With their unique and distinct features, the BCDA-administered freeports and special economic zones remained to be among the country’s prime investment locations this year—helping sustain the country’s socio-economic and tourism progress.
The thrust of BCDA in expanding economic opportunities for Filipinos is echoed within BCDA-administered zones : the Clark Freeport Zone in Pampanga, the John Hay Special Economic Zone in Baguio City, the Poro Point Freeport Zone in La Union, and the Bataan Technology Park in Morong.

The Clark Freeport and Special Economic Zone in Pampanga province, with an area of 26,000 hectares, is a fully-integrated logistics, tourism, manufacturing, and agro-industrial development. Within it is Clark International Airport, a 2,367-hectare aviation complex designated as the new international gateway for the Philippines. The Poro Point Freeport Zone in La Union is a prime location for investments and tourism in North Luzon with its airport, seaport and tourism facilities. The John Hay Special Economic Zone in Baguio City is a tourism complex, a multiple-use forest watershed and a human resource development center. The Bataan Technology Park in Morong, Bataan is planned for an industrial and tourism development.
BCDA's subsidiaries managing these freeports—namely the Clark Development Corporation (CDC), John Hay Management Corporation (JHMC), Poro Point Management Corporation (PPMC) and the Bataan Technology Park, Inc. (BTPI), respectively, continue to offer opportunities for investment and tourism to the local and international communities and, in effect, guaranteed employment to thousands of Filipinos.

Easily accessible via the Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway (SCTEX), these economic growth centers in Central and Northern Luzon have proven to be major drivers in steering the nation towards socioeconomic development.

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 Source:  http://www.bcda.gov.ph/freeport_and_ecozones

Manila, February 22, 2016 --- The Professional Regulation Commission and the Professional Regulatory Board of Real Estate Service denied the Petition for the Renewal of Accreditation of the Philippine Institute of Real Estate Service Practitioners (PhilRES), INC as the Accredited and Integrated Professional Organization with the issuance of Resolution No. 05, Series of 2016, dated January 21, 2016.

The said Resolution provides that PhilRES failed to amend and ratify the contested provisions of its Bylaws specifically on the election rules and chaptering and to comply with its mandate under R.A. No. 9646 (Real Estate Service Act) to register, unite and integrate all licensed and registered real estate practioners. Further, the default on the part of PhilRES to live up to the duties and responsibilities entrusted by the PRC and the Board warranted loss and confidence; thereby, furnishing the latter ample grounds not to give due course to the Petition.
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Under the present circumstance where there is no existing AIPO for the real service profession, the Commission hereby suspends the imposition of Certificate of Good Standing requirement for the renewal of the Professional Identification Cards of all real estate service practioners.




Source:  PRC Official Website -- http://www.prc.gov.ph/news/?id=4115 

ALLOWING NON-DEGREE HOLDERS OF B.S. REAL ESTATE MANAGEMENT TO BE ADMITTED TO THE LAST AND FINAL CHANCE TO THE REAL ESTATE BOARD EXAM FOR BROKERS ON FEBRUARY 28, 2016 AND APPRAISERS ON APRIL 8, 2016

​Allowing Holders of Baccalaureate Degrees other than BS Real Estate Management to be admitted to the LAST AND FINAL CHANCE ...


http://www.prc.gov.ph/prb/default.aspx?id=40&content=295
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​http://www.prc.gov.ph/uploaded/documents/PRB_RES%20Reso2016_066_021216_e.pdf


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FINALLY from the Davos Economic Forum, it was stated that the biggest threat to the world economy is the effects of climate change. Why did it take them so long?

When the ski resorts are not operational and the rich Swiss cannot ski away, and banks refuse to finance their operations because there is no snow, they cry wolf and came out with a big statement, the biggest threat to global economics is Climate Change.

While I was Councilor for International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Resources (IUCN), our treasurer, who headed a big Swiss Bank, told us that – and that was in 1998.

I served in the IUCN Council for eight year from 1996 when I was elected in Montreal, and re-elected in Amman, Jordan in 2000. When we proposed that the Spratly islands be made into an International Peace Park, the Chinese delegation announced in the plenary that they will cooperate and collaborate with the Philippines in making it such.

Well, they invaded our island. As I ended my term in 2004 in Bangkok, we adopted a resolution, banning Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) until proven safe beyond reasonable doubt. The plenary was in rowdy, happy and festive mode. Delegates came up to us with hugs and congratulatory statements. It was a good way to end my term, but that did not stop our policies and issues on conservation. It strengthened more our resolve.

Well, it took them too long because they refused to listen and was after the bottom line – profit and more developments.

According to report from Davos, it is in their security interest to combat climate change. This is big business talking after their balance sheets have been affected, they see the light that the environment is affecting their oligopolies and their business empires.

Only when their economies and personal business is affected will they ACT! Strange as the planet continues to get battered by calamities that affect all.

There are over 3 billion people who rely on the ocean bounty for protein and other marine species for food. The numbers are growing, as well as the cost. Yet, the problems will be the supply of species in the oceans, as of last count, almost half are gone. Ocean acidification is killing our planet. The ocean is alive and the species that occupy it rely on the ocean’s healthy ecology.

Imagine the day when the ocean is dead? When nothing exists except plastics and waste and the dead zones and gyres finally fill the oceans with toxic waste? This is not a joke and can happen! From the days of the great whales to what we have now is a sea change of drastic proportions. From the Davos Economic Forum, it was also reported the 2015 was the hottest year recorded.

El Niño has affected the Pacific with warmer seas, droughts, and storms. It has also affected the Northern countries with the coldest weather, freezing weather that kills everything and puts them in suspended animation.

Well today, their market is gone. The price of commodities are at the lowest levels. Oil is at 28 dollars a barrel, Copper and other minerals are down and falling.

The supply of food is short and it will continue to affect the people and the planet, so with the shortage of water and droughts.

Poverty, famine and more Arab springs will continue.
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The balance sheets of the richest corporations will continue to bleed with red ink and losses. The road ahead is not easy , but can be proactive only if we all take a firm stand and put all our resources to combat climate change and win this war to save our planet.

The Philippines as we know, is made up of 7,107 islands categorized into three main geographical divisions which are Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao, as we were taught in school since first grade. But all that may change, as the National Mapping and Resource Information Authority (NAMRIA) may have discovered 400 more islands in the country.


With NAMRIA’s latest discovery, the Philippines may now have 7,500 islands in total, since the official count of 7,107 islands in 1945 by the Gazetteer of the Philippine Islands.


Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Secretary Ramon Paje said this during a speech at the Philippine Environment Summit at the SMX Convention Center in Pasay City on February 10.




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“Hindi lang tayo 7,101 islands, 7,500 islands na tayo,” Paje said, before summit participants.

NAMRIA confirmed that the agency discovered more than 400 islands using the interferometric synthetic aperture radar (IFSAR) technology conducted in 2013.

Under the DENR, NAMRIA is the agency responsible for providing map-making services to the public, and the central mapping agency, depository, and distribution facility for natural resources data in the form of maps, charts, texts and statistics.

Jose Cabanayan Jr., deputy administrator of NAMRIA, said that majority of the newly-discovered islands are found in Mindanao.

Cabanayan said that to be considered an island, a landmass should be above sea level and high tide at any given time, and can support either plant or animal life, or both.

“Kailangan nakalutang ang lupa at above high tide,” he said.

Cabanayan said that NAMRIA has completed ground validation in Luzon and is currently working in Visayas.

Ground validation is set to be completed by the end of the year, including in Mindanao, Cabanayan disclosed.

Of the 7,107 islands in the Philippines, only about 2,000 islands are inhabited and 5,000 islands still have no names.

Manila, the capital, is located in Luzon island, the Philippines’ largest island and the world’s 15th largest island at 109,965 square kilometers. It is also the 4th most populated island in the world with over 47 million people.


Manila Bulletin Feburary 13, 2016 --  http://www.mb.com.ph

WHILE economic volatility now shakes global markets a bit, the Philippine property industry stands to benefit from still positive investor sentiment, especially as the local office sector enjoys strong demand from outsourcing foreign companies, industry analysts have noted.

“Although it faces a lot of threats and risks, sentiments toward [Philippine economic] growth remain positive within the next one to three years due to its strong underlying fundamentals,” said Michael McCullough, co-founder and managing director of KMC Mag Group, the Philippine associate of global property advisor Savills. “Aside from this, the ASEAN integration is also expected to stimulate various economic sectors and create further investment opportunities for the country. Real estate is the biggest gainer from this positive sentiment, and this is expected to continue through the rest of 2016.”

In a separate report, Cushman and Wakefield shared the same optimistic sentiment, as it described Manila’s property market as “still in the fast lane,” driven by the robust business process outsourcing (BPO) sector, on the back of low inflation and sustained policy accommodation.

“The BPO sector will continue to propel the Philippines’ economy as one of Asia’s strongest performers; at the same time, accelerated implementation of public-private partnership projects and spending related to the May 2016 presidential election will lift growth,” Cushman and Wakefield said.

Office Sector Thrives
While the party goes on for the local real estate industry, the office sector, particularly the landlords, is the happiest, according to McCullough, who specializes in commercial real estate brokerage.
He said a record-breaking take-up of Premium and Grade A office spaces in Metro Manila was seen in the third quarter of 2015, reaching 231,412 square meters.

“Metro Manila’s office market shows no signs of slowing down,” he noted. “As in the previous years, this demand is mainly driven by the ferocious take-up of the outsourcing industry and this is expected to continue well into 2016.”
McCullough said the landlord’s market would remain in 2016, given the unwavering vigor of the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector.

He cited US-based firm Datamark’s projection that the Philippines would rise to the top spot of the world’s BPO destination ranking, as the sector is seen to grow further this year.

Calling it the biggest job provider in the private sector, McCullough said the BPO industry’s compound annual growth rate now stands at 27.7 percent over the past decade.

As such, McCullough anticipates a continuation of a landlord’s market, and that vacancy and rental rates would remain stable despite increasing supply in office space.

This year, he pointed out, the Bonifacio Global City (BGC) would absorb most of the demand, since it would host most of the new supply of office space.

“BGC’s rental growth might slightly ease, and vacancies might also increase this year,” McCullough said. “But we believe it will soon stabilize, as firms are forced to move here due to the lack of space in major CBD Makati.”

Cushman and Wakefield echoed such projection, saying slower rental growth is expected this year, especially for BGC, which has the lion’s share of new office developments.

“Nonetheless, we expect strong take-up levels to sustain high office occupancies and record rents, and continued increases in capital values this year.” Cushman and Wakefield noted.

Condo Market Slows
Meanwhile, McCullough said 2016 would be a challenging year for the residential segment, particularly on the condominium market, as a rental growth and demand for mid-end and high-end units might slow down due to oversupply.

In an interview with The Manila Times, Claro Cordero Jr., head of research of another global property advisor, Jones Lang Lasalle, pointed out that the demand for residential developments is not necessarily the issue, but rather the mismatch between the rate of project completions and demand.

“Because of the tremendous amount of supply completed, maybe in the last five years, that’s the reason why seemingly, the market has softened,” said Cordero. “A lot of people have that impression because of supply pressures, but I don’t think that’s the scenario. I think the demand for condominiums remains to be strong. It’s just that the rate of growth of completion of condominium developments is much faster than the rate of new demand being generated.”

Cordero noted said there would come a time when the market eventually fully absorbs this excess inventory.

“I think the ideal scenario maybe around four to five years and the market will be fully stabilized,” he said.

But then, McCullough pointed out that despite the expected slowdown in the residential condominium market, a massive opportunity for the lower housing segments remains, since this is where the backlog is.

“There is a massive opportunity for economic, socialized, and low-cost housing units, as it is where most of the backlog comes from,” he stressed. “The projected demand for these units from 2012-2030 is at 6.5-million households.”

Consumption-Backed
As for the retail market, private consumption remains one of the strongest drivers of the Philippine economy, backed by overseas remittances and a robust service sector, according to McCullough.

“With the upcoming elections, we expect further boost in consumption during the first two quarters of the year, translating to higher sales and earning opportunities for the retail market,” McCullough said. “At the same time, the growing income of the Filipino household is also causing a shift in lifestyles.”

He noted that Filipinos, especially from the young working middle-class, are quickly “upgrading their preferences,” thus, opening more opportunities for new and existing brands to enter the market.

“Some developments to look out for this year include the opening of the Manila Bay Resorts Mall and the expansion of The Podium and Mall of Asia,” he said.

Hotels and Leisure
Despite issues in airport infrastructure, Philippine tourism continues to gro.w, according to McCullough, with the ongoing Asia Pacific integration, aside from the thriving eco-tourism and BPO industries.

“We see strong opportunities in the mid-scale and budget hotel segments,” he said. “With the rising number of domestic tourism due to the growing income of the Filipinos, there is opportunity in developing better quality of supply for these segments outside of Metro Manila and, closer to eco-tourism hotspots such as Palawan, Davao, and Cebu. The development of the Clark area is also another opportunity to explore.”

As for the luxury segment, prices might be going down, with some supply coming online.

“While the increased competition may affect investors, the silver lining is that it makes the Philippines more competitive in the tourism sector, as its prices are currently higher compared to neighbors, such as Thailand.”

The most-awaited luxury hotel development to open this year, he cited, is the Shang at the Fort.


January 31, 2016 9:09 pm/by CATHERINE TALAVERA, REPORTER AND MARICOR ZAPATA, DESKMAN/http://www.manilatimes.net

Robinsons Land thinks there is still considerable room for growth within the country's vibrant real estate market, amid concerns of peak condo pricing and mall saturation in Metro Manila.

The best indicator?

The developer foresees its permanent, full-time managerial and support employees to increase in the fiscal year to 2,865 from its end-September 2015 level of 1,898. That represents a hefty 50-percent jump in employee count in just a year for a company known for its conservatism.

For a longer time-frame, Robinsons Land's "regular" manpower count (as opposed to the contractual force, which is nearly three times more) was only 1,818 in 2014.

In a report to shareholders ahead of the March 9 meeting, the mid-market developer also said it was committed to completing eight new malls within the next two years as well as expanding three more.

It currently has 40 shopping malls, nine of which are in Metro Manila, generating nearly half of Robinson Land's over P19.7 billion revenue stream in the last fiscal year.

Of the P17 billion the company has allocated for capital expenditures for this fiscal year, a little over half would be spent for the construction of malls, office buildings mainly for call centers, and hotels.

The other half is being allocated to develop more residential subdivisions and to acquire more lands, mainly in the provincial cities.

The company said that it was, by the end of fiscal year 2015, in various stages of negotiations to acquire 85 hectares of land scattered in key cities.


By: Victor C. Agustin/January 25, 2016 2:04 PM/http://www.interaksyon.com

Many “pundits” some years back thought that the business- process outsourcing (BPO) will be a transient global phenomenon. Today, about 15 years later, the BPO industry in the Philippines remains growing and expanding across the country.

BPO is a product of globalization of labor markets. Beyond the realm of the Ricardian comparative advantage where large businesses build scale economies with “cheap labor” abroad, the motivation for BPO is also inspired by Michael Porter’s competitive advantage. As such, scale enterprises in wealthier countries migrate some of their work to “cheaper” countries that similarly (if not far better) have the same level of skills on the work required. One example of specialized skill is customer service, where the Philippines has a vast pool of hospitality equipped and English-speaking labor force. This led to the birth of the BPO-customer-service industry in the Philippines. Labor force employed in the BPO industry grew from more than a quarter-of-a-million Filipinos in 2006 to an estimated 1.07 million in a span of eight years (IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines, or IBPAP, 2014). This contributes to about 2.3 percent to 2.7 percent of the employed labor force in the country, and the revenues earned by the industry is more than 5 percent of the economy’s nominal GDP in 2014.


‘Call centers’
BPO can be classified into several common lines of work: contact centers (often termed as “call centers” in the Philippines), back office knowledge-process outsourcing (KPO) (e.g., payroll, order processing and management); information-technology outsourcing (ITO) (e.g., cloud enabling, software and database management); health care (e.g., medical transcription), animation, and game development. IBPAP’s figures show that in 2014 more than half (64 percent) of all the BPO employees are employed in contact centers, and a third of the BPO’s labor force are in the emerging KPO, ITO and health-care services. The majority of the outsourced work comes from the North American market (77 percent), while the rest come from European and Asia-Pacific regional markets.

The contact centers, which are the major players in the BPO industry, can be further divided into technical-support service (e.g., helping customers with their malfunctioning gadgets); travel and hospitality (e.g., helping customers regarding hotel reservations), health care and health sciences (e.g., providing details of medical coverage); and financial/insurance services (e.g., credit-card or debit-card inquiries or processing requests for insurance claims).


Impact on economy and continuous expansion
Beyond employment and GDP, the BPO industry has produced extensive multiplier effects. This can be seen through tax revenues earned, alongside with the increased consumption of various goods and services (Culaba, 2014). It also indirectly generates employment by spurring the growth of employment in industries that produce basic commodities (Tholons, 2011). It also improves general welfare since the higher incomes earned by the industry (which on average is about more than half of the minimum wage) allows workers to increase consumption not only of basic commodities, but also of leisure and other higher-priced commodities. Furthermore, the yearly expansion of the industry also boosted demand for office space, helping increase real estate values. Lamudi estimated that in 2014 alone 80 percent to 90 percent of the growth in office space are occupied by the BPO industry. Other forecasts reveal vacancy rates in office spaces will remain low for the next years due to the rapid expansion of the industry (Colliers Int’l Philippines, 2014). Moreover, the industry also has diffusing effect in real estate outside Metro Manila. Other cities, dubbed as the Next Wave Cities, like Cebu, Bacolod and Clark have also experienced the BPO expansion (IBPAP, 2014).


Challenges ahead
IN an interview with Jonathan de Luzuriaga, former executive director for Industry Affairs of the IBPAP and presently the president of the Philippine Software Industry Association (PSIA), he mentioned several challenges that lay ahead of the industry. These are overseas employment opportunities attracting fresh graduates and the currently employed BPO workers; fiscal incentives offered by the country versus the competitive offers coming from rival countries, like the Latin American (e.g., Costa Rica) and Asia-Pacific countries; and the contribution of academic institutions to help build a BPO-ready work force. In terms of fiscal incentives, Senate Bills 35 and 987 (both seeking to reduce or repeal the tax incentives of BPO companies), threatens to diminish the competitiveness of the Philippines’s ability to attract more BPO activities. On the other hand, despite having tie-ups between universities with BPOs in terms of preparing graduates to be BPO-ready, there still has been no formal integration of BPO-specific education in the top tiered universities.
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There is definitely a need for the incoming administration to provide support to the BPO industry in responding to these challenges.  At the current rate of growth, the industry will most likely match the revenues received from remittances in the next three years. We believe that, despite its current growth spurt, the best is yet to come for the industry. It is a midnight sun that is yet to set.


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By Gervy Biagtan/ January 28, 2016/  http://www.businessmirror.com.ph/the-bpo-midnight-sun
Gervy Biagtan is a lecturer at the Economics Department of ADMU and is a director for Process Improvement at TelePhilippines Inc.