A record 400,000 Filipino seafarers may be deployed worldwide by the end of this year despite the crisis in Europe, according to projections of the Philippine manning industry, a government press release said.

Eduardo Manese, Joint Manning Group chairman, said the projected seafarers deployment would have an expected foreign currency remittance of about $4 billion to the Philippine economy.

JMG, which is the umbrella organization of the country’s crew management and overseas shipping industry, has vowed to strongly support and work together with the Department of Labor Employment and its line agencies in preserving the sector’s achievement as the top supplier of seafarers to the world’s merchant marine fleet.

Asian countries to create
reg’l rice reserve system

Asian countries agreed on the creation of a regional rice pool that they can use in case of emergencies and severe rice price fluctuations in the global market, President Benigno Aquino III said Saturday.

Aquiono, arrived Saturday night at Villamor Airbase in Pasay City from the 19th Association of South East Asian Nation Summit in Bali, Indonesia.

The creation of a rice reserve system in Asia is in response of the recent devastation by typhoons that resulted to massive flooding in Thailand, Cambodia and the Philippines that severely affected rice production, Aquino said.

‘Loan blockade’ pushed
against big corporations

Senator Ralph Recto yesterday said in a government press release that crony-owned or not, private corporations and their wealthy owners should be barred from getting shares from the loan portfolio of state banks.

This is to avoid a repeat of the alleged P660-million behest loan granted by Development Bank of the Philippines to former Marcos trade minister Roberto Ongpin. Recto said there would still be behest loans that could be obtained in the near future from state-owned banks like the DBP and the Land Bank of the Philippines unless a policy reform is adopted by state banking regulators.

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