New EODB law to impact 2020 Doing Business Survey

Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) Undersecretary Rowel S. Barba said on 10 October that the new Ease of Doing Business (EODB) Act can significantly affect the country’s rankings in the upcoming 2020 Doing Business (DB) Survey if government agencies strictly implement the law.

Speaking before public and private sector participants at the “Accelerating EODB Reform Initiatives for the Doing Business 2020 Strategy” workshop, Undersecretary Barba expressed confidence that the Ease of Doing Business/ Efficient Government Service Delivery Act can help the Philippines improve and even move forward in several indicators of the DB Survey Report.

“RA 11032 (EODB Act) is now in place. If we implement this law to the letter, there is no doubt we can close the gap between us and the frontier,” he said.

According to the World Bank Doing Business Survey, the distance to frontier (DTF) score benchmarks economies with respect to regulatory best practice, showing the absolute distance to the best performance on each Doing Business indicator. An economy’s distance to frontier is reflected on a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 represents the

MANILA -- The sales of automotive vehicles in September this year posted a 9.7-percent decrement to 31,116 units from 34,445 unit sales, a joint report released Thursday by the Chamber of Automotive Manufacturers of the Philippines (CAMPI) and Truck Manufacturers Association (TMA) revealed.

Both passenger car and commercial vehicle

THE Department of Energy (DOE) said Mindanao will need an additional of 10,400 megawatts (MW) of additional capacity by 2040 to be able to sustain its power demand.

However, DOE assistant secretary Redentor Delola, during the 2018 Mindanao Energy Investment Forum at the Grand Regal Hotel on Thursday, October 11, said Mindanao will still be able to meet its power requirement between before 2040.

At its current state, Delola said the Mindanao power grid still has more than enough reserves to meet requirements in the segments declined in sales by 10.2 percent and 9.4 percent, respectively, last month.

The passenger car segment sold a total of 9,441 units in September 2018, lower than the 10,516 units sold in the same month last year.

Sales of commercial vehicles in the previous month also slowed down to 21,675 units from 23,929 units in September coming years. There is currently a total of 3.48 gigawatt of installed capacity in Mindanao from 20 grid connected power plants and 33 embedded power plants. Coal-fired power plants accounts for 53 percent of the island’s power supply while the remaining comes from renewable energy (43%) and oil-fired power plant (7%)

He said should the additional 764.9 MW from committed power projects enter the Mindanao grid in the next two years, Mindanao will be enjoying a surplus of power supply to as much as 1,400 MW.

“After that, Mindanao 2017.

On the other hand, month-on-month sales improved by 2.6 percent in September from 30,313 units in August this year.

CAMPI President Rommel Gutierrez said vehicle manufacturers are bringing new models to the market to drive the growth of vehicle sales until the end of the year.

It was in August that CAMPI and TMA registered will really need additional capacity,” Delola said.

To address this looming problem and not to repeat the Mindanao power crisis four years ago, DOE is looking for power investors to put up new power plants in Mindanao.

Delola said their early campaign now for new power investors will help avoid any power crisis in the future.

He said they are expecting 1,332.43 MW of committed power projects to come in between 2018 to 2025. There are also 1,937.28 MW of indicative power projects that will hopefully push through and be established before its first growth in sales following eight straight months of decline in unit sales. “We remain optimistic that this trend will be sustained before the year ends,” Gutierrez said.

Meanwhile, sales from January to September 2018 still posted a decline of 13.8 percent to 261,057 units from 302,869 units sold in the same period last year. (PNA) 2025.

“We also have various supporting measures in place which facilitate the implementation of energy projects such as Executive Order (EO) No. 30 and the Ease of Doing Business Law,” Felix William B. Fuentebella, DOE Undersecretary, said.

The EO 30 creates the Energy Investment Coordinating Council, which streamlines regulatory procedures affecting energy projects. Meanwhile, the Ease of Doing Business Law prescribes three, seven, or 20 days action on requests made by investors or businesses.