BusinessMirror August 10, 2021

PALACE SHOWERS MEDALISTS MORE CASH INCENTIVES

By Josef Ramos, Samuel P. Medenilla % Recto Mercene

T

HE oft-repeated “silver and/ or bronze that glitter like gold ” reverberated from Malacañang to the Ninoy Aquino International Airport on Monday when more cash incentives greeted Tokyo Olympics medalists Nesthy Petecio, Carlo Paalam and Eumir Felix Marcial upon their arrival from Japan.

President Duterte, in a virtual welcome reception for the Olympic medalists, gave Petecio and Paalam an additional P2 million each for their silvers and Marcial an extra

TOKYO Olympic bronze medalist Eumir Felix Marcial (from right), silver medalists Nesthy Petecio and Carlo Paalam, joined by boxing team member Irish Magno, show their Olympic medals upon their arrival from Tokyo on Monday at the NAIA Terminal 2 in Parañaque City. Welcoming them are Sen. Christopher Lawrence “Bong” Go (center) and Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea (left). NONIE REYES

P1 million for his bronze.

President Duterte didn’t stop there as another P200,000 will be added to the bonuses for Filipino athletes who didn’t win a medal in the pandemic Olympics that came to a close on Sunday.

“I salute all of you,” Duterte told the boxers who wore military uniforms—Philippine Navy for Paalam, Coast Guard for Petecio and Air Force for Marcial.

“I would like to announce that in addition to what the law gives you—the P5 million for silver medalist and the P2 million for bronze medalist—you will also receive an extra cash bonus

from the Office of the President,” Duterte said.

T he w indfall of incentives showered the medalists—particularly women’s -55 kgs of weightlifting champion Hidilyn Diaz— included those through the government’s Athletes and Coaches Incentives Act, San Miguel Corp., MVP Group’s Smart and PLDT, the Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) and its president, Cavite Eighth District Rep. Abraham “Bambol” Tolentino, 1-Pacman Party-list Rep. Mikee Romero, Phoenix, Ayala Corp./Kia and Suntrust/Megaworld Corp.

Continued on A2

DUTERTE OKS P5.024-T ELECTION YR BUDGET

w

n

Tuesday, August 10, 2021 Vol. 16 No. 300

P25.00 nationwide | 2 sections 34 pages |

NO SURPRISES FROM BSP AT THIS WEEK’S POLICY MEETING, SAYS DIOKNO

B

THE streets of Divisoria, once teeming with bargain shoppers, have been closed for two weeks as the National Capital Region returns to a rigid Enhanced Community Quarantine enforced by the government until August 20, 2021, as more contagious variants of the coronavirus fuel a resurgence in infections. ROY DOMINGO

P

By Bernadette D. Nicolas

@BNicolasBM

RESIDENT Duterte has approved the proposed P5.024-trillion 2022 national budget.

Budget Undersecretary and Officer-In-Charge Tina Canda said the Office of the President (OP) approved the proposed national budget before Budget Secretary Wendel E. Avisado went on medical leave.

“Yes. The OP approved it and the budgetisnowbeingprinted,”Candasaid in a message to the BusinessMirror.

Canda also said they are still

hoping to submit the 2022 National Expenditure Program (NEP) to Congress on August 23, ahead of their August 25 deadline.

Under the Constitution, the Executive branch has 30 days from the opening of the regular session of Congress to make the submission to lawmakers.

Continued on A2

ANGKO Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Governor Benjamin Diokno assured markets that they continue to hold their stance of keeping the monetary policy at record lows, ahead of their monetary policy meeting on Thursday.

“The economic recovery is at its early stages. The second quarter GDP will be announced tomorrow.

It has to be nurtured, not nipped at its bud. We need to sustain it and raising interest rates at this time is not the right thing to do.

It is counterproductive,” the governor said in a TV interview on Monday.

The BSP has been keeping their monetary policy rates on record lows for the entire year after its aggressive bout to reduce it by 200 basis points in 2020.

Diokno also said he is not keen on reducing further the banks’ reserve requirement ratio (RRR) this Thursday.

“While I am committed to reduce the RRR to single digit before the end of my term, which is in 2023, cutting it now is untimely and not justified. There is still a lot of liquidity in the system. If there comes a time that the system needs more liquidity as a result of

strong loan demand, then that is the time when we might consider an RRR cut,” the governor said.

Philippine banks’ RRR is currently at 12 percent.

In its last monetary policy meeting in June, the Monetary Board decided to maintain its monetary policy settings to provide continued support to the economy amid Covid-19 related disruptions.

This is the fifth consecutive time that the Monetary Board retained their monetary policy settings at record lows to support the economy. BSP Deputy Governor Francisco Dakila Jr. also said in the same briefing that the BSP “has space” for monetary policy to be “accommodative as long as necessary” until the BSP sees “stronger and sustainable signs” of economic recovery.

“The Monetary Board believes that sustained monetary policy support for domestic demand should help the economic recovery gain more traction, especially as risk aversion continues to temper credit activity despite ample liquidity in the financial system,” Diokno earlier said.

Bianca Cuaresma

GDP was better than earlier estimate in Q1

By Bianca Cuaresma @BcuaresmaBM

T

HE Philippine economy performed better than earlier assumed in the first quarter of the year, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority’s (PSA) recent revision of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) rate during the period.

In a statement on Monday, the PSA said the country’s GDP actually contracted by 3.9 percent in the

first three months of the year, an upward revision from the 4.2-percent contraction based on their earlier estimate.

The PSA said major contributors to the revision were Professional and business services, which improved from -6.5 percent to -4.4 percent after the revision. Construction was also revised from -24.2 percent to -22.6 percent; and Real estate and ownership of dwellings, from -13.2 percent to -11.7 percent.

PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 50.3610

Net Primary Income (NPI) from the Rest of the World and Gross National Income (GNI) also both recorded upward revisions from -75.8 percent to -75.6 percent and -10.9 percent to -10.6 percent, respectively.

The PSA revises the GDP estimates based on an approved revision policy which is consistent with international standard practices on national accounts revisions.

The PSA is set to release the country’s second quarter GDP fig-

ures on Tuesday.

Earlier this month, international think tank Oxford Economics said the local economy will experience the so-called pandemic scarring that is expected to lower the country’s long-term growth.

Oxford Economics economist Sian Fenner said they estimate “the long-run nominal neutral policy rate” of the Philippines to hit 5 percent, slashing their earlier forecast of 5.5 percent.

Continued on A2

n JAPAN 0.4569 n UK 69.9111 n HK 6.4739 n CHINA 7.7664 n SINGAPORE 37.1887 n AUSTRALIA 37.0304 n EU 59.2296 n SAUDI ARABIA 13.4303

Source: BSP (August 9, 2021)

News

BusinessMirror

A2 Tuesday, August 10, 2021

GDP was better than earlier estimate in Q1 Continued from A1

Oxford Economics defines longrun nominal neutral policy rate as the rate at which the economy is in equilibrium and monetary policy fully normalized. “ The pandemic will have a lasting negative impact on AsiaPacific [APAC] economies, and we forecast the Philippines to experience one of the largest permanent losses in output, with GDP levels in 2025 likely to be 8.4 percent lower than our pre-pandemic projections—the equivalent of 1.75 trend years of lost growth,” Fenner said.

Fenner blamed the mismanaged number of cases in the country and the fiscal response of the government, which led to their lower long-term growth forecast of the country.

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Covid vaxx EUAs may stop once market sale is cleared

T

By Samuel P. Medenilla

@sam_medenilla

HE Food and Drug Administration (FDA) may soon stop issuing new emergency use authorization (EUA) for Covid-19 jabs once some vaccine brands are allowed to be sold in the local market.

FDA Director General Eric Domingo issued the statement amid reports that the United States FDA is now fast-tracking the “full approval” or marketing authorization for the Covid-19 vaccine of PfizerBioNTech.

Among the considerations behind the US FDA’s decision will be clinical trial results and whether vaccines were proven safe and effective.

Domingo said they are closely monitoring the US development since it will allow Pfizer-BioNTech to apply the same marketing authorization in the Philippines, which will make it commercially available in the domestic market.

“Once we give it full approval, then probably the other [brands of Covid-19 vaccine] will apply. One of the things which will happen then is, we will no longer be issuing new Emergency Use Authorization,” Domingo said.

Instead, he said FDA will only register Covid-19 vaccines applying for marketing authorization.

Currently, all of the Covid-19 vaccine brands being administered in the country only have EUAs. The EUA allows a vaccine to be used locally despite its ongoing clinical trials.

Among the said vaccine brands is Novavax, which only secured its EUA from FDA last Friday.

DUTERTE OKS P5.024-T ELECTION Groups: Climate YR BUDGET change action vital after IPCC report Continued from A1

The proposed national budget for 2022 is higher by 11.5 percent than the proposed national budget last year at P4.506 trillion.

Among the Covid-19 response efforts that will be sustained through the 2022 budget are the procurement of Cov id-19 testing kits, continuous hiring of human resources for health, the establishment of the Virology Institute of the Philippines, and

the continuous implementation of health programs in line with the Universal Health Care Act. In addition, funds for the procurement of the Covid-19 booster shots will also be allocated under the Unprogrammed Appropriations.

Avisado is on medical leave from August 2 to 13 following his recent bout with Covid-19 for which he was hospitalized for eight days and quarantined for

over a month. The budget chief also followed his doctor’s advice to undertake a series of examinations, as it has been 14 years since he underwent a quadruple open heart bypass.

Despite Avisado going on medical leave, the budget department earlier assured the public that it will submit the 2022 NEP on or before the 30-day constitutional deadline.

By Jonathan L. Mayuga

T

@jonlmayuga

HE Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Working Group 1 Report, which Philippine nongovernment organizations said “paints a grim scenario” highlights the urgent need to act on climate change to avoid the worst of climate impacts, local groups said on Monday, hours after the IPCC report’s release.

The report has confirmed that limiting global warming at 1.5 ºC is slipping beyond reach without immediate, rapid, and large-scale reductions in emissions and that “human-induced climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe.”

The Climate Reality Project Philippines through Country Manager Nazrin Castro said just like the previous reports, the latest IPCC report paints a grim scenario of what the future holds if the global community fails to act with the urgency and scale needed to reduce and avoid greenhouse gas emissions.

“At this point, with all the scientific evidence we already have at our disposal, doing nothing means being complicit in burning our planet down,” she pointed out in a statement.

Nevertheless, Castro noted there’s a sliver of hope as the report itself stated.

“The report noted that we can still achieve 1.5 ºC if we can get to net-zero emissions by 2050. We’ve seen in the past year the growing number of countries and cities pledging for carbon neutrality by mid-century. We need more of these commitments. More importantly, we need concrete actions that will turn these commitments into reality,” she said.

She said the report should compel the Philippine Government to urgently complete the implementation plan for the country’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement, which articulates the country’s commitment to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 75 percent by 2030 with the support of the international community.

“These new scientific findings will likely speed up the global transition to a low-carbon economy that is now under way. We cannot be left behind. We trust that the Department of Finance and the Climate Change Commission will get the ball rolling on developing the country’s NDC Implementation Plan,” Castro said.

The Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities (ICSC), for its part, said the first report, which focuses on the latest physical climate science, shows that “humaninduced climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe and that evidence of observed changes in extremes such as heatwaves, heavy precipitation, droughts, and tropical cyclones, and, in particular, their attribution to human influence, has strengthened since the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5).

“The product of 234 of the world’s leading scientists reviewing, assessing, debating and finalizing analysis of over 14,000 scientific research papers, six items stand out for the Philippines amidst a barrage of compelling scientific evidence,” said ICSC, asserting that the “unequivocal” terms indicate there is no wiggle room in interpreting the IPCC’s use of the word in AR6.

“It goes beyond what is already an unprecedented assertion reaffirming with high confidence the AR5 finding that there is a near-linear relationship between cumulative anthropogenic CO2 emissions and the global warming they cause.”

Breaching the Paris Agreement threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius (°C) will impose far more severe impacts that will prove catastrophic to vulnerable communities around the world, as every additional increment of global warming, will increase changes in extremes, including the intensity and frequency of heatwaves, heavy precipitation, as well as droughts, the ICSC warned.

“AR6 rings the alarm bells stating we are today flirting with ‘tipping points,’ such as rapid ice sheet melt that could lead to catastrophic sea-level rise even before 2100,” it said.

According to ICSC, keeping to the 1.5˚C temperature threshold is urgent as the IPCC has reaffirmed the huge difference in impacts between 1.5 ºC and 2 ºC degrees of warming.

“In the long run, at least 3 meters of sea-level rise can be avoided if we limit warming to 1.5˚C instead of 2˚C. Limiting warming to 1.5°C would strongly reduce climate risks and avoid the most destructive impacts of climate change and reduce impacts by at least 50 percent compared to a 4°C world. This is true for heat waves, extreme precipitation and drought in drying regions,” the ICSC added.

According to ICSC, nevertheless, keeping to the 1.5˚C temperature threshold is within reach.

PALACE SHOWERS MEDALISTS MORE CASH INCENTIVES Continued from A1

“Those who participated in all the events brought honor to the country,” Duterte said. “I do not care about winnin...long live to all of you.”

The boxers and their coaches— Nolito “Boy” Velasco, Ronald Chavez, Elmer Pamisa and Reynaldo Galido, as well as Tolentino and other members of the delegation, touched down at Naia on board a Philippine Airlines A321 Neo plane with flight number 427 at exactly 4:27 p.m. on Monday from Narita Airport.

“Good job guys,” PAL spokesman Cielo Villaluna said. “We are happy and proud to carry all of you on board, it is an honor and privilege to bring home to Manila the ‘country’s pride’ and the flag carrier’s latest Forever Flyers.”

PAL gave all three boxers lifetime privileges, announcing the incentives before they disembarked. Duterte also conferred the medalists Presidential Citations and Order of LapuLapu for excelling in their field.

“It is not an everyday occurrence that we receive such an honor from our citizens of the Republic of the Philippines,” he said. “You went to Tokyo to fight and I’d say you did your best and the Filipino people appreciate it, especially bringing honor to the country.”

The boxers replied in unison: “Thank you, Mr. President.”

But President Duterte didn’t stop there and spiced the occasion with his trademark humor.

“You can marry now, you have the money now,” he said. “Go home to your provinces and share your Olympic glory to your friends and loved ones.”

PHL now ‘high-risk’ from Covid

F

ROM “moderate” risk for Covid-19 less than a week ago, the Department of Health (DOH) said the Philippines is now classified as “high risk” due to the high number of infections recorded.

In an online media briefing, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire also said that over 200 medical facilities nationwide are at critical risk while in the National Capital Region (NCR), 25 health-care facilities are also under critical risk.

Vergeire said the increase in cases was seen in the last week of July and exceeded the seven-day moving average.

Average daily reported cases: August 2 to 8: 8,829, July 26 to August 1: 7,029, July 19 - 25: 5,769, July 12 18: 4,989, and cases peaked on April 9-15: 10,845.

Nationally, the DOH official added, the two-week growth rate (TWGR) remains to be positive with an increase in average daily attack rate (ADAR). “Health capacity at 62 percent; Regions 1, 2, 4A, 7, and 10 with a moderate risk HCUR [health care utilization rate],” Vergeire said.

For NCR: Pateros, Malabon, and Navotas are at critical risk with highrisk TWGR and ADAR; 15 out of 17 areas have high-risk ADAR; Districts 2 (Pateros, Pasig, Taguig, Quezon City, and Marikina), 3 (Makati, San Juan, Mandaluyong, and Manila), and 4 (Pasay, Paranaque, Las Piñas, and Mandaluyog) with ICU utilization rate 50-70 percent.

Vergeire said that 46 areas are at Alert Level 3: Areas with moderate to high risk classification and total beds and ICU utilization less than 70 percent, 42 areas at Alert Level 4: Areas with moderate to high risk classification and health capacity greater than 70 percent in the current week. Claudeth Mocon-Ciriaco

www.businessmirror.com.ph

The Nation BusinessMirror

Editor: Vittorio V. Vitug • Tuesday, August 10, 2021 A3

Meralco power rates to go up this month

By Lenie Lectura @llectura

E

LECTRICITY rates this month will increase by P0.0965 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) to P9.0036 per kWh mainly due to higher transmission charge, the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) said Monday.

The increase is equivalent to an additional P19 in the total bill of a residential customer consuming 200 kWh, P29 for those consuming 300 kWh, P39 for 400 kWh and P48 for 500 kWh. The August rate, however, is still lower than the pre-pandemic rate at P9.5674 in August 2019 and P10.2190 in August 2018. Meralco said this is proof that the series of competitive biddings by the utility firm resulted in lower electricity charges.

The transmission charge for residential customers increased by P0.1331 per kWh from P0.5992 in July to P0.7323 per kWh this month

due to higher ancillary service charges, which accounted for about 36 percent of the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines’s (NGCP) total transmission charge.

Higher rates were tempered by the continued implementation of the Distribution Rate True-Up refund, which began in March 2021.

It can be recalled that the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) provisionally approved Meralco’s proposal to refund around P13.9 billion over a period of 24 months or until the amount is fully refunded. This amount represented the difference between the Actual Weighted Average Tariff and the Energy Regulatory Commission-approved Interim Average Rate for distribution-related charges for the period July 2015 to November 2020.

The refund rate for residential customers is at P0.2761 per kWh and appears in customer bills as a line item called “Dist True-Up.”

The generation charge for August, meanwhile, increased by P0.0615 per kWh from P4.8707 last month to P4.9322 per kWh this month.

Charges from the Independent Power Producers (IPPs) went up by P0.7389 per kWh. This can be partly attributed to the continued peso depreciation, as dollar-denominated charges account for around 95 percent of IPP costs. IPP charges also increased due to higher Malampaya natural gas prices, following its quarterly repricing to reflect increases in world crude oil prices.

The increase in IPP charges was mitigated by the decrease in charges of Power Supply Agreements (PSA) and the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM), which registered reductions of P0.0347 and P2.6903 per kWh, respectively. PSA charges decreased due to higher excess energy deliveries of AC Energy plants, which are priced at a discount.

WESM prices remained high in

the first half of July due to tight supply conditions in Luzon, leading NGCP to declare a “yellow alert” on July 13. High WESM prices triggered the imposition of the secondary prices cap 6.48 percent of the time.

However, WESM prices decreased in the second half, as power situation in the grid improved with cooler temperature and improved availability of generating plants.

For the said period, PSA, IPP, and WESM provided 53.0 percent, 40.8 percent, and 6.2 percent of Meralco’s energy requirements, respectively.

The slight increase in the generation charge was more than offset by lower subsidies, taxes, and other charges, which decreased by P0.0981 per kWh. Meanwhile, collection of the Universal Charge-Environmental Charge amounting to P0.0025 per kWh remains suspended, as directed by the ERC. Meralco’s distribution, supply,

and metering charges, meanwhile, have remained unchanged for 73 months, after recording reductions in July 2015. It reiterated that it does not earn from the passthrough charges, such as the generation and transmission charges, as payments go to the power suppliers and the system operator, respectively. Meanwhile, taxes, universal charges and the FiT-All are remitted to the government.

Meralco customers who are unable to pay their electricity bills in areas under enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) and modified ECQ (MECQ) can heave a sigh of relief after the company announced that it has suspended disconnection activities in its franchise areas, namely, NCR until August 20, and in Laguna, Cavite, Rizal, and Lucena City in Quezon until August 15.

“Given the most recent announcement of the government placing the Cavite, Rizal, and Laguna region un-

der MECQ from August 6 to 15, all disconnection activities in the said areas will also be suspended to help ease the burden of our customers with the needed relief and additional time to settle their bills,” said Ferdinand O. Geluz, Meralco FVP and chief commercial officer.

During heightened quarantine restrictions, demand for electricity is lower. Meralco could not say if power rates for the succeeding months will also be lower as a lot of factors are being considered.

“Typically, when demand goes down, there is generally a downward pressure on spot market prices.

However, it would also depend on the supply, level outages of power plants. Hopefully, the level of outages can be managed like in the past few months and demand goes down like in the past ECQ, then we might see lower charges,” said Meralco Utility Economics Head Lawrence Fernandez during a briefing.

Gordon cautions House vs planned probe of Octa LGUs pressed to heighten

By Butch Fernandez @butchfBM

T

HE Senate chief prober of government anomalies finds it as “absurd” a House proposal probe into the Octa Research group’s study of the coronavirus.

Sen. Richard J. Gordon, chairman of the Senate Committee on Public Accountability, also known as the Blue Ribbon Committee, is uneasy over the move to probe the research group of scientists, mathematicians, academicians and analysts that issue regular projections on Covid-19 cases.

The Senate chief prober reminded that “research is crucial in medical science” in order to effectively con-

tain the deadly Covid-19 pandemic.

Gordon added that all sectors of medical professionals and the academe play vital roles in the campaign to contain the contagion, which was why he was wondering on “why some House members are shooting the messenger.”

Last week, five congressmen filed House Resolution 2075, urging the Committee on Good Government to conduct an inquiry into Octa Research Philippines, an independent research group, on its qualification and research methodology after it was quoted by many mainstream media outlets as projecting a spike in Covid-19 cases.

The lawmakers sought the probe in order to allow the research group to

House proposal on early voting of elderly, PWDs in elections hurdles second reading It would also ease congestion in voting precincts on Election Day, especially at this time of pandemic, and will lessen the possibility of virus transmission.

Deputy Speaker Rufus Rodriguez

By Jovee Marie N. Dela Cruz @joveemarie

T

HE House of Representatives has recently approved on second reading a bill allowing early voting for millions of senior citizens and persons with disability (PWDs) in national and local elections.

Deputy Speaker Rufus Rodriguez of Cagayan de Oro City, one of the authors of the bill, said House Bill 9562 would give affected voters the opportunity to exercise their right of suffrage, beginning with the May 2022 combined presidential-congressional local polls.

He said lawmakers are expected to pass the measure on third and final reading when session resumes after the implementation of the enhanced community quarantine.

Under the bill, the Commission of Elections (Comelec) is mandated to schedule voting for senior citizens and PWDs in establishments accessible to them within seven days before the date of the elections.

The poll body is to conduct

enlighten lawmakers on its metholody in collecting data needed to determine if the projections released

by Octa Research influenced the response of government and populace in the midst of the pandemic.

Octa fellows have in the past said they use strictly scientific methods and are making projections based solely on data. Their dire warnings have often been on the spot.

On their latest suggestion that a “circuit breaker” might be needed with a projected Delta-fueled surge in infections, Octa’s warnings have apparently not been shown to be misplaced or premature. As Octa Fellow, Fr. Nicanor Austriaco from UST, said in a tweet on Monday as he showed the surge in bed capac-

Guevarra assures proper enforcement of ECQ laws

By Joel R. San Juan @jrsanjuan1573

J

BM

nationwide registration for the affected voters to qualify them for early voting. Those who fail to register will vote on Election Day. It would also be tasked to launch an information campaign for early voting for qualified registered voters. Comelec is to issue implementing rules and regulations within 90 days from the date the proposed law takes effect.

Funds for the implementation of the proposed early voting law would be initially charged against the Comelec budget and thereafter included in the annual appropriations bill.

“It would also ease congestion in voting precincts on Election Day, especially at this time of pandemic, and will lessen the possibility of virus transmission,” he said.

It would, likewise, give Comelec more time to process ballots, he said.

Rodriguez added that early voting is already allowed for certain individuals like teachers who serve in the Board of Election Inspectors in polling precincts.

ity utilization by patients requiring hospitalization, “Apparently, despite those who called us alarmists, the Delta surge is worse than what we had anticipated.”

Meanwhile, on Twitter, Dr. Tony Leachon, former Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious (IATF) adviser on Covid-19, said the Department of Health is the government agency that should undergo scrutiny for “lack of transparency in April cases of Delta variant cases; 3 deaths in May and June; late travel ban; non-inclusion in the July 26 State of the Nation Address of the looming problem, i.e., IATF announced on July 30 the planned August 6 to 20 enhanced community quarantine and failure of leadership.”

USTICE Secretary Menardo Guevarra assured the public of the proper enforcement of rules and ordinances by authorities tasked to implement health and safety protocols in areas covered by the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ).

Guevarra made the assurance as the Philippine National Police (PNP) disclosed that more than 20,000 quarantine violators have so far been arrested during the first three days of the ECQ period, which is expected to end on August 20.

The PNP said 353 of the accosted quarantine violators will face formal charges for violation of curfew hours being implemented in Metro Manila.

Metro Manila posted the highest number of quarantine violators with 4,394.

Guevarra noted that apprehension of violators of health and safety ordinances, quarantine-related rules issued by competent authorities, and related laws of national application are covered by the Department of Justice (DOJ)-Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG)-Philippine National Police (PNP) Joint Memorandum Circular (JMC) issued on May 31, 2021.

Under the memorandum, loca l gover nment units are mandated to identif y and prov ide large and open air holding areas which sha l l be used for booking and init ia l invest igat ion pur poses.

Police officers are also tasked to ensure that any apprehension of persons cited for violation of minimum public health stan-

dards is anchored on an existing, valid, and applicable local ordinance or law.

“Where the law ordinance allows the payment of a fine or the rendition of community service to avoid criminal prosecution, the same shall be observed to avoid congestion in detention centers and holding areas and in prosecutor’s offices,” the memorandum added.

Otherwise, if the violation requires that the person arrested be subjected to inquest proceedings such as for resistance and disobedience to a person in authority, the arresting officers are mandated to present the person immediately to the DOJ inquest prosecutor.

The inquest prosecutor, on the other hand, is directed to comply with the mandatory timeframe to complete the inquest by electronic means, or may order the immediate release for further investigation of the person arrested and also to avoid unnecessary congestion in holding areas, jails or detention centers.

The joint guidelines, according to Guevarra, were created to serve as a guide for officials and personnel of the DILG, PNP and the DOJ in the enforcement of the minimum health regulations, including curfew.

“A lthough these are guidelines, we did not include any new reg u lations or d irectives in the form of substantive law. T his is just so t he public will know the internal guidelines and also guide them when they are placed in a situation where they might be accosted by law enforcers in connection with some violations,” Guevarra earlier said.

anti-child abuse monitoring amid strict quarantine curbs

S

ENATORS pressed the Duterte government on Monday to step up stricter measures to monitor and effectively prevent child abuse cases during the extended Covidtriggered lockdowns.

This, as Sen. Risa Hontiveros raised an alert amid concerns that “child abuse and exploitation may increase” amid the imposition of stricter lockdowns around the Philippines due to the Covid-19 Delta variant.

Hontiveros, sitting chairperson of the Senate Committee on Women, Children, Family Relations and Gender Equality, pressed local government units (LGUs) to “ensure channels are open and are readilyavailable to victims of sexual or physical abuse.”

T he senator ra ised rec urring concerns against abuse and exploitation of children inside the home as “more common than our society would like to admit.”

She added: “Iba’t ibang klase ng pang-aabuso ang nararanasan ng ating kabataan—sekswal man o pisikal—at kadalasan sa kamay pa ng mga indibidwal na pinagkakatiwalaan nila. Ngayong marami ang nakakulong ulit sa mga bahay, dapat talasan ng mga barangay at LGUs ang pagbabantay.”

Hontiveros cited findings by the Department of Health (DOH), Women and Children Protection Units in DOH-retained and LGUsupported hospitals reporting that sexual abuse cases (64 percent) are more common than physical abuses (17 percent).

Moreover, the senator noted other reports that incest rape was pegged at 33 percent, prompting her to suggest that LGUs must also be ready to provide psychosocial support should victim-survivors report abuse.

“Many cases of child sexual abuse happen within the domestic environment,” she noted, adding: “It does not help that our country’s age of sexual consent is still at 12 years old, the lowest threshold in the world, and predators often use this as a loophole to get away with child rape. Hindi lang online sexual abuse of children ang pataas nang pataas ngayong pandemya, maaaring domestic sexual abuse of children ay pataas din,” the senator warned.

In addressing the menace earlier, Hontiveros principally sponsored passage of a law Raising the Age of Sexual Consent Act, embodied in Senate Bill 163 to raise the age of sexual consent from 12 years old to 18 years old.

She lamented that under Article 266-A of the Revised Penal Code and as stipulated in the Anti-Rape Law

of 1997, statutory rape covers only children below 12 years old.

Hontiveros recalled that “our Revised Penal Code was enacted in 1930, but the provision on our age of sexual consent has not changed.

That’s over 90 years of allowing child rape.”

The senator asserted that “this bill is a necessary step to make amends to every Filipino child. I look forward to Raising the Age of Consent Act’s passage, given the Senate’s commitment to support the measure.”

Hontiveros added: “Habang dumedepensa ang mga LGU sa komunidad at habang trinatrabahong mapasa ang pagpapataas ng age of consent, ang bawat mamamayan ay may responsibilidad din na siguraduhing walang bata ang nalalagay sa panganib.”

At the same time, Sen. Sherwin T. Gatchalian pressed for increased vigilance amid lingering concerns over “another potential surge in cases of violence against children” during the ECQ. Citing data from the Philippine National Police (PNP), the children’s organization Save the Children flagged the increase of crimes committed against women and children during the imposition of ECQ last year.

It recalled that on April 30, 2020, 1,284 cases were recorded by the PNP, 521 against children and 763 against women. These figures increased dramatically to 3,600 crimes by June 4, 2020— 1,745 against children and 1,945 against women.

Gatchalian had warned that economic hardship looming over families could again trigger a surge in domestic violence.

He added that due to the stricter quarantine measures, potential victims could face “a harder time seeking help.”

The senator recalled that when the lockdown was enforced last year, “we saw ballooning cases of violence against women and children.”

Gatchalian conveyed serious apprehensions that these cases are likely to be repeated if nothing is done to quell violence.

“Nanganganib na maulit ito kung hindi natin paiigtingin ang ating mga hakbang upang masugpo ang mga kaso ng karahasan,” warned Gatchalian, chairman of the Senate Committee on Basic Education, Arts and Culture.

At the same time, the senator asserted the “importance of sustained accessibility for help-lines” of the National Bureau of Investigation’s Violence Against Women and Children Desk and the Philippine National Police’s Women and Children Protection Center. Butch Fernandez

Economy

BusinessMirror

A4 Tuesday, August 10, 2021

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Editor: Vittorio V. Vitug

Printing industry books 53% sales drop amid pandemic, digital shift

T

By Tyrone Jasper C. Piad

@TyronePiad

HE printing industry has registered a 53-percent drop in sales amid the accelerated shift to digitalization during the pandemic.

Ma. Corazon H. Dichosa, Board of Investments (BOI) executive director for industry development services, said in a virtual event on Monday that the printing industry was among the sectors adversely affected by the pandemic.

“Notwithstanding, the PCPEF reported that even if the printing industry had been adversely affected by the crisis, resulting in a 53-percent decline in sales, printing companies did not reduce workers and even converted some of the facilities to house their workers,” Dichosa said, referring to the Philippine Center for Print Excellence Foundation Inc. “This pandemic has given us a pause to recalibrate our steps, rethink and use this time to strengthen our ranks,” she added.

While the industry worries over the impact of the pandemic, Dichosa noted that the sector is also facing another challenge: lack of technical workers in the field.

In response to the need of the industry, the BOI, PCPEF and the Philippine Trade Training Center (PTTC) signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to reskill the printing sector workers amid the fourth industrial revolution.

The pact covers skills development, technology access and collaboration of the public and private sector.

“Our ultimate goal is to enhance supply capability, so a lot of the printing jobs need not go to China or any other Asean country,” she explained. “Our local printing industry should be able to service the needs of the other local industries and outsource printing jobs from other countries.”

Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez said that the training program for the industry work force is in line with the National Employ-

ment Recovery Strategy 2021-2022.

The eight-point agenda seeks to encourage more employment generation and to enhance employability and productivity of workers.

“As we build back better in the postpandemic future, we hope to address the present and future talent requirements of the country’s emerging industries,” he said.

Economic contributor

LOPEZ said that the printing industry remains a critical contributor to the economy amid the digital shift, stressing that investing in human capital development and strengthening industry-government linkages are a must.

For example, the trade chief noted that print—such as newspapers and magazines—is still an important tool in advertising.

“Many people consider print advertisements to be credible, informative, and long lasting. Further, print is an important channel that increases reach and helps in spreading information, which is why many companies still print comprehensive brochures and colorful flyers to advertise their products,” he explained.

The printing industry is also necessary to consumable goods and products given the labeling requirements, Lopez said, adding that product reputation is honed with “superior packaging material and flawless technology.”

In 2015, an industry road map for the printing industry was launched. It aims to enhance supply capability, boost demand for print products and services, encourage collaboration within the sector and with allied industries, and establish a conducive business environment.

House panel approves provisions of bill declaring resource-rich Philippine Rise or Benham Rise as Protected Area

By Jovee Marie N. Dela Cruz @joveemarie

T

HE House Committee on Ways and Means on Monday approved the tax provisions of a bill declaring a portion of the Philippine Rise or the Benham Rise within the country’s exclusive economic zone as a marine resource reserve.

The committee approved Section 8 or the tax provision of the unnumbered substitute bill, which states that the powers and functions of the Philippine Rise Marine Resource Reserve’s Protected Area Management Board (PAMB) to set fees and charges in accordance with the existing guidelines.

The committee also approved that all grants, bequests, endowments, donations and contributions made to the protected area (PA) fund to be used actually, directly, and exclusively by the protected area, shall be exempted from donor’s tax and shall be considered as allowance deductions from gross income for purposes of computing the taxable income of the donor in accordance with the provisions of the National Internal Revenue Code of 1997, as amended.

The panel also said the Protected Area Superintendent, which under Protected Area Management Office, shall be primarily accountable to the PAMB and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) for the management and operations of the protected area.

It also mandates the Protected Area Superintendent to collect and receive pertinent fees, charges, donations, and other income for the protected area. It said such

fees, charges, donations, and other income collected or received shall be reported regularly to PAMB and the DENR. Muntinlupa City Rep. Ruffy Biazon, principal author of the bill, said experts recommended to declare a portion of the Philippine Rise as protected area with the category of marine resource reserve under the National Integrated Protected Areas System (NIPAS) “for us to take advantage of the natural resources therein.”

Benham Plateau or the Benham Rise, was officially renamed Philippine Rise by virtue of Executive Order 25 (Series of 2017) signed by President Duterte on May 16, 2017.

It is a 24 million hectare under sea region east of Luzon and is 35 meters underwater at its shallowest point off the provinces of Aurora and Isabela. The area is solely claimed, as part of its continental shelf, by the Republic of the Philippines, which was confirmed by the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf on April 12, 2012.

Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, a coastal state’s exclusive economic zone extends 370 kilometers (200 nautical miles) from its continental shelf, while its extended continental shelf extends for another 278 kilometers (150 nautical miles). The UN now recognizes the Philippines’s claim and the country’s territory have increased to 43 million hectares from 30 million hectares.

The lawmaker, citing marine conservationists and experts in the field of marine biology and biodiversity, said Philippine Rise is a rare exception.

Economy BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Barring adverse weather condition in H2, PHL on track to historic palay yield in ’21

By Jasper Emmanuel Y. Arcalas @jearcalas

T

HE Philippines is on track to achieve its 20-million metric ton (MMT) historic palay harvest target this year if production momentum will be sustained after first half output grew by almost 5 percent to a record-high of nearly 8.8 MMT. Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) data released on Monday showed that palay production in the January-to-June period reached 8.799 MMT, 413,000 MT higher than the 8.386 MMT recorded in the same period of last year.

The first half palay harvest erased the 8.713 MMT previous record level for the six-month production volume that was posted in 2018, historical PSA data analyzed by the BusinessMirror showed.

The actual first half palay production was slightly higher than the PSA’s forecast of 8.79 MMT. Following the PSA’s earlier forecast, the Department of Agriculture (DA) expressed confidence anew that it would be able to achieve its target of producing 20.4 MMT of palay this year, particularly if

devastating typhoons will not visit the country this year.

“We have been working hard toward achieving this production growth. We hope we can do better this second semester,” Agriculture Secretary William D. Dar told the BusinessMirror via SMS in a previous story.

The BusinessMirror first reported that first half palay production could reach record high due to the expansion in harvest area and yield. (Relatedstory:https://businessmirror. com.ph/2021/07/26/palay-outputlikely-reached-record-high-in-h1/) The value of the palay harvest in the first half, at constant 2018 prices, reached a record level of P175.916 billion, 4.88 percent higher than the P167.727 billion recorded last year, based on PSA data. At current prices, first half palay production was worth P148.824 billion, 2.1 percent higher than the P145.657 billion recorded last year.

However, the average farm-gate price of palay during the reference period declined by 2.64 percent to P16.91 per kilogram from P17.37 per kilogram, based on PSA data.

The country’s palay output in the second quarter grew slightly to 4.172

MMT from 4.125 MMT in the same period of last year, according to PSA. Government officials and experts attributed the increase in rice harvest to the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF), which seeks to make Filipino planters competitive against their counterparts in Asean.

Industry groups like the Philippine Chamber of Agriculture and Food Inc. (PCAFI) also noted that better planting and weather conditions in the first half contributed to the increase in palay output as harvest was not affected by any typhoons.

The Philippines produced a record 19.44 MMT of palay last year, which translates to a self-sufficiency level of 90 percent. This sufficiency level would rise to 95 percent if the government would be able to hit its production target for 2021, the DA said.

Due to the expected increase in rice production this year, the United States Department of Agriculture has projected that Philippine rice imports would decline by 14.28 percent to 2.1 MMT. Despite the contraction in volume, the Philippines would remain as the world’s second-biggest buyer of rice for the second consecutive year.

5 land-reclamation projects in Manila Bay in the pipeline

By Jonathan L. Mayuga @jonlmayuga

A

TOTAL of 5 land-reclamation projects in Manila Bay within the territorial waters of the Province of Cavite are in the pipeline.

The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has set the virtual public hearings via Zoom Meeting for the land-reclamation projects as part of the permitting process for the offshore construction that would require land reclamation, also called dump-and-fill.

Documents revealed that based on the project description submitted by the proponent, the project’s Environmental Clearance Certificate (ECC) application being applied for involves only the horizontal phase.

The plan is to raise the elevation of the seabed for the sole purpose of creating new land intended for various functional purposes. The proposed source is of dumping or filling materials is the San Nicolas Shoal, also in Cavite Province.

Like any other land-reclamation projects, the artificial islands project in Cavite will not only expand the territory of cities along the coast of Cavite but would also provide opportunities for commercial and residential development and in the process generate jobs and livelihood, and other income-generating activities that will boost Cavite’s economic status.

The online public hearing via Zoom for four of the artificial island projects were scheduled in line with the issuance of EMB Memorandum Circular 2020-30 dated July 28, 2020, which provides for an Interim Guidelines on Public Participation in the implementation of PD1586 during the state of the National Public Health Emergency.

The memorandum dated July 26, 2021, which scheduled the public hearings, was signed by Director William Cunado, the DENR’s Environmental Management in the Implementation Bureau (EMB) Director.

All four artificial island projects are to be built 300 to 600 meters

offshore from Cavite City, Kawit, Noveleta and Rosario in Cavite Province. Cavite is located southeast of Manila Bay, currently the subject of massive rehabilitation by the Duterte administration dubbed “Battle for Manila Bay.” Based on the preliminary plan, the four islands will be built into a modern aerotropolis in the future.

The four artificial island projects cover a total area of 1,043.28 through land backfill or dump and fill.

The proponent of the artificial island projects is the Provincial Government of Cavite.

To recall, the Sangguniang Panlalawigan passed Resolution 1077, Series of 2018 on November 19, 2018, which granted the Provincial Governor the authority to award to Century Peak Corp. (CPC) and its consortium, the Cavite Reclamation Project Development covering 1,332 hectares (5 islands) within the territorial jurisdiction of the province.

The same resolution also grants the Provincial Governor the authority to sign the Joint Venture Agreement for this purpose, pursuant to Provincial Ordinance 002-2-2012, otherwise known as “Provincial Government of Cavite’s PPP Code.” At the same time, the resolution granted the Provincial Governor the authority to apply for the necessary permits and to enter into agreement with concerned government agencies in connection with the project.

The provincial resolution is also backed by resolutions from the host city and municipality stating no objection to the project. The Sangguniang Bayan of Cavite City issued Resolution 2018-95 signed on December 17, 2018, which interposed no objection/opposition to the Cavite Reclamation Project and no objection/opposition to the authority of the Provincial Government to apply for the said project.

However, the Resolution from the Sangguniang Bayan of Kawit is still on process. Cavite City resolution is attached as Annex 1-B. The Cavite Province Land Reclamation and Development Project: Is-

land A involves the land-reclamation covering a total area of 247.28 hectares along Bacoor Bay and the coastal waters of Cavite City and Kawit.

The public hearing scheduled at 8 a.m. on August 11, 2021 is being conducted in connection with the review of the said project by the DENR-EMB. Registration for the said public hearing is set at 7 a.m. on the same day.

The Zoom details are the following: h t t p s : // u s 0 2 w e b . z o o m . u s / j/89714437037?pwd=M FJ2Rkl6TWF5NGhRSW9LTXF5TlJ5dz09 Meeting ID: 897 1443 7037 Passcode: PHCRP2021 The public hearing for the Cavite Province Land Reclamation and Development Project: Island C which covers a total of 205 hectares of land-reclamation activities along the Coastal Waters of Noveleta is scheduled at 1 p.m. on August 11, 2021. Registration starts at 12:30 p.m.

Zoom details: h t t p s : // u s 0 2 w e b . z o o m . u s / j/87674400133?pwd= WjJYbjNVazNQODN2OGxaNzNneE92QT09 Meeting ID: 876 7440 0133 Passcode: PHCRP2021 On August 12, the Cavite Province Land Reclamation and Development Project: Island D involving 267 hectares in Noveleta and Rosario is scheduled to begin at 8 a.m. The registration starts at 7:30 a.m. on the same day.

Zoom details: h t t p s : // u s 0 2 w e b . z o o m . u s / j/88929763117?pwd=d m1BdFdOT2V1VXNtUkFMUnZsUk4ydz09 Meeting ID: 889 2976 3117 Passcode: PHCRP2021 Also on August 12, at 1 p.m. with registration starting at 12:30 a.m., the public hearing for the Cavite Province Land Reclamation and Development Project: Island E which covers 324 hectares along the coastal waters of Rosario, Cavite will be held.

Zoom details: h t t p s : // u s 0 2 w e b . z o o m . u s / j/89851061107?pwd=R 291dUlDN3BVVVVJNGNHb2daM2F4dz09 Meeting ID: 898 5106 1107 Passcode: PHCRP2021

Tuesday, August 10, 2021 A5

Being disciplined–makes the difference!

By Henry J. Schumacher

A

LMOST everyone wants to be disciplined, right? But for some reason, we just can’t seem to be consistent. Maybe we can start strong and do really good at the beginning… but in the end, our energy dies a slow but sure death.

We have all heard stories of great self-discipline and immense self-control. These stories usually involve famous people, tech founders, or professional athletes, who accomplished the impossible and somehow worked hard enough and long enough and eventually signed large contracts.

But most people think that those kind people have superpowers. They think those people have something we don’t have. They were born with something the rest of us just don’t have. No matter what you do, you just can’t get yourself to do what you need to do.

So why bother?

I am here to tell you: this mindset is garbage. It’s the main reason why most people will remain in mediocrity when they could have complete financial freedom and be their own boss.

Here’s something that will hap-

pen once you start being consistently disciplined: people will think you’re weird. They might even attack you for it.

You’ll get confused looks and raised eyebrows when you tell people what you do (this is my case): “I wa ke up at 5 a.m. every day? Even Saturdays and Sundays.”

“I am not training for a triathlon like my friend Cyril Rocke, but I play tennis every day at 6:30 a.m. —for the last 40 years.”

“I am putting 25 percent of my paychecks into savings.”

Consistency, being as rare and difficult as it is, scares people when they see it live. It’s awesome. But it also elicits jealousy and resentment.

But great power lies in doing the absurd, especially if you think it’s crazy. Never forget, many of us have grown up in an environment that teaches mediocrity and falling in line. If you want what you’ve never had, you’ll have to do stuff you’ve never done.

Great power lies in doing the absurd. When you start to get those confused looks and passive-aggressive “compliments,” you’ ll know you’re going the right way!

T h is is how ma ny people live their lives. They have big dreams but how can they possibly be disciplined after a long day at work? How can you use your brain when you’re so tired from the day? The answer is simple: make a commitment to perform, and you will.

When you design an environment to produce success, you remove all the energy-wasting dilemmas of “Should I go to the gym, or stay home?” You just go to the gym, because that’s what you do.

Pretty soon, you catch on and just start following the rules. You removed myself—your tired, exhausted, cranky self—and lived by the rules. Make a set of rules,

and stick to it.

I love this statement of Arnold Schwarzenegger: “The only way you become a leading man is by treating yourself like a leading man and working your ass off. If you don’t believe in yourself, then how will anyone else believe in you?”

As mentioned above, statistically speaking, most of us grew up in the low and middle class. We learned the specific behaviors, mindsets, actions, and lifestyles of those around us in our same social class.

But if we want to develop incredible discipline and achieve an upper-class lifestyle, we need to shed the beliefs of the poor and middle class.

When I say “upper class,” I don’t mean those rich snobs who inherited money and spend their parents’ money. What I mean by “upper class” is the kind of people who manage fair amounts of money, fame, influence, and popu l a r it y a nd consistent ly make the world a better place with their gift.

So how are you going to do what you’ve never done before? Be consistently self-disciplined by doing things you’ve never done.

You can have whatever you want if you do whatever it takes. Every level of success starts with discipline.

Take yourself and your laziness out of the equation. Make a plan, and commit to it.

Do the things successful people do. Success isn’t complicated; the fundamentals are simple.

But once you commit to discipline, you will look like you have superpowers; the people in your life will marvel at your results.

Enjoy your trip to discipline.

When you start to get those confused looks and passive-aggressive “compliments,” you’ll know you’re going the right way!

I am looking forward to your feedback; contact me at hjschumacher59@ gmail.com

CCC pushes new social contract to advance IPs’ rights, welfare

T

HE Climate Change Commission (CCC) highlighted the contribution of Indigenous Peoples (IPs) in environmental conservation and the protection of their right and indigenous knowledge, systems, and practices.

The CCC issued the statement in observance of the International Indigenous Peoples’ Day on Monday, August 9. The country’s climate-change body also supported the call for a new social contract that would advance the rights and welfare of IPs. Every year on the same date, the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples is observed to promote and protect the rights of the world’s indigenous population, while acknowledging their significant role in sustaining the diversity of the world’s cultural and biological landscape.

IPs account for about 6 percent of the world’s population, with a wide range of cultures, customs, languages, knowledge systems, and have a particular bond with their homelands.

In the Philippines, it is estimated that IPs consists of 10 percent to 20 percent of the country’s population.

Due to industrialization, armed conflict, extreme poverty, climate change, and other causes, many indigenous peoples have been forcibly displaced from their homes.

Those who have settled in urban areas often struggle to retain their cultural identities.

The Covid-19 pandemic has revealed and worsened the many existing inequalities, disproportionately affecting communities, including IPs who were already facing poverty, illness, discrimination, or financial

insecurity, according to the CCC.

Social contract

“THIS is the rationale behind this year’s celebration with the theme “Leaving no one behind: Indigenous peoples and the call for a new social contract,” CCC said.

A social contract is an unwritten agreement that societies make to cooperate for social and economic benefits, according to the United Nations.

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought to light the effects of growing inequalities and sparked a discussion on the urgent need to rethink a new social contract.

This year’s observance calls for creating and rebuilding a new social contract as an expression of

cooperation for the common benefit of people and the environment.

A social contract must create an opportunity to build back a more equal and sustainable world— based on genuine and inclusive participation and partnership that fosters equal opportunities for all and respect the rights, dignity, and freedoms of all.

The plan to rebuild better and rethink social contracts for the indigenous peoples disproportionately impacted by Covid-19 pandemic and climate crisis around the world must include listening to their voices, needs, and concerns obtaining their free, prior, and informed consent, including IPs’ collective and individual rights. Jonathan L. Mayuga

BusinessMirror

A6 Tuesday, August 10, 2021

ESTABLISHMENT / ADDRESS No.

NAME OF FOREIGN NATIONAL , POSITION AND BRIEF DESCRIPTION

ESTABLISHMENT / ADDRESS QUALIFICATION AND SALARY RANGE

24/7 BUSINESS PROCESSING INC. 5th-6th-7th Flr. 81 Newport Bl Newport City Brgy. 183 Pasay City

1.

GOH PEI PEI Customer Service Representative (Chinese Accounts) Brief Job Description: Assists clients will all their concerns.

Basic Qualification: Any nationality who can speak and write Chinese fluently. Preferably 6 months to 1 year customer service experience. Detail-oriented and has the ability to multitask.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

2.

3.

KONG, FANXIAO Customer Service Representative (Chinese Accounts) Brief Job Description: Assist clients will all their concerns

ONG KIM LING Customer Service Representative (Chinese Accounts) Brief Job Description: ASSISTS CLIENTS WILL ALL THEIR CONCERNS.

Basic Qualification: Any nationality who can speak and write Chinese fluently. Preferably 6 months to 1 year customer service experience.

No.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 3O BPO INCORPORATED 2/f Lcs Bldg South Super Highway San Andres Cor Diamante St 087 Bgy 803 Santa Ana Manila VILLAREAL, CASHMERE SUE PALMOS Customer Service Agent Norwegian 4.

Brief Job Description: Customer Service agent interacts with the customer on behalf of the organization. Provide Information about the products and services responds to customer complaints as well.

22.

Basic Qualification: Native Speaker Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

23.

8 STONE BUSINESS OUTSOURCING OPC 5-10/f Tower 1 Pitx Kennedy Road Tambo Parañaque City LIU, MINGJIE Customer Service Representative Mandarin Speaking 5.

Brief Job Description: Build sustainable relationship of trust through open and interactive communication in mandarin speaking

LIU, YANG Customer Service Representative Mandarin Speaking 6.

Brief Job Description: Build sustainable relationship of trust through open and interactive communication in mandarin speaking LI, QIFENG Mandarin Customer Service Representative

7.

Brief Job Description: Interact with customer to provide information, support and problem resolution to inquiries and order status LIU, BAOCHENG Mandarin Customer Service Representative

8.

Brief Job Description: Interact with customer to provide information, support and problem resolution to inquiries and order status LUO, YUQI Mandarin Customer Service Representative

9.

Brief Job Description: Interact with customer to provide information, support and problem resolution to inquiries and order status WANG, HONGYANG Mandarin Customer Service Representative

10.

Brief Job Description: Interact with customer to provide information, support and problem resolution to inquiries and order status WU, SHUAI Mandarin Customer Service Representative

11.

Brief Job Description: Interact with customer to provide information, support and problem resolution to inquiries and order status YAP WAN JUN Mandarin Customer Service Representative

12.

Brief Job Description: Interact with customer to provide information, support and problem resolution to inquiries and order status ZHANG, YONGNENG Mandarin Customer Service Representative

13.

Brief Job Description: Interact with customer to provide information, support and problem resolution to inquiries and order status ZHAO, YI Mandarin Customer Service Representative

14.

Brief Job Description: Interact with customer to provide information, support and problem resolution to inquiries and order status

Basic Qualification: Knows how to recommend potential products or services to management by collecting customer information and analysing customer need Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Knows how to recommend potential products or services to management by collecting customer information and analysing customer need

24.

25.

HE, JIANXIONG Chinese Customer Specialist Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquiries JI, BINJIE Chinese Customer Specialist Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquiries LIN, LIWEN Chinese Customer Specialist Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquiries SU, MUYANG Chinese Customer Specialist Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquiries SU, MEIFENG Chinese Customer Specialist Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquiries TENG, ZHAOLIANG Chinese Customer Specialist Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquiries WU, LIPING Chinese Customer Specialist Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquiries YANG, XUHANG Chinese Customer Specialist Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquiries ZHANG, CANHUI Chinese Customer Specialist Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquiries

WANG, WENCAO Chinese Speaking Business Consultant 26.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Fluent in Mandarin both oral and written Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Brief Job Description: Plan, organize and manage business projects for clients; develop detailed business plan

XU, YINGHONG Chinese Speaking Business Consultant 27.

Basic Qualification: Fluent in Mandarin both oral and written

Brief Job Description: Plan, organize and manage business projects for clients; develop detailed business plan

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Fluent in Mandarin both oral and written

28.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

ZHAN, ZIQUN Chinese Speaking Business Consultant Brief Job Description: Plan, organize and manage business projects for clients

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

ZHANG, GUANGMING Chinese Speaking Business Consultant 29.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Brief Job Description: Plan, organize and manage business projects for clients; develop detailed business plan

Basic Qualification: Fluent in Mandarin both oral and written Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Fluent in Mandarin both oral and written

30.

HONG, JUN Chinese Speaking Cabling Infrastructure Technician Brief Job Description: Installs Cat5e, Cat6, Cat6a and fiber optic cabling system

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

SANDBHOR, GAURI PRABHAKAR Scrum Product Owner 15.

Brief Job Description: Advised customers based on product capabilities and methodologies, applying reuse where applicable.

31.

NIU, HUBIAO Chinese Speaking Cabling Infrastructure Technician Brief Job Description: Installs Cat5e, Cat6, Cat6a and fiber optic cabling system

16.

Brief Job Description: Build sustainable relationship of trust through open and interactive communication in Mandarin Speaking.

33.

Brief Job Description: Resolving all issues co-workers have with their IT systems and software

Basic Qualification: Able to Speak, Read, and Write Chinese Language Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Able to Speak, Read, and Write Chinese Language

DING, YIBO Chinese Speaking IT Specialist 34.

Brief Job Description: Resolving all issues co-workers have with their IT systems and software

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Able to Speak, Read, and Write Chinese Language Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

GUO, PEIJIANG Chinese Speaking IT Specialist 35.

Basic Qualification: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquiries Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Able to Speak, Read, and Write Chinese Language

36.

Basic Qualification: Able to Speak, Read, and Write Chinese Language Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Brief Job Description: Resolving all issues co-workers have with their IT systems and software

PEI, SHOUZHENG Chinese Speaking IT Specialist 37.

Basic Qualification: Able to Speak, Read, and Write Chinese Language Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Able to Speak, Read, and Write Chinese Language

Brief Job Description: Resolving all issues co-workers have with their IT systems and software

MA, KAI Chinese Speaking IT Specialist

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Brief Job Description: Resolving all issues co-workers have with their IT systems and software

TAN, JIAN Chinese Speaking IT Specialist 38.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Basic Qualification: Fluent in Mandarin/English; aptitude in problem solving; with full knowledge of diverse business matters such as Telecommunication and Network

Brief Job Description: Resolving all issues co-workers have with their IT systems and software

YU, WEI Chinese Speaking IT Specialist 39.

Brief Job Description: Resolving all issues co-workers have with their IT systems and software

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Fluent in Mandarin/English; aptitude in problem solving; with full knowledge of diverse business matters such as Telecommunication and Network

ZHOU, FAHONG Chinese Speaking IT Specialist 40.

Brief Job Description: Resolving all issues co-workers have with their IT systems and software

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: College graduate, with good negotiation skills, fluent in Mandarin and English, preferably with 5 years of experience as Chinese Speaking Business Consultant

Basic Qualification: Fluent in Mandarin/English; aptitude in problem solving; with full knowledge of diverse business matters such as Telecommunication and Network

CAO, MANQIANG Mandarin Speaking Project Supervisor 41.

Brief Job Description: Act as communication liaison between low-level employees and senior management

Basic Qualification: Fluent in Mandarin and English with good communication skills and preferably 5 years of experience as Chinese Speaking Cabling Infrastructure Technician

Basic Qualification: Fluent in Mandarin and English with good communication skills and preferably 5 years of experience as Chinese Speaking Cabling Infrastructure Technician

Basic Qualification: Knows how to recommend potential products or services to management by collecting customer information and analysing customer needs.

Basic Qualification: Fluent in Mandarin and English with good communication skills and preferably 5 years of experience as Chinese Speaking Cabling Infrastructure Technician

32.

ZENG, ZHAOHUI Chinese Speaking Cabling Infrastructure Technician Brief Job Description: Installs Cat5e, Cat6, Cat6a and fiber optic cabling system

CHEN, SHUXING Mandarin Speaking Project Supervisor 42.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Salary Range: Php 60,000 - Php 89,999

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

NAME OF FOREIGN NATIONAL , POSITION AND BRIEF DESCRIPTION CHEN, JUN Chinese Speaking IT Specialist

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Salary Range: Php 90,000 - Php 149,999

AMUSETECH BUSINESS OUTSOURCING 6, 7, 8th Flr. (np) Moa Arena, J.w. Diokno Blvd. Brgy. 076 Pasay City HWANG, YUNHEE Customer Service Representative Mandarin Speaking

Basic Qualification: Able to Speak, Read, and Write Chinese Language

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

AMDOCS PHILIPPINES INC. 23rd, 25th, And 26th Floors Eco Tower 32nd St. Cor. 9th Ave. Bonifacio Global City Fort Bonifacio Taguig City Basic Qualification: Bachelor’s degree, 10 years’ experience in IT Industry, with wide knowledge of relevant products.

No.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Basic Qualification: Fluent in Mandarin both oral and written

Basic Qualification: Fluent in Mandarin both oral and written

QUALIFICATION AND SALARY RANGE

CHINA COMMUNICATIONS SERVICES PHILIPPINES CORPORATION 12/f One/neo Bldg 26th St. Cor 3rd Ave., Bgc Fort Bonifacio Taguig City

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Fluent in Mandarin both oral and written

ESTABLISHMENT / ADDRESS

ANOC99 CORPORATION 5/f To 10/f Ayala Malls Manila Bay Building D. Macapagal Blvd. Cor. Aseana Street Tambo Parañaque City

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Any nationality who can speak and write Chinese fluently. Preferably 6 months to 1 year customer service experience. Detail-oriented and has the ability to multitask.

NAME OF FOREIGN NATIONAL , POSITION AND BRIEF DESCRIPTION

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Salary Range: Php 60,000 - Php 89,999

Brief Job Description: Act as communication liaison between low-level employees and senior management

FAN, ZEHE Mandarin Speaking Project Supervisor 43.

Brief Job Description: Resolving all issues co-workers have with their IT systems and software

HONG, SHANHAO Mandarin Speaking Project Supervisor 44.

Brief Job Description: Act as communication liaison between low-level employees and senior management

LI, JIANXIN Mandarin Speaking Project Supervisor 45.

Brief Job Description: Act as communication liaison between low-level employees and senior management

LIANG, GUOJIN Mandarin Speaking Project Supervisor 46.

Brief Job Description: Act as communication liaison between low-level employees and senior management

QUALIFICATION AND SALARY RANGE Basic Qualification: Fluent in Mandarin and English with good communication skills and preferably 2 years of experience as Chinese Speaking IT Specialist Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Fluent in Mandarin and English with good communication skills and preferably 2 years of experience as Chinese Speaking IT Specialist Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Fluent in Mandarin and English with good communication skills and preferably 2 years of experience as Chinese Speaking IT Specialist Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Fluent in Mandarin and English with good communication skills and preferably 2 years of experience as Chinese Speaking IT Specialist Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Fluent in Mandarin and English with good communication skills and preferably 2 years of experience as Chinese Speaking IT Specialist Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Fluent in Mandarin and English with good communication skills and preferably 2 years of experience as Chinese Speaking IT Specialist Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Fluent in Mandarin and English with good communication skills and preferably 2 years of experience as Chinese Speaking IT Specialist Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Fluent in Mandarin and English with good communication skills and preferably 2 years of experience as Chinese Speaking IT Specialist Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: College graduate outstanding leadership skills, fluent in mandarin and english preferably with 5 years of experience as a project supervisor Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: College graduate outstanding leadership skills, fluent in mandarin and english preferably with 5 years of experience as a project supervisor Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Fluent in Mandarin and English with good communication skills and preferably 2 years of experience as Chinese Speaking IT Specialist Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: College graduate outstanding leadership skills, fluent in mandarin and english preferably with 5 years of experience as a project supervisor Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: College graduate outstanding leadership skills, fluent in mandarin and english preferably with 5 years of experience as a project supervisor Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: College graduate outstanding leadership skills, fluent in mandarin and english preferably with 5 years of experience as a project supervisor Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

ESTABLISHMENT / ADDRESS No.

NAME OF FOREIGN NATIONAL , POSITION AND BRIEF DESCRIPTION

SUN, WENJIE Mandarin Speaking Project Supervisor 47.

Brief Job Description: Act as project supervisor on capital construction and renovation projects

TIAN, GUODONG Mandarin Speaking Project Supervisor 48.

Brief Job Description: Act as communication liaison between low-level employees and senior management

YANG, XIAORONG Mandarin Speaking Project Supervisor 49.

Brief Job Description: Act as project supervisor on capital construction and renovation projects

YANG, YUHUAI Mandarin Speaking Project Supervisor 50.

Brief Job Description: Act as project supervisor on capital construction and renovation projects

ZHONG, JIANAN Mandarin Speaking Project Supervisor 51.

ESTABLISHMENT / ADDRESS

Brief Job Description: Act as project supervisor on capital construction and renovation projects

QUALIFICATION AND SALARY RANGE Basic Qualification: College graduate, outstanding leadership skills, fluent in Mandarin and English preferably with 5 years of experience as project supervisor Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: College graduate, outstanding leadership skills, fluent in Mandarin and English preferably with 5 years of experience as project supervisor

Basic Qualification: College graduate, outstanding leadership skills, fluent in Mandarin and English preferably with 5 years of experience as project supervisor

52.

Brief Job Description: To ensure all receipts have been created by the system.

Apply payments to client accounts or GL accounts after research.

Salary Range: Php 60,000 - Php 89,999 Basic Qualification: College graduate, outstanding leadership skills, fluent in Mandarin and English preferably with 5 years of experience as project supervisor

53.

Brief Job Description: To provide Chinese customer service

Basic Qualification: Spanish speaking (business level); BSBA degree in accounting, finance and Business Administration; At least 1 year experience in accounting; Experience working with an ERP system.

54.

Brief Job Description: Customer Service

62.

63.

64.

65.

66.

67.

68.

69.

70.

Basic Qualification: Knowledgeable in managing incoming calls Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Basic Qualification: College graduate/ Level and fluent in Mandarin/Basic english Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

71.

72.

FUJIAN ELECTRIC POWER ENGINEERING COMPANY 5 West Lawin Phil-am 1 Quezon City HUANG, JIARUN Electro Mechanical Supervisor 55.

Brief Job Description: Directs workers engaged in repairing and maintaining parts of equipment and machineries.

SHEN, ZHOU Electro Mechanical Supervisor

56.

Brief Job Description: Directs workers engaged in repairing and maintaining parts of equipment and machines.

Basic Qualification: Advance knowledge of hardware and software solutions and network maintenance.

73.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Advance knowledge of hardware and software solutions and network maintenance.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

74.

57.

Brief Job Description: Provide technical leadership across multiple business groups of developing prospects, establishing proposal strategy, undertaking proposal reviews, staff interviews etc. And support to site construction management team, contract implementation

Basic Qualification: At least 15 years of relevant experience-proven technical leadership and trusted advisor status within the industry-contract and site construction management specialist (or equivalent) Salary Range: Php 500,000 and above

KPLS GLOBAL PHILIPPINES INC. Block 1lot 2 Marion Road 1 Marian Subdivision San Martin De Porres Parañaque City

58.

SEO, MINGOO Purchasing Manager Brief Job Description: Developing leading and executing purchasing strategies.

Basic Qualification: With at least 5 years working experience in trading industry; Must be fluent in English and Koren/Japanese/ Chinese language

59.

Brief Job Description: Plan lead direct develop and coordinate the policies activities and staff of the human resources (HR Department) ensuring legal compliances and implementation of the organizations mission and talent strategy

75.

60.

Brief Job Description: Provide leadership and management for regional sales territory and sales development activities, in alignment with the strategic company directions responsible for retaining current customers as well as developing and attracting new customers. Responsible for learning and selling current products keeping abreast of new technologies and recommending, sharing changes and trends seem in the field and meeting sales goals in targeted markets.

Salary Range: Php 500,000 and above

Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquiries CHEN, QINGSHOU Chinese Customer Service Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquiries GUO, HAO Chinese Customer Service Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquiries HUANG, RONGCHENG Chinese Customer Service Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquiries LIN, JIAJIAN Chinese Customer Service Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquiries SUN, BANHONG Chinese Customer Service Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquiries WANG, XIAOWEI Chinese Customer Service Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquiries YU, WEI Chinese Customer Service Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquiries HUANG, YANJIE Customer Service Representative Brief Job Description: Customer Service HUO, JIANGCHAO Customer Service Representative Brief Job Description: Customer Service LIU, JUN Customer Service Representative Brief Job Description: Customer Service NGUYEN THI HONG LUU Customer Service Representative Brief Job Description: Customer Service XU, XIAOLONG Customer Service Representative Brief Job Description: Customer Service

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

IRVAN KOSINI Bahasa Language Customer Service Representative 81.

82.

Basic Qualification: Able to speak, read, and write Chinese language Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Able to speak, Read, and Write chinese language Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Able to speak, Read, and Write chinese language

83.

Brief Job Description: Planning and overseeing the operations and its new marketing initiatives.

MATUS, ROLAND Treasurer And General Manager 76.

Brief Job Description: Managing the business development and day to day affairs of the company

84.

77.

Brief Job Description: Delivery management, SLA and Stakeholder Management, Profitability of Telcom account

Basic Qualification: College Graduate/Level and Fluent in Mandarin/Basic English

KIM, HYUNWOO East Asia Regional Developer 85.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

78.

Basic Qualification: Bachelor’s degree in business administration sales and marketing management or a similar qualification 5 years of field sales experience ability to make decisions and evaluations to determine the needs of the customers excellent oral and written communication skills in both technical and business terms fluent in Hebrew and English Salary Range: Php 60,000 - Php 89,999

LEE, HYEUN MUK Research And Development Dept. Manager Brief Job Description: Lead and manage research and development department

86.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

87.

Basic Qualification: Experience in Sales, Marketing or related field.

88.

Salary Range: Php 150,000 - Php 499,999

89.

Basic Qualification: graduate of 4 year course w/ 10 years working experience, fluent in Korean and English Salary Range: Php 90,000 - Php 149,999

79.

Brief Job Description: Assist/Help customers, give customers information about the product and services

DONG, XIAOWEI Chinese Speaking Customer Service Representative 80.

Brief Job Description: Assist/Help customers, give customers information about the product and services

Basic Qualification: Proficiency in handling customers questions about services or products/ excellent Mandarin communication skills

Brief Job Description: Professionally handle incoming requests from customers and ensure that issues are resolved both promptly and thoroughly SUSANTO Bahasa Language Customer Service Representative

90.

Brief Job Description: Professionally handle incoming requests from customers and ensure that issues are resolved both promptly and thoroughly WENDY Bahasa Language Customer Service Representative

91.

Basic Qualification: Proficient in writing, reading and speaking in both English and Bahasa / Thai / Chinese / Vietnamese Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Proficient in writing, reading and speaking in both English and Bahasa / Thai / Chinese / Vietnamese Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Basic Qualification: 15 years experience. Worked as executive in multinational company experienced overseas Salary Range: Php 150,000 - Php 499,999

Basic Qualification: Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience, ability to speak and write in English and Korean and experience leading team and managing people.

Salary Range: Php 150,000 - Php 499,999

Brief Job Description: Professionally handle incoming requests from customers and ensure that issues are resolved both promptly and thoroughly

Basic Qualification: Proficient in writing, reading and speaking in both English and Korean/ Bahasa/ Chinese Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Proficient in writing, reading and speaking in both English and Korean/ Bahasa/ Chinese Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Proficient in writing, reading and speaking in both English and Korean/ Bahasa/ Chinese Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Proficient in writing, reading and speaking in both English and Korean/ Bahasa/ Chinese Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Proficient in writing, reading and speaking in both English and Korean/ Bahasa/ Chinese Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Proficient in writing, reading and speaking in both English and Korean/ Bahasa/ Chinese Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

ZX-PRO TECHNOLOGY CORPORATION 16/f Robinsons Cybergate 3 Pioneer Brgy. Barangka Ilaya Mandaluyong City BUI THI HUYEN Chinese Speaking Customer Service Representative 92.

Basic Qualification: Accountancy graduate, Agile Project Management Certified, 10+ years in Telecommunications Salary Range: Php 150,000 - Php 499,999

Brief Job Description: Professionally handle incoming requests from customers and ensure that issues are resolved both promptly and thoroughly SANTA FRANSISKA Bahasa Language Customer Service Representative

Salary Range: Php 60,000 - Php 89,999

Basic Qualification: Extensive experience as General Manager

Brief Job Description: Professionally handle incoming requests from customers and ensure that issues are resolved both promptly and thoroughly MICHELLA THERISKA Bahasa Language Customer Service Representative

Basic Qualification: College Graduate/Level and Fluent in Mandarin/Basic English Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Brief Job Description: Professionally handle incoming requests from customers and ensure that issues are resolved both promptly and thoroughly JENNYCA AGUNG Bahasa Language Customer Service Representative

Basic Qualification: College Graduate/Level and Fluent in Mandarin/Basic English

TOPAZBLITZ INC. Unit No. Unit 2c, Flr. No. 4/f, One E-com Center Building Bldg. Ocean Drive St., Mall Of Asia Complex Subd. Zone 10, Barangay 076, District 1 Pasay City

CHEN, MIANYE Chinese Speaking Customer Service Representative

Brief Job Description: As a team lead for app developer sales, you will lead and coach business development teams that use consultative sales skills to understand our advertisers’ needs and deliver measurable solutions that grow their businesses.

ALFONS Bahasa Language Customer Service Representative

Basic Qualification: College Graduate/Level and Fluent in Mandarin/Basic English Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

ZIMI TECH, INC. 29th/f Burgundy Corporate Tower Sen. Gil Puyat Ave. Pio Del Pilar Makati City

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: College Graduate/Level and Fluent in Mandarin/Basic English

Basic Qualification: Proficient in writing, reading and speaking in both English and Bahasa / Thai / Chinese / Vietnamese / Malay

WEB4U INC. 2nd-5th Flr. One Of T Bldg. Ilang-ilang St. Almanza Dos Las Piñas City

Brief Job Description: Assist/Help customers, Give customers information about the products and services

JEN, PO-JUI Chinese Speaking Customer Service Representative 93.

THE CLEAN O2 ECO-FRIENDLY CORPORATION Unit 17c Kensington Place 1st Avenue Corner 29th Street Crescent Park West, Bonifacio Global City Fort Bonifacio Taguig City Basic Qualification: Bachelor’s degree in human resources, business administration or related field require master’s degree preferred at least five years of human resources management experience required SHRM-CP or SHRMSCP highly preferred fluent in Hebrew and English

Brief Job Description: Reports to UPPC Board. Responsible for establishing the company’s goals & strategies & presiding over the entire workforce. Responsible for overall accountability to shareholders.

Basic Qualification: Able to speak, Read, and Write chinese language

TECH MAHINDRA LIMITED 5 Eastwood Cyberpark City Bagumbayan 3 Quezon City MISTRY, MITESHKUMAR MOHANLAL Associate Operations Head

Brief Job Description: Report on a daily operation of call center performing customer - oriented telephone activities and various background operation duties.

KAEWUBOL, JIRASAK President & CEO

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

QUALIFICATION AND SALARY RANGE

UNITED PULP AND PAPER CO., INC. 9th Flr. Fort Legend Tower 3rd Ave. 31 St. Fort Bonifacio Taguig City

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Able to speak, read, and write Chinese language

Brief Job Description: Report on a daily operation of call center performing customer - oriented telephone activities and various background operations duties.

HOANG HA NGOC HUYEN Vietnamese Language Customer Service Representative

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Brief Job Description: Report on a daily operation of call center performing customer - oriented telephone activities and various background operations duties.

INSAI, NONRAPUNCH Thai Language Customer Service Representative

Basic Qualification: Able to speak, Read, and Write chinese language

Basic Qualification: Able to speak, Read, and Write chinese language

NAME OF FOREIGN NATIONAL , POSITION AND BRIEF DESCRIPTION

TRI7 SOLUTIONS, INC. Unit 9-a 9/f Marvin Plaza Bldg. 2153 Don Chino Roces Ave. Pio Del Pilar Makati City

Basic Qualification: Able to speak, Read, and Write chinese language

ONOCOM PHILIPPINES INC. Unit 7c 7/f Trafalgar Plaza 105 H.v Dela Costa St. Bel-air Makati City

Salary Range: Php 90,000 - Php 149,999

MASTER, IDAN Hebrew Technical Sales Manager

CHEN, PEIGUI Chinese Customer Service

GERSHON, LIDOR Business Development Manager

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

M AND J SOLUTIONS PROVIDER INC. Ub 111 Paseo De Roxas Bldg. Paseo De Roxas San Lorenzo Makati City

AVISAR, ALMOG Director Of Human Resources

Brief Job Description: Lead and direct the Transportation & industrial Machinery, Finance Business Department

Basic Qualification: Confidential employee appointed by the head office in Japan

No.

MYPARASOLUTIONS INC. 8/f Cityland Shaw Tower Shaw Blvd. Cor. St. Francis Brgy. Wack-wack Mandaluyong City

GHD PTY. LTD. (BRANCH OFFICE) 11/f Alphaland Southgate Tower 2258 Don Chino Roces Ext. Cor. Edsa Magallanes Makati City GILBERT, MARK Technical Director

QUALIFICATION AND SALARY RANGE

MOA CLOUDZONE CORP. 4th-11th Flr. Nexgen Tower C4 Rd. Edsa Ext. Brgy. 076 Pasay City

Salary Range: Php 60,000 - Php 89,999

FLYING DRAGON NETWORK PHILIPPINES INC. 4th-11th Floor Aseana 3 Building Aseana Avenue Corner Diosdado Macapagal Tambo Parañaque City TO DONG THUC Customer Service Representative

61.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

FIRST GREAT COMPUTER TECHNOLOGIES INC. Lot 5 Sta. Agueda Cor. Queensway Pagcor Drive Sto. Niño Parañaque City WANG, KANG Mandarin Customer Service

KANAYA, MITSUSHIGE Vice President

Salary Range: Php 60,000 - Php 89,999 Basic Qualification: College graduate, outstanding leadership skills, fluent in Mandarin and English preferably with 5 years of experience as project supervisor

NAME OF FOREIGN NATIONAL , POSITION AND BRIEF DESCRIPTION

A7

ESTABLISHMENT / ADDRESS

MARUBENI PHILIPPINES CORPORATION L.v. Locsin Building Ayala/makati Ave. San Lorenzo Makati City

Salary Range: Php 60,000 - Php 89,999

EMERSON ELECTRIC (ASIA) LIMITED 9f To 16f Sm Cyberwest E. De Los Santos Ave. Cor. West Ave. Bungad 1 Quezon City ALBERICH VIEDMA, MARC Specialist II Accounts Receivable (Spanish Speaking)

No.

Tuesday, August 10, 2021

Brief Job Description: Assist/Help customers, Give customers information about the products and services

NGOH LAI HUAT Chinese Speaking Customer Service Representative 94.

Brief Job Description: Assist/Help customers, Give customers information about the products and services

Basic Qualification: With atleast 6 months customer service experience/ Good in oral communication and written Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: With atleast 6 months customer service experience/ Good in oral communication and written Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: With atleast 6 months customer service experience/ Good in oral communication and written Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

*Date Generated: Aug 9, 2021 Any person in the Philippines who is competent, able and willing to perform the services for which the foreign national is desired may file an objection at DOLE-NCR Regional Office located at DOLE-NCR Building, 967 Maligaya St., Malate Manila, within 30 days after this publication.

Please inform DOLE-NCR if you have any information on criminal offense committed by the foreign nationals.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Proficiency in handling customers questions about services or products/ excellent Mandarin communication skills Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

ATTY. SARAH BUENA S. MIRASOL REGIONAL DIRECTOR

A8 Tuesday, August 10, 2021

BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

www.businessmirror.com.ph

BusinessMirror

Tuesday, August 10, 2021

A9

A10 Tuesday, August 10, 2021

BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

www.businessmirror.com.ph

BusinessMirror

Tuesday, August 10, 2021

A11

A4 A12

News BusinessMirror

Tuesday, August 10, 2021

www.businessmirror.com.ph

DBM to allot P2.7B for cash aid beneficiaries in Laguna T

By Samuel P. Medenilla

@sam_medenilla

HE government is eyeing to allocate P2.7 billion to provide cash aid to people affected by the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) in Laguna.

At a virtual news briefing on Monday, Presidential spokesman Harry Roque disclosed the proposed amount of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) is based on the submitted list of beneficiaries filed by the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG).

The proposal will be sent to the Office of the President (OP) for approval.

The budget for the cash aid for ECQaffected individuals in Bataan is still being finalized by the DBM, according to Roque.

Both Laguna and Bataan were placed under ECQ during the weekend amid rising Covid-19 cases in the said provinces.

The lockdown for Laguna will be from August 6 until August 15, 2021, while for Bataan it will be from August 8 until August 22, 2021.

Roque said each qualified beneficiary from

the two provinces and other areas under ECQ will get P1,000. Each household in the said areas could only avail of a maximum of four beneficiaries or a maximum of P4,000 financial assistance.

Aside for Laguna and Bataan, other areas that are currently under ECQ where similar financial assistance will be distributed are the National Capital Region (NCR), Iloilo City, and Cagayan de Oro. In NCR, Roque said the concerned LGUs are expected to start the distribution of the financial assistance by Wednesday.

DILG spokesman Jonathan Malaya said LGUs will be initially given 15 days to distribute the cash aid from the day they get the funds for their respective distribution programs.

“If they are unable to complete it within 15 days, they could request for an extension,” Malaya said.

He said DILG and other government agencies issued a Joint Memorandum Circular containing the guidelines to ensure the distribution will be prompt and not become a super spreader event for Covid-19.

Oil companies cut fuel pump prices

By Lenie Lectura

@llectura

A

FTER weeks of oil price increases, oil firms announced Monday that they will reduce fuel pump prices this week.

Gasoline prices will go down by P0.65 per liter, diesel by P0.70 per liter and kerosene by P0.75 per liter.

The new price adjustment takes effect at 6 a.m. of Tuesday, August 10 as announced separately by Seaoil, PTT, Pilipinas Shell, Phoenix, Petron, Total.

Other oil firms are expected to announce a similar price adjustment.

Last week, oil firms raised gasoline prices

by P1.05 per liter, diesel by P0.75-P0.80 per liter and P0.75 per liter for kerosene.

These resulted to the year-to-date adjustments to stand at a total net increase of P13.90/liter for gasoline, P11.10/liter for diesel and P9.45/liter for kerosene.

Oil firms adjust their prices every week to reflect movements in the world oil market.

The Department of Energy (DOE) cited high demand, insufficient increase in supply and continuing US sanctions as among the reasons for high world oil prices.

It said the continued recovery in world demand has resulted to global supply-demand

balance crude oil deficits of 370,000 and 140,000 barrels per day (b/d), respectively, in the first and second quarters of 2021.

Based on reports, the DOE said this market sentiment will continue to develop, with projected increasing demand versus ongoing supply restrictions from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and United States’s sanctions against Iran and Venezuela, which are all seen to be the underpinning factors pointing to sustained price increases for the rest of the year.

Platts Analytics’ projections for the third quarter of the year shows an increasing demand. The increase in demand is expected to be around 5.98 million b/d of crude oil higher than the second quarter.

Also, the projected increase of around 5.98 million b/d for the third quarter will not be fully covered by the projected increase in supply.

The projection shows that the non-OPEC countries will increase their supply only by around 830,000 b/d, while OPEC countries have agreed only to increase their production by around 800,000 b/d for the third quarter. This imbalance for the third quarter is expected to result to a projected insufficiency of crude oil global supply by around 4.35 million b/d.

DILG official says ‘all hands on deck’ to boost govt’s contact-tracing ratio

By Claudeth Mocon-Ciriaco @claudethmc3

A

N official of the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) admitted on Monday they are expecting a low contact-tracing ratio in face of the more transmissible Covid-19 Delta variant in the country.

DILG Undersecretary and spokesman Jonathan Malaya recalled that this also happened in April when a surge in cases was also registered. Ideally, the contact-tracing ratio should be between 1:30 and 1:37.

“While cases are rising, we need to contact trace more persons. So, I expect that the contact-tracing ratio would be low because of the surge,” Malaya said in Filipino during an online media forum of the Department of Health (DOH).

Nonetheless, Malaya said, contact tracers should be able to do their job.

“They have to do their work that is why all hands should be on deck,” Malaya stressed, even as he appealed for the cooperation of everyone by staying at home and by maintaining the practice of minimum public health standards.

Malaya, however, assured that there are “enough” contact tracers all over the country.

The DILG official said that there are a total of 255,854 contact tracers nationwide, “sufficient [enough] to meet our country’s needs.”

This figure, he said, is divided into 29,611 contact tracing teams across the country.

“What we need to ensure right now is that they are actually performing that is why I have been calling on our local government units [LGUs], through our field offices that

they are actually doing active case finding,” Malaya stressed, adding that at any given time, there could be a close contact going elsewhere, like a vaccination site and could already be spreading the virus.

Recently, he said, President Duterte also approved the rehiring of 15,000 until the end of the year to boost contact tracing efforts.

Malaya also noted that prior to the increase in cases being currently experienced, contact-tracing ratio has improved “considerably because 94 percent of probable cases were traced daily and 91 percent were isolated within 24 hours.”

While Malaya expressed appreciation on the work of LGUs in ramping up the vaccination program during the current two-week lockdown, “we cannot, however, do this at the expense of active case finding.”

He also stressed that home quarantine is not allowed due to the threat of Delta variant.

Testing

TERRY RIDON, Infrawatch PH convener, meanwhile, called on Duterte to revamp the leadership of the National Task Force on Covid-19 for their supposed “failure” to expand the country’s testing capability.

“Mr. President, there is no going around this. Your men failed to expand testing in the last five months. We have reached this point today because government has failed its March commitment to raise our daily testing capacity to 90,000 tests per day. With the new ECQ [enhanced community quarantine], our coffers will be depleted further. This is money that could have been better spent for vaccine procurement,” said Ridon who is also Duterte’s former urban poor chief.

News BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

SOTTO: LENI CAMP FIRST REACHED OUT TO US

By Butch Fernandez @butchfBM

I

N an apparent bid to further set the record straight on Senator Panfilo Lacson’s proposal that Vice President Leni Robredo rejected—regarding fielding a unified slate in the 2022 elections—Senate President Vicente Sotto III on Monday released on Twitter a screenshot of a Viber message sent to him through emissary on July 14, 2021.

T he message presumably from the Robredo camp, sent at 8:12AM, told the unnamed link (Sotto covered the person’s name for protection) ran like this: “I am texting as well to relay a message from VP Lenie. She would like to reach out to SP Sotto and Sen Lacson and consult them regarding the possibility of uniting behind one candidate/one ticket come 2022. She also says that the candidate need not be her as the victory and the unity of ticket for her is paramount. May I ask your help to relay this message to SP (Sotto)? I also relayed this message to Jay, Sen. Ping Lacson’s COS (chief-of-staff) . Will wait for your advise. Maraming salamat!

Also, she is willing to see SP Sotto and Sen Ping at a place of their convenience. For your info.”

Asked by reporters for his reaction to this, Senate President Sotto did not hide his disappointment at the “quick rejection” by the Robredo camp of Lacson’s offer, which, he said, was made in good faith and should at least have been studied further.

Sotto implied that some people around the VP may have had their own agenda right from the start, which did not align with the apparently very open tone of the message he first got on July 14 when Robredo first reached out to him through emissary.

Sotto and Lacson were taken aback at the weekend when Robredo revealed she had rejected Lacson’s unification offer. The latter entailed having all of the non-administration candidates proceeding to file their certificates of candidacy (COC) in October, and then, as their strength and numbers begin to show who is the candidate with the most

realistic chance of defeating the Duterte-backed candidate, for them to withdraw in favor of that person.

On Sunday, Lacson shrugged off Robredo’s decision to thumb down his “sure unification formula” to firm up a united front against whoever will finally be named as standard bearer of the outgoing Duterte administration.

“It was a selfless move on my part to offer the unification formula to Vice President Leni Robredo since she was after a united opposition front in 2022,” Lacson said, adding: “After all, it was her objective for liaising with different forces or candidates including Mayor Isko Moreno, Sen. Manny Pacquiao, Sen. Richard Gordon, among others.”

In a statement, Lacson assured: “It goes without saying, I respect her decision to resist my suggestion and whatever reasons she has for declining.”

The senator admitted that while “there could be some complications attendant to my suggestion, nevertheless, it was a sincere and selfless offer in support of her equally sincere efforts to have one common candidate against whoever will be the administration’s bet.”

At the same time, Lacson added that “ included in my suggestion was to have Senate President Vicente Sotto III as our common VP candidate, if only to emphasize that I have no intention of abandoning my partner,” noting that, “in fact, it was in his presence that I made the offer.”

Lacson likew ise reca l led that during their meeting, “I could not think of another sure unification formula,” as he reminded that “not filing in October in favor of one common candidate as Vice President Leni (Robredo) would want it will not happen, considering that the campaign won’t even start until February or four months later.”

The senator stressed: “That is who I am. Challenge me and I will deal with it with boldness, honesty, sincerity and sensibility. I take serious matters with utmost seriousness. Concepts are easy to deal with. How to concretize and implement is the hardest part.”

Firms that bar unvaxxed labor must pay wages

By Samuel P. Medenilla

V

@sam_medenilla

ICTIMS of a “no vaccine, no work” scheme will still get paid even without reporting for work, according to the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE).

In an online press briefing last Monday, Labor and Employment Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III said this will be their last resort in case a company insists on illegally banning their employees, who have yet to get their Covid-19 vaccine, to return to work.

“We will tell them okay, you don’t want them to report for work; as far as DOLE is concerned, they are present and they should be paid. That will be our disciplinary action against them,” Bello said.

Initially, he said they will ask the erring employers through a compliance order, to allow their unvaccinated employees to resume their office duties.

Bello issued the statement after militant labor group, Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) said some workers still suffer the “no vaccine, no work” policy despite DOLE’s Labor Advisory (LA) No. 03, series of 2021.

LA 3 states “any employee who refuses or fails to be vaccinated shall not be discriminated against in terms of tenure, promotion, training, pay, and other benefits, among other benefits, among others, or terminated from employment.”

Bello explained that forcing workers to get vaccinated is not allowed since there is no legal basis for it.

He also noted the practice is currently “illogical” since only a small portion of the country’s population are fully vaccinated against Covid-19.

As of Sunday, only 11 million of the country’s over 100 million population have been fully vaccinated.

To protect workers against the illegal workplace policy, KMU urged DOLE to intensify its workplace inspections.

Bello said he welcomes the call of KMU and advised victims of a “no vaccine, no work” scheme to report it to their 1348 and 1349 hotline so DOLE could inspect their respective employers.

“Just let us know, and we will immediately conduct inspection and if their complaint is found to be true, then we can take administrative sanction against the employer,” Bello said.

Tuesday, August 10, 2021 A13

Farm output shrinks 2.5% on livestock, poultry woes

D

By Jasper Emmanuel Y. Arcalas

@jearcalas

ESPITE a bountiful crop harvest, the country’s farm output in the first half contracted by 2.5 percent as the gap in the livestock and poultry production widened year-on-year, latest government data released Monday showed.

Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) data showed that the value of the agricultural output from January to June declined to the steepest in five years, or since the 3.6-percent contraction in the first half of 2016.

The value of agricultural production during the six-month period was estimated at P856.644 billion (constant 2018 prices), P21.581 billion lower than last year’s P878.225 billion, based on PSA data.

In the second quarter alone, agricultural production fell by 1.5 percent—a five-year low—due to decline in livestock and fisheries production, according to the PSA. Second-quarter agriculture output was valued at P435.607 billion, P6.762 billion lower than the P442.369 billion recorded in the April-to-June period last year, PSA data showed.

Record-high crop value

PSA data showed that crop output, which accounted for 57 percent of total farm output in the first half, grew by 3.2 percent to a record-high P492.395

billion from P477.238 billion last year.

The value of rice production during the six-month period rose by nearly 5 percent to P175.916 billion from P167.727 billion while first half corn output was worth P54.461 billion, 6 percent higher than last year’s P50.388 billion.

PSA data also showed that the value of banana output in the first half rebounded to P73.38 billion from P72.547 billion while value of mango production increased slightly to P24.761 billion from P24.579 billion.

Sugarcane production in the first half was valued at P28.482 billion, 8.8 percent higher than the P26.178 billion recorded in the same period of last year, based on PSA data.

Other subsectors down

PSA data showed that the value of livestock, poultry and fisheries productions all declined in the first half, led by 21.4-percent contraction in the output of the livestock sector.

Livestock output, at constant 2018 prices, was estimated at P121.530 billion, P33.037 billion

lower than last year’s P154.567 billion as hog output, which accounted for 80 percent of the sector, contracted at a double-digit rate.

The value of hog output during the reference period declined by 26 percent to a 19-year-low of P98.438 billion, a result of the devastation caused by the African swine fever on hog farms nationwide.

Total hog output in the first half shrank by more than a quarter to 827,860 metric tons (MT), the lowest January-to-June period in the past 18 years, based on PSA data.

Despite a 2.5-percent increment in the second quarter, the value of total poultry output in the first half declined by 2.6 percent to P115.04 billion from P118.109 billion.

Chicken production alone was estimated at P78.985 billion, 6.4 percent lower than the P84.472 billion recorded in the first half of last year.

In terms of volume, chicken output declined by 57,840 MT to 835,880 MT—a five-year low—from 893,720 MT last year, according to the PSA. PSA showed that the value of fisheries output in the first half fell slightly to P127.679 billion from P128.311 billion.

Industry reaction

PHILIPPINE Chamber of Agriculture and Food Inc. President Danilo V. Fausto said the government may miss its 2 percent full-year agri-

culture growth this year given the first half performance of the sector.

Fausto explained that the ASF remains a pressing problem to address as hog farms, especially commercial raisers, remain hesitant to repopulate amid threat of the fatal hog disease.

Fausto said the current Department of Agriculture (DA) leadership must already look beyond its current tenureship to ensure the recovery of the ailing subsectors of agriculture, particularly hogs.

“Ten months from now there will be a new President and two months from now politicians will start filing for their candidacy. The DA must leave the agriculture sector with at least a legacy in the form of roadmaps to provide the private sector a direction moving forward,” he told the BusinessMirror.

Elias Jose Inciong, United Broiler Raisers Association president, said the contraction in the poultry production was expected, but pointed out that he was “surprised” that the decline in output was just 2.6 percent given the drastic drop in poultry demand.

“I do not know if it is a sign of resiliency or there are problems with the data system,” he told the BusinessMirror. “The industry is demand-driven by nature and demand has declined by so much in the past months. Given the extent of the damage to the demand, [the rate of contraction in production] is rather surprising,” he added.

WELCOME HOME. Megaworld chief strategy officer, Kevin L. Tan (right), formally turns over the P14-million, fully furnished two-bedroom residential condominium unit gifted to Filipino Olympic gold medalist Hidilyn Diaz.

The unit, located at One Eastwood Avenue in Eastwood City, is a gift from tycoon Dr. Andrew L. Tan and property giant Megaworld. Among the centerpieces inside the unit is a commissioned charcoal painting done by 21-yearold John Ken Gomez showing Diaz’s historic Olympic moment.

Eastern Visayas rugged charm in focus in trade fair

By Ma. Stella F. Arnaldo

@akosistellaBM Special to the BusinessMirror

M

ORE than 1,500 visitors registered for the first-ever hybrid Regional Trade Fair for Eastern Visayas, which closed on Sunday.

The Tourism Promotions Board (TPB), which staged the four-day event in Tacloban, Leyte, said in a news statement some P19 million in business leads were generated and will be pursued by participants. Some participants were able to close sales worth P53,000.

With the theme Infinite Escapes: Eastern Visayas, the event featured a tourism webinar, a one-day businessto-business (B2B) session, and live selling from business to consumer (B2C). Onsite activities were held at the Summit Hotel in Tacloban.

In her keynote address at the opening ceremony on August 5, Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo Puyat said, “Throughout the one-

and-a-half year of our pandemic journey, we shifted our efforts to adapt to the emerging challenges and the developments that go with them within and around the tourism industry. This event will help with the continued promotion of our destinations in the various regions while adapting digitization as one of the most effective ways to bridge us to the new normal.”

The regional trade fair is a program of TPB that aims to promote and sell domestic tour packages by showcasing the best regional products and services in partnership with regional offices of the Department of Tourism (DOT), local government units, and the private sector. The TPB is the marketing arm of the DOT. Leyte is currently under modified general community quarantine (MGCQ), but Romulo Puyat said, health and safety protocols were strictly followed for the event’s onsite participants.

Eastern Visayas is made up of the provinces of Biliran, Eastern Samar,

Leyte, Northern Samar, Samar, and Southern Leyte. The region is relatively under the radar of most tourists, and is mainly popular among World War II veterans commemorating the landing of Gen. Douglas MacArthur in the Leyte Gulf on Oct. 20, 1944, which kicked off the campaign to thwart the Japanese military forces from the Philippines.

The historic event is depicted in the MacArthur Leyte Landing Memorial National Park in Palo, Leyte.

In a previous interview with the BusinessMirror, Romulo Puyat said the restoration of the Balangiga Bells to the belfry of the Saint Lawrence the Martyr Church in Balangiga town, Eastern Samar in December 2018, would spark renewed interest in Eastern Visayas.

Prior to the pandemic, Eastern Visayas received 1.6 million in overnight domestic travelers and some 52,000 foreign guests in 2019. The region is slowly becoming known for its rugged landscapes, surfing-friendly coastline, caves, and waterfalls.

“While the end of the pandemic remains uncertain, your shared optimism inspires us to face our day-today challenges,” said Romulo Puyat at the Tacloban event. “The DOT shall continue to ensure safe travel for everyone. With your continued support, we will pave the way for our tourism to bounce back for the sake of those who depend on it for their livelihood, for those who need to travel for their sanity, and for the tourism communities to gradually recover from the adverse impact of this pandemic,” she underscored.

The next regional trade fair is slated in November at the Zamboanga Peninsula, with DOT Region 9 as host.

The TPB is preparing for four more hybrid travel trade fair events for the rest of the year such as the Philippine Travel Exchange in September, the Philippine MICE Convention in October, the Tourism and Technology Forum, and the World Travel and Tourism Council Global Summit in December.

A14 Tuesday, August 10, 2021 • Editor: Angel R. Calso

Opinion BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

editorial

What it takes to save seven billion people

A

S the Covid-19 pandemic continues to disrupt life around the world, governments are doing everything they can to stem the spread of the virus. They have tried lockdowns, travel bans, school closures, social distancing, and other measures. Unfortunately, as countries focused exclusively on their own pandemic response, the virus managed to slip through socalled “gold standard defenses” and conquered the world.

Global cases have exceeded 203 million, and more than 4 million people have died from Covid infection.

Why was there no unified global response to the Covid-19 pandemic?

In the event of a health crisis, the World Health Organization (WHO) should be on top of the situation. After all, it codified its leadership status among 196 member nations in the International Health Regulations (IHR) adopted in 2005. This binding instrument of international law entered into force on June 15, 2007.

Member-countries agreed to designate IHR agencies to share information on disease outbreaks with the WHO and implement its recommendations. Unfortunately, this did not happen in January 2020 when WHO declared a public health emergency of international concern.

Initially, most countries ignored WHO’s social distancing, testing, and contact tracing recommendations. The US, in particular, acted late or not at all on some recommendations. And most countries had no blueprint for coping with the coronavirus.

Is there hope for a genuinely global and coordinated response to the pandemic? “On the global stage, I think there is no alternative to WHO being at the center of it,” says Jennifer Nuzzo, an Environmental Health and Engineering associate professor and a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “The world has to give the WHO and other international organizations the resources and mandate they need to spot potential threats, collect and share data, and to encourage individual countries to develop specific therapeutics and other health infrastructure that would be needed to stay ahead of disease outbreaks before they become pandemic.”

“WHO’s lack of enforcement powers means the political support of the world’s influential nations is critical to any global Covid-19 response,” said Ilona Kickbusch, PhD, a Geneva-based global health policy expert.

However, WHO’s ability to persuade the world to take a unified approach was undermined early in the pandemic by the US, the agency’s largest financial backer. On May 29, 2020, President Donald Trump announced that the US would sever its relationship with WHO. At the World Health Assembly in May 2021, 194 members of the World Health Organization adopted the decision to discuss a new international treaty on pandemics at the UN agency’s special session in November 2021. The president of the European Council and the director general of WHO also supported the move. We hope that major players such as the US, China and Russia will throw their weight behind the WHA proposal to formulate a binding pandemic treaty.

We have seen how the world can work as one to fight a threat against the planet and humankind. In 1985, scientists discovered a giant hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica. The discovery prompted the international community to come together to create a binding international treaty that would lead to the healing of the ozone layer. That agreement is known as the Montreal Protocol. It is arguably the most successful international treaty to date. If world leaders have done it before, we have no doubt they can do it again for the well-being of more than 7 billion people on Earth.

Since 2005

BusinessMirror A broader look at today’s business ✝ Ambassador Antonio L. Cabangon Chua Founder Publisher Editor in Chief Associate Editor News Editor Senior Editors

Online Editor Creative Director Chief Photographer Chairman of the Board President Advertising Sales Manager Group Circulation Manager

T. Anthony C. Cabangon Lourdes M. Fernandez Jennifer A. Ng Vittorio V. Vitug Lorenzo M. Lomibao Jr., Gerard S. Ramos Lyn B. Resurreccion, Dennis D. Estopace Angel R. Calso

Manny B. Villar

THE Entrepreneur

T

he gross domestic product figures for the second quarter could be out as early as today. The favorable GDP figures are a reminder of the economy’s inherent strength in the face of adversity and its potential to create additional jobs if we forego lockdowns.

I will not be surprised at all if the GDP figures turn out to be more than positive. The low base effect coming from a deep contraction in the second quarter of last year, of course, contributed to the sharp rebound. But several indicators that confirmed the recovery also heralded the strong showing of the economy in the second quarter.

Many corporate earnings of major companies, including big banks and conglomerates, were convincing, while other barometers point to an economy that is well on its way to a full comeback.

I was impressed, in particular, with our first-half trade figures officially released last week. Merchandise exports rose 21 percent in the first six months of 2021 to $35.9 billion from $29.7 billion year-onyear, surpassing the pre-pandemic level of $34.6 billion posted in the first half of 2019. The rebound in exports shows that our major markets like China, the US, the European Union and Asia are reopening.

Publishing, Inc., with offices on the 3rd floor of Dominga Building III 2113 Chino Roces Avenue corner De La Rosa Street, Makati City, Philippines.

Tel. Nos. (Editorial) 817-9467; 813-0725. Fax line: 813-7025.

(Advertising Sales) 893-2019; 817-1351, 817-2807.

(Circulation) 893-1662; 814-0134 to 36. E-mail: news@businessmirror.com.ph.

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Printed by brown madonna Press, Inc.–Sun Valley Drive KM-15, South Superhighway, Parañaque, Metro Manila

I am not totally opposed to the government’s decision to place the entire Metro Manila and some provinces under the severest form of lockdown to curb the spread of Covid-19, especially the more virulent Delta strain. I just hope that the ECQ will end as soon as Covid-19 cases reach a plateau and start to come down.

percent from the previous month’s three-digit annual increase of 248.1 percent.

These positive data are telling us that more and more Filipinos are finding jobs in various sectors of the economy. More workers joining the labor pool will translate into higher consumer spending. With increased mobility and consumer confidence, household spending will naturally follow and bolster economic growth.

The correlation between lockdown and employment cannot be overemphasized. The government has reduced the unemployment rate to 7.7 percent in June this year from 8.7 percent in April. But the rate for August could increase again, with the implementation of the stricter enhanced community quarantine from August 6 to 20 in Metro Manila and some provinces.

The Philippines has successfully lowered the unemployment rate from 8.8 percent in February and 8.7 percent in January by going easy on transportation restrictions and the movement of our workers. The flexible quarantine rules lifted the

T is probably a good thing that we have the triumphs of Philippine Olympic athletes to occupy our attention because Covid and the lockdown are taking a serious toll on us, not only economically but also psychologically.

Duterte’s opponents called his a campaign of fear. However, the campaign followed the number one rule: Create a contrast.

Politics is a comparative game.

A winning campaign strategy should be a clear contrast and choice between the candidate and everyone else. The candidate must create a reason for voters to choose him or her.

Of course, like a never-ending telenovela, Philippine politics is always something we can turn to to take our minds off our troubles. Politicians, the press/media, and the pundits/ experts of every persuasion can put a political spin on any topic, including the weather.

One thing is obvious though in

raffle tickets.

Don’t misunderstand me. I am not saying that Philippine elections are all “Guns, Goons, and Gold” as may be in the past. But election campaigns are not far beyond having the candidate for national office dancing or singing on stage to gain votes. Part of the situation is that it is difficult to make sense of an election for 80,000

John Mangun

Eduardo A. Davad Nonilon G. Reyes D. Edgard A. Cabangon Benjamin V. Ramos Aldwin Maralit Tolosa Rolando M. Manangan

More importantly, the significantly higher exports suggest operations at the factories were at full capacity and were employing more workers despite the previous lockdowns.

Merchandise imports, on the other hand, surged 34 percent in June to $9.33 billion. The June figure brought total imports in the first six months to $53.34 billion, up nearly 29.8 percent from $41.08 billion year-on-year. Again, increasing imports mean a busier manufacturing activity ahead for our local factories and exporters.

Another key economic indicator that presages increased business activities is the latest manufacturing data. Per data from the Philippine Statistics Authority, the manufacturing sector expanded further both in value and volume in June.

The Volume of Production Index (VoPI) jumped 453 percent in June, or faster than the 263.2-percent increase in the previous month. The Value of Production Index (VaPI) for manufacturing also surged 440

How to win an election

Ruben M. Cruz Jr.

BusinessMirror is published daily by the Philippine Business Daily Mirror

MEMBER OF

Short lockdown period will preserve our economic gains

OUTSIDE THE BOX

I

the decades of elections since Edsa People Power—Philippine political campaigns are not sophisticated.

Most candidates for national office struggle for votes, like it was a barangay election. By that I mean an “election” as for “Miss Barangay” where the winner is determined by which contestant can sell the most

economy as shown by the GPD figures in the second quarter.

I am not totally opposed to the government’s decision to place the entire Metro Manila and some provinces under the severest form of lockdown to curb the spread of Covid-19, especially the more virulent Delta strain. I just hope that the enhanced community quarantine will end as soon as Covid-19 cases reach a plateau and start to come down.

The economy, per the estimate of the National Economic and Development Authority, will lose around P210 billion for the two-week implementation of the ECQ in Metro Manila, which contributes about 60 percent to the GDP. The same Neda estimates say the ECQ will increase the number of poor people by up to 177,000, and 444,000 if we count the jobs lost from shopping malls, small retail establishments, fastfood restaurants and those rendering personal services.

In the meantime, we should strengthen the capacity of our local government units in contact tracing and isolating all Covid-19 cases to stop the spread of the virus. I still believe that selective lockdowns and a ramped-up vaccination of the population are the best approach to contain the virus transmission so we can spare our working class and keep the growth momentum.

We should preserve our recent economic gains instead of squandering them through widespread lockdowns.

For comments, send e-mail to mbv_secretariat@vistaland.com.ph or visit www.mannyvillar. com.ph

candidates for 17,000 posts. But that does not excuse or explain the lack of a refined and focused campaign.

During the 1992 presidential race, a debate was held between candidates Salvador Laurel and Ramon Mitra Jr. on the ABS-CBN television program Magandang Gabi. It was described by the Manila Standard as an exchange of “barbs, insults, and witticisms.”

Issues, not so much.

The power crisis was the dominant issue and Fidel Ramos was given “special powers” and began economic reforms. But can you remember what the winner’s campaign strategy was other than being “Fidel V. Ramos”?

In 1998, Joseph Estrada won a landslide by being “Joseph Estrada”.

Gloria Macapagal Arroyo won the close 2004 election. Was she elected on her economic plans or for not being a movie star? Benigno Aquino III See “Mangun,” A15

Opinion BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Value-added tax refund under CREATE

Mayor Fred S. Lim’s love affair with the City of Manila Manny F. Dooc

TELLTALES

Atty. Rodel C. Unciano

Tax Law for Business

O

ne question that remains unanswered even with the deferral of the implementation of Revenue Regulations 9-2021 is the viability of claiming tax credit or refund of input taxes attributable to zero-rated sales under Section 112 of the Tax Code, in relation to the amendments introduced by the Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises Act (CREATE).

In relation to this, CREATE neither repealed nor amended the value-added tax refund provisions under Section 112 of the Tax Code. As it stands now, any VAT-registered person, whose sales are zero-rated or effectively zero-rated, may still apply for the issuance of a tax credit certificate or refund of creditable input tax due or paid that is attributable to such zero-rated sales.

T h e I m p l e m e nt i n g R u l e s and Regulations (IRR) of the tax incentives provisions of CREATE in fact recognized this taxpayer’s right. It provides that excess input taxes attributable to zero-rated sales by VAT-registered business enterprises may be refunded or applied for a tax credit, subject to the guidelines provided under existing regulations, specifically under RR 13-2018, as amended.

The conditions, however, on the VAT exemption and VAT zerorating of local purchases as laid down under the tax incentives provisions of the CREATE and its IRR gave birth to the issue on the viability of claiming tax credits or refunds of input VAT attributable to zero-rated sales.

As introduced by CREATE, the VAT exemption on importation and VAT zero-rating on local purchases shall only apply to goods and services that are directly and exclusively used in the registered project or activity by a registered business enterprise. Ergo, importations and local purchases that do not qualify for VAT exemption or VAT zero-rating for reasons that such importations or local purchases by the RBE are not directly and exclusively used in the registered project or activity, are subject to the 12-percent VAT. The IRR of the tax incentives provisions of CREATE defines “direct and exclusive use” as referring to raw materials, inventories, supplies, equipment, goods, services and other expenditures necessary for the registered project or activity without which the registered project or activity cannot be carried out. If the importations or local purchases of a registered enterprise do not fall under this definition of direct and exclusive use, then, said importation and local purchases shall therefore be subjected to the 12-percent VAT. The question to ask now is, whether or not the RBE may claim a tax credit or refund for the input taxes passed on to it by its suppliers for reasons that these importations or purchases are not directly and exclusively used in the enterprise’s registered project or activity. Again, following Section 112 of the Tax Code, the registered business enterprise may apply for tax credit certificate or refund of the input VAT passed on to it by its suppliers, provided that the input tax paid on such importations or purchases are attributable to the enterprise’s zero-rated sales.

The other question then is, whether an input VAT on importations and purchases that are not directly and exclusively used in the enterprise’s registered project or activity be nevertheless considered attributable to the enterprise’s zero-rated sales?

If the importations or local

I believe the term “attributable” is more inclusive than the phrase “direct and exclusive use” as defined in the IRR. As such, purchases made by RBEs, although not directly and exclusively used in the RBE’s registered project or activity, if purchased by reason of the entity’s business operations, should still be considered attributable to the entity’s zero-rated sales. As such, the enterprise should be entitled to reclaim the same through refund or tax credit. purchases are not directly and exclusively used in the enterprise’s registered project or activity, arguably, such importations or local purchases are not indispensable in the operations of the enterprise’s registered project or activity. In other words, such importations or local purchases are not indispensable in generating the RBE’s sales or revenue. Following this view, it appears that a tax credit or refund is not feasible. Apparently, there is no way by which input tax on such importations or local purchases be considered attributable to the RBE’s zero-rated sales.

It must be noted though that very often, an enterprise would need allied services or supplies from or related to legal, consultancy, marketing, accounting finance and other support activities. It may be argued that these purchases, albeit not exclusively and directly used in the enterprise’s registered project or activity, are nevertheless needed in the enterprise’s business operations.

Will the input VAT passed on by the suppliers be considered attributable to the RBE’s zero-rated sales and therefore, qualify for tax credit or refund under Section 112 of the Tax Code?

I believe the term “attributable” is more inclusive than the phrase “direct and exclusive use” as defined in the IRR. As such, purchases made by RBEs, although not directly and exclusively used in the RBE’s registered project or activity, if purchased by reason of the entity’s business operations, should still be considered attributable to the entity’s zerorated sales. As such, the enterprise should be entitled to reclaim the same through refund or tax credit.

Otherwise, the enterprise will be left without any use for the passedon/paid input taxes.

These are questions which need further clarifications from our legislators or regulators for guidance of taxpayers. Absent any clear direction on these policies will further cast doubt on the successful implementation of our enhanced VAT refund system and on the refund system in general.

The author is a partner of Du-Baladad and Associates Law Offices (BDB Law), a member-firm of WTS Global.

The article is for general information only and is not intended, nor should be construed as a substitute for tax, legal or financial advice on any specific matter. Applicability of this article to any actual or particular tax or legal issue should be supported therefore by a professional study or advice. If you have any comments or questions concerning the article, you may e-mail the author at rodel.unciano@ bdblaw.com.ph or call 8403-2001 local 140.

Tuesday, August 10, 2021 A15

A

mid the horrors of Covid-19 that had its worst outbreak in Southeast Asia in August last year, former Mayor Alfredo S. Lim of Manila died on August 8, 2020. The lethal virus did not spare the life of the legendary police officer that had earned the moniker “Dirty Harry” because of his tough stance against lawlessness. Lim died after having tested positive for Covid-19, which confined him at the Sta. Ana Hospital, a government hospital that he built for his beloved constituents. The Manileños, and the rest of the country, who avidly followed his distinguished career as a public servant did not have the opportunity to mourn and honor him, which befits a man of his caliber. It would be grievously wrong if his first death anniversary would pass unremembered by the people he had served with utmost dedication.

In my book, his no nonsense approach to public service and his fidelity to official duties in whatever position was given him had made him an ideal government official. Aside from being the most bemedaled police officer of our country, he also served as the Director of the National Bureau of Investigation where he instilled fear among the crime syndicates.

Mayor Lim was a four-term Mayor of Manila, a Senator, and Secretary of Interior and Local Government under President Joseph Estrada. While he lost in his presidential bid in 1998, his zest for public service remains undiminished. His political rival valued this when President Estrada named him in his cabinet by giving him the DILG portfolio.

Mayor Lim was born poor and had an unhappy childhood. When his mother remarried, he was left under the care of the nuns at the Hospicio de San Jose, a hospice for the poor and unwanted children of Manila. W hen he was in grade school, his maternal grandmother took care of

him until her death. Mayor Lim then lived with his godmother who sent him to school. He supported himself through college and graduated with a degree of Business Administration in 1951 at the University of the East (UE). He entered the police force where he made his name as an outstanding policeman of the Manila Police. He pursued legal studies in UE, which he completed in 1963, and passed the bar the following year. He had tucked under his belt a Master’s Degree in National Security Administration with honors and a Doctor of Philosophy in Criminology, which he earned at the Philippine College of Criminology. He rose from the ranks and earned his coveted star through dedication and hard work as a police officer. Mayor Lim was a self-made man who had overcome life’s adversities. His continuing love for education spurred him to establish the City College of Manila (now Universidad de Manila) to complement the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila. It provides free

Mayor Lim is the most decorated police officer of our country. He had served the police force for three decades untainted by any scandal or corruption. Likewise, his records as an elective public official were unblemished. While serving as Mayor of Manila, he declared war against drugs, crimes, smut and corruption. He was tough and uncompromising when dealing with shenanigans and criminals.

college education to the Manilans and has more than 14,000 student population.

He may not have the intelligence, the language and the wit of Mayor Arsenio “Arsenic” Lacson, the innovative and creative mind of Mayor Antonio “Yeba” Villegas, and the initiative and youthful vigor of Mayor Isko Moreno, but Mayor Lim is unmatched when it comes to courage and conviction. Mayor Lim was not the only Chief of Police of Manila who served as Manila Mayor. Manuel de la Fuente was its Chief of Police when President Manuel Roxas appointed de la Fuente as the city mayor in 1948. A street was named after de la Fuente in Sampaloc, Manila. Mayor Lim deserves no less.

Mayor Lim is the most decorated police officer of our country. He had served the police force for three decades untainted by any scandal or corruption. Likewise, his records as an elective public official were unblemished. While serving as Mayor of Manila, he declared war against drugs, crimes, smut and corruption.

He was tough and uncompromising when dealing with shenanigans and criminals. And he was not one who would tolerate any irregularity or ignoble conduct. Remember the Manila Film Festival awards night scan-

The art of unproductive conversations Lyca Balita

Onwards

M

Y Generation Z sisters are on video calls all day. They have infinite Messenger groups and Discord servers, and they can handle digital socialization 24/7 (for those unfamiliar, Discord is essentially a messaging app on steroids but in a good way).

Meanwhile, the sound of Viber and Messenger notifications make my heart drop, and I think my fellow non-Generation Zs can relate.

The notification sounds used to trigger excitement because they meant socialization, opportunities, or fun stories. But thanks to the pandemic, the bells and dings now signal work, advertisements, and requests—tiring things that used to happen face to face and rarely touched our messaging apps, which used to be reserved for relationships. Now, the notification sounds are dreadful, and they make digital socialization tiresome.

Social-media messaging used to be an accessory or prelude to face to face conversations; they got us excited for the more “real” interactions. But right now, these apps are the primary mode of communication for both work and life, and work has taken over and replaced the energy of social messaging apps. Thus, the

Mangun. . .

Continued from A14

won in 2010 running an anti-corruption campaign.

Presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte’s campaign was summed up in his own words. “My God, I hate drugs. And I have to kill people because I hate drugs. I would return to you the right to walk out at night safe and ride a jeepney without being held up.” Sen. Mar Roxas’ campaign: “I am Mar Roxas and I

Now, I’m learning to relax and adapt to how the pandemic has changed social-media messaging. I’ve decided to make Viber my obligations messaging app, while leaving other platforms for my friends. It might take a while to get over the urge to sigh each time my phone buzzes, but it’s a step in the right direction.

apps no longer signal relationships, but they remind us of obligations.

This seems to apply mostly to millennials and older, whose obligations are now digital. Unlike the younger generations who have smoothly adapted to the full-online setting with their Discord servers, since they grew up on the Internet anyway, most of us who are working are still trying to get around Zoom fatigue. For the working millennials and above, work is online, and notifications and new obligations don’t end at 5 p.m.

So we tend to avoid messages because it’s a hassle to reply anymore, and instead we recharge by scrolling through social media while ignoring our inboxes. When I realized that I’ve begun dreading even messages from my friends because replying felt like work, I had to take a step back.

Catching up with friends shouldn’t feel like work. I should be grateful my friends are still here. I figured out how to fix this when I spoke with my grandmother over brunch.

My grandmother loves to tell stories about her colorful life. She narrates her adventures animatedly, with utensils as props and hyperboles that would put creative writers to shame. Sometimes her stories involved hammers and newspapers and the police, and other times they were more tame and only spoke of drunken quests. This is what I love about her stories: they were told for fun, and not for some virtuous lesson or another form of monetization. Her storytelling was honest, completely unproductive, and purposeless, and they just made us laugh. I could sit at the dinner table for hours just listening to her stories—this was way longer than my social battery could last in a group chat or e-numan. And that was when I realized the lesson:

accept the challenge of our Bosses: to continue, expand and fight for the “Daang Matuwid.” Sounds too much like “Aquino Dos.” Duterte’s opponents called his a campaign of fear. However, the campaign followed the number one rule: Create a contrast. Politics is a comparative game. A winning campaign strategy should be a clear contrast and choice between the candidate and everyone else. The candidate must create a reason for voters to choose him or her.

Only one question needs answer-

ing, and it is not which issue is more important. The question is, “What can your candidate do that no one else can do?” That is what wins elections.

Sen. Panfilo “Ping” Lacson Sr. is the first announced presidential candidate and the only current example of the 2022 campaign. So far, he has presented the list of “what needs to be done.”

“It is high time to end the vicious cycle involving corruption cases where those involved lie low until the issue dies down.” “He also said the budget should have a much big-

dal in 1994 where he acted swiftly to correct the fraud. His motto has said it all: “The law applies to all, otherwise, none at all.” Some critics say the expression is grammatically wrong, but we all know what it means, and the good mayor meant it. His “shame campaign” exposed drug users, thieves and criminals to the public. No wonder, his life had been the subject of many true-to-life movies portrayed by the top action stars of the land. Rudy Fernandez played his character in the 1977 film, Alfredo Lim: Sa Kamay ng Batas; Ramon Revilla Sr. in the movie, Target Police General: Major General Alfredo Lim Story; Eddie Garcia in the 1995 picture Alfredo Lim, Batas ng Maynila; and Cesar Montano in the 2013 film Alfredo S. Lim (The Untold Story). And he deserves all of them for he is a real life legend.

Mayor Lim was duly elected as a senator in 2004 and would have served in that capacity until 2010.

The Senate is a bigger stage with a national following that could boost one’s political stock. Seven of our 12 postwar Presidents were former members of the Senate. It’s the only elective office that carries a term of six years outside of the Presidency and the Vice Presidency. But Mayor Lim would hear none of them. He was born and bred in Tondo—the heart and soul of the City of Manila. He spent most of his long and colorful career as a police officer of Manila’s Finest and had patrolled every city street. W hen Manila beckons, Mayor Lim would always answer its call. He ran for Mayor again and resigned from the Senate in 2007 and served for another two terms. He narrowly lost to President Estrada twice and to Mayor Isko once. He was already 87 years old the last time he ran for Mayor. A year ago he died at age 90.

It seems that only death could stop him from serving his fair and beloved city of Manila.

talking to people does not need to have any purpose. It’s completely okay to just relax and listen to other people’s stories without thinking of how to learn from it or how to convert it to an article.

Now, I’m learning to relax and adapt to how the pandemic has changed social-media messaging.

I’ve decided to make Viber my obligations messaging app, while leaving other platforms for my friends. It might take a while to get over the urge to sigh each time my phone buzzes, but it’s a step in the right direction.

To end, here’s one simple trick which helped me completely change my mindset: replacing “have” with “get”.

I credit this little technique to James Clear, who wrote Atomic Habits.

Thus the mindset isn’t that I have to join a video call with friends, but instead I get to join the call with my friends. I don’t have to reply to a message, but I get to reply to a message; I get to catch up with people. This shift turns hassle to gratitude, which is an important quality to strengthen in a pandemic that has been taking lives. Not everything has to be for some capitalist purpose. It’s okay to just be here and enjoy the company of others. It would boost our mood and mental health to simply revive the art of unproductive conversations once in a while.

For feedback, send an e-mail to lyca.balita@ gmail.com

ger allocation for research and development.” On terrorism: “We need to have a more responsive, stringent, and enduring strategy to make our efforts last.”

Great ideas, I suppose. And not a single word about why “Ping” Lacson can do it better than anyone else.

That is not the beginning of a winner’s campaign.

E-mail me at mangun@gmail.com. Follow me on Twitter @mangunonmarkets. PSE stock-market information and technical analysis provided by AAA Southeast Equities Inc.

Sports BusinessMirror

A16 | T

uesday, August 10, 2021 mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph Editor: Jun Lomibao

EUMIR AIMS TO RESUME PRO CAREER

By Josef Ramos

A

NOTHER shot at the gold at the Paris 2024 Olympics remains a priority for Eumir Felix Marcial but for the meantime, the Tokyo Games bronze medalist will be focusing on his professional career.

“As for now, I’ll be focusing on my professional career. I want to fight in December to keep me going,” Marcial told BusinessMirror on Monday through overseas call before boarding Philippine Airlines flight PR 427 to Manila from Narita Airport in Japan together with his f ellow boxers and team officials.

“I am also under contract,” added Marcial, who penned deal with Senator Manny Pacquiao’s MP Promotions in July last year.

Marcial was successful in his professional debut last December in Los Angeles, beating American Andrew Field in a non-title fourround middleweight bout.

He didn’t fight as a pro after that and returned to the ring in May for the Asian championships, an amateur tournament, and lost to an opponent from Uzbekistan in the first round, 0-5.

That triggered an alarm on Marcial’s readiness for the Tokyo Olympics, prompting the Associaton of Boxing Alliances in the Philippines to send him to training camp at USA Boxing’s headquarters in Colorado Springs.

He trained for six weeks at the US facility, but his stamina was wanting. In his semifinal bout at the Tokyo Olympics against Ukraine’s Oleksandr Khyzhniak,

Marcial obviously lost steam and yielded the fight via split decision to settle for the bronze medal.

Khyzhniak, however, lost his domination of the weight category as he suffered a knockout lost to Brazil’s Hebert Sousa in the finals.

He said his dream to be successful in the pros remain, but the 25-year-old pride of Zamboanga City said Paris is a mission waiting to be accomplished.

“There’s still unfinished business—winning an Olympic gold is always a priority,” he said.

“So in 2024, I really want to upgrade my bronze to an Olympic gold.”

Marcial, silver medalists Nesthy Petecio and Carlo Paalam and Irish Magno headed straight to Summit Ridge in Tagaytay City for the mandatory seven-day hotel quarantine.

Upon his release from quarantine, Marcial will fly to the US to watch Pacquiao fight unbeaten Errol Spence Jr. for his International Boxing Federation and World Boxing Council welterweight belts on August 21 (August 22 in Manila) at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.

“It’s a great honor to watch Senator Manny fight. He is the one who inspires us and other fellow boxers to work hard,” he said. “At the same time, it may also be his last fight so it is a great honor to witness that.”

Marcial added that he is set to marry long-time fiancée Princess Jenniel Galarpe in December in Puerto Galera.

MP Promotions president Sean Gibbons said Marcial will be arriving in Las Vegas on August 18.

EUMIR FELIX MARCIAL (right) poses with fellow medalists Nesthy Petecio (left) and Carlo Paalam, as well as Philippine Olympic Committee President Rep. Abraham “Bambol” Tolentino and other officials on board Philippine Airlines flight 427 from Narita on Monday.

BENEO Palatinose WHAT is Palatinose?

Palatinose is simply a better alternative to sugar, I’ll let BENEO explain: “Palatinose is a naturally sourced smart carbohydrate, providing full carbohydrate energy (4kcal/g) in a more balanced way thanks to its low-glycaemic profile.

By improving fat oxidation during

physical activity, it prolongs energy supply. In addition, it is the first non-cariogenic carbohydrate, gentle on teeth.”

When one thinks of sugar, you think fat, calories and diabetes. Serious and casual endurance athletes need Palatinose for a sustained effort in endurance

T

OKYO—They’ll always have Paris.

That thought, full of promise, has been a lifebuoy for athletes to cling to as they coped, as best they could, with thickets of restrictions at the pandemic-hit Tokyo Games that severely crimped their Olympic experience—and left some hungry for more.

Barred from bringing family and friends with them to Japan, playing in empty arenas and not allowed to sightsee in Tokyo, some athletes found themselves day-dreaming about the French capital’s Olympic rendezvous in 2024.

If the coronavirus is tamed by then, the Paris Games could quickly become the party games.

Already, there is palpable pentup eagerness among athletes to make up for Tokyo and its disappointments.

“When Paris happens, I’ll be like, ‘OK, wow, like this is a whole new energy. This is it,’” said US skateboarder Mariah Duran.

Paris calling: After Tokyo, Olympians hanker for 2024 “Maybe I had to have the appetizer before the whole meal.”

For now, Paris officials say they’re betting that the pandemic will be over when their turn comes. “Normally, we’ll be able to party,” the city’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo, said Sunday on French TV when Tokyo passed the baton.

But if the coronavirus is still ruining the best-laid plans, then Tokyo has served up a model of how to hold an Olympics even as infections are surging. It pared the games down to their most essential ingredient: competition. No spectators. No city-wide partying. Very little mingling between Olympians and their hosts.

Paris officials were watching closely and say that

while they hope for the best, they’ll also plan for the worst.

Toughest for many Tokyo Olympians was not being accompanied to Japan by loved ones who had no choice but to watch them compete on TV. American surfer Carissa Moore said it was “a huge challenge” being separated from her husband and his “strong constant voice.”

Moore ultimately found her footing to win gold in surfing’s debut as an Olympic sport. As painful as separation was, Tokyo was also a learning experience for the Hawaiian. “I’m very proud of myself, to be here and stand on my own two feet,” she said.

Traveling without her parents for the first time at age 17, US skateboarder Brighton Zeuner compensated by staying closely connected even during her competition, video-calling her father from the Olympic skate bowl “between every single run I did.”

To limit infection risks, organizers also asked athletes to arrive in Tokyo no earlier than five days before competing and leave within 48 hours of being done—a rapid turnaround that further truncated the Olympic experience.

Belgian skateboarder Axel Cruysberghs, who competed in week one, and his skateboarding wife Lizzie Armanto, who competed in week two, passed each other like ships in the night.

As she took off for Tokyo, his flight back to their home was 20 minutes from landing.

“It worked out for our puppy,” she joked. But it wasn’t the fairytale Olympics they’d planned before the pandemic.

“We’d hoped to like be here for a month together and, you know, I could see his event and he could stay for mine,” Armanto said. “But because of Covid and everything... ” AP

P10-M furnished condo unit awaits Petecio in Lanang

IF the coronavirus is tamed by the 2024, the Paris Olympics could quickly become the party games. AP

RSA gifts medalists P22 million for successful campaign

By Manuel T. Cayon

D

AN MIGUEL Corp. (SMC) president Ramon S. Ang will give Tokyo Olympics medalists—led by the country’s very first gold medal winner, weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz—a total of P22 million in incentives for accomplishing the Philippines’s best Olympic performance to date.

Ang’s “personal gift” or incentive to the winning athletes, as earlier announced by the Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) before the Summer Games, will consist of P10 million for weightlifter Diaz, P5 million each for boxers Carlo Paalam and Nesthy Petecio for bagging silver medals and P2 million for boxer Eumir Marcial’s broze finish.

“As a longtime partner and supporter of Philippine sports, I’m so happy for our athletes. All their hard work paid off,” Ang said. “They’ve opened the eyes of so many Filipinos sports patrons, fans and aspiring athletes that indeed, we Filipinos can compete and win against the best in the world in the Olympics.”

“This is just the beginning. We have the momentum. We can only get stronger in the succeeding Olympics,” Ang added.

Diaz’s gold medal was the first since the Philippines started competing in the Olympics 97 years ago in Paris.

“I’m especially grateful to Hidilyn, whom we’ve supported for several years now, for giving honor to the

country by winning our very first Olympic gold medal,” Ang said. “We can build on these successes to develop stronger sports programs and produce more Olympic winners like Hidilyn, Carlo, Nesthy and Eumir.”

Ang also said that the Olympic athletes, as well as their coaches and teams, gave the Philippines more than just medals.

“The message of this Olympic campaign for us Filipinos is clear.

We are resilient in the face of challenges and we do not back down from adversity,” he said. “This pandemic is perhaps one of the greatest challenges in our lifetime.

Thank you Hidilyn, Carlo, Nesthy and Eumir for giving us hope and

GYMNASTICS students from St. Paul pose for parents during a parade in Olympian Sunisa Lee’s honor on Sunday in St. Paul, Minnesota. Lee is the first among American and first Asian woman to win the Olympic gymnastics all-around title. AP

AVAO City— Nesthy Petecio will be coming home to a P10-million condominium unit at One PETECIO Lakeshore Drive inside the 11.2-hectare Davao Park District in Lanang.

Her new condominium unit, developed by Suntrust Properties, is a town away from Santa Cruz in Davao del Sur where the Tokyo Olympics women’s featherweight gold medalist of boxing was born and raised.

Suntrust, a subsidiary of Megaworld Corp., committed the property which, according to the Philippine Information Agency, is fully furnished.

Suntrust Properties has earlier rewarded the country’s first Olympic gold medalist, Hidilyn Diaz with a condominium unit at its Eastwood property in Quezon City.

Petecio settled for silver after bowing out to Japanese Sena Irie, matching the feat set by Anthony Villanueva in the men’s featherweight division at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and Mansueto “Onyok” Velasco at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

Carlo Paalam, of Cagayan de Oro, also clinched a boxing silver in men’s featherweight and Eumir Marcial, of Zamboanga City, a bronze in men’s middleweight.

Petecio was the flag bearer in Sunday’s closing ceremony.

sports like triathlon, long distance running and trail running, football, swimming, cycling, obstacle course racing and others.

BENEO continues, “PalatinoseTM (isomaltulose) is purely based on sucrose from sugar beet. It is 100 percent vegan, kosher, halal and nonGMO. It is generated through enzymatic rearrangement of the glycosidic bond between glucose and fructose from an α-1.2 linkage in sucrose to an α-1.6-glycosidic bond in Palatinose .”

BENEO explains further, “The new molecular linkage of PalatinoseTM is more stable compared to that of sucrose. Palatinose has a mild, natural sweetness (approximately 50 percent of sucrose), without any aftertaste. It replaces sucrose on a 1:1 scale and can easily be combined with other sweeteners to achieve a unique and tailored sweetness profile. Palatinose is a very low hygroscopic powder. It absorbs virtually no moisture and remains stable at a temperature of 25 °C and

relative humidity up to 85 percent.”

I had BENEO’s Christian Philippsen, Managing Director for Asia-Pacific and Peen Goh, Manager, Nutrition Communications, Asia-Pacific last Thursday night on Sports For All (Sports For All PH on Facebook).

Philippsen discussed everything but the nutrition side of BENEO while Goh took care of the sports nutrition questions.

BENEO Palatinose brand ambassadors and endorsers are serious and casual endurance athletes and weekend warriors as well. Peen explained what Palatinose is: “Palatinose is a functional carbohydrate with a unique combination of physiological properties, which distinguish it from sucrose and other traditional sugars. On food labels and ingredient lists of retail products, the term isomaltulose is used. While isomaltulose is derived from beet sugar it is also found in honey in small amounts. Palatinose

athlete Austin Carter from New Zealand, and Indonesian CrossFit trainer, Kafka Pampudi.

Christian adds, “Sports nutrition is not only for athletes, but for everyone. People are looking to be more active, and being fit is being seen as having more impact on their health, with nutrition backing this up. But sports nutrition is no longer about protein bars and energy drinks—it has extended to other products as well. This is an exciting market that is expected to grow at a fast pace over the next few years, and Palatinose can definitely help boost this further.”

BENEO’s Palatinose is distributed here in the country by DPO Philippines. Their products, which are mostly in powder form, can be purchased online through your favorite apps and platforms.

I’m genuinely interested in giving BENEO Palatinose a try as I do HIIT workouts everyday and you need sustained energy to sweat and burn calories.

S

inspiration during this critical time. You showed us that nothing is impossible.”

Ang added that as the Olympics showcased the outstanding athletic feats that fully-trained athletes are capable of, it also serves as a reminder that people are not limited, and that Filipinos should endeavor to keep fit and healthy in the face of Covid-19.

“Aside from following health protocols to stop the transmission of the virus and getting vaccinated, we should also do our best to make sure we are mentally and physically fit and healthy during this crisis. I believe that will help us a lot in coping with the stresses of this time,” Ang said.

has a mild, natural sweetness (approximately 50 percent of sucrose), without any aftertaste.

Down the intestine, isomaltulose enters the body the way it is known from complex carbohydrates: slowly and delivering in full the needed carbohydrate energy. Consequently, the blood sugar response curve after eating isomaltulose is lower than after eating table sugar (sucrose); or the overwhelmingly high response after a refined starch or maltodextrin intake.”

What makes the product work with endurance athletes is that it tastes good and as Peen said, there’s no aftertaste. “Palatinose is ideal for sports, it gives you sustained energy, helps to burn more fat as energy and more importantly, tastes great.”

According to Christian, BENEO’s Palatinose is currently being taken by athletes, including Midfielder of Thammasat University football team Krittapot Kongla, rowing

Editor: Jennifer A. Ng

Companies BusinessMirror

Tuesday, August 10, 2021

B1

Globe hikes capex to fund Jollibee opens Smashburger additional network projects store in Chicago

G

By Lorenz S. Marasigan

@lorenzmarasigan

lobe Telecom Inc. raised its capital expenditures (capex) for 2021 by almost a tenth to P76 billion after its board approved additional network projects for the remainder of the year.

Rizza Maniego-Eala, the company’s CFO, said that the board has approved additional network projects amounting to P18 billion, but noted that the actual impact on the programmed capex for the year is only P6 billion.

Globe earlier programmed a capex of P70 billion, already a 16 -percent increase from the

P60.3-billion capex in 2020.

“On the additional P18 billion of capex availment, 90 percent of that will be spent on data related requirements. Out of the P18 billion, only P6 billion will hit our cash capex such that our guidance moves from P70 billion to P76 billion for 2021,” she said during a press briefing on Monday.

In a disclosure to the stock exchange, Globe announced that it will spend 88 percent of the budget on data, 6 percent on business support, 5 percent on core requirements, and a percentage on miscellaneous investments.

So far, Globe has spent P43.3 billion of its programmed capex for 2021.

Globe’s net income rose by 13 percent to P13 billion during the first half of 2021 from P11.5 billion in the same period the year prior, owing to the favorable effects of the Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises (Create) Law. Its consolidated services revenues increased by 4 percent to P75.5 billion from P72.4 billion, driven largely by its fixed and mobile businesses.

Eala noted that Globe is looking at growing its service revenues in the “low single-digit” mark this year.

Shares in Globe were down by P5 apiece to close at P1,980 on Monday.

In June, Globe announced that it raised P12 billion in fresh capital after two local banks extended loan facilities to the telco to bankroll the company’s massive capital investments for the year.

In a disclosure to the stock exchange, Globe said it has signed a P7-billion term loan facility with Philippine National Bank (PNB) and another P5-billion loan with China Banking Corp.

In May Globe announced that it secured a $100-million loan from the Bank of China (Hong Kong) Ltd., which will help bankroll the company’s capital expenditures for 2021.

Globe is modernizing its network to make 5G as well as fiber technology available to more customers nationwide as part of the company’s effort to help the country achieve a “First World Network.”

Puregold income up by 17% in H1

By VG Cabuag @villygc

P

uregold Price Club Inc., the grocery chain led by businessman Lucio Co, said its income reached P3.99 billion in the first semester, 17 percent higher than last year’s P3.4 billion.

Net sales, however, fell 7 percent to P76.18 billion for the period from last year’s P81.96 billion, due mainly to the high base effects created by the public’s panic buying at the onset of the pandemic last year.

Some 72 percent of revenues came from the Puregold stores

ICTSI unit in Iraq hits 3M TEUs

I

nternational Container Terminal Services Inc. (ICTSI) said on Monday its Iraqi subsidiary reached an operational milestone recently with its new record of handling its three million twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU).

This feat makes Basra Gateway Terminal (BGT) the only container terminal at the Port of Umm Qasr to handle 3 million TEUs. BGT started its commercial operations in 2014.

“Three million TEUs in seven years is a remarkable feat. We continue to focus on strong collaborative efforts with all our customers—the shipping lines, cargo owners and transporters—to maximize our efficiency. Through efficient operations, digitalization, and focus on safety, BGT reaffirms its commitment to supporting the country’s economy and providing world-class service to our growing customer base,” Romeo Salvador, BGT CEO, said.

Since 2014, ICTSI has invested over $250 million to upgrade the terminal, including the construction of three new berths, the rehab of the three existing berths and terminal yard, and the acquisition of new equipment.

BGT is the first and currently the only terminal in Iraq capable of efficiently handling 14,000-TEU capacity boxships. According to Salvador, this unique and exclusive advantage continues to help the Port of Umm Qasr attract new services, especially ones that are operated by larger vessels. Lorenz S. Marasigan

network while 28 percent was contributed by S&R Membership warehouse clubs and S&R New York Style Pizza stores.

Consolidated income from operations grew by 7.5 percent to P6.14 billion, from the P5.71 billion a year ago due to strategic costs controls.

“Puregold’s innovative digitization approach through our Puregold Mobile app, Puregold Channel and our e-commerce website will enable us to connect seamlessly with our consumers during this Covid-19 pandemic and at the same time strengthens customer loyalty,” Vincent Co, the company’s president, said.

As of end-June, Puregold opened 15 new organic stores out of the planned 30 to 40 new stores.

S&R also plans to open two new warehouse clubs in the second semester. The group currently has a total of 484 stores nationwide.

These include 418 Puregold stores, 20 S&R membership shopping warehouse and 46 S&R New York Style stores.

Last year, the company reported that its income rose by 19 percent to P8.05 billion from the previous year’s P6.77 billion, mainly as a result of its strong fourth quarter performance.

Net sales grew 9 percent to

P168.63 billion from the previous P154.49 billion. About 73 percent of the revenues came from the Puregold stores network while 27 percent was contributed by S&R Membership warehouse clubs and S&R New York Style Pizza stores.

The company said its consolidated income from operations grew 17 percent to P13.4 billion in 2020, from P11.4 billion during the same period in 2019.

Puregold stores registered same store sales growth of 2.4 percent for the year while S&R registered an SSSG of 8.7 percent during the same period.

Filipino-led biotech raises ₧10B for cancer research

I

nterVenn Biosciences recently announced the completion of a P10-billion Series C financing from SoftBank Group, Heritage Provider Network, Irving Investors, and Highside Capital Management.

The fund will largely be allocated for the development and commercialization of Dawn™, a blood-based test aimed at helping physicians appropriately match cancer patients to the immuno-oncology therapy with the best possible chance of response.

From a simple blood-draw, InterVenn is able to measure never before characterized biological signals from glycoproteins. Dawn™ is in the early validation process for use in patients with pancreatic and lung cancers as well as melanoma. Its application on other tumor types is continuously being studied.

InterVenn uses a proprietary glycoproteomics biomarker interrogation platform that reveals a wealth of information about a person’s unique molecular makeup for next-gen precision medicine. With AI and mass spectrometry, InterVenn’s platform has been utilized to develop 16 clinical use cases across oncology and other indications.

Propelled by its purpose that nobody should ever be blindsided by disease, the company is working to find new solutions for ovarian, colorectal, pancreatic, liver, prostate, and kidney cancer; comprised of treatment and monitoring, immune profiling, patient stratification, and disease progression.

At the helm of the patient-driven, employee-first organization is Aldo Carrascoso. The Filipino founder and chief executive officer of InterVenn is a graduate of the Ateneo De Manila University and Babson College. Alongside Carrascoso is fellow

Photo from Smashburger.com

J

ollibee Foods Corp.’s (JFC) Smashburger on Monday said it opened its first store in downtown Chicago and Washington D.C. in the United States as part of its push to expand the burger joint brand in North America.

The openings are part of the company’s plan to launch 25 new stores under Jollibee Group’s expansion plan in North America and in keeping with its vision of becoming one of the top five restaurant companies in the world.

“Smashburger has achieved noteworthy business improvement, and these store openings are a testament to the brand’s growth momentum in the region,” Ernesto Tanmantiong, president and CEO of JFC, said.

According to Tanmantiong, the new stores in 2020 and 2021 are generating two to three times the average of other stores. The company wants to open 25 new stores and renovate a substantial number of older stores this year.

“Smashburger’s financial performance is expected to continue improving markedly in the months ahead and we anticipate that these two openings will further contribute to its continued turnaround, leading to its profitability,” Tanmantiong

said. The new store in Chicago is located at 360 North Michigan Avenue.

This high visibility location on the historic corner of Michigan Avenue and Wacker in the LondonHouse Chicago building will serve as a flagship location for future expansion of the Smashburger brand in the greater Chicago area.

“Chicago has one of the best food scenes in the United States, which is why we are so thrilled to be bringing our signature burgers, sides and shakes to the Chicago Loop—the stunning heart of the city, buzzing with life and exciting attractions,” Carl Bachmann, Smashburger president, said.

“We are happy to finally open in Chinatown D.C. area and make Smashburger the go-to place for both mouthwatering burgers and delicious breakfast for families of all ages in this community.”

The company’s Washington D.C. store was opened last July.

Jollibee now fully owns Smashburger after its wholly owned subsidiary Bee Good! Inc. acquired in December 2018 Smashburger Master LLC’s remaining 15-percent stake in SJBF LLC, the former parent company of the burger joint operator. VG Cabuag

AirAsia PHL: 92% of flight crew got jabs

Contributed Photo

Filipino and co-founder Dr. Carlito Lebrilla, Ph.D, a Distinguished Professor at the School of Medicine in the University of California, Davis and world-expert in Glycoproteomics.

InterVenn is headquartered in the Bay Area in South San Francisco, California. Their Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments-certified laboratory is also located at the same site. “But one hundred percent of our software is done in the Philippines,” Carrascoso said. “Our engineering team in our Pasig City office takes care of the cloud infrastructure, front end, back end, and even security.

Information security, information event management. Events like infiltration, penetration testing. We have a full staff that does dev ops, server systems administration.”

The company has grown exponentially since its debut project in 2018.

It was then that InterVenn started to work on GLORI™ which is able to differentiate between benign and malignant pelvic tumors in women with 86 percent accuracy, higher than any other currently available blood test for ovarian cancer.

Last June 10, InterVenn announced the validation of GLORI™

as the world’s first glycoproteomic laboratory-developed test that will aid in the fight against ovarian cancer. It has been validated using both retrospective patient samples and samples collected prospectively in InterVenn’s ongoing VOCAL™ (InterVenn Test For Ovarian Cancer Liquid Biopsy) clinical trial.

This was made possible by the over P2 billion venture investment received by InterVenn from Genoa Ventures, True Ventures, Amplify Partners, Boost VC, Prado SV, the Ojjeh Family and Anzu Partners.

“We are inspired by the consistent support from global investor groups, it is a clear recognition of the transformative potential of our technology. Their investment allows us to maintain our position to unlock the glycoproteome as a novel and fundamental layer in biology, which will reveal a myriad of new insights on how to diagnose and treat disease,” Carrascoso states.

After the success of GloriTM, InterVenn is forging ahead with its investigation of other early-detecting blood tests, namely for adenoma, colorectal cancer, and nasopharyngeal carcinoma.

BusinessMirror file photo

By Recto L. Mercene @rectomercene

A

irAsia Philippines on Monday said that 92 percent of its flight operations team, including pilots and cabin crew, have already been vaccinated against Covid-19.

To date, 90 percent of the flight deck and 94 percent of the cabin crew have taken the shot as part of the company’s drive to have its entire organization vaccinated this month.

Meanwhile, 86 percent of the ground staff have also been vaccinated. According to the airline, this is a significant development considering that, aside from the flight crew, ground staff (check-in counters and baggage handlers) directly interact with guests.

The airline attributed the significant increase in the number of inoculated staff to its “Take the Shot” internal campaign, which strongly encourages employees to take their Covid-19 vaccines whenever possible, regardless of the brand.

The campaign was also extended to the airline’s guests through a se-

ries of promotions such as the offering of free “hot seat” upgrade until August 31 and the distribution of alwaysREDy Care kits to fully vaccinated passengers.

A recent survey conducted by AirAsia Philippines revealed that over 90 percent of its guests feel confident to fly with a fully vaccinated crew.

AirAsia Philippines Spokesperson Steve Dailisan said, “The efforts on ensuring that our Allstars get vaccinated stems from AirAsia’s core values of putting people first. We hope our guests feel valued because we are putting a premium to their safety amid threats of the Covid-19 Delta variant spread. However, we would still want to remind our guests to strictly observe established health and safety protocols as we all move forward to a better normal.”

To date, 88 percent of the total 1,457 Filipino Allstars have been vaccinated in partnership with the various local government units.

Meanwhile, the Airasia group reported that 81 percent of its total work force have been inoculated against Covid-19.

B2

Companies BusinessMirror

Tuesday, August 10, 2021

PSE STOCK QUOTATIONS

August 9, 2021

Net Foreign Stocks Bid Ask Open High Low Close Volume Value Trade (Peso) Buy (Sell) FINANCIALs

ASIA UNITED BDO UNIBANK BANK PH ISLANDS CHINABANK EAST WEST BANK METROBANK PB BANK PBCOM PHIL NATL BANK PSBANK RCBC SECURITY BANK UNION BANK BRIGHT KINDLE COL FINANCIAL FERRONOUX HLDG IREMIT MEDCO HLDG MANULIFE NTL REINSURANCE PHIL STOCK EXCH SUN LIFE

44 109.2 82.5 24.3 9.28 46.7 9.77 18.5 20.5 55.5 19.14 112.5 76.15 1.21 4.35 2.92 1.21 0.345 915 0.63 214.4 2,400

45.45 110.8 83.15 24.5 9.29 46.95 10.32 19.94 20.55 56 19.88 112.9 76.5 1.25 4.4 3 1.3 0.365 971 0.69 214.8 2,548

45.5 110.8 83 24.4 9.39 46.7 10.32 18.82 20.25 55.05 19.1 114.6 76.8 1.3 4.32 2.91 1.21 0.36 975 0.63 209.4 2,550

45.5 110.8 83.2 24.5 9.39 46.95 10.32 19.94 20.55 55.1 19.98 114.6 76.8 1.3 4.4 2.92 1.22 0.365 975 0.63 220 2,550

43.55 109 82.35 24 9.26 46.05 10.32 18.82 20.2 55.05 19.1 112.5 76.5 1.25 4.32 2.91 1.21 0.35 975 0.63 209.4 2,550

44 110.8 83.15 24.5 9.29 46.95 10.32 19.94 20.5 55.1 19.1 112.5 76.5 1.25 4.4 2.92 1.21 0.365 975 0.63 214.8 2,550

400 459,430 900,360 24,800 274,100 1,295,600 1,500 1,900 183,300 750 84,700 247,110 16,100 31,000 172,000 8,000 30,000 120,000 10 131,000 25,060 5

17,855 50,677,989 74,682,970 605,090 2,550,637 60,516,875 15,480 36,206 3,744,100 41,302.50 1,678,520 27,891,084 1,232,774 38,800 755,710 23,330 36,480 42,800 9,750 82,530 5,500,610 12,750

9,100 -8,177,378 -47,530,940 -26,091 3,705,050 -883,195 -1,998 -8,907,433 236,700 -4,320 5,059,240 -

INDUSTRIAL AC ENERGY 9.36 9.37 9.27 9.66 9.22 9.37 133,048,200 1,259,296,218 ALSONS CONS 1.23 1.24 1.23 1.24 1.23 1.24 254,000 312,840 23.2 23.4 23.2 23.55 23.1 23.2 1,074,000 25,056,460 ABOITIZ POWER 0.57 0.58 0.56 0.6 0.53 0.58 44,646,000 25,444,640 BASIC ENERGY FIRST GEN 27.8 28 28.3 28.3 27.7 28 625,100 17,436,310 FIRST PHIL HLDG 74 74.05 74.3 74.5 74.05 74.05 2,830 210,078.50 270 275.8 276.8 276.8 270 270 158,970 43,598,576 MERALCO 18.22 18.24 17.7 18.28 17.7 18.24 908,800 16,497,020 MANILA WATER PETRON 3.15 3.16 3.14 3.16 3.13 3.16 576,000 1,810,500 PETROENERGY 3.94 4 3.93 3.94 3.93 3.94 2,000 7,870 12.98 13 12.46 13 12.46 12.98 568,100 7,373,322 PHX PETROLEUM PILIPINAS SHELL 17.74 17.82 17.82 17.82 17.56 17.82 217,500 3,870,264 SPC POWER 12.8 12.9 12.5 12.8 12.3 12.8 136,400 1,726,916 14.68 15.5 14.68 14.68 14.68 14.68 3,200 46,976 VIVANT AGRINURTURE 5.98 6.07 6.05 6.08 5.98 6.07 399,100 2,416,293 AXELUM 2.65 2.67 2.6 2.69 2.6 2.68 120,000 317,670 CENTURY FOOD 24.95 25 25 25.45 24.75 24.95 766,100 19,102,280 13.84 13.9 14.06 14.06 13.7 13.84 296,400 4,095,870 DEL MONTE 8.25 8.5 8 8.55 7.9 8.5 7,144,200 58,710,290 DNL INDUS EMPERADOR 13.1 13.12 13.48 13.62 13.1 13.1 32,726,500 433,253,480 SMC FOODANDBEV 80.55 81.9 81.95 81.95 80 81.9 57,990 4,718,840.50 0.66 0.67 0.65 0.66 0.65 0.66 298,000 196,390 ALLIANCE SELECT FRUITAS HLDG 1.21 1.22 1.23 1.23 1.19 1.22 2,689,000 3,222,950 GINEBRA 93.55 94.6 98 98 93.05 93.55 23,080 2,203,122.50 JOLLIBEE 195 195.4 190.2 195.4 188 195 304,870 59,016,810 5.95 6 5.85 6 5.85 5.95 51,300 304,900 MAXS GROUP MG HLDG 0.234 0.238 0.24 0.24 0.233 0.238 590,000 139,070 MONDE NISSIN 16.74 16.78 15.72 16.96 15.72 16.78 21,145,800 350,601,352 7.7 7.86 7.57 7.88 7.41 7.86 32,300 249,127 SHAKEYS PIZZA 0.95 0.96 0.95 0.98 0.93 0.96 10,042,000 9,523,700 ROXAS AND CO RFM CORP 4.46 4.67 4.45 4.45 4.43 4.45 22,000 97,880 SWIFT FOODS 0.129 0.13 0.129 0.133 0.129 0.13 13,390,000 1,738,580 132 133.3 133 134 132 132 494,610 65,489,598 UNIV ROBINA 0.78 0.79 0.78 0.79 0.77 0.79 605,000 474,840 VITARICH CONCRETE A 47.8 48 49 49 48 48 5,600 269,630 CEMEX HLDG 1.26 1.27 1.24 1.27 1.23 1.27 2,245,000 2,821,640 14.28 14.74 14.16 14.74 14.16 14.74 48,100 689,458 EAGLE CEMENT EEI CORP 8.1 8.15 7.9 8.1 7.9 8.1 125,900 1,005,697 HOLCIM 6.7 6.74 6.67 6.8 6.56 6.74 476,100 3,204,457 5.99 6 6 6.05 5.98 6 2,400,300 14,423,314 MEGAWIDE 12.86 13 13.98 13.98 13 13 60,000 784,204 PHINMA TKC METALS 1 1.02 0.99 1.04 0.99 1.01 79,000 80,390 VULCAN INDL 1.47 1.48 1.5 1.54 1.41 1.48 8,296,000 12,358,210 1.67 1.7 1.64 1.7 1.64 1.7 108,000 179,020 CROWN ASIA 1.8 1.88 1.84 1.9 1.79 1.79 49,000 90,010 EUROMED LMG CORP 4.14 4.94 4.12 4.12 4.12 4.12 11,000 45,320 MABUHAY VINYL 5.3 5.4 5.44 5.45 5.44 5.45 6,000 32,684 5.41 5.49 5.4 5.4 5.4 5.4 2,512,000 13,564,800 PRYCE CORP CONCEPCION 20.2 21 21 21 20.95 21 4,500 94,465 GREENERGY 2.88 2.89 2.83 2.9 2.75 2.89 9,935,000 28,066,090 INTEGRATED MICR 8.5 8.69 8.7 8.81 8.45 8.5 831,000 7,179,246 0.91 0.92 0.93 0.93 0.9 0.92 575,000 520,060 IONICS PANASONIC 5.78 5.89 5.86 5.86 5.86 5.86 2,600 15,236 SFA SEMICON 1.23 1.24 1.25 1.25 1.21 1.24 216,000 265,990 5.19 5.2 4.95 5.23 4.95 5.2 1,413,000 7,264,210 CIRTEK HLDG

195,010,381.00 -98,400 -13,010,940 1,286,500.00 -4,726,970 52,788.50 -12,704,652 -303,370.00 -701,490 -875,208 -22,790 -710 90,600 -972,180 84,180 -14,812,488 30,903,986 -2,702,017.50 15,680.50 -7,931,335 20,825 37,280 26,975,296 75,476 522,430 131,300 -18,218,040 252,080 -72,496 343,373 348,074 156,420 422,100 21,450 20,975 5,222,250 -4,477,007.00 20,930 -133,420.00

HOLDING & FRIMS ABACORE CAPITAL 1.02 1.03 0.99 1.03 0.97 1.02 8,298,000 8,334,240 ASIABEST GROUP 6.7 6.99 7 7 7 7 100 700 744.5 749 728 750 728 749 45,330 33,758,570 AYALA CORP 39.95 40 40.5 41 40 40 435,200 17,593,985 ABOITIZ EQUITY ALLIANCE GLOBAL 9.92 9.99 10 10 9.92 9.99 1,954,200 19,505,795 AYALA LAND LOG 4.28 4.29 4.17 4.34 4.15 4.29 7,289,000 31,007,870 6.91 7 6.9 6.9 6.9 6.9 3,600 24,840 ANSCOR ANGLO PHIL HLDG 0.98 0.99 0.98 1 0.95 0.99 3,027,000 2,970,900 ATN HLDG A 0.59 0.61 0.61 0.61 0.57 0.59 567,000 344,120 ATN HLDG B 0.59 0.62 0.6 0.6 0.59 0.59 99,000 59,160 4.86 4.94 5.04 5.04 4.86 4.86 885,800 4,336,756 COSCO CAPITAL 5.48 5.53 5.7 5.84 5.48 5.48 38,489,300 215,822,775 DMCI HLDG FILINVEST DEV 7.55 7.85 7.8 7.85 7.55 7.85 53,700 418,200 2.67 2.8 2.95 2.95 2.8 2.8 30,000 85,540 FJ PRINCE A FORUM PACIFIC 0.31 0.33 0.315 0.33 0.315 0.33 1,710,000 553,850 GT CAPITAL 531 537 532 545 531 531 160,530 85,872,210 HOUSE OF INV 3.95 4.3 3.91 3.94 3.89 3.94 262,000 1,031,840 60.6 60.9 61 61 59.8 60.9 538,800 32,577,664.50 JG SUMMIT 5.6 5.79 5.56 5.75 5.56 5.75 4,600 26,373 JOLLIVILLE HLDG LODESTAR 0.67 0.68 0.66 0.68 0.63 0.67 673,000 444,280 LOPEZ HLDG 2.94 2.95 2.95 2.95 2.93 2.93 1,412,000 4,143,820 9.69 9.7 9.61 9.79 9.61 9.7 6,727,300 65,231,772 LT GROUP 3.74 3.75 3.7 3.78 3.69 3.75 12,010,000 44,994,450 METRO PAC INV PACIFICA HLDG 3.45 3.61 3.44 3.45 3.44 3.45 5,000 17,230 PRIME MEDIA 2.6 2.64 2.8 3.05 2.5 2.6 10,516,000 29,799,020 1.15 1.22 1.15 1.15 1.1 1.1 616,000 692,230 SOLID GROUP SM INVESTMENTS 983 989 963 989 963 989 116,040 114,089,020 SAN MIGUEL CORP 108.8 108.9 109 109.8 108.3 108.9 81,640 8,895,674 0.68 0.7 0.69 0.69 0.67 0.68 124,000 84,290 SOC RESOURCES 132.2 138 135.5 138 131.8 138 1,140 156,507 TOP FRONTIER WELLEX INDUS 0.265 0.28 0.265 0.265 0.265 0.265 50,000 13,250 ZEUS HLDG 0.202 0.204 0.196 0.202 0.194 0.202 380,000 74,150

326,700 -5,597,545 -3,553,850 9,637,055 -230,260 -1,940 29,160 -2,879,748 -29,658,387 -91,515 -49,662,015 -19,550 -6,477,398.50 -1,725 -355,370 -14,374,391 -2,948,120 -344,260 22,732,810 216,911 32,090 1,355 -

PROPERTY ARTHALAND CORP 0.63 0.66 0.65 0.67 0.62 0.66 157,000 102,620 AYALA LAND 33.45 33.8 32.75 33.8 32.4 33.8 9,735,200 324,534,470 1.12 1.18 1.13 1.18 1.12 1.18 34,000 38,560 ARANETA PROP AREIT RT 36.25 36.3 36.25 36.35 36.05 36.3 311,200 11,283,945 BELLE CORP 1.4 1.43 1.36 1.44 1.36 1.44 46,000 64,590 A BROWN 0.87 0.9 0.9 0.9 0.87 0.9 154,000 134,400 0.79 0.81 0.8 0.8 0.77 0.8 369,000 290,470 CITYLAND DEVT 0.127 0.128 0.124 0.128 0.124 0.128 1,400,000 176,340 CROWN EQUITIES CEBU HLDG 6.21 6.5 6.5 6.5 6.21 6.21 1,600 10,110 CEB LANDMASTERS 3.09 3.1 2.99 3.1 2.99 3.09 1,905,000 5,820,560 0.4 0.405 0.4 0.41 0.4 0.405 4,610,000 1,860,650 CENTURY PROP 10.68 10.8 10.64 10.9 10.64 10.68 291,700 3,129,872 DOUBLEDRAGON DDMP RT 1.78 1.8 1.79 1.81 1.78 1.78 5,941,000 10,630,090 6.98 7 7 7 6.98 6.98 36,300 253,704 DM WENCESLAO EMPIRE EAST 0.29 0.295 0.28 0.295 0.28 0.295 2,460,000 709,650 EVER GOTESCO 0.375 0.38 0.355 0.385 0.345 0.38 71,450,000 26,429,900 FILINVEST LAND 1.12 1.13 1.12 1.13 1.11 1.13 7,359,000 8,276,340 7.02 7.24 7.24 7.24 7.24 7.24 1,200 8,688 8990 HLDG 1.25 1.26 1.24 1.28 1.23 1.25 282,000 350,840 PHIL INFRADEV KEPPEL PROP 3.2 3.59 3.15 3.2 3.15 3.2 6,000 19,030 CITY AND LAND 1.39 1.41 1.35 1.44 1.35 1.41 925,000 1,298,520 2.81 2.82 2.71 2.83 2.71 2.82 12,161,000 33,989,970 MEGAWORLD 0.31 0.315 0.3 0.32 0.3 0.31 19,190,000 5,960,650 MRC ALLIED PHIL ESTATES 0.57 0.58 0.54 0.57 0.53 0.57 7,916,000 4,430,070 PRIMEX CORP 2.16 2.19 2.1 2.22 2.1 2.19 211,000 453,820 15.86 16 16.48 16.48 15.86 15.86 2,871,600 46,229,920 ROBINSONS LAND PHIL REALTY 0.29 0.3 0.28 0.3 0.275 0.3 8,130,000 2,390,400 ROCKWELL 1.47 1.53 1.5 1.52 1.46 1.52 17,000 25,520 2.62 2.67 2.62 2.67 2.62 2.67 17,000 44,940 SHANG PROP STA LUCIA LAND 3.07 3.08 2.99 3.08 2.95 3.07 589,000 1,772,600 SM PRIME HLDG 33.3 33.9 32.7 33.9 32.7 33.9 3,302,500 110,921,835 VISTAMALLS 3.72 3.83 3.75 3.83 3.72 3.83 14,000 52,940 1.6 1.68 1.68 1.68 1.6 1.6 1,160,000 1,877,200 SUNTRUST HOME 3.44 3.58 3.42 3.58 3.4 3.58 4,604,000 15,823,440 VISTA LAND

SERVICES ABS CBN 11.12 11.24 11.04 11.26 11.04 11.24 26,300 292,872 GMA NETWORK 14.28 14.3 13.98 14.32 13.86 14.28 5,074,800 71,938,364 1,980 1,983 1,986 1,987 1,969 1,980 26,230 51,905,150 GLOBE TELECOM 1,250 1,269 1,282 1,284 1,250 1,250 112,525 142,618,965 PLDT APOLLO GLOBAL 0.133 0.134 0.113 0.134 0.111 0.133 707,780,000 89,615,330 CONVERGE 27.15 27.2 26.8 28.35 26.75 27.15 18,394,900 506,893,615 3.57 3.7 3.53 3.84 3.53 3.7 261,000 931,080 DFNN INC 7.36 7.37 7.12 7.56 7.01 7.36 10,489,900 77,431,313 DITO CME HLDG IMPERIAL 1.4 1.6 1.41 1.41 1.4 1.4 123,000 172,250 JACKSTONES 2.11 2.2 2.06 2.2 2.06 2.2 18,000 38,700 2.17 2.2 2.11 2.2 2.11 2.2 1,578,000 3,422,310 NOW CORP TRANSPACIFIC BR 0.395 0.4 0.395 0.41 0.395 0.4 6,700,000 2,676,000 PHILWEB 2.16 2.23 2.24 2.25 2.15 2.23 48,000 106,520 8.25 8.29 8.2 8.3 8.2 8.3 7,500 62,010 2GO GROUP ASIAN TERMINALS 14 14.2 14 14 14 14 6,000 84,000 CHELSEA 2.64 2.65 2.54 2.67 2.53 2.64 652,000 1,690,060 CEBU AIR 45.25 45.3 44.05 45.3 44 45.3 206,200 9,237,935 186 186.1 184 187.3 182.8 186 1,495,370 278,383,184 INTL CONTAINER 16.24 17.18 16.24 17.44 16.24 16.24 5,400 87,816 LBC EXPRESS MACROASIA 4.65 4.66 4.59 4.66 4.45 4.65 928,000 4,228,070 METROALLIANCE A 1.85 1.9 1.95 1.95 1.76 1.91 67,000 124,440 1.07 1.12 1.03 1.14 1.03 1.12 262,000 281,480 HARBOR STAR 1.75 1.79 1.72 1.82 1.71 1.79 287,000 505,360 ACESITE HOTEL BOULEVARD HLDG 0.104 0.105 0.108 0.113 0.103 0.104 242,430,000 26,168,610 DISCOVERY WORLD 2.5 2.6 2.5 2.6 2.5 2.6 70,000 175,700 0.52 0.53 0.52 0.54 0.52 0.53 239,000 126,420 WATERFRONT CENTRO ESCOLAR 6.5 6.97 6.98 6.98 6.95 6.95 7,800 54,324 STI HLDG 0.35 0.355 0.34 0.35 0.34 0.35 2,610,000 904,900 5.74 5.75 5.88 5.88 5.6 5.75 120,100 688,228 BERJAYA BLOOMBERRY 5.91 6.1 5.95 6.1 5.84 6.1 3,395,200 20,003,634 LEISURE AND RES 1.45 1.46 1.46 1.46 1.43 1.46 364,000 530,730 PH RESORTS GRP 1.72 1.73 1.75 1.75 1.7 1.72 868,000 1,489,350 0.4 0.405 0.4 0.405 0.4 0.405 1,090,000 440,500 PREMIUM LEISURE PHIL RACING 5.8 5.95 5.8 5.8 5.8 5.8 100 580 ALLHOME 7.3 7.31 7.34 7.34 7.3 7.3 228,500 1,669,190 METRO RETAIL 1.27 1.29 1.3 1.3 1.27 1.27 1,056,000 1,352,370 39.7 39.8 40.4 40.5 39.7 39.7 425,800 17,004,085 PUREGOLD 50.25 50.5 49 50.5 49 50.5 850,700 42,698,455 ROBINSONS RTL PHIL SEVEN CORP 89 94.85 95 95 90 90 71,960 6,479,160 1.15 1.16 1.12 1.16 1.12 1.16 830,000 939,930 SSI GROUP WILCON DEPOT 22.35 22.7 23.2 23.2 22.35 22.35 586,400 13,187,400 APC GROUP 0.335 0.345 0.33 0.345 0.33 0.345 260,000 87,450 EASYCALL 5.16 5.43 5.12 5.43 5.12 5.43 14,000 73,230 437 448 438.2 448 438.2 448 1,580 707,124 GOLDEN MV IPM HLDG 6.54 6.58 6.58 6.58 6.5 6.54 20,600 134,228 PRMIERE HORIZON 1.22 1.23 1.25 1.37 1.19 1.22 33,833,000 43,544,530 SBS PHIL CORP 4.22 4.35 4.22 4.35 4.22 4.35 58,000 245,020

MINING & OIL

ATOK 6.13 6.32 6.1 6.4 6.03 6.12 299,400 1,853,484 1.55 1.56 1.55 1.58 1.55 1.56 3,971,000 6,181,640 APEX MINING 7.15 7.16 7.08 7.23 6.95 7.15 1,605,900 11,428,791 ATLAS MINING BENGUET A 5.12 5.39 5.32 5.47 5.2 5.44 38,800 203,644 BENGUET B 5 5.28 5.2 5.2 5.2 5.2 10,000 52,000 2.75 2.88 2.71 2.88 2.71 2.88 20,000 55,900 CENTURY PEAK 6.16 6.35 6.16 6.4 6.15 6.16 10,000 61,912 DIZON MINES FERRONICKEL 2.36 2.37 2.37 2.37 2.35 2.36 3,553,000 8,369,910 GEOGRACE 0.28 0.3 0.285 0.3 0.28 0.3 120,000 34,250 0.136 0.138 0.139 0.139 0.134 0.136 4,560,000 620,300 LEPANTO A LEPANTO B 0.138 0.14 0.136 0.136 0.136 0.136 70,000 9,520 MANILA MINING A 0.01 0.011 0.011 0.011 0.01 0.011 700,000 7,200 0.01 0.011 0.01 0.011 0.01 0.011 7,600,000 80,200 MANILA MINING B MARCVENTURES 0.96 0.97 0.99 1.01 0.94 0.97 2,161,000 2,104,740 NIHAO 1.23 1.27 1.23 1.24 1.22 1.24 44,000 53,990 NICKEL ASIA 5.83 5.84 5.99 5.99 5.78 5.83 20,015,100 116,918,019 0.38 0.39 0.39 0.39 0.39 0.39 10,000 3,900 OMICO CORP ORNTL PENINSULA 0.92 0.93 0.94 0.96 0.93 0.93 205,000 191,650 PX MINING 5.66 5.69 5.65 5.7 5.51 5.67 1,394,900 7,822,640 SEMIRARA MINING 17.34 17.36 17.1 17.78 17.1 17.36 3,550,200 61,807,436 0.0084 0.0085 0.0084 0.0085 0.0083 0.0085 35,000,000 293,700 UNITED PARAGON ACE ENEXOR 16.7 16.8 16.5 16.84 16.48 16.8 69,300 1,153,202 ORNTL PETROL A 0.011 0.012 0.012 0.012 0.011 0.011 34,900,000 411,400 ORNTL PETROL B 0.011 0.012 0.011 0.011 0.011 0.011 1,500,000 16,500 0.011 0.012 0.011 0.012 0.011 0.011 15,500,000 175,700 PHILODRILL PXP ENERGY 6.15 6.2 6.34 6.34 6.05 6.2 327,800 2,002,527

PREFFERED HOUSE PREF A 100.8 101 101 101 101 101 10,990 1,109,990 AC PREF B2R 506 520 520 520 520 520 520 270,400 44.3 44.8 43.95 44.8 43.95 44.8 19,400 857,880 CEB PREF 100.6 101.4 100.8 100.8 100.5 100.8 14,430 1,454,501 DD PREF FGEN PREF G 103.2 103.5 104.5 104.5 103.5 103.5 8,600 890,200 MWIDE PREF 100.5 100.6 100.4 100.5 100.4 100.5 1,130 113,559 104 106 105.1 106 105 106 1,350 141,830 PNX PREF 3B PNX PREF 4 1,005 1,014 1,007 1,015 1,005 1,015 7,800 7,877,480 PCOR PREF 3B 1,130 1,150 1,150 1,150 1,150 1,150 15 17,250 SMC PREF 2C 75.95 76 76.5 76.5 75.9 76 214,650 16,365,083.50 79 79.3 79.3 79.3 79 79 23,410 1,849,583 SMC PREF 2F SMC PREF 2H 76.2 76.9 76.8 76.9 76.8 76.9 4,000 307,201 SMC PREF 2I 78.1 78.85 78.9 78.9 78.9 78.9 10 789 75.75 76 76 76 75.9 76 34,990 2,659,190 SMC PREF 2J SMC PREF 2K 76.8 76.9 76.9 76.9 76.8 76.8 840 64,515

PHIL. DEPOSITARY RECEIPTS ABS HLDG PDR 10.48 10.5 10.78 10.78 10.5 10.5 171,200 1,797,890 GMA HLDG PDR 12.3 12.4 12.02 12.4 12.02 12.3 465,700 5,714,930

WARRANTS LR WARRANT 0.81 0.82 0.81 0.85 0.72 0.82 14,035,000 11,207,170

-8,580 154,566,950 2,617,940 8,700 10,780 90,600 -3,900 -284,150 -534,600 -1,071,792 -471,620 -17,400 362,150 1,737,510 1,448 3,780 -34,020 -755,930 121,950 -70,250.00 53,680 -1,504,606 -1,050 -25,333,275 57,750 4,905,860 7,076,225 -110,575,565 -963,420 -78,220,385 -541,630 2,497,376 40,000 1,400 12,650.00 -4,423,085 -12,531,380 139,020 -10,260 -9,000 -164,650 -7,950 -151,500 12,238,040 60,200 791,320 -130,000 -1,661,060 -22,795,055 0 -1,669,610 -832,050 154,500 -812,660 -185,098 55,900 -9,600 -192,490 0 44,910 31,715,493 -171,561 -117,576 -311,931 -624,435 10,450 40,200 22,950 -2,307 -1,578,930 9,840 2,900

SMALL & MEDIUM ENTERPRISES ALTUS PROP ITALPINAS KEPWEALTH MERRYMART

18.08 2.08 4.18 3.79

FIRST METRO ETF

100.8

18.12 2.09 4.3 3.8

EXHANGE TRADE FUNDS

102

18.02 2.06 3.77 3.6

18.2 2.1 4.39 3.81

18.02 2.03 3.77 3.59

18.12 2.09 4.3 3.8

36,300 257,000 63,000 7,892,000

657,506 530,790 257,320 29,765,040

367,798 41,200 -117,810 1,460,010

99.8 101.5 99.8 100.8 16,020 1,610,926 182,534

www.businessmirror.com.ph

GERI net income fell 12% to ₧643.28M in Jan-June

G

By VG Cabuag

@villygc

lobal-Estate Resorts Inc. (GERI) said its net income in the first semester fell 12 percent to P643.28 million year-over-year as its hotel and other commercial operations grappled with the economic impact of the pandemic.

Consolidated revenues reached P2.43 billion, some 17 percent lower compared with last year’s P2.91 billion, as the pandemic affected the company’s businesses, particularly its hospitality businesses in Boracay and Tagaytay.

Real estate sales in the first semester reached only P1.8 billion,

down by 16 percent from the previous year, while reservation sales reached P8.6 billion, a record increase of 48 percent compared to last year’s P5.8 billion.

The bulk of these reservation sales during the period came from the horizontal residential developments in Eastland Heights (Antipolo), Bo-

racay Newcoast (Boracay Island) and Alabang West (Las Piñas).

The company also registered strong sales for its prime properties in Southwoods City, Twin Lakes, and Arden Botanical Estate.

The company launched a new village inside Eastland Heights during the first quarter of the year, which is now 97 percent sold.

“The demand for horizontal developments is just overwhelming during this time, and we continue to come up with innovative projects to address this growing need of our clients. As we sell new residential products, we also turn over those that are already completed this year, particularly our projects in Twin Lakes and Hamptons Caliraya.

We are also on track to turn over more completed projects next year.

These are residential lots in Hamptons Caliraya and condominium

units in Boracay Newcoast, and Twin Lakes,” Monica T. Salomon, the company’s president, said.

For the second quarter alone, its income fell more than 11 percent to P320.65 million from last year’s P363.4 million, while revenues dropped by 11 percent to P1.22 billion from the previous year’s P1.38 billion.

Leasing revenues for January to June declined by 45 percent to P190 million as concessions granted to rental partners remained in place.

Revenue from hotel operations slid by 72 percent from last year due to prevailing travel restrictions.

Quarter-on-quarter, real estate sales were flat at P911 million, while rental income dropped by 41 percent.

Meanwhile, hotel operations posted minimal growth, as eased restrictions allowed the partial opening of the company’s hotels in Boracay and Tagaytay.

Grab: Services remain operational

By Lorenz S. Marasigan @lorenzmarasigan

G

rab Philippines assured its users on Monday that it will continue to operate its various services despite the reimposition of the enhanced community quarantine in the National Capital Region (NCR).

Grace Vera Cruz, the company’s country head, said the group is “reaffirming its commitment to supporting Filipinos” by ensuring that its services such as mobility, deliveries, and cashless payments will continue “to operate smoothly and reliably.”

She added that the group is strengthening efforts to make sure that each service is in compliance with health and hygiene standards.

“We believe that by supporting our consumers, partners, and our

broader communities, and doing right by them, we are able to help our kababayans better cope with the challenges that come with another lockdown, support our country’s socio-economic recovery, and create a lasting impact in the lives of many Filipinos who rely on our platform to improve their quality of life,” Vera Cruz said.

She said that GrabCar, GrabFood, GrabMart, and GrabExpress will continue to operate even during ECQ. A number of GrabCar drivers have also been vaccinated to increase protection against Covid-19.

Grab, she added, is also increasing efforts to combat fraud, warning users that they will be blocked from using the service should they do fake orders.

She said Grab will continue to support small and medium businesses through its digital platform.

Saudi’s Tanmiah plans global halal food sales push after IPO

T

anmiah Food Co., Saudi Arabia’s number two poultry producer, has plans to expand its halal segment into new markets after last week’s initial public offering (IPO).

“We are looking to expand not only locally, but regionally and globally too,” spokesman Ahmed Osilan said in an interview, adding that the company is targeting 1.8 billion Muslims around the world with its expansion.

The Riyadh-based manufacturer and distributor raised 402 million riyals ($107 million) in the IPO. Tanmiah has about an 18-percent share of the Saudi poultry market.

“Halal food is becoming a key opportunity for a lot of companies, and by 2025 we should be able to be set for that expansion,” Osilan said.

Tanmiah, which operates mostly in Saudi Arabia with branches in parts of the Middle East and Africa, said it hopes to expand to the United States, Europe, Asia and Latin America, funded by “various financial tools” from both private and government lenders.

The company focuses mostly on producing fresh and frozen chicken and is also considering expansion into other products.

Saudi Arabia’s stock exchange has been the hottest market for IPOs in the Middle East over the past two

years. Tanmiah completed its bookbuilding process for institutional subscriptions with a coverage ratio of 9,534 percent—setting the offer price at the top of its range.

Saudi Fransi Capital was the financial adviser, lead manager, bookrunner, and underwriter.

Prior to its listing, Tanmiah looked at different strategies including mergers, acquisitions, sellouts and other investments, but found the IPO as the “most sustainable answer,” Osilan said.

The Saudi stock exchange has seen a lot of momentum since the listing of Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest energy company, in 2019, he added.

The food distributor, which was able to grow by 20 percent even during virus-induced lockdowns, said it’s targeting a net-zero carbon emission goal in the upcoming years in a sector known to be polluting.

That will come by using waste water to plant 1 million trees in the next five years, and providing 1 billion seeds to consumers to encourage planting, among other initiatives, the company said.

Tanmiah has been a supplier to major fast food chains including McDonald’s Corp., Burger King and Subway Restaurants, among other clients in the region.

On Sunday, Tanmiah shares fell 2.80 riyals to 101. Bloomberg News

mutual funds

August 9, 2021 NAV

One Year Three Year Five Year

per share

Return*

Y-T-D Return

Stock Funds ALFM Growth Fund, Inc. -a

211.13

8.63%

-7.44%

-5.22%

ATRAM Alpha Opportunity Fund, Inc. -a

1.4278

41.3%

-1.56%

0.17%

8.74%

11.82%

-11.57%

-8.01%

-7.17%

Climbs Share Capital Equity Investment Fund Corp. -a 0.7361 10.18%

-7.58% n.a.

-8.43%

First Metro Consumer Fund on MSCI Phils. IMI, Inc. -a 0.7224 8.71%

-6.02% n.a.

-2.59%

First Metro Save and Learn Equity Fund,Inc. -a

-5.26%

-3.51%

-5.32%

6.32%

-8.07%

-7.49% -8.4%

ATRAM Philippine Equity Opportunity Fund, Inc. -a 2.9083

4.6783

First Metro Save and Learn Philippine Index Fund, Inc. -a,4

12.15% 0.696

-7.08%

MBG Equity Investment Fund, Inc. -a

97

24.47%

-4.07% n.a.

PAMI Equity Index Fund, Inc. -a

43.0039

10.48%

-6.05%

-4.24%

-8.2%

Philam Strategic Growth Fund, Inc. -a

454.07

8.22%

-5.55%

-4.53%

-7.14%

Philequity Alpha One Fund, Inc. -a,d,5

1.0643

Philequity Dividend Yield Fund, Inc. -a

1.1235

13.3%

-4.54%

-3.31%

Philequity Fund, Inc. -a

32.6672

12.29%

-4.81%

-3.02%

-6.05%

8.84% n.a. n.a.

-8.04%

Philequity MSCI Philippine Index Fund, Inc. -a

0.8396

23.28% n.a. n.a.

-4.85%

-3.01% -3.83%

Philequity PSE Index Fund Inc. -a

4.4116

11.36%

-5.45%

-3.47%

Philippine Stock Index Fund Corp. -a

738.32

11.21%

-5.36%

-3.6%

-7.92% -7.9%

Soldivo Strategic Growth Fund, Inc. -a

0.6752

12.83%

-8.87%

-6.52%

-6.08%

Sun Life Prosperity Philippine Equity Fund, Inc. -a 3.4083

11%

-7%

-4.59%

-5.95%

Sun Life Prosperity Philippine Stock Index Fund, Inc. -a 0.8427 10.74%

-5.71%

-3.76%

-8.17%

United Fund, Inc. -a

-5.81%

-2.93%

-7.3%

3.0766

9.93%

Exchange Traded Fund First Metro Phil. Equity Exchange Traded Fund, Inc. -a,c

99.1074

11.19%

-5.16%

-3.07% -7.85%

Primarily invested in foreign currency securities $1.2063

13.28%

5.13%

6.46%

0.28%

Sun Life Prosperity World Voyager Fund, Inc. -a $1.8339

ATRAM AsiaPlus Equity Fund, Inc. -b

22.54%

12.22%

12.04%

9.63%

Balanced Funds Primarily invested in Peso securities ATRAM Dynamic Allocation Fund, Inc. -a

1.656

5.4%

-1.04%

-2.25%

-0.76%

ATRAM Philippine Balanced Fund, Inc. -a

2.1536

5.65%

-2.41%

-2.22%

-5.77%

First Metro Save and Learn Balanced Fund Inc. -a 2.5279

6%

-1.57%

-1.32%

-3.77%

First Metro Save and Learn F.O.C.C.U.S. Dynamic Fund, Inc. -a,1 0.1853

1.42% n.a. n.a. -6.7%

NCM Mutual Fund of the Phils., Inc. -a

1.9055

4.45%

0.36%

-0.48%

PAMI Horizon Fund, Inc. -a

3.5918

3.78%

-0.7%

-1.75%

-5.18%

Philam Fund, Inc. -a

16.0819

4.26%

-0.59%

-1.72%

-5.05%

Solidaritas Fund, Inc. -a

2.0052

5.74%

-1.97%

-1.36%

-4.25%

Sun Life of Canada Prosperity Balanced Fund, Inc. -a 3.4385 6.38%

-2.89%

-2.59%

-3.77%

3.46% n.a. n.a.

-5.56%

Sun Life Prosperity Achiever Fund 2028, Inc. -a,d 0.9657

-2.98%

Sun Life Prosperity Achiever Fund 2038, Inc. -a,d 0.8709

5.14% n.a. n.a.

-8.25%

Sun Life Prosperity Achiever Fund 2048, Inc. -a,d 0.854

6.54% n.a. n.a.

-8.48%

Sun Life Prosperity Dynamic Fund, Inc. -a

7.41%

-3.76%

0.8543

-3.59%

-3.02%

Primarily invested in foreign currency securities Cocolife Dollar Fund Builder, Inc. -a

$0.03851

-3.29%

3.01%

1.32%

-1.56%

PAMI Asia Balanced Fund, Inc. -b

$1.1071

5.59%

3.27%

3.55%

-3.75%

Sun Life Prosperity Dollar Advantage Fund, Inc. -a $4.8064 16.69%

9.37%

8.42%

6.5%

Sun Life Prosperity Dollar Wellspring Fund, Inc. -a,3 $1.2293 7.46%

5.48%

4.59%

2.26%

0.58%

Bond Funds Primarily invested in Peso securities ALFM Peso Bond Fund, Inc. -a

373.23

1.56%

3.15%

2.44%

ATRAM Corporate Bond Fund, Inc. -a

1.9264

-1.06%

1.15%

0.24%

1.37%

Cocolife Fixed Income Fund, Inc. -a

3.2356

1.18%

3.58%

4.26%

0.65%

Ekklesia Mutual Fund Inc. -a

2.2707

-1.59%

2.3%

1.26%

-1.1%

First Metro Save and Learn Fixed Income Fund,Inc. -a 2.447

0.46%

3.34%

1.7%

-0.25%

Philam Bond Fund, Inc. -a

4.4982

-3.85%

4.48%

1.13%

-2.94%

Philam Managed Income Fund, Inc. -a,6

1.3172

0.93%

3.96%

2.68%

-0.3%

Philequity Peso Bond Fund, Inc. -a

3.9869

0.64%

4.54%

1.83%

-0.35%

Soldivo Bond Fund, Inc. -a

1.0415

0.26%

4.92%

1.57%

-0.05%

Sun Life of Canada Prosperity Bond Fund, Inc. -a 3.223

1.25%

5.23%

2.15%

0.53%

0.3%

4.57%

1.49%

0%

Sun Life Prosperity GS Fund, Inc. -a

1.755

Primarily invested in foreign currency securities ALFM Dollar Bond Fund, Inc. -a

$487.38

1.84%

3.17%

2.13%

0.73%

ALFM Euro Bond Fund, Inc. -a

Є220.44

1.65%

1.05%

0.88%

0.57%

ATRAM Total Return Dollar Bond Fund, Inc. -b $1.2052

-5.87%

-3.34%

2.57%

1.38%

First Metro Save and Learn Dollar Bond Fund, Inc. -a $0.0262 -1.5%

1.85%

0.86%

-1.5%

PAMI Global Bond Fund, Inc -b

$1.0602

-3.36%

0.81%

-0.86%

-2.97%

Philam Dollar Bond Fund, Inc. -a

$2.5312

0.26%

5.22%

1.93%

-0.17%

Philequity Dollar Income Fund Inc. -a

$0.06306

3.18%

3.57%

2.1%

1.19%

-1.9%

3.44%

0.78%

-0.74%

Sun Life Prosperity Dollar Abundance Fund, Inc. -a $3.1996

Money Market Funds Primarily invested in Peso securities ALFM Money Market Fund, Inc. -a

2.54%

0.52%

First Metro Save and Learn Money Market Fund, Inc. -a 1.054 1.01% n.a. n.a.

130.48

0.56%

Sun Life Prosperity Money Market Fund, Inc. -a 1.3073

1.42% 1.63%

2.99% 2.8%

2.55%

0.83%

Primarily invested in foreign currency securities Sun Life Prosperity Dollar Starter Fund, Inc. -a $1.0581

1.09%

1.62% n.a.

0.54%

Feeder Funds Primarily invested in Peso securities Sun Life Prosperity World Equity Index Feeder Fund, Inc. -a,d,7 1.3383

30.45% n.a. n.a. 18.48%

Primarily invested in foreign currency securities ALFM Global Multi-Asset Income Fund Inc. -b,d,2 $0.99

4.21% n.a. n.a.

1.02%

a - NAVPS as of the previous banking day. b - NAVPS as of two banking days ago. c - Listed in the PSE. d - in Net Asset Value per Unit (NAVPU).

1 - Launch date is September 28, 2019. 2 - Launch date is November 15, 2019. 3 - Adjusted due to stock dividend issuance last October 9, 2019.

4 - Renaming was approved by the SEC last October 12, 2018 (formerly, One Wealthy Nation Fund, Inc.). 5 - Launch date is December 09, 2019.

6 - Re-classified into a Bond Fund starting February 21, 2020 (Formerly a Money Market Fund).

7 - Launch date is July 6, 2020.

"While we endeavor to keep the information accurate, the Philippine Investment Funds Association (PIFA) and its members make no warranties as to the correctness of the newspaper’s publication and assume no liability or responsibility for any error or omissions. You may visit http://www. pifa.com.ph to see the latest NAVPS/NAVPU."

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Banking&Finance BusinessMirror

Editor: Dennis D. Estopace • Tuesday, August 10, 2021

B3

Lockdown puts dollar-bonds launch in limbo

S

By Bernadette D. Nicolas

@BNicolasBM

MALL lenders may have to hold on to their cash as the Bureau of the Treasury (BTr) cancelled the planned launch this month of the first-ever Retail Dollar Bonds (RDBs) following the re-imposition of stricter lockdown in the National Capital Region and several areas in the country.

While National Treasurer Rosalia V. De Leon told reporters last Monday the RDBs would still be auctioned off this year; but she cannot tell

exactly when.

De Leon said they “will adjust” the launch because of the enhanced community quarantine

Investing has a deeper meaning

A

FTER understanding your risk profile, its definition and the different types of financial instruments, it would be better to gain more investment knowledge before actually doing it.

Your financial status need not be on a highly stable level. Your willingness and determination to achieve financial stability will lead to your financial peace. It is not about how much you earn but it is how you manage your finances.

Allow me to give you some idea on how to invest in yourself.

1. After setting up your cash flow, have enough savings that would be enough to start your investment.

Attend free or discounted seminars that have a high value. There are a lot of seminars that offering for free.

Your capital would be only your time to search for it and your willingness to attend.

Reading books about investments would also be helpful.

2. Make a firm decision to invest your money. Make sure to know the flow, the returns, and the terms of your investment. Reaching your financial goals lowers your stress level and gives you a sense of fulfillment.

3. It is also advisable to withdraw the income or interest-only from your investment. It would allow your investment to have continuously earned. It is your choice to re-invest the earnings, resulting in its exponential income flow.

Let me share with you my personal experiences in attending seminars.

I used to look for a companion in attending some training, simply because I do not want to be alone. I ask some of my friends and classmates to come with me but in the end, no one was available.

One thing that I learned was when you depend on other people’s availability, you will lose your flexibility. When you are dependent on God, you will realize His special plans for you. The unique gifts that He bestowed upon you are designate to be used for His specific calling for you.

I have been called to pursue financial planning while my friends are called to evangelize, sing or teach.

That is the reason why I cannot rely on my friends to join me in the financial seminars. I had to rely on God, on His plan, and the journey that He wants me to take in able to fulfill His assignment. So, I decided to attend the financial training alone when I learned new ideas.

When I suddenly remember my

that began August 6 and they will continue to “monitor market developments.”

“Not postpone since we have not officially set launch date. Of course, plan is to do it this year,” the Treasurer said in a message to reporters.

De Leon earlier said August is the month for they plann to hold the auction for the maiden offering of RDBs.

Support

IN a separate statement, the Treasury said several banks have already expressed support for the issuance of RDBs and agreed to set the minimum initial deposit and average daily maintaining balance requirement to zero for those who would want to purchase the US-dollar denominated securities. This means that banks would do away with their current practice of requiring depositors to open dollar accounts

@BcuaresmaBM

personal finance friends, hoping that they would also hear the lessons, God reminded me that it is His main reason for sending me to that seminar, that He will use me to share the things that I have learned.

God prepares and equips us to fulfil His calling. He perfectly knows that we will need the learning, experience, and even lessons from failures to help other people succeed without having them undergo the same experiences or more severe failures.

I continued to attend different seminars that help me get a deeper understanding of God’s plan for my life. In the recent forums I attended, I realized that all the resources that you need to accomplish your mission are already at your hands. God had already given you the seed like your talent, resources, food, clothing, house, vehicle, everything that you need.

Those were provided already to you as the seed. What are we going to do with the seeds?

If someone gives you seeds, you need to plant them, water them daily, and put them where there is enough sunlight and air. You also have to do the same thing to the seed that God had given you. Plant God’s seed into good ground and take care of it.

This entails being a good steward of the resources that God had entrusted you. Taking care of the seed-like your talent means nourishing it by feeding your mind with the right learning and allowing it to grow to bear fruit.

The fruit will be harvested and shared with other people who also need to feed on that fruit.

In that way, you become a vessel: growing that seed starts within you.

Start investing in yourself.

“It is good to enjoy the income/allowance if you have spent it on your family, friends, and love ones, but do not forget yourself. Remember that the best time to invest in your future is now! The keyword is to “balance” between enjoyment and investing for your future.”

Rodora Mendoza is a registered financial planner of RFP Philippines. To learn more about personal-financial planning, attend the 91st RFP program this August 2021. To inquire, e-mail info@ rfp.ph or text at 0917-6248110.

T-Bills

MEANWHILE, the BTr fully awarded on Monday about P15 billion in Treasury Bills (T-bills) as rates across all tenors moved sideways.

In a message to BusinessMirror, De Leon attributed the mixed results to the easing of the country’s inflation rate to 4 percent in July as well as Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ (BSP) statement that a reserve requirement ratio (RRR) cut is on the table.

However, BSP Governor Benjamin E. Diokno said in a televised interview that it is “untimely” to reduce the RRR now and raise interest rates. The BSP is set to hold its next policy meeting on Thursday.

The auction was more than thrice oversubscribed, with total bids reaching P54.9 billion.

Rates

THE 91-day T-bills fetched an av-

erage of 1.064 percent, up by 1.1 basis points from 1.053 percent previously. Total bids for the tenor amounted to P17.2 billion, more than three times the P5-billion offering.

For the 182-day T-bills, its average rate stood at 1.407 percent, inching up by 0.6 basis points from 1.401 percent. Tenders for the debt paper also hit P17.2 billion, thrice the P5billion offering.

In terms of the 364-day Tbills, it posted an average rate of 1.625 percent, slipping by 0.7 basis points from 1.632 percent.

The tenor attracted P20.4 billion in total bids, four times the P5billion offering.

For August, the Treasury has set to borrow P200 billion from the local debt market, slightly lower than the P235 billion it programmed in July.

BPI Direct BanKo, IFC ink deal to aid micro-entrepreneurs

By Bianca Cuaresma

Rodora Mendoza

with a minimum balance of $500 to $1,000 before being able to invest in the RDBs. The Treasury said the issuance of the RDBs—the first onshore USdollar denominated bonds to be issued in amounts as low as $300—is expected to help the government raise funds for the Philippine government’s Covid-19 recovery and resilience programs.

The potential RDB offering is also seen to be far more accessible than the traditional US dollar-denominated global bonds issued by the Philippine government which require a minimum subscription of $200,000.

Aside from offering the RDBs at a small minimum investment amount, De Leon said the bonds will be available through the BTr’s online ordering facility, Bonds.PH mobile app and the Overseas Filipino Bank mobile application.

B

PI Direct BanKo Inc., the microfinance arm of the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI), inked an agreement with the International Finance Corp. (IFC) to collaborate on new banking products for the self-employed micro-entrepreneurs (SEMEs).

The bank said in a statement on Monday that its president, Jerome B. Minglana signed a Memorandum of Agreement with IFC Manager for Advisory Services, Asia and Pacific, Qamar Saleem.

“We trust that the technical expertise and global experience of IFC will help BPI Direct BanKo develop and implement relevant products and services that will benefit Filipino SEMEs in the short term and in the long run,” Minglana said.

According to the statement, the MOA’s main goal is to identify additional opportunities to help selfemployed micro-entrepreneurs and to implement new products and services in order to bolster the recovery from the pandemic.

Micro-businesses account for 89 percent of companies and 30 percent of jobs in the country. However, they

have been disproportionately impacted by Covid-19 due to factors such as the lack of financing options and a heavy reliance on domestic demand.

According to a Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) survey most micro, small and medium enterprises in the country lacked funds immediately after the outbreak of the virus in the country.

“The challenges in gaining access to credit for micro-entrepreneurs and in granting credit for lenders like BanKo have been further exacerbated by the pandemic. BanKo, instead of being discouraged by the

developments, is even more motivated to provide financial products and services to the unbanked and underbanked by innovating and by partnering with IFC, which is also a staunch supporter of micro-entrepreneurs and women in business,” Minglana said.

“We look forward to supporting BanKo’s efforts to grow its rural footprint and customer base through capacity building in risk management and digital lending, which will help improve access to finance for Filipinos and promote a more inclusive recovery from Covid-19,” Saleem said.

BSP opens Anti-Money Laundering Council Satellite Office

B

Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Governor Benjamin E. Diokno (center) leads the ribbon-cutting ceremony formally opening the Anti-Money Laundering Council Satellite Office at the New Mint Plant Building, BSP Security Plant Complex in Quezon City last July 27. CREDIT: BSP

ANGKO Sentral ng Pilipinas Governor Benjamin E. Diokno formally opened the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) Satellite Office at the New Mint Plant Building, BSP Security Plant Complex in Quezon City last July 27.

Apart from its close proximity to law enforcement and intelligence agencies for easier coordination, the satellite office will accommodate the AMLC’s additional personnel, a statement from the BSP said.

“This move is a step toward accomplishing the Philippines’s ‘International Co-operation Review Group Action Plan’ items, particularly, on increasing the AMLC’s ‘human resources to ensure that it maintains effective operational analysis capacities and facilitates timely access by law enforcement agencies,’” the statement added.

“Addressing all action plan items would ultimately result in the country’s exit from the list of ‘jurisdictions under increased monitoring’ or the grey list,” the BSP said.

Gold claws back some ground after flash crash

G

OLD recouped most of its losses from a sharp plunge at the start of Asian trading, but remains under pressure as bets mount that the US Federal Reserve may soon start paring back its massive monetary stimulus.

Spot bullion fell more than 4 percent early Monday, dropping $60 in minutes, as the selloff following Friday’s better-than-expected employment data accelerated at the start of trading. Gold likely crashed lower after breaching a technical support level and triggering stop losses, all on a day when liquidity was low due to holidays in Japan and Singapore, said Marcus Garvey, head of metals strategy at Macquarie Group Ltd.

While prices bounced back from the initial drop, gold is still under strain. A close at current levels would be the lowest since April after the strong jobs numbers from the US last week helped break the metal out of a weeks-long trading range around $1,800 an ounce. Inflationadjusted Treasury yields spiked on Friday’s data, putting pressure on non-interest bearing gold.

Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan’s comments that the central bank should start tapering its asset purchases sooner rather than later further fanned concerns that stimulus will be reined in.

Bullion was down 1 percent at $1,745.91 an ounce by 9:45 a.m. in London, after earlier touching

its lowest since March, and coming close to its lowest in more than a year. In the futures market, over 3,000 contracts changed hands in a one-minute window—equivalent to over $500 million notional value— as activity surged in a typically quiet trading period.

Gold “recovered in the course of trading as bargain hunters took advantage of the low price to enter the market,” said Falkmar Butgereit, senior trader at refiner Heraeus Metals Germany GmbH & Co. KG. Still, “many investors now fear that the Fed will soon start tapering bond purchases, raising expectations of interest rate hikes in 2022/2023.”

Gold’s drop sparked an unusu-

ally large amount of futures trading in Asia.

Attention will turn to fresh economic data later this week to gauge the health of the recovery from coronavirus, as well as inflation. The consumer price index due Wednesday is expected to show a smaller increase than the previous month as pressures on supply chains caused by reopening ease. That may lend support to the view held by the Federal Reserve that inflationary pressures will prove transitory.

In other markets, silver lost 1.8 percent after earlier touching the lowest since December. Platinum declined while palladium was steady.

The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index was little changed. Bloomberg News

A sweet spot in emerging debt has Goldman warily seeking yield for bonds

T

HE hunt for yield is back for investors in emerging markets, albeit with a cautious twist.

Quasi-sovereign bonds, notes from companies at least partially owned by a government, are in vogue for firms including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Barings LLC that are seeking strong returns amid lots of economic uncertainty.

This debt, which includes some credit risk, pays more than sover-

eign notes and is often considered safer than pure corporate bonds. A Bloomberg Barclays gauge of emerging-market company and quasi-sovereign dollar debt returned 5.7 percent since the virus shuttered cities in early March 2020, compared with a 3.3 percent return from a comparable index tracking strictly government notes.

Investors are weighing concern about the delta variant’s impact on the world’s nascent growth recovery.

Those worries have driven down yields, igniting interest in assets that can offer compelling returns alongside risk mitigation.

EM quasi-sovereign bonds offer wider spreads than pre-pandemic

“Quasis are often a high-beta version of the sovereign,” said Sara Grut, a senior strategist at Goldman Sachs in London. “If you like sovereigns for the carry, it makes sense to look at

some of the quasis.”

While the firm’s analysis shows the median quasi-sovereign bond spread with a yield pickup of 80 basis points, energy-linked notes from state-owned enterprises such as Kazakhstan’s KazMunayGas and Azerbaijan’s Southern Gas Corridor could offer even more.

Mexico’s state-owned oil company Petroleos Mexicanos also looks cheap and benefits from its backing

by the administration, said Omotunde Lawal, London-based head of emerging-market corporate debt at Barings. Dollar bonds due in 2050 from Pemex, as the driller is known, yield about 8.1 percent compared with the 4.1 percent yield of Mexican government bonds of the same maturity, according to data compiled

by Bloomberg.

“You get even more comfort from the fact that it’s government-owned

and very strategic to the Mexican government,” Lawal said. “It’s really about looking at it as a spread over the sovereign.” Political risk is heating up from Latin America—where Peru elected a leftist leader—to China, where recent crackdowns have hit borrowers including state-owned enterprises as policy makers double down on efforts to instill financial discipline and curb moral hazard in credit markets. Bloomberg News

B4

Tuesday, August 10, 2021 • Editor: Gerard S. Ramos

Art

BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Today’s Horoscope

By Eugenia Last

z

CELEBRITIES BORN ON THIS DAY: Jacob Latimore, 25; Josh Gates, 44; Antonio Banderas, 61; Rosanna Arquette, 62.

Happy Birthday: Productivity is the name of the game, not unnecessary change. How you go about getting ahead physically, emotionally and financially will make a difference regarding the influence you have on your life and the lives of others. Think outside the box, and take the path with the least resistance. If you use intelligence and insight, you will overcome any setback you encounter. Your numbers are 7, 18, 23, 27, 34, 38, 45.

❶ ❶

done, do, does, did by Nilo Ilarde at Underground Gallery INSTAGRAM. COM/UNDERGROUND. GALLERY

❷ Ugmad by

Michael Delmo at Art Cube Gallery

❷

ECQ 3.0: Gallery shutdowns, show extensions for Manila art spaces

ARTCUBEPHILIPPINES. COM

T

HE latest omnibus guidelines released on August 6 by the IATF-EID (Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases) enumerate the essential establishments allowed to operate under the highest lockdown orders implemented in the National Capital Region. As was the case during the previous two enhanced community quarantine periods in NCR, not included in list are museums, galleries, and cultural shows and exhibits.

Here, we look at the plans of some Metro Manila galleries over the next two weeks, as announced on their respective social-media channels. n ART CUBE GALLERY: The physical space of Art Cube Gallery will be closed throughout the entire duration of the ECQ and will resume operations on August 21.

Art Cube’s exhibitions, however, will continue

to run online on its user-friendly web site (www. artcubephilippines.com). In focus is a trifecta of psychedelic solo exhibitions: The World That Was by Japs Antido, Ugmad by Michael Delmo and 86,400 by PJ Cabanalan.

For inquiries, call 8816-7758 or e-mail info@ artcubephilippines.com. n ARTE BETTINA: The gallery’s Greenbelt space will likewise be closed until August 20 and will open on regular hours on August 21.

Following its three-artist exhibition, titled, Eterno Clasico—which featured Toti Cerda, Gerry Joquico Jr. and Otto Neri—Arte Bettina also announced that its next show will be available for viewing online.

Contact 0916-6474984 or e-mail artebettinagallery@ gmail.com for more information. n LEON GALLERY: Makati-based auction house and exhibition space Leon Gallery postponed the second solo exhibition of Enzo Razon, titled Songs.

The show, in partnership with DF Art Agency, was originally planned for an August 6 opening but will now be moved “to a later date.” n MONO8 GALLERY: Another art space that announced closure until August 20 was MONO8 Gallery, located at Casa Tesoro along A. Mabini Street in Ermita, Manila. Their post, however, hinted at something more.

“Operations will resume once ECQ is lifted as we look forward to welcoming you to our new location.”

For inquiries, contact 0917-4968752 or info@

mono8gallery.com. n MO_SPACE: MO_Space will be closed until August 20 as their current exhibitions will continue until August 29.

The lineup includes Something of Everything in Everything by Elaine Roberto-Navas in the Main Gallery, and Drawing the Farthest Land by Katrina Bello in Gallery 2.

MO_Space has also announced its shows for next month. Painters Pope Bacay and Nicole Tee will be featured in the Main Gallery, while mixed-media artist Marionne Contreras will occupy Gallery 2. n UNDERGROUND GALLERY: Located at the basement of Makati Cinema Square, Underground Gallery will be closed for the entire duration of the enhanced community quarantine.

Subsequently, the gallery decided to extend its ongoing exhibition that was scheduled to end on August 13 to August 28. In done, do, does, did, conceptual artist Nilo Ilarde presents thoughtprovoking sets of collages, “salvaged objects” and emptied paint tubes to advance the dematerialization of painting.

“The oldest known paintings are approximately 40,000 years old and the oldest bronze statue dates back to the 2500 BCE,” the artist states in the exhibition notes. “My question is can my work still raise provocative issues about art?”

For more information, contact 0927-5118489 via Viber or e-mail underground12615@gmail.com. n

NYC Chinatown museum reopens with anti-Asian racism exhibit

By Deepti Hajela | The Associated Press NEW YORK—A New York City museum dedicated to telling Chinese American history marked its reopening to the public on Wednesday, with an exhibit on Asian Americans and racism that it curated partially through submissions gathered during the pandemic and a surge of anti-Asian bias incidents around the country.

The opening was a long time coming for the Museum of Chinese in America, not only because of the pandemic shutdown of over a year but because of a fire that ravaged though the space where its collection was housed in January 2020. Luckily, most of the collection was salvaged.

Looking back, there was a question of “how were we going to survive, but we kept pivoting,” said Nancy Yao Maasbach, the museum’s president.

That included a lot of virtual programming, including the call for submissions that became part of Responses: Asian American Voices Resisting the Tides of

Racism, opening to the public on Thursday.

In the exhibition, the outer walls are a running history of sorts, a timeline showcasing the racism and bigotry that’s been turned toward Asian and Asian Americans throughout their generations in the US. They touch on the treatment of the earliest Asian immigrant communities, how stereotypes connecting them and disease have a long history, to more recent issues like the treatment of Middle Eastern and South Asian communities in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

The anti-Asian bias of the pandemic is on display, with a timeline including top government officials using anti-Asian slurs as names for the coronavirus and blaming China for its existence.

There’s also a listing of various attacks that had Asian victims, like the shootings at spa businesses in Georgia in March, where six women of Asian descent were among the eight people killed.

In the center of the show are items collected by the museum showing how Asian Americans have

tried to push back against bias in the past year, like photographer Mike Keo’s series of images of Asian Americans sharing their identities with the hashtag, #IAMNOTAVIRUS. Another piece is a collection of yellow whistles, which visitors are encouraged to take. Dr. Agnes Hsu-Tang and Oscar Tang founded the Yellow Whistle Project this year, offering the items as a security measure in case help is needed and making them yellow in a reference to how the color has been weaponized as a xenophobic slur against Asian Americans.

It was important to include both the history and the pandemic-related material, said Herb Tam, curator and director of exhibits at the museum.

“We felt like even though the submissions since April 2020 were really wonderful...it wouldn’t have been enough,” he said, and they wanted the exhibition to “make people aware of how this is not new, the way that Asians have been made to feel foreign, or the way we have been scapegoated for a disease.”

a

ARIES (March 21-April 19): You’ll get the most out of what you do for others. Speak up, offer suggestions and call on people you know can help you get your plans moving in a positive direction.

Words matter, so be precise. Present facts and negotiate passionately. HHH

b

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Get things done on time. Too much talk and not enough action will make it difficult to gain support.

Micromanage every step you want to take, and you’ll make a lasting impression. Take a moment to share something special with someone you love. HHHHH

c

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Think matters through, and talk with someone you respect.

Getting a well-rounded view before you make your next move will give you the confidence to forge ahead without hesitation. Your ability to influence others will encourage success. HH

d

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Resisting change will hold you back. Engage in chatter about what’s happening. Information will put your mind at ease and make a transition more manageable for you to accept. Look for the positive in whatever situation you face, and you will prosper. HHHH

e

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Refuse to let anyone stifle your plans or come between you and someone who has always supported you.

Indulgence will set you back. Consider every angle, ask questions and verify the information. Find a unique way to save. HHH

f

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Take pride in what you do. Accept responsibility and honor your promises. The returns for quality work and living up to your word will be surprisingly worth every minute you spend perfecting what you do and how you live and treat others. HHH

g

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Do what you can to make a difference. The suggestions you make and the help you offer will bring about changes that will make your life easier. A chance to engage in a conference or event will lead to new friendships and beginnings. HHH

h

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Move in a direction that suits you. You’ll miss your chance to create a solid position for yourself if you follow someone else. It’s time to look out for No. 1 and engage in what’s best for you. Live life your way.

HHHH

i

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Watch what others do, and stand up for your rights. You’ll be offered false insight into what’s happening with a friend or relative. Get the facts before you offer to help someone who is in the wrong. Honesty is the best policy. HH

j

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): You’ll find a unique way to increase your money, improve your health or combat someone trying to take advantage of you. An emotional shift will help you improve the way you live and your relationships with loved ones. HHHHH

k

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Don’t lose sight of what you are trying to accomplish.

You’ll find the right balance to help you take advantage of an opportunity without dismantling what you’ve worked so hard to build. A steady pace forward will lead to stability. HHH

l

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Be creative, and you’ll find a way to please others. Work alongside someone who gets what you are trying to do and shares your beliefs. What you achieve will change the way others treat you. A personal adjustment looks promising. HHH Birthday Baby: You are meticulous, inquiring and passionate You are hardworking and energetic.

‘hot meal’ by adam wagner The Universal Crossword/Edited by David Steinberg

ACROSS 1 Alarm clock toggle 5 Competes in a musical battle 9 Gently urge 13 Moana demigod 14 2, 4, 6, 8 and so on 16 Good engine noise 17 Fizzling noise 18 Treat with a hole 19 Capital of Latvia 20 The chicken thief tried to ___ 23 Delight 24 Chatter 25 Getting on in years 26 Ones who eat a fully plant-based diet 28 Ibiza, por ejemplo 30 Founding Father Thomas 32 Got an A+ on, perhaps 34 The whiskey thief tried to ___ 39 Italian lawn bowling 41 Shape of Martin Luther King Jr.’s moral universe 42 Arabian capital whose name has three A’s

3 The chocolate thief tried to ___ 4 46 Apartment payment 47 Goes up 48 Network point 50 Sycophant 53 Camera initials 54 What holds water?

57 Get on in years 58 The dessert thief tried to ___ 62 Politician Andrew 64 Device with tuners 65 “Handling that right now!”

66 “Er, uh-uh” 67 Hangs out in the backyard, say?

68 Airport area 69 Little bird’s sound 70 Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, for one 71 Places for soaks DOWN 1 Great way to be rewarded 2 Crime group 3 Overly complimentary article 4 Softball glove 5 Warning sign 6 Not touch with a ten-foot pole

7 Ivy in the Keystone State, familiarly 8 Comfy 9 Chest-pumping skill: Abbr.

10 Board whose name combines two words for “yes” 11 Alphabetically first noble gas 12 Inside looks?

15 Sugar substitute 21 “You’ve got mail!” company 22 Tears apart 27 Butler of “300” 29 Camera memory chip 30 City of Love...and the Louvre 31 The basics 32 Core components?

33 Foldable bed 35 Leaf-gathering tool 36 “This 3 p.m. crash is hitting me hard!”

37 Photographer Goldin 38 Kit ___ 40 Poet T.S. 44 Loki’s home, in Marvel movies 45 George Carlin became the first one in 1975 49 Catan resource

0 Easy basketball shot 5 51 Athlete’s best effort 52 ___ alla vodka 53 Pigpens 55 Dog breed from Japan 56 Doles (out) 59 Mario ___ (racing game) 60 Falco of The Sopranos 61 Gear teeth 63 Org. symbolized by an elephant Solution to today’s puzzle:

Show BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Editor: Gerard S. Ramos

• Tuesday, August 10, 2021

B5

Q&A: Barbra Streisand remixes her past for ‘Release Me 2’ TEN-year service awardee Victoria Camille Tulad-Rosales, GMA News and Public Affairs senior news correspondent

GMA Network Chairman and CEO Atty. Felipe L. Gozon

GMA Network service awardees share thoughts on being a ‘Kapuso’ IT is no secret that behind every company’s success is a group of dedicated people who share the same passion and goals. Spanning 71 years in the broadcast industry, GMA Network (www.gmanetwork.com) is well aware of this fact. Its proven track record of providing topnotch news and entertainment to Filipinos here and abroad speaks volumes about its stability as a company. In turn, the country’s leading broadcast company celebrates and recognizes the loyalty of its employees via the GMA Network Service Awards.

During the network’s annual General Assembly held virtually on June, over 400 employees were named Service Awardees for their tenure, dedication and hard work, and were awarded certificates of recognition and cash tokens.

For many employees, having the chance to be part of GMA is not just a dream come true but also a great opportunity that enables them to touch other people’s lives and make a difference. “I will always be grateful to GMA when it took a gamble on a fresh graduate like me more than a decade ago. I have immensely grown as a person, and I look forward to learning more as I continue living this dream,” shared 10-year service awardee Victoria Camille Tulad-Rosales, senior news correspondent from GMA News and Public Affairs.

Being part of the network’s regional arm GMA Regional TV has also allowed five-year service awardee Justine Jomento to discover her potential.

“I’m grateful for the opportunity that GMA Regional TV has given me for the past five years to work with the best team. I appreciate the trust and guidance of my bosses. They brought a huge impact to my professional growth which motivates me to work better,” said the Events and Promo Specialist from GMA Regional TV Iloilo. “I am forever grateful for the endless opportunities to learn through my job.”

Victoria’s and Justine’s are just two of the many stories of individuals who started as novices in the industry but have now evolved into career professionals.

In the face of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, GMA made sure to protect its work force. At the height of the enhanced community quarantine, the network provided PPEs, meals, and transportation assistance to its employees who needed to report to work.

Covid-19 tests were also made available as needed.

GMA also implemented flexible work arrangements and provisions to enable working from home, hazard pays and cash advances, as well as continued comprehensive health coverage which extends to medicine allowances (including vitamins during this pandemic) for employees and their respective families.

Taking part in helping the country achieve herd immunity, GMA kicked off the inoculation drive for its work force where it provided employees free Moderna vaccines. This voluntary offering enables them to continue providing the network’s brand of public service while being protected against Covid-19. The first batch, which began recently, was administered per priority category.

Last but definitely not the least, proudly wearing the GMA badge is no less than Atty. Felipe L. Gozon who has been serving as the company’s chair and CEO for 20 years now.

“GMA was blessed by the Lord because not only did we remain standing, but we remained strong and thriving. I personally witnessed the triumphant story of GMA as it became No. 1 in all indicators—ratings, revenues, and reach. This was, of course, made possible through the joint efforts of every Kapuso for their dedication and hard work. I thank and congratulate the service awardees from five years to 30 years. On behalf of the management, I assure our loyal Kapuso that we will continue to give only the best for our people as they truly are our best assets.”

B

By Glenn Gamboa The Associated Press

Barbra Streisand

arbra Streisand likes to get things just right. As impressive as her award-winning superstar career as a singer and actress is, her success as a director and producer is groundbreaking. Until Chloe Zhao won best director at the Golden Globes this year for Nomadland, Streisand was the only woman ever to win that award, a feat she accomplished in 1983 for Yentl.

During the pandemic, Streisand, like so many of us, suddenly had some much-needed time to take on new projects—including her iPhone settings.

“My name was always coming up as ‘Barbara with three As,’” she said. “You’re supposed to be a smartphone! How come you can’t get my name right?”

After famously calling Apple CEO Tim Cook to get Siri to pronounce her last name right—no Z sound— Streisand learned to override auto-correction with some advice from her assistant.

Tackling some previously unreleased songs from her past took a bit more work, but fans get to hear the results when her new album Release Me 2 arrives on Friday. The Associated Press spoke with Streisand, 79, about her new album and life during the pandemic.

The interview was edited for clarity and length.

“Be Aware” sounds like you wrote it last year. It sounds like advice for helping people through the pandemic.

I was talking at that time (1971) about the Vietnam War. That’s what I was thinking about. And hunger has always been a problem in the world. So many things are still a problem—homelessness for children.

The world has changed a lot for the better, but a lot has remained the same. And it’s amazing how when I was mixing this thinking how relevant it was to today’s world.

Today’s production technology improved “Once You’ve Been in Love,” which you recorded in one take in the 1970s.

I wanted to sing it in the middle of an orchestra— feel that experience of being right there. Of course, they forgot to put baffles behind me so you couldn’t edit it then. You couldn’t raise one element of the orchestra. But now what’s fun for me is it’s like we’re conducting the orchestra. When I was working on it with my engineer, Jochem van der Saag, on the iPad during Covid, it was so much fun to have an engineer who could actually add congas or a marimba or whatever.

I was surprised by the radio remix he did for the new single “Sweet Forgiveness.”

That’s the one with the beat.

Yes. What did you think of it?

I liked it. I like the original better. It loses some of its drama by being more contemporary, but it

works for radio now.

Right. I have no idea about that kind of thing.

I mean the record company liked it or wanted me to do it, I guess. So I did it, but my favorite is the orchestration as it was.

Do you like the idea of kind of trying something new and seeing how it turns out?

Yeah. But you know, it’s not my primary focus now. I’ve been doing this book—I started writing my journals in 1999 in long hand because I never learned how to type and now I wish I did.

Did you spend most of the pandemic working on the book?

I signed a book deal in 2014 and it was supposed to be done in two years. (Laughs.) I’m long overdue and my book is 824 pages at the moment and it’s not finished. I’ll look for any other reason than to write

about my life. It’s like “been there, done that.” But during the pandemic I caught up a lot.

What is your process like?

I get up in the morning. My husband (James Brolin) and I may trade stocks and then I work on my book.

Never had to dress up for anybody. It was kind of delicious to walk around my gardens and rearrange certain things. But basically, it was about writing the book.

Are you ready to go back into the world now?

Not really. I like the privacy. And now look at it again, this surge because people don’t want to get vaccinated. It doesn’t make any sense. I’m so sad for all the people that have died needlessly over the last two years. I mean it’s just horrific. I just have to have faith in goodness and kindness, doing the right thing, and compassion. n

Mon Confiado continues to take the right steps

Once Mon Confiado takes on a role, be it big or small, he gives it his all.

With over 400 movie credits to date since he started romancing the art of being an actor, Confiado continues to fly high in the only profession that he has given his entire being to.

“Acting is the core of my life,” he told us in a brief chat recently. “Perhaps it is true what they say, that acting is also in my genes.” His father, Angel Confiado, was a character actor for many decades, and worked with some of the best in the local film industry.

“My mother was barely in her teens when he met my father, who was already almost a senior citizen then. I was the result of their wonderful, albeit very discreet, love affair,” Confiado shared.

His late father would pass by for him during film shoots. “It was only during his shoots when I could bond with my father, and I cherished all those times that I would be on the set, almost always wide-eyed as he worked on his many roles. Little did I know that it was the beginning of my own initiation into acting,” he added.

Showbiz insiders all know that Confiado has mastered the art of “method acting,” a technique actors use to “become” the characters they portray,

and to fully and emotionally identify with their roles.

“I watch a lot of films, observe and study how the great actors give life to their characters. I apply these lessons to the roles that my manager and I choose

to accept. I always aim to be my character and lose myself in the process. That is my gauge—when I no longer am myself and I move, speak and feel like the one I am portraying. That is when I am most fulfilled.”

The legendary Russian actor-director Konstantin Stanislavski once said that there are no small parts, only small actors. Confiado’s latest work in GMA’s Legal Wives is a testament of this. He accepted a guest role, which would have required him to work for only one straight week, but pandemic struck and schedules went awry. When work was eventually resumed, the series had to hurdle exacting challenges that caused so many changes in the work schedules.

Confiado had to give up one new TV series and two film projects because he was committed to the show. “As an actor, you win some, you lose some— that holds true especially these days when locked-in shoots and working in a bubble over a certain period of time are the new ways of working. But it should also continuously inspire us to give only our very best despite the many limitations of this new normal way of working for TV or film.”

Confiado has wrapped up an HBO Asia series under Erik Matti and is currently working on a new project with producer-actor Arjo Atayde in Baguio.

He has also finished his scenes for a musical film under the direction of Vince Tañada. Confiado recently signed a deal to be the celebrity endorser of Barandilya Restarant and in a few weeks, he will start preparing for another meaty role in a historical biopic, also to be directed by Matti.

It just goes to show that despite the pandemic, Mon Confiado continues to take the right steps an actor, highly touted and much sought-after because of who he is, how he works, the way he inspires, and the consistent high standard of output he brings to every project.

Mon Confiado

B6 Tuesday, August 10, 2021

On and offline: Globe takes lead in ensuring child’s rights and safety

C

HILDREN’S rights should be fought for and upheld both offline and online. As a strong advocate of child safety, Globe continues to spread the message about children’s rights in cyberspace, especially the increasing roles that the Internet and technology play in children’s lives.

Globe joined a panel of speakers for Children’s Rights and Business Principles (CRBP) Online Training Seminar organized by the Ateneo Human Rights Center (AHRC) in May 2021, which aimed to build the capacity of top management on CRBP and deepen their knowledge on its relevance to their sector’s operations, and the use of online digital business platforms.

At the session, Miguel Bermundo, Globe Senior Manager for Sustainability Integration discussed the company's various programs and initiatives that help make information technology safe (#MakeITSafePH) for children, parents and caregivers who were impacted by changes in workplace policies during the pandemic, and its best practices to successfully adjust and pivot.

One of these efforts is the Digital Thumbprint Program (DTP) which teaches the youth about good digital citizenship and responsible online behavior. From a series of offline workshops touching on Digital Insight, Digital Impact, Digital Ambition, and Digital Discernment, DTP is now being shared to the public through webinars and e-modules. It is also integrated into the Department of Education’s K-12 curriculum.

The company also joined the UNICEF-led SaferKidsPH initiative

and Safer Internet Day which both raise awareness on pressing and emerging online sexual abuse and exploitation of children (OSAEC) cases. The 18th edition of Safer Internet Day called upon all stakeholders to join hands in making the internet a safer and better place for all, especially for children.

Likewise, Globe supports the ABSCBN Foundation, Inc.’s Bantay Bata #163 Helpline which is free for all Globe and TM mobile phone users to make it easier for anyone to report child abuse during this quarantine period when children are at home most of the time.

“Internet connectivity has become increasingly accessible to minors.

Globe endeavors to make the Internet safer for children, starting with digital awareness. As a company whose

business is connecting many Filipinos to the internet, it is imperative to keep our customers, particularly children, safe online,” said Yoly Crisanto, Chief Sustainability Officer and SVP for Corporate Communications at Globe.”

These initiatives by Globe represent its commitment to supporting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals including UN SDG No. 4 to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all, and UN SDG No. 9 to build resilient infrastructure, promote sustainable industrialization and foster innovation.

To know more about Globe’s sustainability initiatives, visit https://www.globe.com.ph/about-us/ sustainability.html.

Malayan offers ‘Furfect Love’ for your pets

A

PART from the tender loving care that fur parents demonstrate to their pets, dog owners must have a veterinarian for their four-legged family members.

Malayan Insurance Co. Inc.’s “Furfect Love Protection” webinar imparted tips on how to care for one's pets and spot telltale signs that something is wrong.

Norbert Robles, founder of Petlink Veterinary Clinic, shared a veterinarian's perspective on dispensing the proper care for four-legged friends.

“Without water and food and the most complete nutrients, they will not

be healthy. We don't just buy or adopt, but we should provide a home for our dogs. Dogs should be given love and a safe environment, and have someone to socialize with,” Robles explained.

Aside from answering their pets’ basic needs, paw parents should trust their vets.

“Vets know what is best for your pets. Do not go to ‘Dr. Google' first, go to your veterinarians,” he said.

Robles emphasized regular checkups for pets since many diseases range from viral, bacterial, or parasitic infections.

Viral infections range from Distemper, the Parvovirus, blood parasitism, and even a Coronavirus infection. Bacterial infections, on the other hand, include leptospirosis, Bordetella, Salmonella, and E coli.

Parasitic infections are usually caused by blood parasites like roundworms, tapeworms, ringworms, among others.

Aside from all the love, care, and veterinary treatments given to pets, Robles added that having insurance protection can greatly help fur parents address the financial aspects of caring for pets.

“Insurance can help you with your budget, being a parent to your dogs,” he pointed out.

Meanwhile, Kaye Suelto, a product brand specialist of Malayan Insurance, explained the benefits of having pets covered with the Pet Care insurance, especially during the community quarantine period.

The new product covers pet dogs and includes personal accident (PA) and owner's liability coverage for dog owners, as well as payment for any medical treatment or confinement in a vet hospital if the insured dog is in an accident or develops a sudden illness.

Pet Care will also pay for any third-party damages for which the insured pet is legally liable. The owner's liability insurance covers situations in which the pet bites other people.

While the policy is in effect, the PA protects the insured dog owner in the event of accidental death, disablement, or dismemberment.

Pet Care comes in three plans wherein customers will only pay a premium of P2,800 for Plan A, P4,200 for Plan B, and P5,400 for Plan C. The premium for each plan is inclusive of taxes and charges and provides annual coverage.

The Keepers Holdings leads the biggest distributorship of imported spirits in PH

C

OMPANIES owned and operated by Lucio Co-led The Keepers Holdings, Inc. (KEEPR) collectively accounted for 74 percent of the total imported spirits volume in the Philippines in 2020, based on a recent study by the IWSR Drinks Market Analysis Limited (IWSR), the global benchmark for beverage alcohol data and intelligence.

KEEPR owns three major players in the Philippine liquor, wine and specialty beverage distribution segments – Montosco, Inc., Meritus Prime Distributions, Inc., and Premier Wine and Spirits, Inc. Montosco’s portfolio includes brands such as “Alfonso”, the number one imported brandy in the Philippines according to IWSR; and brands from Diageo such as the “Johnnie Walker” range of whiskies, “The Singleton” scotch whisky, “Tanqueray” gin, “Bailey's” liqueur, “Captain Morgan” rum, and “Smirnoff” vodka.

Meritus carries globally renowned brands such as “Glenfiddich”, the number one imported malt Scotch whisky in the Philippines according to IWSR; “Alhambra” brandy; and brands from Beam Suntory such as “Jim Beam” and “Maker’s Mark” US whiskies, the “Suntory” range of Japanese

whiskies, and also “Roku” craft gin.

Premier meanwhile handles the brands such as “Jose Cuervo”, the number one imported tequila in the Philippines according to IWSR; “Jägermeister” liqueur; and “Jinro” soju through distribution links with the HiteJinro group. Premier, through its 30% equity interest in Pernod Ricards Philippines, Inc., likewise distributes a vast portfolio of Pernod Ricard brands. The portfolio includes brands such as “Chivas Regal” whisky, “Martell” cognac, “Absolut” vodka, and “Jameson” Irish whiskey.

According to the IWSR, “brand ownership among imported spirits is relatively concentrated in the Philippines, and by virtue of their relative strength among imported spirits categories – centers around ownership of the leading imported non-cognac brandies.” KEEPR’s market leadership in the imported spirits segment is demonstrated by the strong market share of the brands that Montosco, Meritus and Premier carry.

SMXCC ready to host events once restrictions ease up

S

MX Convention Center (SMXCC), the leading convention center in the country, continues to uphold its commitment for its guests’ and colleagues’ safety and security with its #SMXsafespaces.

SMXCC took a step forward to do so by participating in the Local Government Units and SM-wide vaccination program.

All SMXCC employees have now been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

SMX Manila, SMX Aura, SMX Davao and Megatrade Hall have also recently secured their Safety Seals from the Department of Tourism. The rest of its properties are just waiting for their respective seals. Stringent health and safety protocols are in place -

from no face mask and no face shield policy, contact tracing, frequent public reminders across its properties, thermal scanners, disinfecting high-contact surfaces to protocol marshals to name a few.

“Safety and security have been and will always be our utmost priority, even before the pandemic. It is a responsibility to all our guests and colleagues that we take very seriously”, said SMX Convention Center Vice-President and General Manager, Agnes Pacis. “We have gone from reimagining and repurposing spaces to going hybrid ready. We, at SMX Convention Centers are #SMXready more than ever and we can’t wait to host traditional and hybrid events once restrictions ease up.”

Sun Life‘s Virtual Escape Room teaches proper financial planning and literacy

I

MAGINE yourself waking up 20 years into the future to find yourself struggling financially because of the poor decisions you made in the past. What if you had the power to go back in time and undo them?

This is the scenario presented in “Escape to the Future,” the first ever financial literacy-themed virtual escape room in the insurance industry. It prompts players to discover clues and solve puzzles while highlighting the need for proper financial planning and the importance of having a financial advisor in ensuring a brighter tomorrow.

“After more than a year of lockdowns, people are longing to connect with one another, but the need to keep distance remains for health reasons. With ‘Escape to the Future,’ they can safely spend time with friends and loved ones, have fun, and learn more about the importance of financial planning for their future,” Sun Life Chief Marketing and Client Experience Officer Gilbert Simpao said.

Apart from appealing to clients, “Escape to the Future” will also serve as a novel and meaningful tool for Sun Life advisors, as they educate their clients about financial literacy. “These extraordinary times call for out-of-the-

box thinking, and Sun Life is ready to step up to that challenge,” Simpao said.

Sun Life’s “Escape to the Future” run starting July 22 to December 31, 2021 and can be accessed by visiting https://bit.ly/ sunlifeescapetothefuture.

To know more about Sun Life and how to achieve a brighter future, follow @SunLifePH on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and visit https://www.sunlife. com.ph/en/.

www.businessmirror.com.ph • Editor: Angel R. Calso

The World BusinessMirror

Tuesday, August 10, 2021

B7

China punishes 30 officials for failing to curb outbreak

This July 28, 2021 file photo shows a sign on the door of a hair salon informing patrons that masks are required to be in the business in Kansas City, Mo. Businesses large and small are reinstituting mask mandates and requiring vaccines of their customers as US coronavirus cases rise. Jill Toyoshiba/The Kansas City Star via AP

Weary US businesses confront new round of mask mandates

B

usinesses large and small, from McDonald’s and Home Depot to local yoga studios, are reinstituting mask mandates as US coronavirus cases rise. Bars, gyms and restaurants across the country are requiring vaccines to get inside.

After a largely mask-free summer, it’s a reversal no one wanted to see, brought on by the fast-spreading Delta variant and new guidance from the US Centers for Disease Control. But business owners and workers say they will do what they can to keep their doors open and not slow the economic gains of the last few months.

“We’ve already been through the worst of the challenges when we shut down the indoors last year,” said Brack May, the chef and owner of Cowbell, a New Orleans burger joint. “Let’s just get ahead of the curve here.”

May recently began requiring customers to show their vaccine cards for indoor dining. He said he wants to protect his workers, who are required to be vaccinated but have young children at home, as well as his neighborhood, where some musicians recently contracted the coronavirus.

May expects that eventually, vaccine rules like his will be commonplace.

Next month, New York City will start requiring vaccinations to enter restaurants, gyms and theaters.

But for now, customers are far more likely to encounter mask mandates.

After lifting mask recommendations for fully vaccinated people in May, the CDC reversed course in late July, recommending masks for both vaccinated and unvaccinated people in areas of higher transmission.

The shifting guidance has caused confusion over which rules to enforce and how. Walmart and Target, for instance, recently began requiring masks for employees—but not customers—in areas where virus transmission rates are high. McDonald’s is requiring masks for both employees and customers. Home Depot’s mask mandate is nationwide.

A handful of places, like Louisiana, the San Francisco Bay area and Las Vegas, are mandating masks indoors.

Many business owners didn’t wait for the CDC or their local governments before acting. In mid-July, Tamra Patterson reinstituted a mask mandate and reduced seating capacity from 200 to 65 at Chef Tam’s Underground Cafe, the restaurant she owns in Memphis, Tennessee.

“I need every dollar and dime and penny I can get, but if I don’t have employees healthy, I don’t have a business. If customers are sick, I have nothing,” Patterson said.

Customers are generally receptive to the mask mandate, Patterson said.

Only one has walked out.

PanTerra Gallery, a women’s clothing store in Bisbee, Arizona, reinstated a mask mandate for customers a few weeks ago after watching cases climb nationwide.

“We’re a tourist town, so it was just a matter of time before it reached us again,” said Lisa Wines, a PanTerra employee. Most people are fine with the new mandate, she said, but some turn around and stomp out of the store.

Not every business supports the mandates. Basilico’s Pasta e Vino, a restaurant in Huntington Beach, California, has railed against masks on social media. A sign on its door requires patrons to prove that they’re unvaccinated.

Some workers also don’t want to see masks return.

Dru W., a grocery employee in Houston who asked not to use his full name for fear of reprisals at work, said he was fully vaccinated months ago and enjoys the freedom it gives him to go without a mask. Few stores around him are enforcing the new CDC guidelines, he said, and he won’t either.

“I didn’t get both my doses and deal with the rather gnarly side effects only to be told to go back to the way things were during the pandemic,” he said.

But other retail workers see masks as an important way to end the pandemic. Austin Ray Shanks, who works at a Walmart in Monroe, Washington, said he finds masks uncomfortable but necessary. He’s disappointed that many customers at his store refuse to wear them.

Marshall Crawley said his gym in Morrisville, North Carolina, recently announced that it would require masks for both vaccinated and unvaccinated patrons. But the rule isn’t being enforced, he said.

“It doesn’t really feel like it is doing much good wearing a mask when everyone around me is not,” said Crawley, a client manager for J&J Editorial, a managed services company for scholarly publishing.

Crawley thinks the CDC went too far when it told vaccinated people they could remove their masks this spring. Now, he said, it will be too hard to convince people to put them back on.

Jose Backer, who works in customer service at a food packaging manufacturer in Los Angeles County, said his company began letting vaccinated workers remove their masks earlier this year. But soon everyone stopped wearing them. That angered Backer, who doesn’t want a repeat of a Covid-19 outbreak that sickened him and others at his workplace last year.

He’s relieved that his county is requiring masks for everyone again.

The new wave of mandates give some comfort to companies that never gave up on masks, even when US cases ebbed earlier this summer.

Liz Manasek, the co-owner of Warner Bodies, a custom truck manufacturer in Elwood, Indiana, kept a mask policy in place after watching other companies struggle with different rules for vaccinated and unvaccinated workers.

About 60 percent of the company’s 105 employees are now vaccinated, she said. She has told employees she won’t consider removing the mandate until that level reaches 80 percent.

Manasek has gotten some pushback from workers, but she reminds them that the policy has been effective. Only one or two employees have tested positive for Covid-19 since the pandemic began, she said.

“We’ve just got to hold out and keep on the basics,” she said. AP

B

EIJING—More than 30 Chinese officials have been fired or received other punishments over accusations they failed to respond properly to the latest surge of the coronavirus in the country.

Among those fired were a vice mayor, heads of city districts and health commissions, and staff in hospital management, airport and tourism departments.

China’s National Health Commission on Monday announced 94 new cases of domestic transmission had been recorded over the previous 24 hours.

The latest outbreak is linked to the airport in the eastern city of Nanjing. The highly contagious Delta variant spread among airport workers and has since spread from tropical Hainan province in the south to Inner Mongolia in the far north.

The outbreak has prompted renewed travel restrictions, community lockdowns and the sealing off of the entire city of Zhangjiajie, with a population of 1.5 million.

Key developments:

Victoria lifts lockdown

MELBOURNE, Australia—Victoria state in Australia is lifting its pandemic lockdown beginning Tuesday, except in the city of Melbourne.

Australia’s second-most populous state imposed a seven-day lockdown last Thursday due to concerns about the spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus.

But Victoria Premier Daniel Andrew says all the cases detected in Victoria in recent days have been in Melbourne, with 11 more reported there Monday. So the lockdown will end in the rest of the state at the end of Monday.

Neighboring New South Wales state on Monday reported 283 new

coronavirus infections and one Covid-19 death in the latest 24-hour period. The death toll from the latest outbreak that was first detected in Sydney on June 16 is now 29.

Sydney has been in lockdown since June 26 and will remain under tight pandemic restrictions until at least August 28.

Malaysia eases restrictions for fully vaccinated citizens

KUAL A LUMPUR, Malaysia— Malaysia says it will ease lockdow n restr ictions for people who are fully vaccinated as the government seeks to allay public anger against perceived mismanagement of the pandemic.

Daily infections breached 20,000 for the first time Thursday despite a lockdown since June 1. Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said Sunday the government has decided to provide some leeway for those who have been fully vaccinated as “many are faced with pandemic fatigue.”

From Tuesday, spouses can cross districts to meet each other and parents whose children are studying in other states.

Muhyiddin says local tourism, non-contact outdoor sports and exercise as well as dine-in at eateries will also be allowed in at least eight states and areas where cases have dipped.

So far, 35 percent of the country’s population has been fully vaccinated.

Saudi gives cash to family of health workers

R I YA DH, Saudi A rabia—Saudi Arabia says it is giving the

Workers from the China Star Optoelectronics Technology (CSOT) company line up for mass coronavirus test in a gym during a round of Covid-19 test in Wuhan in central China’s Hubei province on August 5. More than 30 Chinese officials have been fired or received other punishments over accusations they failed to respond properly to the latest surge of the coronavirus in the country. Chinatopix via AP

equivalent of $133,000 to the family of each medical worker who died fighting the coronavirus pandemic in the kingdom.

An announcement made Sunday said the financial award will apply to all health care workers who died as a result of the virus, including nonSaudis and personnel who worked in private sector settings.

The Health Ministry has not said publicly how many of the kingdom’s 8,320 pandemic deaths involved health workers.

Saudi Arabia has a population of 30 million and has administered nearly 30 million vaccine doses. The kingdom currently reported fewer than 1,000 new cases a day.

Arizona Covid infections rise

PHOENIX—Arizona health officials reported more than 2,000 additional Covid-19 cases for the fifth consecutive day Sunday as virus-related hospitalizations continued to rise.

The state’s coronavirus dashboard reported 2,639 additional cases and 12 deaths, increasing the pandemic totals to 946,054 cases and 18,388 known deaths.

Health officials had reported 2,653 cases Saturday with 34 deaths.

The seven-day rolling average of

daily new cases nearly doubled over the past two weeks from 1,145.1 on July 22 to 2,227.6 on Thursday, according to Johns

Hopkins University data

The rolling average of daily deaths more than doubled during the same period, rising from 6.3 to 16.9.

Tunisia starts largest vaccine campaign

TUNIS, Tunisia—Tunisia has launched its largest coronavirus vaccination campaign as the country faces a surge of cases.

Authorities aim to vaccinate over 1 million of people aged 40 and over in only one day, compared with 30,000 to 60,000 a day previously.

In a televised address Sunday, President Kaïs Saied called on people to get the shot “so that life gets back to normal in Tunisia.”

Authorities provided free buses for people going to vaccination centers, many set up in schools.

Tunisia has a population of 12 million, and it has reported more deaths per capita in the pandemic than any African country. More than 20,000 Tunisians have died from Covid-19. So far 9 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated. AP

Australia signals democracies’ trade swing from China to India

C

A NBER R A , Austra lia— Australian special envoy and former Prime Minister Tony Abbott said a free trade agreement between his nation and India would signal the “democratic world’s tilt away from China.”

Abbott visited New Delhi last week as Australia’s special trade envoy for India as the Australian government gives priority to sealing a bilateral trade deal.

In an opinion piece likely to anger Beijing that that was published in The Australian newspaper on Monday, Abbott said the “answer to almost every question about China is India.”

“With the world’s other emerging superpower becoming more belligerent almost by the day, it’s in everyone’s interests that India take its rightful place among the nations as quickly as possible,” Abbott wrote.

“Because trade deals are about politics as much as economics, a swift deal between India and Australia would be an important sign of the democratic world’s tilt away from China, as well as boosting the long-term prosperity of both our countries,” Abbott added.

Abbott was prime minister when China and Australia finalized a bilateral free trade deal that took effect in 2015. He also hosted

In this November 18, 2014 file photo, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi (left), waves as Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott escorts him as they leave the House of Representatives at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia. An India-Australia free trade agreement would signal the “democratic world’s tilt away from China,” trade envoy and former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has written on August 9. AP/Rick Rycroft

a state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping a year earlier.

Relations have since soured over issues including Australia banning Chinese telecom giant Huawei from major communications infrastructure projects, outlawing covert foreign interference in Australian politics and calling for an independent investigation into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Abbott accused Beijing of “capricious boycotts” of Australian exports including coal, barley,

wine and seafood that demonstrated Chinese use of trade as a “strategic weapon.” “ The basic problem is that C hina’s d au nt ing power is a consequence of the free world’s decision to invite a communist dictatorship into global trading networks,” Abbott said.

“China has exploited the West’s goodwill and wishful thinking to steal our technology and undercut our industries; and, in the process, become a much more powerful competitor than the old Soviet

Union ever was, because it’s now a first-rate economy that’s rapidly developing a military to match; and spoiling for a fight over Taiwan, a pluralist democracy of 25 million that’s living proof there’s no totalitarian gene in the Chinese DNA,” Abbott added.

The Chinese Embassy in Australia did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.

Negotiations between India and Australia on a Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement began in 2011 but were suspended in 2015.

India is particularly concerned by freer trade in Australian farm exports. New Delhi’s demands for less restrictive visas for Indian workers is a major sticking point for Australia.

Australia’s current Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi last year upgraded the bilateral relationship with a raft of agreements that strengthened defense ties and committed both nations to expanding trade.

Abbott visited India last week to “propel our economic relationship to its full potential, to the mutual benefit of the Indian and Australian people,” Australian High Commissioner to India Barry O’Farrell said in a statement. AP

B8

The World BusinessMirror

Tuesday, August 10, 2021

www.businessmirror.com.ph

UN report says global warming will likely blow past Paris limit

E

arth’s climate is getting so hot that temperatures in about a decade will probably blow past a level of warming that world leaders have sought to prevent, according to a report released Monday that the United Nations calls a “code red for humanity.”

and become more acidic—are “irreversible for centuries to millennia,” the report said.

The world is “locked in” to 15 to 30 centimeters (6 to 12 inches) of sea level rise by mid-century, said report co-author Bob Kopp of Rutgers University.

Nearly all of the warming that has happened on Earth can be blamed on emissions of heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. At most, natural forces like the sun or simple randomness can explain one- or twotenths of a degree of warming, the report said.

The report described five different future scenarios based on how much the world reduces carbon emissions. They are: a future with incredibly large and quick pollution cuts; another with intense pollution cuts but not quite as massive; a scenario with moderate emissions; a fourth scenario where current plans to make small pollution reductions continue; and a fifth possible future involving continued increases in carbon pollution.

In five previous reports, the world was on that final hottest path, often nicknamed “ business as usual.” But this time, the world is somewhere between the moderate emissions path and the small pollution reductions scenario because of progress to curb climate change, said report coauthor Claudia Tebaldi, a scientist at the US Pacific Northwest National Lab. In a way, the world can stay at the 1.5-degree threshold with extreme and quick emission cuts, but even then, warming would hit 1.5 degrees in a decade, rise a tad and then come back down, said co-author Maisia Rojas Corrada, director of the Center for Climate and Resilience Research in Chile.

W hile calling the report “a code red for humanity,” United Nations Secretar y-General Antonio Guterres kept a sliver of hope that world leaders could still somehow prevent 1.5 degrees of warming, which he said is “perilously close.”

“Anything we can do to limit, to

slow down, is going to pay off,” Tebaldi said. “And if we cannot get to 1.5, it’s probably going to be painful, but it’s better not to give up.”

In the report’s worst-case scenario, the world could be around 3.3 degrees Celsius (5.9 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than now by the end of the century. But that scenario looks increasingly unlikely, said report co-author and climate scientist Zeke Hausfather, climate change director of the Breakthrough Institute. Both extremes are looking less likely, he said.

“We are a lot less likely to get lucky and end up with less warming than we thought. We won’t be able to meet Paris Agreement goals without rapid near-term reductions in our emissions,” Hausfather said. “At the same time, the odds of ending up in a much worse place than we expected if we do reduce our emissions are notably lower.”

The report said ultra-catastrophic disasters, commonly called “tipping points,” like ice sheet collapses and the abrupt slowdown of ocean currents are “low likelihood” but cannot be ruled out. The much talked-about shutdown of Atlantic Ocean currents, which would trigger massive weather shifts, is something that’s unlikely to happen in this century, Kopp said.

The report “provides a strong sense of urgency to do even more,” said Jane Lubchenco, the White House deputy science adviser.

In a new move, scientists emphasized how cutting airborne levels of methane, a powerful but short-lived gas that has soared to record levels, could help curb short-term warming.

More than 100 countries have made informal pledges to achieve “net zero” human-caused carbon dioxide emissions sometime around mid-century, which will be a key part of climate negotiations this fall in Scotland. The report said those commitments are essential.

“It is still possible to forestall many of the most dire impacts,” Barrett said. AP

“It’s just guaranteed that it’s going to get worse,” said report coauthor Linda Mearns, a senior climate scientist at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research.

“I don’t see any area that is safe...

Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.”

But scientists also eased back a bit on the likelihood of the absolute worst climate catastrophes.

The authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, which calls climate change clearly human-caused and “unequivocal,” makes more precise and warmer forecasts for the 21st century than it did last time it was issued in 2013.

Each of five scenarios for the future, based on how much carbon emissions are cut, passes the more stringent of two thresholds set in the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

World leaders agreed then to try to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since the late 19th century because problems mount quickly after that. The limit is only a few tenths of a degree hotter than now because the world has already warmed nearly 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) in the past century and a half.

Under each scenario, the report said, the world will cross the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming mark in the 2030s, earlier than some past predictions. Warming has ramped up in recent years, data shows.

In three scenarios, the world will also likely exceed 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 deg rees Fa hrenheit) over pre-industrial times— the other, less stringent Paris goal—with far worse heat waves, d roughts and f lood-inducing

dow npou rs “u n less dee p re ductions in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades,” the report said.

“This report tells us that recent changes in the climate are widespread, rapid and intensifying, unprecedented in thousands of years,” said IPCC Vice Chair Ko Barrett, senior climate adviser for the US National Oceanic and Atmospher ic Administration.

“The changes we experience will increase with further warming.”

The 3,000-plus-page report from 234 scientists said warming is already accelerating sea level rise, shrinking ice and worsening extremes such as heat waves, droughts, floods and storms. Tropical cyclones are getting stronger and wetter, while Arctic sea ice is dwindling in the summer and permafrost is thawing. All of these trends will get worse, the report said.

For example, the kind of heat wave that used to happen only once every 50 years now happens once a decade, and if the world warms another degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit), it will happen twice every seven years, the report said.

As the planet warms, places will get hit more not just by extreme weather but by multiple climate disasters that occur simultaneously, the report said. That’s like what’s now happening in the Western US, where heat waves, drought and wildfires compound the damage, Mearns said.

S ome h a r m f rom c l i m ate change—dwindling ice sheets, rising sea levels and changes in the oceans as they lose oxygen

Hot dates: 2 spacecraft to make Venus flyby

Taliban seize another Afghan provincial capital

B

ERLIN—Two spacecraft are set to swoop past Venus within hours of each other this week, using the maneuver to do a little bit of bonus science on the way to their main missions at the center of our solar system.

The European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter probe, a cooperation with NASA, will swing around Venus early Monday, using the planet’s gravity to help put it on a course to observe the Sun’s poles.

About 33 hours later, the European-Japanese spacecraft BepiColombo will get even closer to Venus in a maneuver designed to help it slow down sharply and safely steer into the orbit of Mercury in 2025.

“Without the flyby, we would not be able to reach our target planet,” said Elsa Montagnon, the spacecraft operations manager for BepiColombo.

“The energy required to enter into orbit of Mercury would be prohibitively expensive in terms of propellant.”

Both probes have numerous scientific instruments on board, some of which will be used to take a closer look at Venus as they zoom past.

The measurements will add to those taken by the Japanese probe Akatsuki, which is already in orbit around Earth’s hotter neighbor. NASA and the European Space Agency are planning to send three more missions to Venus toward the end of the decade. AP

K

ABUL, Afghanistan—The Taliban on Monday took control of another provincial capital in Afghanistan, an official said. The city’s fall was the latest in a weekslong, relentless Taliban offensive as American and NATO forces finalize their pullout from the war-torn country.

The militants have ramped up their push across much of Afghanistan, turning their guns on provincial capitals after taking large swaths of land in the mostly rural countryside. At the same time, they have been waging an assassination campaign targeting senior government officials in the capital, Kabul.

The sweep comes despite condemnations by the international community and warnings from the United Nations that a military victory and takeover by the Taliban would not be recognized.

The Taliban have also not heeded appeals to return to the negotiating table and continue long-stalled peace talks with the Afghan government.

According to Mohammad Noor Rahmani, the council chief of northern Sar-e Pul province, the Taliban overran the provincial capital after over a week of resistance by the Afghan security forces, after which the city of Sar-e Pul collapsed. The government forces

have now completely withdrawn from the province, he said.

Several pro-government local militia commanders also surrendered to the Taliban without a fight, allowing the insurgents to gain control of the entire province, Rahmani added.

The city of Sar-e Pul joins three other provincial capitals now fully under Taliban control: Zaranj, the capital of western Nimroz province, the city of Shibirghan, the capital of northern Zawzjan province, and Taleqan, the capital of another northern province with the same name.

The Taliban are also fighting on for control of the city of Kunduz, the capital of northern Kunduz province. On Sunday, they planted their flag in the city’s main square, where it was seen flying atop a traffic police booth, a video obtained

by The Associated Press showed.

Kunduz’s capture would be a significant gain for the Taliban and a test of their ability to take and retain territory in their campaign against the Western-backed government. It is one of the country’s larger cities with a population of more than 340,000, and was a key area defended against Taliban takeovers by Western troops over the years.

After billions of dollars spent in aiding, training and shoring up

Afghan forces, many are at odds how to explain the surprising Taliban blitz that has threatened— and by now taken—several of the country’s 34 provincial capitals.

Rahmani, the council chief in Sar-e Pul, said the provincial capital had been under siege by the militants for weeks, with no reinforcements being sent to the overstretched Afghan forces. A video circulating on social media Monday shows a number of Taliban fighters, standing in front of the Sar-e Pul governor’s office and congratulating each other for the victory.

The countrywide Taliban offensive intensified as US and NATO troops began to wrap up their withdrawal from Afghanistan this summer. With Taliban attacks increasing, Afghan security forces and government troops have retaliated with airstrikes aided by the United States. The fighting has also raised growing concerns about civilian casualties.

T he i n s u rge nt s h ave a l so taken most of Lashkar Gah, the capital of souther n Helmand province, where they took nine of the 10 police districts in the city last week. Heavy fighting there continues, as do US and Afghan government airstrikes, one of which damaged a health clinic and a high school. AP

Flames approaching at Gouves village on the island of Evia, about 185 kilometers (115 miles) north of Athens, Greece on August 8. Pillars of billowing smoke and ash are blocking out the sun above Greece’s second-largest island as a days-old wildfire devours pristine forests and triggers more evacuation alerts. AP/Petros Karadjias

Wildfire devours Greek island’s forests; residents urged to flee

P

EFKI, Greece—Pillars of billowing smoke and ash turned the sky orange and blocked out the sun above Greece’s second-largest island Sunday as a days-old wildfire devoured pristine forests and encroached on villages, triggering more evacuation alerts.

The fire on Evia, an island of forested mountains and canyons laced with small coves of crystalline water, began on August 3 and cut across the popular summer destination from coast to coast as it burned out of control. Scores of homes and businesses have been destroyed and thousands of residents and tourists have fled, many escaping the flames via flotillas that even operated in the dark of night.

The blaze is the most severe of dozens that broke out in the wake of Greece’s most protracted heat wave in three decades, which sent temperatures soaring to 45 degrees Celsius (113 F) for days, creating bone-dry conditions.

“It’s already too late, the area has been destroyed,” Giannis Kontzias, mayor of the northern Evia municipality of Istiaia, lamented on Greece’s Open TV. He was one of several local officials and residents who took to Greek TV networks to appeal for more firefighting help, particularly from water-dropping planes and helicopters.

Evacuation orders were issued Sunday for four villages in northern Evia, including Pefki, but many residents refused to leave, hoping to save their properties.

In dramatic scenes Sunday afternoon, fast-moving flames had encroached on the seaside village of Pefki, burning trees on the fringes and entering the houses’ yards. Panicked residents raced with water tanks, hoses and branches in a seemingly futile effort to extinguish the flames.

Late Sunday, firefighters managed to stop the fire before it advanced further into Pefki, on the island’s northern coast. Pefki residents and tourists fled to the port of Aidipsos to take the ferry to the mainland port of Arkitsa, 150 kilometers northwest of Athens.

Acrid, choking smoke hung in the orange-grey air, turning the day into an apocalyptic twilight as people headed towards Pefki’s pebble beach, dragging suitcases, clutching pets and helping elderly relatives.

The ferry, carrying panicked, ex hausted evacuees who had boarded the vessel before the advance of the fire was halted, arrived at Arkitsa on Sunday evening. Passengers complained they had been left to fend for themselves as the fire approched.

“We were completely forsaken.

There were no fire brigades, there were no vehicles, nothing!” David Angelou told The Associated Press, adding that the villagers’ hoses were inadequate to stop the fire.

Angelou described the frightening hours before the evacuation.

“You could feel the enormous heat, there was also a lot of smoke.

You could see the sun, a red ball, and then, nothing else around,” he said.

Angelou’s complaint was echoed by others, who decried government efforts, citing what they saw as a lack of firefighting forces or planes or delays in their arrival.

“There was ash and smoke everywhere,” said Christina Tsatou, who had been in the seaside village of Agios Georgios. “It is very sad that they did not send help in the first days and they left the island burning. It was unfair and many people have lost their property, their livelihoods.”

In the picturesque mountain village of Gouves, towering flames leaped from the treetops, devouring the pine forest leading to the village. Some residents remained, dousing homes with water from garden hoses in a last-ditch effort to save them. Others used bulldozers to raze trees and bushes, hoping to create rudimentary firebreaks.

Civil Protection chief Nikos Hardalias said the Evia fire was burning on two fronts, one to the north and one to the south. He said the conditions there were particularly tough for the waterdropping planes and helicopters, whose pilots faced “great danger” with limited visibility and air turbulence.

“We have before us...one more difficult night,” Hardalias said.

“All the forces that have been fighting a difficult battle all these days will continue operating with unabated intensity, with the same self-sacrifice.”

The wildfires have stretched Greece’s firefighting capabilities to the limit, and the government has appealed for help from abroad.

More than 20 countries in Europe and the Mideast have responded, sending planes, helicopters, vehicles and manpower.

The fire department said Sunday 575 firefighters, 35 ground teams and 89 vehicles were battling the Evia wildfire, including 112 Romanian and 100 Ukrainian firefighters. Four helicopters and three planes provided air support.

Three more major fires were also burning Sunday in Greece’s southern Peloponnese region, while another broke out Sunday afternoon on the southern island of Crete.

Another massive fire that ravaged forests, homes and businesses on the northern fringes of the Greek capital appeared to be on the wane. That blaze burnt through large tracts of a national park on Mount Parnitha, the largest forested area remaining near Athens.

Firefighters were worried that the Mount Parnitha fire would rekindle, so they and the military had been patroling all night, Hardalias said. AP

www.businessmirror.com.ph

BusinessMirror

Tuesday, August 10, 2021 B9

B10

Tuesday, August 10, 2021

BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

www.businessmirror.com.ph

BusinessMirror

Tuesday, August 10, 2021 B11

B12 Tuesday, August 10, 2021

BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

www.businessmirror.com.ph

BusinessMirror

Tuesday, August 10, 2021 B13

B14 Tuesday, August 10, 2021

BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

www.businessmirror.com.ph

BusinessMirror

Tuesday, August 10, 2021 B15

B16 Tuesday, August 10, 2021

BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

www.businessmirror.com.ph

BusinessMirror

Tuesday, August 10, 2021 B17

B18 Tuesday, August 10, 2021

BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph