NEWS & ARTICLES

A plastic-free future really starts with us — in our homes, in our place of work, and wherever we conduct business like stores and factories. We have already read about plastic leaching into our groundwater, and we hope for plastic-free fish and food, in general. What...

We all know the issues of the day: persistent inflation that affects customer spending, new technologies that disrupt how business gets done and how customers interact with brands, new products and services from new competitors, and a changing country demographic that challenges how we hire...

For Filipino small and medium enterprises (SMEs), access to financing remains one of the biggest challenges when trying to grow their business. Everything costs money — from labor to day-to-day operations — and your working capital can quickly dry up with one cash flow gap...

In a column entitled “The journey of MSMEs: Are we there yet?,” I discussed the challenges that MSMEs — Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises — face in their entrepreneurial journey and proposed recommendations for policy makers. This follow-up will focus on Women-owned/led MSMEs (WMSMEs). On...

I am so happy to have met an enlightened civil servant who shared his insights about climate change. After all, he is a Commissioner of the Climate Change Commission. Albert dela Cruz, Sr. is so interested in sharing his sci-entific explanations for climate adaptation. He...

Many economists think of scale and clustering as the only way to be food secure. Entrepreneurs tend to think differently. I was recently in Batanes where they seem to have no issues about food security. It is because they learned to deal with the scarcity...

When I learned that Sablayan, Mindoro Occidental was the site of the Sablayan Prisons and Penal Farm (SPPF), the Philippines’ largest penal colony with a sprawling 16,190 square meters, I promised myself that I would help, even in some small way, some of the 1,800+...

In recent years, the Philippines has been undergoing an extensive overhaul of its tax system. One such law is the CREATE Act, which was passed in 2021. Under CREATE (the Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises Act), the corporate income tax was lowered, and...

One of the essential skills that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) need to master in order to survive growing pains is the strategic use of the financial tools available to them. Beyond the day-to-day management of expenses and business revenue, SMEs are faced with the pressure...