The Filipino Entrepreneur

To those who visited their loved ones yesterday, I hoped all is well and you enjoyed the gathering with your relatives. And as for me, I also enjoyed it but I only went to my father-in-law’s grave and can’t visit my father’s because of the distance. But I’ll try to visit other days. November 1 is common to us for celebrating the All Saint’s Day but did you know that there is a place in the Philippines that celebrates it on November 2 ?

It’s in Angono, Rizal. At first I thought my wife is joking about it. But when I saw people flocking to the cemetery on November 2 on that place then I believed. This is the reason why I was having a hard time commuting because of the traffic due to the crowd.

Its interesting to know that despite the U.S. recession, the Philippines is taking advantage of the cheaper labor cost. Comparing labor cost in the U.S., one job there is equal to 4 or 5 jobs here with regards to pay. So companies there are seeking to cut down expenses by outsourcing to cheaper labor cost. That is why just last week when I bought a newspaper, The Manila Bulletin, on the classified ads section there were lots of call center jobs available despite of the crisis. Although this is good to our economy, I still pray that the recession will soon be over because in the long run our economy will be affected too because this is a global crisis.

If you are wondering why there is a reduction of traffic in your website or blog this last two weeks of October, then the possible reasons are the semestral break and festivals here in the Philippines. I can’t think of other possible explanations but the facts are there. But I guess it will depend on the kind of niche your website or blog has and the kind of visitors who visits. I read Yugatech’s blog when he posted about the reduction of his traffic in the  summer months of April and May which is the end of school year. So we can assume that it is the same thing when there is a semestral break in October up to the first week of November. And we can conclude that students is a big part of any kinds of businesses whether they sell in food carts, selling celphones, a book store or internet businesses.

So far so good that only 2 products have been found that have melamine. They are Greenfood Yili Fresh Milk and Mengniu Drink as declared by Health Secretary Francisco Duque III. Below are the partial list melamine-free products sold locally in the market:

• Anchor Lite Milk
• Anlene High Calcium, Low Fat Milk
• Bear Brand Instant
• Chic Choc Milk Chocolate
• Farmland Skim Milk
• Jinwei Drink
• Jolly Cow Pure Fresh Milk
• Kiddie Soya Milk Egg Delight
• Lactogen 1 DHA Infant Formula
• M&M Milk Chocolate Candy
• M&M Peanut Chocolate Candy
• Milk Boy
• Nestagen 2 DHA Follow-up Formula
• Nestagen 3 DHA Follow-up Formula
• Nido 3 Plus Pre-bio with DHA
• Nido Full Cream Milk Powder
• Nido Junior
• No Sugar Chocolate of Isomalt 2 Oligosaccharide (cocoa butter substitute)
• Nutri Express Milk Drink
• Pura Fresh Milk
• Snickers (roasted in caramel nogut in thick milk chocolate)
• Vitasoy Soya Milk Drink
• Wahaha Orange
• Wahaha Yellow
• Want Want Milk Drink
• Windmill Skim Milk Powder
• Yinlu Milk Peanut
• Yogi Yogurt Flavor Milk Drink

Source: GMANews.TV

I read this in New York Times where the giant Swiss bank UBS is going to hand over names of wealthy americans to the Justice Department. Quoting from the news:

The delivery to the Justice Department, expected to take place within several months, would place American client names in the hands of federal prosecutors seeking to build criminal cases against wealthy Americans they suspect of tax evasion.

The reason why they are doing this, again I quote:

Justice Department officials hope to prove that the American clients committed fraud and engaged in tax evasion by concealing their ownership of offshore assets, in part by creating sham entities and then filing I.R.S. forms that falsely claimed the entities were the owners of the accounts.

United States law requires American taxpayers, including trusts and partnerships, to report all financial accounts held in a foreign country if their total value exceeds $10,000 during the year. Not doing so can result in a penalty of up to 50 percent of the amount in the account at the time. In a new tactic, the Justice Department is focusing on failure by UBS’s American clients to file those reports.

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