.3 trillion in terms of GDP,” Pedro said. He also said Google and Apple data showed that people’s mobile phone movement in the country were still about 40 percent of the pre-coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic level of activity. “So with that, we believe there’s still a lot of catching up to do,” he added. Pedro’s outlook was worse than the government’s revis...