Lawmakers yesterday urged the Department of Tourism to adopt a more attractive program to promote medical tourism in the country, a press release from Congress said.

Rep. Rufus Rodriguez (Cagayan De Oro City, 2nd District) author of House Resolution 2025, said foreign nationals, Overseas Filipino Workers and Filipinos living abroad are among the potential targets of medical tourism.

Rodriguez said the DOT should implement proper programs to attract foreigners and Overseas Filipino Workers to get health care, medical, surgical, aesthetic and other wellness needs in the Philippines to boost the country's medical tourism industry.

Peso, PSEi improve

MANILA – Positive news on US’ growth prospects lifted both the Philippines’ peso and stocks yesterday.

The local unit closed P0.22 better to P42.615 against the dollar from the previous day’s P42.835 finish. It opened at P42.66, an improvement from day-ago’s P42.77 start.

Its strongest for the day is P42.60 while weakest stood at P42.71 resulting to an average of P42.65, an improvement from Thursday’s P42.84. Total volume went down to $935.56 million from the previous day’s $1.32 billion. Relatively, trading at the Philippine Stock Exchange were all up at the end of this week boosted by the improvement in jobs markets in the US as well as factory output and increase in building permits.

Lower remittance seen

MANILA – Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp. projects a lower expansion for inflows from Filipinos abroad this year and considers this as a reason for monetary officials to further implement an easing bias on their policy stance in March.

In a research note penned by its economist Trinh Nguyen, HSBC eyes a five percent growth for remittances for 2012, lower than the 7.2 percent it posted in 2011.

It cited that the robust growth of remittances last year, which was higher than central bank’s seven percent projection, was an important factor for the economy as this continued to drive private consumption.