How competitive is the PH real estate industry?

The local real estate industry has experienced growth that is both fast and promising, but is this enough for them to be competitive in the ASEAN region and the world?

ANC On The Money

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

China offers ASEAN friendship, loans as sea tension bubbles

NAYPYITAW - China's Prime Minister Li Keqiang proposed a friendship treaty with Southeast Asian countries and offered $20 billion in loans on Thursday but held firm on the line that Beijing will only settle South China Sea disputes directly with other claimants.

China, Taiwan and four members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have competing claims in the sea where concern is growing of an escalation in disputes.

"China ... stands ready to become the first dialogue partner to sign with ASEAN a treaty of friendship and cooperation," Li told leaders at an East Asian summit in Myanmar.

The treaty is seen as an attempt by China to dispel any notion it is a threat and Li said China was willing to make pacts with more countries on good-neighbourliness and friendship.

Li also offered ASEAN countries $20 billion in preferential and special loans to develop infrastructure, an attractive proposition for a region struggling to fund the roads, ports and railways needed for growth.

Still, he reiterated China's resolve to safeguard its sovereignty and its position that maritime disputes should be settled bilaterally rather than collectively or through arbitration.

The Philippines, one of the ASEAN claimants, has irked China by seeking international arbitration over China's claims to about 90 percent of the South China Sea.

Philippine diplomatic sources were cool to China's treaty offer, saying it lacked substance and was similar to a 2012 Philippine proposal that China ignored.

ASEAN leaders hoped to persuade their giant neighbour to take a less bellicose approach to the overlapping claims when they met Li behind closed doors on Thursday.

But despite the backroom talk, ASEAN as a group has been reluctant to antagonise China.

"We remain concerned over the situation in the South China Sea," the group said its Chairman's Statement without mentioning China.

The Philippines and Vietnam have sought closer U.S. ties to counter what they see as China's aggression.

In May, China sent an oil drilling rig to waters claimed by Vietnam, sparking deadly anti-Chinese riots in Vietnam.

U.S. President Barack Obama, also in Naypyitaw for the East Asian summit, held his first formal meeting with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dong on Thursday.

"We very much share the belief that it is important for all countries in the region, large and small, to abide by rules based norms in resolving disputes," Obama said.

On Oct. 2, the United States decided to start easing a nearly four-decade lethal arms embargo on Vietnam. (Additional reporting by Manuel Mogato in MANILA, Matt Spetalnick in NAYPYITAW and Ben Blanchard in BEIJING; Editing by Jeremy Laurence and Robert Birsel)

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

PH is Asia's top performer in gender equality in workplace

MANILA – The Philippines is still among the top 10 best performing countries in promoting gender equality in the workplace, according to the World Economic Forum's 2014 Global Gender Gap report.

The Philippines ranked ninth overall out of 142 economies assessed by the World Economic Forum (WEF), which aims to measure the relative gaps between women and men in health, education, economy and politics.

Compared to ASEAN countries, the Philippines is way ahead of its neighboring nations, with Singapore, Laos and Thailand lagging behind at 59th, 60th and 61st place, respectively.

WEF said the Philippines is also the only country from the Asia-Pacific region that has closed both the educational attainment and health and survival gender gaps.

However, the country dropped eight places to 24 in economic participation, and seven notches down to 17th place in politics.

WEF said the Philippines is part of the top 10 on wage equality for similar work and legislators, senior officials and managers indicators, noting that the country "was led by a female head of state for 16 of the last 50 years."

Cory Aquino was president from 1986 to 1992, while Gloria Macapagal Arroyo served as president from 2001 to 2010.

WEF also noted that since 2008, the Philippines has seen an improvement in its overall score, except in 2014, which was due "to a decrease in the Health and Survival and Political Empowerment subindex scores."

The Philippines is also the second best country after Norway on the ability of women to rise to positions of enterprise leadership indicator, and the country with the highest percentage of firms with female participation in ownership.

The Philippines ranked fifth in last year’s WEF index.

This year, the Nordic countries of Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark remained the world’s most gender equal nations.

WEF said that while women are rapidly closing the gender gap with men, inequality at work will likely remain until 2095, adding that in the past nine years, the global gender gap in the workplace barely narrowed.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com