Businessmirror december 22, 2017

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Friday, December 22, 2017 Vol. 13 No. 72

PHL conglomerates join forces to rehabilitate Naia ₧2.2 trillion S

By VG Cabuag

The market capitalization of the consortium behind the bid to rehabilitate the Naia

In their respective disclosures to the Philippine Stock Exchange, the seven firms said they have agreed to form a consortium composed of the parent companies and their subsidiaries.

The consortium is composed of Continued on A2

Neda to help fund studies for projects under PIP

By Cai U. Ordinario

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@cuo_bm

Continued on A2

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Countryside peace and order to balance economic development

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EVEN of the country’s top conglomerates—backed by a market capitalization of about P2.2 trillion if combined—have formalized their bid to rehabilitate, operate and maintain the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia), a facility that has outgrown itself with the country being tagged as having one of the worst airports in the world.

he National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) will be setting aside P1.5 billion from its own budget to help agencies complete the necessary studies for the P11 trillion worth of projects under the Public Investment Program (PIP).

This will not only speed up the approval process at the Neda Investment Coordination Committee (ICC), but also ensure projects will not encounter delays during implementation.

In an interview with the BusinessMirror, Neda Undersecretary for Investment Programming Rolando G. Tungpalan said a P1.5billion allocation will go to the Project Development and Other Related Studies. “[It aims to] support the translation of a list of projects, as well as enable the government to address

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Make Sense

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he market, regulatory policies, and peace and order are among the factors usually considered by investors in choosing a place to invest. And like investors, ordinary people are also sensitive to certain conditions in choosing a place to live, like safety and security, including employment opportunities.

Whether they are ordinary families finding a place to live, or investor choosing a place to invest, peace and order is a primordial concern in making crucial decisions. Such is the importance of these conditions that President Duterte has made his campaign against drugs and corruption part of his government’s centerpiece agenda.

After all, records will show that many reported crimes were committed by criminals under the influence of drugs. From petty crime to rape to murder, these antisocial behaviors are usually committed by men under the influence of drugs. Not even children aged 6 and below are spared from rape by drugcrazed criminals.

However, with Duterte’s firm grip on his antidrug and criminality campaign, change is now happening in the country. According to some of my friends, not only have they seen a significant drop in crime incidents in their communities, but they have also seen less people hanging around in crime-prone areas. In fact, a resident of a community of informal settlers in Cavite that is known to be a haven for criminals said criminality in their community dropped dramatically after Duterte’s serious campaign against illegal drugs.

Peace and order spurs economic growth

The government is in the right direction in strengthening and expanding its antidrugs and criminality campaign to the countryside. A safe and secure countryside will definitely spur economic growth outside urban centers. In the first place, who

MAGICAL FIELD OF LIGHTS Over 5,000 “glowing flowers” are grouped into clusters so visitors can roam around the magical field and get closer to the lighted dandelion-like stems during the Christmas light show at Nuvali in Laguna. NONIE REYES

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Economic managers likely to raise export, GDP growth goals for 2018

F

By Rea Cu

@ReaCuBM

inance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III said the interagency Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC) is likely to raise the economic targets for 2018, taking into consideration the passage of the first tranche of the tax-reform program and the

PESO exchange rates n US 50.3020

favorable global market condition that will hike export revenue.

The DBCC is scheduled to convene today (Friday), and Dominguez said included in the agenda is the revision of the macroeconomic goals. “If any, it will be higher,” Dominguez hinted.

Finance Undersecretary Karl Kendrick T. Chua, Dominguez

Beltran: “Export growth should be higher; now it’s double digit.

[For 2018], they are adjusting the target.”

added, will be discussing the provisions of the recently signed Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) Act, and that economic targets may be revised. The DBCC earlier approved revenue levels that take into account the impact of the first package of the Comprehensive Tax Reform Program.

The first tax-reform package

is seen to contribute P133.8 billion in revenues for 2018, P233.6 billion in 2019, P272.9 billion in 2020, P253 billion in 2021 and P269.9 billion in 2022, according to the DBCC. Economic managers are also likely to raise the export target for 2018, taking cue from the See “GDP growth,” A2

n japan 0.4436 n UK 67.3443 n HK 6.4302 n CHINA 7.6476 n singapore 37.4299 n australia 38.5565 n EU 59.7588 n SAUDI arabia 13.4131

Source: BSP (21 December 2017 )

BMReports BusinessMirror

A2 Friday, December 22, 2017

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PHL conglomerates join forces to rehabilitate Naia Continued from A1

parent companies Metro Pacific Investments Corp., Andrew Tan’s Alliance Global Group Inc., the Gotianun’s Filinvest Development Corp. and the Gokongwei family’s JG Summit Holdings Inc. The subsidiaries in the consortium are Aboitiz InfraCapital Inc. of Aboitiz Equity Ventures Inc., AC Infrastructure Holdings Corp. of Ayala Corp. and Lucio Tan’s Asia’s Emerging Dragons Corp.

The combined market capitalization, or how a company is worth or va lued by investors, of the parent of the three subsidiaries are already worth P1.2 trillion, according to the BusinessMirror’s computation.

San Miguel Corp., one of the countr y’s largest and most agg ressive inf rastr uct ure companies and which has a market capita lization of about P264 million, is not present in the consortium. San Miguel, which

currently operates the Naia Expressway, is proposing the construction of a new international airport in Bulacan.

“Numerous foreign and local ex perts have highlighted the advantage of keeping an airport within city limits. Like other major cities in the world, experts recommend an in-city airport and another one outside the metropolis to complement it,” the consor tium said. “Megacities that benefit from a two-airport

setup include Tokyo (Haneda and Narita) and London (Gatwick and Heathrow).”

The consortium said the Naia will continue to be a strategic gateway for our country and a key hub of airline operations for many more years.

“The consortium will work with foreign technical partners with proven world-class track records and experiences in airport operations to improve, upgrade and enhance the operational efficiencies

of Naia covering both land-side and air-side facilities.”

It said that given proper upgrades and strategic improvements, the Naia can easily accommodate an additional 11 million passengers annually from the current 39.5 million passengers, and can increase its hourly aircraft movements—landing and takeoff—from 40 movements per hour to 48 movements per hour.

“The unsolicited proposal is intended to help accelerate the

Countryside peace and order to balance economic development in his right mind would invest in an area where the probability of them being kidnapped, beheaded, and their factory and equipment being burned, is high. Thus, with factories being established in the countryside, this will eventually narrow down the yawning economic gap between rich urban centers and rural communities.

Moreover, for manufacturers that source their raw materials from the countryside, putting up their factories close to their source of raw materials will not only save them on their handling cost of materials, but it will also save them from paying for

the handling cost of their rawmaterials wastages.

This paradigm would eventually spur progress in the countryside, even as it will also help to decongest big urban centers like Metro Manila and Metro Cebu of people and vehicle traffic. Why do investors converge in big cities in the first place? Is it not because they want to put up their business in areas where they feel secure, even as they believe that government officials, including police officers would be close by and accessible for them to get immediate help whenever necessary? And why do people converge

GDP growth. . .

Continued from A1

double-digit growth in the January-to-October receipts from outward shipment of goods.

The current official export growth target is 5 percent to 7 percent for next year.

Finance Undersecretary Gil S. Beltran said members of the DBCC are now looking to adjust this upward.

“Export growth should be higher, now it’s double digit. [For 2018], they are adjusting the target,” Beltran told reporters in an interview.

The value of shipments in the 10-month period rose by 11.7 percent to $53.11 billion.

In June the DBCC raised its assumptions on goods export growth from 2 percent to 5

in big cities, as well? Is it not also because they want to live in areas where there are jobs?

For investors, choosing a place to set up business is a choice that is anchored on where they can find a place where their investment would be most secure and economically viable. While for the ordinary people, choosing a place to live is a choice that would be anchored on where they can find jobs.

Thus, with a safer and more secure countryside, the nation’s economic growth would not only be expanded but inclusive, as well.

And as investors favorably consider the countryside as potential growth

percent in 2017, 5 percent to 7 percent in 2018 and from 7 percent to 9 percent in 2019. Thereafter, exports growth will be maintained at 9 percent from 2020 to 2022.

The DBCC also projected that the country will sustain high economic growth as macroeconomic fundamentals, including imports remain stable.

Inflation assumptions were seen at 2 percent to 4 percent for 2017 to 2022. The DBCC expects GDP growth to hit 6.5 percent to 7.5 percent in 2017 and 7 percent to 8 percent from 2018 to 2022.

In terms of exchange rates, the DBCC assumes the dollar to trade at P48 to P50 for 2017, and P48 to P51 for 2018 to 2022.

Goods imports growth was seen at 10 percent from 2017 to 2019 and will be maintained at 11 percent from 2020 to 2022.

areas and eventually put up their factories, this would eventually result in the creation of more jobs outside urban centers.

And most important, this business model shall help pave the way for the nation’s balanced economic development where growth opportunities for rich urban centers and rural communities would be equally available, just as the opportunities for the rich and poor Filipinos would also be evenly provided.

At the end of the day, the entire Filipino nation would benefit the most from the country’s balanced economic development

DOT. . .

Continued from A12

the tourism sector to the local economy was 8.6 percent in 2016. It was up 13.7 percent to P1.24 trillion in terms of tourism direct gross value added, from some P1.09 trillion in 2015.

In a separate interview with DOT Director for Tourism Standards and Regulation Maria Rica Bueno, she explained that on its own, the DOT already has its own crisismanagement response system. “Even before this symposium, the regional offices already have a memorandum of understanding with chosen accommodations, which can be used as safe houses for tourists affected by natural calamities or disasters.”

Continued from a1

as the yawning gap between the rich and the poor Filipinos is narrowed down, and developing rural communities are slowly able to catch up economically, with rich urban communities.

T herefore, as peace-lov ing Filipinos, we can do our share by supporting the President and the police, the good ones, of course, in their campaign against illega l d r ugs, c r i m i na l it y a nd corruption, if only to help pave the way for the creation of a socially and economically mature and secure nation where there is equal distribution of wealth and resources.

She added that all of DOT’s regional offices are now equipped with satellite phones, so they can easily be contacted by the head office in times of disasters. She noted that equipping regional offices with satphones was a vital lesson learned after Yolanda struck in 2013 and all regular communications systems in affected areas where inoperable.

She also stressed the importance for industry stakeholders to be prepared for crises, such that one of the important requirements in accrediting hotels and resorts, for instance, is the assignment of a safety officer who would oversee the establishment’s crisis-management procedures. The DOT likewise trains stakeholders on how to handle crises, as part of the accreditation process.

gove r n me nt ’s “ Bu i ld , Bu i ld , Build” program. Augmenting the Naia’s capacity is the quickest way to address airport congestion while other airports are being developed outside Metro Manila,” the consortium said. “ T h i s ap pro a c h promot e s greater economic benefit and sustainability for the whole country.” The terms of the memorandum of understanding, or framework of the consortium, are still under negotiation.

Neda to help fund studies for projects under PIP Continued from A1

some of the recurring issues, that’s why [we included] other related studies,” Tungpalan said.

He explained that apart from helping in feasibility studies, projects that would encounter recurring issues, such as right-of-way acquisition, would be able to tap into the fund.

Tungpalan stressed that the fund will not only be used for f lagship projects, but also for the over 5,000 projects included in the PIP. Based on the draft 2017-2022 PIP released by the Neda, initial estimates showed that the entire PIP will cost the government nearly P11 trillion to complete.

The PIP contains a list of priority programs and projects to be implemented by national government, government-owned and -controlled corporations, government financial institutions and other national government offices.

It is a document that accompanies the Philippine Development Plan (PDP). The PIP identifies the projects and programs that will fulfill the plans in the PDP and meet its targets.

“The PIP serves as a mechanism to improve resource mobilization by ensuring the linkage of the planning and budgeting processes toward the achievement of our goals,” Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto M. Pernia earlier said.

Recently, Neda Infrastructure Staff Director Roderick M. Planta said in a presentation that the infrastr ucture gap for paved provincial roads in terms of kilometers is 71.4 percent.

The infrastructure gap in barangays covered by municipal recycling facilities was also significant at 46.2 percent.

Neda data also showed that the infrastructure gap in paved city roads was at 38.2 percent, while barangays covered by solidwaste management facilities is at 36.1 percent.

Double-digit infrastructure g ap s we re a l s o ob s e r ve d i n Mindanao’s household electrification level at 27.6 percent; access to broadband in cities and municipa lities, 23.6 percent; and access to irrigation service, 13.6 percent.

Planta told the BusinessMirror, however, that the assessment does not include the gap in the number of health facilities, classrooms, housing and other similar infrastructure needs.

He said apart from implementation delays and changes in project scope, these gaps are also due to challenges such institutional issues that pertain to weak regulation and poor project planning.

The challenges also include operational issues, such as unsynchronized planning, investment programming and budgeting.

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Shabu from U.S. baffles Customs, airport execs

By Recto Mercene @rectomercene

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he seizure of some 3.5 kilograms of shabu with a street value of P17.5 million from the US at a customs-bonded warehouse in Parañaque has left airport authorities baffled. “[This] will be the subject of our investigation,” Customs Commissioner Isidro Lapeña said, noting that this was the first time that shabu from the US arrived at a customsbonded warehouse at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia).

In most of cases, intercepted shabu at the Naia comes from China, Taiwan and elsewhere, but never from the US, Lapeña added.

The hot item was shipped via Federal Express and came from a certain Jason Lee, of 340 E 1st, California, USA. The package content was declared as “toys.”

The shipment was consigned to a certain Michael Espino Cruz with address at 121-C Kowloon Street B.F. Homes, Parañaque.

Lapeña said the discovery of the illegal drug was made by their own agents and not through the information provided by outsiders.

He said a certain Michael Espino, a.k.a. Melvin Feliciano, claimed the parcel at the Fedex warehouse, accompanied by a certain Rachel Hilario de la Cruz.

Both were arrested after Cus-

toms and drug-enforcement agents set entrapment for them to claim ownership of the shipment.

The suspects were presented to the public, along with the illegal drugs.

Lapeña was accompanied by Gerald Javier, head of the interagency task force that participated in the drug seizure.

Equipped with a machine that could detect drugs, Javier pointed the device at one of the three packages of shabu and after a few seconds, the name “metamphetamine hydrochloride” appeared on the tiny screen.

“Aside from drug-sniffing dogs, we also use this equipment to determine the nature of any substance, which this machine displays on its small screen,” Javier said.

Another attempt to smuggle some illegal items was foiled by the airport agents after they apprehended suspected Colombian drug mule Alberto Pedroza Quijano. The suspect swallowed 79 rubber pallets of cocaine.

After the pallets were recovered from Quijano, the authorities said some 1,173 grams of the cocaine was found with an estimated value of P8.8 million.

The suspects in the shabusmuggling attempt are now in the custody of the drug-enforcement agency.

Navy says frigate delivery on track despite CMS snag

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By Rene Acosta

@reneacostaBM

he delivery of two frigates ordered by the Department of National Defense (DND) for the Navy will proceed as planned, despite a snag brought about by an issue involving the vessels’ combat support systems (CMS).

Acting Navy chief Rear Admiral Robert Empedrad on Wednesday said the South Korean contractor Hyundai Heavy Industries would deliver the two brand-new frigates by the first quarter of 2020. “[The frigates] should be delivered [in the] first quarter of 2020. It is within the timeline,” Empedrad said.

The acquisition and delivery of the frigates, with a total budget of P15.5 billion, are being made under the Armed Forces Modernization Program.

Empedrad was installed as acting Navy chief on Tuesday after Defense Secretary Delfin N.

Lorenzana relieved former Navy chief Vice Admiral Ronald Joseph Mercado of his post reportedly due to insubordination.

Lorenzana said he had lost his trust and confidence on Mercado due to the latter’s action relating to the acquisition of the frigates, whose contract the former Navy chief had reportedly even threatened to rescind.

Me rc a d o h a d w a nt e d t h e French defense contractor Thales to deliver the CMS for the two frigates, but Lorenzana said the contract spelled out that Hyundai, as the winning bidder, would be the one to identify the

Waves, wind sink Quezon ferry with 200 aboard

contractor for the CMS. Mercado’s insistence and preference for the French firm have already delayed the CMS project and affected the whole frigate acquisition program for four months, according to Lorenzana.

But Empedrad said the whole project is still within its designated period.

“The frigate [delivery has] not been delayed. It is ongoing and the delivery time is still the same, and we are going to process that,” he said.

“We will move on, whatever is the ongoing projects of the Navy, we will move on from here,” he added.

Empedrad said they are going to facilitate the things needed by the project and ensure that these would be delivered and used by the Navy by 2020.

“A frigate has a lot of problems.

How to prepare the Philippine Navy for the frigate is the most important one, like, where are we going to dock the frigate and who will be the personnel that will man the frigate?” he said.

Empedrad added other problems also involve the sources of missiles and torpedoes. “[That’s] because [the frigates

The frigate [delivery has] not been delayed. It is ongoing and the delivery time is still the same, and we are going to [pursue] that.

We will move on, whatever is the ongoing projects of the Navy, we will move on from here.”

—Empedrad

still]…do not have missiles and torpedoes [which takes] two years to manufacture. So we have to process that so that [before] the frigate[s] arrive…,” he said.

Urduja damage to crops, fishery climbs to P701.61 million–DA

By Jasper Emmanuel Y . Arcalas @jearcalas

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hilippine Coast Guard (PCG) boats and fishermen worked to rescue more than 200 people onboard an interisland ferry that sank on Thursday after being lashed by strong winds and waves off a northeastern province, officials said.

PCG Spokesman Armand Balilo said the rescue was launched after the passenger vessel Mercraft 3 began sinking between Quezon province’s Infanta town and the ferry’s destination, Polillo island.

A survivor, Donel Jade Mendiola, told dzMM radio that the weather was fine when the ferry left port in Quezon’s Real town, but strong winds and large waves started to batter it about two hours into the trip.

“The vessel came to a halt and started taking in water in the front side. The passengers dashed to one side and the ferry started to sink,” Mendiola said.

He added that the passengers were instructed to don life vests.

The PCG is coordinating with the military for the possible deployment of Air Force helicopters and Navy ships to help in the rescue, Balilo said.

Typhoons and storms, poorly maintained ferries and ships and law-enforcement issues have often been blamed for past sea disasters in the Philippine archipelago. AP

Editor: Vittorio V. Vitug • Friday, December 22, 2017 A3

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VINTA IN MINDANAO Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) Weather Division Chief, Dr. Esperanza Cayanan, gives an update on the location of Tropical Storm Vinta during a news conference at the Pagasa Weather Forecasting Center in Diliman, Quezon City, on Thursday. Vinta has maintained its speed and direction as it continues to move toward eastern Mindanao. PNA/Ben Briones

Filipino company to compete in TNVS business dominated by Grab and Uber

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new Filipino-owned transportation network vehicle service (TNVS) will soon compete and break the Grab and Uber duopoly in the lucrative TNVS commuter market in key urban centers in the Philippines.

In a news statement, OWTO Vice President and COO Pao Libertad said his fledgling company has developed a ride-hailing app that can compete with rivals in the business.

“The system is developed by a team, of course, world-class Filipino

programmers,” he said at a news conference on December 18 .

The new TNVS company is headed by its President and CEO Joel M. Gayod, who had expressed optimism that they will be accredited by the Land Transportation, Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB). “We are positive, we are close to that ‘yes’ because we are willing to comply with the requirements of the government,” Gayod said.

Libertad announced that on November 15 they conducted a business

presentation and submitted to the LTFRB the necessary documents for accreditation on a later date.

Libertad stressed that OWTO is a 100-percent Filipino company and committed to being compliant with the rules and regulation set forth by the government.

Also, Atty. Eloisa Bayani, OWTO corporate secretary, said they are guaranteeing that no operation will be done unless they already got the accreditation from the LTFRB.

amage wrought by Typhoon Urduja to crops and fishery in six regions of the country has reached P701.61 million, according to the latest assessment of the Department of Agriculture (DA).

Field Programs Operational Planning Division Engr.

Christopher V. Morales said that as of December 20, 9 a.m., about 17,334 metric tons (MT) of crops planted in 36,896 hectares in Regions 5, 6, 7 and 13 were affected by the typhoon.

Morales said the rice sector bore the brunt of the damage of Urduja, accounting for about 58.19 percent of the production losses. Damages to the rice sector was pegged at P408.30 million, based on the assessment of the DA regional field offices (RFOs).

“The affected [rice] area is 33,294 hectares, equivalent to 11.4 percent of the total standing crop of 291,746 hectares,” Morales said in a memorandum addressed to Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol, a copy of which was given to reporters on Thursday.

“The volume loss incurred has increased from yesterday’s [Wednesday] 4,892 [MT] to 5,395 MT today [Thursday].

Most affected rice crops are at sowing, seeding, newly transplanted and vegetative stages, a majority of which were reported as totally damaged,” Morales added.

Latest assessment by the DA showed that losses in high-value

crops sector has reached P280 million, or 39.9 percent, of the total estimated production losses, according to Morales.

“Meanwhile, the increase on the value of losses in high-value crops is mainly attributed to assorted vegetables [pole sitao, squash, okra, upland kangkong, bottle gourd, bitter gourd, string beans eggplant and pechay] in Region 8,” he said.

“Most of these are on their fruit-bearing to harvestable stage.

The total affected area for highvalue crops is 1,475 hectares, equivalent to 11,726 MT volume loss,” he added.

Meanwhile, losses in corn and cassava reached P7.82 million and P2.03 million, respectively, according to Morales.

Damages to the corn sector accounted for 1.4 percent of the total losses, with some 2,110 hectares being affected by the typhoon.

Morales said production losses of the livestock sector already reached P3.307 million. “Losses in livestock now include 2,489 animal heads [2,534 in poultry, 350 in swine, 307 in goats, 10 in carabao, five in cattle, three sheep and two in horse],” he added.

Meanwhile, the value of damages to agri-fisheries facilities of the DA reached P157,000, according to Morales. He added that the latest damage report is still for validation.

“The DA-DRRM Operations Center shall continuously monitor and provide further updates to the honorable secretary on the matter, once succeeding reports have been submitted by the concerned RFOs,” he added.

Ombudsman files graft charges vs ex-ERC head Salazar, 4 commissioners suspended

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he Office of the Ombudsman ordered on Thursday a one-year suspension on former Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) Chairman and CEO Jose Vicente Salazar and four other commissioners of the agency.

Salazar and the four other ERC officials were charged with viola-

tion of Republic Act 3019, or the “Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act.” The case arose from the complaint filed by the group Alyansa Para Sa Bagong Pilipinas Inc. (APSBPI) in the alleged anomalous resolution of the ERC for the conduct of the so-ca l led

competitive selection process (CSP) in the purchase of power requirements of d istr ibution utilities.

The APSBPI accused the ERC of allegedly intentionally favoring the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) through the delayed implementation of the CSP resolution on April

30, 2016, which was supposed to have been implemented on November 6, 2015.

The complainant argued that Meralco had the opportunity for the “backdoor negotiation,” so the 20-year power supply agreements (PSAs) were sealed.

T hey added t hat by doing

so, Mera lco and even its aff i liated distr ibution uti lities were a l leged ly automat ica l ly “exempted ” f rom undergoing the competitive process, which was requisite in the ERC ’s 2015 CSP resolution.

The suspended ERC commissioners are Gloria Victoria C. Yap-

Taruc, Alfredo J. Non, Josefina Patricia A. Magpale-Asirit and Geronimo D. Sta. Ana. Salazar, meanwhile, was ordered to pay the amount equivalent to his six-month salary after he was dismissed from the service

by Malacañang in October this year. PNA

Economy

A4 Friday, December 22, 2017 • Editors: Vittorio V. Vitug and Max V. de Leon

BusinessMirror

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COMP affirms vow to ‘responsible’ mining

By Jonathan L. Mayuga

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@jonlmayuga

ining companies under the Chamber of Mines of the Philippines (COMP) have affirmed their commitment to responsible mining with the recent adoption of Canada’s Toward Sustainable Mining (TSM) initiative and the Baguio Declaration.

All 23 operating COMP members are mandated to implement the TSM, Canada’s sustainable mining mode, and adhere to the Baguio Declaration, in response to the challenge of Secretary Roy A. Cimatu of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to the industry during his keynote speech at the 64th Annual National Mine Safety and Environment Conference (ANMSEC) in Baguio City last month.

The adoption of the TSM and Baguio Declaration is viewed as an attempt by the mining industry to further improve its operation, as well as its image in the eyes of the

public, after suffering huge setbacks from attacks mounted against the sector by former DENR Secretary Regina Paz L. Lopez.

Gerard H. Brimo, chairman of the Board of Trustees of COMP and President and CEO of Nickel Asia Corp. (NAC) said the adoption of the TSM will be mandatory for all COMP members. He admitted that it may take years to put the initiative in place but, Brimo added, he is confident that its members will comply to prove that the country has world-class mines.

Environmental and anti-mining advocates blame large-scale mining for the massive environ-

mental destruction in areas where they operate.

Marcventures Mining and Development Corporation (MMDC), a member of COMP said its adoption of the TSM and Baguio Declaration aims to manifest its commitment to responsible minerals development and to ensure a thriving environment and host communities long after mining has ceased.

In a joint statement, MMDC vice chairman and COMP board of trustee Isidro C. Alcantara Jr. who represented the company in ceremonies attended by the DENR chief, Canadian Ambassador to the Philippines John Holmes and Mining Association of Canada (MAC) President and CEO Pierre Gratton, said: “Our participation in both the TSM and the Baguio Declaration is aligned with Marcventures’ ‘Clean Mining’ Advocacy, particularly in making sure we exceed our host communities’ expectations in mitigating the impact of our operations on the environment, and in serving these communities as a matter of social obligation during and long after the life of our mines.”

“This advocacy has led us to find new and better ways to improve our systems and processes, and to put highly qualified people to lead our team and manage our

business,” Alcantara added.

The TSM is a mining sustainability standard developed in 2004

by MAC. The implementation of the program is mandatory for all MAC members’ Canadian operations, but many voluntarily apply it to their international sites.

MAC freely shares TSM with other countries seeking tools to improve the environmental and social performance of their mining industries, including engagement with civil society and enhanced transparency and accountability.

President Duterte has said in several speeches that the country’s mining industry should adopt the Canadian and Australian standards in protecting the environment and in upholding the rights of host mining communities.

The TSM requires mining companies to annually assess their facilities’ performance in key areas, including tailings management community outreach, safety and health, biodiversity conservation, crisis management and energy use and greenhouse gas emissions management.

The results are freely available to the public and are externally-verified every three years to ensure what has been reported is accurate.

The Baguio Declaration outlines five elements of Responsible

Minerals Development: (1) People Orientation; (2) Protection and Enhancement of the Environment; (3) Respect for the Rights and Welfare of Indigenous people; (4) Fair Contribution to the National Economy; and (5) Efficient, Competitive and Compliant with International Standards.

In his speech in the Baguio City event, Cimatu challenged the mining industry to be a greater contributor to national development.

COMP, through its executive committee, immediately took up the challenge and fast-tracked a number of initiatives that have been in the pipeline since the 2017 Mining Philippines conference last June.

In witnessing the signing of an agreement between COMP

and MAC, Cimatu expressed elation that the industry accepted his challenge.

“I am happy that you have accepted my challenge to the mining industry, and I look forward to the more meaningful collaboration between the DENR and the private sector involved in minerals development in ensuring even greater benefits for our people,” Secretary Cimatu told the COMP leadership.

Gratton, for his part, said “It is MAC’s privilege to share our tools and expertise in sustainable mining practices with the world. We applaud COMP for taking this important step forward as it works to enhance its industry’s environmental and social performance.”

I am happy that you have accepted my challenge to the mining industry, and I look forward to the more meaningful collaboration between the DENR and the private sector involved in minerals development in ensuring even greater benefits for our people.”—Cimatu

Alvarez defends ‘zero’ funding for opposition lawmakers

By Jovee Marie N. dela Cruz @joveemarie

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ouse Speaker Pantaleon D. Alvarez on Thursday said Congress has reallocated the infrastructure funds of several lawmakers to finance the free college education and salary increase of military and uniformed personnel next year.

Alvarez issued the statement after the opposition bloc bewailed the “zero infrastructure funding” they received in next year’s General Appropriations Act. A ccord i ng to A lva rez, t he House leadership has decided to reallocate funds to finance “other priorities.”

“I also wish to emphasize that the funds slashed from some projects of the opposition and even those in the supermajority have been reallocated to free college education in state universities and colleges and to augment the salaries and benefits of our men and women in uniform who are in the frontlines of the government’s war against terrorism and criminality,” Alvarez added.

House leaders allocated P40 billion to cover the free tuition and miscellaneous fees for college students in all State Colleges and Universities nationwide under the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act. It also set aside an additional P62 billion for the increase of

OPERATION PRIVATE EYE Philippine

Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) Director General Aaron Aquino (right) hands over about P500,000 in cash to a tipster named “Basti” at the PDEA office in Quezon City on Wednesday. Three other informants were given cash rewards under the operation “Private Eye,” a citizen-based informationcollection program designed to encourage the active participation of citizens to report illegal-drug activities in their communities.

PNA/Ben Briones

military and uniformed personnel’s base pay beginning January 1, 2018.

“I mean what I say and I am not in the habit of saying one thing and doing another. If there’s money, then I’ll see to it that it would be properly allocated,” he said.

“As much as possible, once funding for a project has been approved, then it is good to go.

But in extraordinary cases we have to re-allocate funds for other priorities, such as education and the welfare of policemen and soldiers. This is what happened in the 2018 budget,” Alvarez added.

For his part, Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, a member of the opposition bloc. The Magnificent 7, said zero allocations for at least 24 lawmakers are projected to “punish and silence opposition legislators even as it is their constituencies who are deprived of the benefits of infrastructure development.”

“The scrapping of infrastructure projects to zero in the districts and constituencies of dissenting solons was nonchalantly dismissed by Speaker Pantaelon Alvarez as a result of the vagaries of life,” Lagman added.

“This also reveals a discriminatory and flawed perception of life wherein partisan allies are vastly rewarded and opposition Representatives are utterly deprived, irrespective of the compelling needs of their respective

districts,” he added.

Lagman said the minority positions are not appreciated and accommodated in the Speaker’s “concept of life which seeks to impose servile unanimity.”

The Magnificent 7 said it is now eyeing to bring the matter to the court for legal action. Members of the Magnificent 7 and some Liberal Party members suffered zero allocations next year.

However, Alvarez said the House of Representatives respects the right of the opposition to raise concerns or questions regarding our fund allocations.

Speaker Alvarez claimed that Lagman has projects worth a total of P3.8 billion in his district, saying “We would be very happy to hear from him where this huge funding has gone.”

But Lagman said “the Speaker’s claim that I proposed P3.8-B worth of projects is utterly preposterous.

How could an opposition Representative propose and be accorded this amount of projects?”

For their part, Magdalo Rep. Gary Alejano and Dinagat Islands Rep. Kaka Bag-ao reminded the leadership that their infrastructure funding are for their constituents.

“The agencies are then the ones that implement the programs and projects we have recommended.

Therefore, if our recommendations are slashed, their it is our constituents that are disenfranchised,” Alejano said.

Railway commuter facility

Workers lay steel and concrete foundation of the Metro Railway Transit 7 along Commonwealth Avenue in Quezon City. The commuter railway project, upon its completion, will link North Avenue, Quezon City to San Jose del Monte, Bulacan, via a 22-kilometer elevated railway that is expected to serve initially 500,000 riders per day. Nonoy Lacza

DBM’s Diokno assures citizens’ role, transparency in BBB implementation

By Manuel T. Cayon @awimailbox Mindanao Bureau Chief

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AVAO CITY—Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno has told Asia-Pacific leaders that the country’s most ambitious infrastructure spending under President Duterte’s “Build, Build, Build” program would only be successful if it adhered into with an open government or transparency.

“The citizens can be our strongest allies in developing and improving government programs, that will increasingly be responsive to the needs of our people,” Diokno told his counterparts in the ministerial roundtable discussion during the 2017 Asia Pacific Leaders’ Forum (APLF) on Open Government.

Diokno led the Philippine delegation to the forum on December 14 at Hotel Borobodur in Jakarta, Indonesia.

“When we speak about growth and sustainable development, we know that a requisite to boosting the economy is good and efficient infrastructure,” he added.

He said the “Build, Build, Build” program of the Duterte administration seeks to address the inadequacies in Philippine infrastructure.

The program would entail some $160 billion to $180 billion in the medium term, he added.

But Diokno emphasized that “the whole concept of an open government is pertinent to the achievement of the goals of the Philippines’s ambitious infrastructure program.”

“In implementing a program as huge as “Build Build Build”, we also ensure that the principles of transparency, accountability and citizen engagement are key elements in all phases of the program cycle, from planning and budgeting to implementation and monitoring of projects,” he noted.

Diokno’s said people’s engagement in big-ticket projects, commonly frowned also as the main source of corruption among government officials and private contractors, would further the attempt to bring the benefits to a wider section of the population by directly involving communities in the projects.

This would be done by “the administration’s focus on human capital development as another requisite for the country’s progress,” he assured.

“Education is a great equalizer.

So, under our social services budget, we have allocated more than $12 billion for basic education and around $140 million for technicalvocational,” he added.

The APLF, themed “Open Government for Inclusive Development,” has “featured leaders and

ministers from various countries for a series of parallel sessions and roundtable discussions aimed at encouraging partnerships towards more open or transparent governments.”

The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) said the forum “intends to reinvigorate political leadership for open government in the region, allowing ministers to go on the record with support for open government and OGP (open government partnership) and to build relationships with each other to encourage cross-country learning.”

Also, the DBM added, the forum sought to provide a space for the exchange of information, knowledge, experience and practices in utilizing the open government platform and/or applying open government principles to help achieve more inclusive development.”

It said the APLF has “Facilitated collaboration and partnership between and among development partners—central governments, local governments, civil society, private sector, educational institutions, multilateral agencies and the media, to work together to find ways to bolster individual efforts in promoting transparency, accountability, and inclusive governance that potentially leads to a more inclusive development.”

Agriculture/Commodities BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Editor: Jennifer A. Ng • Friday, December 22, 2017 A5

NFA will still import rice, Aquino says

By Jasper Emmanuel Y. Arcalas

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@jearcalas

HE National Food Authority (NFA) will continue to purchase paddy from farmers and import rice, if necessary, to beef up its buffer stock even after the quantitative restriction (QR) on the staple has been lifted.

The NFA made the statement in reaction to speculations that with the lifting of the rice QR in favor of higher tariffs on imports, the food agency may have to be reorganized to limit its functions to proprietary activities, such as buffer stocking and local procurement.

“If the past few years are any indication, we have seen a trend where palay farm-gate prices have been on the uptrend, higher than the NFA’s support price of P17 per kilogram [kg],” NFA Administrator Jason Laureano Y. Aquino said in a statement.

“This is the reason the NFA has not been able to meet procurement targets, resorting to importation to fill in the buffer stock requirement for food security,” he added.

The NFA said it will take a while before the domestic rice market would be able to adjust to the nonQR regime. Under a non-QR regime, Aquino said the government should continue to provide safety nets for the farmers who may be most affected by the freer entry of imported

rice into the Philippines.

“We cannot speculate on how much lower rice prices could go under a non-QR but higher tariff situation.

Our role in the NFA is to ensure that there will always be enough affordable rice for everyone, including the small farmer-producers who are also end-consumers of their own produce,” Aquino added.

Aquino said small farmers eventually sell their own harvests, sometimes in advance, thus they end up buying from the market for their family’s daily consumption.

The NFA will also continue to perform its regulatory function by issuing import licenses to traders and importers, and provide the necessary guidelines to ensure food safety and quality standards of rice imports, according to Aquino.

Aquino’s statement came days after the Department of Finance (DOF) said the commercial price of rice could go down by as much as P7 once the QR on the staple is lifted and that the food agency could just focus on local palay procurement.

In an economic bulletin on the rice-sector reform, Finance Undersecretary Gil S. Beltran said a 35-percent import tariff on rice in lieu of restricting rice-import volumes would encourage private traders to bring in the staple into the country, which would allow the influx of cheaper rice in the domestic market.

Instead of subsidizing imports, the national government could reallocate its funds to invest in public goods and services that directly benefit the farmers, including farm-tomarket roads, irrigation and storage, which reduce production and marketing costs, according to Beltran.

The NFA is mandated to import and regulate rice imports, and has so far received a total of P187 billion in tax subsidies for its purchases of imported grain from 2005 to 2015, or an average of P19 billion a year, according to the DOF. “Note that in its present state, the NFA loses about P11 billion annually, [that], even after operating subsidy of P5 billion average per year from 2005 to 2015…[still] has an accumulated debt of P155.84 billion as of the end of September 2016,” Beltran said.

The Philippines is under pressure to convert its QR on rice into ordinary customs duties after its waiver on the special treatment on rice expired on June 30. The World Trade Organization (WTO) General Council approved the waiver, which allowed Manila to keep its rice QR until June 30, on the condition that the Philippines will subject its rice imports to ordinary custom duties

by July 1.

The conversion of QR into tariffs requires the amendment of Republic

Act (RA) 8178, which allowed the government to continue implementing the caps on rice imports even after the WTO waiver has expired. But Congress was forced to delay discussions on amending RA 8178 as lawmakers were focused on passing the 2018 national budget and the first package of the tax-reform program before their Christmas break on December 13.

PHL among countries least cruel to farm animals

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HE Philippines is one of the countries that is regarded as least cruel to farm animals due to its low level of animal production and consumption, according to a recent global survey on animal cruelty.

In the Voiceless Animal Cruelty Index (VACI) released recently by Australia-based nonprofit animal-rights group Voiceless, the Philippines was ranked as the fourth best-performing country.

“The Philippines is the fourth best-performing country under the VACI due to its low levels of animal production and consumption,” the VACI said on its web site.

Kenya was ranked as the best-performing country in the VACI, followed by India and the United Republic of Tanzania.

The VACI tracks the animal-welfare performance of 50 select countries regarded as among the largest producers of farm animal products in the world.

“The VACI aims to provide an interactive index that evaluates and ranks countries based on the nature, extent and intensity of cruelty associated with farm animal production and consumption in a sample of 50 countries that together account for almost 80 percent of the world’s farm animal population,” it said.

The VACI assesses countries based on three factors: producing cruelty, consuming cruelty and sanctioning cruelty.

Producing cruelty is based on the number of farm animals slaughtered for food every year on a per-capita basis. Consuming cruelty is based on the number of animals consumed, on a per-capita basis, as a source of protein.

VACI said sanctioning cruelty measures the country’s societal and cultural attitudes to farm animals, as reflected in the quality of regulatory frameworks that protect or fail to protect farm animals.

The Philippines ranked 17th in terms of producing cruelty as it slaughters around 10.2 land-based animals per person per year, which is slightly higher than the global average of 9.7.

“The country’s dependency on farm animals is low, with around 2 farm animals per person [compared with a global average of around 4],” the VACI said.

“While farming is mostly small-scale, factory farms are growing— particularly in pig and poultry production,” it added.

In terms of consumption cruelty, the Philippines was ranked 10th after the VACI found that the Filipino diet contains a relatively low proportion of animal products as a source of protein at only around 30.7 percent. This was lower compared to the global average of 35.2 percent.

“This equates to each person consuming around 15.5 grams of land-based animal protein per day [compared with a global average of 26.7 grams],” the VACI said.

The country also ranked 10th in the sanctioning cruelty category as it was given a “C” under the Animal Protection Index (API), which means it has sufficient laws to protect farm animals against cruelty and mistreatment.

“While the Philippines has legislated animal-welfare protections, the API notes the difficulty in improving animal welfare given agricultural production ranges from backyard farms to large-scale intensive systems,” VACI said.

“The API also notes cultural and economic barriers to change, particularly around the treatment of animals in captivity,” it added.

The VACI included countries like Switzerland, Austria, Germany, the United States, Sweden, the United Kingdom, France and Denmark.

Jasper Emmanuel Y. Arcalas

KSK BATCH 154 COMPLETES TRAINING IN CDO Participants to Kabalikat sa Kabuhayan

Farmers’ Training Program Batch 154 finished their training in Barangay Balubal, Cagayan de Oro City. One hundred thrity-five participants graduated from the 12-week program trained by Harbest Agribusiness field instructor Celes Alla. The participants were farmers and 4Ps beneficiaries from different barangays: Balubal, Puerto, Bugo, Indahag and Tablon. The graduation ceremony was held at SM CdO Downtown Premier. SM FOUNDATION PHOTO

Pulp giant stirs conflicts with Indonesian villagers

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IR MENDUYUNG, Indonesia—Less than five years after it pledged to end dozens of disputes over land and gain local consent for new plantations in Indonesia, one of the world’s largest paper companies is backsliding on those vows. At issue: its dealings with a supplier that has been a butt of community opposition.

Asia Pulp & Paper denies it controls the littleknown plantation company it wants as a supplier.

But an Associated Press (AP) investigation reveals the paper giant has had close ties to the company, as it does with more than two dozen other suppliers it characterizes as independent.

Through the supplier, Asia Pulp & Paper is pressing ahead with plans to exploit 66,000 hectares (163,000 acres) of state land in the Bangka Belitung island chain off Sumatra, despite resistance from 40 affected villages that some 100,000 people call home.

That runs against the company’s commitment to gain the “free, prior and informed consent” of local communities and indigenous people when developing new plantations.

Bangka and the other major island in the chain, a melting pot of Malay, Chinese, Javanese, Arab, Bugis and Batak peoples, are already pockmarked and polluted by illegal tin mining.

Villagers are intensely wary of industrial plantations after what some described as false promises from palm-oil companies that wanted land.

Roadside signs declare “we reject industrial forestry plantations” and “No BRS”—a reference to Bangun Rimba Sejahtera, the company that’s a front for Asia Pulp & Paper’s expansion in the area.

“If this land is taken by BRS where we shall we go,” said Yunus, the religious leader of Tambang Enam village, who uses one name.

“This land supports our society and economy, it pays our children’s school fees,” he said.

“We are ready to go to war. It’s better than dying slowly. It’s better for us to die at once.”

Asia Pulp & Paper is a trade name for a group of mills and forestry companies owned by Indonesia’s family-run Sinarmas conglomerate that together form a global paper and packaging giant.

Its products touch consumers around the world, ranging from photocopy paper, tissues and cigarette boxes to special types of paper and card that become bottle labels, burger wrappers, noodle cups and menu cards.

Asia Pulp & Paper says BRS is in the final stage of being approved as a wood supplier.

A spokesman told the AP in July that it and a second company under consideration, Buana Megatama Jaya in West Kalimantan, “both are independent suppliers and have no affiliation to APP or Sinarmas.” An AP investigation into the ownership of 27 companies that supply the Sinarmas pulp empire with wood has revealed ties that indicate that the group can exercise significant influence over nearly all of them despite its characterization of them as independent.

In the case of the two potential wood suppliers, Buana Megatama Jaya is owned by two people—one a former director of a plantation company owned by Sinarmas, and the second a current manager of the same plantation company.

Corporate documents show BRS, meanwhile, was a Sinarmas creature for most of the past decade.

In 2007 it was owned by Margaretha Widjaya, who was deputy CEO of Sinarmas Forestry from 2002 to 2008 and is a granddaughter of the Sinarmas patriarch. AP

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Friday, December 22, 2017

The World BusinessMirror

Editor: Lyn Ressureccion | www.businessmirror.com.ph

US life expectancy drops for 2nd year amid opioid crisis

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The skyline in China is marred by air pollution. Bloomberg

China’s policy-makers signal 3-year financial-risk campaign

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hina’s top leaders said they are taking a three-year approach to winning “critical battles” against financial risk, pollution and poverty, and signaled that monetary policy will remain “prudent and neutral” next year in support.

Economic policy-makers led

by President Xi Jinping agreed to “fight the battle of preventing and resolving major risks, with a focus on preventing and controlling financial risks,” according to a statement following the annual Central Economic Work Conference in Beijing, released by the official Xinhua news agency late on Wednesday.

In the coming three years, China will seek to control financial risks and foster a “virtuous circle” between finance and the real economy, the statement said.

Policy-makers didn’t repeat language on outright deleveraging from the previous two years, but instead focused comments on risk in the financial system, signaling that’s where pressure will continue to be applied in the coming year.

The reiteration of a prudent and neutral monetary-policy stance

for next year signals that policymakers again seek to balance the goals of reining in the nation’s rampant credit growth and polluting industries, while ensuring growth doesn’t slow too drastically.

“The statement doesn’t mention corporate deleveraging, suggesting financial de-risking takes priority for the moment,” said Yao Wei, chief China economist at Société Générale SA in Paris. “This is a more practical approach, as

the economy would not be able to handle both financial and real economy deleveraging at the same time.”

The nation must also build and improve mechanisms for pushing ahead high-quality development and further supply-side structural reforms, the statement said.

Pol ic y-ma kers a lso ag reed to move faster to put in place a housing system that ensures supply through multiple sources and encourages both purchases and rentals in 2018, the news service reported. p re s i d e nt X i a nd h i s t o p policy-lieutenants gathered for the three-day meeting after a robust economic performance this year with growth on pace to expand 6.8 percent, the first annual acceleration since 2010. “ The top priority of the past five years has been power consolidation. For this purpose, stimulus in property and infrastructure has been used to provide

The top priority of the past five years has been power consolidation. For this purpose, stimulus in property and infrastructure has been used to provide a stable economic backdrop.”—Hu

a stable economic backdrop,” Larry Hu, chief China economist at Macquarie Securities Ltd. in Hong Kong, wrote in a note. Authorities are now “ keen to curb the risks accumulated over the past five years, so that growth could be more sustainable over the next five years without having a financial meltdown.”

Fielding Chen, a Bloomberg Economics economist in Hong Kong, noted that preventing financial risks has a more prominent spot in this year’s statement with a specific timeline and to-do list.

“It highlights the increasing importance of this objective,” he said.

The People’s Bank of China has increased borrowing costs in the interbank market this year, while keeping steady the benchmark rate that governs lending rates in the wider economy.

Further details from the policy meeting include: China will maintain a proactive fiscal policy. China seeks to limit growth of credit and total social financing to a “reasonable level.”

China’s stance on the yuan seems little changed, as officials pledge to keep basic yuan stability at a “reasonable” level. Officials reiterated commitments to economic reform and, opening up, vowed to cut tariffs and increase imports.

Officials said credit supply should support home purchases for living in and that speculation should be strictly curbed. Bloomberg News

Scuba-diving Santa Claus delights kids in San Francisco

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AN FRANCISCO—Santa Claus doesn’t just sit at shopping malls in snowchallenged San Francisco: He also goes scuba diving. The California Academy of Sciences launched its annual Scuba Santa show on Tuesday with about 100 children and adults crowded around a coral-reef exhibit to watch jolly Saint Nick feed fish.

Diver George Bell also answered questions via underwater microphone about the reef and reindeer. He high-fived through the glass and posed for photos, delighting children thrilled with a swimming Santa.

The daily feeding runs through Christmas Day. The academy’s Philippine Coral Reef tank holds 212,000 gallons (802,000 liters) and has thousands of reef fish representing about 100 species.

Parent Michali Kolnick says the tradition is a charming San Francisco “spin on meeting Santa.” AP

Diver George Bell, dressed as Santa Claus, swims in the Philippine coral-reef tank during a presentation on fish and corals as part of the ‘Tis the Season for Science holiday exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco on December 19. AP Photo/Jeff Chiu

mericans’ life expectanc y at bir th declined for the second year in a row in 2016 as the nation grappled with an opioid crisis, the first time t h at ’s h appened i n more than half a centur y.

The overall decrease in longevity—to an average of 78.6 years—was driven by higher death rates among young and middle-aged Americans, even as older people are living longer. Fatal drug overdoses jumped by 21 percent, and the rate of deaths from synthetic opioids like fentanyl doubled from 2015 to 2016, the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) said on Thursday.

Broad declines in life expectancy are unusual in modern, wealthy nations—absent of war or epidemics—and the reversal in the United States has been years in the making.

Americans have shorter lives than citizens of other rich nations like Japan, Germany or Canada, and the gap in lifespans have been increasing, according to a 2013 National Academies of Sciences report.

“We’ve been on a different trajector y from other high-income nations over two decades,” Laudan Aron, a demographer at the Urban Institute and coeditor of that report said.

Still, the opioid crisis is part of the story in the most recent years. Accidental injuries, a category that includes drug overdoses, eclipsed respiratory disease to become the third-leading cause of death in 2016, accounting for almost 6 percent of all deaths.

Only cancer and heart disease kill more Americans.

The demographic changes, and the actuarial tables that are based on them have led compa n ies, i nc lud i ng Ver i zon Com mu n ic at ions Inc., General Motors Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp., to adjust their expected pension obligations downward.

Life expectancy at birth in the US dropped about 10 weeks in two years, from 78.8 years in 2014. That’s a statistical estimate based on current death rates and other factors in the decades ahead will influence

how long, on average, today’s newborns will live.

Last time the statistic fell two consecutive years was in 1962-1963, the NCHS said in one of two reports released on Thursday.

About 63,600 Americans died from fatal overdoses in 2016, according to the second report, with West Virginia, New Hampshire, the District of Columbia and Pennsylvania among the hardest-hit states.

The increase in fatalities linked to powerful synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl, is particularly stark. As recently as 2013, those substances accounted for just one death for every 100,000 people. The rate in 2016 was 6.2 per 100,000, said the NCHS, a division of the Centers for Disease Control.

Bleak picture

The overall death rate, adjusted for the age distribution of the population, actually declined slightly. But because mortality increased for younger groups—people between 15 and 44 —that pulled down the estimate of life expectancy at birth.

Deat h rates dec l i ned for people over 65. Mortality decreased for white women and increased for black men. Infant mortality remained flat.

Despite the bleak picture of recent years, Americans have enjoyed big gains in life expectancy over the long term from public-health improvements, new med ica l treatments and ex panded access to care.

Life expectancy at birth is almost a decade higher today than it was in 1960, an era before social programs like Medicare and life-extending drugs like statins.

Still, the recent increase in mortality at younger ages is a symptom of underlying illness and distress. That could be a consequence of economic decline, and a cause.

“You need a healthy, robust popu lation to f uel our economy and raise families and ser ve in the militar y,” A ron, the Urban Institute demographer said. “ T hese data are rea l ly k ind of the tip of the iceberg in ter ms of our overa l l hea lth and wel l-being.” Bloomberg News

N. Korea soldier defections reach highest rate this century

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second North Korean soldier, in as many months, fled across the heavily fortified land border separating the two Koreas, capping a year that has seen the most military defections this century since Kim Jong Un’s regime.

T he low-rank ing soldier crossed at around 8 a.m. on Thursday, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.

South Korea’s military fired about 20 warning shots as North Korean guards chased the defector in thick fog, Yonhap News Agency reported.

Last month another North Korean soldier was shot as he crossed near the Joint Security Area (JSA)—the only part of the demilitarized zone where forces from both countries stand face-toface. That defection was only the third across the heavily guarded JSA since 1998.

While escapes like Thursday’s

across a less sensitive area of the border are more common, it’s rare for soldiers to defect. Four troops have crossed into South Korea this year, the most since at least 2000.

Un ited Nat ions Com m a nd said that North Korea breached t h e i nt e r - K o r e a n a r m i s t i c e a g r e e m e nt w h e n it s b o r d e r guards fired across the military demarcation line at the previous defector. He is now recovering in a South Korean hospital.

North Korea and South Korea are technically still at war, with Kim’s regime saying a 1953 armistice agreement is invalid. President Donald J. Trump has threatened military action to prevent Kim from obtaining the ability to strike the continental United States with a nuclear weapon.

Separately, two North Korean civilians defected to the south on a fishing boat on Wednesday, Yonhap said, citing a Unification Ministry official. Bloomberg News

www.businessmirror.com.ph | Editor: Lyn Ressureccion

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Friday, December 22, 2017

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Trump threatens to cut off foreign aid over UN’s Jerusalem resolution W

ASHINGTON—President Donald J. Trump issued a threat on Wednesday to cut off United States aid to any country that votes for a resolution at the United Nations condemning his recent decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Trump’s statement, delivered at a Cabinet meeting in which he exulted over the passage of a tax overhaul, followed a letter to General Assembly members from the US ambassador to the UN, Nikki R. Haley, in which she warned that the United States would take note of countries that voted in favor of the measure.

“All of these nations that take our money and then they vote against us at the Security Council or they vote against us, potentially, at the Assembly, they take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars and then they vote against us,” Trump said.

“Well, we’re watching those votes,”

he added. “Let them vote against us; we’ll save a lot. We don’t care.”

It is difficult to see how Trump can make good on that threat because it could involve cutting off financial assistance to the country’s most strategic allies in the Middle East.

Some of those programs, like Egypt’s, are congressionally mandated.

While the president can hold up aid unilaterally as a form of leverage, canceling it would require new legislation.

Still, the bitter confrontation at the UN shows the lingering repercussions of Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem, which defied world opinion and upended decades of US policy.

While the decision has not unleashed the violence in the Arab capitals that some had feared, it has left the US diplomatically isolated.

The General Assembly is scheduled to vote on Thursday on a resolution that would express “deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem,” according to a draft text. It

would urge other countries not to move their embassies there from Tel Aviv.

Trump announced this month that the US would relocate its embassy to Jerusalem, though State Department officials said a move was several years away because of the logistics of constructing a new embassy complex.

In Haley’s letter, a copy of which was seen by The New York Times, she said, “As you consider your vote, I want you to know that the president and the US take this vote personally.”

“To be clear,” she wrote, “we are not asking that other countries move their embassies to Jerusalem, though we think it would be appropriate.

We are simply asking that you acknowledge the historical friendship, partnership and support we have extended and respect our decision about our own embassy.”

In a Twitter post on Tuesday, Haley said of the vote in the General Assembly, “the US will be taking names.”

On Monday the US used a rare veto

to block a resolution in the Security Council calling for the administration to reverse its decision on Jerusalem.

The vote on the resolution, which was drafted by Egypt, was 14-1, suggesting there could be a similarly wide margin against the United States in the 193-member General Assembly.

Canada, the Czech Republic and Hungary might abstain from the vote, according to diplomats.

Days after the US, the Czech Republic recognized West Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, though it said it would not move its embassy before negotiating with countries in the region. Egypt received $77.4 billion in foreign aid from the US from 1948 to 2016, according to the Congressional Research Service, including about $1.3 billion in annual military aid.

Yemen and Turkey are sponsoring the General Assembly resolution, which underlines the problem Trump would face in retaliating for an antiAmerican vote.

Yemen, which is torn by civil war, receives humanitarian aid from the US, while Turkey is a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) ally.

On Wednesday Trump struck a familiar tone, declaring that “people are tired of the US—people that live here, our great citizens that love this country—they’re tired of this country being taken advantage of, and we’re not going to be taken advantage of any longer.”

Derek H. Chollet, who served in the Obama administration, said: “This is an empty threat. Some of the countries Trump professes to be most admiring of would be caught in the cross-hairs of this.”

Former President Barack Obama w it h held Ha r poon m issi les a nd F-16 fighter jets from Egypt in 2013 after the countr y’s army ousted President Mohammed Morsi. But Obama did not tr y to kill the overall aid program, even though some officials argued that the army’s action constituted a coup, grounds

for cutting off the aid. In 2015 he reinstated the aid.

“The idea that you can use foreign assistance as a lever to influence the behavior of countries is not a not new one,” Chollet said. “But this is bluster that other countries will see right through.”

Trump has threatened to hold up aid to Pakistan if it does not cooperate more with the US on counterterrorism operations. During the 2016 presidential election, he warned that the United States might pull out of Nato because it shouldered an unfair burden in paying for the alliance.

It was also not the first time that Haley has used this language at the UN. Soon after taking her post, she said, “You’re going to see a change in the way we do business.”

The US, she said, would back its allies and expected their backing in return. “For those who don’t have our back,” she added, “we’re taking names.”

New York Times News Service

The Regions

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Camotes Island featured in protected-areas series

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By Charles R. Pepito | Correspondent

N the third week of the docu-series Our Fragile Earth: Protected Areas of the Philippines, Sen. Loren B. Legarda enjoined the public to watch the episode on the Camotes Island Mangrove Swamp Forest Reserve, described as a precious fortress in Central Visayas.

“Unspoiled white-sand beaches and untouched natural forests thrive in the Camotes Island in Cebu. Its breathtaking aqua-blue seascape, mangroves, lakes, dive sites, and majestic caves are part of a fragile biodiversity threatened by a grow� ing population and climate change,” Legarda said in a statement.

Legarda added that, within recent years, Camotes Island ex� perienced a significant increase in the number of visitors. She noted, however, that natural haz� ards magnified by climate change are still the biggest threat to the island. In 2013, Camotes Island was along the storm path of Ty�

phoon Yolanda (international code name Haiyan), and quite recently, Typhoon Urduja (inter� national code name Ka-tak).

“The Camotes Island Mangrove Swamp Forest Reserve, which covers the coastlines of Camotes, acts as a vital defense against the impacts of climate change, such as storm surge and sea-level rise.

The third episode from the docuseries features how the mangrove forest protected and saved the lives of the people on the island.

It also called for sustainable de� velopment and preservation for the mangrove forest, which ne� cessitates cooperation from gov�

ernment agencies and the people it serves,” Legarda said.

The protected areas documen� tary series was narrated and con� ceptualized by Legarda, directed

by Brillante Mendoza and produced by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).

“This series aims to educate citizens on our protected areas, which are critical in conserving our biodiversity that is essential to our existence and survival.

Through this documentary se� ries, Filipinos will learn more about our protected areas—the richness of these areas and the challenges in conservation. We

PRC opens Bogo City branch

DENR chief to residents in disaster-prone areas: Evacuate when told to

By Jonathan L. Mayuga

P

@jonlmayuga

‘I

F told to evacuate, evacuate.”

This was the advice of Secretary Roy A. Cimatu of the Department of Environment and Natural Re� sources (DENR) to residents living in disaster-prone areas in times of natural calamities.

In a statement, Cimatu cautioned those living along the path of storms, particularly in the eastern seaboard of the country, to be alert and follow warnings from con� cerned national and local government agencies.

The advice was issued by the DENR chief after typhoon Urduja struck the Visayas and Mindanao last week. The torrential rains induced by the typhoon triggered floods and landslides that left at least 31 people dead.

“We are particularly appealing to those living in areas that have already been identified as highly susceptible to landslides and floods to please evacuate as soon as you are told to, so that we can achieve zero casualties,” Cimatu said in a statement.

As storm track can change quickly and unexpectedly, Cimatu urged residents in potentially affected areas not to be caught unaware and take advantage of advance warning to get their families to safety before it becomes too dangerous to do so.

“Lives are more important than property. Let us all remain safe and alive, especially during this Christmas season,” he added.

The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astro� nomical Services Administration (Pag-asa) warned of a low-pressure area that could possibly develop into tropi� cal cyclone Vinta when it enters the Philippine area of responsibility in the next few days.

Cimatu also advised the public to use technology to keep abreast of government updates and safety information.

Geohazard maps showing landslide and flood-prone areas are available on the web sites of the DENR (www. denr.gov.ph) and the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (www. mgb.gov.ph). These maps are available in 1:50,000 and 1:10,000 scales.

The DENR also distributed geohazard maps to local government units for their guidance and use, especially for zoning purposes.

The agency has two free mobile applications that contain environmental information, including flood-and landslideprone areas.

The AlertoPinoy and EnvironMentor applications are both map-based and use global positioning sys� tem technology.

want Filipinos to appreciate the unique natural heritage that we have and enjoin everyone to pro� tect them,” Legarda added.

Protected areas are identified portions of land and water set aside by reasons of their unique physi� cal and biological significance, managed to enhance biological diversity and protected against destructive human exploitation.

There are 240 identified protected areas in the country.

Our Fragile Earth: Protected Areas of the Philippines airs every Sat� urday, 7:45 a.m., on the ABS-CBN News Channel (ANC), with replays every Sunday, 1:45 p.m.

BOUNTY FROM BENGUET A vendor in the vegetable section of the Baguio City public market sorts his fresh vegetables, mainly coming from the nearby province of Benguet. Vegetable prices remain stable and supply continues to abound.

MAU VICTA

Republic Cement urges private sector to join fight vs malnutrition

D

URING the recently concluded #ENDHUNGERSUMMIT2017 or� ganized by Gawad Kalinga, Republic Cement President Nabil Francis shared a strong model on how firms can impact com� munities through sustainable projects, such as its pilot Kusina ng Kalinga in Batangas.

“Through Kusina ng Kalinga, we are addressing the urgent nutritional needs of children who need it most. More than that, we are also able to educate our partner-ben� eficiaries, encourage community involve� ment and create a livelihood,” Francis said.

“Our main goal is to impart a sustainable solution to the issue of malnutrition, not just a dole-out or a quick fix, but something that would truly create lasting impact in

our beneficiary communities.”

With the help of Gawad Kalinga, Repub� lic identified Taysan, a remote community in Batangas, as its first partner-beneficiary, with its Kusina catering initially to Taysan Central Elementary School, Pag-asa Ele� mentary School, Bilogo Elementary School and Mapulo Elementary School.

The program started with renovat� ing an old dilapidated classroom and refurbishing it to become a full-fledged kitchen, fully equipped with amenities and utilities, in Taysan. Republic also partnered with four elementary schools in the community and conducted workshops for parents, highlighting that proper nu� trition begins at home.

The Republic Kusina serves nutritious lunch meals daily to schoolchildren from Kindergarten to Grade 3 in four schools located in Taysan, Batangas. To measure the impact of the program, the students’ body mass indexes (BMIs) were measured in June and November.

In just six months, Republic reported the reduction in malnutrition incidence among its over 700 student beneficiaries from 11 percent down to 0 percent.

With a desire to replicate the success of its Batangas Kusina, Republic is setting up another Kusina in Bulacan in 2018.

Furthermore, Republic is also expanding its Batangas Kusina to serve up to 1,500 children daily.

EOPLE in northern Cebu in need of blood will no longer have to travel more than 100 kilometers to Cebu City.

The Philippine Red Cross (PRC), in partnership with the city of Bogo, recently inaugurated the PRC Bogo City and Northern Cebu Branch Building located at the back of the New Bogo City Hall. ���������������������������������� ��������������������������������� The two-story building is strate� gically located at the New Business District and will serve Bogohanons and residents of nearby towns who will now have better access to the services of the premier humanitar� ian organization in the country.

The branch building was built on a 1,000-square-meter lot un� der a usufruct agreement with the City of Bogo retaining ownership of the lot.

The inauguration was led by PRC Chairman and CEO Sen. Richard J. Gordon together with Bogo City Mayor Carlo Martinez and Vice Mayor Mayel Martinez who also happens to be a board of director of PRC Cebu Chapter.

“The establishment of a branch in Bogo City will further bring PRC services nearer and more accessible to people in the northern part of Cebu. People from Bogo and neigh� boring municipalities will not have to go far to access Red Cross serv� ices like blood, as the new building will have a blood-collecting station,” Gordon said.

The move to establish a PRC branch in Bogo is strongly support� ed by the community that sees the need for the Red Cross to continue its presence in the aftermath of Ty� phoon Yolanda (international code name Haiyan).

Around P11 million was spent by the PRC for the construction of the building, in partnership with the German Red Cross, French Red Cross, and Japanese Red Cross Society.

Study verifies Sual power plant not causing water pollution, environmental damage

By Orly Guirao Correspondent

S

UAL, Pangasinan—Recent monitoring activities con� ducted by water specialists on marine, groundwater and stream wa� ter around the Sual coal-fired power plant showed water quality in the area continues to meet the standards set by the Department of Environ� ment and Natural Resources (DENR).

The monitoring activities were conducted on April 25 and April 26 and July 17 by Aecom Philippines Inc., a subsidiary of Aecom Inter� national, which is listed in Fortune Magazine’s 500 richest companies with branches in 150 countries.

The report submitted to the DENR Central Office on November 17 said that “water-quality samples were collected from previously estab� lished monitoring stations consist� ing of nine marine water-quality monitoring stations in Baquioen Bay and Pao Bay, four stream-water qual� ity monitoring stations in Lugulog

River, and four groundwater quality monitoring stations located in Sitio Bangayao, Sitio Salumagui and Sitio Lugulog in Barangay Pangascasan where the power plant is located, and in Sitio Calupani in Barangay Capan� tolan in this coastal town.”

The sampling techniques used to collect the water samples were based on three guidelines under DENR Administrative Order 199034, or the Revised Water Usage and Classification/Water Quality Crite� ria; and DENR Administrative Or� der 2016-08, or the Water Quality Guidelines and General Affluent Standards of 2016.

The sampling guides also con� formed with the Australian/New Zealand Standard Quality Sampling Guidance: AS/NZS 5667:1998 (ISO Certificate 5667 1, 6,9 and 11), the Aecom report stated.

Aecom Philippines has been con� ducting water quality-monitoring ac� tivities twice a year since year 2000 during the dry and rainy seasons.

The water parameters used for

the Sual power-plant surface and groundwater quality monitoring program include temperature, pH level, dissolved oxygen, total sus� pected solid (TSS), biological oxygen demand (BOD), chemical oxygen de� mand (COD), phosphates, hexavalent chromium, dissolved copper, total metals such as lead, manganese, cad� mium, arsenic, iron, zinc, mercury, and oil and grease.

In the report submitted by Aecom Philippines to the DENR, results of its monitoring program showed all the water parameters were within the normal levels and met the crite� ria under the DENR Administrative Orders 1990-35 and 2016-08.

Mayor Roberto Arcinue, who was given a copy of the report, hailed the results of the waterquality monitoring program as a “monumental victory for the people of Sual” and the municipal govern� ment who have opened its doors for well-meaning investors.

He said the monitoring report of Aecom Philippines belied the claim

of the Save Sual Movement that the Sual power plant is causing environ� mental pollution.

“It is the other way around, that the Save Sual Movement is the one polluting the hearts and minds of our people with their distortion of facts, baseless claims and lies,” Arcinue said.

In welcoming the monitoring re� port, the mayor expressed optimism

for the realization of another coalfired power plant a South Koreanbased company is planning to put up in Sual.

The new coal-fired power plant worth about $2 billion and with a gen� erating capacity of 1,000 megawatts, would be using ultra-supercritical technology that considerably reduces emissions and pollution, he said.

“The progress and development

of Sual are now unstoppable. Imag� ine the thousands of jobs and the billions of revenues to be gener� ated by the second power plant,” Arcinue added.

Sual jumped from fifth class to a first-class municipality after the op� eration of the first coal-fired power plant. The town is consistently in the fourth spot on the list of top 10 richest municipalities in the country.

The Regions BusinessMirror

Friday, December 22, 2017 A9

Govt, private sector vow to combat illegal fishing in Tañon Strait

V

By Jonathan L. Mayuga

@jonlmayuga

ARIOUS stakeholders in Tañon Strait vowed to strengthen collaboration to combat illegal fishing and protect one of the country’s important fishing grounds in the Visayas.

The Tañon Strait is an important fishing ground down south. About 288,000 small-scale fishers rely on the bounty of Tañon, which is part of the Tañon Strait Protected Seascape (TSPS).

The area is supposed to be exclusive fishing grounds for municipal fishers, but the competition from commercial fishers who illegally enter the strait, plus destructive fishing methods used by small-scale fishers, have led to an overall decline in productivity, said Oceana Philippines, a conservation and advocacy group.

In a joint statement, Oceana said that from an average of 5 kilos of fish per trip, yields have plummeted to 2 kilos—and many fishing households earn less than P100 daily, prompting various stakeholders to come together to put in place a management framework to sustainably manage their coastal and marine resources.

“Tañon Strait is an important traditional source of fish for millions of Filipinos. Doing the right thing for Tañon paves the way for the sustainable use and management of our fisheries

to address food security concerns,” Oceana Philippines Vice President Gloria Estenzo Ramos said.

“No Filipino should go hungry in this native land. I believe we can achieve this if we protect our coastal and marine resources,” Negros Occidental Gov. Alfredo Marañon said.

Declared a protected area in 1998, Tañon Strait is a 161-kilometer long channel separating the Islands of Cebu and Negros.

It is famous not only for being a rich fishing area, but as a tourist destination.

In the channel lies popular tourist sites, such as Bantayan Isle, Malapascua, Moalboal, the Mantalip Sandbar and Bais, where whales and dolphins abound.

Encompassing three provinces, 42 coastal towns and cities, plus nearly 300 barangays, overlapping mandates have led to largely inconsistent policies in conserving the area. Since 2015 the TSPS’s Protected Area Management Board and its executive committee worked hand-in-hand with Site Management Units, the Protected Area Of-

fice, plus various stakeholders from the government, private sector and civil society for improved conservation measures.

They are now guided by an approved management plan and enforcement plan for the sustainable management of the Tañon Strait.

Last week the Department of Environment and Natural Resources convened the second Enforcement Summit, in partnership with Oceana, in Cebu City during which they agreed to strengthen the collaboration for the protection of Tañon.

Under the current setup, government agencies and local governments worked closely with nonprofit organizations and community champions to review the state of enforcement in Tañon over the past year while identifying solutions to current challenges, especially illegal and destructive fishing.

Despite its status as a protected seascape, Tañon Strait is besieged by illegal activities, destroying its ecological integrity and depriving fishermen of their rightful catch.

“Only through our continued strong collaboration can the fisheries of the Tañon Strait continue to thrive,” Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources National Director and Fisheries Undersecretary Eduardo B. Gongona said.

Gongona pledged more patrol vessels in the area to fight illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.

A recent Social Weather Stations survey commissioned by Oceana found that illegal and destructive

DOF head: CIA expansion shows strong political will of Duterte

By Rea Cu

DTI tells public: Buy certified fireworks products

By Catherine Joy L. Maglalang Correspondent

T

@ReaCuBM

F

INANCE Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III said the rollout of the Clark International Airport (CIA) expansion project within the first 18 months of the Duterte administration demonstrates the “strong political will of the government to get things done fast.”

Dominguez said unlike previous administrations when the CaviteLaguna Expressway project took around 50 months to start, the infrastructure projects under the Duterte administration will commence over the next few months.

“This shovel-ready project was approved in the first 18 months of the Duterte administration. It demonstrates the political will to get things done. This administration brooks no delay in building the projects the people need and the public deserves,” Dominguez said.

The venture is among the first big-ticket infrastructure projects to be built using the Duterte administration’s “hybrid” Public-Private Partnership formula, in which the government starts the initial phase of the project’s construction and later bids out the project to the private sector.

The finance chief, who represented the economic team at the groundbreaking rites for the new passenger terminal of the Clark airport on Wednesday, cited the importance of the project in completing the infrastructure network in Central Luzon.

The project was seen to capture the “Build, Build, Build” program’s target of putting up a “coherent national logistics circuit” in support of rapid and inclusive growth for the country.

fishing is the most seriously perceived threat to the oceans, next to pollution.

Police Regional Office 7 Director Chief Superintendent Jose Mario Espino said 656 illegal fishers were arrested while over 2,000 explosives were seized from January to November this year alone.

“The fight against illegal fishing is high on the priority list of the Philippine National Police,” he said.

Oceana and its allies reiterated the need for stronger law enforcement to guard the northern and southern entrances of the Tañon Strait while requiring all vessels to comply with the legal directive to install Vessel Monitoring Measures for fishing transparency and safetyat-sea.

Vessel monitoring allows for land-based monitoring of all vessels, ensuring they stay in designated fishing zones while acting as a safeguard in case boats run into accidents.

“We still have a long way to go but we need to continue finding ways to improve our enforcement efforts.

We shall continue to work together as a team, where everyone has a stake not just to benefit responsibly from our natural resources but to manage it such that our future generations will have sustainable coastal and marine resources,” Cebu Gov. Hilario Davide III added.

TSPS Park Superintendent Prospero Lendio said P1 million of its P8.7-million budget for 2018 has been set aside for seaborne patrols and enforcement activities.

LUCKY FRUITS

A vendor in the fruit section of the Baguio City public market sorts the fresh fruits she sells in preparation for Christmas and New Year’s Day. MAU VICTA

Palawan ready to be divided into 3 provinces

P

UERTO PRINCESA CITY, Palawan—Members of the Sangguniang Panlalawigan (SP) here have agreed it is the right time to begin the process of dividing Palawan into three provinces to open more tourism opportunities and speed up delivery of basic social services to the people.

The resolution, final version of four merged proposals and was approved by the SP on December 12, awaits the signature of Gov. Jose Alvarez next year, said Board Member Cherry Pie Acosta on Wednesday morning.

“There were actually four proposals that included mine. It was about clustering the municipalities to establish three provinces, and it was united with the rest and was approved unanimously,” Acosta said.

Under the resolution, the three provinces would be called Northern, Southern and East Central Palawan.

The municipalities of Aborlan, Narra, Brooke’s Point, Sofronio Española, Quezon, Rizal, Balabac and Bataraza will not be broken down, and will remain as part of Southern Palawan.

Kalayaan in the West Philippines Sea, which is near Southern Palawan, will also be included in the proposed Southern Palawan province.

“Since Kalayaan officials said they are nearer the town of Quezon in the south, we’re opting to include it in the Southern Palawan cluster,” Acosta said.

Northern Palawan, on the other hand, will be composed of Taytay, El Nido, Coron, Linapacan and Busuanga.

The towns of Roxas, San Vicente, Dumaran, Cuyo, Agutaya, Magsaysay and Cagayancillo, which used to be part of Northern Palawan, are being proposed to comprise the East Central Palawan province.

“These municipalities have tourism and agriculture potentials, and bringing them together in one province would be beneficial in the long run,” Acosta added.

Acosta said once the governor signed the approved SP measure, it would be forwarded to the three House representatives of Palawan—Reps. Gil P. Acosta Sr. of the Third District, Eric F. Abueg of the Second District and Franz E. Alvarez of the First District. PNA

HE Department of Trade and Industry Regional Office in Central Luzon (DTI 3) reminded buyers of firecrackers and pyrotechnic products to be careful in buying fireworks for the holiday season.

The agency reminded buyers to buy only from certified and authorized manufacturers and dealers.

Warren T. Serrano, the information officer of the DTI in Central Luzon, said under Republic Act (RA) 7183, types of firecrackers that may be manufactured, sold and distributed include the following: Baby rocket, Bawang, El Diablo, Judah’s Belt, Paper Caps, Pulling of Strings, Sky Rocket (Kwitis), Small “Trianggulo” and other equivalent types to the foregoing.

For pyrotechnic devices, the following are authorized: Butterfly, Fountain, Jumbo Regular, Luces, Mabuhay, Roman Candle, Sparklers, Tromplillo, Whistle Devices, “Pailaw” and other equivalent types. The Philippine National Police is the primary agency in the enforcement of the Firecracker Law. Prohibited firecrackers include overweight (not more than 0.2 gram or 1/3 teaspoon), oversized firecrackers like Super Lolo, Whistle Bomb, etc. and imported finished products.

The law also prohibits fireworks fuses that burn less than three seconds but not more than six seconds. Mixture of phosphorous or sulfur with that of chlorate is also prohibited under the Firecrackers Law. Firecracker and pyrotechnic buyers are also reminded that under RA 7183, it is prohibited to sell firecrackers and pyrotechnic devices to anyone under 18 years of age. Children using firecrackers must be supervised by adults. Penalties for violation of the Firecracker Law include a fine ranging from P20,000 to P30,000 and imprisonment from six months to one year.

A10 Friday, December 22, 2017 • Editor: Angel R. Calso

Opinion BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

editorial

Fair taxation?

O

ver the last 100 years since the United States changed its Constitution to make legal the taxation of income, we have lost sight of what taxation by the government means. We have been brainwashed by those that think economic prosperity comes from the government and, therefore, all wealth is the government’s by default.

Tax laws that should be thought of as how much of our wealth we the people decide to give to the government has been twisted to mean how much of our wealth the government decides to let the people keep.

The justification for taxation is that the government needs a certain amount of funds to provide services to the public that is better provided by the government rather than the private sector.

These might include national military security and the police. We assume also that centralized government “ownership” of licensing agencies and record-keeping bodies also are better. The basic functioning of the three branches of the government also should be funded at the public expense.

But control of the people’s money—which taxation really is— has gone much further than simply paying the bills to keep the government operating.

Taxation is being used for “social engineering.” If in the wisdom of the government, the people should not indulge in a certain behavior, such as cigarette smoking, then make it more expensive to smoke through taxation. If the government believes that a larger population is necessary, then with “reverse taxation,” pay women to have more children as is done in Russia.

If there are “too many” poor people, then wealth distribution for those that have to those that need is part of taxation. While that may be a noble cause and necessary as a safety net in some cases, taking to the ridiculous extreme—as often happens with the government—you might end up like the US where half the people pay net taxes and half do not.

The question of “fairness” in the tax laws is debated with millions of words and great emotion as currently with the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion. By definition, “fair” should mean “trying to achieve unjust advantage to one person or group.”

Fairness is the quality of making judgments that are free from discrimination.

However, taxation is never fair. Why is the excise tax proportionally larger on an automobile priced at P2,000,000 than a car that sells for P600,000? We are told that the “rich” man who buys an expensive car should pay more tax and that is fair. In that case, shouldn’t the tax on a “cheap” car be higher if bought by a rich man and the tax on an expensive car bought by a “poor” man—who saved all his life to make the purchase—be lower?

All the arguments about a “fair tax,” including what we just highlighted are all nonsense. Legislators write the tax laws ultimately to take as much money from, and thereby control, the people as possible without causing rioting in the streets. It is not that our representatives are all malevolent. They are not. All of them have the best interests of the people in their hearts. It is the modern system of the government that has become malicious.

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God is great James Jimenez

spox

G

od is great.

I like rational explanations. Given the choice between believing in a rationalization based on fact and science versus accepting a faith-based justification, I default to science; there is much comfort to be had in believing that things happen randomly, rather than as a result of judgement on your moral worth.

And to be honest, believing in science also sets a very low bar for personal behavior. If stuff is just as likely to happen to you as anyone else, then there is less pressure for you to be good. And if you are good, then you get to boast that you’re good, for goodness’ sake rather than out of fear of some divine punishment; it is a comfortable arrangement. And then my mother happened.

Early in December while I was out of the country on official business, my mother’s long struggle with hypothyroidism suddenly took a turn for the worse. I cut my trip short and while I was in transit, things turned critical. Fearing the worst, I reached out to everyone I could and asked them to pray for my mother.

In my heart, I knew that science— medicine—would eventually decide the outcome, but isn’t it always that in the extremes of our despair, we become like children, left alone in the dark and calling out for mother?

Well, my mother was in trouble, and I felt grossly unequal to the task, so

I cried out for help—at one point, even literally.

The response was overwhelming (for which I am eternally thankful) and my mother made it through the night, even surviving cardiac arrest.

Immediately, things started looking up and she was ready for discharge from the hospital’s intensive care unit (ICU) in a little less than a week.

On her discharge from the ICU, however, my mother was seized by what she said was an anxiety attack.

Fairly confident that her vital signs were strong, I and everyone around me, sought to calm her down. But the anxiety continued well into the

night. In the end, I suspect that the only reason she had managed to sleep even a little was because she had passed out from fatigue.

My sister and I were no less exhausted, but she stayed by her side while I tried to get some sleep. At 3 a.m., I woke up to a cluster of nurses surrounding my mother, talking in urgent tones. I could barely muster up the courage to ask what was going on. “Mommy’s gums are bleeding,” my sister told me. It was bad; so bad that a cotton ball held up to the bleeding was soaked within seconds. A quick-thinking nurse dipped a cotton ball in cold water and held it up to my mother’s gums and that worked, stanching the bleeding. But by morning, my mother’s mouth was black; she had kept on bleeding through the night.

The doctor who came looked at my mother’s gums, noted the loose tooth where most of the bleeding seemed to be coming from, and guessed that the tooth had been knocked loose by their efforts to intubate her four days prior. It made no sense to me why the bleeding would take so long to start, but it was a convenient explanation, and it seemed to satisfy the doctor.

The following day, the consulting dentist took one look at my mother’s tooth and dismissed the idea of it being in danger of falling out. “It’s just loose,” he said, and asked to see my mother’s records from the night the bleeding started. He took one look and, with a jab of his finger at the

nurse’s clipboard, muttered “there it is. That’s why she was bleeding.”

At around the time my mother had started bleeding, her blood pressure had spiked massively.

“Your mom was lucky,” the dentist said. Instead of causing bleeding into her brain, the elevated blood pressure had caused the blood to burst from the vessels in my mother’s gums, saving my mother’s life from what might have very well been a fatal stroke.

There is a rational, scientific explanation for my mother’s survival, of course. The tooth had been knocked loose when they tried to force a breathing tube down her mouth; that action had weakened the blood vessels around her tooth, making them most likely to burst in the event of a spike in her blood pressure; when the spike happened, the blood found the quickest way out. A simple, casual, pedestrian explanation. And yet, for all those circumstances to be in just the right juxtaposition, at just the right time that they needed to be, and specifically for my mother —randomness, science, these things suddenly felt inadequate.

Lucky? That’s one way of looking at it. But there’s only one way to feel about it, even for a skeptic like me.

It was a miracle for my mother and for those who would have been shattered by her loss. If I—unworthy as I am—rate a miracle, then I have faith that there is certainly a miracle for each of you.

God is great.

Emerging markets don’t control their own destiny

F

By Daniel Moss | Bloomberg View

or all the hype about the decline of the West, it still largely controls whether emerging markets thrive or suffer.

The broad global pickup in growth this year propelled emerging markets toward the biggest gains in stocks and currencies in almost a decade. China’s debt binge did add ballast to the global expansion, and the country’s neighbors are vulnerable to any sudden blow-up there, as implausible as it is. (A gradual unwinding, guided by the state, seems more likely.)

But in a year cluttered with commentary about the retreat of the United States and the contentious divorce proceedings between Britain and the European Union, it’s worth remembering that in some arenas the Old still punches way above its weight relative to the New. The withdrawal of monetary accommodation in the US and the euro zone enters a new phase in 2018, and how that plays out will matter far more than anything emerging markets do themselves.

Even Japan may begin easing up on liquidity.

The Fed is further ahead than anyone. Unlike in past Fed interestrate cycles, big emerging market countries like Indonesia and Brazil have been able to cut borrowing

costs. That’s partly because inflation has been relatively low, and also because the Fed’s actions have been predictable; forward guidance has been a reliable script. Here’s the risk: What if the Fed feels it needs to be more aggressive in 2018 than indicated, because unemployment gets so low that wages and inflation pick up?

Emerging markets can probably handle four Fed hikes next year, rather than the three indicated by the celebrated “dot plot.” The tension is that four aren’t priced by investors. Some models even show less than two steps baked in.

A shift in pricing could spell volatility in emerging market assets, says Luis Oganes, head of global emerging market research at JPM-

organ. Things might start to get hairy if the Fed has to again do more in 2019.

The European Central Bank is on track to end quantitative easing in September. It doesn’t say that baldly, only that the current whittled-down program of €30 billion a month runs until September. But you can’t be as optimistic as Mario Draghi was last week, and then say you need more QE beyond the current horizon. It’s a gradual phasing out, but when it ends, a chapter in monetary history is over.

Japan, for one, seems closer to the end of QE than to the beginning, even if no immediate cutoff is likely.

The second big threat to EM also originates in the developed world.

And it just wouldn’t be December 2017 without mentioning Bitcoin or the flattening US yield curve, right?

The yield curve gets the prize. While its record as a predictor of recession isn’t perfect, it might be telling us something is amiss. There is little indication from elsewhere that a recession is approaching. Something to watch, cautions Oganes, is whether the curve points to reduced lending appetite from banks, which would in turn erode credit supply and constrain growth.

Political risks are scattered through individual countries, principally elections, though not on a level that is likely to prove systemic.

Elections in Mexico and Brazil top the list. On the former, left-wing populist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is ahead in most opinion polls, and some of his positions are hard for investors to stomach. That said, Lopez Obrador is trying to placate critics. He’s made several visits to New York recently and this month said he would name Carlos Urzua as finance minister if he wins. Urzua is a former finance minister of Mexico City and well respected. Lopez Obrador may be less of a revolutionary than investors fear.

Then again, perhaps, politics doesn’t matter so much anyway.

After all, 12 months ago one of the most-cited risks was that Donald J. Trump would start a trade war and that globalization was dead. Either of those would have gravely wounded emerging market assets.

Good thing the developed world central banks are really running things. China and India are rising, but can’t yet bend the financial world to their will consistently. It still doesn’t pay to fight the Fed.

Opinion BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

How can one benefit from TRAIN?

The star of fools Tito Genova Valiente

annotations

Alvin P. Ang

EAGLE WATCH

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he President signed into law Republic Act 10963, or more popularly known as the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN), on December 19. The measure is the first of a series of reforms to align the tax system to current realities. This first tranche is expected to bring in about P130 billion for 2018 largely for infrastructure (about 70 percent) and social spending. The main focus of TRAIN was to reduce personal income taxes while taxing consumption that affects health (some sugar-sweetened beverages and tobacco) and those that are largely consumed by the rich, such as cars, fuel and cosmetic surgery, among others.

The Department of Finance estimates that about 6 million workers earning P273,000 per year or about 21,000 a month and below will be exempt from paying personal income taxes. This represents about 83 percent of all compensation workers.

This is essentially giving additional freedom of choice to these consumers on how to manage their income.

Data from the Philippine Statistics Authority on the 2015 Family Income and Expenditure Survey reveals that about 80 percent of families earn on average P320,000 and below per year. The same data set provides a clear distinction on how these families spend in comparison with the upper 20 percent of earners. There are marked differences on how the lower income families spend more on food, alcohol and tobacco while spending less on other items. The tax on some sugar-sweetened beverages and related products will also help lessen their consumption of these as they can lead to higher health risks in the future. It is expected that the lower income families can now use the additional resources to improve their consumption patterns and, hopefully, to allow for higher savings. Half of families only saves an average of P15,000 per year.

According to the Quarterly Consumer Expectations Surveys of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, about 40 percent of households with income P10,000 to P30,000 have savings as of fourth Quarter 2017. Half of them claim that they could set aside savings this quarter even if it is the Christmas season. However, only 10 percent have actually allocated 10 percent of their income for savings. Thus, the exemption from personal income taxation can now help these families add into their savings or for buying other human capital building expenditures, such as health and education.

The challenge, however, is how the actual implementation will reflect the behavior of the affected population. As it is, people usually spend expected earnings way ahead of actual receipt. In colloquial language, this is called “leveling up.”

Notice that since most people expect a 13th month pay in December, there is already an allocation for its expenditure even as early as January of the coming year. Worse, when people expect an inflow will come, they usually overspend considering that this can be paid for in the future by the coming income. This is the reason people hardly feel an income

Beginning January 1, we should start recording our income and expense flow daily and regularly. We should be able to segregate what are expenses that cannot be postponed and what are wants. When things are clear, it is important to get debt out of the way. increase since psychologically one has already factored said increase in future expenditures. Anecdotally, there is also a large segment of the lower income population accessing payday loans or in fact are indebted.

Consider the recent news about some public-sector employees unable to pay their debts and loans despite the increases provided for under the Salary Standardization Law. This January 2018, salary grade 10 (possibly the equivalent of entry level in most private-sector regular jobs) will have an entry level of P18,718 per month, almost P4,000 higher than privatesector counterparts. Combined with the personal tax exemption, the takehome pay will increase by at least P1,200 per month.

The additional “freedom” therefore does not necessarily mean that people will reap fully the marginal benefits it provides. There is a need for a corresponding improvement in how people manage their finances.

As we come into a new year, it is a good time to go back and review our expenditure patterns. For most of us, it is important much like a company to record and review how our spending was in 2017. Beginning January 1, we should start recording our income and expense flow daily and regularly. We should be able to segregate what are expenses that cannot be postponed and what are wants. When things are clear, it is important to get debt out of the way.

That should be the first beneficiary of the increase in purchasing power.

It does not make sense paying 30 percent on interest and then saving a portion that earns lower. After paying debt, ensure a fixed percentage of savings that is affordable, say 5 percent monthly. Allocate the remainder of the increase for health insurance or buffer for unforeseen expenses.

These are just some ways that we could fully benefit from the TRAIN. Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Blessed 2018 from the Ateneo Center for Economic Research and Development.

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art— Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, …

From “Bright Star” by John Keats

C

hristmas as imagined by Saint Francis never figured prominently in my childhood Christmas. Just like any family belonging the middle-class, or above it and, perhaps, slightly below that class, we had our own adventure with the Christmas tree. On one year, we spent fortune on cotton or algodon to shower the tree with snow. Then we discovered that salt mixed with bars of detergent produced the bestpowder snow and snowflakes, our Christmas tree, even when it was made from bamboo, transported us to a winter wonderland. The only consolation with my Christmases was the cold December in those years, when ozone layers and their depletion was not yet a byword.

The crèche or Belen, attributed to Saint Francis, was not part of our imagination. The figures with their preponderance of animals, again ascribed to the naturalism of the saint, came to us manufactured in resin or made out of plastic. I was not lacking in the interest in this illustration of the first Christmas. I loved even then the coziness of the margin, the cows almost with mournful eyes looking over the fenced backdrop, the sheep always taking the important spot mainly because of their putative innocence. And then there was the Angel either hanged above the broken roof covering Mary, Jesus and Joseph, detached and disintested.

Save for that white cloth announcing “Gloria in Excelsis Deo,” the Angel did not seem part of the story.

There was a reason the crèche never gained centerstage in our family. Our father who was a very good figurative painter, always painted the Three Kings. He would rip apart huge carton boxes and use the materials for his canvas. The figures of the Three Magi were of different sizes to show that, as they traveled, they were set apart. Melchior was closer, was always at the foreground; Gaspar was behind him. Balthazar or any of the three would tarry behind. One of them would have his arm stretched pointing to something far apart— the Star. I believe my father changed the roles for the Three Kings. These figures would be placed on the wall.

The star would never be painted with the Magi. My father would place the Star, usually made of metallic materials with its rays spreading all over a little town. The Star and the Magi were so massively constructed, there was no way for the manger to be made bigger.

When my father was younger, he supported my mother and then our elder brother by illustrating and painting devices for teachers. I do not remember now why my father was always illustrating the Legend

Friday, December 22, 2017 A11

of King Arthur. As my father was a storyteller, he would tell us about the search for the Holy Grail. When we moved to the big city and stayed in a rambling house with a huge roofdeck, he would take us out each night and point to us stars and constellations.

He would then tell us about Orion’s Belt, Cassiopeia and other heavenly formation.

The paintings he did for Christmas were not only images but also stories. We knew about myrrh, incense and frankincense. He told us about another King, Herod, who was fooled by the Magi and, because he did not believe in what the skies foretold, the Star that shone brightly.

Memory brings me another story about the Three Kings. It was in the 1970s and a brave new play was astounding audiences in the Jesuit school. In an institution noted for students with brilliant English accent, a group of intrepid Ateneans came up with a play, called Pororopot, which literally “all twisted” or “entangled,” with characters speaking like a real people. Unimaginable now in a city dominated by powerful moral guardians, the play had the actors uttering expletives on stage.

The troupe was all-male. In one scene, a “woman” was seen cleaning her backyard. From left stage, three men dressed as the Magi appeared.

They asked the woman where the Star was. The woman pointed to the back of her small hut. The Magi rushed out and disappeared. In a few seconds, three policemen appeared.

The world still needs the WTO

I

t’s hard these days to muster much interest in the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Locked for years in rounds of negotiations leading nowhere, the body seems to have outlived its usefulness. Another big gathering of trade ministers ended in deadlock in Buenos Aires last week. You might wonder: Why bother?

The answer is that liberal trade, second only to capitalism, is the most powerful engine of economic prosperity the world has ever seen—and governments could use the WTO to advance living standards across the globe. Led by the United States, that’s what they did in the decades after 1945. Without an international commitment to free trade, though, the institution is doomed to irrelevance.

The core principle of the WTO, and its predecessor the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), is reciprocity. In simple terms, this approach aims to make free trade politically feasible. Country A would be better off, if it lowered its import tariffs unilaterally, goes the theory—but that change meets less resistance if Country B lowers its tariffs as well.

This formula was enormously successful in the GATT’s first decades, mainly because the US was eager to lead the world in that direction. In more recent years, the conviction that free trade is good has weakened.

Increasingly, governments are regressing to mercantilism—the fallacy that a country gains from trade only if its exports exceed its imports.

In addition, once the GATT and the WTO had succeeded in bringing tariffs down, trade liberalization became more complicated and more politically fraught—more to do with regulatory obstacles than taxes at the border.

Where it matters most, political support for liberal trade has fallen to its lowest point in years. The US still leads—but now in the wrong direction. President Donald Trump embraces mercantilism in its purest and dumbest form: “exports good, imports bad.”

US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer began the Buenos Aires meeting by calling the WTO’s role into question. The US blocked a declaration asserting the value of trade in development and is holding

They announced themselves as coming from a town where a new mental hospital was recently built. There was no need for the audience to wait for the punchline. The whole auditorium was up in hysteria. Three mental patients were looking for the Savior. It was irreverent, and breathtakingly sincere.

My father was right. Christmas is not about the manger and the mournful cows and the politicized role of shepherds. Christmas is more about the quest and the questions about a strange night when, as they put it, God became Man. That is the strangest story one could tell to a child.

My father made sense with the story of three wise men whose wisdom was the only real gift. They knew, as my father knew, that the Star was shining for the Fools, those who are always asking questions. That Star shone for the Sorrows to come to that Child and we are part of His destiny. My father painted the Star farthest from the wise finger because Christmas would always be shining far, the memories of those happy days as tangible as our belief in terrible, lovely stories of yore.

I believe my father was saying, any arm could be stretched out to the horizon to indicate the search and the discovery. Any star would do, he was telling us, his children marveling at the wall of his truths.

E-mail: titovaliente@yahoo.com.

up the appointment of judges to the body’s dispute-settlement courts.

Meanwhile, governments in the rest of the world are pressing forward with bilateral and regional agreements, as opposed to the global deals that the WTO could advance. Depending on the details, regional pacts like the TransPacific Partnership can be enormously valuable, but they aren’t the gold standard of multilateral liberal trade.

Don’t blame the WTO for its paralysis. It could still be a powerful instrument for governments that believe in international competition.

Without that conviction—and without the engagement and leadership of the US—it’s bound to fail.

Bloomberg View

Call for donations for flood-affected residents by Tropical Storm Urduja Rev. Fr. Antonio Cecilio T. Pascual

SERVANT LEADER

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ear brothers and sisters in Christ, As we approach the commemoration of our Savior’s birth, Caritas Manila and Radio Veritas are appealing for prayers for Divine protection and to help alleviate the sufferings through donations in cash and in kind for the relief and rehabilitation needs of our kababayans affected by Tropical Storm Urduja.

Urduja caused heavy rains that triggered massive flooding in Bicol Region; Western and Eastern Visayas, Central Visayas; Mindoro, Marinduque, Romblon and Palawan (Mimaropa); and Caraga Region.

According to the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council and Department of Social Welfare and Development, almost 2,200 passengers have been stranded in different ports (mostly in Manila North Harbor) in the country.

Also, four bridges in Biliran,

Samar and Leyte are currently impassable while 17 road sections in Mimaropa, Bicol Region, Central Visayas, Western and Eastern Visayas, Davao Region and Caraga are currently impassable. Furthermore, a total of 26 casualties and 46 missing pesons have been reported due to landslide, especially in Biliran.

Cash or in-kind donations for food assistance particularly rice could help supplement the food intake of every affected family. School supplies, hygiene kits, multivitamins and medicines for cough, colds and

fever for adults and children are also in dire need.

Donations can be made online via http://ushare.unionbankph.com/ caritas/ or by bank deposit: Banco de Oro—Savings Account No.: 5600-45905 Bank of the Philippine Islands— Savings Account No.: 3063-5357-01 Metrobank - Savings Account No.: 175-3-175069543 For dollar accounts: Bank of the Philippine Islands— Savings Account No. 3064-0033-5 Swift Code—BOPIPHMM Philippine National Bank—

Savings Account No. 108566600025 Swift Code—PNBMPHMM Donations can also be made via Cebuana Lhuillier (free of charge) or dropped off at Caritas Manila office: 2002 Jesus Street Pandacan, Manila or Radio Veritas in West Avenue corner Edsa, Quezon City.

For proper acknowledgment of your donations, kindly fax copy of deposit slip to 563-9306, or e-mail a scanned copy to caritas_manila@ yahoo.com. Please indicate your name and complete address.

Thank you and may God bless your generosity.

2nd Front Page BusinessMirror

A12 Friday, December 22, 2017

www.businessmirror.com.ph

DOT unveils crisis-management program

By Ma. Stella F. Arnaldo

T

@akosistellaBM Special to the BusinessMirror

HE Department of Tourism (DOT) has unveiled a crisismanagement program that would help the tourism industry cope and respond to businesses and tourists’ concerns during periods of instability, such as national disasters and political developments.

T he Pu ksa Cr isis Management Process Flow will become a continuing cycle of establishing systems and procedures to be used in combatting risk factors identified as Peste, which stands for political turmoil, economic instabilities, social disturbances, technological attacks and environmental hazards, according to a DOT news statement.

The program was revealed at the end of the Tourism Crisis Management Symposium held last week with DOT’s multisectoral partners, including representatives from the Philippine National Police, National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, Department of Interior and Local Government, Philippine Red Cross, other government agencies and tourismindustry associations.

With the construction of this workflow, the tourism industry is prepared to overcome challenges and ensure its resilience in the years to come, Tourism Secretary Wanda Corazon T. Teo said. “The DOT continues to face challenges of uplifting tourism amid perceived security and safety problems. Another factor is the perception of the Philippines as the center of natural calamities, such as typhoons, flash floods and earthquakes,” she explained.

Addressing these issues, she stressed, is imperative and thus a shared responsibility among stakeholders in order to guarantee safety and security throughout the country.

For her part, Undersecretary for Tourism Regulation, Coordination and Resource Generation Alma

Rita R. Jimenez also encouraged stakeholders to be involved by learning the ways of prevention, management and mitigation in the events of crises.

Since the tourism industry banks on the economic impact of the marketed destinations, it is vital to identify hazards and risks and consider their implications on tourism facilities and the economic sector in general.

In a n i nter v ie w w it h t he BusinessMirror, Jimenez explained that Puksa first establishes the need for crisis-management response for all tourism sectors and, second, lists down the roles of industry stakeholders, partner government agencies and nongovernmental organizations in dealing with a specific crisis. “They all have a role in disaster or crisis management, so in that sense, the approach is multisectoral, but the lead convenor is still the DOT. [Puksa] is a series of interventions to respond to specific crisis, put together to create a crisis protocol.”

Puksa answers for instance, which agencies or industry associations are supposed to track the whereabouts of foreign and domestic tourists, or in a pandemic, what is the role of the Department of Health. She added that even media has a role in communicating the extent of the disasters, who or what areas are affected by the crisis, etc.

She added that partners and industr y sta keholders in the

PARTNERSHIP Department of Foreign Affairs Assistant Secretary Jose Eduardo E. Malaya (left) and Psyche Roxas-Mendoza, Philippines Graphic managing editor and special project director for “Mission: PHL,” the BusinessMirror Envoys and Expats Awards, sign the memorandum of agreement for the project. ALYSA SALEN

regions will be consulted “which will concretize the [crisis management] process.” By next year, she said the DOT will publish a “crisis management manual,” and will include concrete steps to be taken by each region in response to specific events. “For instance it will identify which areas are more prone to typhoons, so the disaster response will be different in region 8 [Eastern Visayas] compared

to say, the NCR [National Capital Region or Metro Manila].”

While the DOT failed to release data on the tourism losses from natural disasters or perceived political and security issues, BusinessMirror’s own research showed, for one, an initial loss of P20 million in tourism receipts in Davao City alone, due to the declaration of martial law in Mindanao on May 23. Rajah Tours, for another, estimated

it lost P30 million due to canceled bookings by tourists from Japan, when extreme Islamic separatists attacked a town in Bohol. While the total tourism losses from Supertyphoon Yolanda (Haiyan) was never quantified by the DOT, the Philippines did miss its 5-million arrivals target for 2013.

According to the Philippine Statistics Authority, the direct share See “DOt,” A2