Oil drops nearly $1 on economic gloom - 1

US crude for February delivery fell 93 cents to settle at $41.70 a barrel, while London Brent crude fell 97 cents to $44.89 a barrel.

Oil prices have dropped more than $100 a barrel since July as a global financial crisis has cut consumer and business energy demand, threatening to shrink total world oil usage for the first time in 25 years.

A US government report on Thursday showed the number of people remaining on jobless rolls last week rose to a 26-year high, even as new claims for unemployment benefits slipped.

Adding to the economic gloom, Wal-Mart Stores Inc, which accounts for a 10th of US retail spending, reported a disappointing sales performance in December and cut its earnings outlook.

Oil prices tumbled on Wednesday after the US Energy Information Administration's weekly report showed crude stocks rose last week by 6.7 million barrels, more than seven times the 900,000-barrel increase analysts had expected.

"Brent is done going under $40, but WTI (US crude) is a different animal altogether ... crude stocks in the Midwest are very high because Cushing is a landlocked base with pipes that only go in one direction," Christopher Bellew of Bache Financial said.

Ref: dailyinquire

Economy grows 4.6% in Q3 amid crisis

Gross domestic product (GDP) in the third quarter grew 4.6 percent from a year earlier, despite the global financial crisis, government data showed Thursday.

The economy expanded a seasonally adjusted 0.9 percent in July to September from the second quarter.

The government has revised second quarter GDP growth to an annual 4.4 percent from the previously announced 4.6 percent.

Jonathan Ravelas, chief market strategist, at Banco de Oro Universal Bank said: "This is good and it's better than my forecast of 4.4 percent. Quite unexpected as the quarter was the height of the US financial crisis."

Nicholas Bibby, economist at Barclays Capital said: "It came out better than expected. We've been looking for 4.0 percent (year-on-year). We thought that given the surge in consumer price inflation through the third quarter it would have had a big drag on private consumption.

"Private consumption may be a bit stronger than what we've thought and the government did increase public spending through the third quarter. Overall though, growth is expected to slow. We're looking for GDP growth of around 3.0 percent next year."

The government had forecast third quarter economic growth at 3.8-4.6 percent from a year earlier. Growth is also expected to come in between 4.1 and 4.8 percent this year after it hit 7.2 percent in 2007, a 31-year high.

The International Monetary Fund has cut its 2008 growth forecast for the Philippines to 4.4 percent from 5.2 percent earlier this year.

Inflation, which climbed to a 17-year high of 12.5 percent year-on-year in August, is expected to continue to slow and return to single digits as early as this month, the central bank said.
The Philippines' main economic drivers are exports of electronics and agriculture goods, and domestic demand fuelled largely by remittances from overseas Filipino workers.

Merchandise exports for the first nine months of the year rose 4.04 percent from a year earlier but exports contracted 2.7 percent in September from the same 2007 period.

New investments up 96% at P370 B - 1

Good morning everyone. Hearing this kind of good news will surely boost the eagerness of investing for your own business. This has referenced to one of the newspaper here in our country.

Despite the global financial crisis, all key indicators in the investments picture by the country’s premier investment generating agencies – the Board of Investments (BoI) and the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) – are positive with combined investments in the first nine months this year posting a robust growth of 96 percent to P369.87 billion versus P188.62 billion in the same January-September period last year.

Data obtained by reporters showed the BoI project approvals contributed P275.49 billion or 74 percent of the total investments while PEZA contributed P94.38 billion accounting for the remaining 26 percent.

The approved investments, measured in terms of project cost, represent around 95 percent of the P391 billion combined 2008 investments target of the BoI and PEZA, which is 12 percent growth from the 2007 actual investments haul.

There were also more projects that register in the first nine months than last year with 698 projects approved by both agencies compared to only 560 projects approved in the same period last year.

Once fully operational, these projects are expected to generate 147,705 job opportunities, significantly higher than the 107,851 jobs generated on approved projects in the same period last year.