Gov’t studying more frequent RTB offerings RETAIL TREASURY BOND (RTB) issuances could be staged more frequently by the government, the National Treasurer said. "We’d like to make it a program so it becomes a regular supply source for small investors and savers," Roberto B. Tan told reporters following yesterday’s T-bill auction. "There is demand and it is also good for small investors to always have a source of investments with meaningful returns," he added. Earlier in the day, First Metro Invesment Corp. Executive Vice President Roberto Juanchito T. Dispo said at a briefing that the government was looking at an RTB sale every semester. "The Treasury wants RTBs to be more predictive, as much as going to one every semester," he said, adding: "We are looking at amounts of P50 billion per tranche." FMIC served as arranger for the Treasury’s RTB sale last August. The government sold RTBs twice last year. In April, it raised $500 million from the sale of three- and five-year papers in dollar and euro-denominations. In August, it raised P97 billion from the sale of five-, seven- and ten-year RTBs. Mr. Tan said officials were also considering a swap of dollar-denominated bonds to global peso bonds. "We’re still figuring out market reception for it," he said.
SOME 30 priority measures have been identified by Cabinet officials as priority measures needing action by Congress, a Malacañang official yesterday said. The list, which the official said does not include new tax legislation, will be further trimmed to 25 before being submitted to President Benigno S. C. Aquino III for approval. A Cabinet workshop yesterday resulted in the initial list, Sec. Ricky A. Carandang of the Presidential Communication Development and Strategic Planning Office said. Mr. Aquino, he added, will decide what items will be included in Executive branch’s legislative agenda that is to be submitted during a Legislative Executive Development Advisory Council (LEDAC) meeting later this month. "The criteria [in choosing the bills] include [their] relevance to the [government’s] 16-point agenda," Mr. Carandang said, along with "impact on the largest number of people" and "doability" -- how easy it would be to get legislative approval. Mr. Aquino’s "Social Contract with the Filipino People" seeks to address poverty by weeding out graft and corruption in the bureaucracy and creating jobs, among others. The list of measures, said Mr. Carandang, have been clustered into five areas: human development; infrastructure development; economic development; sovereignty, security and rule of law; and good governance. "We did not discuss measures to increase taxes but mostly measures that might help revenue collections rather than [a] legislated increase in taxes," he added. The controversial reproductive health (RH) bill, however, is one of the 30 identified bills. The list "will roughly hew to what the President talked about during the State of the Nation address (SONA)," Mr. Carandang said. Among the measures listed in Mr. Aquino’s SONA last year were the fiscal responsibility, rationalization of fiscal incentives, anti-trust, national land use and whistleblower bills. Legislators, meanwhile, are preparing their own talking points for the LEDAC meeting, with leaders of both chambers of Congress saying these would be aligned to that of the Aquino administration. Both Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and House Speaker Feliciano R. Belmonte, Jr. have stated that the proposed antitrust law would be prioritized. Other than the antitrust law, the Senate priorities are said to include the Electricity Rate Reduction Act, National Telecommunications Commission Reorganization Act, Government Owned and Controlled Corporations Governance Act, the creation of a People’s Survival Fund under the Climate Change Act of 2009, and amendments to the Electric Power Industry Reform Act. The House priorities, meanwhile, include the Public-Private-Partnership Law as an amendment of the Build-Operate-Transfer Law, Anti-Money Laundering Act; Right to Information Bill and the RH bill. |
U.S. Stocks Retreat as Daylong Rebound Fails to Erase S&P 500 Index Loss U.S. stocks declined for a third day as a daylong advance that reversed most of a 100-point loss in the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell short of erasing all the losses spurred by concern Europe’s credit crisis may worsen. DuPont Co. and Duke Energy Corp. slumped at least 1.1 percent after announcing takeovers valued at more than $20 billion. Strayer Education Inc. led losses in for-profit education stocks, tumbling 23 percent after forecasting less profit than analysts estimated because enrollment plunged. Apple Inc. rallied 1.9 percent after analysts said Verizon Wireless’s introduction of the iPhone will boost sales. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index lost 0.1 percent to 1,269.75 at 4 p.m. New York time after losing as much as 0.7 percent after the cost to insure against sovereign defaults in Europe jumped to a record high. The Dow average lost 37.31 points, or 0.3 percent, to 11,637.45.
Two-year note yields touched the lowest in almost five weeks as the cost of insuring Portuguese bonds against default rose to a record. Treasuries yields extended a drop from Jan. 7, after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the labor- market recovery will be gradual and a report showed the nation’s employers added fewer jobs than forecast. The Fed bought $7.79 billion in Treasuries due from February 2018 to August 2020 as part of its plan to spur the economy. “There’s a spillover from Europe,” said Thomas Tucci, head of U.S. government bond trading at Royal Bank of Canada’s RBC Capital Markets in New York, one of 18 firms that trade directly with the Fed. “The front end of the market after Bernanke spoke on Friday realizes the Fed is not in any rush to remove accommodation, so it’s relatively well bid.” Ten-year yields dropped four basis points to 3.29 percent, at 5:08 p.m. in New York, BGCantor Market Data show, the first three-day decline since Nov. 30. The 2.625 percent security maturing in November 2020 rose 10/32, or $3.13 per $1,000 face value, to 94 15/32. |
Crude Oil Rises After Alaskan Pipeline Shutdown Cuts Production After Leak Crude oil rose after BP Plc and its partners in the Trans Alaska Pipeline System, which carries 15 percent of U.S. output, couldn’t say when production would return after the line was shut following a leak. Futures climbed 1.4 percent after the pipeline’s Jan. 8 closure forced companies to suspend 95 percent of production from the North Slope area. U.S. crude supplies fell 6.8 percent to 335.3 million barrels in the five weeks ended Dec. 31, according to the Energy Department. “The Alaska oil pipeline is getting considerable attention because it comes on the heels of a significant drawdown in U.S. crude-oil inventories over the past several weeks,” said John Kilduff, a partner at Again Capital LLC, a New York-based hedge fund that focuses on energy. Crude oil for February delivery increased $1.22 to settle at $89.25 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices are up 7.9 percent from a year ago. |
Sources: Bloomberg, Reuters, www.inquirer.net, www.philstar.com, www.bworldonline.com, www.cnnmoney.com
Jonathan Ravelas
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Rhys Cruz
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