MANILA, Aug 19 — The Philippines shut financial markets, government offices and schools in the capital and several provinces in the main island of Luzon after heavy rains caused flooding.

Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Deputy Governor Nestor Espenilla said there will be no clearing and trading of currency and government securities today. The Philippine Stock Exchange said equity trading is also halted as well as settlement at its Securities Clearing Corp. of the Philippines.

The weather bureau renewed its highest rainfall warning of red in a three-colour scale in the Manila region and nearby provinces to its north and south at 6:15am The agency raised the alert level to red from orange at 9pm yesterday, and warned of heavy to intense rain and “severe flooding” as tropical storm Trami enhanced the monsoon weather.

Tropical storm Trami, locally known as Maring, was 550 kilometres (340 miles) east of the northern Batanes province as of 4am, with maximum sustained winds of 75 kilometres per hour near the centre and gusts of as much as 90 kilometres per hour. A southwest monsoon is also affecting the whole country, according to the weather bureau.

Separately, search and rescue teams battled strong waves, current and fuel spilling from passenger ferry M/V St. Thomas Aquinas, which sank in the evening of August 16 after colliding with cargo vessel M/V Sulpicio Express off the waters of Talisay, Cebu, Winiel Azcuna, the coast guard’s station commander in Cebu, said by phone yesterday.

The death toll had reached 38 yesterday evening, Azcuna said. Survivors numbered 750, with 75 passengers and 7 crew members still missing at the time.

Torrential rains

At least 15 people were killed and thousands fled their homes a year ago when torrential rains flooded about 50 per cent of the Manila region. The monsoon last year was comparable to the flooding caused by Typhoon Ketsana, which killed more than 400 people when it swamped Manila and parts of Luzon in 2009.

The Southeast Asian nation is regularly battered by cyclones that form over the Pacific Ocean, causing devastation that often prompts criticism of the government’s disaster- response efforts. Storm Washi killed more than 1,200 people, mostly in Mindanao, in December 2011.

Large parts of the capital pummelled by rain since yesterday are flooded, according to GMA News. Some roads in Makati City near the central business district are not passable while portions of Quezon City and Manila are waist-deep, the report said online.

Rains of 30 millimetres to 65 millimetres per hour are expected under a red warning, compared with 15 millimetres to 30 millimetres under an orange warning, according to the weather bureau website.

Storm Bopha, which triggered landslides and damaged thousands homes in coastal and mining towns in Mindanao in December, killed 1,067 and left 834 missing, according to the state disaster monitoring agency. Bopha damaged almost 37 billion pesos of infrastructure and farm output. — Bloomberg