Monitoring the Philippine Economy Fourth Quarter Report for 2022

The Philippine economy grew 7.2 percent, featuring robust growth despite facing domestic challenges. Fourth quarter growth reflected a more optimistic consumer sentiment as the economy continued to open up. Economic growth in Q4 2022 was 7.2 percent year-on-year and 17.1 percent quarter-on-quarter (q-o-q), showing the Philippines’ consistent effort to create a positive growth outlook for the economy (see Table 1). Year-on-year growth exceeded the median analyst forecast of 6.8 percent despite accelerating inflation and growing food security issues. Revenge spending continues to drive consumption on the demand side while service sector growth remains headstrong on the supply side amid stunted growth in the industry and agriculture sectors. Meanwhile, an expected reversal to a balance-of-payments surplus at December-end was fueled by remittances and tourism receipts during the holiday season. The trade deficit narrowed as well in Q4-end, with prospects for trade looking bright with the Senate’s eventual ratification of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership in the next quarter. Looking ahead, the central bank and national government must continue to determine the effective mix of policies and straighten out its priorities to support the economy\u27s recovery

Does the Presence of Foreign Investors Affect Financial Reporting Quality in Philippine Publicly Listed Firms?

Reinstate accounting conservatism in the Conceptual Framework – Our findings should be of interest to accounting standard setters, given the ongoing debate on the necessity for accounting conservatism as a characteristic for useful financial statements after its initial removal from the conceptual framework in 2010. While there are arguments that conservatism violates the neutrality of financial reports, further discussions show that conservatism can give a more faithful representation of firm performance (Cooper, 2015; International Accounting Standards Board, 2018)

Philippine Structural Transformation - With or Without Maharlika

It appears the Maharlika Investment Fund (MIF) is a fait accompli. As we write, our finance officials are in New York and Toronto, pitching the MIF to international bankers and representatives of Middle East sovereign wealth funds. This means once President Marcos, Jr. affixes his signature, a newly-created Maharlika Investment Corporation (MIC) will pool, before the year is over, PhP 75 billion in seed capital from the LandBank and Development Bank of the Philippines. With a further PhP 50 billion plus two full years of dividends from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), its nine directors, all presidential appointees, will be able to invest in tradable commodities, overseas instruments, and local development projects to earn dual bottom line returns — financial and social — for the country

Does the presence of foreign investors affect financial reporting quality in Philippine publicly listed firms?

Philippine foreign ownership laws have recently been amended in favor of foreign investors to attract more foreign capital. However, foreign investors may hesitate to invest in the Philippines due to the rampant information asymmetry caused by weak corporate governance and compliance-driven disclosures that are impractical for making investment decisions (Asian Development Bank, 2019; Ferreira et al., 2017; Khalil et al., 2020). Therefore, foreign investors demand for more high-quality financial reporting. Accounting conservatism plays a crucial role in providing this due to its tendency to require more stringent verification when recognizing economic gains over losses (Watts, 2003a). In this study, we aim to investigate the relationship between foreign investor presence and accounting conservatism using an unbalanced panel dataset of publicly listed non-financial firms in the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) from 2010 to 2019 using standard panel regression. This paper accounts for the multiple dimensions of foreign investor presence such as foreign ownership, substantial foreign ownership, and foreign shareholder board representation. To test for robustness of results, we use Khan and Watts (2009) and Ball and Shivakumar (2005) as alternative measures of accounting conservatism. We find a significant and positive relationship between foreign investor presence and accounting conservatism but only when using the Ball and Shivakumar (2005) measure and when foreign investor presence is proxied by the presence of substantial foreign ownership over 50% and foreign shareholder board representation. Our results imply two things: (1) the presence of substantial foreign ownership over 50% results in a higher degree of accounting conservatism; and (2) higher degrees of foreign shareholder board representation results in increases in the demand for conservative reporting. In conclusion, our results suggest that the presence of foreign directors representing foreign investors in Philippine corporate boards and the presence of foreign majority shareholders in Philippine firms may be the main drivers to encourage companies to improve transparency, lessen information asymmetry, and prevent managers’ opportunistic behaviors by demanding for more conservative reporting, which in turn increases the quality of financial reporting

Carbon-Based Artificial SEI Layers for Aqueous Lithium-Ion Battery Anodes

Replacing flammable organic electrolytes with aqueous electrolytes in lithium-ion batteries (LIB) can greatly enhance the safety of next-generation energy storage systems. With the extended electrochemical stability window of electrolytes, \u27water-in-salt\u27 (WIS) electrolytes containing LIB presented significant performance improvements. However, the solubility limits of lithium salts in water restrain the extent of kinetic protection offered by the high salt concentration. Here, we report design strategies of anode structure to improve the cycle life of LIB with WIS electrolytes. We introduced partially graphitic protective carbon layers on anode particles using a versatile coating method. This protective layer not only improved charge transfer kinetics but also minimized the exposure of anode surface for water electrolysis. The effectiveness of anode structure developed in this study was exemplified on TiO2 anodes, where cycle performance and coulombic efficiency improved by 11 times and 29% respectively over the base anode material. This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry