BusinessMirror February 12, 2016

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A broader look at today’s business Friday, February 12, 2016 Vol. 11 No. 127

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BSP plays it safe by holding interest rates steady anew ‘UPGRADE OF AIRPORTS, SUBWAY SHOULD GET I PRIORITY IN NEXT ADMIN’ B B C

INSIDE

NFLATION over the policy horizon was seen tilted slightly to the downside and compelled the monetary authorities on Thursday to rule out changes in the monetary-policy structure in place C  A since September 2014.

SEX, DRUGS AND ROCK ’N’ ROLL We value our heart

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EAR Lord, each Valentine’s Day, I always write something to the delight of my heart or something that will let us say that we know how we value our heart in any form. The desires of our heart should lead to extending help to the poor, nurturing happy memories, keeping a good true relationship with someone we love and modeling a true sense of belonging and importance. Lord, as we value our heart on Valentine’s Day, may we be inspired every day with your word in every way we live our life. We value our heart in Jesus, the Way, the Truth and the Life. Amen.

VALENTINE’S DAY REFLEECTIONS AND LOUIE M. LACSON, HFL Word&Life Publications • teacherlouie1965@yahoo.com

Editor: erard . a o • i e t e

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Life

SPREAD THE LOVE: A VALENTINE 2016 CALENDAR D3-D4

BusinessMirror

Friday, February 12, 2016

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These risks require a careful balancing of policy levers, to minimize any unintended consequences of actions.”—Tetangco

Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll N

BY MEREDITH BLAKE Los Angeles Times

EW YORK—Sometime in the mid-1990s, after grunge and before the boy-band era, Mick Jagger approached Martin Scorsese with an idea for a movie about the music business. The project would span several decades of rock history and focus not on decadent musicians, as one might expect, but on the executives who ran the record labels.

“Everyone was very familiar with all the musicians’ excesses of the period—throwing televisions out the window, excessive sex and drugs and all this sort of thing,” said the Rolling Stones frontman, lounging in his capacious (and very much intact) hotel suite last month. “My observation was that the business people were really crazy.”

Twenty years and numerous incarnations later, Jagger’s vision has finally been realized in Vinyl, which premieres February 14 on HBO with a twohour pilot directed by Scorsese.

Set primarily in 1973 New York City, the drama stars Bobby Cannavale as Richie Finestra, the cokesnorting president of an embattled record label called American Century. The drama also includes Boardwalk Empire’s Terence Winter as a show runner, and co-stars Olivia Wilde as Richie’s wife, a soberedup Factory Girl now living in the Connecticut ‘burbs, and Ray Romano as the sleazy head of promotions at American Century.

Both the excess and the energy of the period were evident during a visit to Vinyl’s Brooklyn set last fall.

Cannavale and several dozen extras clad in black leather, gold lame and frayed denim were filming a raucous party scene at American Century’s earthtoned, smoke-filled offices.

As the Velvet Underground’s “Sweet Jane” throbbed in the background, an assistant director gestured toward a young man with Allman Brothersstyle hair and a silk bomber jacket. “Can I get a joint

for Matthew?” she asked. “Marijuana for Matthew?”

With painstaking detail, right down to digitally recreated graffiti on the subway, the series vividly captures an era when New York was financially strapped, but creatively thriving.

It’s a milieu that Jagger, who lived in New York for some of the decade and partied at Studio 54, certainly knows well. But as a cocreator and executive producer on Vinyl, the rock ‘n’ roll icon has done more than play the part of 1970s eyewitness.

“People think that’s the only thing I do,” said Jagger, trim as ever at 72, “but that’s like number 20.”

“Mick is a great artist, period, but he’s also a great creative partner,” Scorsese said in an e-mail.

“It’s not just a matter of knowing this or that story but of getting the feel of it: what it felt like to be a promotional assistant at a record company, or a platinum-selling band at the mercy of the executives, and what it felt like to be in those offices, in those recording booths, in those clubs. The texture of it all, the life...that’s what Mick brought to it.”

The filmmaker, who also directed the Rolling Stones concert film Shine a Light, was excited by the idea of putting the suits at the center of the story.

Drawing inspiration from a variety of nonfiction books about the industry, including Howling at the Moon: The Odyssey of a Monstrous Music Mogul in an Age of Excess, by former CBS Records President Walter Yetnikoff, and Fredric Dannen’s Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business, Jagger began to develop the script with Scorsese and journalist Rich Cohen.

Winter, who wrote the screenplay for Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street and won two drama writing Emmys for The Sopranos, was eventually invited on board. He didn’t take much convincing. “Taxi Driver was the movie that got me interested in cinema,” he said, “and the first album I ever bought, in 1973, was Goats Head Soup by the Rolling Stones.”

When the economic collapse of 2008 cooled Hollywood’s appetite for risky, adult-oriented

movies, the trio decided to reconceive the project for television, which, led by the likes of HBO, had become a viable outlet for ambitious storytelling. “After The Sopranos and several others like it, TV series started to come into their own, making money, attracting big actors,” Jagger said.

Over tea at Scorsese’s Manhattan townhouse in 2011, they pitched the series to HBO’s top executives, Michael Lombardo and Richard Plepler. Lombardo, the network’s programming president, was immediately struck by both Jagger’s un-rock-star-ish ensemble (a fine cashmere sweater, no leather) and, more critically, his producing smarts.

“As you find out right away with Mick Jagger, you’re talking to a very able, perceptive and experienced producer,” he recalled.

Jagger has been involved in the movie business since the late 1960s and early 1970s, when he starred in films like Performance and Ned Kelly.

More recent, he’s produced several well-received movies with his Jagged Films partner Victoria Pearman, including the James Brown biopic Get on Up, the World War II code-breaking drama Enigma and the Rolling Stones documentary Cross�ire Hurricane. Still, the pace and scale of television took some getting used to. “It’s easier doing movies,” he said wearily.

Throughout the process, Jagger met with directors, weighed in on casting, music cues and costumes, and even visited the writers room. He particularly enjoyed the “literary part” of making a series, he said.

“How are the characters going to develop? Making sure they’re not cardboard characters, the minor characters are fleshed out, a lot of chats about the women characters, because everyone’s so sensitive about it.... It’s all very interesting.”

Though he was a hands-on creative producer, it was sometimes difficult for his collaborators to forget that he was also, well, Mick Jagger.

Winter admits being star struck for at least a few

months. At one early creative meeting in Jagger’s hotel room, the singer suggested ordering food from Serafina, a relatively modest Italian restaurant. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh, my God, he eats at Serafina?

I eat at Serafina!’ I went home and told my wife and she’s like, ‘Well, what do you think he eats?’”

Lombardo—who says he used to lie in his bed listening to “Angie” on repeat—was provided with a potent reminder of Jagger’s fame one night over dinner with Plepler when, during an intense conversation about the challenges of the series, a young female server came to the table. “All of a sudden, the vibration changes,” he said. “There’s something about a huge rock star that’s very different than being with a famous actor or director.”

While there are no plans to write the Rolling Stones into the series (you know you were wondering), Vinyl references real artists from the era—the New York Dolls, Led Zeppelin and the Velvet Underground all show up in early episodes.

It also features fictionalized performers, like a proto-punk band called the Nasty Bits whose sneering lead singer is played by Jagger’s 30-yearold son, James. (The younger Jagger is not the only rock progeny to appear in the series; Juno Temple, whose father, Julien Temple, directed the Sex Pistols in The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle, stars as a striving A&R assistant who keeps a stash of “bennies” in her desk drawer). Vinyl is the first of several television projects that will transport viewers back to New York in the Taxi Driver era, a time that now seems unimaginably distant despite its relative proximity.

Last month HBO greenlighted The Deuce, a drama from The Wire writer David Simon set in the Times Square porn industry, while later this year, Netflix will launch Baz Luhrmann and Shawn Ryan’s The Get Down, which follows a group of Bronx teenagers in the early days of hip-hop and disco.

“Life in the city was kind of hard if you were poor,

MITSUBISHI PHILIPPINES

Motoring

LIFE

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CONTINUED ON D6

BusinessMirror

Henry Ford Awards Best Motoring Section 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 2011 Hall of Fame

Friday, February 12, 2016

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MITSUBISHI PHILIPPINES ANNOUNCES CAR-MANUFACTURING PROGRAM

Editor: Tet Andolong

MITSUBISHI Motors Corp. CEO Osamu Masuko (seated, sixth from left) and Motors Philippines Corp. President and CEO Yoshiaki Kato (seated, eighth from right) together with their parts suppliers. RANDY S. PEREGRINO

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B T A

FTER receiving the blessing of President Aquino, Mitsubishi Motors Philippines Corp. (MMPC) will manufacture its vehicles in the country through a six-year program called Comprehensive Automotive Resurgence Strategy (CARS) beginning next year.

MMPC intends to invest over P4.3 billion in order to build 100,000 vehicles by the end of the program. The project will include a stamping facility during the first phase and a paint shop in the second phase. The program will be conducted at the Mitsubishi Plant in Santa Rosa, Laguna, where Mitsubishi started its operation in January 2015, and the facility will involve the production of 12,000

units of Mirage sedans, as well as 18,000 units of Adventure and L3s.

“I had the opportunity to meet President Aquino earlier today and we have expressed our participation in which we will immediately file an application to the CARS Program and when it is accepted, we are planning to start the production of hatchback and sedan of Mirage in the beginning of 2017,” said Osamu Masuko, CEO

of Mitsubishi Motors Corp. (MMC) during the media briefing held on Wednesday at Solaire Resort and Casino Hotel in Pasay City.

Present during the media briefing were Nobuaki Katoh, chairman of Denso; Shinji Yazaki, president of Yazaki Corp.; Shigeki Dantani, EVP of Sojitz Corp.; and chief executives of other companies, including Yokohama Rubber Co. Ltd.; Toyo Seat Co. Ltd.; NHK Spring Co. Ltd.; Mitsuba Corp.; Autoliv Japan Ltd.; Nitto Denko Philippines Corp., who have decided to partner with MMPC in their latest venture.

ADVENTURE

“The parts suppliers who are here today are aiming to contribute to the development of the automotive industry of the Philippines in different ways, such as construction of new plants, expansion of existing production base and providing technology to local corporations. They are, indeed, indispensable business partners to us,” Masuko said.

The Japanese company (MMC) has been in business and involved in production in the country for more than 50 years. According to Masuko, “The Philippines is one of the most important markets for MMC. It is, indeed, a great pleasure for us to be able to contribute to the automotive industry of the Philippines for the economic, even in the slightest terms. We are doing this in order to increase the local content rate and further make investment to expand employment opportunities responding to the buildup capacity,” he said.

MMPC decided to initially manufacture Mirage and Adventure units because of their success in the previous years. In 2015 Mirage sales reached 17,000 units, while MMPC sold 8,000 Adventure units and 7,000 L3s with a 20-percent growth for the company.

According to Henry Co, governor of the Board of Investments, the country never had any such occasion (to boost the automotive industry) in the last 33 years. “I’m very excited to sit with the Japanese in the car industry. We have a government that is very supportive.

Our time has come and I believe that this has benefits and it will be tremendous although it will take many years,” he said.

“If you look into the future, further economic growth is forecasted. At the end of last year, the Asean economic community was established but I believe that competition in the Asean countries will even become more severe. Among the members of the Asean Economic Community, we see the Philippines as having extremely high potential for growth and I think that it was very good timing for the Philippine government to announce the CARS Program,” Masuko said.

MIRAGE

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MICHELIN LAUNCHES THE NEW PRIMACY SUV TIRE S    R S. P

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ICHELIN Philippines recently introduced the new Primacy SUV tire, which will cater the growing number of the popular sport-utility vehicle (SUV) segment in the country. Nowadays drivers heavily rely on critical safety features available with their SUVs, such as air bags, antilock braking system (ABS) and traction control, to name a few, but in most cases, they overlook the critical role of tires. Not only that these rubbers considered being the most important component, but it is every car’s only contact with the road, subjected to numerous beatings from different conditions.

The Michelin Primacy SUV tire is solely intended for the said car models and was developed to withstand the extreme road and weather conditions, particularly in the

BIBENDUM (from left); Michael Nunag, chief representative of Michelin Philippines; Martial Lafont, PCLT marketing director for Michelin East Asia and Oceania; Pierre Azemat, product marketing manager for Michelin East Asia and Oceania; Chiara Architta, consumer experience manager for Michelin East Asia and Oceania; and Caroline del Rosario, marketing communications manager for Michelin Philippines

our region. They choose their vehicles because they want more safety for themselves and their family on their daily commute, as well as during long distance

handle and stop, especially on wet roads.

The Michelin Primacy SUV tire was developed to address these needs, and provide maximum safety, as well as protection for

flow for better performance.

Moreover, the new tire is equipped with self-locking knobs inside the small channels to minimize deformation, improve handling and braking in dry circumstances. As for the smooth and comfortable ride, the rubber absorbs path flaws, thanks to the blended CushionGuard and EvenPeak technologies.

When the new tires were finally presented during the launch, members of the media were able to further scrutinize the physical dimension of the product and witnessed the actual built with evident advancements in the tread patterns. Clearly, Michelin is committed to deliver safer and smoother ride without compromising other performance characteristics, such as tread life and fuel consumption.

The new Michelin Primacy SUV tire is recommended for popular SUVs, such as the Toyota Fortuner, Mitsubishi Mon-

MOTORING

SELF-LOCKING knobs and optimized tread grooves, which minimize deformation, improve handling and braking in dry circumstances, while creating high-efficiency water evacuation in wet conditions.

Braking distance was dramatically reduced to 2.2 meters on wet roads, while tests on dry situations registered 1.9 meter shorter. The new FlexMax 2.0 rubber

cornering and resistant to lateral slipping, which is 10 percent more compared to its premium leading competitor.

The High Sipe Density breaks the wa-

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CLEAN WATER WASTED Children play on a flooded boulevard due to a busted pipe at the low-lying Santa Mesa district in Manila on Thursday.

Thousands of residents were affected by the incident, which occurred as the country is still feeling the effects of low water supply due to El Niño. AP

‘ANGERED & DISMAYED’

ERC SETS P41.65-B REVENUE CAP FOR NGCP

Sports BusinessMirror

‘ANGERED & DISMAYED’

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| FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2016 mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph sports@businessmirror.com.ph Editor: Jun Lomibao

Nestlé funded the kids’ athletics program for four years, but decided to end the partnership “with immediate effect.”

NESTLÉ terminates International Association of Athletics Federations sponsorship over doping scandal. AP

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The Associated Press

ONDON—Food and beverage giant Nestlé told the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) on Wednesday that it terminated its sponsorship of athletics’ governing body over fears the doping scandal could damage the company’s image.

The announcement came, while adidas remains in talks with the IAAF about its handling of the corruption scandal amid reports the sportswear giant was considering ending its sponsorship.

The IAAF, under Sebastian Coe’s new leadership, is fighting attempts by sponsors to cut their contracts early.

Coe said he was “angered and dismayed” by the Nestlé announcement.

“We will not accept it,” he said in a

statement. “It’s the kids who will suffer.”

Nestlé funded the kids’ athletics program for four years, but decided to end the partnership “with immediate effect.”

“This decision was taken in light of negative publicity associated with allegations of corruption and doping in sport made against the IAAF,” Nestlé said in a statement.

“We believe this could negatively impact our reputation and image and will, therefore, terminate our existing agreement with the IAAF, established in 2012.”

The IAAF, incensed by the Nestlé announcement, was determined to hold the company to the final year of its contract.

Rather than accepting the sponsor’s decision, the IAAF said it remained “in discussion with Nestlé concerning the final year of its five-year partnership.”

“This has been a

successful program with 15 million kids aged 7 to 12 in 76 countries, taking part in fun team activities which promotes a healthy, active lifestyle,” the IAAF said.

The program was due to reach another 15 countries, involving another 3 million children, training 360 lecturers and 8,640 physical education teachers, the IAAF added.

The Nestlé decision was a blow to Coe, whose first six months as IAAF president have been blighted by the extent of the corruption under predecessor Lamine Diack being exposed.

A World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) investigation found there was deeply rooted corruption on the inside by a “powerful rogue group” led by Diack, and they conspired to extort athletes and allow doping Russians to continue competing.

ALEGED BRIBERY IN KENYA

TWO Kenyan athletes serving four-year bans for doping at the 2015 world championships say the chief executive ACTOR and director Clint Eastwood (left) stands with his caddie Nick Faldo while waiting to putt on the 18th green of the Pebble Beach Golf Links during the celebrity challenge event of the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am on Wednesday. AP

of Athletics Kenya, the country’s governing body for track and field, asked them each for a $24,000 bribe to reduce their suspensions.

Joy Sakari and Francisca Koki Manunga told the Associated Press (AP) that CEO Isaac Mwangi asked for the payment in an October 16 meeting, but that they could not raise the money. They were informed of their four-year bans in a November 27 e-mail, but never filed a criminal complaint because, they say, they had no proof to back up their bribery accusation and also feared repercussions.

Mwangi dismissed the allegation as “just a joke,” denied ever meeting privately with the athletes and said Athletics Kenya has no power to shave time off athletes’ bans.

“We have heard stories, athletes coming and saying, ‘Oh, you know, I was asked for money,’” Mwangi said. “But can you really substantiate that?”

Sakari, a 400-meter runner, and Manunga, a hurdler, told AP they would be

willing to testify to the ethics commission of the IAAF, the global governing body of athletics.

The commission already is investigating allegations that AK officials sought to subvert anti-doping in Kenya, solicited bribes and offered athletes reduced bans.

The probe has led to the suspensions of AK president, Isaiah Kiplagat, a vice president, David Okeyo, and AK’s former treasurer, Joseph Kinyua.

Sharad Rao, a former director of prosecutions in Kenya who also has adjudicated cases for the Court of Arbitration for Sport, is leading the ethics investigation for the IAAF. Sakari and Manunga’s decision to come forward could be a breakthrough, because Kenyan athletes have been unwilling to act as whistleblowers.

“There is obviously the reluctance on the part of the athletes to come forward,” Rao said.

“They don’t want to stand out.”

As many as a half-dozen banned

athletes have privately indicated to the IAAF commission that AK officials sought to extort them and that they feel their sanctions might have been less if they had paid bribes, Rao said.

The Wada, meanwhile, said a deal has been signed for British officials to take temporary charge of drug-testing in Russia.

The Russian anti-doping agency (Rusada) was suspended last November following accusations it covered up doping

by Russian athletes.

Russia has vowed to implement reforms but it has taken three months to arrange a new testing system.

Wada says the UK Anti-Doping agency will work with Rusada to ensure that “targeted and intelligence-led testing is carried out on Russian athletes.” Test results will be managed by a “designated independent body, with full oversight by Wada.”

The testing program covers all sports, not just track and field, where doping in Russia has come under particular scrutiny.

CADDIES LOSE LAWSUIT VS PGA P EBBLE BEACH, California—Caddies lost their class-action lawsuit against the US Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA) Tour when a federal judge in California ruled they signed a contract with the tour that requires them to wear bibs as part of their uniform and cannot claim that corporate sponsorship on the bibs makes them human billboards.

US District Judge Vince Chhabria dismissed the lawsuit late Tuesday with prejudice, which typically means it cannot be refiled.

The decision came just over a year after caddies filed the lawsuit in northern California. The lawsuit began with 81 caddies and had grown to 168.

Chhabria dismissed all seven of the contractual claims.

The caddies have been at odds with the tour for years over what they perceive as poor treatment. They are not allowed in clubhouses, and at some tournaments are not allowed in the locker room.

“The caddies’ overall complaint about poor treatment by the tour has merit, but this federal lawsuit about bibs does not,” Chhabria said.

using them as “human billboards” because the bibs they wore on the course, which featured the logo of the title sponsor, amounted to advertising for which they received no compensation. Lawyers for the caddies estimated the value of the advertising at $50 million a year.

Chhabria suggested in his ruling that the caddies’ own complaint worked against them.

The contract a caddie signs to work a tour event says caddies are to wear uniforms and identification badges prescribed by the tournament and the tour. Chhabria said the caddies in their brief acknowledge that “the PGA Tour has required caddies to wear bibs for decades.”

“In other words, for decades, the bib has been the primary part of the ‘uniform’ that the tour requires caddies to wear,” Chhabria wrote. “The only reasonable interpretation of the contract is that the caddies agreed the tour could make them wear bibs.”

Chhabria also found no merit to claims of antitrust and trademark law, along with complaints of publicity rights, and contracts were signed under duress.

Richard Meadow of Lanier Law Firm, which represents the caddies, said the decision would be closely reviewed to determine grounds for appeal.

“We are, however, pleased the court acknowledged that the caddies are treated

with the respect and dignity they deserve,” Meadow said.

The tour said in a statement it was pleased by the decision.

“We look forward to putting this matter behind us and moving forward in a positive direction with the caddies,” the statement said.

The Pebble Beach Pro-Am, meanwhile, is only the third tournament for Jason Day since the Tour Championship. He rallied on Sunday at Kapalua with a 65 to finish tied for 10th (15 shots behind Jordan Spieth) and missed the cut at Torrey Pines while playing with the flu.

He expected a slow start to the year given his time off. But it’s the time off, he says, that sets him apart from Spieth, Rory McIlroy and Rickie Fowler.

“Rickie and Jordan don’t have kids and stuff like that yet,” Day said. “So it’s very important for me to make sure that I see my kids grow up and obviously see the birth of my second child, Lucy. And they will get there one day and they will probably go through the same things that I’m feeling and going through, as well.”

His wife gave birth to their second child last November.

“It’s all good stuff,” Day said. “It can be difficult at times, but that’s where the balance of being a professional golfer, playing at an elite level against the best players in the world and trying to balance family life and personal

SPORTS

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₧45.28B

The maximum allowable revenue sought by NGCP

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B L L

HE Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) has allowed the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) to implement an interim Maximum Allowable Revenue (iMAR) of P41.65 billion this year.

The amount is lower than the P45.28 billion being sought by NGCP. In October 2015 the grid operator filed an application to implement an iMAR

of P45.28 billion this year.

“The commission’s derived iMAR 2016 value of P41.653 billion is lower

by P3.633 billion,” the ERC said in a nine-page order dated January 21, but was issued only on Thursday.

The iMAR, which limits the amount the grid operator can charge distribution facilities (DUs) and electric cooperatives (ECs), will be reflected in NGCP’s January 2016 billing.

S “ERC,” A

Oil traders considering floating storage again

It’s probably a good time to be a vessel owner.”

—Vitol’s Bake

P.  |     | 7 DAYS A WEEK

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HE world is so awash with crude, the boss of BP Plc. said people will be filling their “swimming pools” with it by the end of the year.

W hile the company’s CEO Bob Dudley bemoaned this bearish out look for oi l , t raders were eyeing a potentially profitable o p p o r t u n it y : t u r n i n g s u p e r -

PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 47.5380

tankers into temporar y f loating storage facilities.

Trading houses, including Vitol Group, Koch Supply & Trading Lp. and Glencore Plc., plus the in-house trading arms of BP and Royal Dutch Shell Plc., collectively made billions of dollars in 2008 and 2009 stockpiling crude at sea. At the peak of the floating storage spree, sheltered

anchorages in the North Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Singapore Strait and off South Africa each hosted dozens of supertankers.

Chris Bake, a senior executive at Vitol, the world’s largest independent oil trader, gave the clearest indication yet this week that traders are considering the same strategy again.

B L S. M

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HE next administration should put emphasis on the development of transport infrastructure across the country, the chief of the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Center said on Thursday, as the clamor for adequate, safe and efficient modes of transportation in major cities and provinces in the Philippines continues to reverberate.

PPP Center Executive Director Cosette V. Canilao said the next administration should take a keen look at the sorry state of the Philippine transport infrastructure, which, according to the World Economic Forum, currently ranks 77th out of 140 economies in the globe.

“The next administration should prioritize projects on the transport side to increase the connectivity and interconnectivity between islands and other countries. They should also continue decongesting Metro Manila and other urban areas, like Cebu,” she said in a media briefing on Thursday.

Projects of prime importance, according to Canilao, include the development of regional air hubs and the construction of subway systems in Metro Manila’s bustling central business districts.

The airports should be prioritized; the subway project should be looked at again.” —Canilao “The airports should be prioritized; the subway project should be looked at again. We also have ongoing projects for the rail sector. Social infrastructure should also be looked at, and climate-adaptation projects, too,” she added.

Canilao was referring to the P74.56-billion contract for the development of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport through the modernization of the landside and airside services of the air hub to meet the International Civil Aviation Organization standards and develop the main gateway airport of the Philippines.

Also in need of upgrade are the regional airports in Bohol, Puerto Princesa, Bacolod, Iloilo and Davao. These deals, which amount to P108.19 billion in total, are currently being offered by the transport department to the private sector.

Likewise, Canilao was referring to the P370-billion subway-development deal, which was stalled due to the lack of the needed feasibility study. Transportation Secretary Joseph Emilio A. Abaya has said that the Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica) is working on the completion of such a requirement.

There are about 51 projects in the national government’s PPP pipeline, 12 of which have been awarded, and two others under implementation. The government has signed about P217.42 billion worth of infrastructure contracts with various local and international companies.

The transport department accounts for the lion’s share of these projects. The government gave prime importance to the transport sector, as this industry has a large impact on the movement of goods and services.

Without adequate infrastructure, Metro Manila currently loses P2.3 billion in productivity costs due to the traffic situation in the capital.

It is expected to balloon to up to P6 billion in 2030, if measures to improve the congestion will not be implemented.

S “A,” A

S “O ,” A

n JAPAN 0.4194 n UK 69.0727 n HK 6.1021 n CHINA 7.2416 n SINGAPORE 34.1656 n AUSTRALIA 33.6862 n EU 53.6847 n SAUDI ARABIA 12.6805

Source: BSP (11 February 2016 )

BMReports BusinessMirror

A2 Friday, February 12, 2016

news@businessmirror.com.ph

BSP plays it safe by holding interest rates steady anew C  A

This developed at the inaugural rate-setting meeting of the Monetary Board of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), where the rate at which the BSP borrows from or lends to banks was kept at 4 percent and 6 percent, respectively.

Most banks predicted the freezing of the central bank’s policy rates where they are at present and all anticipate that the most logical next step was for the BSP to tighten instead.

“Our own assessment is that domestic conditions remain sufficiently liquid and aggregate demand is fairly robust, hence no need to provide further support to the domestic economy right now, especially as the inflation path

continues to show this will move to within target in the next few months,” BSP Governor Amando M. Tetangco Jr. said at the postmeeting briefing for financial reporters.

Tetangco particularly said the risks attendant to the inflation outlook have shifted “slightly to the downside” between now and the next 18 to 24 months.

The latest forecast inflation path reversed projections in December last year when this averaged 2.4 percent, but seen now at the more moderate rate of only 2.2 percent.

BSP Deputy Governor for Monetary Stability Sector Diwa C. Guinigundo traced the more moderate inflation outlook to sharply lower price of oil in the world markets, the more re-

cent reduction in domestic transport rates and below-target headline inflation.

Guinigundo said oil prices proved “much lower” than expectations such that the BSP revised the assumed rate to $31.62 per barrel for 2016 from an earlier assumed rate of $44.90 per barrel. For 2017 the assumed rate was also downscaled to $37.53 per barrel from $50.29 per barrel.

“Given firm domestic demand, BSP judged that the Philippine economy did not require additional stimulus from monetary policy as “aggregate demand remains firm and inflation expectations are well anchored,” the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) said in reaction.

The BSP opted to stay neutral as it carefully

“monitors what advanced economies’ central banks and central banks in the region do as these affect risk appetite of global investors and, therefore, capital flows also,” BPI quickly added.

It also said the BSP may now be more inclined to complete preparations for the proposed interest rate corridor seen to act as guide on where domestic interest rates were moving next.

Other downside risks in the near term could arise from slower-than-expected global economic activity, potential second-round effects from lower international oil prices, petitions for transportation adjustments in other regions of the country and proposal for downward adjustments in suggested retail prices of some key food items this year.

Guinigundo said inflation should only start picking up around June this year when the rate should fall within the back to the 2-percent to 4-percent target range. Tetangco also said the monetary authorities are looking at the same external concerns as the US Fed. He also said they continue to retain “policy flexibility” as there are risks from El Niño in medium term and from commodity and financial market volatility over the near term, as well.

“These risks require a careful balancing of policy levers, to minimize any unintended consequences of actions,” Tetangco said.

The Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board only recently rolled back by 50 centavos the minimum transport fare.

ERC. . .

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The NGCP is responsible for dispatching electricity from the power plants via its transmission facilities all the way to the DUs and ECs. Its approved MAR in 2015 stood at P43.07 billion. This translates to an indicative transmission charge of P0.6161 per kilowatt-hour (kW).

Separately, ERC Commissioner Jose Vicente Salazar said on Tuesday night that the approved iMAR this year translates to an indicative transmission charge of P.05686 per kWh, lower

by P0.0483.

“Based on our assessment, P41.653 billion is the amount of iMAR that should be approved for NGCP,” Salazar said.

The 2016 iMAR approved rates are still subject to further adjustment by the commission.

“In light of pendency of the reset process for the fourth regulatory period, this iMAR 2016 value is merely an interim approach. Thus, it is still subject to adjustment once the commission issues the fourth Regulatory Period Final Determination for NGCP,” the ERC order read.

Also, the ERC did not decide on the NGCP’s proposed interim Net Performance Incentive (iNPI) for 2015 amounting to P1.02 billion.

“The commission deems it appropriate not to include the PIS, considering that the applicant has yet to substantiate the same,” the regulator said.

The MAR and iNPI form part of the annual verification and adjustment of tariffs allowed under Republic Act 9136, or the Electric Power Industry Reform Act. According to the NGCP, the MAR and iNPI were designed and developed to determine fair and reasonable interim transmission rates that will serve the public interest and convenience, and signal the efficient utilization of transmission facilities that will ultimately redound to the best interest and benefit of the public.

The NGCP is the private firm that operates, maintains and develops the country’s transmission network.

Its transmission charges are for power delivery service, system operations and metering services. These charges recover the cost of conveying electricity to or from the grid, the cost of system operation services, and the cost metering facilities, respectively.

Airports. . .

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EASTERLIES AFFECTING EASTERN SECTION OF THE COUNTRY (FEBRUARY 11, 5:00 PM)

American Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines President Rick M. Santos has said that infrastructure is a crucial element to attract more investors to the country.

“Take the case of rails; the next set of leaders must immediately upgrade the railway system to ensure faster mobility of people and goods. The next administration must act with urgency because of the daily experiences in gridlocks,” he said.

Infrastructure is the top growth driver of investments, especially in real-estate development, a 2014 research conducted by the Urban Land Institute showed.

The same body noted that improved public transport such as “upgrades to public transit systems, including bus and fixed-rail systems—emerged from the survey as a strong priority for future investment.”

This view is shared by Acting Economic Planning Secretary and Acting National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) Director General Emmanuel F. Esguerra, who said that better infrastructure can also encourage businesses to reap the benefits of free-trade agreements.

“Smooth flow of goods can be achieved through adequate and resilient road networks, seaports a n d a i r p o r t s, a n d re l i a b l e telecommunication services. These improvements will enhance the capacity of local players to participate in global value chains,” he explained.

to achieve the goal of lessening productivity losses and increasing gains from the freer flow of goods and services. “These are infra facilities and services that we need for interconnectivity—the airports, the rails—and all of us in public service and other government officials are saying that we need more infrastructure and PPP is a way to do that,” Canilao said.

“Now, for the projects that are already in the pipeline that are ready for the approval of the Neda Board, we’ve done our evaluation properly. We’ve done our best to make sure that there’s transparency in everything we do. So, if the next government decide not to pursue these projects in the pipeline, that would be a disservice to the people.”

This means that the government will have to pass into law the proposed amendments to the decades-old build-operate-and-transfer (BOT) law, otherwise known as the PPP Act. Congress, however, failed to pass the bill in the last calendared session day of the 16th Congress.

Lawmakers, however, will still convene for the canvassing of votes. They can still act on pending bills from May 23 to June 10.

Canilao is still hopeful that lawmakers will still be able to pass this crucial piece of legislation once Congress resumes after the elections in May. “I’m still hopeful that we can pass this into law, as this will fast-track the implementation of PPP projects for the next administration,”she said.“It’s still doable.”

Currently, the bill stands for third and final reading at the House of Representatives, while senators have yet to complete the interpellation processes for the bill.

“The pains that we encountered during the first three or four years of the admin will be solved with the PPP Act,”Canilao said. “But even without the PPP Act, the PPP Center would still continue. We were able to build a really good program, having the BOT law with the issuances of policies and other guidelines to further strengthen it.”

Sustainability is crucial

HENCE, continuity of the key infrastructure program will be vital

Oil traders. . .

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“Primary and secondary storage is pretty much full,” Bake said in London on Wednesday.

“It’s probably a good time to be a vessel owner.”

Floating storage is profitable when the market reaches a condition traders call a “supercontango.” In a contango market, prices of oil for delivery today are lower than those in future months. Buyers with access to storage can fill up their tanks with cheap crude and sell higherpriced futures contracts to lock in a profit.

This has been happening throughout the oil slump using onshore tanks, which are now starting to fill up. Oil stocks at Cushing, the Oklahoma town that calls itself the “pipeline crossroads of the world” and serves as the delivery point of the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures contract, have surged to a record of 64.7 million barrels, or more than 88 percent of working capacity, according to data from the

US Department of Energy.

“In the second half, every tank and swimming pool in the world is going to fill,” BP’s Dudley said on Wednesday at International Petroleum Week in London, which every year brings together hundreds of people from the oil industry, from producers and refiners to traders and bankers.

As onshore storage rises toward full capacity, the market is slowly moving into super-contango territory—when one-year forward prices trade at a premium of $10 a barrel or more. The price difference between WTI futures for March delivery and one year later was $11.49 at 1:42 p.m. in New York on Wednesday, the highest in almost a year.

The gap was as wide as $24 in 2009.

This opens the door for more costly floating storage, according to traders and analysts interviewed by Bloomberg on the IP Week cocktail-party circuit.Bloomberg News

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Friday, February 12, 2016

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NGCP’s vast cable network may soon deliver high-speed Internet service to govt offices

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B L L

HE Information and Communications Technology Office (ICTO) of the Department of Science and Technology wants to utilize the fiber-optic cable network of the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) to link and provide Internet service to each government agency in the country.

ICTO, the government’s lead agency on ICT and related matters, had approached the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) to facilitate a dialogue with NGCP on the matter.

“Henry Sy Jr. is fully supportive of this. In fact, he has designated one of his personnel to coordinate with us, with ICTO,” ERC Commissioner Jose Vicente Salazar said.

NGCP is a privately owned corporation in charge of operating, maintaining and developing the country’s power grid. It transmits high-voltage electricity through “power superhighways” that include the interconnected system

of transmission lines, towers, substations and related assets.

The consortium, which holds the 25-year concession contract to operate the country’s powertransmission network, is comprised of Monte Oro Grid Resources Corp., also led by Sy Jr.; Calaca High Power Corp. led by Robert Coyiuto Jr.; and the State Grid Corp. of China (SGCC) as technical partner.

The ERC chief said a meeting with Sy was held recently.

“We discussed a lot of things, including the implementation of certain initiatives which include this,” Salazar said.

“Basically, ICTO is undertaking

this project. We will just be assisting ICTO so it can discuss with NGCP this matter. The transmission facilities are still owned by the government and these can be utilized without affecting the operations of NGCP,” Salazar said.

Details of the project are still being finalized, but Salazar said that “it’s just a matter of expanding it since ICTO has already started this in some areas. It’s just a matter of utilizing the resources by linking the government offices with that of the NGCP grid to provide high-speed Internet.”

The ERC chief said that any interconnection link “would no longer pass through any of the

facilities of the telcos [telecommunication companies],” and that this project is also being coordinated with the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC).

“As a result, the telcos would step up in providing better Internet service to their customers. The share of the country’s penetration rate would also be higher,” Salazar said.

The Internet speed in the Philippines is said to be the second slowest in Asia. Also, the country’s Long-Term Evolution (LTE) speed has an average coverage of 43 percent and an average LTE download speed of 6 Mbps. The global average speed is now 13.

Neda mulls over creation of oversight committee on SDG implementation B C U. O

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HE national government is mulling over the creation of another interagency committee that will focus on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), according to the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda).

Neda Assistant Director General and current Officer in Charge Rosemarie G. Edillon told reporters on Thursday that the new inter-agency body will focus on monitoring the country’s performance and other efforts on the global goals.

“We are looking at several options. One option is to make it as a committee of the Neda Board, so interagency pa rin. Kailangan talaga [ang] oversight [and] DBM [Department of Budget and Management] has to be there dahil sa financing side and [the] DOF [Department of Finance]. You need the key economic agencies like environment,” Edillon said.

The Neda official said there was a previous suggestion that an SDG steering committee be lodged at the Philippine Council for Sustainable Development.

However, Edillon said given the various social, economic and environmental goals that need to be monitored, it would be better for the steering committee to be placed under the ambit of the Neda, an oversight agency.

Edillon said that Goals 1 to 6, which are mainly the Millennium Development Goals, are social goals. Goals 7 to 12, meanwhile, are mostly economic goals.

Goals 13 to 15 comprised of environmental goals. Goal 16, on the other hand, is a mixed goal that focuses on peace and justice, while Goal 17 is focused on global partnership.

Goal 11 covers economic and environment concerns and Goal 10 covers social and economic topics.

“If its part of the Neda Board, then it will have part of the structure, the apparatus. I think ’yun ang pinaka-viable,” Edillon said.

“It has to be substantially a higher up so there will be substantial coordination.”

The Neda Board is the highest policy-making body of the Neda, the country’s premier socioeconomic planning agency. It is chaired by no less than the President of the Philippines.

The Neda Board already has several interagency committees under its wing, including the Investment Coordination Committee, Infrastructure Committee, and Development Budget Coordination Committee, among

It has to be substantially a higher up so there will be substantial coordination.”—Edillon others.

Meanwhile, Edillon said the government has yet to craft a financial plan for the SDGs. This will be drafted once the SDG indicators are finalized by the United Nations.

However, given that there are 169 targets for 17 goals, the indicators that will be required to meet the goals could be more than double the number of targets, more financial resources are needed.

Edillon said the Philippines is ready to provide data for 75 percent of the data requirements needed for the over 200 indicators but will need more data sources for other indicators.

Many of the additional indicators will require disaggregating data according to gender, as well as providing data specifically on persons with disability and indigenous peoples.

“The problem is under the SDG kasi because the principle is ‘no one left behind,’ then we have to make sure that it can be disaggregated. Disaggregated by gender, disaggregated by minority groups, persons with disability, mga ganun,” Edillon explained.

“It will require lots of resources. ’Yun lang making it representative at the provincial level, sample size has to be increased by four, so times four, eh ’yun pang may disaggregation,” she added.

The SDGs are composed of 17 goals with around 169 targets with 229 global indicators. The goals were adopted in September 2015.

The Global Goals aim to end poverty and hunger; promote universal health; education for all and lifelong learning; achieve gender equality; sustainable water management; ensure sustainable energy for all; decent work for all; resilient infrastructure; and reduce income inequality between and among countries.

The goals also include create sustainable cities; ensure sustainable consumption and production; take action against climate change; conserve and sustainably use oceans and marine resources; reduce biodiversity loss; achieve peaceful and inclusive societies; and revitalize global partnership for development. Cai U. Ordinario

PRU LIFE, ‘PHILIPPINES GRAPHIC’ INK PARTNERSHIP PRU Life UK and Philippines Graphic magazine sign another memorandum of agreement for sponsorship in support

of one of the country’s prestigious literary awards—the 2016 Nick Joaquin Literary Awards. Pru Life UK has supported the magazine’s vision of raising young and brilliant writers of literature five years in a row. Celebrating its 20th anniversary in the Philippines, Pru Life UK reinforces its commitment to support the Graphic’s goal of raising the bar of Philippine letters. In photo are (from left) Joel Pablo Salud, Philippines Graphic editor-in-chief, Frederick M. Alegre, Philippines Graphic EVP-chief operating officer; Antonio de Rosas, Pru Life UK CEO; and Belle Tiongco, Pru Life UK senior vice president and marketing officer, at the signing of the memorandum on sponsorship for the 2016 Nick Joaquin Awards at the Pru Life UK office, Uptown Place Tower 1, Taguig City. ROY DOMINGO

SSS bill veto override now has Most people don’t signatures of at least 75 solons think a gender-pay gap at work exists 194 E

FFORTS to gather the needed 194 signatures to override the presidential veto of the Social Security System (SSS) bill continue to gain ground at the House of Representatives.

A lawmaker on Thursday said at least 75 lawmakers have already signed the resolution overriding President Aquino’s veto on the measure increasing the SSS pension by P2,000.

Party-list Rep. Neri Colmenares of Bayan Muna, the main author of the bill, said he is continuously gathering signature to reach the needed votes.

Under Article VI, Section 27 of the 1987 Constitution, Congress could pass a bill into law despite the President’s veto if two-thirds of the members of each chamber vote for its approval.

At least 194 of the 291 remaining House members would have to vote to approve a vetoed measure to overturn the President’s opposition to it.

“We now have 75 congressmen supporting the resolution. We expect more support as we gather the signed resolution from the offices of many congressmen. By May 23 we hope to have the needed [194] signatures,” Senior Deputy Minority Leader Colmenares said.

“We also wish to emphasize that this is a running list and many more congressmen have expressed support for the override. We are right on track and we expect more congressmen to sign as the days pass by. We ask our senior citizens to go to their representatives and request them to support and vote in favor

Number of signatures needed to pass the House resolution overriding President Aquino’s veto

of override on May 23, when Congress reconvenes,” Colmenares added.

The lawmaker earlier said the lower chamber abruptly ended the session on February 3 to prevent the voting for the motion to override the controversial veto.

“By May 23, we will again push for override, and we hope that our fellow congressmen will not waste the chance to discuss, debate and eventually vote for the override, motion. We have nothing to lose because the seniors are on our side.

We will give our best shot to this fight.

The daily struggles of our pensioners is at stake here, and every single day counts,” Colmenares ended.

In January President Aquino vetoed the bill providing P2,000 across-theboard increase in the monthly pension of SSS pensioners and adjustment of the minimum monthly pension from P1,200 to P3,200, for members who have contributed the equivalent of 10 credited years of service (CYS), and from P2,400 to P4,000, for those with at least 20 CYS. The President was worried that the stability of the SSS would be compromised if he would allow the pension hike of 2.1 million pensioners. Jovee Marie N. dela Cruz

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T will take 118 years to close the gender-pay gap in the workplace, the World Economic Forum predicted last year.

Despite its documented existence, however, most American workers don’t notice the difference between what men and women make, new research shows.

A report released on Thursday by salary and employment web site Glassdoor found 89 percent of workers felt men and women should be paid equally for equal work, and 60 percent said they would not apply for a job at a company if they believed gender compensation was unfair. The web site surveyed 8,254 full-time and part-time employees in the US, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

Yet, despite their strong defense of workplace equality, most survey respondents seemed unconvinced that the pay gap extended to their office: In the US, 78 percent of men and 60 percent of women felt their workplace paid men and women equally, Glassdoor found.

“The challenge of changing the gender-pay gap is that people don’t think they’ve experienced it firsthand,” said Susan Duffy, executive director for the Center for Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership at Babson College. In the US, the average woman makes ¢79 for every dollar earned by a man.

The study shows that employees in different age groups think differently about the gender pay gap. Eighty-one percent of US employees between the ages of 18 to 24 would not consider working at a company with a known gender bias, which is the same for young millennials in most of the other countries surveyed. But after age 24, employees are a lot less idealistic.

In the US, the percentage of people morally against working at a company with a gender pay gap drops to 68 percent, said the report. People aged 45 and older are the most complacent: Only 13 percent would turn down a job at a place with a gender-pay gap. “When you have a mortgage and a family, a job is a job,” said Duffy, “So it really falls on the companies themselves to change the status quo.” Bloomberg News

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Singapore’s crime statistics slightly increased in 2015

5%

Rise in the number of emergency ambulance calls in Singapore

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HE law-and-order situation in Singapore continues to be favorable, although there was a slight increase from 2014 due to a significant increase in online crimes, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said on Wednesday.

Apart from online crimes, almost all other crime classes registered a fall. Violent/serious property crimes and housebreaking and related crimes have dropped to the lowest levels in 20 years. The number of unlicensed moneylending harassment cases continues to decline and is the lowest in 10 years, the MHA said.

The drug situation remains stable and the number of immigration offenders arrested continued to remain low. There was also a decrease in fire incidents, with fire fatalities remaining low, or under 0.1 percent per 100,000 population in the last 10 years.

However, the MHA also pointed out several trends that remain of concern. Online crimes rose sharply, especially scams, and this has been the trend since 2013, the MHA noted. The number of new drug abusers, in particular those aged below 30, continued to rise. The number of arrested harborers and employers of immigration offenders has also increased.

Unauthorized change of use of premises and illegal fire-safety works continue to cause the highest number of fire-safety violations.

“While our law-and-order situation remains positive, Singapore continues to face various threats, the most significant being terrorism,” the MHA said, adding that the Home Team will do its utmost to protect Singapore against terrorism, and the public can also play a major role by being alert to potential dangers and warning signs of terrorism.

The ministry also noted that the Home Team is facing increasing work load in many areas, with the number of emergency ambulance calls increasing at a rate of about 5 percent a year over the last five years.

“This trend will worsen as our population continues to age,” the ministry said, asking the public to give their support and understanding.

“Our officers will continue to work round-the-clock to minimize inconvenience to the public, with the foremost priority of keeping Singapore and Singaporeans safe,” it said.

Meanwhile, the resale prices for Singapore’s nonlanded homes developed by private developers in January rose by 0.6 percent from that in the previous month, reversing the 0.5-percent drop in the previous month.

This was showed in the flash estimates released by the Singapore Real Estate Exchange on Thursday.

On a year-on-year basis, the resale prices for the nonlanded private homes dropped by 1.7 percent.

Compared with the recent peak in January 2014, the decline was 7.2 percent.

The resale volume saw a 3.7-percent increase, with 351 nonlanded private homes resold in January.

The homes developed by private developers in Singapore are typically more expensive. It is a market separate from the public housing market, where the housing units are built by the government and sold to resident households with the principle of one unit for each household.

About 80 percent of the resident population in Singapore live in public housing units. PNA

Editor: Max V. de Leon • Friday, February 12, 2016 A5

Indonesia seen cutting palm shipments as demand from biodiesel makers rises

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ALM-OIL shipments from Indonesia—the world’s top producer—probably dropped the most in almost two years in January after domestic biodiesel makers increased purchases amid a decline in production.

Exports, including palm and kernel oils, fell 22 percent to 1.97 million metric tons from December, according to the median of 10 estimates from analysts, planters and industry officials.

That would be the steepest decline since April 2014, according to data from the Indonesian Palm Oil Association.

Dwindling supplies from the world’s largest producer may help further extend gains in futures in Kuala Lumpur from a 20-month high. The vegetable oil used in everything from cookies to cosmetics and biodiesel has surged about 38 percent from a six-year low last August on concern the strongest El Niño in almost two decades will hurt production and shrink inventories.

“Domestic demand for biodiesel is increasing,” said Joelianto, trading director at PT Sinar Mas Agro Resources and Technology. “Supply is limited because of the low production season and the effect of El Niño. Output will remain low until June or July.”

Mistry forecast

FUTURES in Kuala Lumpur were little changed at 2,568 ringgit ($625) at 11:43 a.m. local time on Thursday. Prices may climb to as high as 2,700 ringgit in the second quarter, as supplies dwindle and global inventories shrink, according to Dorab Mistry, a director at Godrej International Ltd.

2.23M tons Indonesia’s palm-oil production in January, considerably down from 2.43 million tons last December Indonesian biodiesel makers are buying more palm oil to meet their supply contracts with PT Pertamina, said Eddy Martono, director at planter PT Mega Karya Nusa. Eleven suppliers last November agreed to supply 1.85 million kiloliters of biodiesel to Pertamina, Indonesia’s state-energy company, until April.

Indonesia will need to make a colossal increase in subsidies to make the biodiesel blending workable after the collapse in crude oil prices, Mistry said at a conference in Karachi, Pakistan, on February 7. The government is seeking several options to cover potential shortfall in subsidies, Bayu Krisnamurthi, the chief executive of Indonesia Estate Crop Fund, said on January 21.

Falling output

PRODUCTION in Indonesia probably totaled 2.23 million tons in January and reserves were 2.05

Baht leads advance in Asean as Fed may delay rate rises

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HAILAND’S baht led an advance in Southeast Asian exchange rates as signs the Federal Reserve (the Fed) will delay monetary tightening buoyed demand for emerging-market assets.

The Indonesian and Malaysian currencies pared gains after rising to their strongest levels since at least August following Fed Chairman Janet Yellen’s remarks to Congress that further interest-rate increases might be pushed back due to global market turbulence. Higher US borrowing costs reduce the attractiveness of developing-nation assets. A Bloomberg gauge of the greenback versus 10 peers fell to the lowest level since November after Yellen’s comments.

The baht climbed 0.3 percent to 35.265 a dollar as of 12:12 p.m. in Bangkok and reached the highest level since October earlier, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The rupiah advanced 0.2 percent to 13,443 after rising as much as 0.9 percent and the ringgit gained 0.1 percent to 4.1160 after strengthening 0.5 percent in early trading.

The Philippine peso appreciated 0.1 percent to 47.44.

“Yellen’s remarks pushing back rate-hike expectations and pushing down the odds of hikes near term appear to be the key driver,” said Vishnu Varathan, a Singaporebased economist at Mizuho Bank Ltd. “The rally may not be sustained as nothing has changed dramatically” and the test will be when Chinese markets reopen on Monday after the Lunar New Year holidays, he said.

The rally may not be sustained as nothing has changed dramatically.”

—Varathan

Bonds advance MALAYSIA’S industrial output rose 2.7 percent last December from a year earlier, official data released on Thursday showed.

That surpassed the 1.8-percent increase last November and the 1-percent median estimate in a Bloomberg survey.

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas will hold its policy rate at 4 percent on Thursday, according to all 14 economists in a separate Bloomberg survey.

Regional bonds rose, with the yield on Indonesia’s sovereign notes due September 2026 falling three basis points to a ninemonth low of 7.97 percent, according to the Inter Dealer Market Association.

The yield on similar-maturity Thai securities declined one basis point to 2.10 percent and that on 10-year Philippine paper dropped three basis points to 4.04 percent.

The yield on Malaysian debt dropped six basis points to 3.91 percent, the most in almost three weeks, Bursa Malaysia prices showed. Bloomberg News

MYANMAR CRASH

A military officer gestures by the wreckage of a Myanmar military aircraft that crashed in an area close to the airport in Naypyitaw, Myanmar, on Wednesday. A number of military personnel were feared dead after a small aircraft went down in a field near the airport. AP

million tons, the survey showed.

That compares with December output of 2.43 million tons and inventories of 2.9 million tons in a survey last month. The Indonesian Palm Oil Association, known as Gapki, doesn’t release monthly production and stockpile data.

Output also probably dropped because of the impact of lack of fertilizer use by smallholders in the second half of 2015 which reduced fresh fruit bunch output, Hariyanto Wijaya, analyst at PT RHB Securities Indonesia, said by e-mail on February 5. The lagged effects of “unfavorably”

dry weather last year reflected in significantly reduced yields in several parts of Malaysia and Indonesia last December and in January, researcher Oil World said this month.

The Indonesian Palm Oil Association will release January export data later this month. Bloomberg News

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Republican candidates hope for survival in S. Carolina

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OLUMBIA, South Carolina—Republican businessman Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders forged ahead after decisive wins in the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary, and the Republican field dwindled by two with announcements that Carly Fiorina and Chris Christie would drop out of the race.

All signs point to a drawn-out battle in the state-by-state contests following Trump’s resounding victory in New Hampshire. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, under immense pressure to prove himself after a devastating fifthplace finish, was looking for a fight that could last for months or even spill into the first contested Republican national convention since 1976.

“We very easily could be looking at May—or the convention,” Rubio campaign manager Terry Sullivan told The Associated Press.

If Trump had Republicans on edge, Democrats were feeling no less queasy.

Rejected in New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton sought redemption in Nevada, where a more diverse group of voters awaited her and Bernie Sanders.

Sanders, a Vermont senator and self-proclaimed democratic socialist, raised $5 million-plus in less than a day after his New Hampshire triumph.

The contributions came mostly in small dollar amounts, his campaign said, illustrating the resources he’ll have to fight Clinton to a bitter end.

Both Clinton and Sanders—the first Jew to win a presidential primary— worked to undercut each other among African-Americans and Hispanics

with less than two weeks until the Democratic contests in Nevada and South Carolina. Clinton’s campaign deployed South Carolina state Rep. Todd Rutherford to vouch for her support for minorities.

“Secretary Clinton has been involved in South Carolina for the last 40 years,” Rutherford said. “Bernie Sanders has talked about these issues for the last 40 days.”

Sanders, meanwhile, met with the Rev. Al Sharpton, a civil-rights activist, at a Harlem restaurant.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, the conservative firebrand and victor in the leadoff Iowa caucuses, returned to the center of the fracas after largely sitting out New Hampshire. He drew contrasts with Trump as he told a crowd of 500 in Myrtle Beach that Texans and South Carolinians are more alike than not.

“We love God, we’re gun owners, military veterans and we’re fed up with what’s happening in Washington,” Cruz said. Far behind in New Hampshire voting, former HewlettPackard CEO Fiorina dropped out, and a spokesman for New Jersey Gov. Christie said his race was over, too. But a sizable field remained.

Almost all the Republicans have spent months building complex campaigns and blanketing airwaves in South Carolina, which heralds the start of the Republican campaign’s foray into the South. After that primary on February 20, seven Southern states, including Georgia and Virginia,

will anchor the Super Tuesday primaries on March 1, with a large number of delegates at stake.

Rubio’s campaign has looked forward to South Carolina. Yet, his path grew far trickier after a fifth-place New Hampshire letdown, which terminated talk of Republican leaders quickly uniting behind him as the strongest alternative to “outsiders” Trump and Cruz.

His campaign’s suggestion that the race could veer a contested convention seemed to signal to mainstream Republicans that the party would be ill-served by allowing the Trump phenomenon to last much longer. Republican officials have already had early discussions about such a July scenario, which could be triggered if no candidate secures a majority of delegates by convention time.

For Gov. John Kasich, whose second-place showing was New Hampshire’s primary stunner, the task was to convert newfound interest into support in a state ideologically distant from his native Ohio. With a minimal South Carolina operation compared to his rivals, Kasich must work quickly.

Heading into the final two-week sprint, Trump was leading in South Carolina among all demographic groups, an NBC/Marist/Wall Street Journal poll showed, with Cruz and Rubio a distant second and third.

Already, more than $32 million has been spent on TV ads here, according to CMAG/Kantar Media data—much of it by Right to Rise, the PAC backing former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. AP

Friday, February 12, 2016

Critics decry radioactive leak at NY nuke plant

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EW YORK—A leak of radioactive material into the groundwater below a nuclear power station in New York City’s suburbs highlights a chronic problem with the nation’s atomic plants, some watchdogs said.

New testing has shown that the amount of tritium in the groundwater below the Indian Point power plant in Buchanan, New York, is about 740 times the amount allowed in drinking water, though officials said there was no publichealth risk from the leak.

Entergy Corp., which operates the plant at the edge of the Hudson River, said on Wednesday that the latest samples from monitoring wells found tritium at a level of 14.8 million picocuries per liter. The US Environmental Protection Agency has set a limit of no more than 20,000 picocuries per liter in drinking water.

Buchanan gets its public water supply from reservoirs in the Catskill mountains, not from local wells, so the danger to humans from the spill was likely to be negligible.

But critics of nuclear plants said the mere fact there is a leak is cause for concern, partly because investigators had yet to pinpoint how it happened.

“There a leak somewhere, and I don’t think they know where it is,” said Arnold Gundersen, a nuclear engineer and former industry executive who now runs a nonprofit group dedicated to nuclear safety.

An Associated Press investigation, published in 2011, found that three quarters of commercial nuclear power plants

in the US had reported tritium leaks.

Those spills were often linked to corroded, underground pipes. Experts have questioned whether the plants are capable of catching leaks and spills promptly in the maze of buried pipes that the plants use to move coolant.

Gundersen said he was concerned that other potentially more problematic elements could also have leaked out that would add to the cleanup burden when the facility is eventually decommissioned.

“All of that stuff stays in the soil,” he said.

Entergy Spokesman Jerry Nappi said the radioactive water probably leaked during a recent operation to prepare for a planned refueling outage, which takes place every two years, but the New Orleans-based company was still investigating to figure out exactly how.

“Tritium, making its way to the ground at Indian Point, is not the way we want to operate,” he said.

He said testing had also found elevated levels of antimony, at about 5,500 picocuries per liter.

The contaminated groundwater will eventually make its way to the Hudson River, where it will become so diluted it won’t be detectable, Nappi said.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has ordered the state’s departments of health and environmental conservation to investigate, calling the leak “unacceptable.”

Cuomo, who lives about 15 miles east of the plant, has long questioned the safety of having a nuclear plant so close to such a large population center. AP

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S. Korea shuts down joint industrial park with NoKor

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AJU, South Korea—Under the gaze of armed soldiers, large white trucks streamed across the world’s most armed border on Thursday as South Korean workers began shutting down a jointly run industrial park in North Korea.

The South’s suspension will end, at least temporarily, the Koreas’ last major cooperation project as punishment over Pyongyang’s recent rocket launch.

It was unclear how long the shutdown at the industrial complex in the border city of Kaesong would last, or even how long it would take South Korean companies to close down.

Pyongyang has yet to comment, but Seoul said that North Korean workers did not report to work at Kaesong on Thursday.

Along the South Korean side of the border, trucks lined up on Thursday morning before crossing into North Korea, presumably to bring back products and gear from the factories.

Soldiers stood guard near customs offices and military vehicles escorted cars and vans to the South Korean side.

The shutdown is one of Seoul’s strongest available punitive measures, but it is unclear how seriously the impoverished North would be hurt.

Seoul said it wants to stop Pyongyang from using hard currency from the park to develop its nuclear and missile programs.

The closing is meant to punish North Korea for its Sunday launch of a rocket that the world sees as a banned test of ballistic missile technology.

Yoon Sang-eun, 62, a South Korean driver for a firm at the factory park, said that if Kaesong “stops operating, companies like us almost have to close off business. It is difficult.”

The South’s Unification Ministry, which is responsible for ties with the North, said about 130 South Koreans planned to enter Kaesong on Thursday to begin shutdown work, and that nearly 70 South Koreans who had

been staying there would be leaving.

North Korea, in a fit of anger over US-South Korean military drills, pulled its workers from Kaesong for about five months in 2013. But, generally, the complex has long been seen as above the constant squabbling and occasional bloodshed between the rival Koreas, one of the last bright spots in a relationship more often marked by threats of war.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye has now done something her conservative predecessor resisted, even after two attacks blamed on North Korea killed 50 South Koreans in 2010.

The question among some is, why now?

While Park has yet to explain her reasoning on the timing, she has previously shown a willingness to take quick action when provoked by the North.

When the North conducted its fourth nuclear test last month, for instance, she resumed anti-Pyongyang propaganda from loudspeakers along the border, despite what Seoul says was an exchange of crossborder artillery fire the last time she used the speakers.

The factory park, which started producing goods in 2004, has provided 616 billion won ($560 million) in cash to North Korea, South Korean Unification Minister Hong Yong-pyo told a news conference.

“It appears that such funds have not been used to pave the way to peace as the international community had hoped, but rather to upgrade its nuclear weapons and long-range missiles,” he said at the televised briefing.

The Unification Ministry said in a statement that the government had “decided to completely shut down” the park. It notified North Korean authorities of the decision and asked them to help ensure the safe return of South Korean citizens from Kaesong.

Combining South Korean initiative, capital and technology with the North’s cheap labor, the industrial park has been seen as a test case for reunification between the Koreas.

Last year 124 South Korean companies hired 54,000 North Korean workers to produce socks, wristwatches and other goods worth about $500 million.

The United States supported the move by its close ally, and said it was considering its own, unspecified “unilateral measures” to punish Pyongyang for its recent nuclear test and rocket launch, even as the UN Security Council deliberates imposing more multilateral sanctions.

South Korea’s government will provide financial compensation to companies that operate at the park, the Finance Ministry said.

South Korean businesses with factories at the park reacted with a mixture of disappointment and anger. AP

Friday, February 12, 2016

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U.S. SENATE PASSES SANCTIONS BILL AGAINST PYONGYANG

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ASHINGTON—Seeking to derail North Korea’s drive for nuclear weapons, Republican and Democratic senators set aside their partisan differences on Wednesday to unanimously pass legislation aimed at starving Pyongyang of the money it needs to build an atomic arsenal.

The Senate approved the sanctions bill 96-0 after lawmakers repeatedly denounced Pyongyang for flouting international law by pursuing nuclear weapons.

Sen. Bob Menendez said that, for too long, North Korea has been dismissed as a strange country run by irrational leaders.

“It’s time to take North Korea seriously,” Menendez said.

The Senate bill, authored by Menendez and Sen. Cory Gardner, targets North Korea’s ability to finance the development of miniaturized nuclear warheads and the longrange missiles required to deliver them.

The legislation also authorizes $50 million over the next five years to transmit radio broadcasts into North Korea, purchase communications equipment and support humanitarian-assistance programs.

The legislation comes in the wake of Pyongyang’s recent satellite launch and technical advances that US intelligence agencies said the reclusive Asian nation is making in its nuclear-weapons program.

Gardner said the Obama administration’s policy of “strategic patience” with North Korea has failed. “The situation in the Korea peninsula is at its most unstable point since the armistice,” said Gardner, referring to the 1953 agreement to end the Korean War. The House overwhelmingly approved North Korean sanctions legislation last month. While there are differences in the two bills, Sen. Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he does not expect any difficulty in

producing a final measure.

The House sent the Senate a bill that was very strong and “we’ve been able to improve it,” said Corker, a Tennessee Republican. “I think they’ll be happy with those improvements.”

Republican senators and presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio rushed back from the campaign to vote, but one presidential hopeful didn’t make it.

Democratic candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders missed the vote. He issued a statement expressing his support for the legislation.

North Korea on Sunday launched a long-range rocket carrying an Earth-observation satellite into space. The launch, which came about a month after the country’s fourth nuclear test, was quickly condemned by world leaders as a potential threat to regional and global security.

Washington, Seoul and others consider the launch a banned test of missile technology. That assessment is based on Pyongyang’s efforts to manufacture nuclear-tipped missiles capable of striking the US mainland; the technology used to launch a rocket carrying a satellite into space can be applied to fire a long-range missile.

In the annual assessment of global threats delivered to Congress on Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper said North Korea has expanded a uranium-enrichment facility and restarted a plutonium reactor that could start recovering material for nuclear weapons in weeks or months.

Both findings will deepen concern that North Korea is not only making technical advances in its nuclear-weapons program, but is working to expand what is thought to be a small nuclear arsenal. US-based experts have estimated that North Korea may have about 10 bombs, but that could grow to between 20 and 100 by 2020. AP

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The World BusinessMirror

Friday, February 12, 2016

briefs

SEOUL: NORTH KOREAN MILITARY CHIEF EXECUTED

SEOUL, South Korea—North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had his military chief executed for corruption and other charges, a South Korean official said on Thursday.

If true, the execution of Ri Yong Gil, chief of the North Korean military’s general staff, would be the latest in a series of killings, purges and dismissals since Kim took power in late 2011.

Details about North Korea’s opaque government are notoriously difficult for outsiders to get, even national governments and South Korean officials have a spotty record of tracking developments in North Korea.

A South Korean official said that Ri’s execution was part of Kim’s effort to bolster his grip on power. Other charges Ri faced before his execution were abusing his power and forming a clique, the official said. AP

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Cease-fire plans in Syria: Russia, US differ on date H

Church talks to make Cuba ‘perfect place for negotiations’

IRANIANS RALLY TO CELEBRATE ANNIVERSARY OF 1979 REVOLUTION

TEHRAN, Iran—Iranians have begun nationwide celebrations to commemorate the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution.

State television on Thursday aired footage of rallies in Tehran and other cities and towns across the country, many of them in frigid winter weather conditions. The demonstrators chanted traditional slogans against the US and Israel, and the streets in many cities were decorated with anti-US and anti-Israeli banners and posters The rallies commemorate February 11, 1979, when followers of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ousted US-backed Shah Reza Pahlavi. The US helped orchestrate the 1953 coup that overthrew Iran’s popular Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and brought Pahlavi to power. AP

AUSTRALIAN DEPUTY PM ANNOUNCES RETIREMENT CANBERRA, Australia—Australia’s deputy prime minister announced his retirement on Thursday, with the prime minister likely to announce a Cabinet reshuffle before elections due this year.

Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss, who is minister for Regional Development and Infrastructure, told Parliament he will retire at the next election.

Truss also immediately resigned as leader of The Nationals party, the government’s junior coalition partner. His replacement as party leader will be decided by his colleagues later on Thursday and the new leader will automatically become deputy prime minister.

Trade and Investment Minister Andrew Robb announced on Wednesday that he too will leave politics at the next election. AP

2 FEMALE BOMBERS KILL 58 IN NIGERIAN REFUGEE CAMP MAIDUGURI, Nigeria—Two female suicide bombers blew themselves up in a northeastern Nigerian refugee camp, killing at least 58 people, health and rescue officials said on Wednesday.

A third woman bomber was arrested and gave officials information about other planned bombings that helped them increase security at the camp, an official of the Borno State Emergency Management Agency said. AP

SYRIANS gather in a street that was hit by shelling in the predominantly Christian and Armenian neighborhood of Suleimaniyeh, Aleppo, Syria, on April 11, 2015. AP/SANA

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UNICH—Russia has proposed a March 1 cease-fire in Syria, US officials said on Wednesday, but Washington believes Moscow is giving itself and the Syrian government three weeks to try to crush moderate rebel groups.

The US has countered with demands for the fighting to stop immediately, the officials said. Peace talks are supposed to resume by February 25.

The talk of new cease-fire plans comes as the US, Russia and more than a dozen other countries meet in Munich to try to halt five years of civil war in the Arab country.

The conflict has killed more than a quarter-million people, created Europe’s biggest refugee crisis since World War II and allowed the Islamic State (IS) to carve out its own territory across parts of Syria and neighboring Iraq.

Russia says it is supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government as part of a counterterrorism campaign. But the West says the majority of its strikes are targeting moderate groups that are opposed to Assad and the IS. The most recent Russian-backed offensive, near Aleppo, prompted opposition groups to walk out of peace talks last month in Geneva, while forcing tens of thousands of

civilians to flee toward the Turkish border.

The US officials weren’t authorized to speak publicly about private diplomatic discussions in the run-up to the Munich conference and demanded anonymity. One said the US can’t accept Russia’s offer because opposition forces could suffer irreversible losses in northern and southern Syria before the cease-fire ever takes hold.

The officials said the US counterproposal is simple: A cease-fire that is effective immediately and is accompanied by full humanitarian access to Syria’s besieged civilian centers.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry, who arrived in Germany on Wednesday, had talks planned late in the evening with UN peace envoy Staffan de Mistura and Adel al-Jubeir, the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia, a key backer of Syria’s rebel groups.

The Obama administration has been trying for months to clinch a cease-fire and pave the way for a

transition government in Syria that would allow parties to the conflict to concentrate on defeating the threat posed by the IS and the al-Qaedalinked Nusra Front.

But after having long demanded Assad’s ouster, the shift in the US focus to combating terrorism has resulted in a confusing mix of priorities and a layered strategy in Syria that few understand, and even fewer see working.

Beyond Russia, the administration has often struggled to keep its own allies, such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia in line.

“We will approach this meeting in Munich with great hopes that this will be a telling moment,” Kerry said on Tuesday in Washington. His peace push coincides with Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s attendance at a gathering in Brussels to hash out military options with North Atlantic Traty Organization partners.

Brett McGurk, the Obama administration’s point-man for defeating the IS, said Russia’s Aleppo offensive was having the perverse effect of helping the extremists by drawing local fighters away from the battle against IS and to the war against Syria’s government.

“What Russia’s doing is directly enabling ISIL [Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant],” McGurk told the House Foreign Affairs Committee in Washington.

But the panel’s top Democrat echoed some of the frustration of his Republican colleagues with the larger US strategy.

“It seems as if we’re only halfheartedly going after IS, and halfheartedly helping the [rebel] Free

250,000 Killed in five-year Syrian civil-war

Syria Army and others on the ground,” Rep. Eliot Engel, DemocratNew York said. He urged a “robust campaign, not a tentative one, not one that seems like we’re dragging ourselves in...to destroy IS and get rid of Assad.”

Kerry emphasized on Tuesday that US officials “are not blind to what is happening.” He said the Aleppo battle makes it “much more difficult to be able to come to the table and to be able to have a serious conversation.”

But the US has staked its hopes for an end to the five-year civil war in Syria on the peace talks and Assad’s eventual departure, saying the American public has no appetite for a military solution.

To that end, Washington has tempered its calls dating back to August 2011 for Assad to immediately leave power. And to get Russia on board, it now won’t even say that Assad should be barred from running for reelection if and when a new Syrian constitution is drafted.

The ambiguity has emboldened Assad’s supporters, Russia and Iran, while upsetting American allies in the Middle East, who are frustrated by a process that appears to lock the Syrian leader in place well into 2017—and perhaps beyond. AP

AVANA—The heads of the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches will hold a historic meeting on Friday in the threadbare international airport of an officially secular, communist-run tropical island.

Odd as the location seems, Pope Francis’s and Patriarch Kirill’s attempt to reconcile their churches after centuries of estrangement will set the tone for a year of peacemaking in Cuba, a nation trying to shed its historic role as international socialist provocateur.

In addition to the meeting of the church leaders, Cuban President Raul Castro is expected to welcome President Barack Obama to Havana as early as this spring to celebrate the detente the two men declared at the end of 2014, ending a half-century of hostility.

And four years of talks in Cuba between Colombia’s government and its main rebel group appear set to produce an accord ending the Western Hemisphere’s longest-running conflict, perhaps, as early as mid-year.

If all goes as planned, 2016 could cement Castro’s construction of a foreign policy legacy markedly different from that of his brother Fidel, who oversaw five decades of tension with the US, dispatching Cuban troops and advisers to Africa, Asia and Central and South America, and offering safe haven to anti-Western fighters from conflicts around the world.

“Cuba has been transformed from a revolutionary actor, isolated from other states in the Western Hemisphere with the exception of Mexico and Canada,” said Arturo Lopez-Levy, a Cuban-trained professor at the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley. “The country has come to be seen as a country in transformation, part of the modern-day international system.”

Kirill is traveling through Latin America, visiting national leaders and the region’s small Russian Orthodox communities.

Francis is stopping briefly in Cuba for the second time in less than a year on his way to a tour of Mexico.

The meeting of the men in Havana’s Jose Marti International Airport is expected to focus almost entirely on the issue of religious reconciliation.

The two churches split during the Great Schism of 1054 and have remained estranged over a host of issues, including the primacy of the pope and Russian Orthodox accusations that the Catholic Church is poaching converts in former Soviet lands.

Friday’s meeting will be the first-ever meeting between the leaders of the churches. It will put Castro in a positive international light at a critical point in his normalization of relations with the US. With less than a year left in Obama’s presidency, advocates of detente are pushing hard for Cuba and the US to make their reconciliation irreversible. The Obama administration has cited Cuba’s role in Colombia’s peace talks as a reason for the US to engage with the island rather than isolating it. Images of Castro presiding over another historic attempt at reconciliation can’t help but build his credentials as a man the US should be doing business with.

“Fidel was widely perceived as volatile and partisan, Raul as steadier, more predictable and reliable, more reflective, hence, a better negotiating partner or host,” said Richard Feinberg, a former Clinton Administration official and a professor of international politics at the University of California, San Diego.

While Castro is departing from his brother’s foreign policy, Fidel Castro’s international focus left his successor with some advantages, including a larger and better-trained diplomatic corps than those of many other countries its size. AP

Robert Kennedy’s assassin denied parole; senator’s confidante fails to win his release

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AN DIEGO—Sirhan Sirhan was denied parole on Wednesday for fatally shooting Robert F. Kennedy after a confidante of the slain senator, who was shot in the head, forgave him and repeatedly apologized for not doing more to win his release.

Paul Schrade’s voice cracked with emotion during an hour of testimony on his efforts to untangle mysteries about the events of June 5, 1968. The 91-year-old former labor leader said he believed Sirhan shot him but that a second unidentified shooter felled Kennedy.

“I should have been here long ago and that’s why I feel guilty for

not being here to help you and to help me,” Schrade said.

The men faced each other for the first time since Schrade testified at Sirhan’s 1969 trial. Schrade apologized for not going to any of Sirhan’s 14 previous parole hearings.

As Sirhan left, Schrade shouted, “Sirhan, I’m so sorry this is happening to you. It’s my fault.”

Sirhan, who had nodded politely when the victim addressed him, tried to shake hands with Schrade but a guard blocked him.

Commissioners concluded after more than three hours of intense testimony at the Richard J. Donovan

Correctional Center that Sirhan did not show adequate remorse or understand the enormity of his crime.

Sirhan, who is serving a life sentence that was commuted from death when the California Supreme Court briefly outlawed capital punishment in 1972, will next be eligible for parole in five years.

“This crime impacted the nation, and I daresay it impacted the world,” Commissioner Brian Roberts said. “It was a political assassination of a viable Democratic presidential candidate.”

Sirhan, 71, stuck to his account that he didn’t remember the shooting at the Ambassador Hotel in Los

Angeles moments after Kennedy delivered a victory speech in the pivotal California primary.

Sirhan recalled events before the shooting in some detail—going to a shooting range that day, visiting the hotel in search of a party and returning after realizing he drank too many Tom Collins’s to drive. He drank coffee in a hotel pantry with a woman to whom he was attracted.

The next thing he said he remembered was being choked and unable to breathe.

“It’s all vague now,” he said. “I’m sure you all have it in your records, I can’t deny it or confirm it. I just

wish this whole thing had never taken place.”

Sirhan, a native of Jerusalem, listened intently during most of the hearing, turning testy when commissioners pressed him on his memory and any feelings of remorse. He said he felt remorse for any crime victim but added that he couldn’t take responsibility for the shooting.

“If you want a confession, I can’t make it now,” Sirhan said. “Legally speaking, I’m not guilty of anything.... It’s not that I’m making light of it. I’m responsible for being there.”

Schrade, who was alongside Kennedy and four others who were

injured and served as western regional director of the United Auto Workers Union at the time, provided much of the drama. He angrily ignored the commissioner’s admonishment to avoid directly addressing Sirhan and chastised the prosecution for a “venomous” statement advocating that Sirhan stay in prison.

Schrade, who long advocated the second-gunman theory, recalled how he became depressed and upset after the shooting and vividly described his extensive efforts to find answers. He stopped occasionally to apologize for being nervous and emotional. AP

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PYONGYANG: SOUTH’S SHUTDOWN A ‘DANGEROUS DECLARATION OF WAR’

N. Korea vows to deport all S. Koreans from factory park

A SOUTH Korean cargo truck returning home from North Korea’s Kaesong is being checked at the customs, immigration and quarantine office near the border village of Panmunjom, in Paju, South Korea, on Thursday. AP/AHN YOUNG-JOON

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AJU, South Korea—North Korea on Thursday vowed to immediately deport all South Korean nationals and freeze all South Korean assets at a jointly run factory park in the North, a swift, aggressive response to the South Korean decision to suspend operations at the former symbol of inter-Korean cooperation. Related story on A7.

Pyongyang also said it was pulling all its workers from the Kaesong complex just across the tense

border in the city of Kaesong, shutting down two crucial cross-border communication hotlines and

putting the factory under its military control.

It wasn’t immediately clear what had become of the hundreds of South Koreans who began shutting down their operations at Kaesong on Thursday.

The statement by the North’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea significantly raises the stakes in a standoff that began with North Korea’s nuclear test last month and rocket launch on Sunday.

South Korea responded on Thursday by suspending operations at the factory park, one of its harshest possible punishment options.

North Korea called the South’s shutdown announcement a “dangerous declaration of war” and a “declaration of an end to the last lifeline of the North-South relations.” Such over-the-top rhetoric is typical of the North’s propaganda, but the country appeared to

be backing up its language with its strong response to the South Korean suspension at Kaesong.

North Korea, in its statement, also issued crude insults against South Korea’s President Park Geunhye, saying she masterminded the shutdown and calling her a “confrontational wicked woman” who lives upon “the groin of her American boss.”

The statement said the South Korean move is a “product of Park Geun-hye’s inveterate sycophancy and abnormal confrontational hysteria kicked off by her at the prodding of the United States.”

Seoul said it wants to stop Pyongyang from using hard currency from the park to develop its nuclear and missile programs.

The closing is meant to punish North Korea for its Sunday launch of a rocket that the world sees as a banned test of ballistic missile technology. AP

Editor: Lyn Resurreccion •

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US health officials warn of Zika outbreak in Florida

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A SHINGTON—Urg ing Congress to provide more resources in the fight against Zika, a top federal health official on Wednesday warned Congress that the virus is likely to spread into tropical areas of the United States, such as Puerto Rico and South Florida, where the Aedes aegypti mosquito is common.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Thomas Frieden told members of the Foreign Affairs Committee that the number of US Zika cases has risen and cautioned that if the virus takes root, it could spread as rapidly as the chikungunya virus did in 2014, when the disease, also carried by mosquitoes, crisscrossed Puerto Rico in less than a year.

Frieden, acknowledging that a case of Zika was spread through sexual contact in Dallas, said much was still unknown about the virus, including the depth of its health effects and how long it could survive in bodily fluids. He said mosquito eradication remained the best way to fight the virus.

“There is the enemy,” Frieden said, directing the attention of members of Congress to a picture of an Aedes mosquito, distinguished by white markings on its legs.

“It hides in closets, under tables and places that are harder to get to…. It can bite four or five people in the course of one blood meal, meaning it can spread the disease very quickly. Our efforts to control it are challenging.”

Rep. Curt Clawson, a Republican from Florida’s Gulf Coast, expressed concern that despite widespread publicity in recent weeks about Zika, not enough is being done to combat the virus. He peppered Frieden and Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Health, with questions about vaccinations, outdoor spraying and the possible use of genetically modified mosquitoes to disrupt breeding patterns.

“This is one that is sneaking up on us and we’re not paying enough attention,” Clawson said following the hearing. “If we deal with it prior to an outbreak we’d be much better off.”

More than 30 countries and territories have reported local transmissions of the Zika virus, which, when contracted by pregnant women, is thought to be the cause of a birth defect characterized by an unusually small head and developmental problems. The World Health Organization declared the rapidly spreading virus a public health emergency, reflecting the concern internationally.

President Barack Obama has asked Congress for more than $1.8 billion in emergency funding to fight

the Zika virus domestically and internationally. The money would be used for testing and surveillance to help control any potential outbreak. It would also be put toward finding a vaccine.

Fauci said work was under way on finding a vaccine but that finding one wasn’t likely before the end of 2017.

In Florida, Gov. Rick Scott declared a health emergency last week after at least nine new cases of the virus were found in four counties. At least 16 cases have been discovered statewide, including six in Miami-Dade.

Frieden said Florida was one of the key tropical areas of the US likely to face a challenge controlling Zika. He noted the region has a huge number of mosquitoes, as well as sporadic outbreaks of dengue and chikungunya, both which also are carried by the Aedes aegypti mosquito.

Chikungunya was discovered in about 450 people who traveled through Florida in 2014. Eleven people contracted the virus in Florida.

Dengue fever struck Key West in 2009, infecting 27 people, and again in 2011, infecting 66 people.

The Zika hearing was reminiscent of another in 2014 involving Frieden and Fauci when they faced even tougher questions on the US response to the Ebola epidemic, which killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa.

At the time, several Republicans called for travel restrictions to prevent new Ebola cases from coming to the US. While there were questions about monitoring at the nation’s international airports, no one demanded travel restrictions for the Zika virus.

Rep. Chris Smith, Republican-New Jersey, chairman of the subcommittee on global health, said awareness about Zika needed to be raised, but noted a major difference: Ebola was a deadly disease easily spread by human-to-human contact. With Zika, the symptoms are so mild that those infected may not even realize it.

But Rep. Jeff Duncan, a California Republican who is chairman of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee, said Zika should not be dismissed. He worried that Central American migrants crossing the Southwest border might be carrying it, and that it has been linked not only to microcephaly in newborns, but to Guillain-Barre syndrome, which causes paralysis in adults.

Rep. Ami Bera, a California Democrat and a physician, raised concerns about the possibility of the virus being active in semen and other bodily fluids. But he cautioned people not to overreact. TNS

INDIA PRODUCTION SURGE TO FIZZLE OUT AS OIL BOUNTY FADES

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NDIA’S growth data is once again raising questions, and that signals trouble ahead for the world’s fastest-growing major economy.

This time the surprise was a manufacturing surge that contrasted with other indicators, including official industrial production data and a private purchasing managers’ index (PMI).

The discrepancy in part suggests that companies saw margins rise from lower input costs rather than higher volumes—an “oil bounty” that won’t be around next year, HSBC Holdings Plc.’s Pranjul Bhandari said.

“Put another way, India is likely to lose its main driver of growth,” Bhandari wrote in a February 9 report.

With China slowing down, India’s surging growth rates have made it a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy global economy. Yet, the headline numbers have puzzled economists ever since the government’s statistics department changed its method for calculating GDP a year ago, and Monday’s data release only added to the confusion.

Attracting factory jobs is key to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s growth plans. He’s pushing to boost the share of manufacturing in the economy to 25 percent by 2022 from

100M

after the data was published.

‘More complicated’

India’s target new jobs by 2022

about 18 percent now to put 100 million people to work.

Next week he plans to hold an investment fair in Mumbai to woo companies under a program called “Make In India.”

While investment growth overall remains subdued, Modi has seen some success in changing the impression of India as a difficult place to do business.

From the time he took office in May 2014 through September, foreign direct investment rose to around $42 billion in India—a 27-percent increase from the prior 16 months at a time of slowing global demand.

Sony Corp. last year shipped its first television sets made in India, and

LABORERS carry wood piles for preparations of the Make In India summit in Mumbai, India, on February 9. AP/RAFIQ MAQBOOL Other numbers in Monday’s data Lenovo Group Ltd. and Foxconn Techrelease also raised eyebrows. The govnology Group started making smarternment revised April to June GDP phones in India. growth to 7.6 percent from 7 percent, and that for July to September to 7.7 STILL, the 12.6-percent jump in manupercent from 7.4 percent. facturing in the last three months of 2015 These changes are “more likely to from a year ago belied other indicators. deepen doubts about the quality of Industrial production last November fell the official data than improve sentiby the most since 2011, and PMI data last ment toward India’s economy,” Shilan December indicated a slowdown for the Shah, Singapore-based India econofirst time since 2013. mist at Capital Economics, wrote soon

‘Deepen doubts’

TO meet the government’s full-year GDP growth estimate of 7.6 percent, household consumption would have to increase an “unrealistic” 12 percent in January to March, according to Anubhuti Sahay, head of South Asia economic research at Standard Chartered. That’s almost double the average over the three previous quarters, she said.

Investment is also unlikely to rebound in the final three months of the fiscal year as the government slows spending to meet its budget deficit target, she added.

“We hesitate to draw conclusions about growth drivers,” Sahay said, adding that she’ll watch for trends when actual data is released in May. India’s top statistician said that India’s growth rate doesn’t mean Asia’s third-largest economy is booming.

While production volumes increased, sales declined and input costs fell even more steeply, TCA Anant said in an interview on Tuesday.

“It’s not a clear-cut story,” he said, adding that the data must be filtered through the current economic situation. “The underlying reality has be-

come a lot more complicated.”

The GDP revisions were partly due to a surge in tax revenues, he said, adding that the data could see one more revision “though of less magnitude.”

Wobbly recovery

EITHER way, the numbers point to a wobbly economic recovery ahead. A Bloomberg survey of 23 economists taken before the latest data release saw GDP growth at 7.4 percent in the year through March— below the government’s estimate—before accelerating to 7.8 percent in the following 12 months. HSBC and Standard Chartered retained their full-year predictions even after the government raised its forecast.

Despite the slowdown in manufacturing, a stronger monsoon will boost consumption and lower borrowing costs will spur investment, according to HSBC’s Bhandari. She predicted GDP growth at 7.4 percent in the current fiscal year and next, while Standard Chartered sees GDP expanding 7.4 percent this year and 7.6 percent next year.

“Don’t panic in a hurry,” she wrote.

“Piecing together the jigsaw suggests that the drivers of growth could change in a manner that keeps growth rates unaltered.” Bloomberg News

A10 Friday, February 12, 2016 • Editor: Angel R. Calso

Opinion BusinessMirror

editorial

Japan’s Philippine foreign investment– maybe this year

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ITH all of the important and critical events happening on the global economic front, it is unfortunate we are in the campaign season, where information is simply food for political propaganda to sway voters.

The latest are the comments from a ranking official of the Japan External Trade Organization (Jetro). In a recent visit to the Philippines, Jetro Executive Vice President Tatsuhiro Shindo was quoted as saying that the Philippines has moved up on the Japanese investors’ list of their most favored destinations in Asia.

The political pundits immediately jumped on this sentiment as a clear indication of who should be elected the next president. Interestingly, Shindo has nothing to do at all with Japan’s investments in Asia. He is in charge of the Chicago, USA, office, and is responsible to facilitate business development between Japan and companies in the 12-state Midwest region.

The Philippines may be on Japan’s “most favored list of investment destinations,” but it would appear that the Japanese are not putting their money where their nice sentiments are.

For the last reporting period—2014—Japanese foreign direct investment (FDI) to the Philippines increased by 3.8 percent over the previous year. By comparison, investment in other regional nations substantially increased: China, 6.3 percent; Thailand, 17.4 percent; Vietnam, 11.3 percent; and Indonesia, 19.4 percent.

In fact, the average yearly increase in Japanese FDI from 2004 to 2009 was 18 percent, and since 2010 has averaged 6.3 percent. Since 2010, the average year-on-year increase in Japan’s FDI to the other nations has been growing: Vietnam, 24 percent; Indonesia, 19 percent; Thailand, 17 percent; and Malaysia, 10 percent.

Shindo also cited Japan’s “China Plus One” investment strategy so as to avoid putting all its investment “eggs” just in China’s “basket”. He said: “Recently, we are pushing more for China Plus One means Philippines.” About this time in 2015, the same comment was made about Vietnam being the destination of choice after China.

Perhaps this time, favorable comments about investing in the Philippines will be followed by companies actually writing checks for their investment. However, it probably would be a sensible idea to leave the political rhetoric for the campaign trail and face the realities of the challenges the economy faces.

Billboards James Jimenez

SPOX

T

HIS election’s campaign rules, promulgated by the Commission on Elections (Comelec), have been shaped by the Supreme Court’s decisions on a number of cases. Candidates now have the freedom to buy up virtually as much airtime as their spending limits will allow, and public-utility vehicles—buses, jeepneys and taxis—will probably soon become rolling poster boards for your favorite politicians.

The most important change, however, has to be the one wrought by Diocese of Bacolod v. Comelec. In that case involving Team Patay/Team Buhay posters, the Court held that the Comelec could not regulate campaign propaganda placed on private property, with the consent of the property owner. This was the Comelec’s position to begin with. Where the Court and the Comelec differed, however, was with regard to the sizes

of the posters. The Comelec believed that size could still be regulated; the Court disagreed.

Here’s where things turn surreal.

Now the argument has cropped up that, since billboards are private property, the Comelec is equally powerless to regulate their use for political purposes. That’s right. Billboards. Those huge things by the side of the road that normally show the most beautiful people doing their

best to convince the rest of us that we can look like them, too, if only we buy their jeans. Imagine, instead of big-name stars, those billboards featured politicians running for office.

I don’t know why anyone would even entertain this notion, given that the reliance on diocese is so clearly misplaced. In that case, the Court demonstrated its awareness of the possibility of abuse. It said: “On the other extreme, moved by the credentials and the message of a candidate, others will spend their own resources in order to lend support for the campaigns. This may be without agreement between the speaker and the candidate, or his or her political party. In lieu of donating funds to the campaign, they will instead use their resources directly in a way that the candidate or political party would have done so.” This is the exact same argument being put forward by those who want to exempt billboards from campaign regulation; an argument that the Court recognized may effectively skirt the constitutional and statutory limits of campaign spending.

And so the Court clarified: “This is not the situation in this case.”

Otherwise put, the decision in Diocese was never meant to excuse the scenario being proposed by those who believe that billboards should be considered unregulated private property. In fact, the diocese itself says: “This does not mean that there cannot be a species of speech by a private citizen which will not amount to an election paraphernalia to be validly regulated by law;” and then goes on to provide for situations where, in the context of regulation, “it will not matter whether the speech is made with or on private property.”

Yeah, billboards. I’m looking at you. n n n

DON’T forget to report campaign violations to the Comelec on Twitter, using the hashtag #SumbongKo. Voter vigilance is key.

James Arthur B. Jimenez is director of the Commission on Elections’s Education and Information Department.

Opinion BusinessMirror

opinion@businessmirror.com.ph

How to fight Zika and other diseases B Y A W  M B | TNS

T

HE Zika virus headlines may seem disturbingly familiar— with good reason. Although Zika and Ebola are very different contagions that cause distinctive diseases, there are startling similarities in how the two epidemics unfolded.

Both were detected late. By the time health authorities understood that we were in the midst of an Ebola outbreak, the virus had been spreading for months and across multiple international borders.

We are only now starting to piece together the magnitude of the Zika crisis, but the more than twentyfold surge in reports of microcephaly—a neurologic birth defect believed to be caused by Zika infection in pregnant women—last year in Brazil suggests that extensive viral spread in late 2014 and early 2015 went unnoticed.

Both disease outbreaks generated sluggish international responses. The World Health Organization (WHO) was lambasted for its long delay before labeling the Ebola outbreak an international emergency. With Zika cases now reported in 23 countries and territories in the Americas and up to 1.3 million infections in Brazil alone, the WHO finally declared the outbreak an international public-health emergency on February 1. It remains to be seen whether the WHO will effectively escalate international control and research efforts, while preventing countries from imposing unwarranted travel and trade restrictions.

And in both outbreaks, the heaviest burden fell on vulnerable populations least able to bear it. Ebola swept across three postconflict countries that are among the world’s poorest and lowestranked in terms of human development.

Brazil’s outbreak of microcephaly was centered in the north—one of its poorest areas. These patterns—slow detection, sluggish response and endangered vulnerable populations—will repeat themselves until we fix the forces driving them.

A post-Ebola report released by the National Academy of Medicine

last month estimated that pandemics cost the global economy on average over $60 billion each year, and it prescribed an annual global investment of $4.5 billion, mostly to bolster public-health systems. It recommended that the WHO disseminate a daily “watch list” of outbreaks, and streamline its emergency preparedness and response activities into one reliably funded and separately governed center. Finally, the report suggested funding a pandemic research group that would be supported by but independent of the WHO, and that would build surge capacity for drugs needed in health emergencies.

To build an effective global system for containing infectious diseases like Zika and Ebola, we need to make sure that countries around the world have the surveillance capacity to identify outbreaks before they spiral out of control. That means giving technical and financial assistance to developing countries and having external monitoring and incentives to make sure that capacity is built. We also need to make sure that the WHO—the only organization with the representation and legitimacy to do so—is up to the task of leading outbreak response when local forces are overwhelmed. Not only do we know how to create a functioning global system, doing so is actually required under international law.

The 2005 International Health Regulations, introduced by the WHO and binding on virtually every country in the world, set standards for how to track, report and respond to outbreaks. Countries were supposed to build the capacity needed to meet these standards by 2012, with possible extensions to 2014 and 2016. Time is quickly running out, yet only a third of countries worldwide said they had complied as of late 2014. The real compliance rate is almost certainly lower.

Now that Zika is at the forefront of international attention, let’s remember the broader systemic shortcomings that got us here in the first place.

Without serious investment in global health systems, we will continue to face pandemics like Ebola and Zika and their devastating consequences.

Saving lives amid world’s worst humanitarian crisis B A T | TNS

S

KALA SIKAMINEAS, Greece— Standing in the harbor of this Greek village on the island of Lesbos, I am holding yet another soaking wet little girl with blue lips. Minutes before she had been sinking in the deadly Aegean sea crossing from Turkey to Greece. Her parents had fled Syria with only a cell phone and cash after their house had been bombed and the Islamic State (IS) had shot three generations of their relatives in cold blood.

My heart swells as I spot tiny specks of orange lifejackets bobbing like oranges in a low-riding boat. The rescue whistles blow, and volunteers from all nations jump into action. The refugees are closer now, and 50 feet from shore the screams of terror begin as two panicked refugees jump out, setting off a crushing stampede as children and babies are catapulted from the boat into the dark sea.

Most Syrians don’t swim. I catch sight of a small body in a puffy pink jacket floating away, and I plunge into the water to reach her in borrowed time. I struggle to plant my feet on the slippery rocks below, as the weight of her lifejacket and wet clothes strain my lazy muscles to work even harder. By the shore, volunteers call for stretchers in five different languages, but I am focused on one child’s heartbeat. Finding no pulse, I fumble at her clothes, free the airway and pump her tiny chest looking for life.

After two cycles of CPR, water sputters from her mouth and I turn her over to allow the sea to escape. She is not in good condition, but she is alive. Children and babies are quickly being passed, volunteer to volunteer, to the safety of shore, and we smile and hug the families who were almost swallowed by the sea.

Back on the shore, I reach for a bottle of bubbles to help calm another restless baby and eye the two teenage girls who have been raped by the IS. They remain silent, and their dark lashes spy my every move. With new eyes, I scope the refugee journey of heading toward the “promised

land,” but finding only paper towns. In Lesbos I have seen the face of all our gods, where humans embrace and pain is absorbed into a love without borders.

Volunteers work day and night in rain and snow, huddled together around fires and in rental cars, tracking the boats and sending rescue teams out into the angry sea.

We rush another hypothermic pregnant woman along the darkened shoreline now lit with magic bright solar lights and wait and pray, always ready with emergency blankets and food and dry clothes. The volunteers share jubilation in the safe rescues—and bottomless despair when we learn they have capsized and everyone has drowned.

After five months of volunteering in Lesbos, my brain can’t solve the larger problems of a world where leaders are also struggling to find answers. I do know that I can help these suffering humans, but I am not naïve enough to think that a terrorist couldn’t get through any border or inspire people across many nations.

Syria’s civil war is the worst humanitarian crisis of our time. Half the country’s prewar population—more than 11 million people—have been killed or forced to flee their homes. Last year more than 800,000 Syrians arrived by sea, and in them I have met beautiful, educated families who are just like us.

When did we become so fearful? The September 11 attacks taught me not to live in fear or give in to terrorism. If the world turns its back on the refugees, they will be forced to return to Syria, and then the IS wins. Where has all the love gone in the world? We are not being asked to go shave our heads and become monks, but to imagine a world where everyone does his or her part, so that the karma banks will overflow with blue-chip stocks of compassion and we all become “billionaires on the inside.”

Imagine a world where souls are more valuable than money. Isn’t that the way it was meant to be? It’s easy to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but now humanity asks us to transform fear into love. To be in the wrong place at the right time.

Friday, February 12, 2016 A11

A day with the Czech ambassador Tito Genova Valiente

ANNOTATIONS

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HERE was the name that was difficult to pronounce, and there was the country we barely have an idea about. But His Excellency Jaroslav Olša, Czech ambassador to the Philippines, did come to Naga City. He heard about the book, which is a translation to the Bikol language of Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis. He read about Kristian Sendon Cordero translating the said classic.

The visit of the ambassador, although not an official one, proved to be a very important and a heartwarming occasion. We not only got interested about the Czech Republic, we also learned about Czech humor.

We have to confess, we really did not know how to deal with an ambassador. What we simply know is that as any ambassador moves around, he is carrying with him the country, his territory. Ambassador Olša would laugh at this thought, and our idea of gravitas and diplomats.

He arrived via a plane from Manila. His driver took the land route with his car flying the Czech flag.

We met up at the foot of the famed Four Pillars of the Ateneo de Naga, where I told him the building was made in the 1940s and taken over by

the Japanese during the Pacific War. We took him to see Fr. Jun Viray, SJ, president of the Ateneo de Naga University (AdNU). And over cups of coffee and local rice cakes, they discussed how the Philippines and his country are linked in some ways.

Of particular interest to the Ateneo and the Jesuits were the Czech Jesuits who visited the Philippines in the 17th century. There was Fr. Georg Kamel, SJ, who is reputed to be the first to document the flora and fauna of the Philippines. Then there was Fr. Paul Klein, SJ, who held an important post among the Jesuits. The ambassador was well aware of one fact, too, that the Jesuit historian Fr. Rene Javellana is already looking into the works of these Czech missionaries.

Out of the blue, I relayed to

21216

the ambassador a question: Isn’t Ladislav Smoček a Czech? Yes, he is and, in the 1970s, he conducted workshops at the Philippine Educational.

During the launch of Kafka’s book, Metamorphosis, which is published by the Ateneo de Naga University Press, the ambassador relayed more information about the Czech contribution to the world, the term “robot” being one of them.

The morning of his arrival, the ambassador visited the animation department of the AdNU, which

wins the national competition yearly. On our way up the building, I recalled what the ambassador said about his Czech scientists’ interest in botany. I then asked him to look back at the dormant volcano called Mount Isarog, looming over the university. “There it is, Mount Isarog,” and catching my breath, “hmm, shrouded in mist.” That was the only letdown in this short and charming visit of a Czech Ambassador to our city.

E-mail: titovaliente@yahoo.com.

Torn between two loves: Balancing career and relationships Niña Terol

WOMEN STEPPING UP Conclusion

I

NSTEAD of speaking about “work-life balance,” we must speak of “work-life integration”—not that act of managing those heavy scales that weigh upon women and our many roles, but, instead, completing a “wheel of wholeness” and being focused about our purpose and our priorities.

This was the crux of the discussion during Business and Professional Women (BPW)-Makati’s event, dubbed “Torn Between Two Loves: Balancing Career and Relationships,” held on February 10 at A Space in Legaspi Village, Makati City.

“The concept of work-life balance is already outdated,” pointed out Chiqui Escareal-Go, an event panelist who is president of Mansmith and Fielders Inc., an advocacy-based marketing, sales, innovation and strategy training, and consultancy company. “We should talk about “integration” and wholeness…. And when you talk of a romantic partnership, it should be with someone who is just as whole, with whom you can share your wholeness.”

Chiqui is one-half of the hugely successful partnership between her and her husband, “marketing guru” Josiah Go. She said one key to keeping their relationship strong is accepting the many things that bring their partner joy—in both their cases, marketing and advocacy—and integrating those into their relationship.

“It’s impossible for us not to talk about marketing and work, even during our ‘dates.’ Sometimes, we just spend some time together and we already hatch an idea for another marketing program. And it works for us,” Chiqui shared.

For Monette Iturralde-Hamlin, another event panelist who cofounded the integrated marketing communications firm TeamAsia with her late husband, Mike, both marriage and business-building complemented each other, because each partner recognized the respective strengths that they brought into their partnership. It was the mutual give and take that allowed their business to flourish and their marriage to succeed.

“And I was just always in awe of him,” Monette shared. “For 20 years,

I was in love with him every single day. We would hold hands while walking, and I always told him ‘I love you’—morning, noon and night.”

Mike’s passing three years ago left Monette “devastated,” but she is grateful to have been able to express her love for her husband every single day. If there is one thing she would tell her 10-year-younger self, it would be: “Take more vacations— and longer vacations—with your husband and your family.”

Meanwhile, Jean de CastroMolo, another event panelist who is a corporate lawyer and anchor for the daily morning show First Up Philippines (Bloomberg TV Philippines), spoke of compromise and sacrifice in favor of one’s priorities.

In her case, it meant giving up the partnership track at a corporate law firm in order to run the family’s engineering business with her father, while her husband ran his own law firm. (“We didn’t want to put our eggs in one basket,” she shared of the couple’s decision not to run the law firm together.) And now, because of her anchor duties with Bloomberg TV Philippines—which Jean admitted she enjoys—she has also given up late nights in order to make it to the studio by 3:30 a.m. every day.

She credited her husband for being hands-on at home (such as taking care of supermarket and cooking duties, for instance), so she can do what she loves while also having time for their young family.

For all three married women in the panel, an important factor of their own success was having “the right partner” who would be equally supportive of their endeavors— with whom there were no “ego issues,” and who were equally involved in raising their respective families.

For Riva Galveztan, the event’s “joyfully single” panelist who is also an entrepreneur and founder of the profiling-and-matching

For all three married women in the panel, an important factor of their own success was having “the right partner” who would be equally supportive of their endeavors—with whom there were no “ego issues,” and who were equally involved in raising their respective families. service Customized Dating, being in the right romantic partnership is a byproduct, first and foremost, of achieving wholeness in oneself, and being able to value the many relationships and priorities around her.

“You first have to know yourself and be true to your values. You need to know your purpose and know how to set healthy boundaries. If you don’t know yourself and your purpose, you might compromise on your nonnegotiables just for the sake of having a partner.” It is this reason, Riva said, that she has remained joyfully single for eight years and is, instead, spending her time truly getting to know her family, her friends and herself.

The event’s official “male reactor,” comedy actor and learning and development consultant Gabe Mercado, echoed Riva’s views on purpose and priorities. He spoke of his choice to become a single adoptive parent, and of the many unconventional decisions he had made in favor of parenting. To Gabe, being father (and mother) to his 11-yearold son, Beeto, is his priority, and all his choices—from his decision to give up showbiz to his preference for a long-distance relationship—are built around that.

“It is possible to be happy, whole and fulfilled as a single person—and it is possible to raise a child on your own, as a single, adoptive parent. It’s a choice that’s available to everyone, and it can be done,” Gabe emphasized in his own sharing.

Throughout the provocative and illuminating one-hour discussion, all speakers shared and echoed these ideas: n Know yourself fully. n Know your priorities and what truly matters to you. n Make time for what matters.

Sacrifices will have to be made, but at the end of the day, you will not regret making choices for the people you love. n Don’t be afraid to say no. Set healthy boundaries—and stick to them. n Be disciplined in your lifestyle and choices. Let your choices reflect the kind of life you wish to have

and the kind of person you wish to be. Be realistic about what you can commit—both at work and in love.

Dive into your commitments with open eyes and with a healthy dose of reality.

With integration and wholeness will come clarity. It won’t be easy, but it will be easier to drown out the noise and be more at peace with the decisions that you make for yourself and for those you love.

One hour was clearly not enough for such an engaging discussion, and it is BPW-Makati’s hope that we can continue engaging women— and men, too—in the many critical topics that form the substance of our lives. We are grateful to all our guests for their time that evening, and we hope to continue hosting similar events that will inspire everyone to live fuller, more balanced, and more integrated lives. nnn

BPW-MAKATI is a nonprofit organization that is a member of BPW International. The network seeks to “develop the professional, business and leadership potential of women on all levels through advocacy, mentoring, networking, skill-building and economic-empowerment programs and projects around the world.” The entire BPW organization is also closely aligned with the United Nations Women Empowerment Principles.

For inquiries about the event or about BPW-Makati, e-mail bpw. makati@gmail.com. To know more about our future events in partnership with A Space Manila, visit “Women Stepping Up PH” on Facebook and @WomenSteppingUp on Twitter.

Niña Terol (@ninaterol) calls herself a “communicator, connector, idea curator and changemaker.” She heads corporate affairs for McCann Worldgroup Philippines, one of the largest and leading multinational communications firms in the Philippines, and is a founding trustee and board member of BPW-Makati. She has also been widely published in local and international publications and is a lecturer at the Ateneo de Manila University.