NEWS & ARTICLES

“Unprecedented” is one word that we hear over and over again – unprecedented demands, challenges, threats, impacts, and the list goes on. Quoting the World Bank Group, what we are experiencing is “an unprecedented crisis, with devastating health, economic, and social effects felt around the...

Eleven years ago in September 2009, Tropical Storm “Ondoy”, internationally named as “Ketsana”, plunged many parts of Metro Manila (MM) into waist to rooftop-level floodwaters. The people of MM, especially those in the cities of Pasig, Quezon, Manila, Caloocan, Muntinlupa and Marikina lost their homes...

First, a look back at 2020. 2020 was unexpectedly a Year of SEVERE and MULTIPLE CRISES. We had and have a HEALTH Crisis. The COVID-19 Coronavirus Pandemic hit the world and the Philippines like a giant sledgehammer. Global statistics show over 20 million COVID-19 cases,...

(FIRST OF TWO PARTS) Cellphones and coronavirus are icons of the 21st Age of Globalization. Six ages of globalization of humankind preceded the 21st C digital era however. Between robots and humanoids taking over our species, and the decimation of the human race by a...

Sustainable finance is more than simply issuing green, social, and sustainability bonds. More broadly, it refers to a process of taking environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations into business decisions – particularly on investment and lending. Environmental considerations usually refer to climate change, deforestation, and...

I have seen many Facebook groups, rather FB support groups for Restaurant owners, business owners in general and just about every SME who has founded a business the past decades or maybe even just a few months before COVID started. And all of us, myself...

Mean and Wicked Many of us will long remember how mean and wicked COVID 19 is. For one, it is insidious. Except for a few which acted with alacrity, most nations were caught with their pants down – blissfully unware of the serious situation in...

There is no turning back. This is the NEW NORMAL. We must accept it and get used to it and most of all, adjust our business, job or career to adapt to it. When the lockdown was announced for the National Capital Region (NCR), I...

Several observations can be gleaned from the recent poverty survey (2018), especially about two clusters of regions: “North” for Northern Luzon and “South” for Mindanao. On the average, in 2015, the North has half the poverty of the South, and lower than the national incidence....