Filipino accountants eyeing a license and work in the United States may take the US CPA licensure examination in the Commonwealth Northern Mariana Islands, the Department of Labor and Employment said in a press release yesterday.

The CNMI is a territory of the United States in the Western Pacific, which is nearer to the Philippines than the US mainland. It consists of 14 islands, the biggest of which are Saipan, Rota, and Tinian.

The Philippine Overseas Labor Office in Saipan, in a report to Labor and Employment Secretary Arturo Brion said that the CNMI became the latest US jurisdiction that has been allowed to administer the US CPA examination.

DESPITE LEBANON CRISIS
OFW deployment up
by 6.8 percent: DOLE

The crisis in Lebanon has not affected the global deployment of overseas Filipino workers with the positive 6.8 percent growth to 697,735 (+44,467) from Jan. 1 to Aug. 10, 2006, compared to 653,268 in the same period last year.

In a press release, Labor Secretary Arturo Brion attributed the increase to the continuing preference for the skills and services of the OFWs in more than 180 host destinations worldwide.

He also noted the report of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas that the level of global OFW remittances also increased by 15.4 percent to $6 billion in the first semester of 2006, from around $5.2 billion in the same period last year. Brion has expressed optimism that the global remittances of OFWs this year would exceed the $10-billion mark and possibly reach above the total $10.6 billion remitted in 2005, the press release added.

Solons asked to OK budget

The declining movement of the country's borrowings should be a good signal for Congress to immediately act and pass the P46.9 billion supplemental budget for this year, Press Secretary and presidential spokesman Ignacio Bunye said in a statement yesterday.

Our improving finances must be matched with a national budget that would address the imperatives of sound and timely public investments, jobs and basic needs, Bunye added.

"We have more funds at our disposal and what government needs now is the appropriate law to earmark these to drive our pump priming programs in the super-regions," he said, adding, "We are also optimistic that Congress would also pass a new budget for the coming year as we aim for a balanced budget in 2008".*

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