BRIEF: Philippine Financial Reporting Standards for Real Estate Firms

OVERVIEW: Accounting is essentially the process of keeping records of all financial transactions of an entity, and generating various reports or statements out of those records. Financial reporting, on the other hand, is a subset of the accounting process that uses financial statements to disclose a company’s financial information and performance over a particular period […]

Towards Equitable & Sustainable Land Use Interventions

“Land is indispensable to any and all human activity; and how a nation uses its lands, to a large extent determines its fate – whether its people will remain as tillers of the soil or homeless nomads, or prosper along with the better part of the human race.” Ever since the Department of Agrarian Reform […]

Towards an Effective, Sustainable Homebuyer Financing System

The simple fact is that housing is the most expensive of all human needs; and like any business, without government intervention, housing production by the private sector will always be geared towards effective demand. By effective demand, we mean those with the ability to pay. Because of this fact, millions of Filipinos are without homes […]

VAT on Low-Income Housing: An Anti-Poor Measure

The Value-Added Tax was first adopted in the Philippines on 25 July 1987 when then President Corazon Aquino promulgated Executive Order (EO) No. 273 pursuant to her emergency powers. The EO pegged the VAT at 10%. Five groups including the labor organization Kilusang Mayo Uno petitioned the Supreme Court to nullify EO 273 on various […]

Reforming Philippine Property Valuation – a Long Awaited Measure

Land is the most valuable resource; and it is globally recognized that land/housing development is the primary catalyst for economic progress and social advancement. Yet over the decades, the country’s system of land or real property valuation has failed to properly exploit this vital attribute. The system is characterized by multiple, inconsistent, outdated, inaccurate and […]

The Quest for a Housing Department

Food, clothing and shelter are man’s most basic needs. Apparently with this truism in mind, and cognizant of the economic pump-priming attributes of shelter development, the government under the martial law regime placed housing – side by side with agrarian reform – at the focus of its developmental thrust.  Thus, the Ministry of Human settlements […]