Eleven agencies tasked to lure investments into the country will focus
efforts on 10 target sectors to double foreign inflows by 2014.

The agencies, which include the Board of Investments (BoI) and the
Philippine Economic Zone Authority, will be drafting strategies to
harmonize marketing efforts under the first-ever Philippine Investment
Promotion Plan.

These target sectors are agro-industry, food processing, electronics
and chip manufacturing, business process outsourcing and information
technology, energy, mining, logistics, aviation, shipbuilding, and
tourism.

The crafting of the investment promotion plan, first announced in May
2009 and funded by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency, seeks
to have agencies work with instead of against each other to attract
foreign direct investments.

A draft has listed target sources of investments, investor facilitation
services offered in competing countries, and strategies such as sharing
a supplier database to support incoming ventures.

The steering committee has agreed to have the plan focus on 10
"opportunity sectors," said Bernardo F. Angeles Jr., who is the
assistant head of the technical working group.

"We then assigned a sector to an investment promotion agency with the
assumption that each is knowledgeable in a certain area given the type
of investments it handles," Angeles said in a telephone interview on
Friday without elaborating.

The sectoral strategies will then be used by all eleven agencies.
Common collateral materials will be made and information these agencies
give to interested investors will be made uniform.

"The target is to double [foreign direct investment] inflow in five years by 2014," Angeles said.

Foreign direct investments increased by almost half to $1.806 billion
last year, but still short of the $1.949 billion recorded in 2007,
central bank data showed.

The Philippines bagged only 2.5 percent of foreign direct investments
that went to Southeast Asia in 2008, while neighbors Indonesia,
Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam cornered 12-16 percent each, latest data
from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations showed.

Foreign direct investments, unlike portfolio investments that can leave
at the first sign of trouble, are generally useful whether things go
well or badly since these are placed in so-called brick and mortar
enterprises that generate jobs for thousands of Filipinos.

"This plan will assist the BoI given that our trade representatives are
lacking abroad. We have limited manpower. We are tapping other
investment promotion agencies to help," Angeles said.

The investment promotion plan, he added, also seeks to lessen confusion
confronting prospective investors on various investment sites and
procedures.

Sought for comment, the Joint Foreign Chambers (JFC) batted for a
higher investment target and offered information it was also compiling
on how to boost the country’s competitiveness.

Last year, the group identified sectors similar to those listed on the plan that could bring in sizeable investments.

"We held [focus group discussions] on all seven sectors. We’re going to
present [the findings] to the public on April 12," American Chamber of
Commerce of the Philippines Executive Director Robert M. Sears said in
a telephone interview on Monday.

"We’d like to have an exchange of notes [with the committee]," European
Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines Executive-Vice President Henry
J. Schumacher said in a separate telephone interview.

"A doubling of FDI levels in five years is not a ‘super’ target,"
Schumacher added. "Given that the Philippine share is very low, I think
we should go for a higher target".

Report Source: http://www.gmanews.tv/story/186786/rp-investment-promotion-plan-to-focus-on-10-sectors

MANILA, Philippines – A government think tank worries that the series of natural and economic calamities that visited the country last year has led to an increase in poor children that it now estimates to be higher than the 2006 estimate of 12.8 million. It did not give any dimension of the rise.

The statement is from the policy note “Child Poverty In The Philippines: More Children Suffer As Poverty Rises,” released by state-owned Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS). It was authored by PIDS senior research fellow Dr. Celia Reyes and supervising research specialist Aubrey Tabuga.

“Given the recent calamities, the food- and fuel-price shocks and the global financial crisis, it is expected that poverty among the general population, in general, and children, in particular, will further increase. This will be true not just for income poverty but for other dimensions, as well,” said the authors.

“A well-designed, well-targeted and sustainable social-protection system that can mitigate the impact of crises and calamities, and not just ad-hoc temporary assistance, should therefore be put in place,” they urged, observing that in times of difficulty due to poverty, crises and calamities, children, who are among the most vulnerable groups, suffer the most.

They also noted as “an alarming trend” in data on poverty that the poverty rate increased to nearly 33% in 2006 from 30% in 2003, a reversal of the downward trend in poverty during the 1985-to- 2000 period.

Further, the authors added the 2.9-percent increase in the percentage of the poor is equivalent to about 4 million additional poor people. This brings the total to roughly 27.6 million in 2006.

“With increased income poverty, children immediately suffer the consequences in terms of nutritional and health conditions, as well as schooling. This is because unlike adults, children are still in certain developmental stages where proper nourishment is necessary, and are most vulnerable to diseases.”

“Any reduction in income greatly affects the sustenance of their nutritional and health status. The same is true with their schooling, which becomes adversely affected as family resources become depleted.”

Poverty, the authors said, is more concentrated in rural areas. Of the 12.8 million estimated poor children in 2006, some 9.2 million are in rural areas, which means the poverty situation in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) and in Metro Manila must be addressed differently.

Based on official data, the study stated Metro Manila has the largest number of children considered informal settlers at 382,510, about 170,000 higher than the 2003 estimate, showing a 6-percentage-point increase. In 2006 1 out of 10 children in the metropolis are in squatter communities.

On the other hand, a large proportion of the number of children without access to electricity come from the Bicol region, Western Visayas and ARMM. In ARMM, some 5 out of 10 children have no access to electricity. “This justifies the need for more focused interventions to address spatial disparities.”

Report Source:http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/nation/03/08/10/calamities-lead-more-poor-children

BEIJING – Blogs, chatrooms and mobile phones have helped information
about Tibetan protests to stream out faster than ever, but China is
also harnessing technology, as well as fear, to stem the flow.

Internet users, journalists and campaign groups are all scrambling
for information as they try to build up an independent picture of
deadly protests and clampdowns in Tibet and elsewhere in China in the
past few days.

Jeremy Goldkorn, editor of Danwei.org, which monitors China’s media,
said that new technology has forced the authorities to promptly
acknowledge events like the Tibetan protests.

"They cannot lockdown a disaster anymore," Goldkorn told AFP.

"Before the Internet, it was possible in China to isolate an area
because ordinary people did not have access to information, but that is
not possible now."

Tenement Palm, a China blog, has translated conversations between
Chinese netizens on what are called microblogging sites, where short
messages from mobiles are published to selected friends or more widely.