By ARNOLD PADILLA MANILA — “A President must be on the job 24/7, ready for any contingency, any crisis, anywhere, anytime.” “As a country in the path of typhoons… we must be as prepared as the latest technology permits to anticipate natural calamities when that is possible; to extend immediate and effective relief when it…
Arnold Padilla
Text Tax: An IMF Imposition That Could Blow in Arroyo’s Face
By ARNOLD PADILLA
The latest incarnation of the text tax comes in the context of an administration under pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to widen its revenue base. It was the IMF that first openly pushed the text tax idea in 2002 to address the government’s burgeoning budget deficit.
Amid Overpricing by Oil Firms, Repeal of Deregulation Law Now a Must
By ARNOLD PADILLA
No matter how oil firms deny the allegations that they are overcharging the consumers, the widespread public perception that oil companies are abusive and profit-hungry will remain. This will be the case as long as the oil industry is deregulated and oil companies are allowed to automatically increase their prices and at the same time not compelled to publicly divulge how they compute their price adjustments.
Arroyo’s Claim of ‘8 Million Jobs Created’ a Statistical Hocus-Pocus
In her recent State of the Nation Address, President Arroyo claimed to have created eight million jobs, or an average of a million jobs per year in the past eight years. But where exactly did this figure come from? A closer look at the government’s own data yields a statistical distortion.
US ‘Wish List’ Vs Philippine Constitution Behind American Lobby for Cha-Cha
The Americans, like the Europeans, have an inventory of what they call “barriers” in the Philippine Constitution that they want the Arroyo regime to remove through constitutional amendments. Meanwhile, the Constitution will have to conform with the Jpepa, the Philippine-Japan agreement, not the other way around. (Second of two parts)
Apart from Politics, Pressure from WTO, US, EU Drives Charter-Change Bid
The political dimension of charter change has dominated the national agenda. But the constant driving force behind all the attempts since the last decade to modify the Constitution has been the external pressure coming mainly from the WTO, the US, the EU and Japan to create the sort of policy environment that will allow globalization to fully thrive in the Philippines. (First of two parts)
Centralized Procurement of Imported Oil: A Doable Alternative to Reduce Prices
One of Ibon’s proposals is a system of centralized procurement of imported crude oil and refined oil products, a necessary step to ensure the steady supply of reasonably priced petroleum in the country. By Arnold Padilla Ibon Features It has now become obvious that the Arroyo administration does not have a credible program to lessen…
Service Contract Allows De Facto Foreign Control Over Malampaya
Looking at Service Contract 38 and its implementation, government has practically become ‘powerless’ over Malampaya, and is therefore not in the position to ensure that Malampaya serves the national interest. By Arnold Padilla IBON FEATURES The US$4.5-billion Malampaya Deepwater Gas to Power Project in Palawan (an island some 590 kms from Manila) is supposed to…