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Tuesday, February 21, 2017 Vol. 12 No. 132

‘Curbs in grant of perks to worsen housing gap’ ₧3 million D

By Catherine N. Pillas

inside

a billionaire’s party is a lens on wealth in the trump era

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A BillionAire’s PArty is A

lens on WeAlth

in the trumP erA

President donald trump during a strategy and policy forum with business leaders in the state dining room, at the White House in Washington, February 3, 2017. From left: Ginni rometty, the chief executive of iBM; indra nooyi, the chief executive of PepsiCo; stephen A. schwarzman, the chief executive of the Blackstone Group; President trump; Mary Barra; the chief executive of General Motors; Gary Cohn, trump’s chief economic adviser; and doug McMillon, the chief executive of Wal-Mart. Brendan SmialowSki/agence France-PreSSe/getty imageS

By Andrew Ross Sorkin

S

o, Stephen A. Schwarzman had another birthday party. The celebration for his 70th birthday at his Palm Beach, Florida, home over the weekend included live camels, trapeze artists and a performance by Gwen Stefani.

Some reports speculated the party cost as much as $20 million, a price tag that insiders say is ridiculously inflated, but clearly the event fell in the category of overthe-top expensive. the chairman of the president’s strategic policy forum—and his last birthday bash turned into a cultural flashpoint.

You might recall that, a decade ago, Schwarzman’s 60th birthday party—reportedly for some $5 million at

Normally, a birthday party for a boldface name wouldn’t warrant a sentence outside the gossip pages. But Schwarzman is the billionaire co-founder of the Blackstone Group as well as President Donald Trump’s latest BFF as

the Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan—spun into a yearslong existential crisis on Wall Street about the evils of conspicuous consumption. on Wall Street and in the media, Schwarzman’s 2007 party was treated as a five-alarm fire. Many media outlets gawked at it prominently, with an implicit tsk, tsk. the new yorker declared that it had turned Schwarzman into private equity’s “designated villain.” Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, introduced what became known as the Blackstone Bill to end the tax treatment of carried interest, though industry opposition managed to shoot it down. oh, how times have changed.

In the age of Trump and his famed golden penthouse, Schwarzman’s party has largely been ignored except for a bit of chattering by town & Country and sniping among the schadenfreude-loving Acela Corridor Crowd.

Perhaps Trump has normalized conspicuous consumption. on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, there were a few smuggled snapshots of the Schwarzman party passed around,

but not much in the way of great viral outcry. A small band of protesters who tried to picket the party Saturday night did not get anywhere close to it, nor was there much media pickup on the group’s message.

The collective yawn may say something larger about the shifts in the way parts of the country think about great wealth—and perhaps how they have always thought about big money.

Trump’s election and the nominations of his Cabinet of billionaires may draw ire from his critics, but the people who elected him—who draw largely from the middle and lower classes—appear nonplused by his, and other people’s, showy displays of wealth. Indeed, judging by various polls, much of the country aspires to live like Schwarzman and Trump.

While Trump himself did not attend the party, his daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, did. So did others from the administration, including Elaine L. Chao, the transportation secretary; Steven T. Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary; and Wilbur Ross, the nominee for commerce secretary. oth-

and does not need to placate everyone.

In truth, Schwarzman has become perhaps the most successful financier on Wall Street over the past decade, growing Blackstone to become the preeminent asset manager in the country, pulling far ahead of his private-equity rivals and turning his firm into one of the largest real-estate investors in the world.

And his generosity has extended to several nine-figure donations—that’s more than $100 million each—to Yale, the New York Public Library and a scholarship program modeled after the Rhodes for students from the United States to attend Tsinghua University in China.

Last week, responding to scholarship recipients’ criticism over his decision to help Trump, Schwarzman wrote in a letter: “I regret that some scholars have reservations about my following this approach with the new administration in Washington. In life, you’ll often find that having influence and providing sound advice is a good thing, even if it attracts criticism or requires some sacrifice.”

er guests included everyone from the prominent financier Henry R. Kravis of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and the fashion designer Donatella Versace to Susan George, executive director of the InnerCity Scholarship Fund in New York.

People who were there said that the tennis courts had been covered with Asian-themed staging, and that Schwarzman was presented an oversize cake that looked like an Asian temple.

But even a generous tally of all the most lavish components couldn’t get you anywhere within shouting distance of $20 million: Even if, theoretically, Gwen Stefani had charged the $1 million that Rod Stewart was said to have charged at Schwarzman’s 60th (and she didn’t; the figure was substantially lower), it would take 25 of her to get to that price tag.

A friend of Schwarzman’s said that one of the lessons from the 60th birthday’s blowback was he was never going to satisfy his critics, and that he had to live his life on his own terms. At age 70, said the friend, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to express candid views, Schwarzman has given a lot back

BUSINESS SENSE

The sun will come out

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LIVING WINSDOM FOR EVERY DAY, REV. B. KELLY, C.P., SHARED BY LUISA M. LACSON, HFL Word&Life Publications • teacherlouie1965@yahoo.com

Editor: Gerard S. Ramos • lifestylebusinessmirror@gmail.com

Life

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Tuesday, February 21, 2017

❶

❶ JAMIE

DRAKE designed the Savile Collection for Labrazel, which employs Italian herringboneembossed suede. This charcoal-gray suite is named Savile, after London’s famed street of classic haberdashery, and trimmed with polished chrome for crisp, textural contrast. AP

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THE Sauder Boutique shows their Boot Leg Dining Table. AP

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Menswear motifs give dé décor a dash of debonair M

BY KIM COOK The Associated Press

ANY of this season’s home décor collections are sporting a rather debonair look.

Tweeds, tartans and twills drape cushions and comforters; furniture is clad in supple leather; drapes are made of suiting fabric; and hardware takes style notes from the gentlemen’s accessory drawer.

“The classic good looks of menswear are popping up in subtle and unexpected ways,” says Jamie Drake of the luxury-design firm Drake/

Anderson Interiors in New York.

Drake and business partner Caleb Anderson are fans of woven horsehair textiles, and have produced a collection for Holland & Sherry. The sleek fabrics with subtle yet striking colorations are loomed from horse tails and cotton. Their durability makes them ideal for chair, bench and headboard upholstery. (www. hollandandsherry.com) Drake also has designed a collection of luxurybath accessories with a classic herringbone pattern on charcoal-gray, embossed Italian suede. Named Savile, after London’s famed street of haberdashery, the collection is trimmed with polished chrome for a crisp, tailored look. (www.labrazel.com) And for Stark, Drake’s Jakara pattern puts the elegant chevron in a soft wool rug, offered in urbane neutrals. (www.starkcarpet.com) Subtle, tonal hues and fabrics with a textural depth offer a handsome—often luxurious—masculine aesthetic that transcends gender, says Shawn Sowers, principal design director at furniture company Sauder, in Archbold, Ohio.

“It incorporates several elements traditionally

considered feminine, like softness and attention to detail,” he says. “There’s still a masculine presence of mass, strong forms and bold simplicity, but these elements are paired with elegance and details that take into account multiple senses.”

Sowers and his team designed their repurposed, naturally worn oak Cannery Bridge collection of living room, bedroom and home-office pieces to have a hefty rusticity. Sowers cheekily calls the target demographic the “urban beardsman”.

His Conductor credenza blends a sexy mix of copper, marble and steel. The Boot Leg Dining Table pairs a charcoal-black finish with leatherwrapped legs. “It’s like a V-neck shirt under a blazer or sport coat,” Sowers says. “It can live in a variety of environments and be relevant and stylish.” (www. sauderboutique.com) Taking the menswear look into lighting in a whimsical way, Houzz offers a collection of pendant fixtures inspired by haberdashery. The Jeeves fixture, in matte-black metal with a warm gold interior, evokes a classic British bowler. Zuo Modern’s Aspiration pendant is a pashmina wool “top hat” lined

in burnished gold. (www.houzz.com) Even light switches are picking up the theme: Legrand’s wall plates are available in black leather. (www.legrand.us) Brooklyn-based brothers Emil and Sandy Corsillo, who design menswear under their Hill-Side label, have partnered with CB2 on a collection of home goods. A brawny, striped throw pillow in navy and gray reflects the designers’ workwear roots, while deconstructed indigo floral prints on a comfy chair and big floor cushion echo shirt and tie patterns. (www.cb2.com) Or bring the masculine vibe home with room scents; many evoke men’s fragrances or toiletry items.

Blind Barber offers the midnight-blue, soy-wax Tompkins candle, a mix of aromas like honey, smoke, leather, lavender and “freshly laundered towels”, all ostensibly evoking that traditional male enclave: the barber shop. (www.blindbarber.com) Like a delicious men’s cologne, Molton Brown’s Black Peppercorn candle wafts coriander, vetiver and pepper notes from a maroon-colored glass tumbler. (www.moltonbrown.com) ■

DEPARTMENT 24

CDO Handmade Papers

LARONE Crafts Inc. BON-ACE

Philippine design showcased in Germany THE Philippine exhibition for Ambiente 2017 in Frankfurt, Germany, was a strong showing of craftsmanship and creativity. Presented by Citem through its industry brand, Lifestyle Philippines, the Philippine Pavilion in Ambiente paid homage to the unseen hands that have heroically preserved the country’s artisanal traditions, despite the threats of modernity, competition and global disruptions.

Fourteen companies from seven regions around the country—including provinces north of Manila, such as Bulacan, Tarlac and Pampanga, and exhibitors from Cebu, Davao and Cagayan de Oro representing the country’s

southern end, alongside a few from the capital city and its fringes—took part in this poignant paean. In splendid collections for home interiors and décor, the participants showcased a wide range of materials, such as hard wood, shell, plant fibers, carabao horn, bone and metals, as well as diverse crafts to illuminate the Filipino artisan’s virtuosity.

With the craftsmen’s thoughtful interventions, materials come to life as functional or décorative objects imbued with character and meaning.

At times technique is restrained to give way to natural textures and patterns, while in some, weavings, carvings and other craft techniques lead the narratives.

Basket & Weaves and Lapekto Lapel exhibited tabletop wares with contrasting woodworking techniques. Carabao horn and bone were at the core of Elms Accessoria’s presentation of serving spoons, dipping bowls and other dining accessories. Bon Ace’s series of tabletop articles were a mix of humble wood and polished metals. Likewise, the calm and luminous character of capiz shells covered Robles Heritage’s hard-angled products, and Larone’s ancient patterns were set against streamlined shapes and brooding colors.

33 Point 3 elevated traditional basketry with its play on scale and subdued tones, while Celestial Arts and Department 24

combined weaving and carving expertise for its line of décor and small accessories.

Cagayan de Oro Handmade Paper and New Maddela Flowers & Crafts presented a thoughtful response to environmental issues, with the former showcasing the versatility of tree-less paper in a line of sculptural lights and the latter’s collection of vibrant blooms made from desiccated, locally grown alibangbang leaves.

Chanalli’s sacral icons, such as the granary idols called bulols and the Filipino-Hispanic colonial santos, were removed from their original context and reappropriated as décorations for the home. Oricon’s tabletop wares were

carved from stones harvested from the northern rivers of Tarlac, their surfaces polished through years of gentle tides and the furious wrath of typhoons.

Even the simple placemats from Julie Anne’s Handicrafts were rife with meanings, the products made mostly from the humble buri palm evoking the lively conversations and camaraderie present in every Filipino dining table.

The Ambiente 2017 showing was organized by Citem, the export-marketing and promotions arm of the Department of Trade and Industry, in association with Philippine Trade and Investment Center, the commercial section of the Philippine Embassy in Berlin.

LIFE

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All about winning

Sports BusinessMirror

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| Tuesday, February 21, 2017 mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph Editor: Jun Lomibao

this undated photo shows Jordan spieth about to blow on a golf ball. on February 20 spieth promoted the golf shoes named after him, the spieth one, which would be made available at under Armour retail outlets.

sPieth CheCks shoes, ReGAins his FootinG

By Karen Crouse New York Times

M

ALIBU, California—The golf shoes on display in a backroom at Nobu Malibu would have looked at home in the nearby Museum of Contemporary Art. They were artwork for the sole, pairs of shoes adorned with leis, tartan plaid, a California grizzly bear—and numbers, scores from breakthrough rounds that marked steps in the ascent of Jordan Spieth’s career.

The Spieth One, available soon at an Under Armour retail outlet near you, are not at all like the decorative footwear that caught the eye of those at the US introduction of Spieth’s new spikes. They are distinctive in ways that do not grab the eye: the springiness, the snug heel support and the wide placement of the spikes for better stability.

Even the stylistic elements—vertical and horizontal lines that Spieth requested from the designers— emphasize utility. “That’s going to help me when I look down and I’m trying to line up,” Spieth said. “But it also looks cool. It’s a cool way to be subtle because I don’t want a giant ‘J.S.’ on there.”

Be it his signature shoe or his life, Spieth prefers form over flash. Just as his golfing attire leans toward grays, blues, browns and whites, his public persona leans toward vanilla malted. Except for Spieth’s results, nothing about him screams “Look at me!” That made Nobu, where the beautiful people go to be seen while grazing on yellowtail sashimi, a novel place for Spieth, 23, to promote the shoe last Monday.

The day before, Spieth had held his first 54-hole lead on the Professional Golfers’ Association Tour since blowing the 2016 Masters, and this one he converted into his ninth Tour title. His four-stroke victory, at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-

Am, was just what the psychologist ordered for Spieth, who hoped he would not have to return to Augusta National in April weighed down by the baggage of the five-stroke lead he squandered in the final round last year.

“It was definitely in the back of my head all day,” Spieth said. “You have that voice in your head that says, ‘Who cares what anybody else says or thinks? We just do what we do.’ But obviously that round was going to be on my brain because it was the most recent lead that we had. If I didn’t hold this one, what kind of repercussions would that have?”

Having exorcised the ghost of leads lost, Spieth could have slept in the next morning, enjoyed a sun-splashed day, and then luxuriated in the rave reviews of his new shoes that night. Instead, he was out at Riviera Country Club when the sun came up to play in the Collegiate Showcase with amateur partners that included the heralded Texas senior Gavin Hall. Spieth was accompanied by his coach, Cameron McCormick, who took videos of his swing to review between shots.

Spieth, who dropped out of Texas early in his sophomore year to turn pro, said he is striking the ball, as well as he did in 2015, when he came close to winning the first three legs of golf’s Grand Slam. He posted 27 consecutive rounds under par in stroke play until his 1-over-par third round at the rain-plagued Genesis Open on Sunday. But you would never know it from watching him prepare. In his practice rounds, he bemoaned approach shots that found the green but were more than 10 feet from the pin and lamented that they were not perfectly struck but nevertheless found the fairway.

Last month Spieth played a pro-am round with another Under Armour athlete, the swimmer Michael Phelps, who said he was struck by how much Spieth expected of himself.

McCormick and his caddie, Michael Greller, consider Spieth’s perfectionist streak a double-edged sword: It motivates Spieth to keep working diligently, but he can be steered off track by the internal torrent of negativity when he falls short. “I’m very reliant on Michael for positive energy, positive voice,” Spieth acknowledged.

Then there are the external pressures. A story in the local newspaper two days before the start of the Genesis Open mentioned that Spieth, a five-time winner in 2014-2015, had “only” two victories last season, as if he had fallen on hard times. If that’s struggling, most of Jordan’s cohorts have never experienced success: Of the 144 players in the Genesis Open field, 88 had fewer than two PGA Tour victories.

“If that’s those individuals’ perception, they’ve got an extremely high perception of what I’m capable of, so I guess, thank you,” Spieth said, adding, “If that’s a low point for a year, then we’re going to surpass Phil Mickelson.”

Mickelson, 46, has 42 PGA Tour victories but is winless since the 2013 British Open. That, combined with Tiger Woods’s being sidelined with a bad back and stuck indefinitely (perhaps enduringly) on 79 Tour victories, has tagged Spieth, America’s “It” player in a high-stakes game with no discernible safe zone.

Spieth is also close to his Under Armour family, whose members are always no more than a text away.

After his victory in Pebble Beach, Spieth received messages from the New England Patriots quarterback and Super Bowl Most Valuable Player Tom Brady and the two-time reigning National Basketball Aaasociation Player of the Year, Stephen Curry.

ALL ABOUT WINNING

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OS ANGELES—The only question about Dustin Johnson going to No. 1 in the world is: What took so long?

The talent was never an issue.

Jordan Spieth once referred to Johnson as “a freak athlete”, a term rarely heard in golf. Pat Perez was partly in awe and partly exasperated on Sunday as he stood behind the 10th green during the final round at Riviera and said, “The guy hits it 40 yards by me, hits his short irons great and makes 30-foot putts. What do you do?”

Crown him.

Finally.

Johnson looked like a world-beater against the strongest field of the year at the Genesis Open. He went 49 consecutive holes without a bogey. During the third round Sunday morning, when he shot a secen-under 64 and built a five-shot lead, his two longest par putts were from 4 feet. On the 606-yard 17th hole in the second round, on a day when no one could get it back to the flag, Johnson went over the green.

With his five-shot victory, he became the 20th player since the world ranking began in 1986 to reach No. 1.

And it never crossed his mind.

Neither did the 72-hole scoring record at Riviera, set in 1985 by Lanny Wadkins at 20-under 264, making it the oldest such record on the Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA) Tour schedule. Johnson didn’t even know what the record was,

nor did he care. He was at 20 under after making his 21st birdie of the week at the par-3 sixth, played it safe from there with a big lead and closed with three meaningless bogeys for a 71.

“Winning the golf tournament...that’s what I was here to do,” Johnson said.

That’s what he’s been doing ever since his rookie season. Johnson has won every year on the PGA Tour except for 2014, which was cut short when he stepped away for six months to seek professional help for personal challenges amid a published report he had tested positive twice for drugs.

He found guidance from hockey great Wayne Gretzky—Johnson is engaged to the Great One’s daughter, they have a 2-year-old son and Paulina Gretzky announced this week on Instagram that another one is on the way.

Gretzky’s words carry a lot of weight on and off the golf course.

“When an athlete of his stature...thinks very highly of you, it definitely gives you a lot of confidence and gives you more belief,” Johnson said.

Johnson won in his fifth tournament back from that six-month break to get back into the top 10 in the world, and it’s been a slow rise ever since. He won his first major

in the US Open at Oakmont the following year, added his third World Golf Championships title, a FedEx Cup playoff event and swept all the big awards, starting with PGA Tour player of the year.

And now he’s No. 1.

“No surprise to us players, and I don’t think too much surprise to many others,” Jordan Spieth said.

Dating to that US Open victory, Johnson has won four times in the last eight months against the strongest fields in golf. In 16 tournaments since, he has finished no worse than third place in eight of them.

He could hear chants of “No. 1” when he walked up to the 18th green at Riviera, with fans crammed onto the hillside below the storied clubhouse. When he tapped in for par, he headed for the side of the green toward his fiancé to pick up their young son.

“Little man” is what Johnson calls him, and there already are tales that he’s a lot like his father. Gretzky told of the time Tatum was going through the house and banged his head on a table. The boy rubbed it for a second and kept right on running. Nothing fazed him, and the same is true of Johnson.

Major setbacks? Johnson might be the leader in the clubhouse. He lost one major with an 82 in the final round, another when he grounded

his club in sand without realizing it was a bunker. The most crushing was the US Open at Chambers Bay, when Johnson had a 12-foot eagle putt to win and threeputted to lose.

And he rubbed his head and kept right on going.

This was his largest margin of victory, and it could have been worse. Johnson arrived at Riviera on Sunday morning with a one-shot lead to play 36 holes—the tournament was delayed all week by fog and rain—and one burst was all it took. He closed out the third round with three straight birdies, had 14 minutes before starting the final round and started with two birdies. At one point, his lead was up to nine before he coasted in.

Johnson will be in Mexico City in two weeks where Jason Day, who had spent 47 weeks at the top of the ranking, will try to take it back.

“If he keeps playing the way he’s playing, we’ve all got to pick our games up and try and compete against him,” Day said. “Because he’s playing some good golf.” AP

The BPO sector moving forward

the entrepreneur Manny Villar

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he election of Donald J. Trump as United States president last November brought mixed reaction in terms of its impact on the Philippine economy and the business sector.

Some analysts and businessmen feared that with his protectionist “America first” statements during the campaign, a Trump presidency would slow down, or even cause a withdrawal of investments from the Philippines.

Others believe that the Philippines’s many advantages as an investment hub would continue to attract investors, who are generally driven by the profit motive.

My own view, which I discussed in previous columns, was that his election would not drive American investors in the Philippines to pack up and leave, despite Trump’s strong rhetoric about bringing back jobs to the US. Continued on A10

at Riviera Country Club on February 19 in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles. AP

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UP VOTING ON DEATH PENALTY

Part Two

ASED on the records of the Supreme Court, there were 53,735 annulment cases that were filed from the period 2010 to 2016.

In 2010 a total of 7,354 annulment petitions were filed; 7,554 cases in 2011; 8,007 in 2012; 7,360 in 2013; 7,999 in 2014; 8,660 in 2015; and 6,801 in 2016.

In the Philippines married couples no longer interested in living together may opt for any of the option—to file a petition for annulment or a petition for legal separation.

Under Article 45 of the Family Code and Supreme Court AM 02-11-10, a marriage can be annulled if either spouse was over 18, but not yet 21, and got married without parental consent or guardian, or person having substitute parental authority over the party.

Another ground is if one spouse wasn’t mentally sound at the time of the marriage or was forced into it, unless he or she continued living as husband and wife after regaining mental competence or the threat of force disappeared.

Marriage can also be annulled if fraud is committed in order to obtain the consent of either party, unless such party afterward, with full knowledge of the facts constituting the fraud, freely cohabited with the other as husband and wife.

Other grounds

Johnson poses with his trophy on the 18th »greenDustin after winning the Genesis open golf tournament

Sports

See “Perks,” A2

@jrsanjuan1573

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LUIS LORENZANA: AN ARTIST AHEAD OF HIS TIME D4

BusinessMirror

being given to mass-housing projects in Metro Manila and maintain the current price ceiling for low-cost housing eligible for fiscal perks.

The DTI has already submitted for President Duterte’s signature the implementing rules and regulations (IRR) for executive order that will

By Joel R. San Juan

© 2017 the new york times

menswear motifs give décor a dash of debonair EAR Lord, we know that in desolation and aridity, we must trust the will of God the Father. Eventually, the sun will come out and the dark will disappear.

It may not be easy for us to remain in a state of prayer, Lord, when it is dark and dryly uninspiring, when it seems that nothing is happening, but let us trust that You are there, ever present as our inspiration. Amen.

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‘Breaking hearts’ legally costly for many Filipinos HOUSE SPEEDS

analysis, ideas and commentary from

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the incentives regime for the industry.

In particular, the SHDA, according to its senior adviser Bansan C. Choa, wants the DTI to retain the incentives

The current price cap for housing projects that are eligible for fiscal perks

BMReports

BusinessSense E1 Tuesday, February 21, 2017

business news source of the year

@c_pillas29

evelopers have warned the government that soon-to-be implemented curbs in the grant of incentives for mass housing under the 2017 Investment Priorities Plan (IPP) could worsen the housing backlog in the country.

The Subdivision and Housing Developers Association (SHDA), thus, appealed anew to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) for a status quo in

2016 ejap JOURNALISM awards

THE discovery of an incurable sexually transmitted disease or permanent impotence can also be invoked as valid grounds to seek an annulment.

PESO exchange rates n US 49.9870

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he House of Representatives has decided to speed up the approval of the controversial death-penalty measure, or House Bill (HB) 4727, which is being pushed by the Duterte administration.

Majority Leader Rodolfo C. Fariñas of the First District of Ilocos Norte said in an interview following their caucus on Monday that the projected February 28 approval on second reading of HB 4727 is a week earlier than the March 8 original schedule.

“If they cannot maintain the quorum to listen to them [interpellators] it’s over...we will advance the voting on February 28,” Fariñas said.

The lower chamber has originally set March 8 and March 15 for the second and third reading, respectively, of the capitalpunishment bill.

Fariñas said a majority of the lawmakers have already decided how to vote and the House leadership will only accommodate 50 interpellators who want to express their opposition to the measure.

“How could I force people to listen to their points if people have already made up their minds. As you may have noticed, nobody wants to listen to them [interpellators], that’s their problem and they are the one’s questioning the quorum,” Fariñas said.

The supermajority has conducted a caucus after lawmakers who opposed the bill kept questioning the lack of quorum, which delayed the sponsorship and debate period.

Meanwhile, Fariñas said the supermajority has also agreed to narrow down to nine—from 21—the number of heinous crimes punishable by death. “We whittled it down to a minimum number of offenses punishable by death [through hanging, firing squad or lethal injection]. These crimes are drug-related offenses, plunder and then treason,” Fariñas said.

200

The number of solons at the lower chamber that is expected to vote in favor of the measure reviving the death penalty

On the other hand, Article 55 of the Family Code establishes the ground in seeking a legal separation.

These include repeated physical violence or grossly abusive conduct directed against the petitioner, a common child, or a child of the petitioner; if the other spouse is sentenced to jail for more than five years; physical violence or moral pressure to compel the petitioner to change religious or political affiliation; attempt of respondent to corrupt or induce the petitioner, a com-

mon child, or a child of the petitioner, to engage in prostitution, or connivance in such corruption or inducement; drug addiction or habitual alcoholism of the respondent; lesbianism or homosexuality of the respondent; contracting by the respondent of a subsequent bigamous marriage, whether in the Philippines or abroad; sexual infidelity or perversion; attempt by the respondent against the life of the petitioner; or abandonment of

See “Death penalty,” A2

Continued on A2

n japan 0.4429 n UK 62.1088 n HK 6.4412 n CHINA 7.2773 n singapore 35.2368 n australia 38.3300 n EU 53.0612 n SAUDI arabia 13.3284

Source: BSP (20 February 2017 )

BMReports BusinessMirror

A2 Tuesday, February 21, 2017

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‘Breaking hearts’ legally costly for many Filipinos Continued from A1

petitioner by respondent without justifiable cause for more than one year.

On the other hand, a married couple can also file a petition for nullity of marriage if it is void from the beginning.

Several options

THE valid grounds for the declaration of absolute nullity of marriage are if either of the party is below 18 years of age, even with consent of parents or guardians; marriage was solemnized by a person not legally authorized to perform marriages; marriage was solemnized without license; bigamous or polygamous marriages; marriage was contracted through mistake of one contracting party as to the identity of the other; either party was psychologically incapacitated to comply with the essential marital obligations of marriage at the time of the celebration of the marriage; incestuous marriages; and marriages that are void from the beginning for reasons of public policy.

State Solicitor II-Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) Jessica Siquijor-Magbanua said some parties would opt for legal separation instead of annulment to keep the

Mines. . .

legal ties of being married while others opt for annulment when they plan on getting married again.

Whether it is an annulment or legal separation, Siquijor-Magbanua said the State, under Section 12 of the 1987 Constitution, “recognizes the sanctity of family life”, thus, it is obliged to protect and strengthen the family as a basic autonomous social institution.”

But, Siquijor-Magbanua stressed that there were instances that the OSG did not oppose a petition for annulment, particularly when it finds that there is procedural and substantial compliance with the rules.

SC relaxes rules?

TWO years ago, the SC issued a ruling that relaxes the “strict and literal” interpretation of a provision in the Family Code that pertains to the issue of psychological incapacity as a ground of nullifying a marriage.

The Court’s Special First Division admitted that it had set some guidelines for the interpretation and application of Article 36 of the Family Code that “ have turned out to be rigid, such that their application to every instance

Continued from A12

Eastern Samar, Dinagat Islands, Surigao del Norte and Surigao del Sur. LGUs directly collect from mining firms operating in their municipalities and cities the following taxes and fees: RPTs, local business tax, mayor’s permit fee, regulatory and administrative fees and occupation fees.

For the RPTs imposed by cities, the LGU gets a 70-percent share, while the remaining 30 percent is shared with the barangays, of which half goes to the barangay directly affected, and the other half shared equally by component barangays. For the RPTs collected by provinces, the area receives a 35-percent share, 40 percent goes to the municipality and the remaining 25 percent to barangays where the mining site is located, Alvina added.

practically condemned the petitions for declaration of nullity to the fate of certain rejection.”

It noted said such provision should not “so strictly and too literally” applied.

Article 36 provides that “a marriage contracted by any party who, at the time of the celebration, was psychologically incapacitated to comply with the essential marital obligations of marriage, shall likewise be void, even if such in capacity becomes manifest only after its solemnization.”

Psychological incapacity under Article 36 refers to a serious psychological illness afflicting a party even prior to the celebration of the marriage that is permanent as to deprive the party of the awareness of the duties and responsibilities of the matrimonial bond he or she was about to assume.

Court interpretation

IN the case, the husband, who was already living with and had children with another woman, sought annulment of his marriage with his legal wife, accusing her of infidelity and neglecting their children.

The wife opposed the petition, saying

Death penalty. . .

Continued from A1

These drug-related cases include importation of dangerous drugs and/or controlled precursors and essential chemicals; sale, trading, administration, dispensation, delivery, distribution and transportation of dangerous drugs and/or controlled precursors and essential chemicals; and maintenance of drug den.

Also punishable by death are the manufacture of dangerous drugs and/ or controlled precursor and essential chemicals; cultivation or culture of plants classified as dangerous drugs; unlawful

prescription of dangerous drugs; criminal liability of public officer for misappropriation, misapplication or failure to account for the confiscated, seized or surrendered drugs; and criminal liability for planting evidence.

Meanwhile, the heinous crimes originally punishable by death that will be removed from the bill are qualified piracy, qualified bribery, parricide, murder, infanticide, rape, kidnapping and serious illegal detention, robbery with violence against or intimidation of persons, destructive arson, criminal liability for planting evidence and carnapping.

Last Sunday Deputy Speaker and National Unity Party Rep. Fredenil Castro of

her husband was a womanizer, alcoholic, drug dependent and wife-beater.

The trial court granted the annulment but the Court of Appeals (CA) overturned it. However, SC Spokesman Theodore Te quickly denied that the Court has relaxed its rules on psychological incapacity as one of the grounds for the annulment of marriages in reversing the CA’s decision.

“The dispositive portion of the [January 2015] resolution did not state that the Supreme Court was abandoning its precedents on psychological incapacity as a ground for declaring marriages null and void under the Family Code, only that the motion for reconsideration was granted and the particular marriage, based on the evidence presented and appreciated, is declared null and void,” Te noted.

Te noted that the January 2015 resolution was issued by a division and could not modify the decisions of the en banc or the entire court when it interpreted the application of Article 36 in the cases of Santos v Court of Appeals (1995), Republic v Court of Appeals (1997, also known as the Molina case) and Ngo Te v Yu-Te (1998).

To be concluded

Capiz, one of the principal authors of House Bill 4727, said at least 200 lawmakers are expected to vote in favor of the measure reviving the death penalty.

“Out of 293 members of the House, we expect at least 200-plus votes in favor of the measure versus 60 or 70 [lawmakers who are against the capital punishment],” Castro said.

“I believe that since our first caucus [two weeks ago] we already have a comfortable margin [to push for the passage of the bill],” Castro added.

Capital punishment in the country was suspended in 2006 by then-president and now Lakas Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo of Pampanga. Jovee Marie N. dela Cruz

Perks. . .

Continued from A1

operationalize the 2017 IPP. Choa said the housing industry is still hoping to dissuade the DTI from imposing stricter measures for housing developers in availing fiscal perks.

“We only have two main concerns: Reducing the price cap for low-cost housing from P3 million and removing the incentives for projects in Metro Manila,” Choa said in a phone interview on Monday.

According to earlier reports, the BOI has moved to lower the P3-millionper-unit price ceiling for low-cost housing to P2 million, in a bid to encourage developers to offer more affordable housing packages. Currently, developers can avail themselves of fiscal perks for mass-housing projects costing P3 million and below.

Developers said constructing units at below P2 million is difficult, considering the cost of materials.

They added that the change would shift demand away from the P3-million segment, subsequently aggravating the housing backlog. Employment may also be reduced in the construction industry.

The country’s housing backlog is estimated at 5.5 million units, prompting a mutlisector review of the country’s shelter policy, including the use of in-city development for squatters.

The government is also looking at using a public-private partnership scheme to involve corporations in the bid to bridge the gaping housing gap.

Complying with the price range of P450,000 to P3 million for economic and low-cost housing, as stipulated in the 20142016 IPP guidelines, is a requirement to receive tax breaks.

The IPP gives qualified vertical and horizontal mass-housing projects fiscal incentives, including up to four years of incometax holiday and duty-free importation of capital equipment.

Choa also bemoaned the reported move of the BOI to add a “geographic limitation” for mass-housing projects eligible for tax perks. The BOI has reportedly removed Metro Manila from mass-housing sites that will qualify for incentives.

The SHDA adviser reasoned that this may jack up the cost of mass-housing units being built in Metro Manila and temper the growth of housing inventory in the region.

Other officials in the housing industry have also pointed out that most jobs are still concentrated in Metro Manila, making it difficult to attract home buyers to housing projects outside of it.

PAL. . .

Continued from A12

the tourism destinations of Legazpi, Cebu, Boracay, Davao, Coron, Laoag, Bohol, Cagayan de Oro and Manila. “We built a mock of our aircraft seat and brought it around the Philippines to serve as a backdrop for our auditionees while performing the safety guidelines,” she said.

PAL officials said the video will be part of a worldwide safety advocacy campaign starting this month, and aimed at strengthening passenger knowledge on aircraft safety. The said campaign will culminate with an “experiential event in March that will allow people to build a better understanding of the safety guidelines,” de Jesus emphasized.

Ordinarily, an airline’s crew demonstrates the safety procedures before a plane takes off, or in the case of some international carriers, show a video clip of the crew doing the same. But “studies show that about 50 percent of passengers are distracted and do not pay attention to safety videos so we at PAL wanted to ensure that the material will be engaging enough to capture the attention of its passengers,” de Jesus said.

For her part, McCann Associate Managing Director Mitzie Lim-Nacancieno said in a clip on the making of the new in-flight safety video: “The idea we came up with was simple yet powerful. We wanted to show the true beauty that lies in every heart of the Filipino, against the backdrop of some of the most breathtaking places in the Philippines.

“We called for auditions online and invited Filipinos from all over the country, to take part in PAL’s ‘Heart of a Nation’ safety advocacy. We created a video that not only talks about in-flight safety that also serves as a source of pride for Filipinos all over the world.”

McCann was also the winning bidder for the new DOT brand campaign, #WhenWithFilipinos, and produced the recent Valentine online TV commercials for a fastfood chain, which also went viral.

news@businessmirror.com.ph

The Nation BusinessMirror

Child-rights advocates slam bid to lower MACR to 9

By Marvyn N. Benaning Correspondent

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WO national networks of children’s rights advocates have condemned lawmakers for even contemplating on reducing the minimum age of criminal responsibility (MACR) from the current 15 years to only 9 years.

One justification for this, the Child Rights Network (CRN) and Philippine Action for Youth Offenders (Payo) said in a statement, is President Duterte’s determination to punish the children being used as drug couriers or as informants of drug syndicates.

CRN and Payo argued that it would be foolish for the government to impose punishments on children who are so young they cannot discern what is right and what is wrong.

Citing statistics, CRN and Payo said the total number of children in conflict with the law (CICL) was not even 4 percent, and this includes many who are themselves victims, or are too poor to reject cash or blandishments by crime gangs.

In response to the determined campaign by Speaker Pantaleon D.

Alvarez and his allies at the House of Representatives to approve a bill reducing MACR to only 9 years, CRN and Payo vowed to intensify their effort to block it.

On February 16 CRN and Payo urged legislators to junk House Bill 2 and five other bills that seek to amend the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act by reducing the MACR. CRN and Payo said evidence against lowering MACR has been mounting, with medical, psychological and legal experts, as well as social workers, insisting that a reduced MACR would increase the number of CICLs. The logical attitude of the Duterte administration should be to zero in on foreign illegaldrugs manufacturers and their local cohorts who are on top of the drug pyramid if they are really keen on winning the fight against shabu, or methamphetamine hydrochloride.

“Lowering MACR is antihuman rights and antipoor. It is a wrong solution to the problem it seeks to address. It goes against the rights and best interests of children, especially those in conflict with the law,” they added.

Editor: Dionisio L. Pelayo • Tuesday, February 21, 2017 A3

Confessed DDS hit man links Duterte to killings T

CSC to government workers: Observe working hours

A

By Butch Fernandez

@butchfBM

SENATOR who has been hounding President Duterte on Monday presented a Davao City policeman who confessed to being a member of the so-called Davao Death Squad (DDS), which carried out hit projects purportedly ordered by then-Mayor now President Rodrigo R. Duterte.

Accompanied by lawyers of the Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG), Senior Police Officer 3 Arturo Lascañas corroborated the earlier testimony of Edgar Matobato, who was the first to implicate Duterte to the spate of killings by the DDS in Davao, including the assasination of radio broadcaster Jun Pala.

“I promised God I will make a

full confession,” Lascañas said, admitting, among others, that they received a P1-million “bonus” from then-Mayor Duterte for killing Pala.

Lascañas recalled that Duterte had “asked his driver to tell me to go after Jun Pala because he kept on attacking the mayor,” adding that he was initially offered P2 million to carry out the plan to assasinate Pala.

“We tried to assassinate Pala but it was aborted twice so we paid Pala’s bodyguards for information when to hit him by sending us the coded message‘itsshowtime’.”Headded:“Duterte paidusP3million...evengaveusbonus.”

Facing reporters at the Senate, Lascañas said he was one of the founders of the DDS directly linked to the wave of extrajudicial killings in Davao City when Duterte was serving as mayor.

Lascañas disclosed that he and other National Police personnel were also involved in the group that retaliated for the bombing of Davao’s San Pedro Cathedral by lobbing grenade at a mosque, tagging a certain “Major Macasaet” as the one who gave them “money from Duterte” for the hit.

“Ito po ang katotohanan,” Lascañas said, adding a clear admission against interest: “Consider the Pala murder case solved. I am one of those who killed him.”

Lascañas, who was presented by Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, likewise, admitted causing the killing of his brothers—Cecilio and Fernando— who were linked to drugs as result of his loyalty to Duterte.

HE Civil Service Commission (CSC) reminded state workers on Mond ay to strictly observe government working hours.

The commission issued the reminder through Memorandum Circular 1, Series of 2017, reiterating the policy on government office hours, and penalties for unauthorized absences, tardiness in reporting for duty, and loafing during office hours.

The statement came in the wake of reports on government officials and employees not observing prescribed offices hours and failing to account for their attendance.

“These acts are detrimental to public service, thus, we are reminding all government workers of all departments and agencies to render eight hours of work from Monday to Friday, or not less than 40 hours a week,” CSC Chairman Alicia dela Rosa-Bala said.

Bala explained that even those assigned in the field have to account for their attendance by accomplishing the proper form, which serves as their daily time record. PNA

The Regions BusinessMirror

A4 Tuesday, February 21, 2017 • Editor: Efleda P. Campos

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PHL’s lone rainwater-harvesting ordinance gains ground with new constructions

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By Manuel T. Cayon

@awimailbox Mindanao Bureau Chief

AVAO CITY—The country’s only rainwater-harvesting policy enforced through a city ordinance is gaining ground in its first two years of implementation here, records from the City Engineer’s Office (Cenro) showed.

From 2,497 residences and commercial buildings required to install their water tanks and other rainwater collection facility in 2015, the number rose to 3,879 the following year.

A conservative estimate, the number could reach a minimum volume of more than 10,400 cubic meters of rainwater at one time that could have aggravated flooding in low-lying areas. The desired result of the rainwater-catching system became a reality through a city ordinance enacted in 2009.

It took five more years before the ordinance, tagged 0298-09 Series of 2009, was granted its Implementating Rules and Regulation in 2014, for final enforcement, Arjean Jumamoy of the Cenro said.

The ordinance took off from the former practice of residents of installing their own water tanks and water pumps before the advent of the water districts, the late environmentalist Councilor Leonardo Avila III said in his advocating for a policy to adapt the practice anew.

Jumamoy said there was no official estimation yet of the aggregate capacity of all the rainwater collection facilities, as she said additional

rainwater catching was being contributed also by subdivisions which carve their own “retarding pond” or impounding dams.

The ponds could hold 10 cubic meters of water and more, depending on the preference of housing developers, she said. Subdivision developers turned these ponds into some kind of amenity, Jumamoy said, like one subdivision in Puan, 11 kilometers southwest of downtown, which maintained it as a lagoon.

Some 20 subdivisions already have their own retarding ponds.

Residences could have up to two cubic meters of a water tank and commercial buildings could install up to 10 cubic meters. Individual houses in the subdivisions with the retarding pond were still required to install their own water tanks.

To effectively enforce the ordinance, the city attached it as a requirement for new residences and buildings seeking building permits, and for old residences and commercial buildings that require major repairs.

Seventy percent of all new applications for constructions were residences, she said.

‘CHORIZO DE CEBU’ Workers make the tiny longganisa (sausages) popular in the province of Cebu in the Taboan Public Market. Cebu’s chorizo is different from other varieties for its sweetness.

FAYE PABLO

Energy firm provides solar power to Quezon sitio

By John Bello | Correspondent

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AGBILAO, QUEZON—A coalfired power plant here is providing electricity to poor residents through solar power.

Around 145 individuals in Sitio Daungang Pari, a small and secluded community, are the beneficiaries of the 10 watt-peak solar homelighting systems equipped with two light bulbs, a solar panel and a cellphone charger.

The residents of the sitio are experiencing the benefits of electricity in their households for the first

time, as they received 29 solar-home systems from TeamEnergry Foundation Inc. (Tefi) through its “Light A Home” project, said Ricky de Castro, executive director of Tefi.

“The Light A Home project was conceptualized in order to provide electricity to the underserved communities that do no qualify in the government’s criteria for their electrification program,” de Castro said, adding the program is Tefi’s way of partnering with the government in helping fully energize even the most remote areas of the country.

TeamEnergy Corp. (TEC) runs

the 430-megawatt coal-fired power plant in Barangay Iba Polo here and was originally Hopewell Power Corp. in the 1990s when it started operation during the administration of then-Gov. Eduardo Rodriguez.

TEC represents one of the biggest Japanese investments in the country, which is run by a predominantly Filipino work force.

Tefi is the social development arm of TEC, a partnership between two Japanese firms: Tokyo Electric Power Co. and Marubeni Corp. It also operates a bigger 1,200 MW coal-fired power plant in Sual, Pangasinan.

NGO claims violations of children’s rights escalated after ‘all-out war’ vs NPA declared

By Marvyn N. Benaning Correspondent

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HE Children’s Rehabilitation Center (CRC) said an upsurge in violations of children’s rights has followed the declaration by the military of an all-out war campaign against the New People’s Army (NPA).

CRC, which had been counseling children traumatized by military operations for years, challenged President Duterte to order his troops to leave the children alone and stop making their schools and day-care centers as their bivouac areas.

Cristina Palabay, secretary-general of the human-rights watchdog Karapatan, also urged the Duterte government to respect the provisions of the International Covenant of

Children’s Rights (ICCR), which bans the recruitment of child soldiers and the use of educational institutions as staging areas for military operations.

NPA Spokesman Jorge Ka Oris Madlos said “the NPA stands by its prohibition on the use of children as combatants, and this has been spelled out in the documents released by the National Democratic Front of the Philippines [NDF].”

“Even while the peace negotiation between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines and the NDF is ongoing, we have been witness to the continuing humanrights violations by the Armed Forces of the Philippines [AFP]. Especially after Duterte’s declaration of an all-out war, the military has continued, and even gained more confidence, in violating human

rights of progressives, activists and even civilians,” CRC executive director Sr. Jacqueline Ruiz said.

Ruiz said children in the countryside continue to live under siege as elements of the AFP target civilians.

Palabay earlier condemned the killing of 17-year-old Jobert Bito, a Grade 11 student, who was gunned down in a mining tunnel in Tagmamarkay, Agusan del Norte, on February 11, by soldiers of the 17th Infantry Battalion who claimed that NPA guerrillas were holed up in the tunnel being worked on by small miners.

Miner Pepito Tiambong, 40, was killed along with Bito, with the soldiers claiming they died in a clash with the NPA. “We are very much alarmed that children continue to carry the heaviest brunt of military abuses in

the countryside. Between February 10 and February 11, elements of the AFP have committed cases of extrajudicial killing of a Grade 11 student, military attacks on schools and indiscriminate aerial bombings resulting to forcible evacuations of indigenous communities,” Ruiz said.

In Magallanes, Sorsogon, soldiers also used the Tula-Tula Elementary School as a shield during a clash with the NPA on February 10, forcing school officials to suspend classes.

On Februar y 11 about 100 families of the Tagakaolo minority group in Barangay Datal Anggas, Alabel, Saranggani, forcibly evacuated their homes and fled to Sitio Kindag when six bombs were dropped on Sitio Tangis, following an encounter between NPA guerrillas and soldiers.

T h re e Lu m ad com mu n it y schools, operated by the Center for Lumad Advocacy and Services Inc., were also affected by ongoing combat operations.

Ruiz lamented the Duterte government’s all-out war “is leaving hundreds of children as orphans, with many of them separated them from their parents, who were either arrested and detained and slapped with trumped-up charges or disappeared altogether.”

“Where is the change Duterte promised to millions of people who have supported and voted for him?

Children of peasants and indigenous peoples continue to experience state violence on a daily basis. Indeed, the future remains bleak for Filipino children, whom we consider as our nation’s hope!” Ruiz said.

Filinvest opts to rescind SRP purchase

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HE Filinvest Consortium said it has decided to exercise its option to rescind its purchase of a 19.2-hectare property in the Cebu South Road Properties (SRP) won through a public bidding in June 2015.

The announcement came a day after Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña said last Sunday Filinvest will rescind the contract it signed with the city government to purchase 19.2 hectares of land at the SRP. The contract was signed during the time of former mayor Michael L. Rama, who lost to Osmeña in the May 2016 polls.

Filinvest said the city of Cebu failed to comply with several covenants, undertakings and obligations it was required to fulfill more than a year ago.

Filinvest said it has given the city ample extensions, but it appeared unlikely the city would be able to comply within a foreseeable reasonable period of time.

Filinvest has decided to rescind the purchase pursuant to Section 5.7 of the sale document.

In a meeting held on Monday, Osmeña said he had no objection to the joint letter to rescind sent

by Filinvest. He has tasked city officials and Filinvest representatives to work out the details and processes to consummate the rescission.

Filinvest expressed its continued commitment to Cebu. The company is going full blast with its projects, including joint ventures with Cebu City and Cebu province.

Among these is the ongoing development of the 40-hectare City di Mare, a joint venture with Cebu City located in SRP. Currently, the Filinvest group has existing and planned developments in Cebu covering residential, commercial, hospitality and office-building projects totaling over P20 billion.

Aside from interposing no objection, Osmeña also welcomed the decision of Filinvest, as this meant the city no longer needs to file a case in court to have the contract revoked, as well as the contract with SM-Ayala Consortium for the purchase of 26 hectares of land at SRP. When the city signed the deed of sale, the city hall was to turn over documents, like titles of the property within six months after the signing, and after Filinvest and the SM-Ayala Consortium paid the initial half of the purchase amount.

The city reportedly failed to honor this agreement despite having already received P8.3 billion, equivalent to half of the total amount of purchase.

The remaining balance of the sale was agreed to be paid on a staggered basis within the next three years.

Osmeña earlier said the sale, conducted through a public bidding, was highly questionable, which was why he was planning to bring the matter to court to have the contract revoked. Charles R. Pepito

Zambo asks DSWD to provide deportees’ catchment area

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RAMPAGING CASCADES

Traversing the 22-kilometer access road developed by OceanaGold (Phil.) Inc. is a crystal-clear upland river in Tucod, Cabarroguis, Quirino. The Australian firm partnered with International River Foundation to promote sustainable management of catch basin and waterways downstream. LEONARDO PERANTE II

AMBOANGA CITY—The local government has appealed to the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) to provide a catchment area, other than this city, for the thousands of deportees coming from Malaysia.

Mayor Maria Isabelle Climaco-Salazar on Monday said the city government is still preoccupied with attending to the needs of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) during the 21-day September 2013 siege.

City Social Welfare and Development Office Chief Socorro Rojas said there are still 2,095 IDPs who are still housed in 11 transitory sites.

Rojas said protection services, such as child-protection program, and livelihoodsupport initiatives that include food-forwork program, remains part of the ongoing initiatives being implemented in the 11 transitory sites still in operation.

“We are trying to provide them [IDPs] de-

cent permanent housing units and our capacity to take in more [displaced people] must be considered because of the social impact that it will cause the city,” Salazar said.

Rojas informed Salazar the current mendicants roaming the streets of this city are formerly deportees.

“Because of lack of jobs, they end up becoming street mendicants and not only that, it will lead to other social problems,” the mayor said.

The DSWD earlier reported some 7,000 Filipinos who have been arrested in Malaysia for “undocumented migrant status” will be deported starting this month to the Philippines through this city.

The first batch of deportees, comprising 420 individuals, arrived last Thursday night and were temporarily housed at the DSWD Center for Displaced Persons in Barangay Talon-Talon, this city, for documentation and assessment. PNA

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Editor: Jennifer A. Ng • Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Solons to scrutinize impact of WTO policies on PHL agriculture sector

BLOOMBERG

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By Jovee Marie N. dela Cruz

@joveemarie

awmakers on Monday filed two resolutions calling for an inquiry into the impact of World Trade Organization (WTO) policies and programs on the local vegetable, livestock and poultry sectors.

T he Ma k abayan bloc f i led House Resolutions (HR) 796 and 797 directing the House Special Committee on Globalization and WTO to conduct the investigation.

Lawmakers wanted to look into the impact of WTO policies on the

local farm sector amid government efforts to amend Republic Act (RA) 8178, which converted import caps or quantitative restrictions, on farm commodities with tariffs.

“Tariffs on vegetables have been reduced since the 1980s,

when the government embarked on the comprehensive liberalization program under the country’s Structural Adjustment Program [SAP],” HR 796 read.

The Makabayan bloc noted that the Ramos administration passed RA 8178, which replaced quantitative restrictions on almost all agricultural products with tariffs that would be reduced within 10 percent to 50 percent by 2003. “[RA 8178] also amended the Magna Carta for Small Farmers, which restricted agricultural imports that competed with local produce, and RA 1296, which banned the importation of regulated vegetables except for seeding purposes,” HR 796 read.

Citing data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), the

lawmakers noted that the total production of 25 vegetables from 2011 to 2016 rose by 58 percent to 1.5 million metric tons (MMT) from the levels recorded during the pre-WTO period of 1990 to 1994. But imports also rose by 63 percent during the same period.

The Makabayan bloc said local vegetable growers have complained of losses as imported vegetables started flooding local markets after the country acceded to the WTO in 1995. Lawmakers said big businessmen found it cheaper to import highland vegetables from China, Taiwan and other countries.

Farmers, they said, have complained that cheap agricultural imports have become a main threat to their livelihood, complicating

the problems they are currently confronting like the lack of support services and high cost of production.

As for the livestock and poultry sector, the lawmakers said in HR 797 that hog raisers and poultry growers have also incurred losses due to country’s accession to the WTO. Before the Philippines became a member of the WTO, the lawmakers said the country’s livestock and poultry sectors were “quite selfsufficient and self-reliant”.

“After we became a member of the WTO, the importation of livestock and poultry products has increased with the country gravitating toward dependency on imports,” they said.

Lawmakers said that from 1995 to 2014, the Philippines imported 24,572,482 heads of live animals and 4.2 MMT. They also noted that the country increased its purchase of imported dairy products and meat by 67.47 percent and 797.53 percent, respectively, from 1995 to 2013.

“Because of the influx of cheap imported livestock and poultry products in the domestic market, local livestock and poultry raisers are forced to bid low and underprice their produce,” HR 797 read.

“Since they cannot compete with imported livestock and poultry products, local dealers compete with one another through pricing wars in which dealers in one province out-price dealers of another province while imported livestock and poultry products hold sway in the market,” it added.

According to the lawmakers, many hog raisers have stopped production since they are forced to sell directly at low prices or they simply slaughter their breeders after giving birth to avoid incurring big losses.

The two resolutions were filed

by Anak Pawis Rep. Ariel Casilao, Bayan Muna Rep. Carlos Isagani Zarate, Gabriela Reps. Emmi de Jesus and Arlene Brosas, Act Teachers Reps. Antonio Tinio and France Castro and Kabataan Rep. Sarah Jane Elago.

SRA issues rules to regulate Kenya seeks $114 million to mitigate severe drought entry of imported fructose N T

By Jasper Emmanuel Y. Arcalas @jearcalas

he Sugar Regulatory Adm i n i st rat ion (SR A) h a s released on Monday guidelines regulating the entry of imported high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) into the Philippines in its bid to stabilize prices.

The SRA, an attached agency of the Department of Agriculture, issued Sugar Order (SO) 3, which specified the guidelines for the issuance of clearance for the release of imported HFCS and chemically pure fructose.

“HFCS is a type of sugar and/ or that its importation affects the balance of supply of sugar in the country,” SRA Administrator Anna Rosario V. Paner said in SO 3.

“The unregulated importation of HFCS displaces the use of locally produced sugar and thereby negatively affects the balance of production, threatens the livelihood of industry workers and impedes the growth of the sugar industry,” Paner added.

Under SO 3, an importer or consignee of imported fructose must be a duly registered international trader with the SRA at the time of the application for clearance for release.

Importers of HFCS and chemically pure fructose shall submit at

least six primary requirements to secure a clearance for the release of shipments.

These are: letter of application for issuance of clearance for release; bill of lading; certificate of origin; certificate of analysis; notarized declaration by the importer or consignee that the fructose is either produced or derived from genetically modified organisms or not; and a copy of receipt of payment of SRA clearance for release fee.

“If any of the foregoing documents is in a foreign language, a translation in English shall be submitted and must be duly authenticated by a Philippine embassy or consular official in such country, where the documents were executed,” Paner said.

“No applications for clearance for release shall be accepted for processing unless all the requirements are duly complied with,” she added.

Under SO 3, the clearance for release should indicate the classification of the fructose as either “B” for domestic market, “C” for reserved, or “D” for world market.

“If the classification is ‘C’ or reserved, the imported fructose maybe withdrawn from the Bureau of Customs [BOC] but only for warehousing in a customs bonded warehouse [CBW] of the importer

or consignee,” Paner said.

“If the classification or reclassification is ‘B’ for domestic market or ‘D’ for world market, the imported fructose may be withdrawn by the importer or consignee from the BOC or from its CBW, as the case may be, for consumption or export,” she added.

Should the importers wish to transport the imported fructose within the country, they should secure a shipping permit and pay the corresponding fees to the SRA, Paner said.

The SRA said SO 3 is consistent with the Sugarcane Industry Development Act of 2015, or Republic Act 10659, which mandates the BOC to require importers or consignees to secure from the SRA the classification of the imported sugar prior to its release.

Paner also said Executive Order 18 mandates the SRA to establish and maintain a “balanced relation” between production and requirement of sugar to ensure stable prices at a level “reasonably profitable” to the producers and fair to consumers.

Sugar producers have earlier complained that they are losing some P10 billion a year due to the unregulated entry of HFCS Imports being used by local beverage and food producers.

AIROBI—The Kenyan government said on Sunday it requires $114 million to counter severe drought that has hit the country, as the number of food-insecure people rose to 3 million in February, from 1.3 million in August 2016.

State House Spokesman Manoah Esipisu said the state has secured $73 million of which it has spent $54 million in phase one of its responses.

“Toward this the government has allocated $73 million already and that leaves a gap of $114 million, which the government is also mobilizing,” Esipisu told journalists in Nairobi.

He said the government had allocated $54 million in the first stage of drought mitigation interventions the period covered November 2016-January 2017.

“For the second phase, which covers the period which we are in, February-April, an additional $116 million is required; and for phase three, between April-August, another $71 million will be required.

Kenya is experiencing severe drought due to depressed rainfall, which has led to crop failure and extreme livestock, water and vegetation deficit.

Esipisu said the drought, mostly affecting 3 million people in 23

counties, has caused a 10-percent to 20-percent increase in food prices.

According to Esipisu, 300,000 of these people are in non-arid and semiarid areas, and this represents about 20 percent of the population in pastoral areas and 18 percent in marginal agricultural areas.

He said the worst affected are the most vulnerable, usually the elderly, sick, children under 5 and mothers.

The east African nation declared drought a national disaster two weeks, inviting international community to help in addressing the situation.

Kenya convened a meeting with international partners last week as part of enhanced efforts to mobilize these additional resources to focus on mitigating the effects of drought and we can already report a tremendous positive response to this.

“Fifty percent of the mitigation is through cash transfers so that the recipients decide what to buy. In other areas, we send food rations,” Esipisu said, noting that this year’s drought has been managed well compared to 2011.

As a result of this vegetation deficit, he said, livestock prices are falling as body condition declines, noting that goat prices in December 2016 were up to 25 percent below their five-year averages. PNA/Xinhua

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Tadeco open to review of Davao banana lease contract

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anana exporter Tagum Agricultural Development Co. Inc. (Tadeco) said on Monday it is open to renegotiating its existing jointventure agreement (JVA) with the government for the lease of banana plantations in Davao.

“Even during the past administrations, the company has always been open to any call for adjustments in the benefits that the government derives from the joint venture, as well as the benefits, that go to the community and the inmates,” Tadeco President Alexander N. Valoria said in a statement.

“In the past when government asked for adjustments, the company readily accommodated them, noting that the times are changing, although the contract provides for escalation clause,” Valoria added.

Valoria made the pronouncement after reports indicated that the Department of Justice (DOJ) is mulling over to review the 25-year JVA between the Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) and Tadeco.

According to the DOJ, the JVA was “disadvantageous” and “unfavorable” to the government, stating that the annual payments of Tadeco to the government as obligated under the deal are only a fraction of the prevailing market rate.

Under the JVA, the BuCor allows Tadeco to lease portions of the Davao Prison and Penal farm reservation for its banana plantation.

In turn, Tadeco should provide the required investment and operating expenses for management of the land, pay leasing fees per hectare and employ prisoners in the plantation.

The JVA took effect in 1969. In 1979 the terms of the JVA were amended and the 15-year contract was extended for 10 years.

In 1988 the contract was amended again to escalate rates in land rentals, royalties and profit shares.

In 2004 the JVA was extended to another 25 years, with the BuCor renegotiating for an annual production share of P29.196 million, with a mandatory 10-percent increase every five years.

On top of the annual production share, the BuCor also gets a share of profits earned from Tadeco’s banana exports.

“Since 2012, the contract has been the subject of three congressional hearings by the committee on agrarian reform of the House of Representatives,” Valoria said.

The result of the first review in 2012 already stated that the joint venture was in order and that it was important to the government, as the company “contribute to the DOJ/BuCor and provide trainings and incomes to the latter’s inmates”, Valoria added, citing the government’s position paper.

Valoria said even before the call was made, the company and the government, represented by the BuCor, were scheduled to meet for their quarterly meeting next month to discuss the JVA and other related issues.

He said the JVA allowed the creation of a management committee to oversee its implementation and address concerns. The management committee is also mandated to convene quarterly meetings to discuss concerns about the JVA. “Aside from the quarterly meeting, Tadeco and government officials also meet every month to tackle day-to-day issues,” Valoria said.

The JVA, which covers 5,308 hectares at the Davao Prison and Penal Farm reservation, has benefited about 3,500 inmates every year with an average daily deployment of about 1,000 inmates every day under the Inmates Farm and Training and Exposure Program, Valoria said.

“On financial benefits and assistance to BuCor, the joint venture resulted in about P1.642 billion in financial benefits until 2016, about P15.432 million in fixed program assistance during the period, P3.831 million in infrastructure assistance and P2.205million in other forms of assistance,” Valoria said.

“On employment generation, the joint venture, on a three person per two hectare ratio, created about 18,580 jobs for inmates and other workers and resulted in about P3.1 billion in annual salaries,” he added.

Citing company documents, Valoria said the government received P35.327 million for guaranteed production share and P9.527 million for profit share last year.

Tadeco is the largest contiguous banana plantation in the world, producing 5,000 boxes of bananas per hectare per year, surpassing the industry’s average yield of 3,500 boxes.

Tadeco has a work force of more than 10,000. Jasper Emmanuel Y. Arcalas

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Tuesday, February 21, 2017

The World BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph • Editor: Lyn Resurreccion

Prosecutors say malnutrition killing inmates in Haiti jails

P Men facing deportation are handcuffed at a Border Patrol station before taking a flight to Honduras via Miami, in Brownsville, Texas on March 25, 2014. Two draft memos signed in 2017 by John F. Kelly, the secretary of homeland security, outline an aggressive mission for the immigration authorities that would rescind policies put in place by President Barack Obama that focused mainly on removing serious criminals. Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Trump proposal would deport more immigrants immediately

By Peter Baker & Ron Nixon | New York Times News Service

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ALM BEACH, Florida—Federal authorities would be empowered to immediately deport vastly more unauthorized immigrants as part of a broad crackdown being developed by the Trump administration that would significantly change the way federal agencies enforce immigration laws.

Two draft memos signed last Fr iday by John F. Kel ly, the retired Marine general who is secretary of homeland security, outline an aggressive mission for i m m i g r at ion aut hor it ies that would rescind policies put in place by President Barack Obama that focused mainly on removing serious criminals.

T he d irectives appear to spare many younger immigrants brought to the countr y il lega l ly as children, know n as Dreamers. But some parents of children who enter unaccompanied cou ld face prosecution under the g uidelines.

Strong borders

THE approach laid out in the memos, which have not been f ina l i zed a nd a re subject to change by the W hite House, ref lects Donald Trump’s campaign promise to harden the border and deport people who entered the United States illegally. He has returned to that theme in recent days: At a rally on Saturday in Melbourne, Florida, Trump highlighted a recent spate of deportations and characterized those being sent out of the country as dangerous criminals.

“We will have strong borders again,” he told supporters, who cheered robustly. “You’ve seen it

on television. General Kelly, now Secretary Kelly, he’s really doing the job. You’re seeing it. The gang members—bad, bad people. I said it Day 1. And they’re going out, or they’re being put in prison. But for the most part, get them the hell out of here. Bring them back to where they came from.”

Among the most significant changes in the memos, which were obta ined by McC l atc hy newspapers and The Washington Post, would be an expansion of expedited removal proceedings to cover thousands more unauthorized immigrants.

Under expedited removals, agents from the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement can deport detained individuals immediately. Under Obama administration directives, expedited removal was used only within 100 miles of the border for people who had been in the country no more than 14 days. Kelly’s memos would expand that to those who have been in the country for up to two years anywhere in the nation.

Unaccompanied minors

THE memos also call for the possible prosecution of the parents of children who arrived as unaccompanied minors and are later reunited with the parents.

Under K e l ly ’s d i rec t ive, t he parents could be charged with smuggling or trafficking.

But the memos appear to exempt the Dreamers, the young i m m ig ra nt s protec ted u nder Obama’s Defer red Action for Child hood A r r iva ls prog ram, called DACA. Trump has signaled that he is not eager to completely reverse that initiative, since those young immigrants were not responsible for their entering the country illegally. “ T he DAC A sit u at ion i s a ver y, ver y—it ’s a ver y d if f icult thing for me, because, you know, I love these kids,” Trump said at a news conference on Thursday. “I love kids. I have kids and grandkids. And I find it very, very hard doing what the law says exactly to do. And you know the law is rough.”

The W hite House cautioned last Sunday that the details of the directives were still being reviewed, but suggested final orders may be issued this week.

“None of those are final and have not been signed off by the W hite House,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a deputy press secretary for Trump, told reporters in Florida, where the president was spending the weekend. The Department of Homeland Security declined to discuss the memos.

Pretending to care

THE changes in immigration enforcement, outlined in executive orders signed by Trump last month, have drawn praise from agents in the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “For the first time in my 19 years, I feel like I can do the job I was hired to do, the job they tell you you’ll be doing when you leave the academy,” said Shawn Moran, a Border Patrol agent in San Diego and spokesman for the National Border Patrol Council, the union representing 16,000 of the agency’s 21,000 agents.

But immigration advocates

called the policy changes dangerous a nd e x pressed d isap pointment in Kelly, who they had hoped would be a more moderate voice on immigration policy in the Trump administration because he had expressed sympathy for women and children arriving in the US after fleeing violence in Central America.

“That hope is now gone,” Tom Jawetz, vice president of immigration policy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal research organization, said on Twitter.

“The border security memo mentions Honduran, Salvadoran and Guatemalan kids coming without pretending to care why.”

De facto agents

E X PA NDING immigration author ities’ reach wou ld require a considerable increase in resources. With an estimated 11 mil lion people in the countr y il lega l ly, the gover nment has long had to set nar rower pr ior ities, g iven the constraints on staffing and money.

But Kelly’s memos envision hiring 10,000 new immigration and customs agents, expanding detention facilities and creating an office to help families of those killed by unauthorized immigrants. Trump had some of those relatives address his rallies in the campaign, and several were present when he signed an executive order on immigration last month at the Department of Homeland Security.

Kelly’s directives would also instruct Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as Customs and Border Protection, the parent agency of the Border Patrol, to begin reviving a program that recruits local police officers and sheriff ’s deputies to help with deportation, effectively making them de facto immigration agents. The effort, called the 287g program, was scaled back during the Obama administration.

New Zealand judge upholds Kim Dotcom extradition ruling

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ELLINGTON, New Zealand—A New Zealand judge on Monday upheld an earlier court ruling that flamboyant Unternet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom and three of his colleagues can be extradited to the United States to face criminal charges. The decision comes five years after US authorities shut down Dotcom’s file-sharing web site Megaupload and filed charges of conspirac y, racketeering and money laundering against the men. If found guilty, they could face decades in prison.

Dotcom, who lives in New Zealand, has been fighting extradition in a case which has moved with glacial slowness at times.

And Monday’s decision won’t be the last, with the case likely to be appealed up to New Zealand’s Supreme Court, a process

that could take another year or two.

US prosecutors say that Megaupload raked in at least $175 million, mainly from people using it to illegally download songs, television shows and movies.

The New Zealand district court ruled in 2015 that Dotcom and the others were eligible for extradition on the charges.

High Cour t judge Justice Murray Gilbert found on Monday that the district court made mistakes in its ruling, but that those didn’t alter the big picture.

Dotcom tweeted on Monday: “We won but we lost anyway.”

Dotcom’s lawyer Ron Mansfield said the high cour t agreed with a major part of their appeal—that copyright infringement on its own isn’t an offense that warrants ex tradition—but had

erred in finding the men could be extradited on conspiracy grounds.

“Look, we’re disappointed it’s not all over in the high court,” Mansfield said.

“But we’re one step away, as far as we’re concerned, from winning outright.”

Mansfield said they are determined to keep fighting. “There are substantial legal issues in play,” he said.

The US argues that the site cost c o p y r i g h t h o l d e r s, w h i c h i n c l u d e d Hollywood’s major movie studios, more than $500 million. Prosec utors say intercepted communications show the men talking about being “modern-day pirates” and “evil” and that they were part of a conspiracy to profit from copyright infringement. Dotcom argues that he can’t be held responsible for others who

chose to use his site for illegal purposes, and that any case against him should have been heard in civil court.

Born in Germany as Kim Schmitz, Dotcom has long enjoyed a flamboyant lifestyle. He was arrested in New Zealand in 2012 after a dramatic police raid on his mansion. Out on bail soon after, he released a music album, started another Internet file-sharing company called Mega, and launched a political party that unsuccessfully contested the nation’s 2014 election.

In addition to Dotcom, who founded Megaupload and was its biggest shareholder, the US is also seeking to extradite former Megaupload officers Mathias Ortmann, Bram van der Kolk and Finn Batato. AP

ORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti— Dozens of emaciated men with sunken cheeks and protruding ribs lie silently in an infirmary at Haiti’s largest prison, most too weak to stand. The corpse of an inmate, who died miserably of malnutrition, is shrouded beneath a plastic tarp.

Elsewhere, pr isoners are crammed shoulder-to-shoulder in cellblocks so overcrowded they have to sleep in makeshift hammocks suspended from the ceiling or squeeze four to a bunk. New arrivals at Haiti’s National Penitentiary jostle for space on filthy floors where inmates on lockdown 22 hours a day are forced to defecate into plastic bags in the absence of latrines.

“Straight up: This is hell. Getting locked up in Haiti will drive you crazy if it doesn’t kill you first,” said Vangeliste Bazile, a homicide suspect, who is among the about 80 percent of those incarcerated who have not been convicted of a crime but are held in prolonged pretrial detention waiting for their chance to see a judge.

Tormented

OVERCROWDING, malnutrition and infectious diseases that flourish in jammed quarters have led to an upsurge of inmate deaths, including 21 at the Port-au-Prince penitentiar y just last month.

Those who monitor the country’s lockups are sounding an alarm about collapsing conditions. “ T his is the worst rate of preventable deaths that I have encountered any where in the world,” said Dr. John May, a Florida physician who co-founded the nonprofit group Health Through Walls to improve health conditions in the Caribbean and several African nations.

Prisoners at the crumbling Por t - au - P r i nce p e n it e nt i a r y flocked around a team of Associated Press journalists on a recent morning, eager to discuss their cases and complain of being all but forgotten at the foul-smelling furnace. Some 40 percent of the country’s 11,000 inmates are housed there in appalling squalor, a block away from government headquarters, and many are tormented by the prospect of indefinite detention.

“I’m really scared I won’t get to see a judge until I’m an old man,” said Paul Stenlove, a 21-year-old murder suspect who was put in the prison 11 months ago.

Dismal

PRISONS are crowded, dismal places in any number of countries. But Haiti’s penal system is, by far, the globe’s most congested, with a staggering 454 percent occupancy level, according to the most recent ranking by the University of London’s Institute for Criminal Policy Research. The Philippines comes second with 316 percent occupancy.

Inmates, some waiting up to eight years to see a judge, try to keep their sanity by maintaining a daily routine of push-ups and lifting jugs filled with dirty water. Others play checkers or dominoes. Sentenced convicts, and the far greater numbers of untried suspects, pool together what little money they can scare up to buy small TVs and radios for their shared cells. But with widespread malnutrition and rats scampering through cells made for 20 men but now crammed with 80 to 100, it’s hard to focus on anything but basic survival.

“On ly t he st rong ca n ma ke it in here,” sa id Ronel Mic hel, a pr isoner in one of t he cr u mbl ing cel lbloc k s, where e x ter ior wa l ls are sta ined w it h dr ied feces because t he men have to d rop t heir e xcrement out of ba r red w indows.

Provided

NOT all the inmates are weakened

by hunger. Some are provided meals by visiting relatives and others are permitted by guards to meet with contacts to bring in food, cigarettes and other things.

AP reporters saw one inmate with a wad of cash, standing near the main gate ordering spaghetti and fried plantains from a vendor outside.

But the large majority of prisoners are dependent on authorities to feed them twice a day and get little more than rationed supplies of rice, oats or cornmeal. Even clean drinking water is often in short supply.

Prison authorities say they try their best to meet inmates’ needs, but repeatedly receive insufficient funds from the state to buy food and cooking fuel, leading to deadly cases of malnutrition-related ailments, such as beriberi and anemia.

“Whenever the money is late, it’s the prisoners who pay,” said National Penitentiary Director Ysarac Synal.

Improvements

H A I T I ’ S p e n a l s y ste m i s so overcrowded that suspects are held indefinitely in other fetid, cramped pens, including cells at four police stations, where malnutrition is common. Three inmates recently died of malnutrition ailments at a prison in the southern city of Les Cayes.

Life was supposed to be getting a little better for prisoners here. In 2008 the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordered Haiti to bring its “ inhuman” prisons in line with minimum international standards.

A fter a devastating ear thqua ke in 2010, donor nations a nd hu m a n it a r i a n orga n i z ations launched projects aimed at building new infrastr ucture and improv ing deplorable conditions. One of these improvements was the “ Titanic” cellblock at the National Penitentiary, built with $260,000 from the International Committee of the Red Cross. Its cement tower was intended to ease overcrowding.

But a few years after opening, it is possibly the most crowded block in the prison.

“It’s a permanent struggle just to keep them (Haitian prisoners) alive,” said Thomas Ess, chief of delegation for Haiti’s Red Cross office.

Causes

SEVERE overcrowding is partly due to rampant corruption, as judges, prosecutors and lawyers join in creating a market for bribes, said Brian Concannon, director of the nonprofit Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti.

“If nine in 10 prisoners is in pretrial detention, and a person has no prospect of getting a fair trial for years, his family will find some way of raising the funds to bribe him out, regardless of guilt,” Concannon said.

Some foreign officials, who have seen the system up close, are exasperated by a lack of political will to solve problems of corruption, sluggish justice and prison conditions.

“It is unconscionable t hat despite hundreds of millions of dollars in international aid the situation is even worse today, with inmates suffering from severe malnutrition and dying of preventable diseases,” United States Sen. Patrick Leahy, who toured the National Penitentiary in 2012, said in an e-mail.

A s men continue to die unne c e s s a r i l y at t he Nat ion a l Pen itent i a r y, Por t - au-P r i nce chief prosecutor Danton Leger has been holding mass bur ia ls for pr isoners, purchasing caskets and f lower ar rangements.

Dead i n m ates, rega rd less of whether they were conv icted or not, were previously dumped in a potter’s field. AP

Editor: Lyn Resurreccion • www.businessmirror.com.ph

The World BusinessMirror

Tuesday, February 21, 2017

A7

Texas oil fields rebound from price, lull but employment is left behind

By Clifford Krauss | New York Times News Service

ago now drills up to 16. Last year the company added nearly 240 wells to its Permian Basin inventory without adding new employees.

The faster operations, Pioneer executives say, are due in large part to more effective well planning and drill steering. Both have been made possible by the real-time computer connections between the rig and top geoscientists back at corporate headquarters and intense analysis of the data gathered at every well.

With the loss of manual jobs has come a transformation in the job force, with demand growing for more data analysts, math scientists, communications specialists and robotic design engineers. In the last two years ABB, the Swiss technology company, has opened two plants in Houston for assembling and packaging robotics and integrating advanced instrumentation into oil-field operations.

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IDLAND, Texas—In the land where oil jobs were once a guaranteed road to security for blue-collar workers, Eustasio Velazquez’s career has been upended by technology.

For 10 years, he laid cables for service companies doing seismic testing in the search for the next big gusher. Then, powerful computer hardware and software replaced cables with wireless-data collection, and he lost his job. He found new work connecting pipes on rigs, but lost that job, too, when plunging oil prices in 2015 forced the driller he worked for to replace rig hands with cheaper, more reliable automated tools.

“I don’t see a future,” Velazquez, 44, said on a recent afternoon as he stooped over his shopping cart at a local grocery store. “Pretty soon every rig will have one worker and a robot.”

Oil-and-gas workers have traditionally had some of the highest-paying blue-collar jobs—just the type that President Donald J. Trump has vowed to preserve and bring back. But the West Texas oil fields, where activity is gearing back up as prices rebound, illustrate how difficult it will be to meet that goal. As in other industries, automation is creating a new demand for high-tech workers—sometimes hundreds of miles away in a control center—but their numbers don’t offset the ranks of field hands no longer required to sling chains and lift iron.

Office and kitchen

SO while there is a general sense of relief in the oil patch that a recovery is gaining momentum, discussions at company meetings and family kitchen tables are rife with aching worries, especially among those who are middle-aged with no more than a high-school education.

Roughly 163,000 oil jobs were lost nationally from the 2014 peak, or about 30 percent of the total, while oil prices plummeted, at one point by as much as 70 percent. The job losses just in Texas, the most productive oil-producing state, totaled 98,000.

Se vera l t hou sa nd workers have come back to work in recent months as the price of oil has begun to rise again, but energy experts say between a third and a half of the workers who lost their jobs are not returning. Many have migrated to construction or even jobs in renewable energy, like wind power.

“People have left the industry, and they are not coming back,” said Michael Dynan, vice president for portfolio and strategic development at Schramm, a Pennsylvania manufacturer of drilling rigs. “If it’s a repetitive task, it can be automated, and I don’t need

Danny Perez, a floor hand, washes the rig with water at Latshaw Drilling’s Oil Rig 43 in Midland, Texas, on February 8. The rig is two years old, and requires a smaller crew to run it because of advancing technologies. Ilana Panich-Linsman/The New York Times

someone to do that. I can get a computer to do that.”

Geoscientists and engineers

INDEED, computers now direct drill bits that were once directed manually. The wireless technology taking hold across the oil patch allows a handful of geoscientists and engineers to monitor the drilling and completion of multiple wells at a time—onshore or miles out to sea—and supervise immediate fixes when something goes wrong, all without leaving their desks. It is a world where rigs walk on their own legs and sensors on wells alert headquarters to a leak or loss of pressure, reducing the need for a technician to check. And despite all the lost workers, US oil production is galloping upward, to 9 million barrels a day, from 8.6 million last

Anesthesia abortion law in Utah not enforced

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ALT LAKE CITY—Last year Utah enacted a first-in-thenation law requiring that fetuses receive anesthesia or painkillers before elective abortions starting at 20 weeks gestation.

Nine months later, the only licensed clinic providing those abortions in the state says no changes have been made in how doctors perform the procedures.

The handful of doctors who do the abortions at the clinic run by the Planned Parenthood Association of Utah are trying to comply with the law passed last May but it contained no specific guidance on how to do so, said K arrie Galloway, the group’s CEO. Leah Torres, one of five or six licensed physicians who perform elective late-term abortions at the clinic, said she went to legislators, the governor’s office and the attorney general’s office seeking an explanation on what treatment she’s supposed to give. She said they gave her none and recommended she speak to a lawyer.

“I guess I’m breaking the law, but I don’t know how to not break it because no one would tell me,” Torres said in an interview with The Associated Press (AP).

M. Sean Esplin, a Utah physician who performs late term abortions in emergency situations, such as if the mother’s life is at risk, which is not covered by the law, said a strict interpretation could force doctors to choose between two risky procedures: Administering anesthesia via a needle directly into the umbilical cord or giving women general an-

esthesia. The law, he said, “is, in my opinion, a waste of our money and our time by someone who is trying to make a political statement and really not worried about what’s best medically or what’s best for people’s health.”

Utah Gov. Gary Herbert told the AP that physicians should try to get directions from the attorney general’s office if they don’t understand how to follow the law.

Dan Burton, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office, said that the office does not “specifically regulate doctors in Utah”.

He suggested asking Utah’s Department of Health but the spokesman for that agency, Tom Hudachko, said it had no guidance for the doctors because the law “didn’t task us with doing that”.

Sixteen states ban abortions starting at about 20 weeks, according to Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights. Utah allows such procedures, but last year passed the first law in the nation to require anesthesia or painkillers for fetuses after 20 weeks.

Montana lawmakers passed a similar law in 2015 requiring fetal anesthesia before surgeries, including abortions, performed after 20 or more weeks of gestation, but its Democratic governor vetoed the measure.

The Utah law has no definition of legal fetal anesthetics or whether doctors have complied if women receive anesthesia or painkillers during abortions with those drugs passing to the fetus.

Burton said the attorney general’s office is unaware of any investi-

gations into doctors for alleged violations. He said any violations would probably be punishable by fines of up to $750.

The Republican lawmaker who sponsored the legislation, Sen. Curt Bramble, said in an interview that he did not know how the law is being implemented, but expects doctors to comply.

The most recent data available from Utah’s health department show that doctors in the state performed 25 abortions at 21 weeks of gestation or later in 2015.

David Turok, another physician who provides the abortions at the Planned Parenthood clinic, said he tells his patients that research shows fetuses likely cannot feel pain prior to 24 weeks but believes he is probably following the law by giving women moderate sedation.

Mary Taylor, the president of Pro-Life Utah, said her group supported the law but that she wishes it had been enacted with tougher language and that there was more enforcement so physicians would be more likely to comply.

Eric Scheidler of the national anti-abortion group Pro-Life Action League accused the clinic’s doctors and Planned Parenthood of trying to skirt the law.

“What’s happening here is that these abortionists do not want to have to acknowledge the value of the life of the unborn child and the pain that those children experience,” he said. Galloway said the confusion surrounding the law is proof that Utah’s state legislators did not understand the medical impact of what they were doing when they passed it. AP

September. Nationwide, with a bit more than one-third as many rigs operating as in 2014, production is not even down 10 percent from record levels.

Some of the best wells here in the Permian Basin that three years ago required an oil price of over $60 a barrel for an operator to break even now need about $35, well below the current price of about $53.

Production and safety

MUCH of the technology has been developed by the aviation and automotive industries, along with deepwater-oil exploration, over more than a decade. But companies drilling on land were slow to adapt until oil prices crashed and companies needed to get efficient quickly or go out of business.

All the big companies, and many smaller ones, have organized

teams of technicians that collect well and tank data to develop complex algorithms enabling them to duplicate the design for the most productive wells over and over, and to repair valves and other parts before they break down.

The result is improved production and safety, but also a far smaller work force, and one that is increasingly morphing from muscle to brain power.

Planning and steering

PIONEER Natura l Resources, one of the most productive West Texas producers, has slashed the number of days to drill and complete wells so drastically that it has been able to cut costs by 25 percent in wells completed since early-2015.

The typical rig that drilled eight to 12 wells a year just a few years

Lucky and happy

A typical new oil company employee is Andre Nel, a 25-yearold mechanical engineer who is a rising star at Pioneer Natural Resources. In less than two years, he has helped rew r ite computer software to instruct workers on the best designs for hydraulic fracturing, optimizing the amounts of fluids, sand and chemicals pumped into the wells.

Now, connected by computers to technicians in the field, he is monitoring the production of 950 wells, instantly checking the maintenance histor y and production trends of every well with the click of a mouse.

“I’m lucky and happy that the tech revolution in the oil field has created the need for engineers like me with backgrounds in computer science,” he said.

Mattis in Baghdad: ‘We’re not in Iraq to seize anybody’s oil’

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AGHDAD—Defense Secretary Jim Mattis arr ived i n Baghd ad on Monday, promising that, despite what President Donald J. Trump said last month, the administration would not try to seize Iraq’s oil. Nor, he said, would the administration repay Iraqis who have worked and fought side by side with American troops by excluding them from the United States— as Trump initially did with an executive order shutting the door to citizens of seven mainly Muslim countries, including Iraq. That order has been stayed by the courts and is expected to be replaced soon.

“I have not seen the new executive order,” Mattis said last Sunday. “But right now, I’m assured that we will take steps to allow those who have fought alongside us to be allowed into the United States.”

A s for Tr ump’s remark s during a visit to Central Intelligence Agency headquarters last month that the US should have “kept” Iraq’s oil after the American-led invasion, and might still have a chance to do so, Mattis said that Americans were accustomed to paying for their fuel.

“We’re not in Iraq to seize anybody’s oil,” he told reporters in Abu Dhabi before departing for Baghdad. That Mattis,

the first senior official in the Trump administration to visit Iraq, would even have to make such comments would have been unthinkable under previous administrations. But many once-unthinkable things have become par for the course under Trump, and his emissaries abroad are spending much of their time trying to reassure American allies that they need not take everything the president says seriously.

Up a gear

In Brussels last week Mattis assured the North Atlantic Treaty Organization members that, contrary to what his boss had said, the US still valued the trans-Atlantic alliance. In Munich he had the same message for skittish European diplomats assembled for a major annual conference on security.

Nowhere have Trump’s policy pronouncements landed harder, though, than in Iraq, where about 5,000 American troops are assisting Iraqi forces in the fight against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. That fight went up a gear last Sunday with the start of a major operation by the Iraqi security forces to liberate the western side of Mosul, once Iraq’s second-largest city.

A former Iraqi ambassador to Washington, Lukman Faily,

said last month that Iraqis were unsettled by Trump’s moves, including the travel ban, and wondered whether the US even wanted a long-term relationship with Iraq.

Over the weekend, airplanes carpeted the ground in western Mosul with leaflets appealing directly to IS fighters to surrender. “To those of you who are intrigued by the ISIS ideology,” one leaflet said, “this is your last opportunity to quit your work with ISIS and to leave the foreigners who are in your homeland. Stay at home, raising the white flags as the forces approach.”

Rules of engagement

WHILE in Baghdad, Mattis plans to hold talks with Iraqi officials as well as American military commanders. “I need to get current on the situation” in Iraq, he said. “And the only way you can do this is talking to the people on the ground.” He said that, though power has been transferred in Washington, the rules of engagement in Iraq have not changed, and American Special Forces will not get any closer to the fighting in western Mosul than they have in eastern Mosul, which has largely been cleared of militant control.

“The US forces continue in the same role as they did in East Mosul,” Mattis said. AP

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Tuesday, February 21, 2017

The World BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph • Editor: Lyn Resurreccion

Saudi bank Samba follows bourse in naming woman to top position

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Greece needs to stabilize its economy by the time its €86-billion ($91-billion) rescue program expires next year so that it can begin financing its own obligations. Bloomberg News

Greek efforts to escape bailout shackles at risk amid standoff

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s Greek efforts to conclude a year-old review of its rescue program stall, the government’s ability to regain access to the public debt market grows slimmer, increasing the possibility Athens will have to seek another unpopular strings-attached bailout program.

Euro-area finance ministers meet in Brussels on Monday to once again tell Greece it needs to do more to get a new aid disbursement. Investor confidence in Greece has been shaken as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) disputes the nation’s financial sustainability and the European Central Bank (ECB) refuses to buy its bonds until more substantial debtrelief measures are announced.

Greece’s bailout auditors— the European Commission, the ECB, t he Eu ropea n St abi l it y Mechanism and the IMF—are racing to complete the review before the start of a busy national election season in which surging populist parties would make protracted negotiations politically difficult. Greece needs to stabilize its economy by the time its €86-billion ($91-billion) rescue program expires next year so that it can begin financing its own obligations.

“Delays in completing the review raise the risk of another bailout being needed,” said Nick Kounis, head of macro research at ABN Amro Bank NV. The government’s resistance to the IMF’s prescriptions and the refusal of European creditors to keep funding Greece without IMF participation has led to the standoff. The most that can be e x pec ted i n Mond ay ’s meeting of finance ministers is an agreement for bailout auditors to return to Athens to continue negotiations, according to an European Union official.Even if a staff-level agreement between bailout auditors and the government is reached quickly and the IMF rejoins the Greek bailout, Athens will still need to legislate measures related to the review, prolonging when money can be disbursed, said the official, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private. In

the past, it’s taken the Greek government months to implement these required actions.

The still unfinished tasks range from an overhaul of the country’s labor market to a new framework on out-of-court debt settlements, according to a memo sent by Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos to his colleagues last month.

“Greece is a special case,” Klaus Regling, head of the euro area’s crisis-fighting fund, said at the Munich Security Conference last week. “Nowhere the extent of the problems was as large as in Greece, and the administration as weak.”

The Greek government has been at odds with the IMF’s assessment of it’s financial projections, with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras lashing out in recent days at the Washington-based fund.

Earlier this month, Tsipras said the IMF was afraid to tell Europeans the truth and is playing a perpetual poker game.

“I’m quite confident that we’ll do it exactly as agreed,” German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said on ARD public television on Sunday regarding IMF participation in the bailout.

“Greece is on a good path. Last year’s developments—as Mr. Regling has rightly pointed out—are better than the IMF has foreseen.”

Uncertainty

Uncertainty over whether the government will complete the tasks required by creditors in time to avert a default in July—when

more than €6 billion of bonds come due—threatens to derail an anticipated economic rebound this year. Economic output unexpectedly contracted in the last quarter of 2016, while deposit outflows from the nation’s battered banks resumed this year.

Excessive taxation of companies and the middle class to fund an overly generous pension system and an unacceptably high threshold for tax-free income is also to blame for Greece’s continuing economic malaise, according to the IMF. The fund says that in the absence of an overhaul of income tax and pension benefits, Greece won’t be able to meet the budget targets envisaged in its latest bailout agreement, and refuses to join the program.

The yield on Greece’s two-year note rose 14 basis points to 9.95 percent on Friday. Greek 10-year notes have traded as high as 7.85 percent, almost twice the level of Portugal’s benchmark securities.

Despite the risks associated with having to eventually negotiate a new loan agreement, some see a silver lining. Greece shouldn’t be allowed to access the capital markets as investors will ask for a very high risk premium, said Daniel Gros, director at the Brussels-based Centre for European Policy Studies. “The official creditors should refinance all the remaining private debt coming due at their low official rates. The country would then not throw away huge interest payments,” he said. Bloomberg News

audi Arabia’s Samba Financial Group named Rania Mahmoud Nashar as CEO, the second woman recruited for a top finance-industry position in recent days as the country undertakes unprecedented social and economic change.

Nashar’s appointment is effective on February 19 according to a statement to the stock exchange on Sunday. She replaces Sajjad Razvi who resigned for personal reasons. On Thursday, NCB Capital Co. CEO Sarah Al Suhaimi was named the first woman to chair Saudi Arabia’s stock exchange, the region’s largest.

The appointments are significant for a country where the female unemployment rate is more than 34 percent and women aren’t allowed to drive. They also need a guardian’s consent to travel outside the country or marry. Change is starting to happen with the number of working women jumping 50 percent between 2010 and 2015, and more Saudi women entering male-dominated fields, such as banking and engineering.

Samba’s Nashar has almost two decades of experience in banking and has taken various leadership roles at the bank through its executive track program, according to the lender. Al Suhaimi replaces Khalid Al Rabiah as head of the bourse, known as the Tadawul.

She’s expected to keep her position at NCB Capital, the investment banking unit of National Commercial Bank, a person familiar with the appointment said. Al Suhaimi was the first female head of a Saudi investment bank when she assumed the role in 2014.

Before joining NCB Capital, Al Suhaimi was chief investment officer at Jadwa Investment and a senior portfolio manager at Samba Financial Group. Her father, Jammaz Al Suhaimi, was the head of the Capital Market Authority, the market regulator, until 2006.

The kingdom’s $439-billion stock exchange, which opened to foreigners in 2015, is seeking to attract more overseas investment as part of the country’s plans to diversify the economy away from oil. Bloomberg News

RBI forex intervention makes companies blind to rupee risks

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he Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) commitment to a stable rupee is having an unintended consequence: local companies are getting complacent about hedging their overseas borrowings.

A gauge of expected rupee swings fell the most after Russia among 23 emerging markets over the last two years, thanks to the RBI’s regular interventions in currency markets and its success in boosting India’s reserves. The unhedged foreign-exchange exposure of local corporates and investors combined rose $78 billion between April 2014 and September 2016, Standard Chartered Plc.’s calculations show.

With global risks, such as the uncertainty surrounding US President Donald J. Trump’s policies, elections in Europe and monetary tightening by the Federal Reserve pointing to a tumultuous 2017, companies and investors could be in for a rude shock should the central bank let go of its rupee grip.

“A combination of market complacency and RBI intervention in the spot market to curb volatility” has contributed to rise in unhedged exposures, said Ananth Narayan, Mumbai-based regional head of Asean and South Asia financial markets at Standard Chartered Plc. A simultaneous increase in hedging costs has also deterred companies from buying protection, he said.

India doesn’t publish data on hedging, making it difficult to gauge how well firms are covered. That said, a recent study by the local unit of Fitch Ratings showed that 64 percent of the 19.5-trillion rupee ($291-billion) gross foreign-exchange exposure of the nation’s top 100 nonfinancial overseas borrowers was unhedged. Companies in the oil and gas, metals and mining, power and telecom sectors made up 75 percent of this.

That not only threatens company margins and credit profiles, but also poses a

systemic risk for Asia’s third-largest economy, according to India Ratings & Research Pvt. “It’s a matter of concern for entities and sectors that are highly sensitive to a depreciating rupee,” according to Bansi Madhavani, an analyst at India Ratings who coauthored the report. “There is no data or trend to back this hypothesis up, but the theory of ‘moral-hazard’ does suggest that central bank’s endeavor to anchor currency’s stability in fact leads corporates to keep their exposures unhedged.”

The rupee’s one-month implied volatility slumped 28 percent in the two years through December 2016. The drop was the biggest in Asia. Indian companies need to repay about $32 billion of foreign-currency bonds and loans by March 31, 2018, with 95 percent of that in US dollars, data compiled by Bloomberg show. This at a time when the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey shows the rupee will slip to 69 per dollar by end-2017, from 66.9950 in Mumbai on Monday. Commonwealth Bank of Australia says even as the currency remains a relative outperformer in Asia, a slide to 71 is likely, according to a report on Monday.

Thermax Ltd., an engineering and power-equipment maker based in Pune, near Mumbai, doesn’t keep any open foreign-exchange positions and takes a forward cover on its net exposure on a weekly basis, said M.S. Unnikrishnan, the company’s managing director and CEO. “Companies shouldn’t look at temporary fluctuations in the currency for making profit,” he added. A resumption of stock and bond inflows and a government budget viewed as fiscally prudent and pro-growth saw the Indian currency climb 1.9 percent over the three weeks ended February 10, its sharpest rally in almost a year.

Bloomberg News

On frozen fields, North Korean farmers prep for battle ahead

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YONGYANG, Nor th Korea—Plug your noses and ready your “Juche fertilizer”. It’s time to prep the frozen fields in North Korea.

North Korea relies on its farmers to squeeze absolutely all they can out of every harvest. It’s a tall order in a country with 25 million mouths to feed that is mostly mountains, hamstrung by international trade sanctions and, beyond a handful of showcase cooperatives, hard-pressed to modernize its agricultural sector.

Without doubt, life as a farmer in North Korea is harsh. But there are some signs of change in how North Korea is treating its fields and its farmers.

In typically propagandist fashion, the North’s state media are already reporting that workers inspired by leader Kim Jong Un’s New Year’s address are heroically churning out “117 percent” of their production quotas of what they call Juche fertilizer.

A grain of salt is certainly in order. What exactly the patriotic-sounding Juche fertilizer

is isn’t all that clear, though it’s likely a mix of largely organic components augmented with some chemicals. Because of the general lack of livestock, human feces are a key ingredient.

Juche refers to the North’s long-standing, but mostly aspirational, policy of self-reliance.

The battle in the fields, however, has certainly begun. With the ground still frozen as the North waits out its notoriously cold winters, farmers, joined by workers and students mobilized from the cities, are in the process of transporting truckloads of pungent fertilizer to fields across the country for the planting season ahead.

Kim Song Ryong, head technician at the Migok Cooperative Farm in Sariwon, south of Pyongyang, said it takes about 20 to 25 days to distribute the compost. In March it will be spread over the fields in an even layer and then ploughed in below the surface.

“O ur respec ted supreme leader comrade Kim Jong Un instructed us that agriculture is the main approach to building a strong economy and country,” he said in an

interview with the Associated Press Television News. “To get the best harvest with scientific farming, all our farmers and workers are out in the fields to improve the quality of the soil.”

In the past, the country’s overreliance on scientific magic bullets has had tragic results.

Overuse of chemical fertilizers that began in the 1950s devastated the natural microbiotic soil environment and fueled a cycle in which its fields grew increasingly dependent on ever-moreartificial fertilization. In the 1990s the fall of the Soviet Union and Pyongyang’s other communist benefactors disrupted the supply of that fertilizer—which, coupled with other factors, led to widespread famine.

But Pyongyang appears to have learned some lessons since. According to Randall Ireson, a private consultant and former nongovernmental program director in the North, farmers have shifted their emphasis since about 2000 to adding compost and organic fertilizers to rebuild the organic content in the soil and revivify microorganisms.

“What I’ve seen and heard of is the use of effective rapid aerobic composting of plant residue and, where available, animal and human manure, with the composted material further augmented with some chemical fertilizer,” he said. “The addition of chemical fertilizer to the mix makes it ’nonorganic’ by a strict definition, but the other aspects are generally sound and sustainable, if managed correctly.”

Ireson noted that the depressed economy, lack of foreign exchange and weak industrial sector combine to make the acquisition of foreign chemical fertilizer difficult. But he said the push in the North for composting, while poorly designed at first, has gradually improved so that farms have started to produce fertilizer using local, low-energy methods.

“Buying more would be the easy, if not environmentally or economically sustainable, way to boost farm production,” Ireson said. “Lacking that resource, the push has been to find local resources, which I think is quite appropriate.” AP

In this January 23 photo, women farmworkers shovel locally produced “Juche fertilizer” at Migok Cooperative Farm near Sariwon, North Hwanghae Province, North Korea. With the ground still frozen as the North waits out its notoriously cold winters, farmers, joined by workers and students mobilized from the cities, are in the process of transporting truckloads of pungent fertilizer to fields across the country for the planting season ahead. AP

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Editor: Max V. de Leon • Tuesday, February 21, 2017 A9

Thailand’s growth weakens to one-year low Singapore seen taking modest fiscal push as growth risks abound

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hailand’s economy grew at the slowest pace in a year last quarter, as private consumption moderated.

GDP expanded 3 percent from a year earlier, the National Economic and Social Development Board said in Bangkok on Monday. That is the slowest in a year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The median estimate of 20 economists surveyed

by Bloomberg was 3 percent. GDP grew 0.4 percent from the previous three months, compared with the 0.7-percent median estimate. The Thai economy grew 3.2 percent in 2016, from 2.9 percent in 2015.

Big picture

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ingapore’s 2017 budget is set to deliver a modest fiscal push to an economy that’s facing a gloomy trade outlook just as it starts to rebound.

With China’s economy showing consistent signs of recovery, spurring exports across the region, the immediate pressure is off Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat to provide a large stimulus package when he gives his budget speech in Parliament on Monday. Consumer demand remains weak though, and with global uncertainties mounting, the fiscal policy focus is set to stay on targeted measures and plans to spur productivity in a country grappling with an aging population.

“The urgency for a sizable countercyclical fiscal stimulus has probably eased compared to just three months ago,” said Kit Wei Zheng, an economist at Citigroup Inc. in Singapore.

Here’s what to watch for in the budget:

CFE recommendations

The budget comes less than two weeks after a government-appointed panel, led by Heng, outlined initiatives to propel the economy into its next phase of growth. The Committee on the Future Economy (CFE) recommended a range of measures— such as skills development, helping small businesses adopt digital capabilities and easing regulations for businesses—to help spur growth to 2 percent to 3 percent a year over the next decade.

The budget will probably give effect to some of these proposals, including possible moves to shore up the manufacturing industry, which the CFE recommended should be maintained at its current share of about 20 percent of GDP, said Citigroup’s Kit.

Social spending

The government’s strong focus on social spending—such as cash transfers—will probably take a backseat and measures to support job-creation will get more attention, said Vaninder Singh, an economist at Natwest Markets in Singapore.

To help consumers spend more, the government may assist in reducing the cost of living rather than cutting taxes, he said. “Singapore will have to continue fiscal support to the economy,” he said. “We expect the budget to focus its attention on helping corporates create jobs and helping households spend.”

Investment sweeteners

Singapore posted its lowest level of fixed-asset investments last year since at least 2007, as a booming cycle in the petrochemical industry turned to bust after oil prices fell. US President Donald J. Trump’s decision to ditch the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—a free-trade deal that would’ve benefited open economies, like Singapore—may add urgency to government efforts to boost investment.

Singapore is “increasingly facing an uphill climb as far as multilateral trade agreements, for example TPP, attracting foreign direct

Singapore will have to continue fiscal support to the economy. We expect the budget to focus its attention on helping corporates create jobs and helping households spend.”

—Natwest Markets investments (as more economies turn more protectionist), and generating more value-added, well-paying jobs,” Selena Ling, an economist at Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp.

(OCBC) in Singapore, said in a report.

Property curbs

The government imposed property curbs in recent years, including capping debt repayments at 60 percent of a borrower’s income and higher stamp duties, to rein in an overheating market, causing residential home prices to contract for a third consecutive year in 2016. Lim Ming Yan, the president and CEO of CapitaLand Ltd., said there’s no “compelling” reason for the government to make any major changes to the rules since the housing market seems to be stabilizing.

Fiscal surplus

Heng forecast a budget surplus of S$3.5 billion in the fiscal year ending March 2017, or just under 1 percent of GDP. The outcome may turn out to be better at S$5.05 billion after an improvement in tax receipts in the first six months of the year, said OCBC’s Ling. That may give authorities scope to “be more generous and target a modest fiscal deficit” of S$0.99 billion, or 0.2 percent of GDP, in the year beginning April 1, she said.

The government also gets contributions from state investment companies and institutions, like Temasek Holdings Pte., GIC Pte. and the Monetary Authority of Singapore. It’s mandated to run a balanced budget over its term of office.

Tax measures

The CFE recommended a review of Singapore’s taxes, saying the nation may need to move toward a progressive system—where the tax rate rises as income increases—while staying fiscally attractive in a world of declining corporate-tax rates.

It’s not clear whether the government will be ready to announce such a move so soon after the proposal was made as it needs careful consideration, said Brian Tan, an economist with Nomura Holdings Inc. in Singapore. Bloomberg News

The death last year of the Thai king and a crackdown on illegal Chinese tourists hurt the economy with

private consumption weakening.

Thailand’s military junta, led

by Prime Minister Prayuth ChanOcha, has pledged to boost infrastructure projects and give financial support to farmers to strengthen growth, while the Bank of Thailand has kept its benchmark policy rate near a record low. The baht has risen more than 2 percent against the US dollar this year, among Asia’s best performing currencies.

Experts’ takeaways

“A combination of high household debt, lackluster external demand and continued political uncertainty will keep growth subdued in

3.2%

Thailand’s GDP growth in 2016, faster than 2015’s 2.9 percent

the quarters ahead,” Krystal Tan, an economist at Capital Economics Ltd. in Singapore, said in a note.

“The government’s plans to ramp up spending this year should offer some support to growth. Meanwhile, with inflation set to remain benign, the central bank is likely to keep interest rates at their current lows for a prolonged period.”

“Supporting factors for the Thai economy this year are recovering exports, improving agricultural sector, government investment and spending, as well as tourism

revenue,” Porametee Vimolsiri, secretary-general of the state planning agency, told reporters. “Risk factors are from outside, such as US policies, Brexit, geopolitical problems in Europe and the Chinese economy.”

Porametee, one of seven monetary policy committee members that decide on the benchmark rate, said the central bank may not need to follow the US in raising interest rates this year.

“We have to look at the local economy first, whether it’s suitable for our situation,” he said.

Private consumption rose 2.5 percent last quarter from a year ago, from 3 percent in the previous three months. Government spending, meanwhile, rose 1.5 percent, rebounding from a 5.2-percent contraction. Exports gained 3.6 percent.

Government retains growth forecast at 3 percent to 4 percent for this year.

The projection for exports was raised to 2.9 percent, from 2.4 percent.

Bloomberg News

Borneo vote shows Najib base still strong in key Malaysia state

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largely uncontested byelection in Sarawak reaffirmed the strength of Prime Minister Najib Razak’s base in a key Malaysian state, showing the challenges his opponents face to defeat him in the next general election.

Jamilah Anu, the widow of popular former Chief Minister Adenan Satem, easily won Saturday’s vote to fill a local assembly seat in Sarawak, one of two Malaysian states on Borneo island. It had been left vacant by the death of her husband in January, and major national opposition parties chose not to contest out of respect.

That’s good news for Najib, who has weathered more than a year of scandals and is weighing the right time to call the next federal election due by mid-2018. Sarawak and neighboring Sabah accounted for about a third of his Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition’s seats in the last general election, and signs of waning support there would boost the opposition’s chances of taking power for the first time since independence in 1957.

“Najib can be assured that Sarawak BN will pretty much deliver its share of seats for the parliamentary election,” said Ibrahim Suffian, an analyst at the Merdeka Center for Opinion Research in Kuala Lumpur.

“A lot depends on whether they can come up with a credible leader for the opposition. As things are right now, there isn’t one in the offing.”

Najib scandals

The BN-led coalition retained power in 2013 with its slimmest margin ever, and would have lost if not for the Borneo states. Since then Najib has been mired in controversy surrounding several international investigations into alleged corruption and money laundering by public officials at 1Malaysia Development Bhd. (1MDB), the national development fund whose advisory board he had chaired.

Prime Minister Najib Razak meets with his supporters at a recent political rally. BLOOMBERG

Yet, opposition parties have struggled to take advantage of Najib’s woes. The coalition that banded together four years ago under the leadership of Anwar Ibrahim has fractured since his imprisonment following a sodomy conviction and has yet to find a way to regroup.

Voters in Sarawak ignored the 1MDB scandal during a state election last year, handing the ruling coalition an even bigger majority in the local assembly. Rather than banding together to take on BN, the two major opposition parties—the Democratic Action Party and People’s Justice Party—returned to previous habits of fighting against each other.

The ruling coalition had a clear appeal to voters, promising handouts to the poor and a pipeline of development projects, including construction of a 28.9-billion-ringgit ($6.5-billion) highway linking the two Borneo states.

BN was also buoyed by Adenan, the deceased chief minister, who led the coalition’s election campaign and became popular by fighting for issues close to the hearts of Sarawak voters, including greater autonomy for the state.

Fixed deposit

Baru Bian, the head of People’s Justice Party in Sarawak, said the opposition was willing to sit out Saturday’s election out of respect for Adenan and to give his successor a chance to carry out his vision.

“They are the same issues that we have been championing,” Baru said. “The question now is whether he is going to deliver. When the time comes for the general election, that is how the people will judge.”

Opposition parties also realize they face an image problem in the Borneo states, including that they are too focused on peninsular Malaysia, which sits across the South

China Sea and is home to both the country’s economic capital, Kuala Lumpur, and its administrative one, Putrajaya.

“To me, one major key to getting into Putrajaya is Sabah and Sarawak,” Lim Guan Eng, secretary-general of the Democratic Action Party, said at a news conference on February 7.

“But it appears today that we have forgotten about Sabah and Sarawak.”

He suggested the opposition needed to do a better job of highlighting the scandals surrounding Najib to voters in Borneo rather than “preaching to the converted”.

Ruling coalition members are confident that as long as they follow through on promises made in local campaigns they will remain a bulwark against the opposition, said James Masing, one of Sarawak’s two deputy chief ministers and a BN legislator.

“Sarawak will remain a BN fixed deposit,” he said. Bloomberg News

Singaporeans make eating profitable as restaurants rally

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s Singapore’s stock market continues to rally, an often overlooked sector is getting a boost. The city-state’s listed restaurants have outperformed regional and global peers, as dining out drives shares higher.

These companies may be steady defensive businesses with consistent margins, said Gregory Yap, an analyst at Maybank Kim Eng The Straits Times Index has surged 7.9 percent this year to become the second-best performing developed market in the world after record tourist spending in 2016 and strong fourth-quarter GDP. An equalweighted index of Singapore companies that derive at least 70 percent

of their revenue from restaurants has climbed a similar 7.5 percent.

Singapore’s economy will only expand between 1 percent and 3 pecent in 2017, policy-makers said after fourth-quarter growth came in at an annualized 12.3 percent, which was the fastest pace in more than five years.

Chili crab restaurant Jumbo Group Ltd. is one of the sector’s biggest gainers, as shares are up 9.2 percent year-to-date even after a 63-percent rally in the past 12 months.

“Franchise will be our new growth path,” Group CEO Ang Kiam Meng said in an interview in Singapore.

Negotiations in Thailand are “in the final stage” and it will look

to other nearby locations, such as Indonesia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau, in the next two to three years.

In China it intends to open at least one new outlet in Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen between 2017 and 2019. Jumbo has the best potential among Singapore’s listed restaurants to expand into bigger consumer markets due to its “wellestablished name” and its product offering is suitable for the Chinese market, said Alan Richardson, investment manager at Samsung Asset Management that holds a stake in the company.

Other restaurants, such as Japan Foods Holdings Ltd., the

company that runs Ajisen Ramen, and Chinese restaurant chain Tung Lok Restaurants (2000) Ltd. are expanding at a slower pace amid a slowdown in the inflow of foreign workers since 2010.

“My strategy is to place importance on profit,” said Takahashi Kenichi, CEO of Japan Foods, in an interview in Singapore.

A few years ago, the company focused on increasing numbers but now it has 51 stores and it “won’t open more aggressively”. Aside from Jumbo, other Singapore restaurant companies are more fast-food concepts, which have little competitive advantage, Richardson said.

Bloomberg News

A10 Tuesday, February 21, 2017 • Editor: Angel R. Calso

Opinion BusinessMirror

editorial

Truth be untold

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ne cannot help but wonder if any of the witnesses who testify in the Senate hearings on the alleged bribery-extortion in the Bureau of Immigration actually take the oaths they swear to tell the truth any seriously.

During committee hearings in Congress, witnesses typically take an oath before the committee chairman, an oath similar to the one used in a court of law, subject to prosecution if they don’t tell the truth. If a witness is sworn in and lies to a congressional committee, he or she may be prosecuted for perjury.

But if all the witnesses who have so far testified in the three hearings of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee on the bribery-extortion scandal are telling the truth, then no one actually did anything wrong.

Not Justice Secretary Vitaliano N. Aguirre II, who practically allowed former policeman turned self-professed gambling advocate Wally Sombero to try to influence him to be the “godfather” of Chinese gambling tycoon Jack Lam in the Duterte administration, and let Sombero off without so much as a slap on the wrist.

Not Aguirre’s subordinates and fraternity brothers, former Immigration Deputy Commissioners Michael Robles and Al Argosino, who both vehemently kept denying they had extorted at least P50 million for the release of some 1,300 Chinese nationals illegally working in the Lamowned Fontana Leisure Parks and Casino in Clark, Pampanga, and Fort Ilocandia in Laoag. Although they admitted to accepting the money and keeping it for more than two weeks, or until they were exposed, they claimed to have nothing but good intentions. They only wished to prove that corruption exists in the immigration bureau, they said. In last Thursday’s hearing, they told Sen. Richard J. Gordon, the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee chairman, that they met with Sombero only to help facilitate the release of the Chinese nationals when, all of a sudden, the money was laid out before them.

Sombero says he, too, was only trying to help Lam’s group get the arrested Chinese out of detention, in his capacity as founder of a certain Asian Gaming Service Provider Association Inc. or Agspa. He refused to call the P50 million he gave to Argosino and Robles a bribe, preferring the word “payoff”, as if it makes any difference.

Sombero claimed he was trying to entrap Argosino and Robles, who, in turn, claimed they were also trying to entrap Sombero. Whose sting operation was successful depends on who you want to believe.

As if their tales were not sordid and twisted enough, Lam’s group, which gave the money—P60 million as of the last count—to Sombero to give to Argosino and Robles, includes a certain Charlie “Atong” Ang. Ang, who was coaccused in the plunder case against former President Joseph Ejercito Estrada and who was sentenced to six years in prison on the charge of corruption of a public official after entering a plea bargaining agreement, naturally did not want to call the P60 million they shelled out a bribe either. He said the money was intended to bail out the arrested Chinese. But why give it to Sombero to give to Argosino and Robles, when cash bail is usually posted in the courthouse? Surely a former felon like Ang would know that.

Three hearings and all we have heard so far are circuitous and conflicting testimonies, none of which are very convincing to be the “whole truth and nothing but the truth”.

It is easy to tell the truth but not so easy to hide it. The truth is simple and direct. It doesn’t need a painstakingly crafted explanation. When somebody gives us a long-winded explanation or a complicated story about why something happened or did not happen, we usually wonder if there’s a simpler explanation not being said or if what is being said is altogether false. When somebody can’t convey the truth plain and simple, searches for words, or avoids giving direct answers, we think they’re not being truthful.

Perhaps, it’s time for the Senate to start filing perjury charges.

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Continued from A1

M

y own view, which I discussed in previous columns, was that his election would not drive American investors in the Philippines to pack up and leave, despite Trump’s strong rhetoric about bringing back jobs to the United States.

I also said that, while there might be uncertainty under a Trump presidency, American businesses will not just follow whatever their president said. The ongoing controversy over US President Donald J. Trump’s immigration ban also showed that he could not always get what he wanted despite being known as the most powerful man in the world.

Last month Trump issued an executive order suspending immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries—Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen— for at least 90 days and the refugee program for four months.

The state of Washington filed a

lawsuit in federal court challenging the ban. In response, a federal judge in Seattle early this month issued a nationwide temporary restraining order to block Trump’s immigration ban.

Subsequently, the US Department of Justice filed an appeal with the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco. On February 9 a three-man appellate court panel denied the appeal.

The unanimous decision by the three judges was described in news reports as a sweeping rebuke of the administration’s claim that the courts have no role as a check on the president.

As far as the Philippines is

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As far as the Philippines is concerned, the business-process outsourcing industry had been identified as the sector that could be heavily affected if Trump’s protectionist stance prevailed. It employs more than a million Filipinos and generates foreign exchange exceeding $20 billion a year.

concerned, the business-process outsourcing (BPO) industry had been identified as the sector that could be heavily affected if Trump’s protectionist stance prevailed. It employs more than a million Filipinos and generates foreign exchange exceeding $20 billion a year, providing another major dollar stream for the country, in addition to remittances.

The strength of institutions in the US, which also include (aside from the judiciary) the legislature and the press, means that the strong statements made by Trump during the campaign, particularly those affecting investors, could eventually fizzle down, allowing US companies to go back to their routine: doing business and making money, such as in their outsourcing operations in the Philippines.

Choosing the unknown ‘devil’ John Mangun

Max V. de Leon Jennifer A. Ng Dionisio L. Pelayo Vittorio V. Vitug

Ruben M. Cruz Jr. Angel R. Calso

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The BPO sector moving forward

OUTSIDE THE BOX

T

he political turmoil in the West is reaching epic proportions as nation after nation faces what can only be called an uprising of public discontent. The disconnect between what the people desire and their opinions on specific issues and what their governments are offering is staggering.

The traditional go-to source to figure out what people are thinking about the specific issues—opinion polls—are themselves highly questionable. The polling conducted on both the UK vote to leave the European Union and on the US presidential election was far off the mark. But, even now, for example, it seems that you can find a poll that shows a plurality of public support for both sides of every issue, depending on which organization is doing the survey.

However, there is no disputing that the “status quo” political candidates are looking at the potential of major defeats in upcoming elections through the end of 2017 and into 2018. In France Marine Le Pen

is now a serious contender for the French presidency, from being a fringe candidate only months ago.

Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who has pledged to close the Netherlands’ borders, shut down mosques and leave the euro and European Union if he gets into power, is now expected to win next month’s election.

The leap of the people not “liking” their elected officials to not “trusting” their politicians is critically important. In a survey conducted at the end of 2015, only 19 percent of Americans said they trusted the government “always or most of the time”. This is down from 78 percent in 1965 and 52 percent in 2003. Further, three out of four—74 percent

Given a choice between the corrupt practices of “more of the same” and possible change for the better, the people are choosing the latter. For the first time in recent memory, people are choosing the “devil” they don’t know rather than the “devil” they do know.

—say public officials put their own interests ahead of the nation’s.

No leader, whether of the smallest company in the private sector to the largest countries, can effectively govern under those conditions. Yet, there has been a strong and longterm trend for politicians to demand more and more power be put in the hands of the government. Further, the power of the government is for sale to the highest bidder.

For example, US banks and Wall Street firms have been repeatedly bailed out from financial collapse using public funds, and these were done for the “public interest”. But in 2015, bonuses for Wall Street executives—not regular compensation— totaled $29.4 billion. In comparison, the total compensation paid to every American who makes the minimum wage totaled $14 billion. Speaker of

The Philippines, with a strong domestic market and a robust economy, offers competitive advantages as an outsourcing hub for American companies, which dominate the local BPO industry. For example, labor costs in the Philippines are estimated at about 25 percent of US wages.

Filipino workers in the information technology and BPO sector are also preferred for their English fluency, compatibility with western culture and excellent work ethics.

The government also has thrown its full support for the BPO industry through incentives. For its part, property developers continue to ramp up construction of office buildings to satisfy the requirements of the BPO companies.

Google, which opened an office in Makati City in 2013, says the Philippines is a key market in terms of its digital economy and tech-savvy population. The entry of the technology giant is expected to encourage more technology companies to invest here.

Going forward, I don’t see the BPO industry dying or slowing down significantly. It will survive as long as it remains cost-effective, and as long as the economy sustains strong growth.

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

the British Parliament, John Bercow, charged taxpayers the Philippine peso equivalent of P10,743 for a 1-kilometer trip using an official car and driver. A taxi would have cost P250.

And the politicians persist in believing that the people are foolish enough to allow this corruption to continue.

Politicians and many pundits are whining about how the people could possibly elect candidates like Donald J. Trump and Rodrigo Duterte.

The current leading candidate for German Prime Minister is Martin Schulz, a man who never went beyond high school. The largest opposition party in Italy is the Five-Star Movement founded by popular comedian and blogger Beppe Grillo.

Given a choice between the corrupt practices of “more of the same” and possible change for the better, the people are choosing the latter.

For the first time in recent memory, people are choosing the “devil” they don’t know rather than the “devil” they do know.

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

opinion@businessmirror.com.ph

Opinion

Mining firm airs its side

Death penalty won’t deter serious crimes

BusinessMirror

Ernesto M. Hilario

ABOUT TOWN

L

ast week Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Secretary Regina Paz L. Lopez announced that she had canceled 75 mineral production sharing agreements (MPSAs) because these are located in watershed areas.

Among those included in her list was the MPSA of Silangan Mindanao Mining Co. Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Philex Mining Corp.

Silangan is a copper and gold project in Surigao del Norte in Mindanao. It is still in the exploration stage, but starting in 2020, it will, for the first 10 years of operation, generate P170 billion in revenues, P31 billion in national and local taxes, and at least 8,000 jobs. Silangan Mining also plans to spend P6 billion over the same 10-year period for social development and infrastructure programs that will benefit Mindanao, an area that President Duterte has targeted as a top priority of his administration’s socioeconomic development agenda.

Silangan Mining secured its MPSA for the Silangan project from the DENR only after a thorough review process by all relevant government agencies and the approval of the host communities and local government units.

Philex, the parent company of Silangan Mining, says it has a long-standing policy to strictly comply with all applicable laws and regulations, particularly those pertaining to social development, as well as environmental protection and rehabilitation.

And the mining firm insists that none of the areas covered by the Silangan Mining MPSA is located in a watershed forest reserve, where mining is prohibited, and that Silangan Mining’s MPSA is valid and can withstand any legal challenge.

Philex concedes that while the DENR, as regulator, has the right, if not also the duty, to enforce faithfully all mining laws, and to wield its powers against errant mining companies, it must do so within the ambit of due process.

What the DENR’s announcement on the cancellation of MPSAs has caused is unexpected economic harm to Philex shareholders, including the Social Security System and its beneficiaries, through a sharp decline in its share price, equivalent to approximately P6.5 billion in shareholder value in one day.

More than this, it has put the Silangan project, which is nearing implementation, under a shadow of doubt.

Philex believes that the DENR pronouncement has eroded investor confidence in the entire Philippine mining industry because the regulatory framework of the government agency appeared to disregard due process.

Four tenements of another Philex subsidiary, Philex Gold Philippines Inc. (PGPI), have also been included in the list for MPSA cancellation. Philex says all these MPSAs have been validly issued and are not located in watershed forest reserves. Philex and its subsidiaries have expressed full support for the government’s efforts to protect the environment, combat poverty and unemployment, and to uphold the rule of law and due process.

Needed: Code of conduct in South China Sea The situation in the South China Sea remains tense, with China continuing to upgrade its military presence there. China

now occupies 20 outposts in the Paracels and is now conducting extensive military buildup in eight islands. Latest satellite photographs show that China has built harbors capable of hosting large numbers of naval and civilian vessels. Five of the islands contain helipads, with Duncan Island housing a full helicopter base. And the largest of the Paracels, Woody Island, sports an airstrip, hangars and surfaceto-air missile batteries.

Sino-US relations now stand at a “precarious crossroads”, amid growing tensions between the two powers that could send them on a “collision course”.

Both Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, as well as senior advisor Steve Bannon, recently warned that China’s extensive and growing territorial claims in the South China Sea could be a potential flashpoint. Countering China’s efforts has become a key test of perceived US commitment to the countries in the region. The prevailing sentiment is that, if Chinese coercion goes unchallenged by the United States, it will send a dangerous signal about the strength of the US alliance system and lessen its appeal as a security partner.

The crux of the issue is the growing aggressiveness of China in militarizing the artificial islands and assertive patrolling of the disputed region. There are also reports of militia being prepared for deployment in the region. This, after China has made it clear that it does not recognize the ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration.

Some recent developments may have encouraged China to perceive that its diplomatic moves could yield the desired results in establishing its hegemony in the region. President Duterte’s anti-US statements and willingness to discuss the issue with China may have been seen as a turnaround on the Philippine stand on the dispute. Vietnam, too, has shown willingness to discuss the issue with China through negotiations. In the recent Asean meeting in Vientiane, Lao PDR did not mention the July 2016 ruling, giving the impression that the Asean may not be willing to press hard on the issue. The cumulative impact of all these may have strengthened the Chinese perception that it could take control over the region by neutralizing its opponents one by one. China must realize, however, that other parties in the dispute may adopt different approaches and, like responsible nations, are willing to resolve the issue through negotiations, but they are united in not accepting the Chinese claims.

The situation remains grave with the chances of a conflict taking place.

Thus, it is crucial for the disputants to unite and formulate a Code of Conduct (COC) in accordance with international law. Asean will have to take the lead in this respect, but their unity will be essential to achieve a durable peace in the strategically important region. Any further delay in the formulation of the COC could make the situation spiral out of hand, with disastrous implications for regional peace and stability.

E-mail: ernhil@yahoo.com.

Edgardo J. Angara

D

ebates are ongoing in Congress on reinstating the death penalty for heinous crimes. The proposal has already reached the plenary at the House of Representatives, while the Senate suspended deliberations at the committee level as it became clear that restoring the death penalty would violate the country’s treaty obligations—particularly, the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Those in favor of restoring the death penalty point to the “deterrent effect” of capital punishment, preventing criminals from committing grave crimes out of fear. President Duterte said meting out capital punishment is retribution for those who have committed heinous crimes.

On the other hand, those against the death penalty point to the virtually universal consensus that there is no such deterrent effect. For instance, a 2009 University of Chicago survey of criminologists in the United States found out that up to 88 percent of the interviewees did not believe the death penalty had any effect on preventing crime.

Recently, The Manila Times columnist Rigoberto Tiglao wrote a two-part series debunking claims that the incidence of heinous crimes in the Philippines increased after we abolished the death penalty in 2006. Citing Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) data, Tiglao pointed out that the rate of heinous crimes remained unchanged between 2006 and 2016—at an annual average of 2.98 per 100,000 population. The former presidential spokesman also referred to a 2013 72-country study in the European Journal of Law and Economics that determined “police efficiency”, among other factors, affected crime rates

Edsa revisited Cecilio T. Arillo

database Part 1

Treachery of the highest order

E

XACTLY 31 years ago on Wednesday, the so-called 1986 Edsa Revolution that catapulted the housewife, Mrs. Corazon C. Aquino, to power remains today not only a highway of horrendous traffic but a long avenue of questions, regrets, economic opportunism and a source of hatred, vengeance and disunity among Filipinos.

Historians Salvador Escalante and J. Augustus Y. de la Paz, of the Truth and Justice Foundation, asked: If it was a genuine revolution, where are the radical changes that it should have set in place?

If it was popular, why were the beneficiaries so few?

If it was all-Filipino, why was there American intervention?

If it was for Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino (the slain senator), how valid a cause was he?

If it was meant to install his wife, Cory Aquino, to the presidency, was it worth it?

And why has life become so much harder, and politics even more corrupt, after the so-called People Power uprising supposedly restored democracy?

Not only that. In the post-Edsa years, five presidents who succeeded President Marcos, Mrs. Aquino, her son Benigno III and the three between them: Presidents Fidel V. Ramos, Joseph Ejercito Estrada and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, spent more than P35 trillion in accumulated national budgets, compared to President Marcos’s total budget in 20 years of only P486.42 billion and, yet, the country remains at

the bottom of the five originals who organized the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The four others—Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore—are now acknowledged newly industrialized and progressive countries.

Two best-selling books, Greed & Betrayal, published in 2000 and A Country Imperiled-Tragic Lessons of a Distorted History in 2011 by Amazon, one of the world’s biggest publishing houses and both authored by this writer, distinctly provided the answers.

On March 15, 1986 President Aquino, without prior consultation with Vice President Salvador Laurel, Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile and other key participants of the Edsa Revolution, created a Special Cabinet Committee (SCC) to decide whether the new government would operate outside the 1973 Constitution.

The prime objective was to determine whether the 1973 Constitution would be abolished.

The SCC was composed of Minister of Justice Neptali Gonzales as chairman and members of parliament (MPs) Luis Villafuerte and Antonio Cuenco, Executive

Technology and education as tools to end poverty

By Rovelyn Fuggan Ayonayon

T

he education department is currently taking the lead in the government’s campaign to eradicate poverty through an aggressive campaign to reach out to the farthest barangays in the country to bring all out-of-school-youth inside the classroom.

With the K to 12 program already in full swing, the education department is now looking at the latest in today’s technology that can be used to improve teaching and learning and help our students, including out-of-school-youth, become successful.

With the proliferation of laptops, iPads and smartphones, teachers know that education does not have to stop at the end of the school day because students can now connect with their

teachers online, and access educational resources such as e-books via the Web for their well-rounded education. Indeed, the future of education is at hand for today’s students.

However, parental involvement is still essential, especially in the process of allowing and monitoring our kids’ access to the Internet, where a lot of things have the potential to cause harm instead of helping them excel academically. This is evident in a recent teachers’ survey that shows students who spend five to eight hours a day on computers or smartphones tend to lose their concentration and harm their writing and communication skills.

Among the various media, the most problematic, according to the teachers, are video games for elementary students, and texting and social media for adolescents.

For this reason, parents should monitor their children in

order to ensure proper use of the Internet, both for research or educational purposes, and for time spent on other web sites for entertainment. Today, children around the world are getting in touch with virtual friends through social media at a much younger age. But some of these kids are also being exposed to all kinds of danger that the Internet has spawned. Online gaming is an example. Some children have learned to create their own account with the intention to gamble online. This is a truly alarming development. As secondary school teachers, we can guide our students to improve their learning ability through various online strategies using different aps and sites.

For example, we can use Twitter to contact well-known academic personalities or to create hashtags about a relevant classroom topic and see if this can generate students’ participation.

Tuesday, February 21, 2017 A11

the most. In short, the more efficient a police force was in serving their duties, the more likely crime rates were down.

So what is the solution? A 2015 report by the Impunity and Justice Research Center of the Universidad de las Americas ranked the Philippines as having the worst impunity problem, topping a 59-country list whose top five includes Mexico, Colombia, Turkey and Russia.

The report defines impunity as a situation of “crime without punishment,” where there are structural and functional problems to how a State provides security and how justice institutions fulfill their mandates.

Impunity, the report continues, “is closely linked with unequal access to justice, inadequate institutional design, lack of structural capacities and disregard of citizen’s rights.”

More than 7,000 people have already been killed since the administration’s war against drugs started in July. Out of some 3,603 cases of deaths under investigation as of January 9, only 922 cases have been concluded. Such a low conclusion rate illustrates how cases often take very long to get solved, a problem exacerbated by a graft-ridden—or worse, rogue—police. No less than President Duterte branded our police “corrupt to the core.”

Secretary Joker Arroyo and Laurel himself, as members.

Gonzales proposed the abolition of the Constitution and the proclamation of a Revolutionary Government under a Freedom Constitution.

Enrile strongly opposed the idea and argued that preserving the existing Constitution would ensure political stability.

Laurel, likewise, objected to the abolition, as he pointed out that the Gonzales proposal would result in a dictatorial government and would exist beyond the ambit of judicial review.

United Nationalist Democratic Organizations (Unido) MPs supported Laurel and Enrile’s observations, and told Mrs. Aquino that there was no need to abolish the Parliament because there was a new majority, which was ready to support the new administration.

Based on the minutes of a meeting recorded by lawyers Avelino V. Cruz and Minerva Reyes, the clear consensus was that the Parliament would give the President emergency powers through a proclamation, so that she could move on smoothly to discharge her power effectively along the lines enunciated in Gonzales’s draft of a Freedom Constitution.

As planned, the Parliament stays and reconvenes on May 12, 1986, to adopt the proclamation of emergency powers. At the same time, it would annul the proclamation of President Marcos and Vice President Arturo Tolentino and declare Mrs. Aquino and Salvador H. Laurel as the duly elected President and Vice President, respectively.

The new government would be properly inaugurated and begin to operate under the existing legal framework, subject to the provisions of the Emergency Powers Proclamation under the Freedom Constitution. The Emergency Powers Proclamation would include a complete

Educators like us consider it a challenge to arouse the interest of our students in this kind of academic interaction. We can also try to expand online interaction with parents, or with the community in general, where the welfare of our students are concerned.

We can make our students take turns in reading passages from an e-book, for example, or schedule an online discussion on a specific topic through group chats. This modern method of educating the youth could be challenging. But if we can show to our students how easy it is to broadcast their thoughts to the world, complete with handy references, there’s a good chance we can revolutionize the learning process.

Here’s how we can harness the power of Excel: When working with students on a mathematical or budgeting exercise, have them work with a spreadsheet program, like

Stories of corruption abound about the courts and law-enforcement agencies. Amnesty International recently exposed an “economy of murder” thriving in the country, where policemen get P8,000 to P15,000 per drug pusher or addict killed during antidrug operations.

And some funeral homes are part of the murderous racket, giving policemen incentives for every dead body brought to them.

Even though the drive against illegal drugs has been suspended since the dastardly killing of Korean businessman Jee Ick-Joo inside Camp Crame, the body count continues to rise. Recently seven were killed in a span of three hours in Quezon City, while an environmental lawyer in Bohol was shot dead while she was driving with her children.

Fighting criminality is best achieved through reforms that speed up courts and prosecution procedures, overhaul the police and other law-enforcement agencies, and cleanse them of corruption. Reinstating capital punishment will only make us into an international pariah, as we will be reneging on our treaty obligations. In no way will that solve our problems with impunity.

E-mail: angara.ed@gmail.com, Facebook and Twitter: @edangara

timetable for full transition to normalcy, including the adoption of a new Constitution and the holding of elections under it.

Accordingly, lawyer Avelino Cruz, representing Arroyo, lawyer Minerva Reyes, and Deputy Justice Minister Reynato Puno, representing Gonzales, drafted the fast-track plan.

The plan, however, failed to materialize and was never heard of again.

Malacañang secretly hatched another plan, and suddenly executed it without the knowledge of Laurel, Enrile, the rebel officers, as well as the majority of the Parliament.

“It was political treachery of the highest order,” Laurel said, adding that a new power group had quietly taken over Malacañang.

Earlier Laurel and Enrile, with the full knowledge of Mrs. Aquino, had been meeting with the Parliament members, with the help of former Prime Minister Cesar Virata, former Parliament Speaker Nicanor Yniguez, minority floor leader Jose B. Laurel Jr., and all the Unido MPs. They were able to obtain the commitment of 132 members, a clear majority in the Parliament, with more members willing to join the bandwagon.

Recalling the incident, Laurel said: “We had agreed that the new majority would annul the proclamation of Marcos and Tolentino, that Cory and myself would instead be proclaimed, after which I would be formally installed as Prime Minister. The new majority, likewise, assured me that they would support the entire legislative program to be presented by the Aquino administration.”

To be continued To reach the writer, e-mail cecilio.arillo@ gmail.com.

Microsoft Excel, to promote understanding of both simple and complex calculations, as well as how such tools can be used to enhance productivity. Educators may be surprised at how well basic financial planning concepts are grasped when they focus on real-world scenarios.

Technology advances and evolves so fast. As educators, we need to keep up with the times in order to best prepare our students for this ever-changing world that we live in. With proper implementation, advanced technology can help us realize the educator’s role in helping Filipinos escape poverty through the power of education.

The author is Teacher 3 at Licerio Antiporda Sr. National High School in Buguey, Cagayan.

2nd Front Page BusinessMirror

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Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Mines closure to cost LGUs up to 60% of annual income

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By Rea Cu

@ReaCuBM

t least 17 cities and municipalities in 10 provinces would have to find alternative revenue sources soon, as they are likely to lose as much as 60 percent of their annual income due to the decision of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to close or suspend the operations of 28 mining sites across the country.

Latest data released by the Department of Finance (DOF) showed these local government units (LGUs) will be saying good-bye to P821 million in total annual revenues from the mines they are hosting.

Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III has directed treasurers of the affected LGUs to submit their respective reports on the complete revenue impact of the DENR closure and suspension orders.

He said based on the reports, three municipalities will lose revenues a little over 50 percent of their current operating income if the affected mine

sites are forced to suspend operations.

“One is the municipality of Carrascal [in Surigao del Sur]; then you have Tagana-an [in Surigao del Norte] and Tubajon [in Dinagat Islands],” Dominguez said in a forum.

The estimates submitted by the Bureau of Local Government Finance (BLGF) to the DOF showed Carrascal will lose P198.3 million of its mining revenues, representing 62.3 percent of its total operating income. Tagana-an will lose P70.3 million, or 54 percent, and Tubajon will shed P38 million, or 55.4 percent, if the DENR order is implemented.

₧821M

The estimated total revenues to be lost by LGUs yearly due to the DENR’s decision to padlock 28 mining sites The Mining Industry Coordinating Council (MICC), which is cochaired by the DOF and the DENR, met earlier in the month to discuss the closure and suspension orders, and issued a resolution emphasizing that due process will be observed in assessing the status of mining operations in the country.

A multistakeholder team was also formed to review existing mining operations in consultation with the LGUs, under MICC Resolution 6.

“The review shall be based on the guidelines and parameters set forth in the specific mining contract and in other pertinent laws, taking into account the valid exercise of the state’s police power to serve the common good of the poor,” the MICC resolution said.

The latest BLGF estimate on revenue losses to be incurred by LGUs, which is an increase from the initial P653 million submitted earlier, is based on the 100-percent compliance to Dominguez’s directive of city and

municipal treasurers in the affected LGUs. BLGF’s estimates do not include yet the projected income losses of the LGUs that host 75 mine sites, whose mineral production sharing agreements were ordered cancelled by the DENR last week.

“The bureau’s updated estimates on the impact on local finance of LGUs hosting mining firms ordered for suspension and closure by the DENR… constitutes 100-percent compliance of local treasurers ordered to submit [fiscal year] 2016 LGU data. The total estimated potential revenue loss from the direct payments of mining firms and the shares from mining taxes of affected LGUs amounted to P821.13 million,” BLGF Acting Executive Director Nino B. Alvina said in his report.

Of the total amount, local collections of the affected LGUs from mining firms amounted to P340 million, comprising real property taxes (RPTs) of P53.54 million; P263.13 million from business tax, fees, charges and other local charges; and P23.29 million from provincial revenues.

According to Alvina, the share of the affected LGUs from mining taxes collected by the national government accounts for P481.17 million. The BLGF earlier said the provinces affected by the closure or suspension orders are Benguet, Nueva Vizcaya, Palawan, Cebu, Bulacan, Zambales,

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Duterte sets conditions for resumption of peace talks with communists

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By Cai U. Ordinario

@cuo_bm

he President will return to the negotiating table with the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army-National Democratic Front (CPP-NPA-NDF) if they will be able to meet certain conditions, according to Palace Spokesman Ernesto C. Abella.

In a statement, Abella said the President will only agree to a bilateral cease-fire if the CPP-NPA-NDF will stop the collection of the so-called revolutionary tax.

Duterte, he added, also wants the communist rebels to stop ambushing military personnel, burning property and carrying out other “provocative and hostile actions”.

“Considering the unprecedented goodwill the President has shown, these actions from NDF may provide compelling reason and could put at ease, to some extent, the apprehension of the military and the administration. After all, when guns are silent, we can better listen to each other,” he said.

Abella said the efforts of the Duterte administration to negotiate peace with rebel groups are part of the President’s plan to institute much-needed socioeconomic reforms.

National Economic and Development Authority Undersecretary Adoracion Navarro earlier told the BusinessMirror that an all-out war with the CPPNPA-NDF will displace communities and cause setbacks in project implementation.

Navarro said economic activities in communities could come to a halt due to the skirmishes between the rebels and government security forces.

Abella said the President is also keen on forging peace with the communist rebels, as this is in line with his efforts to put in place political and constitutional reforms. Duterte was scheduled to meet with Left-leaning Cabinet members National Anti-Poverty Commission Secretary Liza Maza and Agrarian Reform Secretary Rafael V. Mariano on Monday night.

See “Mines,” A2

PAL uses tourist sites, locals for new in-flight safety video

By Ma. Stella F. Arnaldo

@akosistellaBM Special to the BusinessMirror

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HE Philippine Airlines (PAL) took a huge leap forward and joined the growing trend of carriers producing imaginative and engaging inflight safety videos.

The pioneering flag carrier posted its new in-flight safety video on its Facebook page (https:// www.facebook.com/flyPAL/) on February 17. As of Monday afternoon, the video has been viewed 1.3 million times, reaped 43,000 “Likes” and shared 24,667 times.

The video has already been playing in PAL’s flights.

With the airline’s theme music playing in the background, the video is introduced as “the firstever safety video proudly from the Heart of the Filipino for the Filipino, and the world”. It then cuts to well-known tourism destinations in the country, with regular folk demonstrating plane safety features and procedures, such as how to lock the passenger seatbelt, how to properly store one’s luggage, or what to do in case of an emergency landing.

PAL Vice President for Marketing Ria Domingo told the BusinessMirror that this is the “first crowd-sourced” in-flight safety video, as the carrier held auditions in each destination to engage local residents to participate in the new video. “We announced the auditions online without really telling them what it was for. Then we chose from among the best of the participants who to include the video,” she added.

The in-f light safety video was warmly received by the carrier’s Facebook followers. Netizen Drew Garcia, commented: “Well done guys! This is really a first in the world!” Another top commenter, Luven B. Fuentes,

BAUTISTA: “It is engaging because it is two-pronged: It provides the latest safety guidelines and also generates interest to travel to and within the Philippines.”

said: “ The concept of this commercial of Philippine Airlines is original showcasing our beautiful tourist attractions and the Filipino people mabuhay! (sic).”

One NoiNoi Atayde, for his part, said: “Wow i love it...great Job for promoting safety and country’s tourism (sic).”

In a news statement, PAL COO Jaime J. Bautista said: “Last year Philippine Airlines celebrated its 75th anniversary with a renewed mission and vision of becoming a five-star full-service airline by 2020. As more and more people fall in love with flying, we recognize the responsibility to provide our passengers a level of care that goes beyond the call of duty—especially when it comes to their safety.”

He added that the crowdsourced concept “makes PAL’s new safety video unique in the airline world. It is engaging because it is two-pronged: It provides the latest safety guidelines and also generates interest to travel to and within the Philippines.”

Filipinos from nine provinces were invited to audition and demonstrate the latest safety guidelines for PAL’s safety video. Those who made the cut and were included in the video were: Kathryn Ann Pilar (Legazpi), Andres Borromeo (Manila), Gazini Ganados (Cebu), Nathan James Goll (Busuanga), Karen Antonio Quong (Tagbilaran), Ethan Gillelli (Caticlan), Angelica Paras and Adrian Villegas (Cagayan de Oro), Andrew Domacina (Tagbilaran),

John Paul and Bush Hailee Flores, Aiza Mae Galang (Laoag), Queen Amora and Jesse Serrano (Davao), and Aiza Carmina Frez (Laoag).

“With this new in-flight safety video, together with our welltrained crew and updated safety guidelines and procedures, we want to show the world how the Heart of the Filipino cares like no other. The beauty of the Philippines and the warmth of the nation are the perfect backdrop for the first-ever nationwide crowd-sourced in-flight safety video made by the Filipinos, for the Filipinos and the world,” Bautista stressed.

In a separate interview, PAL Assistant Vice President for Strategic Marketing and Communications Ceres Joyce de Jesus said the airline “partnered with our digital creative agency McCann Worldgroup Philippines Inc. and the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines [Caap], in support of the Department of Tourism [DOT],” in creating the new in-flight safety video.

She explained that the new video “took inspiration from two unique Filipino traits: Being maaruga and maalaga, and the spirit of bayanihan, or community spirit, to show teamwork between the passenger and the crew when it comes to in-flight safety. “ Si nce t hese v a lues a re uniquely Filipino, who better to star in it than real Filipinos?

The beautiful destinations of the Philippines also provided the perfect backdrop and are aligned with the company’s brand equity.

These two executional elements aligned with PAL’s brand equity, The Heart of the Filipino—representing the best of the Filipino and the beauty of the Philippines,” she added.

The safety video took two months to produce and features See “PAL,” A2