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OMBUDSMAN ADMINISTERS OATH TO NEW PRSP BOARD Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales (left) administers the oath of office to the new set of board of directors of the Public Relations Society of the Philippines (PRSP) at the Office of the Ombudsman. The newly elected officers are (from left) Ron F. Jabal, APR, of PageOne Media as president; Bong Osorio, APR, of ABS-CBN as exofficio president and adviser; Rochelle Gamboa, APR, of Light Rail Manila Corp. as vice presidentinternal; Harold C. Geronimo of Megaworld Corp. as vice president-external; Andres Saracho of Millennium Challenge Account-Philippines as secretary; Martin Bunag of Investor Relations Global as treasurer; Ed Timbungco, APR/ CPME (right), of San Beda College-Mendiola as auditor; and Chito Maniago (third from right) of Cemex, Luz Amandolina Navasero (second from right) of MN Fotoslick Communications Inc. and Jika Mendoza-Dalupan, APR (not in photo), of Pepsi-Cola Products Philippines Inc., as directors.

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Tuesday, February 23, 2016 Vol. 11 No. 138

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

PHL to import 170,000 tons of sugar to stabilize supply T B M G P

INSIDE

HE Philippine government on Monday said it has allowed traders and millers to import 170,000 metric tons (MT) of sugar to stabilize the supply and price of sugar.

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135,508 MT

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WORLD MEMORABLE WEEK Sports

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Nomura claims first LPGA crown by 3 shots

DELAIDE, Australia—Honolulu-based Haru Nomura of Japan won her first Ladies Professional Golfers Association (LPGA) tournament in her 72nd start, shooting a closing seven-under 65 on Sunday to win the Women’s Australian Open by three strokes. Nomura, who was tied for the lead with two others going into the final round at The Grange’s West course, finished with a 16-under total of 272. Top-ranked and defending champion Lydia Ko, who trailed by a stroke after three rounds, finished second after a 67. Five-time champion Karrie Webb shot 71 to finish third, seven strokes behind Nomura. American Danielle Kang was tied for fourth after a 73, eight strokes behind. Webb, who trailed by a stroke at the start of the final round, had three birdies in her first five holes to take a share of the lead, but those

were her last under-par holes of the round. Nomura, whose previous best finishes were three top 10s, had birdies on 15, 16 and 17 and five overall on the back nine before a bogey on 18. Born in Japan to a South Korean mother and Japanese father, Nomura said she wasn’t intimidated by Ko being so close late in the round. “Golf is the fight of my own, it’s not against someone else,” she said. “Even though someone else plays well, if I hit my goals, then I win.” Starting as third-round leader with Kang and South Korean Jenny Shin, Nomura had four birdies in six holes on the front nine. When Ko challenged on the back nine with three birdies in five holes to leave the New Zealander just one shot behind, Nomura responded with her three consecutive birdies. Shin closed with a 74 to finish nine strokes behind.

| TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2016 mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph sports@businessmirror.com.ph Editor: Jun Lomibao Asst. Editor: Joel Orellana

BUBBA WATSON holds up his trophy after winning the Northern Trust Open in the Pacific Palisades section of Los Angeles. AP

MEMORABLE WEEK B D F The Associated Press

OS ANGELES—Bubba Watson packed plenty of memories from his week in Los Angeles. He has a kidney stone as a keepsake. He had a cameo in Girl Meets World. He received a text on Sunday morning from Steph Curry offering shooting tips to Watson’s son. And he capped it all with the best memento of all. “Hold on a second, my trophy is coming,” Watson said, interrupting his news conference as the shiny prize was placed on the table next to him. It wasn’t clear if passing the kidney stone or winning the Northern Trust Open was more difficult. Two shots behind with four holes to play, Watson rallied with flawless golf and a pair of birdies over the last three holes to overtake

Jason Kokrak and hold off Adam Scott to win at Riviera for the second time in three years and move back to No. 4 in the world. All weeklong, Watson spoke of the importance of making putts at Riviera, and he needed all of them—the 10-footer for par on No. 10 to stay in the game, and a pair of birdies to twice tie for the lead, from 30 feet on No. 11 and from 5 feet on the par-3 16th. And then he took the lead with a birdie that was pure Bubba. Both feet came off the ground as he hammered a drive 334 yards on the 582-yard 17th hole, and then he hit 2-iron to the back of the green that led to a two-putt birdie. He closed with a three-under 68 for a one-shot victory over Kokrak and Scott. “The highlight is definitely winning,” Watson said. “When you come to Hollywood, there’s a lot of things you can do. It’s fun. And winning is the cake.”

UALA LUMPUR, Malaysia—Australian Marcus Fraser made a curling 18-foot putt for par on the final hole on Sunday for a three-under 68 to win the inaugural Maybank Championship Malaysia by two strokes over Lee Soo-min of South Korea. Fraser trailed third-round leader Lee throughout the final round at Royal Selangor Golf Club before taking advantage of Lee’s late collapse to claim a third European Tour victory in the event cosanctioned with the Asian Tour. The 37-year-old Australian, who ended a six-year title drought, finished with a 15-under total of 269 that included a bogey-free final two rounds. Lee closed with a 73 and was tied for second with Miguel Tabuena of the Philippines, who shot a final-round 68. Former British Open champion Louis Oosthuizen shot a closing 66 and was seven strokes behind. The 24-year-old Lee led by three strokes at the start of the day but a double bogey on 16 after an errant drive allowed Fraser to draw level. Tied on the 18th green, the South Korean missed his long par attempt before watching Fraser make his to clinch the tournament. Lee then failed to convert his return putt to give Fraser his twostroke margin. “Unbelievable,” said Fraser, who leads the Asian Tour Order of Merit after only taking up membership at the start of the week. “Six years since the last one. My kids keep saying every time I walk out the door ‘Hey Dad, can you bring home a trophy? And I’ll say, ‘I’ll try, I’ll try,’ and this time I’ll take one home and I’ll get them to take it to school for show and tell,” he said. He was surprised by his par-saving putt on 18. “I don’t know how I got that one to go in,” he said. “I was very nervous and looking down on the putt, I could see my putter shaking. But I just said to myself that this is one opportunity for me to win and I took a few deep breaths and holed the putt.” Lee said he felt “nervous and pressured” over the closing holes. “This week is very good for my golf life, but I’m a little bit disappointed,” Lee said. “But...I have three top 10s in three events now, so it is OK.” The 21-year-old Tabuena was pleased to finish tied for second after struggling with food poisoning over the opening two rounds. “Not being 100 percent, no complaints at all,” Tabuena said. “It kind of helped that I wasn’t in the final group, it took some pressure off.” AP

It was a bitter taste for Kokrak, going for his first Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA) Tour win and making it look like it was his time when he fired at a dangerous pin on the 13th and pulled it off for a short birdie putt that gave him a two-shot advantage. But he made bogey from the fairway on the 15th, had to scramble for par on the next two holes and narrowly missed a birdie on the 18th that ended his chances. “You’ve got to eliminate the mental mistakes,” Kokrak said after a 68. “Hitting it in the middle of the green on 15 is just.... I had a two-shot lead at the time.” Scott raced off to a big start with an eagle and three birdies over his opening six holes. He missed a pair of 4-foot par putts on the back nine, only to bounce back with a key birdie on the 17th and a chip-in for birdie from behind the 18th green for a 67 that tied him for the lead, but only briefly.

Watson, two groups behind him, twoputted from 40 feet for his go-ahead birdie. “A guy like Bubba, he’s very tough to beat,” Scott said. “He’s proving tough to beat from that position. He’s wearing the course out on the toughest day.” Six players were still in the mix on the back nine until the final few holes. Rory McIlroy was not among them. McIlroy tied for the lead with an eagle on the par-5 opening hole, then made nothing but pars and seven bogeys until a meaningless birdie on the final hole for a 75 that put him in a tie for 20th. He loved Riviera and said he would be back. He just didn’t like the way his week ended. “I turned a chance to win into a top 20 at the end of the day, so that wasn’t too good,” McIlroy said.

Watson won for the ninth time in his PGA Tour, but rarely on a week with so much activity. He said he passed the kidney stone on Monday, and then took 3-year-old Caleb to hang with Justin Bieber. He taped a Girl Meets World show, and even was given one line (that required four takes). And then he rushed out of Riviera with a one-shot lead on Saturday night to hang at Staples Center for a ClippersWarriors game. He said Curry sent a text about

15 minutes before he teed off on Sunday offering some shooting tips to Caleb. And then he wound up a winner at Riviera again, a course he loves because of the history and because it changes so little over the years. The timing couldn’t have been better. Watson was still stung by his week at the Phoenix Open, when he was booed for comments earlier in the week that he didn’t like the changes to the TPC Scottsdale. He said that was misconstrued into a headline that he didn’t like the tournament, and he said the verbal abuse was so bad that at least two players complained on his behalf. But when asked earlier this week if he was going back to Phoenix, Watson replied, “I’ll be the first one to sign up.” And he’ll be back at Riviera, the course that still makes him nervous over every shot (especially on No. 10) and every putt. He still managed to win.

FRASER WINS MALAYSIA TOURNEY; TABUENA 2ND MARCUS FRASER of Australia poses for a photograph with his trophy after winning the Maybank Championship in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. AP

SPORTS

EDSA SHRINE CLEANUP Department of Public Works and Highways employees work with volunteers to spruce up the People Power Monument along Edsa days before the 30th anniversary of the People Power Revolution that ousted President Ferdinand E. Marcos in 1986. NONOY LACZA

For Opec, path from oil freeze to output cuts is still not clear

NOMURA

Ko said she was not happy to finish the tournament with a bogey, but was overall pleased with her play. “My goal was to shoot 67 today and I shot 67,” she said. “I played really well, but Haru played even better, and the roars I could hear she seemed like she was holing a lot of putts. So when another player does it, it’s really out of my hands.” Webb said she was disappointed she couldn’t continue her early birdie run. “I got off to a good start, I made a couple of putts and that was it,” she said. “I hit it really nicely again today, and it just gets really frustrating out there on the greens.” The tournament was also sanctioned by the Australian Ladies and Ladies European Tour. Next week, the two tours will sanction the Australian Ladies Masters at Royal Pines on the Gold Coast south of Brisbane. AP

WATSON RALLIES FOR ANOTHER WIN AT RIVIERA IVIERA

The Sugar Regulator y Administration (SRA) also said the Philippines could import more sugar if Volume of raw sugar El Niño significantly cuts sugarcane output exported to the US this year. under the tariff-rate SRA Administrator quota scheme Ma. Regina BautistaMartin said the 170,000 MT of sugar will be imported under the US sugar quota and export replacement program of the agency for crop year (CY) 2015-2016. “We are importing 170,000 MT to replace the sugar exported to fill the US quota. This volume already includes the 5-percent additional imports to balance the drop in production of around 8 percent,” Martin said. C  A

AUDI Arabia said its accord with Russia to cap oil production was “the beginning of a process,” but the path from a freeze to the output cuts needed to eliminate a global surplus is far from clear. When Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi suggested that the agreement in Doha was a prelude to “other steps,” he fanned hopes that the kingdom’s resistance to production cuts was finally weakening. Oil’s recovery from a 12-year low last month was fueled by speculation that major producers were finally building a coalition that could work to end the glut.

The problem with using a production freeze as the bedrock for deeper cooperation is that none of the parties involved have to make any effort to comply. “The four producers involved are already producing close to their peak,” said Miswin Mahesh, an analyst at Barclays Plc. in London. “The freeze is the oil-market equivalent of calling for a cease-fire when they’re running out of ammo.” The accord reached on Tuesday in the Qatari capital marks the first sign of the cooperation between the Organization of Petroleum C  A

China fuels acceleration in Asia’s military spending

HINA’S military growth, combined with heightened territorial tensions, are likely to propel the Asia-Pacific (Apac) region to the top rank of military spending by the end of the decade, according to a report by IHS Jane’s. The Apac will account for $1 in $3 spent on defense by the early 2020s, up from $1 in $5 in 2010, according to the London-based military publisher. While the US remains the globe’s biggest pur-

$435B Total military spending in Asia Pacific in 2015

PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 47.6650

veyor of weapons, China led growth in major arms exports in the 2011-2015 period, with weapons sales rising 88 percent from the previous five-year span, another report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute showed. “Rising tensions in Apac have seen a long-overdue process of military modernization move up the political agenda in a

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PHL THROWS CASH VS TRAFFIC JAMS AS PUBLIC TRANSPORT SYSTEM FALTERS B R C | Researcher & D D. E | Editor

Second of three parts

E wants to be buried not in a coffin but in his automobile. At least that’s what James Taylor’s “Traffic Jam” sang for a driver stuck on the “freeway looking like a parking lot.” That was in 1977—the 1:58-minutelong song was released in the JT album— and yet, echoes painfully real in Metro Manila. Driving on Metro Manila’s 27,816.46 kilometers of paved road is more painful for commuters than Mexico City’s or Beijing’s, Rene S. Santiago, a traffic expert, told the BM. That is, had the metropolis been included by IBM Corp. in its survey of commuters in 20 cities, Santiago explained. “Had Metro Manila been included, it would have topped the Commuter Pain Index—higher than the 108 for Mexico City and Beijing’s 95 ranking. Maybe, 120

78 percent The total road space taken up by private vehicles in Metro Manila in 2011

for Metro Manila.” Santiago said the survey via IBM’s Smart Planet program asked commuters on their emotional and economic toll of daily commuting. “Having been to some of those cities, I think Singapore’s score [44] should be lower than Paris [31] or New York [28].”

Pain index

TRAFFIC jams in Metro Manila have reached a level wherein motorists and commuters alike dread the daily commute or drive to and from their respective destinations, with some wishing to magically be able to fly. It is said that the increase C  A

S “C,” A

n JAPAN 0.4232 n UK 68.4994 n HK 6.1315 n CHINA 7.3105 n SINGAPORE 33.9228 n AUSTRALIA 33.9084 n EU 53.0750 n SAUDI ARABIA 12.7124

Source: BSP (22 February 2016 )

A2 Tuesday, February 23, 2016

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PHL throws cash vs traffic jams as public transport system falters… C  

in the volume of vehicles and the slow pace of the development of road infrastructures can be attributed to the state of traffic in the Metro. According to Santiago, who is also the president and CEO of Bellwether Advisory Inc., the average commuter in Metro Manila wastes more than 43 days in a year on traffic. He compared this to New York as having the worst commute in the US at 39.7 minutes, citing a study by the Transportation Research Institute of University of Michigan. “That [New York City’s level] would be heaven, compared to Metro Manila’s 92.4 minutes by buses!” Today traffic has harbored an erratic behavior. There are days when motorists expect there will be no traffic at all, especially on weekends, but disappointment abounds when they traverse the many roads of Metro Manila and find out these roads are already congested. It seems like traffic is present no matter the time of day and lasts most days of the week. Public Works Secretary Rogelio L. Singson notes that on a scale of one (traffic being bearable to a pleasurable degree) to 10 (traffic being overwhelmingly unbearable), Metro Manila traffic would be at a rate of eight or nine. “During peak hours, eight or nine on the main national roads, like Edsa, C-5, Quezon Avenue,” Singson said.

Lean, peak

THE Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) noted lean hours during the day for most major roads around the metropolis are the hours between 10

utes, with a traffic rating of six, as well. The average travel time and rating applies to south-bound or northbound vehicles and goes for both public and private vehicles, MMDA documents revealed. Ariel Raymundo, Isuzu Gencars Inc. sales and marketing manager, noted that the severity of traffic can indeed be felt by many commuters, especially in a business district like Makati City. “Traffic [congestion] can mostly be felt during mornings and during the afternoon when work is already finished,” Raymundo told the BM. “Makati is a business district that’s why it is fully loaded. But other cities have windows [of ease in travel time].” According to Raymundo, traffic congestion worsens at 4 p.m. because people are trying to get home.

a.m. and 4 p.m., while peak hours when traffic jams increase are between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. and between 4 p.m. and 7 in the evening, according to MMDA documents. The MMDA also noted that traffic occurs all throughout the week, including Saturday, with Sunday being the only day when vehicle flow is rated for commuters as “bearable” to “convenient.” The major roads that most vehicles use on a daily basis are Balintawak, starting at Biglang Awa Street and ending at Roosevelt Avenue; and Cubao, starting at New York Street up to P. Tuazon Street. Ortigas Avenue, starting at White Plains to Shaw Boulevard; and Shaw Boulevard up to Boni Avenue are also roads used every day. Other major roads include the Ayala area, starting at Buendia Avenue to Pasay

Road, Guadalupe, from Boni Avenue to Buendia Avenue; and Taft Avenue, starting from Tramo to F.B. Harrison. For the Philippine National PoliceHighway Patrol Group (PNP-HPG), the lean hours exclude the roads of Buendia Avenue northbound to SM Megamall in Ortigas. According to MMDA documents, the average travel time taken by motorists while traversing the Balintawak length is at 38.33 minutes. This average travel time has a traffic rating of eight out of 10. Cubao takes at least 20.77 minutes, with a rating of four, while the Ortigas stretch takes about 30.94 minutes, with a rating of seven. Motorists going through Shaw boulevard will take about 26.89 minutes, with a traffic rating of six, while traversing the Ayala area takes an average of 30.33 min-

Private vs public

THE Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica) noted in one of their studies that private vehicles hog the road, contributing to traffic congestion in Metro Manila. In 2011 total vehicular trips of 12.8 million was needed from Metro Manila alone to address various transportation and logistic needs, the Jica study said. About 69 percent of the total demand from these trips came from public transport, while private vehicles accounted for a lesser share. However, the Jica study noted that, while private vehicles had the lesser share of the trips, they still took up most of the road space with 78 percent. This finding has been emphasized in a report by the National Economic Development Authority in the year 2000. “Al-

though the private mode comprises only about 22 percent of the total transport demand, it comprises 46 percent of the total vehicles on the road,” the report, titled “Economic Impact of Traffic Congestion in Metro Manila,” said. The Jica study, moreover, said traffic congestion can now be felt all throughout the day, from 6 a.m. up to 9 in the evening. “During peak hours, our public transportation is not sufficient for those riding public transportation, so there is chaos on the streets,” Singson said. Singson, who heads the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), blamed lack of discipline by drivers of jeepneys, buses and tricycles. The DPWH chief also blamed passengers for their lack of discipline: the “passengers who take their rides anywhere, including taking over roadways for their ride.” “Add to [these are] the vendors who are allowed by local government officials to take over sidewalks and even roadways for illegal vending and other obstructions.” Nonetheless, Jose Regin F. Regidor sees the clearly amid the fumes of traffic congestion. “Traffic is bad along most major roads but is not hopeless,” said Regidor, a professor of the Institute of Civil Engineering at the University of the Philippines Diliman. He cited the factors that affect traffic congestion as transport infrastructure projects both ongoing and in the pipeline, “assuming these are implemented within the short term.” “The volume of vehicular traffic varies throughout the day so there are still times of the day—yes, even during daytime—that traffic is not so bad,” Regidor added.

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Tuesday, February 23, 2016 A3

Nomura: Impact of oil on remittances overblown

B B C

ONCERNS on the possible fall of the country’s remittances once oil-producing countries start laying off jobs have been “overblown,” according to the research group of an international financial institution.

In its latest assessment on the external position of the Philippines, Japan-based Nomura group said remittances are still likely to remain strong amid possible layoffs in the Middle East due to the prevailing low prices of oil. “Of particular concern for investors has been the impact of lower oil prices on remittances, given that 2 million overseas Filipinos are based in the Middle East. However, we believe that these concerns are

overblown,” Nomura said. “Filipino workers in the Middle East, who are most prone to layoffs, are the semi-low-skilled workers with relatively low per-capita remittances. In addition, the termsof-trade benefits help to offset the potential impact of lower oil prices on remittance,” it added. Despite shaky growth rates for 2015, cash sent by Filipino migrant workers had a good showing in the last month of the year,

ARMM launches ‘Apat Dapat’ antipoverty drive with 600 of region’s ‘poorest’ families B M T. C

AVAO CITY—The Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) has selected 600 of the “poorest families” to kickstart a short-term regional program in a bid to bring them out of “abject poverty.” The one-year program would be handled by the ARMM’s Department for Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), a devolved agency to the autonomous region, in a program dubbed “Apat Dapat,” which focuses on the four basic needs of a family, namely, food, water, light and shelter. DSWD-ARMM Secretary Rahima D. Alba said the program’s pilot run is set to last until December and would start with 40 poorest families in 15 selected ARMM municipalities. “The program will supplement the ongoing povertyalleviation initiatives both of the regional and national government. It will follow the four for the poor formula…,” she added. Alba said the four basic needs “were determined by a study regarding poverty incidence in the region, conducted by the Regional Planning and Development Office [RPDO].” Major interventions include “ensuring families are housed in secure homes with [their] own water and sanitation system and a basic lighting facility, while providing them with the means to expand their livelihood and achieve food sufficiency along the way,” she added. “Combating poverty has two phases, the long term and the short term. While the Apat Dapat program is initially a short-term program, gradually, we’re expecting that we’ll earn the necessary experience and milestones for the continuity and expansion of the program into a long-term solution to poverty,” Alba said. She added that the DSWD would oversee the conduct of case management of every household “to ensure that the program will meet its goals.” The program would be coordinated with the Department of Health’s rural health units to monitor and ensure the good health of each participant. The 15 pilot municipalities would be taken from three municipalities in every province of the ARMM with 40 family beneficiaries in every municipality. The pilot municipalities are Matanog, Barira and Datu Anggal Midtimbang in Maguindanao; Balindong, LumbaBayabao and Taraka in Lanao del Sur; Tuburan, Tipu-Tipo, and Sumisip in Basilan; Talipao, Parang and Pandami in Sulu; and Tandubas, Simunul and Sibutu in Tawi-Tawi. Alba said that the program would take a special focus on food sufficiency as a key tool to address poverty. “Ensuring food sufficiency and livelihood are the first of the four components of the Apat Dapat program, involves four modalities: satisfying every families’ recommended dietary allowance for protein and energy; identifying what livelihood is best for the families and providing the necessary livelihood training; encouraging families to put up small livelihood activities, such as backyard gardening and poultry raising, that can support food sufficiency; and gradually transitioning the livelihood activities from being food security measure to also being a source of income for the families,” she said. “Along with continued support in construction of solar dryers and warehouse, as well as the provision of equipment and machineries, we are making sure that every family in a community can live a life where their needs are met through the Apat Dapat program,” Alba added, referring to the highly rural character of the region, where the poorest also reside. The World Food Program, she added, will likewise participate “to ensure the sustainability of the food security program, with inputs from the World Bank.” “We hope that the Apat Dapat program’s focused approach will prove to be a good fit alongside the broader approaches taken by our existing antipoverty initiatives, all of which are community-driven development projects,” Alba added.

with record-high monthly remittance pushing the growth above government’s target for the year. The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported last week that the country’s overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) remittances hit a total cash-remittance value of $25.767 billion in 2015, posting a 4.6-percent growth from 2014. The growth rate of cash remittances was faster than the 4-percent expansion forecast by the Philippine government for the year. The December OFW remittances hit $2.47 billion—the highest monthly inflow to date. Data from the central bank showed that remittances from the Middle East hit $5.98 billion in January to December in 2015, growing by 10 percent from the $5.428 billion seen in the same period in 2014. Nomura said a number of other structural factors mitigate the risks to remittances from workers in the Middle East and the global

Of particular concern for investors has been the impact of lower oil prices on remittances, given that 2 million overseas Filipinos are based in the Middle East. However, we believe that these concerns are overblown.”—Nomura energy sector. This includes the increased geographical diversification of remittances in recent years, an increased proportion of the contribution from more skilled workers in service sectors with strong demand, as well as higher per-capita remittances ref lecting better proportion of higherincome workers. “We conducted a survey of overseas based Filipinos to support these findings,” Nomura said.

Meanwhile, Nomura also said global developments in recent months have increased the pressure on the Philippines’s balance of payments position and the peso. “These include increased financial-market volatility and continued concerns over China’s economic slowdown, the impact of policy normalization from the Federal Reserve and worries over the impact of lower oil prices,” Nomura said.

The BSP said the sustained growth in personal remittances during the year was driven by the steady increase in remittances from land-based and sea-based workers. The BSP also said the 2015 remittance number equaled 9.8 percent of local output, or the GDP, and 8.1 percent of the country’s gross national income. The continued deployment of skilled workers was a key factor to continued remittance growth, according to the central bank. Preliminary data from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration indicated that the number of deployed workers in 2015 reached 1.8 million. These job orders were intended mainly for service, production and professional, technical and related workers in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Taiwan and Hong Kong. For this year, the government expects remittances to grow by another 4 percent.

Comelec asked to look for possible poll violations if Pacquiao pushes through with fight on April 9 B J R. S J

HE Commission on Elections (Comelec) has been formally asked to look into possible violations of election laws that senatorial aspirant and boxing icon Manny Pacquiao may commit in case he decides to push through with his fight with American boxer Timonthy Bradley on April 9. Walden Bello—the petitioner, who is also running for a Senate slot, like Pacquiao—said that the Comelec should rule on the legality of the fight, which, he said, would expectedly provide an extensive media coverage that would give Pacquiao a “distinct advantage” over other senatorial bets in the polls. “Wherefore, it is most respectfully prayed that the Honorable Commission study the aforementioned situation concerning senatorial candidate Pacquiao, and for it to take the appropriate steps that it may deem proper to enforce Comelec Resolution 10049 and Republic Act [RA] 9006,[or] the Fair Elections Act,” Bello said. Bello pointed out that in crafting the implementing rules and regulations (IRR) of the Fair Elections Act, it may have been possible that the Comelec anticipated all situations where media coverage and advantage may be at issue. Among the concerns raised by Bello include the extensive media coverage of both local and international media on the boxing event, the massive exposure afforded to Pacquiao as a boxer and a candidate, and the income that can be earned by Pacquiao from the pay-per-view revenue, plus the product endorsements airing during the fight. Considering his stature and previous boxing bouts, which were covered widely by the media, Bello said the Comelec should to put the situation under intense scrutiny and study in order to fulfill its mandate to enforce and administer election-related laws. “Bearing in mind the stature of Mr. Pacquiao as a boxer, and his previous boxing bouts, which were covered widely by the media, the bout will surely give him extensive media exposure, giving him a distinct advantage over other senatorial bets,” Bello said. “Such is the situation at hand in the case of the boxing bout between Mr. Pacquiao, a senatorial candidate. It then behooves the commission to put the situation under intense scrutiny and study, and for it to take action, under its mandate to enforce, administer election-related laws and ensure that the regulations are appropriate implemented and followed,” he added. On April 9, Pacquiao, who is running for senator under the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA), will be facing Bradley for the third time at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.

FORMER Party-list Rep. Walden Bello holds documents as he arrives at the Commission on Elections seeking to postpone the April 9 fight between Filipino boxer and senatorial candidate Manny Pacquiao and Timothy Bradley on Monday. AP

I imagine if they rule in our favor, which I believe they will, then they will have to tell Manny that he would have to comply with it.”–Bello The fight will supposedly be the retirement bout of the 37-year-old Pacquiao after he decided to hang up his gloves and focus on his political career. RA 9006 provides that the Comelec shall ensure that radio-, television- or cable television-broadcasting entities shall not allow the scheduling of any program or permit any sponsor to manifestly favor or oppose any candidate or political party by unduly or repeatedly referring to or including said candidate and/or political party in such program. Meanwhile, under Comelec Resolution 10049, it is considered a prohibited form of election propaganda “to show, display or exhibit publicly in a theater, through a television station, or any public forum any movie, cinematography or documentary, including concert or any type of performance portraying the life or biography of a candidate, or in which a character is portrayed by an actor or media personality, who is himself or herself a candidate.” It is also prohibited “for any radio, television, cable television station, announcer or broadcaster to allow the scheduling of any program or permit any sponsor to manifestly favor or op-

pose any candidate or party by unduly or repeatedly referring to or unnecessarily mentioning his name, including said candidate or party.” Earlier, election lawyer Romulo Macalintal said that Pacquiao cannot be held liable for any election-related offense in connection with his fight against Bradley. Macalintal noted that even if there is any offense defined under other Philippine laws, the lawyer said it could not be imposed against Pacquiao because the fight will be held in the US. As for the media entities that will cover the fight, Macalintal said they also cannot be held liable for doing their job. Pacquiao has not fought since losing to Floyd Mayweather Jr. last May in the richest fight ever. Pacquiao reportedly made more than $100 million for that fight, and is guaranteed $20 million to fight Bradley. The eight-division champion is the Philippines’s most famous athlete. He has represented Sarangani province in the Philippines’s House of Representatives since May 2010, though he has drawn criticism for seldom showing up for legislative duties. Pacquiao will face Bradley at the

MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, completing a trilogy between two of the world’s top welterweights. Bradley won a hotly disputed split decision over Pacquiao in their first meeting in June 2012, but Pacquiao won by unanimous decision in the April 2014 rematch. The Bible-quoting Pacquiao has been embroiled in controversy recently for saying that people in same-sex relations are “worse than animals,” drawing the ire of netizens and celebrities. He made the comment when asked by a local TV network about his views on same-sex marriage, and video of his response was posted on the network’s web site last week. In response to the remark, apparel giant Nike said that it would no longer have any business dealings with Pacquiao, and that that it found his comments “abhorrent.” Pacquiao has apologized to people hurt by his comments and said he respects Nike’s decision. But he has stood pat on his opposition to samesex marriage. Bello said he was not seeking Pacquiao’s disqualification as a senatorial candidate, but was asking the elections commission to take action on the complaint. “I imagine if they rule in our favor, which I believe they will, then they will have to tell Manny that he would have to comply with it,” Bello said, adding that if Pacquiao refuses to comply, disqualification from the election could be a logical outcome. With AP

A4 Tuesday, February 23, 2016

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Bumolo Project’s mineral-resource estimates exceed expectations–Philex

HILEX Mining Corp. said on Monday the mineral-resource estimates (MRE) for its Bumolo Project exceeded expectations and showed potential to extend the life of the company’s Padcal Mine in Benguet. The company said the maideninferred mineral resource for the Bumolo Project was estimated at 21.7 million tons at 0.2 percent copper, and 0.3 grams per ton gold at 0.274-percent copper equivalent cutoff grade. Philex said the maiden-inferred mineral resource represents the first phase of the ongoing resource

27,199 ounces Average quarterly gold output of Philex definition program to advance the Bumolo Project and provide additional ore to Padcal Mine. “Philex is pleased to announce

the results of the company's ongoing near mine exploration to assess the possibilities of further extending the life of the Padcal Mine. The [MRE] for the Bumolo Project confirms the potential we have been progressing with over the past year,” company CEO and President Eulalio B. Austin Jr. said in a statement. “This resource result exceeds our expectations and we further look forward to the next two years of exploration around the Padcal Mine,” Austin added. The Bumolo porphyry coppergold deposit is in the Baguio Mineral District, approximately 250 kilometers north of Manila. Philex said the Bumolo MRE is based on drilling data and initial geological information interpreted

by its geologists as of February 2016. The mineral resource has been estimated in accordance with the Philippine Mineral Reporting Code. Currently, the Philex said it is continuing its resource definition, including in-fill drilling programs, to increase the Inferred Resource and to upgrade it to Measured and Indicated Resource estimates. The company earlier disclosed that its copper production in the third quarter of 2015 increased by 2 percent to 8.82 million pounds from 8.64 million pounds last year, while gold output rose by 5 percent to 27,910 ounces, from 26,458 ounces. Philex’s metal output for the period went beyond the company’s average quarterly output of 8.57 million pounds for copper and 27,199 ounces for gold.

The company attributed the improvement in metal recovery rates to the enhancements in operations and upgrades in equipment it made. Its Padcal Mine operated for 269 days in January to September 2015 and milled 6.89 million tons of ore. “The tonnage translated to 25.7 million pounds of copper produced, as copper grades were lower at 0.205 percent. Gold production reached 81,599 ounces, with gold grades slightly improving to 0.440 grams per ton,” Philex said. Despite the increase in production, Philex’s core net income in the first nine months of last year declined by almost 10 percent to P811 million, from P901 million in the same period in 2014, due to depressed metal prices.

Revenues during the period consisted of P4.36 billion from gold and P2.752 billion from copper. These figures were lower from the 2014 levels by 2.83 percent and 22.46 percent, respectively. “Average realized process for gold went down by 10 percent to $1,171 per ounce, while average copper prices fell by 19 percent to $2.45 per pound, offsetting the reported higher production,” Philex said. “These price levels were the lowest recorded in the last five years and touched their lowest points in August 2015,” it added. The total consolidated revenues, including petroleum and other sources, for the period amounted to P7.29 billion, 12.96 percent lower than the 2014 revenue of P8.37 billion. Mary Grace Padin

For Opec, path from oil freeze to output cuts is still not clear. . . Exporting Countries (Opec) and nonmembers that Saudi Arabia has said is necessary before it agrees to curb production. The failure of previous attempts at coordination, such as when Russia offered to curtail supply in 2008 only to keep pumping, makes analysts doubtful this latest union will go ahead. Divisions over

the conflict in Syria—where Saudi and Russia back opposing sides—are also an obstacle. Al-Naimi may clarify what to expect from the agreement when he gives a special address at the IHS CERAWeek conference in Houston on February 23. Nigeria, another member of

the Opec, supports an output cap but also backs giving Iran and Iraq room to regain lost market share, the African producer’s Energy Minister of Petroleum Emmanuel Kachikwu told reporters on Sunday in Doha. He’s scheduled to meet with alNaimi on Monday, according to a

person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because K achikw u’s itinerar y isn’t public. “Countries, like Iran and Iraq, have been out of the market for a while and if they are to come back, you shouldn’t freeze them out where they are, you should freeze them at

a higher level,” Kachikwu said. “By June we will come very close to tightening the market.”

Russian potential

AS Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich acknowledged on February 16, complying with the output freeze is

  

no great stretch for the world ’s second-largest crude producer. Most companies won’t have to take any measures to comply and the nation’s output was already on track to remain stable this year, after recent tax increases reduced the potential for growth, he said. Bloomberg News

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Editor: Max V. de Leon • Tuesday, February 23, 2016 A5

Vietnam adjusting to FTAs faster than peers there was also a lack of stability in the quality of their products. Other problems included high input costs, infrastructure inadequacies and loose links in the production chain. It is now time for Vietnamese businesses to restructure and to mature, according to Lich. He noted that bad debt, public debt and institutional reforms, in addition to strengthening local markets, must be thoroughly tackled.

Champion certain he’ll beat AI at ancient game

Agriculture investment

LEE

If artificial intelligence continues to advance, in a year or two years, it will be really hard to guess the results.” —Lee

EOUL, South Korea—The world champion of the ancient Chinese board game Go, South Korean Lee Sedol, expects to prevail in a match with Google’s computer program AlphaGo next month, but he’s not so sure he would be able to do it a year later. For now, Lee is predicting a 5-0 or 4-1 victory in his favor. AlphaGo defeated a professional Go player for the first time last October, something that experts had predicted would take a decade. The match, described in a paper released in the journal Nature last month, marked a significant advance for development of artificial intelligence. Lee, 32, said AlphaGo’s October match showed the program was still a few levels lower than him. It has not had enough time to improve its skills. “But if artificial intelligence continues to advance, in a year or two years, it will be really hard to guess the results,” Lee said. Computers have long surpassed humans in other games, including chess. But Go is considered the most challenging for artificial intelligence to master because of its intuitive nature and complexity. Before AlphaGo, the Go community thought it would take a few generations for computers to match human players. So the October shut-out of the European champion was “truly shocking,” said Park Chi-moon, vice president of the Korean Baduk Association. The winner of the five-game match starting March 9 in Seoul will get a $1-million prize. If AlphaGo wins, the prize will be donated to charities, including Unicef. Demis Hassabis, CEO at AlphaGo developer Google DeepMind, said the program will enable smartphones to provide smarter help for people in the near future. Eventually, it will enable computers to help scientists solve some of the toughest real-world problems, such as disease analysis and climate modeling, he said. Go originated in China more than 2,500 years ago. It involves two players who take turns putting markers on a checkerboardlike grid. The object is to take over more area on the board with the markers than one’s opponent, and to capture the opponent’s pieces by surrounding them. AP

A VIETNAMESE woman prays as more than 100 Vietnamese people gather in central Hanoi to commemorate the anniversary of the start of Vietnam’s brief-but-bloody border war with China. The residents lit incense and laid flowers at the statue of King Ly Thai To, a Vietnamese hero, in a ceremony that lasted about an hour without police intervention. There have been no official government commemorations of the war. AP

IETNAM is integrating more rapidly than any other Asean member-countries, except Singapore, according to Vietnam’s Center Institute of Economic Management (CIEM).

Võ Trí Thành, deputy director of the CIEM, also believes that the Vietnamese economy will enter a new thriving period, marked by participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He urged Vietnamese to study new-generation free-trade agreements (FTAs) carefully to understand rules of origin and meet technical norms to enhance participation in these markets. Thành further predicted that there would be a boom in the consumption and service industries to benefit end-users. Thành also said at a conference held by the Vietnam Association of Consumer Goods over the weekend that creation of a 400-page economic-strategy report, entitled 2035, would be officially announced this week.

Innovations, competition TRÂN DU LICH, member of the National Assembly’s Economic Committee, said existing and future FTAs are expected to promote innovations in the business community to enable firms to compete not only at home, but also on international markets. With this, Lich said success in the market will be determined by restructuring and creativity, rather than scale. Lich said businesses need to operate in a climate in which innovations were encouraged and the state played a role in ensuring the market remains operating on the right track. Vietnam, having great opportunities to increase its economic growth in the coming

550,000

Estimated number of firms in Vietnam, but only onefourth of them capable of exporting

decades, will help Southeast Asia expand the industrialization process and avoid risks of lower- and middle-income traps, Lich said. Competition is anticipated to become fiercer, not only at home, but in international markets, and firms improving their competitiveness is critical to being able to take advantage of opportunities. However, Lich pointed out that the competitiveness of Vietnamese businesses remained low, especially in high-tech industries, capitalintensive sectors and high-end services. There are some 550,000 existing firms in Vietnam, but only one-fourth of them were capable of exporting, he said, adding that

IN agriculture, Vietnam needs to create policies to promote investment that will allow the farming sector to compete internationally. Investments in agriculture remain modest, although the sector involved nearly 70 percent of the country’s population, while contributing some 18 percent to 22 percent of GDP and 23 percent to 35 percent of the value of all exports. Yet, investments in agriculture were estimated to account for only 6 percent of the economy’s total investments. Experts at a meeting held by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development on Friday pointed out that firms were hesitant to invest in the agricultural and rural sector due to bottlenecks in policies and mechanisms, including land-related issues and credit policies. According to Nguyen Do Anh Tuân, deputy director of the Institute of Policy and Strategy for Agriculture and Rural Development, complicated administrative procedures controlling agro-fishery and forestry companies were discouraging investments.

Reforms

A SURVEY by the think tank in 2014 found that nearly 80 percent of surveyed companies operating in the agricultural, fishery and forestry sectors wanted greater efforts in administrative reforms to create favorable conditions for businesses. Tuân said that slow tax reforms must be hastened, together with incentives to be created to encourage firms to invest. Tran Dinh Thien, director of the Vietnam Economics Institute, stressed that it is time to change the view about the role of businesses in agriculture. Businesses should be viewed as the “leader” to drive the farming sector ahead, amid rapid international integration. Nguyen Manh Hùng, chairman of Nafood Group, said that open policies were important to encouraging firms to invest in agriculture to develop a modern sector with high-quality output and greater productivity. Further, the farming sector should raise planning and strategy in line with the development of firms, Hùng said. Additionally, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Cao Dúc Phát, at the meeting, said the ministry would create measures to tackle problems faced by firms. PNA

Kuala Lumpur: We respect travel advisories even if inaccurate

HE Malaysian government reassured the safety of tourists and expatriates in the country following a travel advisory issued by Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom on threats from terrorists. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade updated its travel advisory on Malaysia on Sunday, warning against “an ongoing threat of terrorism in Malaysia.” “Terrorists may be planning attacks in and around Kuala Lumpur. Attacks could be indiscriminate and may target Western interests or locations frequented by Westerners,” it said. Commenting on the travel advice, a Malaysian foreign ministry spokesman said “it is nothing to be alarmed for.” “We also acknowledged the fact that foreign missions are at liberty to provide their own assessment of the security situation in their host countries albeit the fact that it may not be accurate or gives a true reflection of the situation,” said the spokesperson. Kuala Lumpur police chief Tajuddin Md Isa was quoted by local Star newspaper as saying that police had received no intelligence on terror treat, assuring safety in the Malaysian capital city. Malaysian authorities have stepped up alert following the terrorist attack on Jakarta, Indonesia

HEAVILY armed soldiers stand guard in front of a major shopping area in downtown in Kuala Lumpur on Monday. AP

in January, arresting suspects with links to the Islamic State (IS). Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said on Saturday that the more than 100 Malaysian who fight for IS in Syria and Iraq would be barred from returning home. The UK joined Australia and New Zealand in warning citizens against

travel to coastal islands in the east Malaysia state of Sabah bordering the Philippines, citing high threats to foreigners of kidnapping and criminality. The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office this week raised the terrorism threat level for the islands to “high” from “general,”

and advised against all but essential travel. There has been an increase in kidnapping by groups operating in the southern Philippines, some with the ability to conduct kidnaps on the coast of Sabah, the office said, while also citing an earthquake that took place last June and increased instances of haze.

Australia advises its citizens to avoid all travel to the coastal resorts of eastern Sabah, including the islands, dive sites and associated tourist facilities due to the high threat of kidnapping, while New Zealand classifies travel to the area as “high risk.” Malaysia’s foreign ministry said the situation in Sabah is “nothing to be alarmed of” and it will keep other foreign missions informed on the security developments. “We take note of the advisories posted by some countries for their travelers to Sabah, which have also acknowledged the efforts of the authorities in strengthening security presence in those areas mentioned,” a Malaysian foreign ministry spokesman, who asked not to be identified, said by text message. “We also acknowledged the fact that foreign missions are at liberty to provide their own assessment of the security situation in their host countries albeit the fact that it may not be accurate or give a true reflection of the situation.” The US State Department doesn’t have a travel advisory specifically for Malaysia. In a travel warning for the Philippines updated in October 2015, it said US citizens should defer nonssential travel to the Sulu Archipelago, a chain of islands between south Philippines and Sabah, due to the high threat of kidnappings and violence linked to insurgency and terrorism. PNA

The W

Business

A6 Tuesday, February 23, 2016 * Editor: Lyn Resurreccion

Echoes of 1991 Gulf War linger on in Mideast

HE 1991 Gulf War saw only 100 hours of ground fighting as US forces entered Kuwait to end the Iraqi occupation, but echoes of that conflict have lingered on for decades in the Middle East.

The war pushed America into opening militar y bases in the Persian Gulf and Saudi Arabia, drawing the anger of an upstart militant named Osama bin Laden and laying the groundwork for al-Qaeda attacks leading up to September 11, 2001. Saddam Hussein, demonized as being worse than Adolf Hitler by President George HW Bush, would outlast his American rival in power until Bush’s son launched the 2003 American-led invasion that toppled the Iraqi dictator. Now, 25 years after the first US Marines swept across the border into Kuwait, American forces are battling the extremist Islamic State group, born out of al-Qaeda, in the splintered territories of Iraq and Syria. The Arab allies that joined the 1991 coalition are fighting their own conflicts both at home and abroad, as Iran vies for greater regional power following a nuclear deal with world powers. In all, the United States finds itself in the quandary it hoped to avoid back in 1991. “Had we taken all of Iraq, we would have been like the dinosaur in the tar pit—we would still be there, and we, not the United Nations, would be bearing the costs for that occupation,” the late US Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of Desert Storm, wrote in his memoirs. Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, angry that

the tiny neighbor and the United Arab Emirates had ignored Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) quotas, which Saddam claimed cost his nation $14 billion. Saddam also accused Kuwait of stealing $2.4 billion by pumping crude from a disputed oil field and demanded that Kuwait write off an estimated $15 billion from Iraq’s 1980s war with Iran. Fearing Saudi Arabia could be invaded next, US officials moved quickly to deploy troops to the region. After months of negotiations and warnings, the US launched its assault on Iraqi forces in Kuwait on February 24, 1991. In purely military and political terms, the first Gulf War marked a tremendous success for a US still haunted by Vietnam. America suffered 148 combat deaths during the entire conf lict, while 467 troops were wounded out of the over 500,000 deployed, according to the Defense Department. It held together an allied army, its war effort was supported by a number of United Nations resolutions, and the conf lict cemented its position as the sole world power following end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. A mer ica’s A rab a l l ies a lso footed muc h of t he bi l l for the $61-billion war, with both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait con-

IN this January 4 file photo, Iraqi security forces and allied Sunni tribal fighters help trapped civilians to cross from neighborhoods under control of the Islamic State (IS) group to neighborhoods under control of Iraqi security forces in Ramadi, 70 miles (115 kilometers) west of Baghdad, Iraq. Twenty-five years after the first US Marines swept across the border into Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War, American forces find themselves battling the extremist IS group, born out of al-Qaeda, in the splintered territories of Iraq and Syria. AP

tributing $16 billion while the United Arab Emirates offered $4 billion, according to US congressional reports. Japan and Germany together contributed another $16 billion, while South Korea gave $251 million. The US covered the rest. But the key players in the Arab world on whom the US relied on during the conf lict are long gone. Saudi King Fahd died in 2005. A popular uprising toppled Egyptian autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011. Syria’s totalitarian ruler Hafez Assad, a longtime US foe who joined the Gulf War effort to reap billions in aid and diplomatic benefits, died in 2000. His son, President Bashar al-Assad,

still clings to power amid a fiveyear civil war that has killed more than 250,000 people and flooded Europe with those fleeing violence across the region. In Israel, the memory of Iraqi Scud missile fire prompted the military to speed up a missiledefense program that included the development of its Iron Dome rocket-defense system with the help of the Americans. ThenPrime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, a hard-liner, held back from retaliating at the request of Bush, who feared losing Arab support for the war. Though American aid to Israel exceeds $3 billion a year, relations have been strained over stalled Palestinian peace talks.

Yet despite seeing his forces routed from Kuwait, Saddam clung to power and survived an uprising by both Shiites and Kurds following the war. The US and its allies began to patrol a northern and southern no-fly zone to protect the Shiites and the Kurds while Saddam remained a thorn in the inside of American politics for more than a decade. “I miscalculated,” Bush said in a December 1995 interview. “I thought he’d be gone.” It would take President George HW Bush’s 2003 invasion to end Saddam’s reign, coming amid the US campaign in Afghanistan. In its aftermath, al-Qaeda in Iraq would arise and be put down by a US military surge, coupled with the

support of Sunni tribesmen. But as the US withdrew from Iraq and Baghdad stopped supporting the Sunni tribesmen, the Islamic State group emerged from the ashes of al-Qaeda in Iraq and in 2014, took control of about a third of both Iraq and neighboring Syria. Today, the US finds itself mired in a long war feared by Schwarzkopf and others who oversaw Operation Desert Storm. Oil prices, which sparked Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, have dropped to under $30 a barrel from more than $100 in just a year and a half. The cause, in part, is the same Opec overproduction the late dictator Saddam railed against across the splintered Middle East. AP

Bangladesh editor admits bogus stories fed by military Damning study finds a ‘whitewashed’ Hollywood N

EW DELHI—An editor of one of Bangladesh’s most respected newspapers has sparked an uproar by admitting that eight years ago, he published unsubstantiated reports alleging corruption by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, then in the opposition. He said the military fed him the information and pressured him to print it, but it’s the journalist who is feeling the heat more than the country’s long-powerful armed forces. The admission by Editor Mahfuz Anam of the English-language Daily Star raises questions of whether the impoverished and politically fractious South Asian nation can escape the influence of its long-powerful military, which has taken over the country twice since Bangladesh gained independence in 1971. The revelation “is significant to understand Bangladesh’s inner weaknesses in the governance system,” retired Maj. Gen. Abdur Rashid, now a political analyst, told The Associated Press. “The military is always powerful in Bangladesh, as they always have a role to play to decide the political course. Such important organs of the state are not always free from influence.” Though Bangladesh is a democracy, the influence of its military is felt far and wide. It’s routinely utilized for big projects, including building bridges, expanding highways and preparing national identity cards and passports. It has frequently contributed to UN peacekeeping missions, raising its stature among Bangladeshis, many of whom believe that soldiers could fix even Dhaka’s notorious traffic congestion. Any public insult to the military is considered unthinkable. The military has loomed large over Bangladeshi politics, and over the lives of both Hasina and her main rival, opposition leader Khaleda Zia. Hasina’s father,

THIS February 20 photo shows, an Indian rickshaw puller reading a newspaper early morning in Dhaka, Bangladesh. An editor of one of Bangladesh’s most respected newspapers has sparked an uproar by admitting that eight years ago, he published unsubstantiated reports alleging corruption by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, then in the opposition. He says the military fed him the information and pressured him to print it, but it’s the journalist who is feeling the heat more than the country’s long-powerful armed forces.AP/A6M. AHAD

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country’s first democratically elected leader, was killed in a military coup along with many of his family members in 1975. Zia’s husband was a military chief and, after a series of coups and countercoups, declared himself president and ruled until he was assassinated by a group of army officers in 1981. Though they are now bitter foes, Hasina and Zia once built a mass movement to oust the last military dictator in 1990, demanding that democracy be restored to the nation of 160 million. Both Zia, whose center-right party is aligned with Islamist political forces, and the secular Hasina served as prime minister before a militaryinstalled government took over in 2007 and jailed both of them on corruption charges that were never proven in court. Between 2006 and 2008, the military began using the nation’s media to tear the two women down,

Anam and other newspaper editors said. Anam said on a TV talk show this month that acquiescing to the military was the “biggest mistake” of his professional life. His confession quickly prompted lawmakers in Hasina’s party to demand his paper be closed, with some filing police charges accusing Anam of sedition and defamation. But other editors have since said Anam was not the only one pressured by the military to report stories against political leaders without adequately vetting the allegations. “We also published such reports, it’s not that Mahfuz Anam did it alone,” Bhorer Kagoj daily editor Shyamal Dutta said on another TV talk show. At the time, he said, editors felt that they had no choice but to go with the will of the military. The military’s public relations office did not immediately respond to a written request for comment. A former chief reporter at the

Daily Star, Zayadul Ahsan Pintu, said one of their journalists was picked up by the military and tortured in custody while the military-installed government ruled. He later gained asylum in Sweden, which Anam helped negotiate. The Daily Star continued to publish unsubstantiated reports against Hasina and other after that arrest, Pintu said in a February 14 essay published on the website of local TV station Cannel I. Even now, the “time has not come yet to disclose everything,” Pintu said. “Our society or the state is not mentally ready yet to accept such things. It proves we are not mature enough [as a society] to accept that truth. It’s clear from my ex-editor’s slight revelation of truth.” Only one newspaper, the New Age, and its editor Nurul Kabir has said he refused to crack under military pressure to publish reports from its intelligence wing. Kabir said that, on occasions, he had to sit across table from top military officials to discuss such reports over cups of tea. The last era of military-backed rule ended in 2008, when political pressure led to the release of both Hasina and Zia. Hasina then led a political alliance to election victory, and has been the country’s prime minister ever since. The military, however, remains strong enough that some believe it could clear the way for Zia to become prime minister by withdrawing its backing for Hasina. Zia wants an early election, but Hasina says there will be no vote until her term ends in 2019. Rashid, the former general, said checks on the militar y’s power are needed. “In many countries reforms in the military are obvious and a constant process, especially in the developed nations to make them accountable to public,” he said. AP

EW YOR K—In one of the most exhaustive and damning reports on diversity in Hollywood, a new study finds that the films and television produced by major media companies are “whitewashed,” and that an “epidemic of invisibility” runs top to bottom through the industry for women, minorities and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. A study to be released on Monday by the Media, Diversity and Social Change Initiative at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism offers one of the most wide-ranging examinations of the film and television industries, including a pointed “inclusivity index” of 10 major media companies—from Disney to Netflix—that gives a failing grade to every movie studio and most TV makers. Coming just days before an Academy Awards, where a second straight year of all-white acting nominees has enflamed an industry-wide crisis, the report offers a new barrage of sobering statistics that further evidence a deep discrepancy between Hollywood and the American population it entertains, in gender, race and ethnicity. “The prequel to OscarsSoWhite is HollywoodSoWhite,” said Stacy L. Smith, a USC professor and one of the study’s authors, in an interview. “We don’t have a diversity problem. We have an inclusion crisis.” The study, titled the Comprehensive Annenberg Report on Diversity, examined the 109 films released by major studios (including art-house divisions) in 2014 and 305 scripted, first-run TV and digital series across 31 networks and streaming services that aired

from September 2014 to August 2015. More than 11,000 speaking characters were analyzed for gender, racial and ethnic representation and LGBT status. Some 10,000 directors, writers and show creators were examined, as was the gender of more than 1,500 executives.The portrait is one of pervasive underrepresentation, no matter the media platform, from CEOs to minor characters. “Overall, the landscape of media content is still largely whitewashed,” the study concludes. In the 414 studied films and series, only a third of speaking c h a racters were fem a le, a nd only 28.3 percent were from minority groups—about 10 percent less than the makeup of the US population. Characters 40 years or older skew heavily male across film and T V: 74.3 percent male to 25.7 percent female. Just 2 percent of speaking characters were LGBT-identified. Among the 11,306 speaking characters studied, only seven were transgendered (and four were from the same series). “When we start to step back to see this larger ecology, I think we see a picture of exclusion,” said Smith. “And it doesn’t match the norms of the population of the United States.” Behind the camera, the discrepancy is even greater. Directors overall were 87 percent white. Broadcast TV directors (90.4 percent white) were the least diverse. Just 15.2 percent of directors, 28.9 percent of writers and 22.6 percent of series creators were female. In film, the gender gap is greatest: Only 3.4 percent of the films studied were directed by women, and only two directors out of the 109 were black women: Ava DuVernay (Selma) and Amma Asante (Belle). AP

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Ballot question on President Morales reelection in trouble

A PAZ, Bolivia—Voters’ eagerness for new blood in Bolivian politics and thinning patience with government corruption may make President Evo Morales’s current term in office his last. Early results and an unofficial partial vote count early Monday indicated Morales’s bid to extend his presidency by amending the constitution was headed toward a narrow defeat. Morales has governed for a decade. A “yes” vote in Sunday’s referendum would have let Bolivia’s first indigenous president seek a fourth term in 2019. The referendum’s timing could not have been worse for Morales. He was stung this month by an influencepeddling scandal involving a former lover and by a deadly incident of political violence. Tw o u no f f i c i a l “q u i c k cou nt s” by pol l i ng f i r ms that looked at counts from a sampling of polling stations said 52 percent voted “no.” One firm, Ipsos-Apoyo, said it saw ballots at one of every 15 polling stations. Official vote counting was slow. With just 23 percent polling stations reporting just after midnight, the “no” vote stood at 67 percent. But vote reports were particularly slow in coming from the countryside, where Morales is most popular. State television halted election coverage shortly before midnight. A frustrated Vice President Alvaro Garcia said at a news conference on Sunday night that the vote was so far “a technical tie”—too close to call. “No one has won, nor has anyone lost,” he said. Morales did not make an appearance. Mic hael Shif ter, president of the Inter-American Dia log ue think tank in Washington, called the tight vote a surprising, major blow to Morales, who tallied more than 60 percent in his 2014 reelection. “W hile few can deny that Bolivia has seen impressive economic growth and social progress under Morales’s rule, many voters are sending a message that it is not enough—they are demand ing c lean gover nment, accou nt abi l it y a nd more competitive politics,” Shifter said. Morales, who entered politics as a coca growers union leader, could now be motivated to groom a successor, he added. Bolivia’s constitution, enacted in Morales’s initial term, permits presidents and vice presidents to serve two consecutive terms. Morales’s first term was deemed by a high court not to have counted.

International obser vers reported only minor irregularities in Sunday’s vote. The referendum followed by days a political bombshell: A former lover of Morales was named sales manager of a Chinese company in 2013 that has obtained nearly $500 million in mostly no-bid state contracts. Morales denied any impropriety and his claim to have last seen the woman in 2007 was questioned when a picture of them together last year emerged. The case deepened doubts about the integrity of Morales’s governing Movement Toward Socialism, which has been wracked by scandals. Adding to Morales’s woes, six city workers died of smoke inhalation last week in El Alto, the teeming city adjacent to the capital of La Paz, in an attack blamed on proMorales agitators. The attackers torched documents that allegedly incriminated the previous mayor in payroll corruption. Both developments blighted Morales’s achievements in cutting poverty, spreading Bolivia’s natural resource wealth and empowering its indigenous majority during a decade in office. Eusebio Condori, a retired schoolteacher, said he voted “no” because the scandal and the deaths “confirm that this government doesn’t have a plan for Bolivia, only for itself.” A mother of three, Maria Espinoza, said she voted “no” because she believes in term limits. She echoed the complaint of others that too many jobs depend on political patronage. South America’s left has recently been su l lied by scanda l—and punished at the ballot box in Argentina and Venezuela— but Morales had personally remained unscathed. His movement has been discredited, however, by the skimming of millions from the government-managed Fondo Indigena, which runs agricultural and public works in the countryside. Mora les presided over an unprecedented economic boom as prices for raw materials soared just as he took of f ice. He bu i lt a ir por ts, highways and the pride of La Paz, an Austrian-built aerial tramway system. He also put a Chinese-built satellite into space. Average per-capita income rose from $873 to $3,119 and a new indigenous middle class was born. But the boom is over. Bolivia’s revenues from natural gas and minerals, making up three-fourths of its exports, were down 32 percent last year. AP

IN this February 3 photo, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks during a Democratic primary town hall sponsored by CNN in Derry, New Hampshire. It seems Clinton is having trouble earning the public’s trust. As the Democratic presidential contest hurtles toward the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, the former secretary of state is seeking to convince voters of her authenticity as rival Bernie Sanders criticizes her Wall Street ties and questions whether she’s really a liberal. AP

Clinton concedes she has work to do even as she savors win

RANKLIN, Tennessee—Hillary Clinton acknowledged she has work to do in convincing voters that she has their best interests at heart, even as the former United States secretary of state, she savored her weekend win over rival Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in the Nevada caucuses. On the Republican side, US Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz battled to emerge as the true anti-Donald Trump candidate after the billionaire businessman’s resounding victory in the South Carolina primar y established him as the clear front-runner in the race for that party’s presidential nomination. Clinton was happy with her Nevada win but conceded that some voters are skeptical of her motivations. “I think there’s an underlying question that maybe is really in the back of people’s minds and that is, you know, is she in it for us or is she in it for herself?” Clinton said on CNN. “I think that is a question that people are trying to sort through.” A large majority of black voters supported Clinton in Nevada, according to entrance polls, an out-

come that bodes well for her in next Saturday’s Democratic primary in South Carolina and on so-called Super Tuesday a few days later when primaries are held in several southern states where African-Americans make up a large segment of the Democratic electorate. Working to increase his support among black voters, Sanders visited a Baptist church luncheon following services in West Columbia, South Carolina, and talked up the country’s economic recovery under President Barack Obama. Sanders, a Vermont senator, acknowledged that while his insurgent campaign has made strides, “at the end of the day...you need delegates.” Sanders looked past South Carolina to list Colorado, Minnesota, Massachusetts and Oklahoma as places where he has a “good shot” to do well on March

1, or Super Tuesday, which offers a large haul of delegates who will choose the party’s nominee at the national convention in July. As for Trump, he declined to say the Republican nomination was his to lose. But he quickly went on to declare, “I’m really on my way.” Soon enough, in a television interview, he was toting up electoral math all the way through Election Day and concluding, “I’m going to win.” Trump’s main rivals, Rubio and Cruz, used the Sunday morning news shows to spin optimistic scenarios after complete but unofficial returns in South Carolina put Trump way up on top, with Rubio squeaking past Cruz for second. But with roughly 70 percent of Republicans in national polls declining to back Trump, Cruz and Rubio tried to cast themselves as the one candidate around whom what Rubio calls the “alternative-toDonald-Trump vote” can coalesce. Rubio also took an aggressive run at Trump, faulting him for a lack of specifics on policy. “If you’re running for president of the United States, you can’t just tell people you’re going to make America great again,” he said on CBS’ Face the Nation, referring to Trump’s campaign slogan. At a later rally in Franklin, Tennessee, a Nashville suburb, Rubio took note of the smaller Republican field after former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s departure from the race, and celebrated his biggest crowd of

the campaign, estimated at more than 3,000 people. Rubio avoided criticizing his Republican rivals, instead highlighting his efforts to help middle-class families. Cruz, for his part, stressed his conservative bona fides and said he was the lone “strong conservative in this race who can win. We see conservatives continuing to unite behind our campaign,” he told NBC’s Meet the Press. With Bush gone from the race, Rubio was hoping to pick off past donors to the Bush campaign and looking to benefit as well from a cessation in the millions of dollars in negative ads run against him by the Bush campaign and its allies. Rubio also suggested it was only a matter of time before John Kasich and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson ended their campaigns as well. The Florida senator hinted it would be better to get that winnowing over with, saying, “the sooner we can coalesce, the better we’re going to be as a party in general.” Not so fast, Kasich countered. “We’re getting big crowds everywhere we go,” the Ohio governor insisted, listing Vermont, Massachusetts and Virginia as places he can shine. Trump suddenly had nice things to say about Bush, the candidate he had hammered so relentlessly when they were rivals. As for Rubio, Trump told Fox News Sunday that “I start off liking everybody. Then, all of a sudden, they become mortal enemies.” AP

Rubio, Cruz jostle to claim ‘alternative-to-Trump’ vote

REPUBLICAN presidential candidate, businessman Donald Trump (center) speaks about Republican presidential candidates, Sen. Ted Cruz, RepublicanTexas (left), and Sen. Marco Rubio, Republican-Florida, during the CBS News Republican presidential debate at the Peace Center on February 13 in Greenville, South Carolina. AP/JOHN BAZEMORE

RANKLIN, Tennessee—Republican Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz battled to emerge as the true anti-Donald Trump candidate on Sunday after the billionaire businessman’s resounding victory in the South Carolina primary established him as the clear front-runner in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Trump declined to say the nomination was his to lose. But he quickly went on to declare, “I’m really on my way.” Soon enough, in a television interview, he was toting up electoral math all the way through Election Day and concluding, “I’m going to win.” The candidates’ diverging flight plans demonstrated how the campaign spreads out and speeds up now. Nevada’s Republican caucuses are on Tuesday, and then a dozen states vote on March 1, or Super Tuesday, which offers a large haul of delegates who will choose the party’s nominee at the national convention in July. Trump was in Georgia exulting over his latest victory, Cruz

headed for Nevada and Rubio embarked on a Tennessee-Arkansas-Nevada swing. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton savored her weekend win in the Nevada caucuses as Bernie Sanders acknowledged that while his insurgent campaign has made strides, “at the end of the day...you need delegates.” The Vermont senator looked past Saturday’s Democratic primary in South Carolina to list Colorado, Minnesota, Massachusetts and Oklahoma as places where he has a “good shot” to do well on Super Tuesday. Clinton was happy with her Nevada win, but acknowledged she has work to do in persuading voters that she has their best interests at heart. “I think there’s an underlying question that maybe is really in the back of people’s minds and that is, you know, is she in it for us or is she in it for herself?” Clinton said on CNN. “I think that is a question that people are trying to sort through.” Working to increase his support among

black voters, Sanders visited a Baptist church luncheon following services in West Columbia, South Carolina, and talked up the country’s economic recovery under President Barack Obama. Trump’s main rivals, Rubio and Cruz, used the Sunday morning news shows to spin optimistic scenarios after complete but unofficial returns in South Carolina put Trump way up on top, with Rubio squeaking past Cruz for second. But with roughly 70 percent of Republicans in national polls declining to back Trump, Cruz and Rubio tried to cast themselves as the one candidate around whom what Rubio calls the “alternativeto-Donald-Trump vote” can coalesce. Rubio also took an aggressive run at Trump, faulting him for a lack of specifics on policy. “If you’re running for president of the United States, you can’t just tell people you’re going to make America great again,” he said on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” referring to Trump’s campaign slogan. AP

A8 Tuesday, February 23, 2016

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Zuckerberg at crossroads in connecting the globe

IN this December 29, 2015, file photo, Indian students gather for a protest against Facebook’s Free Basics in Hyderabad, India. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg likes to boast that his three-year-old effort to connect the developing world to the Internet has reached millions of people in some of the world’s poorest nations. AP

AN FRANCISCO—Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg likes to boast that his three-yearold effort to bring the developing world online has reached millions of people in some of the world’s poorest nations. But a central element of his Internet.org campaign was controversial even before it was shut down in a key market this month. Indian regulators banned one of the pillars of the campaign, a service known as Free Basics, because it provided access only to certain preapproved services—including Facebook—rather than the full Internet. That leaves the social-media mogul at a crossroads. Though he has vowed not to give up, Zuckerberg hasn’t said whether he’ll alter his approach. Facebook declined to make executives available for comment. Zuckerberg can shed light on his plans when he speaks on Monday at Mobile World Congress, an annual industry event in Barcelona, Spain, where he has touted Internet.org in previous years. “Everyone in the world should have access to the Internet,” Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook this month, arguing that online connections can improve

lives and fuel economic development. To achieve that goal, Zuckerberg has high-flying dreams for someday providing Internet connections through a network of drones, satellites and lasers. But his near-term plan is simpler: Facebook works with wireless carriers in poorer nations to let people use streamlined versions of Facebook and certain other online services, without paying data charges. While the drones may someday connect people in areas too remote for cables or cell towers, Free Basics is intended for people who live in areas with Internet service but still can’t afford it. A low-income resident of urban Manila, for example, can use Free Basics to view the Philippines’s GMA News site. “He can be informed. He can research. He can read the news,” Ederic Eder of GMA News said. The program varies by country, in

offerings and effectiveness. In South Africa, for instance, Facebook partnered with the third-largest wireless carrier, Cell C. But Johannesburg resident Priscilla de Klerk said she couldn’t get Free Basics to work on her phone. “Cell C is much cheaper as far as everything else is concerned, but their free Facebook is not a reality,” she said. Last fall Facebook announced a major expansion in Africa, where another regional carrier, Bharti Airtel, said it will offer Free Basics in 17 countries. “They’re getting a lot of traction in Africa,” said Danson Njue, a Kenyabased telecom analyst with the Ovum research firm. Tech rivals Google and Microsoft also have programs to expand Internet access, he noted, but their approaches are content neutral and involve extending networks to underserved areas. Facebook doesn’t pay wireless companies for the cost of Free Basics. Carriers make money if new users eventually move to a paid data plan. Facebook also says it makes no money, as it doesn’t show ads, though Zuckerberg has conceded it benefits from gaining users in the long run. While the company hasn’t released detailed usage figures, Facebook says Free Basics has brought more than 19 million people online for the first time. That counts any user who didn’t have Internet access before, regardless of whether they’re currently active.

On the Internet.org web site, mixed in with videos about impoverished students using Free Basics to study and laborers starting small businesses, Facebook boasts more than 1 billion people “have access” to the service. That’s the combined population of regions where it’s available, not the number of users. Free Basics is now in 36 countries. It was suspended last year in Egypt, on the anniversary of anti-government protests that were organized partly on Facebook. An earlier version of Free Basics, known as Facebook Zero, was shuttered three years ago in Chile, after authorities said Internet providers couldn’t offer discounts for accessing some content but not others. Similar concerns turned India into the program’s biggest battleground. Free Basics enrolled more than 1 million Indians in its first year, according to Facebook’s wireless partner, Reliance Communications. But critics, including many in the country’s growing tech community, complained it was a predatory scheme: If low-income users couldn’t afford anything besides Free Basics, opponents said, that meant Facebook was deciding which online services the nation’s poor could use. “The government should not allow big players to monopolize the Internet,” said Manu Sharma, who runs a software development company in New Delhi. AP

Editor: Lyn Resurreccion • news@businessmirror.com.ph

VENEZUELA TAKES ON ZIKA AMID SHORTAGES, INFORMATION BLACKOUT

ARACAS, Venezuela—This is what the Zika outbreak looks like in Venezuela, a country whose medical system has teetered for months on the brink of collapse: There’s a lack of bug spray to prevent mosquito bites; scant contraceptives to avert pregnancies; little medicine to treat Zika-linked maladies. There has been no effective public-health campaign to inform the public about the disease—and nobody really knows how many infections there have been. “It’s just terrible what we are living,” said Carla Natera, a 50-year-old local government worker who contracted Zika and spent three days searching pharmacies for an ointment to calm the angry rash that broke out on her face and body. William Barrientos, a doctor and opposition lawmaker, says the socialist government is not equipped to confront a health crisis in a country where food and medicine shortages are acute, the economy is a shambles and a political crisis deepens by the day. “There is no education and information campaign among the population here,” and no tracking of the mosquitoes that carry the virus, he said. The scale of what Venezuela is going through is unclear. Officials alerted the World Health Organization to the first case of Zika here last November but did not release statistics or reach out to the public until two months later. The Health Ministry is now reporting more than 5,000 suspected Zika cases and three related deaths. But a network of independent physicians allied with the opposition—the Venezuelan Society of Public Health— says that’s likely a dramatic underestimate. It says a polling of local health officials found a rise in acute fevers that could correspond to 400,000 Zika cases, and the outbreak will likely reach its peak around the end of March. Neighboring Colombia, by contrast, has reported more than 30,000 cases. It’s been a year since the government published up-to-date epidemiological data and reaching the Health Ministry for information is frustrating. The main line for hits “Zika situation room” was out of order on Tuesday and the person answering another number for the room hung up twice on a reporter. To compensate for the lack of official figures, doctors have been turning to informal surveys, social media and even Google analytics to try to get a handle on the scope of the outbreak. The virus has been linked to a spike in Guillain-Barre, a rare disorder in which the immune system attacks the nervous system, causing temporary paralysis that can be fatal. Health officials say the country has seen 255 cases of the GuillainBarre syndrome since the Zika outbreak began—a much higher incidence than reported in other countries grappling with the virus. “Normally, we’d expect 30 or 40 cases of Guillain-Barre a month,” former Health Minister José Félix Oletta said.

“What this shows is that the minister has the total number of Zika cases wrong. It’s much higher.” Venezuela’s medical shortages could easily boost the mortality rate for GuilliaBarre, which is about 5 percent in developed countries. Nancy Pino, a 68-yearold retired school administrator, died last month of Guillain-Barre that developed after she fell ill over Christmas with symptoms of Zika. Doctors said the woman from the lowland state of Anzoategui needed intravenous immunoglobulin therapy, and sent her three children on a frantic twoweek search for the medicine after they rushed her to Caracas. As the family begged for immunoglobulin at state agencies, on local television channels and even at the presidential palace, their mother lost the ability to walk, speak, open her eyes and, finally, to breathe. “They shut the doors on us. There’s just no medicine here,” daughter Nehara Ramos said. The country’s private, oppositionleaning pharmaceutical association says Venezuela only has 20 percent of the medications it requires, a result of currency and price controls. The government blames the shortages on “economic war” waged by its right-wing opponents. Earlier this month, Health Minister Luisana Melo invited sick Venezuelans to e-mail requests for medicine to a staterun Gmail account. Last week President Nicolas Maduro said the country had received a special shipment of drugs that will be sufficient to combat Zika, but did not specify what the shipment included. The Health Ministry is advising the public to use bug spray, an item all but impossible to come by in Venezuela these days, and to clean out their tubs of standing water once a week. That is a lot to ask, however, of the many Venezuelans keep tubs in their homes full of water to deal with chronic shortages. Meanwhile, state media have been broadcasting a steady stream of footage of health officials accompanying workers on mosquito fumigation and immunoglobulin-distribution missions. What they haven’t been doing with any regularity is offering the public advice on how to behave. Venezuelan officials say the country has not yet seen any cases of birth defects associated with Zika, as have been reported in Brazil. Other countries have advised women to postpone pregnancy until the Zika epidemic has slowed. But in Venezuela, condoms and birth-control pills are in extremely short supply, making it complicated for women to avoid pregnancy. In the western state of Zulia, a focal point of the epidemic, local health authorities say 25 pregnant women have contracted Zika and are under medical observation. Doctors are also complaining that laboratories have been unable to obtain the chemical needed to diagnose Zika by identifying the DNA of the virus. AP

Sorry, no kangaroos: Service-animal impostors face crackdown

UGUSTA, Maine—People who falsely pass off their pets as service animals—think of the woman in Wisconsin last year who claimed the right bring her kangaroo into McDonald’s—have frustrated people with legitimate needs to such an extent that legislators in several states are considering laws to restore the animals’ credibility. Legislatures in Maine, Virginia, Arizona, Hawaii, New York and Puerto Rico are considering bills that would either establish such a program or penalize people who fraudulently claim to have service dogs. In Maine a task force this month issued a report that says well-meaning federal laws designed to protect people with disabilities have instead opened the door to fraud. “The abuse and confusion are harming everybody,” said Barbara Archer Hirsch, an attorney with the Maine Human Rights Commission and member of the task force. “It’s harming the landlords, and it’s harming the individuals who need their animals.” Here’s the dilemma: Under federal

law, no papers are required for service dogs in public places. If people want to sneak their pampered Chihuahua into a restaurant, they can simply lie and say it’s a service dog trained to help them with their disability. Sean McDonough, 51, has a brain injury from a car accident and said he’s noticed people are increasingly skeptical that his 5-year-old goldendoodle, Bruno, is a service dog. Bruno is trained to distract McDonough from stress triggers by pressing against him. Security officers at a courthouse tried to block Bruno at the door recently because of their encounter with a fraudulent service dog, said McDonough of Lyman, Maine. “The court people treated me badly because of what other people had done,” he said. Impostors pose a problem for businesses and landlords because they fear legal action if they clamp down, said Donna Hodges, who owns 100 apartment units in central Maine. She recalled a prospective tenant who claimed his rambunctious pit bull was a service dog.

The dog was leaning out a car window and barking at her while its owner waved a framed, official-looking certificate identifying the dog as a service animal. She knew the certificate was a fake, she said, because federal law stipulates that service dogs don’t need documentation. And she knew the dog was a fake, she said, because it was badly behaved. Federal law applies a different standard for housing. A landlord may ask for a doctor’s letter if a person has a disability and needs to live with an animal. Those animals can include service dogs, as well as emotionalsupport animals—pets that provide comfort but lack the training of a service dog. An emotional-support animal can be any kind of pet approved by a doctor, and public establishments do not have to accommodate them. However, businesses must accommodate people with service dogs. In rare cases, a miniature horse may substitute for a service dog— they can be trained to guide the blind and live longer than dogs. But that’s it. The baby kangaroo that a woman car-

ried into the McDonald’s, claiming it was a service animal, does not qualify. People have also asserted service animal status for pigs, cats, rabbits, turkeys, llamas, snakes and turtles, said Jeanine Konopelski, spokesman for Canine Companions for Independence, a nonprofit based in California that supplies disabled people with trained service dogs. In many of those cases, she said, people aren’t lying about their animals but misunderstand the difference between a service animal and an emotional-support animal. “The public is confused,” she said. Florida last year took a hard line on the issue, passing a law that makes misrepresenting a service animal a crime punishable by up to 60 days in jail. Maine’s task force recommends that the state launch a public-information campaign on the issue. Donald Marean, a Republican lawmaker, also supports creating a voluntary certification program for service dogs. He said lawmakers could weed out fakers by allowing the disabled to obtain a state-issued card that veri-

IN this February 8 photo, Sean McDonough leaves Macaroni Grill in South Portland, Maine, after eating lunch with his service dog Bruno at his side. McDonough suffered brain injuries in a car crash in 2008 and depends on Bruno to keep him calm in public settings. When McDonough is stressed, Bruno will lean against him. “Businesses are so fed up with the fakes that those of us with legitimate service dogs are being scrutinized and discriminated against,” McDonough said. AP

fies their animal is a service dog or an official patch that can be affi xed to their animal’s vest. His proposal is modeled after a Michigan law that

went into effect in January. “I’d like us to do anything we can,” Marean said, “to help people get full use of their dogs.” AP

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Editor: Lyn Resurreccion • Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Gunfire rocks site where Indian forces, rebels in 2-day standoff

briefs

U.N.: I.S. BOMBS IN IRAQ’S RAMADI HINDER RETURN OF DISPLACED

BAGHDAD—The United Nations mission in Iraq said bombs planted by the Islamic State group are hindering the return of displaced families to the newly liberated city of Ramadi. It’s been two months since Iraqi forces, aided by US-led coalition airstrikes and Sunni fighters, took back Ramadi from the extremists. UN development official Lise Grande said such unexploded bombs have killed eight people in the past two weeks. She said they died either while surveying their homes or attempting to disable devices inside the city. Grande urged caution and said that “making sure” Ramadi families can go back safely is “everyone’s responsibility.” Ramadi, the provincial capital of Ramadi, fell to the Islamic State group last May, a major setback for US-allied Iraqi forces at time. It was liberated last December. AP

IN SYRIA, HEAVY FIGHTING CUTS OFF ROAD TO CITY OFF ALEPPO BEIRUT—A Syrian opposition activist group said heavy fighting has cut off the government’s only supply route to the northeastern city of Aleppo. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said clashes were underway on Monday along the southeastern approaches to the city, which is bitterly divided between the government and the rebels, and also around the town of Khanaser. The Observatory tracks Syria’s civil war. A news agency close to the Islamic State (IS) group said the extremist group’s fighters had cut the road. Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and one-time commercial center, is divided between the government and its opponents, while IS holds a wide front to the east of the city. Fighting has been fierce in Aleppo province in recent weeks amid a government offensive to cut off the rebel stronghold. AP

KASHMIRI men shout profreedom and pro-Pakistani slogans near the site of a gun battle on the outskirts of Srinagar, Indian-controlled Kashmir, on February 21. A handful of rebels holed up in a building in the Indian portion of Kashmir exchanged fire with government forces for the second straight day on Sunday, leaving some killed and many injured. AP/DAR YASIN

RINAGAR, India—Loud explosions and gunfire rattled a building where a few Kashmiri rebels were fighting off Indian government forces for a third day on Monday in a standoff, in which five soldiers and one civilian have been killed. Two to three rebels have been cornered in a small area of the five-story government building, paramilitary officer Nalin Prabhat said. The militants took refuge there after they fired automatic rifles and ambushed a convoy of paramilitary soldiers on Saturday. The rebels allowed more than 100 civilian government employees to leave the building without any harm. Anti-India sentiment runs deep in India’s portion of Kashmir, where rebel groups have been fighting since

1989 for either independence or a merger with neighboring Pakistan. More than 68,000 people have been killed in the armed uprising and ensuing Indian military crackdown. Two army captains and a special forces soldier were killed on Sunday after two paramilitary soldiers and one civilian were killed on Saturday. Another 13 paramilitary troops have been wounded in the standoff. “Our main purpose is to make sure that we don’t have any more ca-

sualties,” Lt. Gen. Satish Kumar Dua, India’s top army officer in Kashmir, said on Monday. “There’s no hurry. We will take as long as it takes,” Dua said, adding that special forces have to clear the five-story building room by room. As an intense gunbattle raged between security forces and the insurgents, a portion of the building caught fire on Sunday, but the blaze subsided after some time. The army also flew a drone to monitor the rebel positions. Meanwhile, hundreds of residents in the Pampore area, where the militants are holed up, came out on the streets for a second day on Monday in a show of support for the rebels, chanting slogans against Indian rule in Kashmir. They ignored government orders to stay away from the site of the gunbattle. India and Pakistan each administer a portion of Kashmir, but both claim the Himalayan region in its entirety. The rival nations have fought three wars, two of them over control of Kashmir, since they won independence from British colonialists in 1947. AP

Suspect in fatal Michigan shootings expected in court

ALAMAZOO, Michigan—Authorities trying to piece together an hours-long weekend rampage that left six people dead in western Michigan said they are looking into a report that the suspect picked up at least one fare for a ride-hailing service between shootings. Jason Dalton, a 45-year-old Uber driver and former insurance adjuster who police said had no criminal record, was arrested in connection with the shootings after a massive manhunt and was expected to be arraigned on Monday. Authorities could not say what they believed motivated him to target victims with no apparent connection to him or to each other in the Saturday night shootings. “How do you go and tell the families of these victims that they weren’t targeted for any reason other than they were

there to be a target?” Kalamazoo County Prosecutor Jeff Getting said at a Sunday news conference. Kalamazoo County Undersheriff Paul Matyas described a terrifying series of attacks that began about 6 p.m. on Saturday, outside the Meadows apartment complex on the eastern edge of Kalamazoo County, where a woman was shot multiple times. She was expected to survive. A little more than four hours later and 15 miles away, a father and his 17-year-old son were fatally shot while looking at cars at the dealership. Fifteen minutes after that, five people were gunned down in the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel restaurant, Matyas said. Four of them died. “These are random murders,” Matyas said. Dalton was arrested without incident about 12:40 a.m. on Sunday after a deputy spotted his vehicle driving through down-

town Kalamazoo after leaving a bar parking lot, authorities said. Matyas declined to disclose anything found in the vehicle except for a semiautomatic handgun. By midday, authorities were investigating a Facebook post that indicated the suspect was driving for Uber during the manhunt and had taken at least one fare, Getting said. A spokesman for Uber confirmed that Dalton was a driver for the company, but she declined to say whether he was driving on Saturday night. Uber prohibits both passengers and drivers from possessing guns of any kind in a vehicle. Anyone found to be in violation of the policy may be prohibited from using or driving for the service. A man who knows Dalton said he was a married father of two who never showed any signs of violence. AP

BANGLADESH POLICE RAID DHAKA HOMES, FIND AT LEAST 20 BOMBS

THIS February 20 photo shows local residents watching a police raid on a building in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Bangladesh police said they arrested two suspected members of a banned radical Islamist group and seized at least 20 bombs and bomb-making materials in a series of raids over the weekend. AP

EW DELHI—Bangladesh police seized at least 20 bombs and bomb-making materials and arrested two suspected members of a banned radical Islamist group in a series of weekend raids, an official said on Monday. Authorities have been under pressure to crack down on radical groups after attacks on foreigners and minorities last year raised concern about rising extremism in the secular South Asian nation. The deputy inspector general of Dhaka police, Monirul Islam, said police arrested two members of the banned Ansarullah Bangla Team group during raids on at least four homes in the capital and its outskirts. He said some people were seen fleeing from the houses.

The raids yielded information that led officers to another home in the capital where they found 20 “powerful bombs” and bomb-making materials, he said. Most of the bombs were later defused. Islam said the bombs likely belonged to Ansarullah Bangla Team members who used the top floor of the home as an arsenal. However, two other police officers said on condition of anonymity that it was unclear who used the home and who possessed the explosives. Police did not allow reporters to enter the raided homes. Ansarullah Bangla Team is accused of killing several secular bloggers. The government banned the group in 2015. AP

U.N. WARNS OF NUCLEAR MATERIAL FALLING INTO TERRORIST HANDS VIENNA—The head of the United Nations nuclear agency is warning of the dangers of nuclear material falling into the hands of terrorists and is urging world nations to apply an agreement meant to minimize such dangers. Yukiya Amano of the International Atomic Energy Agency said 11 more nations must agree to adhere to the Amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material before it can enter into force. He said on Monday its application would "reduce the likelihood of terrorists being able to detonate a...'dirty bomb,'" which can spread radioactivity over a wide area. It would also reduce the risk of an attack on a nuclear power plant. He noted that nearly 2,800 incidents of radioactive material going missing have been reported to his agency since 1995. AP

PROTESTS THAT LED TO CASTE VIOLENCE IN NORTH INDIA NEAR END NEW DELHI—Authorities in a north Indian state have begun lifting a curfew in key towns and protesters have removed roadblocks after clashes left 12 people dead during their demonstrations for government benefits. Government forces also on Monday secured a canal in Haryana state, which provides 60 percent of New Delhi’s water needs, easing fears of a shortage. New Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said engineers were repairing portions of a reservoir damaged by protesters. Police say the situation is improving in Rohtak district, which bore the brunt of attacks by the protesters in the underprivileged Jat community, who demanded quotas in jobs and educational institutions. With the state government accepting their demands, Jat leaders are expected to formally end their protests later on Monday. AP

A10 Tuesday, February 23, 2016 • Editor: Angel R. Calso

Opinion BusinessMirror

editorial

Deciding what is important

E are not sure if it is a topic for discussion in other countries and societies but it seems that we spend a lot of time criticizing fellow Filipinos for not being engaged and concerned about the “bigger problems”.

A recent comment on one of the social-media platforms caught our attention. The author wrote “China’s Missile in our back yard & possible invasion of Syria that can start WWIII. Yet we are debating on Pacquiao & Vice Ganda.” We had commented in the past that Filipinos were not shallow and superficial in their thinking just because the country was caught up in the “AlDub” phenomena. We considered then that, perhaps, many Filipinos were simply conditioned to think of little outside of our own close experience. Certainly, the world is a dangerous place with many problems of great importance that affect the country. However, maybe Filipinos are showing more common sense than we give each other credit for. As to the comment about “China’s Missile”, a recent study showed that more than 90 percent of Filipinos surveyed were somewhat or very concerned about the situation regarding China’s aggressive behavior in the region. This was matched only by the people of Vietnam. It makes sense for us to show this level of apprehension. As the survey moved farther south and west, the peoples of Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand showed almost no concern about China. You might say that this makes sense in that these nations are not as directly affected the same way we are. But that truly shows an attitude of denial about a regional issue that, if escalated, would affect those other nations as much as the Philippines. For example, in the event of a misstep between the US and China or a situation where trade was hampered in the regional waters, all Southeast Asian countries would be in trouble, not just the Philippines and Vietnam. And a major problem could occur at any time without notice. Manny Pacquiao’s statements and the reaction from individuals like Vice Ganda have become an international story. The controversy is not trivial in that it reflects on the nation. Further, this is an important social issue that we all must eventually confront. On the other hand, the war in Syria—as serious as it may be—is an issue that needs watching, but has little direct impact today. It is simply a matter of prioritizing the issues that need immediate attention and those that do not. Syria may be like the earthquake that may or may not eventually come to pass. China is the tropical storm that could become a typhoon at any time. Examining matters affecting our social structure, like same-sex marriage and the like, is not trivial. Let’s give ourselves a little more credit for keeping the drama low when that is appropriate while still discussing relevant topics.

Don’t push the panic button, yet Manny B. Villar

THE ENTREPRENEUR

UCH to the joy of car owners and public-utility vehicle drivers, domestic prices of gasoline and diesel, which are mostly imported, are at historic lows. The low prices reflect the trend in the global markets, where oil prices fell by 47 percent in 2015 and are expected to drop by another 27 percent this year, according to the World Bank. In its latest “Commodity Markets Outlook” report, the World Bank said it was lowering its 2016 forecast for crude oil prices to $37 per barrel from $51 per barrel in its October 2015 projections. That’s the good news. The bad news, based on reports attributed to Labor Secretary Rosalinda D. Baldoz, is that 1.5 million overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in the Middle East could lose their jobs when Saudi Arabia and other Middle East oil producers cut production. Saudi Arabia is the largest employer of OFWs, estimated at almost

900,000. It is also the world’s leading oil exporter and second (after the United States) largest producer. The kingdom’s proven oil reserves, estimated at 260 billion barrels, are about 25 percent of the world’s oil reserves. Thus, Saudi Arabia will continue to influence oil prices. Other producers, like Russia, have proposed a cut in production to reduce the glut on world supplies, and thus improve prices. In a report last week, the Agence France Presse quoted Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister as saying the

What debt problem? John Mangun

OUTSIDE THE BOX

EAR panic hit the streets of the Philippines this past weekend as people were seen running and shouting: “The alien creditors are coming. Hide your money.” We were told that the total Philippine government debt, if divided among the population, means every Filipino owes P60,000. But that number means absolutely nothing in the real world. I have the highest respect for the group the Freedom From Debt Coalition and the original purpose to stop the government from repaying the improper loans taken out prior to the Edsa revolution However, the Philippines is not caught in an “entrapment in a cycle of debt dependence”; the country does not have an “unresolved debt problem”, nor is the nominal amount of government debt of great importance. The similarity between public (government) debt and private (individual and corporate) debt is the same as with a horse and a gorilla—both are debts; both are mammals. If you do not pay your loans, your

creditors will send you nasty letters, foreclose on your house and repossess your car. If a government does not pay its debt, they get nasty letters. But what is the drama about Greece? That was only because Greece uses the common euro currency. If Greece had its own national currency, the drama would have been limited to a devaluation of the drachma to buy foreign currency to pay the debt. The administration of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo took the Philippines away from the traditional and disastrous “Third World” debt model of running a high government budget deficit funded by foreign borrowing. The Aquino administration continued

kingdom was “not prepared” to cut production. Instead, the minister said “Saudi Arabia will protect its market share and we have said so.” For the Philippines, cutting production, which means reducing manpower, will adversely affect the OFWs. I was intrigued by the headline in one of the local newspapers, which said: “Gov’t girds for OFW crisis.” I agree that we should prepare for any eventuality. Actually, I believe that, crisis or no crisis, the government should continue to pursue broad programs to create jobs locally to reduce the pressure on Filipino workers to seek employment abroad. Right now, however, I don’t think we have reached the point where we have to push the panic button. We’re nowhere near that point. On the contrary, I see a lot of reasons the slump in oil prices will not have a significant and immediate impact on OFWs. No country will bite the bullet as soon as a crisis erupts. Even the European Union did not let go of Portu-

gal and Greece when these countries plunged into crisis. In the Middle East, oil has not only brought wealth to the producers, particularly Saudi Arabia. It raised standards of living and changed the people’s lifestyle, with the help of hundreds of thousands of foreign employees, like OFWs. Beyond economics, I expect Saudi Arabia to maintain its stance, for the following reasons: 1. It will delay any fiscal tightening that may affect its citizens, to avoid unrest. 2. It is not a good policy to stop ongoing projects because it would show weakness and would thus be embarrassing. 3. Saudi Arabia can borrow or draw on its reserves, which is a lot. 4. I don’t see the Saudi government abruptly sending away the foreign doctors in its hospitals, the engineers in its industries and other professionals, who help in the country’s development.

the better policies. In 2002 the budget deficit was 5.3 percent of the GDP. The deficit was 0.1 percent of GDP by 2007. The government debt as a percentage of GDP was over 70 percent in 2003. It was down to 54 percent in 2009. Only 52 percent of the debt was domestic in 2001. By 2009 58 percent was domestic. This was a major shift in policy. The government spends some P372 billion for debt interest. Except, P278 billion (74 percent) was paid to Filipinos in the Philippines, not to foreign creditors. No one really cares about domestic debt. In fact domestic debt is good for the economy as it allows Filipinos to invest in risk-free government bonds not affected by foreign currency exchange-rate fluctuations. What does matter is the amount of external debt owed to the foreigners, qualified as a percentage of debtto-GDP, now at about 45 percent. The Philippines has one of the lowest in the world. While true that public debt has increased during the Aquino administration, what is not mentioned is when and why. Total foreign debt is virtually unchanged since 2009, up only 7.4 percent. Domestic debt has increased by 35 percent. However, the greatest increase came in the three years after the global financial

crisis hit, when the nominal GDP contracted more than any time since World War II. Further, total government revenues in 2009 were lower than in both 2007 and 2008 and did not recover until 2011. In order to keep government spending constant even as the economy was shrinking, the Aquino administration borrowed money primarily from domestic sources. It is not unlike a corporation borrowing funds for operations until business turns back up. Regarding debt payments for interest and principal, the government is actually spending 17 percent less today than in 2009 in spite of the increase in total debt because of lower interest rates. Additionally, total debt repayments were more than 50 percent of government revenues in 2009 and now are about 25 percent. Keeping a close eye on the government’s fiscal and financial situation is important. But if you are going to complain and criticize, do it based on facts and proper interpretation of the data.

To be continued For comments, e-mail mbv.secretariat @gmail.com or visit www.mannyvillar.com.ph.

E-mail me at mangun@gmail.com. Visit my web site at www.mangunonmarkets.com. Follow me on Twitter @mangunonmarkets. PSE stock-market information and technical analysis tools provided by the COL Financial Group Inc.

opinion@businessmirror.com.ph

Opinion

Breach of faith

A ‘must-see’ destination

BusinessMirror

Cecilio T. Arillo

DATABASE Conclusion

ODAY, more than ever, we have enough reason to believe that when President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III mentioned “Kayo ang boss ko” (You are my boss, referring to the people of the Philippines) in his well-publicized first State of the Nation Address, he wasn’t referring to the masses. Perhaps his brilliant speechwriter was, but for the second Aquino President, he was merely reading the lines. And it is not extremely difficult for ordinary citizens to find that out, either. The pieces of evidence are glaring in the news every day. For the farmers of Hacienda Luisita, the dream of actually owning the land they tilled for decades remains an elusive dream. According to government data, as of August 2014, more than 6,000 hectares of land—as large as Pasig and Makati cities—have yet to be distributed to farmer beneficiaries, but the haciendero President is apparently in no rush to give in to this faction of his bosses. After all, it is his clan who owns the sprawling estate that has been regarded as a classic example of the country’s dismal landreform program. Of course, family comes first, especially when you are in power. On July 16 to 19, 2015, at Washington DC, the alleged violations in Hacienda Luisita were presented by the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) before the International People’s Tribunal (IPT) organized by the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines, International Association of Democratic Lawyers, National Lawyers Guild and IBON International. The IPT verdict, although morally symbolic in nature and not legally binding, found the Aquino Administration “guilty of violating civil and political rights, socio-economic and cultural rights, and the right to self-determination of the Filipino people.” There were further instances when Mr. Aquino proved that his “Kayo ang boss ko” mantra is a myth. On January 29, 2015, the Commander-in-Chief was a no-show at the welcome honors for the 44 Special Action Force (SAF) troopers killed in line of duty in Mamasapano, Maguindanao. He opted to stick to his original schedule and attend the inauguration of a Mitsubishi car assembly plant in Santa Rosa, Laguna. He might have thought it is more vital to shake hands with businessmen rather than comfort weeping widows. And he rubbed salt to the putrefying wound he created by saying in his eulogy days later: “Namatay rin ang tatay ko, alam ko pakiramdam niyo kaya patas na rin tayo ngayon.” But this is another grim story that requires more space. Ignoring the flak he drew from his first blunder, Mr. Aquino yet again showed his priorities when he chose to skip the second anniversary commemoration of Typhoon Yolanda’s devastation in Tacloban, Leyte. The President, instead of checking on the

There were further instances when President Aquino proved that his “Kayo ang boss ko” mantra is a myth. On January 29, 2015, the Commander-in-Chief was a no-show at the welcome honors for the 44 Special Action Force troopers killed in line of duty in Mamasapano, Maguindanao. aggrieved families in Tacloban who are still far from recovering, was seen chatting heartily beside business tycoon Andrew Tan during the wedding of the latter’s son, Kester, at the Shrine of Saint Therese Child of Jesus in Newport, Pasay City. If you are not seeing a pattern here, please check your senses. Aquino’s ostensive closeness with the elite is key to understanding who he is for. And if we look at the records, it appears that he has served his true bosses very well. According to a July 2015 IBON report entitled Aquino Legacy: Wealth of richest tripled, the wealth of the 10 richest Filipinos has more than tripled at 250 percent, from P650 billion in 2010 to P2.2 trillion in 2015. Twelve Filipino billionaires have joined the world’s billionaires listed in Forbes Magazine, among them Henry Sy who rose from 97th a year ago to 73rd wealthiest in the world in 2015. The net income of some 260 firms listed in the Philippine Stock Exchange rose 33 percent, from P438 billion in 2010 to P583 billion in 2014. The gross revenues of these firms doubled at 106 percent in the same period. These firms are in the property, financials and holdings sectors, which include property and construction. Yet, despite this significant increase in profits of the capitalists, IBON reports that the wages and incomes of millions of workers nationwide have remained low. The real value of the average daily basic wage increased by less than P9 between 2010 and 2014. In nominal terms, the average daily basic pay is only P367.35 for all industries, with workers in private households and agriculture receiving the lowest pay. What is more devastating is that toward the end of Aquino’s term, the combined net worth of the 25 richest Filipinos was equivalent to the combined income of more than 70 million poorest Filipinos. To reach the writer, e-mail cecilio.arillo@ gmail.com.

Edgardo J. Angara

HE Philippines gained another nod as a top tourist spot when National Geographic included us in its annual list of “mustsee” destinations for 2016.

The listing puts up all our 7,000 or more islands with the magazine’s “Best of the World” for the year, which includes Bermuda, Glasgow (Scotland), Greenland, the Danube River, the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, Hokkaido (Japan), New York City, the Okavango Delta (Botswana) and Uruguay, among many others. A decade ago recognition from such global publications was few and far between, if at all. But recently, they are becoming more commonplace, owing to the collaborative efforts between tourism industry stakeholders and government agencies spurred on by the viral “It’s More Fun in the Philippines” campaign. Last December, foreign arrivals breached 5 million, marking the fourth consecutive year the industry

broke its own records. We may not reach the 2016 target of 10 million foreign arrivals, but today more of our foreign guests are staying longer than previously projected. By October 2015, their average length of stay was already at 9.66 nights—more than a day longer than the 2016 target of 8.04 nights in the 2011-2016 National Tourism Development Plan. The greater success story is in domestic tourism. In 2013 44.1 million domestic tourists were recorded, almost twice the 2010 figure of around 25 million domestic tourists. This prompted tourism officials to raise their 2016 domestic tourist target to 56.1 million, because we had reached our previous targets a full two years early.

Tuesday, February 23, 2016 A11

The greater success story is in domestic tourism. In 2013 44.1 million domestic tourists were recorded, almost twice the 2010 figure of around 25 million domestic tourists. This prompted tourism officials to raise their 2016 domestic tourist target to 56.1 million, because we had reached our previous targets a full two years early. The boom has reached far-flung areas like my hometown, Baler in Aurora province. In 2008, there were only 27 so-called “accommodation establishments” in the entire province. Seven years after, the number ballooned to 135, operating with a capacity of more than 5,000. And where only 10,786 tourists came in 2007, by 2015 they numbered around one million already. These achievements are nothing short of laudable, considering that the industry by comparison just started its ascent. In the process, tourism pumped $5 billion (P237.6 billion) into the economy and accounted for 4.99 million direct and indirect jobs last year.

Fairness, first and foremost Ernesto M. Hilario

ABOUT TOWN

N the past several weeks members of the homegrown Iglesia Ni Cristo (INC), the third-largest religious denomination in the Philippines, are said to have called for a boycott against a leading broadcast network for its “biased reporting.” The reason: The “family” network, they claim, has been blowing out of proportion the smallest incidents in the INC’s internal affairs and making every move of expelled members worthy of coverage and airtime.

The INC has made it clear that it has not issued any official boycott orders. But it hastened to add that it cannot prevent individual members from expressing their displeasure regarding alleged one-sided reporting through both mainstream and social media. Should the INC be defensive and apologetic about the boycott? It’s a religious organization, after all, that has its own set of rules and is accountable to its own members. Whether it authorizes a boycott or not is its own choice. Perhaps the more important question should be: Is the “family” network’s reporting biased and unfair? Let’s look at what really happened. One, the expelled members are said to have repeatedly made premeditated moves to forcibly enter the INC compound in Tandang Sora, always with the “family” network news crews and ex-military personnel in tow. Do these former INC members have the right to be allowed inside? The INC doesn’t think so, since they have been expelled, and have in fact filed a string of cases against the INC leadership. The last thing the

expelled members should expect is a welcome mat at the INC’s private property. Still, the “family” network made a big to-do about being denied entry. Two, the “family” network often gets exclusive access to the press conferences of the “tiwalag” members, whose smallest complaints are made national news. It reported an expelled member’s “plan” to file charges against PNP officers who were serving a validly issued warrant of arrest, but the network has kept mum about their criminal complaints against the INC having been dismissed by the Department of Justice for being baseless. Isn’t this being choosy about what “news” to feed the public? Let the public be the judge. The broadcast network isn’t likely to publicly admit or reveal if it is aiding what seems to be a demolition job against the INC by disgruntled exmembers and their financiers. The least it should do is to demonstrate some semblance of fairness, by allowing both parties to air their side.

Fair and credible elections

THE Commission on Elections

The broadcast network isn’t likely to publicly admit or reveal if it is aiding what seems to be a demolition job against the INC by disgruntled ex-members and their financiers. The least it should do is to demonstrate some semblance of fairness, by allowing both parties to air their side. (Comelec) held mock elections the other weekend in selected areas throughout the country to get a glimpse of what could possibly happen on May 9. The poll body conducted a simulation of the entire voting process from preparation, voting, counting, consolidation, canvassing and transmission of votes from the polling centers to the canvassing centers to the national data center. A random manual audit was also performed to test the accuracy of the vote-counting machines (VCMs). Many of the voters in the mock polls were observed to be taking their time in selecting their candidates. In one voting center in Manila, for instance, it took 11 minutes for the first voter to vote. This did not include other election procedures like feeding of the ballot into the vote counting machine and putting indelible ink on the voter’s finger. On the other hand, the vote counting machines seemed to be working well, as ballot rejections appeared to be minimal. At a polling precinct in Quezon City, only one of 74 ballots was rejected due to the marks deliberately made by

Real economies and economists stay calm, even if equities cannot PAUL DONOVAN

HE start of 2016 has been turbulent in equity markets, although the world’s economies themselves have been much less volatile. Economics and markets seem to be moving in different directions. The relationship between equities and economies is looser than people assume. The S&P is not a barometer for the health of the US economy and the Nikkei tells us little about Japan.

Why? Equities are a tiny part of the economy. Economies are composed of a trio of large quoted companies, small companies and the government sector. Large companies are

the smallest of the three categories. In the US, listed companies account for perhaps 15 percent of economic activity. This is important because a lot of economic growth is currently coming from small companies. Economies are service-sector dominated, equity markets are not. There is often an assumption that the composition of the equity market should be the same as the composition of the economy—but this is not true. Equity markets favor the manufacturing and commodity sectors —nearly half the earnings of the US equity market come from these sources. However, the US private sector is about 85 percent service-

sector companies. Cost of capital is not a problem. One way that equity market weakness can impact an economy is by increasing the cost of capital. Large companies do use the equity market to raise funding. However, the global economy today is hardly capital constrained. Profits are close to record highs in most economies, banks are more inclined to lend money in Europe and the US, and intercompany credit (a critical form of lending) is on the rise. While bank lending in Asia is likely to be more constrained as the recent credit expansion gives way to moderation and deleveraging, this is not a global phenomenon. The wealth effect from equities

is smaller than that of from estate. Most people do not own equities. Less than half of the US population own equities— even in their pension funds. The most important asset for most people’s wealth is housing. The increase in house prices in the US and the stability of property prices in top tier cities in China more than offsets the movement in equity prices for most people. We have not yet seen a general crisis of confidence. It is possible that the weakness of equity markets may create a crisis of confidence. So far this is not the case. Consumer confidence data is a flawed indicator, but it is not showing undue concern about financial markets. This situation

Succeeding administrations should build on these successes. More importantly, they should learn from previous mistakes—such as debating too long on where to build a new international airport for Metro Manila or withholding tourism incentives years after the law that mandated them (Republic Act 9353, or the Tourism Act of 2009) was enacted. The Aquino administration correctly dovetailed the plans of the Department of Tourism with that of the Department of Public Works and Highways. Such convergence should be intensified. Action should be swift and decisive, especially when we just formally signed the Asean “open skies” policy and strive to invite more of the millions of tourists projected to visit the region in the coming years. We’ve done a good job of showing to the rest of the world how the Philippines is truly a “must-see” destination. More now should be done to build up the infrastructure and connectivity needed to let even more tourists to actually see and visit the Philippines. E-mail: angara.ed@gmail.com.

voter. In Basilan, the mock elections went generally smoothly, except for some reports of paper jam and a few ballots being rejected by the machine. The Comelec tried to accommodate at least 100 voters per precinct until noon. On May 9, clustered precincts will only have 700 voters each as against 1,000 in previous elections. This is designed to make the voting process less time-consuming. But the most controversial aspect of the mock polls was the decision of the Comelec not to issue a printed record of their votes. The poll body stood pat on its decision not to print the voters verification paper audit trail (VVPAT) tape receipts to prevent vote-buying, as well as speed up voting procedures. The VVPAT is a feature of the VCM that produces printout of each vote cast. The Comelec has been urged to activate this feature so that voters can see if their votes are counted. In fact, one senatorial candidate has filed a petition with the Supreme Court for it to compel the Comelec to restore the VVAPT, as he said it’s in the law. The Comelec has countered that it takes approximately 13 minutes to print a tape receipt or some 2.1 hours for a precinct with 600 voters. While we await the ruling of the Supreme Court on this issue, we hope that the May polls would be free and fair. That means it should be orderly, with no glitches, and peaceful, with no violence or intimidation. And that also means it should be clean and honest, with no fraud or cheating, or dagdag-bawas that would mar this vital political exercise. E-mail: ernhil@yahoo.com.

could change, but, for now, the situation seems benign. We cannot entirely ignore the moves in financial markets. There are transmission mechanisms that can lead into the real world. For now, the signs are not alarming. The movements of equities run counter to a modest US and European economic expansion, and a modest Asian economic slowdown. For now, economists are indifferent to the whirling cycle of equities. Paul Donovan’s latest book The Truth About Inflation was published by Routledge in April 2015. Visit www.ubs.com/pauldonovan for more research. Paul’s commentaries in the UBS series of documentaries on Nobel Laureates in economics is available at www.ubs.com/nobel

2nd Front Page BusinessMirror

A12 Tuesday, February 23, 2016

OIC-brokered government, MNLF peace talks end B M T. C

Mindanao Bureau Chief

AVAO CITY—The eight-yearlong review of the alleged nonimplementation of the provisions of the peace agreement between the government and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) officially ended last month, and the three parties to the review would move on toward the full implementation of the provisions of the agreement, the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (Opapp) said. In a statement that quoted parts of the Joint Communiqué after the tripartite review last month, the Opapp said the January 26 Tripartite Review Process (TRP) of the implementation of the 1996 government-MNLF Final Peace Agreement (FPA) officially ended after more than eight years. “This is an important milestone we have reached, as it sets the convergence of the two Bangsamoro peace processes,”

said Teresita Quintos Deles, presidential adviser on the peace process and head of the government delegation during the two-day Fifth Ministerial Level meeting of the review. The Opapp said the Joint Communiqué of the conference “stated that the TRP ministerial meeting was held to define a road map toward the completion of the Review Process and identify ways and means of coordination and

collaboration for the implementation of what they agreed upon during the review process.” “What this means is that we have finally finished the eightyearlong review of the implementation of the FPA, and we can now move forward toward implementing the agreements reached this time under the TRP,” Opapp Undersecretary for Programs Yusuf Jose Lorena said. The burden of implementation would likely fall on the government, which the MNLF has accused of failing to fully implement all the provisions of the peace agreement. The MNLF has previously raised its concern at the separate peace process it was conducting with another Moro revolutionary organization, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), saying that it may muddle the government focus at fully complying with its end of the agreement with the MNLF. The government signed the peace pact with MNLF in September 1996, and began the peace negotiation with the MILF a year after. The pan-Arabic Organization of Islamic Cooperation brokered a meeting between the two parties in 2008.

The Opapp said that “specifically, the Joint Communiqué identified four key areas that the parties agreed to implement: establishment of the Bangsamoro Development Assistance Fund that will be used for socioeconomic development projects for MNLF communities; the agreement on the comanagement of strategic minerals will be referred to the oversight committee created by Republic Act 9054 for the continuation of its devolution process; participation of the MNLF in the Bangsamoro Transition Commission of the envisioned Bangsamoro Parliament; and creation of the Tripartite Implementation Monitoring Committee, a body that will oversee the implementation of all points of consensus arrived at by the TRP. Opapp said the communiqué was signed by Undersecretary Jose Yusuf and Iribani Lorena for the government, and Randolph Parcasio and Muslimin Sema on behalf of the MNLF as principals, along with OIC Secretary General Iyad bin Amin Madani for the 57-nation Islamic organization. Deles and Samsula Adju of the MNLF signed as witnesses.

www.businessmirror.com.ph

‘OUTER SPACETYPE’ MUSIC HEARD OVER APOLLO 10 RADIO

N Apollo mission secretly hidden in a classified tape for almost 40 years has been finally revealed, according to a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) recent report. Three astronauts who served on the Apollo 10 mission dating back to 1969—before Apollo 11’s first manned moon landing —were terrified to hear radio transmissions similar to music during the radio-free mission while traversing the far side of the moon. They were cut off from the Earth for about 60 minutes but still could hear radio sounds through their headsets after they entered lunar orbit. Astronauts were puzzled whether to report about the incident to Nasa. The released transcripts contained “strange, otherworldly music coming through the Apollo module’s radio,” the Science Channel series Nasa’s Unexplained Files found out. The astronauts onboard Apollo 10 can be heard talking about the “whistling sound.” “You hear that? That whistling sound? Whooooooooo!” one of them says. Another astronaut said: “It sounds like, you know, outer space-type music.” “Well, that sure is weird music,” one astronaut says. “Boy it got quiet, didn’t

it?” one can be heard. Apollo astronauts debated the necessity to tell Mission Control about the strange music minutes before they regained radio contact with Earth. “It’s unbelievable”,“Shall we tell them about it?”, “I don’t know. We ought to think about it,” they questioned. “The Apollo 10 crew was very used to the kind of noise that they should be hearing. Logic tells me that if there was something recorded on there, then there was something there,”Apollo 15 astronaut Al Worden says on the Science Channel program. “Nasa would withhold information from the public if they thought it was in the public’s best interest.” The recordings remained classified in Nasa’s archives until 2008, prompting an ongoing discussion regarding the nature and origin of the outer spacetype music. “If you’re behind the moon and hear some weird noise on your radio, and you know you’re blocked from the Earth, then what could you possibly think?” The Huffington Post quoted Worden as saying. Some astronauts assume the music could belong to aliens. “These noises some of them are really weird, they even sound un sub conditional like strange alien speech.” PNA

PHL to import 170,000 tons of sugar to stabilize supply C  A

Martin said sugar production for the current CY is projected to reach 2.15 to 2.19 million metric tons (MMT), lower than last year’s output of 2.32 MMT. Earlier, Manila decided to allow the export of 135,508 MT of raw sugar to fill up the Philippines’s allocation under the US tariff-rate quota (TRQ ) scheme. Countries authorized by the US to export sugar under TRQ can do so at lower duties. The US is a preferred market for Philippine sugar producers because American end-users buy sugar at a premium price. According to Martin, five traders will import the volume as they complied with Sugar Order 4, which provided the guidelines for the US sugar quota and export-replacement program. They will also export the volume of sugar required by the US. Philippine Sugar Millers Association President Francisco D. Varua said traders will buy most of the

China. . .

sugar from Thailand. Sugar is levied a 5-percent tariff under the Asean free-trade agreement. Also, Varua said Thailand is the nearest country with available sugar. He said the shipments will arrive in the country on a staggered basis, but all imports are expected to arrive before April. “[We will be importing] both raw and refined sugar, although the SRA is encouraging the importation of a sizable portion in raw form to provide more business to our local sugar refineries,” Varua said. The arrival of sugar imports is expected to cut the price of refined sugar by P5 per kilogram, he said. “Presently, refined sugar is being retailed in groceries and supermarkets at P55 per kilogram, which is within the suggested retail price of the Department of Trade and Industry,” Varusa said. “Based on my computation, the imported refined sugar should retail at about P50 per kilo. The main objective of the SRA for the import program is to make sugar more affordable,” he added.

Meanwhile, Martin said the SRA is closely monitoring the impact of El Niño on the country’s sugarcane production. “We are only 60 percent down with milling, so we are closely monitoring our production given that it has already rained in the Visayas, contrary to initial forecasts,” Martin said. Varua said a “clearer picture” of El Niño’s impact on sugarcane output could be seen by March. “We have to wait until the second half of March to get a true picture of the effects of El Niño and to what extent production will drop compared to the previous crop year,” he said. Data from the SRA showed that the country’s raw sugar output as of January 31 reached 1.203 MMT. This is still comparable to the output recorded as of January 25 last year, which stood at 1.202 MMT. Refined sugar production as of January 31 declined by 9.07 percent to 405,627 MT, from 446,075 MT recorded last year. Raw and refined molasses output rose by 9.35 percent to 487,655 MT, from 445,957 MT.

to 2010, Sipri said. In Asia, those gains have been driven by demand from Pakistan, which accounted for 35 percent of China’s weapon sales, followed by Bangladesh and Myanmar, at 20 percent and 16 percent, respectively. China supplied arms to 37 countries in 2011-2015. The US market share rose to 33 percent in the latest five-year period, up from 29 percent previously. Russia’s share increased to 25 percent from 22 percent, the Sipri report said. China now ranks as the world’s third-largest provider, overtaking France, which has 5.6 percent in the latest period, down from 7.1 percent previously.

on Monday that he is wary of the situation in the South China Sea being painted as a battle between the US and China, but added the presence of a Chinese missile system on a disputed island will not stop the US military from flying over the region. US Navy Vice Adm. Joseph Aucoin’s comments come a week after it was revealed that Beijing had deployed surface-to-air missiles on an island in the fiercely contested region. The US said the presence of missiles provided increasing evidence of militarization of the area by China. China subsequently accused the US of militarizing the region, saying patrols by US Navy vessels and military aircraft had escalated tensions and raised concerns about stability in the area. AP

C  A

number of countries,” Craig Caffrey, principal analyst at IHS Jane’s wrote in the report. “The Philippines, Indonesia, Japan and Vietnam are all following China’s lead and we see no sign of this trend coming to an end.” By 2020 total military spending in the Asia-Pacific region is expected to reach $533 billion a year from $435 billion in 2015, IHS Jane’s said. In 2015 nine of the 20 fastest-growing defense budgets were found in the Asia Pacific, up from seven a year earlier. In contrast, the number of Middle EastNorth Africa nations topping the list fell to five from seven. China is benefiting from that increased defense spending. China’s share of global arms exports accounted for 5.9 percent in 20112015, up from 3.6 percent in 2006

US vs China

MEANWHILE, the commander of the US Navy’s 7th Fleet said