Businessmirror july 14, 2017

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL IN MANILA The internationally renowned Venice Film Festival, the world’s oldest film festival, is finally coming to Manila for the first time, with the Venice Grand Canal in McKinley Hill, Taguig City, playing host to the prestigious event, whicth will also be the first in Southeast Asia. The five-day festival will run from July 26 to July 31, with three Filipino films, namely, Ang Babaeng Humayo directed by Lav Diaz, Jay by Francis Xavier Passion and Thy Womb by Brillante Mendoza, among the 11 award-winning films from last year’s festival in Venice, Italy. Leading the launch are (from left) Luigi Bernas, director, Societa Dante Alighieri; His Excellency Massimo Roscigno, Italy’s ambassador to the Philippines; Mary Liza Diño, chairman and CEO of the Film Development Council of the Philippines; and Sergio Boero, president, Italian Chamber of Commerce in the Philippines.

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DIZON VOWS TO START BIG-TICKET PROJECTS IN CLARK-SUBIC AREA DURING DUTERTE’S TERM

BCDA to build momentum for infra push UNDERPAID? PUBLIC-ScHOOL C TEACHERS OWE On target

By Henry Empeño | Correspondent

LARK FREEPORT—“Dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.” Using this Arab proverb to illustrate the mind-set of the Duterte administration regarding its ‘Build, Build, Build program, Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) President and CEO Vivencio B. Dizon said the government is creating momentum to realize the full development of Central Luzon, particularly the Clark airport, which is touted to be the next growth driver in the region.

“BCDA is going all-in in this region,” Dizon told senior officials from various private companies during the Asia CEO Forum Clark on Wednesday here.

Noting that a lot of problems are spawned by lack of infrastructure, Dizon said the BCDA will be

prioritizing the Clark-Subic area with multibillion-peso infrastructure projects, like the NorthRail project, Subic-Clark railway, Clark airport expansion and the Clark Green City project.

“These projects will not be finished within five years; but the

momentum is what’s important,” Dizon added.

“The Duterte administration wants to generate enough momentum in its infrastructure program, so that the next administrations will not be able to backtrack from the development

DIZON: “These projects will not be finished within five years; but the momentum is what’s important.”

track,” he added.

Dizon also said that, while project implementation has always been a challenge to governments, the Duterte administration has a different approach to infrastructure, which he described as the “secret sauce to development”.

“President Duterte is known as a doer, with the will to get things done,” Dizon added. “He told me, ‘Just do it, Vince.’ That’s his mindset, so we really have to thank him for that,” he said.

Dizon said the NorthRail project was planned during the time of President Fidel V. Ramos, but noted that “nothing happened [because there was] no clear decision and no fast action”.

“But this administration is dead-set on completing the project. The Manila-Clark railway is full steam ahead,” he added.

The NorthRail project involves the development of an 85-kilometer railroad that will connect Manila and Clark, and will be composed of two segments: the first from Tutuban to Malolos, Bulacan, and the second from Malolos to Clark, which is called the Clark Rail Transit System. In subsequent phases, the project is also seen to provide Manila with a north-tosouth connection, reaching as far as La Union in the north and to Laguna in the south, Dizon added.

Continued on A12

Manila seeing gains multiply by the day after shelving tribunal decision on SCS

By Recto Mercene

B DEEPER TIES Foreign Secretary Alan Peter S. Cayetano (fourth from left) and Taguig City Mayor Lani Cayetano (third from left) recently hosted a welcome dinner for His Excellency Saleumxay Kommasith (left), Lao PDR minister of Foreign Affairs, and his spouse Alounny Kommasith, at Shangri-La Fort Bonifacio, Taguig City. The Philippines and Laos are seeking ways to strengthen bilateral relations and cooperation. RUDY ESPERAS

PESO exchange rates n US 50.5790

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EIJING, China—It may sound contradictory, but despite President Duterte’s shelving of the arbitral tribunal’s ruling on the South China Sea (SCS), this administration was actually able to improve bilateral relations with China and, at the same time, pursue Manila’s claims without antagonizing Beijing to the point of either severing diplomatic relations or going to war.

“Instead of the previous approach of putting the disputes at the center of the bilateral

sta. romana: “We have made progress over the past year and, basically, where there is difference, we continue talking about it, and where there is no difference, to continue further developing relations that are mutually beneficial.”

relations, the Duterte administration decided to separate it into two tracks: the contentious issues put on one track and the noncontentious issues put on the other track,” said Philippine Ambassador to

China Jose Santiago L. Sta. Romana during an interview with this reporter on the invitation of the Communication University of China.

He added that the contentious issues are sovereignty, maritime jurisdiction, including the nine-dash line and the other claimants to the resource-rich area where $5 trillion worth of trade passes through.

The other contentious issues are the differences in the position of the Philippines and China on the arbitral tribunal decision which favors the Philippines but that China did not accept.

Aside from the Philippines and

LENDERS P163B

By Rosabell C. Toledo Correspondent

E

ducation Secretary Leonor M. Briones on Wednesday stressed the need for public-school teachers to have financial literacy, as she lamented the fact that teachers in the Philippines currently owe various lending institutions an aggregate of P163 billion.

In a news conference at a hotel in Ermita, Manila, Briones denied that publicschool teachers in the Philippines are underpaid. She told the story of a teacher who previously complained at a demonstration in front of the Department of Education (DepEd) in Pasig City about his take-home salary of only P3,000.

Briones said the DepEd could not be faulted for it because the man’s salary is actually P25,000, with bonuses and perks, but he owed money to seven different lending institutions. “What the government is responsible for is to give the appropriate and necessary salary, which will sustain a teacher, but what a teacher does to his or her money is also his or her own responsibility,” Briones said.

See “Underpaid,” A2

See “Manila,” A2

n japan 0.4471 n UK 65.1862 n HK 6.4754 n CHINA 7.4503 n singapore 36.7233 n australia 38.8194 n EU 57.7309 n SAUDI arabia 13.4881

Source: BSP (13 July 2017 )

A2 Friday, July 14, 2017

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Manila sees gains multiply by the day after shelving tribunal decision on SCS Continued from A1

China, the other claimants are Taiwan, Brunei Darussalam, Malaysia and Vietnam.

“So because of this you have to deal with this separate tracks and use bilateral talks to deal with areas that you can discuss and, hopefully, resolve overtime. At the same time, you find areas of common interest where you can cooperate and on the whole, if you look at the past year, the paradox has been that the tribunal award— despite the differences on the two sides, from that time—particularly since the Duterte administration used a different approach, there’s been an improvement in bilateral relations.”

It has been a year since the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague handed an arbitral ruling that concluded that China’s “nine-dash line” in the South China Sea is “invalid” and that it does not have “historic rights” over the disputed region.

But one year after the ruling, the Duterte administration was blasted by critics, among them Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonio T. Carpio, who said, “The stunning victory became strangely orphan.”

“The Duterte administration refused to celebrate the ruling even though the ruling legally secured for the Philippines a vast maritime

Underpaid. . .

Continued from A1

She said the real culprit behind the shrunk take-home pay of most teachers is the lack of a sound personal financial-management system, and the way borrowing money

zone than the total land area of the Philippines.” Carpio said he was “aghast” when Duterte announced last year that he was setting aside the PCA ruling to secure better economic relations with China.

On the other hand, former Solicitor General Florin T. Hilbay said the administration seems to have adopted a policy of defeatism and a mind-set of nonenforcement of the award.

“Filipinos haven’t seen any forward movement for the Philippines and there has been no pushback against China’s continued aggression,” he said, adding the first anniversary of the tribunal’s award marks a year of disappointment after the victory at The Hague.

At the height of the Philippines’s dispute with China, Filipino f isher men were bar red f rom fishing in Scarborough Shoal and from entering Ayungin Shoal, where a contingent of the Armed Forces is stationed on a rusting ship.

“Now, by looking at areas where the two sides can find agreement, that has been resolved in the sense that there is now access for Filipino fishermen there,” Sta. Romana said. “ W hereas before, the supply lines to Ayungin Shoal to our soldiers in the ship, the Chinese had a blockade, and now that blockade has been lifted, so now the supply lines are open. The same is true

for supply lines in Pag-asa and the other features that are under Philippine occupation. So on the whole, the tensions have eased.”

He said the Philippines’s strategy is to “basically try to stabilize the situation and to develop trust and confidence between the two sides.”

“There are still difference and challenges that remain, but this is where—like in the inaugural meeting of the bilateral mechanism—basically all the issues where touched, or at least brought up. Some of the differences have remained, but at least you are able to talk about it in amicable and civil manner.”

“So in this sense, we have made progress over the past year and basically where there is difference, we continue talking about it, and where there is no difference, to continue further developing relations that are mutually beneficial,” he added.

The envoy, however, said there is a whole range of noncontentious issues where the Philippines and China continue to engage, “such as in trade, economics, infrastructure, science, culture and the whole range of areas where you could cooperate but which were frozen in the past”.

“So the basic approach now is don’t let the disputes be an obstacle. What we are really doing

is to fast-track when it comes to economics, trade, cultural, education and all these other areas, which were affected if you put the disputes at the center. It affects the whole atmosphere so the idea is to separate them.”

He added that this was the idea of bilateral mechanism that was inaugurated in May “to basically discuss issues, the sensitive issues where of concern to our side, as well as issues of concern to the Chinese side”.

Sta. Romana said, “If you cannot resolve the differences right away because there are differences that existed for quite some time, then at least you can try to manage the issue so you can ease the tensions in the South China Sea/West Philippine Sea.” By this approach, the Philippines can at least find areas of cooperation, build confidence while still trying to discuss the issue.

“In other words, you try to combine principle and pragmatism.

[The] principle [is] you don’t give up your claim, and you don’t abandon the tribunal award. Pragmatism because you know, there is a saying that you need two hands to clap, to shake hands; we’re not negotiating alone by ourselves.”

At the same time, Sta. Romana added that since the ruling one year ago, “the situation in the US, in the world, in the Philippines

has changed.”

“And now with Marawi City, there is another unifying factor, the common struggle against extremism, and this is why the Chinese and the Philippines have decided to accept the military assista nce f rom t he C hinese and from other members of the international community.”

In this respect, the envoy said, China is willing to help insofar as the anti-extremism, antiterrorism struggle is concerned and, so far, as the antidrug campaign is concerned. He said that, in addition, there are more high-level exchanges now, “so at least we have restored all bilateral mechanisms; the two foreign ministries are talking again; the two coastguards have formed joint committees in areas where they can cooperate; and then in the coming months they will restore joint commission for defense and security.”

Following the restoration of dialogues between the two military establishments, Sta. Romana said there followed the joint trade commission, joint agricultural commission and joint fishery commission, “so the different areas where the different levels of government can at least hold talks to discuss differences, as well as areas where we can make progress”. He vehemently disagreed to the accusations that the administration’s soft approach

to the Chinese has compromised the country’s claims to the South China Sea. “I certainly don’t agree. No, because what we are trying to do is not to give us the claims and yet develop relations, and this is the goal of the Duterte administration.

And if you look at it, I don’t think we have lost an inch of territory.”

On the contrary, Sta. Romana said the country has gained when the administration changed its tack toward China. “ W hereas before we didn’t have access to the Scarborough Shoal, now we have access. Before there were fears that the Chinese will reclaim Scarborough Shoal now the Chinese are saying they won’t build. There is a consensus to keep it as a maritime, as a fishery area. Whereas before we had a problem with Ayungin, the supply lines and the same with Pag-asa and now we were able to continue with the supplies.”

“So I don’t think we’ve lost an inch of territory, we have gained what we lost for so many years. We have regained some of the features or areas we don’t have access to.”

“So I think, basically, what we are trying to do is, hopefully, through this approach, is not only to defend what we have but to preserve what we have and, if possible, to regain what we have lost in the past,” he added.

from loan sharks has become a habit for most of them.

Poor financial decisions lead to financial instability, which is why the DepEd is “seriously considering” teaching financial literacy to public-school teachers and other government employees, according to Briones.

“What do we borrow money for?

Do we borrow for a trip abroad, for a child’s entry to a beauty contest, or do we borrow for additional funds for investment, or for a house, or a child’s education? These things have to be thoroughly considered.”

In line with this, Briones also

hit lending institutions that make it so easy to borrow money without providing sound financial advice. She said these institutions should also be responsible for launching activities that work toward capacity-building in financial literacy.

T he mont h ly sa l a r y of a n

entry-level public-school teacher in the Philippines is P19,000.

Briones has been supportive of proposals to raise this to P39,000 monthly, but has also expressed her worries that any further hike in public-school teachers’ pay would mean a greater divide between them and private-school

educators, who, in some parts of the country, receive only P8,000 in monthly compensation.

Regardless of these possibilities, however, she is confident that with enough financial literacy and guidance, the current salary that public-school teachers receive is already adequate.

Poverty. . .

Continued from A12

and job loss of a household head or member. Covariate shocks, meanwhile, include natural disasters, human or animal epidemic, economic crises, high unemployment rate and stock-market collapse, among others.

“Many of the households were more vulnerable to idiosyncratic shocks probably because of the latter’s direct and more specific impacts,” the PIDS researchers said.

To address poverty issues, the authors urged the government to invest more in education. Some key strategies include stronger implementation of the grants-in-aid program of the Unified Student Financial Assistance System for Tertiary Education Act (an option to the Free Higher Education for All Act) and systematic monitoring and regular evaluation of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program.

They also want the government to improve the agricultural sector by developing agri-based industries to increase employment, providing support to highvalue commodities and enhancing small farmers’ access to format credit.

The authors also said there is a need to protect farmers against market risks, refine the design and implementation of the agricultural insurance programs and improve infrastructure, especially in rural agricultural areas.

Mina and Reyes also advised the government to help Filipinos build resiliency in coping with shocks and to devise comprehensive strategies related to disasterrisk reduction, mitigation and management, including strengthening of early warning and forecasting systems.

The authors also recommended for a stronger implementation of laws promoting entrepreneurship, such as the Go Negosyo Act, and the provision of technical and financial assistance to potential entrepreneurs, as well as financialmanagement education.

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Editor: Vittorio V. Vitug • Friday, July 14, 2017 A3

Senators decry reinstatement of cops linked to mayor’s slay

S

By Butch Fernandez

@butchfBM

enators have slammed the reinstatement of controversial Philippine National Police (PNP) Supt.

Marvin Marcos and 18 more PNP officers facing murder charges for killing Albuera town Mayor Rolando Espinosa Sr. while under detention in a Leyte jail.

“The questionable downgrading of the charge from murder to homicide against Supt. Marcos, notwithstanding, it cannot be denied that there is probable cause that accused Marcos committed the crime,” Sen. Grace Poe said on Thursday.

Poe voiced concern that “his [Marcos] reinstatement to active duty may further tarnish the PNP as an institution that should value and uphold the rule of law in the performance of duty”.

“Such reinstatement may just encourage a culture of impunity among the ranks,” the senator said, adding, “The PNP could very well carry out its duties in protecting our people without somebody like Marcos and his cohorts.”

Sen. Panfilo M. Lacson, who served as PNP chief before joining the Senate, noted that it was “not even a reinstatement” that was granted to Marcos and the other police officers implicated in the murder case “Rather, it was back-to-duty status after serving four-month suspension order incorporated in a ‘slap-on-the-wrist’ administrative penalty imposed on Marcos by the PNP Internal Affairs Service and subsequently approved by National Police chief Ronald M. dela Rosa,” Lacson lamented.

Lacson noted that “according to the decision, Marcos was not physically present when the raiding team killed Mayor Espinosa and [fellow inmate] Raul Yap, but outside supervising the operation”.

“The other [PNP officers involved] were given demotions and six-month suspension. This effectively disregarded the conspiracy angle. In sum, there is a phrase to describe this whole damn thing: Put*ng i*a,” Lacson said in a news statement.

In a separate text message to Senate reporters, Sen. Antonio F. Trillanes IV griped that in reinstating Marcos, “Duterte not only set the murderers free, he now gave back their badges and guns so they could murder again with impunity. Why? Because Duterte fears that these policemen might rat out on him for what they know

Govt verifies claims of Turkish terrorist presence in Philippines

By Elijah Felice E. Rosales

M

@alyasjah

alacañang on Thursday expressed concern over a statement made by a Turkish envoy, claiming that a Turkish terror group has infiltrated the Philippines, which, if true, would solidify foreign involvement in terror activities in Mindanao.

In a news statement, Presidential Spokesman Ernesto C. Abella said defense officials are now validating the report of Turkish Ambassador Esra Cankorur that Turkish terrorists have long been staying in southern Philippines.

“The military is verifying the statement of Turkish Ambassador Esra Cankorur regarding the presence of Turkish terrorists, particularly the Fethullah Gulen Movement, in the Philippines,” Abella said.

“We will investigate organizations abetting or aiding terrorism and will hold them accountable, especially those that may be working as fronts for terrorist and criminal activities, as alleged by the ambassador,” Abella added.

In a television interview, Cankorur said the Fethullah Gulen Movement had been in the Philippines for so long already, clutching its foundations through a school in Zamboanga and some cultural groups.

“This is their façade…as civic-education institutions and innocent charity organizations. That will be a huge mischaracterization; that is wrong…just a façade. They talk about interfaith dialogue, but they are concealing themselves,” Cankorur said.

“We consider Fethullah Gulen Movement as a terrorist organization or persons linked or affiliated to that group is like sleeping cells,” Cankorur added.

To this, Abella said the government is coordinating with its foreign counterparts to neutralize probable attacks from the Turkeybased terror group.

“We are also working closely with all other nations to combat terrorism. This is now a global threat that can be better addressed through a unified effort,” Abella said.

Defense officials monitoring the conflict in Marawi City, Lanao del Sur, has confirmed foreign fighters were among the Islamic State militants security forces encountered in the battlefield.

The most recent, according to military Spokesman Restituto F. Padilla Jr. on Wednesday, was the recovery of two Singaporeanlooking cadavers in Marawi City.

“Initially, they said [these were] the remains or could be the remains of a foreign fighter and allegedly a Singaporean. [However], we don’t have yet enough proof to validate this information and we are working to do that along with the police,” Padilla said.

He added this development only strengthens the government’s claim that there are foreign fighters on the side of IS militants in Marawi City.

about his involvement in the Espinosa murder.”

Trillanes added, “Remember, it was divulged during the hearings that right after assuming office on June 30, Duterte had Marcos and company reassigned to Criminal Investigation and Detection Group [CIDG] 8. But when Gen. dela Rosa relieved them for being implicated by Espinosa in the illegal-drug trade and, at the same time, not having required schooling to be assigned at CIDG, it was Duterte himself who ordered dela Rosa for their immediate reinstatement.

Then, just weeks after, Espinosa ended up getting murdered by Marcos’s group.”

At the same time, Sen. Sherwin T. Gatchalian recalled that the majority of the senators who conducted the Senate inquiry into the Espinosa slay case, after listening to testimonies on the timing of the raid of the mayor’s prison cell, reached the same conclusion pointing to “premeditated murder”.

“Because of that story, we concluded, at least majority of us, that this is a premeditated murder. That’s

why the majority of the members ng committee agreed they [police raiders] planned to kill Espinosa,” Gatchalian said, adding, “I was actually quite surprised when the crime was lowered down and I think there is a clamor to really investigate this thoroughly and review the facts unearthed at the hearing.... I think Supt. Marcos and his cohorts should be investigated thoroughly, and my opinion on this is forthe Department of Justice to reexamine the facts that came out during the Senate investigation.”

Economy

A4 Friday, July 14, 2017 • Editors: Vittorio V. Vitug and Max V. de Leon

LTO, LTFRB told: Ensure road availability of Grab, Uber units

A

member of the House Committee on Transportation on Thursday urged the Land Transportation and Franchising Regulatory Board (LTFRB) and the Land Transportation Office (LTO) to adopt several measures to ensure the availability of transportation network company (TNC) units, like Grab and Uber.

But Assistant Minority Leader Neil Harlin Abayon III of Aangat Tayo Party-list said these a genc ies shou ld a ssu re t h at these measures will benefit the riding public.

“The fine imposed is justified and has been accepted. The riding public clearly prefer the private vehicle TNCs over the less-maintained regular taxis because they are cleaner,” he said.

On Tuesday the LTFRB slapped a P5-million each fine against Uber and Grab for violating several terms and conditions of the Certificate of Transportation Network Company.

The agency, however, allowed Uber and Grab to continue their operations while reviewing their accreditations as TNCs. Abayon said both the LTFRB and LTO should assign document processing lanes, specifically for TNCs and provide barcode to each TNC member filing so it would be easier to track the progress of each set of documents. “ TNC drivers are generally more courteous to their passen-

gers and passengers feel safer while in the TNC units because regular taxis often fall victim to robbers,” Abayon added.

Abayon also urged TNCs to adopt security measures to protect themselves and their passengers from robbers, as well as protocols for medical emergencies involving either the driver or passengers.

“The regular taxis are on the losing end of their competition with the TNCs because the riding public feel the service they provide is poor and unsatisfactory,” he said.

“Commuters want value for their money. Our country has a market demand-driven economy. The regular taxi fleets must shape up or they will become as obsolete as pagers were decades ago when mobile phones entered the consumer market,” he added.

According to Abayon, TNC service has become a source of additional or even major income for many middle-income Filipino families not just in Metro Manila, but in other major urban cities where they have been allowed to operate.

“Harsh treatment of TNCs and their drivers will do more harm than good and will not ease the financial hardships of the families that have now come to depend on TNC income to sustain their everyday lives and gather savings for medical expenses and other major expenses,” he said.

Jovee Marie N. dela Cruz

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PUV modernization will reap gains for jeepney drivers, operators–Neda

T

By Cai U. Ordinario

@cuo_bm

he National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) on Thursday urged jeepney drivers and operators to think long term when it comes to using clean technology for jeepneys under the public-utility vehicle (PUV) modernization program.

Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto M. Pernia assured the program will reap health and economic benefits for commuters and jeepney operators and drivers in the long run.

“There will be a lot of resistance from jeepney owners because they don’t look long term usually,” Pernia said.

“Jeepney drivers and commuters should be made aware of the health benefits of cleaner public transport,” he added.

Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) Vice President and housing and urban development expert Marife M. Ballesteros agreed

and said the PUV modernization program will mean less air pollution and more efficient fuel use.

Ballesteros added the program can also promote safety standards, comfort and better machine performance that will benefit commuters and PUV owners.

However, Ballesteros said the program may not be able to address the congestion that Metro Manila is already experiencing.

“I’m doubtful it will decongest traffic since the objective is just replacing the old jeepneys. Also, the proposed design is to have lesser passenger capacity per jeep [unless this will also replace the

trikes],” Ballesteros told the BusinessMirror via e-mail.

Pernia said the reason the government is not pushing the complete phase out of jeepneys is that jeepneys are still needed in feeder roads that lead to communities.

However, the Neda chief said improving the way that they are run and operated by using cleaner technology will make all the difference in the long term.

Ballesteros said there may also be some short-term effects on fares.

Since the PUV modernization program will involve changes in the technology used for jeepneys, riders can expect an increase in fares in the short run.

She, however, said the government can address this short-term effect through the creation of subsidy programs for riders and “microscale transport business” owners.

The PIDS expert also encouraged the conduct of a cost-benefit analysis on the PUV modernization program to better determine its impact on both the riding public and PUV operators.

The PUV modernization program also aims to phase out old and dilapidated PUVs. Franchised units should either be powered by Euro 4 engines or electrically powered engines with solar panels for roofs.

Other proposed specifications include closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras, a GPS navigation system, an Automatic Fare Collection System (AFCS), speed limiters, dashboard cameras and Wi-fi.

There will be a lot of resistance from jeepney owners because they don’t look long term usually.

Jeepney drivers and commuters should be made aware of the health benefits of cleaner public transport.”

—Pernia

Wood work A commuter finds shade underneath the makeshift roof of a sash factory specializing in the crafting of home furniture and statues in Makati City. Highly skilled wood craftsmen are slowly vanishing in the country, as some opt to offer their skills elsewhere.

Alysa Salen

Legislator urges swift okay of vape-regulation measure P arty-list Rep. Rodel Batocabe of Ako Bicol is urging the House Committee on Health to fast-track the approval of House Bill 3330 or the “Vaporized Nicotine Product Regulation Act”.

The enactment of the proposed legislative measure would police the use, sale, packaging, distribution and advertisements of Vaporized Nicotine Products (VNP).

This new class of products deliver nicotine to the user without combustion, and the proposal is timely given the recent pronouncement of the Department of Health to adopt the recommendation of the World Health Organization to disallow the use of VNP in indoor spaces.

“We are seeking to enact the vape regulation bill in order to guarantee the safety of our Filipino consumers. This will provide a clear-cut policy in addressing the concerns and issues concerning the use of e-cigarettes,” Batocabe said in a news statement.

“Since the medical and sci-

entific community have yet to arrive at a consensus regarding the safety of e-cigarettes, in the absence of the Philippine Food and Drug Administration’s validation, we should not assume that these products have the absolute propensity as reducedrisk nicotine-delivery systems,” Batocabe added.

Groups, such as the Public Health England and the British Lung Foundation, have emphasized the importance of creating a separate regulation for VNP from cigarettes and other tobacco products.

A specialist in epidemiology and public health at the University College of London expressed that e-cigarettes are safer and less tox ic t han convent iona l tobacco cigarettes based on a study involving people who have switched to e-cigarettes having lower levels of toxins in their saliva and urine compared to the group who have continued to smoke tobacco products.

“The regulation of the vaping in-

dustry would guarantee the quality and safety of the products available for use in the market. Products will be required to be registered at the Department of Trade and Industry three months prior to its release in the market,” Batocabe said. VNPs will also be required to contain instructions for its proper handling, use and maintenance, along with the health warning, stating that “this product may damage your health and is addictive”. Furthermore, minors will not be allowed to purchase and use these products, as the sale and distribution of these products to anyone below 18 years old is strictly prohibited under the proposed law.

Purchasing VNPs from a minor is also forbidden as part of the stringent regulation of e-cigarettes.

Moreover, VNPs are not allowed to be advertised in television, radio and cinema. They may be allowed in points-of-sale via direct marketing and on the Internet as long as the restrictions prescribed by the law are followed.

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Malaysia wields cheap currency to beat peers in export race

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hen the global trade rebound came this year, Malaysia held one advantage over its peers: the cheapest currency in Southeast Asia.

The ringgit is down more than 7 percent against the dollar in the past year, even after recovering in 2017. Exports from Indonesia to Vietnam are surging but Malaysia’s shipments are growing the fastest, accelerating to a seven-year high of 33 percent in May. After a couple of years of slowing growth, declining investor sentiment and a corruption scandal involving a state-owned investment fund, Malaysia’s fortunes are turning. The World Bank raised the nation’s growth forecast in June by the most in East Asia, inflation is easing and foreign investors are more bullish on the stock market. That’s taking the pressure off the central bank to add more stimulus to the economy after last year’s interest-rate cut.

“The ringgit went through a difficult period but it is now helping exporters,” said Wellian Wiranto, an economist at Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. in

33%

Malaysia’s export growth in May, a seven-year high Singapore. “That is boosting the economy and with domestic consumption improving, the central bank is very, very likely to keep rates unchanged in the next six to 12 months.”

Rate decision

Bank Negara Malaysia will probably hold its benchmark interest rate at 3 percent on Thursday, according to all 21 economists surveyed by Bloomberg.

“Bank Negara is in a sweet spot now,” said Irvin Seah, a senior economist at DBS Group Holdings Ltd. in

Singapore. “We had a strong run in the first quarter in terms of gross domestic product growth and inflation is gradually moderating. This provides room for policy-makers to maintain the policy.”

The World Bank predicts Malaysia’s economy will expand at least 4.9 percent annually from 2017 to 2019, from 4.2 percent last year. Malaysia’s exports are equivalent to about 70 percent of GDP in 2016 at constant prices, according to government data.

While risks remain—including a general election and doubts about the strength of the trade recovery— foreign investors are piling in. Non-

residents purchased about $2.4 billion of Malaysian stocks so far this year, the most in Southeast Asia excluding Singapore.

An improving growth outlook means the odds are rising that the central bank will start signaling a more hawkish stance, said Euben Paracuelles, an economist at Nomura Holdings Inc. in Singapore.

“The two most important things for Bank Negara are the growth outlook and financial stability risk,” he said. “Given the strength of growth, led by exports and palm oil, the probability of a hike next year is higher than a cut.”

Bloomberg News

As Indonesia cuts forests, fake nature thrives

I

ndonesia’s capital is lush with fake greenery, even as the country is cutting down its precious tropical forests at a record rate.

Jakarta’s gleaming air-conditioned malls have a particular fondness for lifeless extravaganzas of plastic ferns or autumnal trees that don’t drop any leaves.

Construction sites are wrapped in screens printed with giant leaves glistening with dew drops or the picturesque deciduous forests found in temperate climates. A new terminal at the international airport has a mini-jungle within its cavernous air-conditioned interior. Despite the odd inclusion of fake grass it has the slight saving grace that the potted greenery is real.

It’s not that Jakarta lacks real trees.

The presidential palace has well-manicured surrounds of park, verges and trees. But elsewhere, against the backdrop of unrelenting traffic and brutalist concrete, the greens often seem weirdly out of place, like an introduced alien species.

“Shuttling between air-conditioned high rises decorated with a simulacrum of nature, it’s easy to ignore the impact on climate and communities of relentless forest destruction taking place far away,” said Greenpeace Indonesia campaigner Yuyun Indradi.

Indonesia’s most densely populated

B

Vietnam’s rate cut may spur growth amid credit worries

V

ietnam’s surprise lowering of interest rates for the first time in three years may help to support economic growth, but raises credit risks in a nation still grappling with a hangover of bad debt.

The central bank reduced the refinance rate by 25 basis points to 6.25 percent last week, and also lowered the discount rate to 4.25 percent from 4.5 percent. The changes come into effect on Monday, the State Bank of Vietnam said on its web site.

“These rate cuts will make it cheaper for businesses and individuals to borrow, so it will help spur loan demand and bolster consumption,” said Do Ngoc Quynh, head of treasury at Bank for Investment & Development of Vietnam in Hanoi.

“Vietnamese companies still highly rely on bank lending. We just need to be mindful about how the loans will be used to avoid increasing bad debt.”

The policy easing came a day after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said the central bank should remain on hold, stressing the need to contain rapid credit growth. Vietnam remains vulnerable because of the slow pace of its banking sector reforms, the IMF said.

The central bank said in its statement that the move was to help boost economic growth and keep inflation under control. Vietnam is among the fastest-expanding economies in the world, but growth is still below the government’s ambitious target of 6.7 percent. Annual inflation eased to 2.54 percent in June, the slowest pace in almost a year.

Vietnam has done much to overhaul its banking system since 2012, after a lending spree and weak controls led to a surge in bad debt. The central bank in 2013 set up the Vietnam Asset Management Co. to buy banks’ bad debt. Nonperforming loans, at 17 percent at the time, dropped to 2.6 percent as of March and the government aims to keep it under 3 percent.

While the asset quality of Vietnamese banks has improved, there is a risk some new loans could sour, according to a Moody’s Investors Service research note. Bad loans at Vietnam banks were 6.8 percent of total loans as of the end of 2016, Moody’s said.

‘Prudent’ growth

“The government has spent some time stabilizing the economy and now the macroeconomic situation is stable, favoring easing monetary policies for growth,” Nguyen Ngoc Anh, chief economist and chairman of the Development and Policies Research Center in Hanoi.

“However, it’s crucial to be more prudent with fast-lending growth and vigilant about where the money is going to avoid having bubble markets in property and equities and the quickening of inflation, which we experienced in the past,” he said. The IMF reported that its estimate of impaired loans at Vietnamese banks had decreased to 8.4 percent of total loans at the end of 2016 from 12.7 percent in mid-2015 The central bank’s target for credit growth this year is 18 percent. The banking system had about 345 trillion dong ($15.2 billion) of unresolved bad debt as of December 31, 2016, according to the central bank.

Lawmakers last month endorsed rules that would help clear nonperforming loans from the banking system. Banks would be able to sell bad loans and the assets backing them with fewer restrictions than presently imposed, speeding up the disposal process.

Challenging target

Workers take a break at an artificial garden at the newly opened Terminal 3 at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Tangerang, Indonesia. AP

island, Java, is nearly completely denuded of its original virgin forest and Sumatra is nearly as bare. Palm oil and pulp wood plantation companies are now making inroads into the great forests of Borneo and Papua.

The draining of tropical wetlands for industrial plantations has also come at

a significant human cost. Record dry season fires in Sumatra and Borneo in 2015 hastened 100,000 deaths in the region from air pollution, according to a Harvard and Columbia study, and by World Bank estimates cost Indonesia’s economy $16 billion.

“Perhaps when our children grow

up, fake trees may help them reflect on how badly we need to protect that which is authentic and can’t simply be purchased in a mall,” Indradi said.

“Or will they decide that the more comfortable, accessible and colorful fake version will do them just as well?” AP

Buddhists protest UN human-rights envoy in western Myanmar

uddhist demonstrators on Wednesday protested the arrival of the United Nations (UN) human-rights envoy to Myanmar for an information-gathering trip in troubled Rakhine state, where security forces have been accused of rights abuses against the Muslim Rohingya minority.

Less than 100 protesters from the state’s ethnic Rakhine Buddhist community shouted and held signs, as Yanghee Lee passed in her car in Sittwe, the state capital, calling her unfair and unwanted.

Lee has criticized the government’s treatment of the Rohingya minority, who face severe discrimination in Buddhist-majority Myanmar. They were the targets of intercommunal violence in 2012 that killed hundreds and drove about 140,000 people—predominantly Rohingya—from their homes to displacement camps, where most remain.

Last October the army launched counterinsurgency operations in Rohingya areas after assailants pre-

Editor: Max V. de Leon • Friday, July 14, 2017 A5

What Rakhine people think about Yanghee Lee is that she is too onesided. This is why people in Rakhine state don’t like Yanghee Lee’s visit, because whether she comes here or not, nothing will change for us.” —Than Tun

sumed to be Rohingya attacked police outposts along the border with Bangladesh, killing nine officers and seizing weapons and ammunition.

UN human-rights investigators and independent rights organizations charge that soldiers and police killed and raped civilians and burned down more than 1,000 homes during the operations.

Lee is on a 12-day visit to Myanmar at the invitation of the government during which she is to discuss human- rights issues with political and

community leaders and civil-society representatives.

After her arrival in Sittwe, she visited a prison where hundreds of Rohingya men are detained on suspicion of having links with the assailants who carried out the October attacks.

“Yanghee Lee has been here in Rakhine three or four times but every time she goes back and writes a report about her trip or has press conferences and never mentioned any good thing about either Rakhine people or the Myanmar government,” said Than Tun, a leader

of the Rakhine Buddhist community.

“What Rakhine people think about Yanghee Lee is that she is too one-sided,” he said. “This is why people in Rakhine state don’t like Yanghee Lee’s visit, because whether she comes here or not, nothing will change for us.”

Lee has been outspoken in her criticism of the government on previous visits, and recommended the establishment of a special UN mission primarily to investigate the problems in Rakhine. The UN Human Rights Council approved the mission by consensus in March and in May appointed three legal experts and human-rights advocates to lead it.

In June, however, Myanmar officials announced that the mission’s members would not be allowed into the country. They insisted that their own efforts to deal with the problem—including an advisory committee appointed

by Myanmar’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and led by former UN SecretaryGeneral Kofi Annan—are adequate. AP

Even with the rate cuts, the government’s growth target will be hard to achieve as trade momentum eases, said Eugenia Victorino, an economist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. in Singapore. ANZ recently lowered its growth forecast for Vietnam to 6 percent from 6.4 percent.

“Even as export growth has remained buoyant, the reemergence of a narrow trade deficit this year implies a lower net contribution of trade to overall growth,” Victorino said in a note. Bloomberg News

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The World BusinessMirror

Friday, July 14, 2017

May faces battle over Brexit laws as clock ticks on EU talks

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ne year after becoming UK prime minister, Theresa May is braced for political trench warfare over Brexit as she finally unveils the landmark law that will take Britain out of the European Union.

Opposition politicians are plotting to unite with rebels in May’s Conservative Party to rewrite the key piece of legislation that will prepare the UK’s law book for leaving the EU—before she has even published it.

Without an automatic majority in Parliament, May’s minority Tory government is likely to need votes from other parties to pass the so-called repeal bill.

Her team is prepar ing for months of attritional battles ahead and will seek to make allies with political rivals, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named discussing internal plans.

“By working together, in the national interest, we can ensure we have a fully functioning legal system on the day we leave the European Union,” Brexit Secretary David Davis said in an e-mail last Thursday, as he appealed to other parties for support. “The eyes of the country are on us, and I will work with anyone to achieve this goal and shape a new future for our country.”

Time is short

A year to the day since she succeeded David Cameron, May and her vision of a clean break with the EU are under attack on two fronts—her critics in London, who are emboldened by her failure to win a majority in last month’s

3.2M

The number of Europeans living in Britain

election and want a softer departure—and the EU’s negotiators who are taking a firm line as talks unfold.

Time is also short. The prime minister wants to open talks on a new free-trade deal between the UK and the EU so the future trading relationship is settled by the deadline for talks concluding on March 29, 2019.

Yet, trade discussions will not begin until the EU judges that the UK has made enough progress toward settling the long-term fate of 3.2 million Europeans living in Britain, the payment of a financial settlement to the bloc and the future for the Irish border. Progress so far has been limited in all three areas.

Last Thursday May’s administration will set out the legal mechanism for adjusting British law after Brexit.

Little margin

The EU (withdrawal) bill, to give the repeal bill its formal title, will end the jurisdiction of EU law in

Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May speaks to the media outside 10 Downing Street in London on June 19. AP/Matt Dunham

the UK. It will also convert existing European statutes into the British law book when the UK leaves the bloc, a move intended to provide continuity for businesses and to avoid a legislative black hole appearing overnight as Britain exits the EU. In an interview with The Guardian newspaper on Thursday, Labour’s Brexit Spokesman Keir Starmer said he was putting the government “on notice” that the official opposition party would not support the repeal bill in its current form. It would take only seven lawmakers from May’s Tory party to rebel in order to potentially defeat the government in any vote in the House of Commons.

Starmer demanded changes to the bill in six areas, including the extent of the executive powers the draft law gives May’s ministers to alter legislation without full scrutiny from Parliament. A senior figure in May’s team said this battle would be the most difficult for the government to win.

While the repeal bill itself is likely to pass eventually, longr unning clashes over fol lowup legislation could bring the whole business of government

to a standstill, the person said.

In Brussels, EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier dismissed comments from Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson that the EU could “go whistle” for its money if it thought Britain would pay sums said to be as high as €100 billion ($114 billion) as an exit fee. “I am not hearing any whistling, just a clock ticking,” Barnier said.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will meet Barnier in Brussels for detailed talks Thursday.

“Labour respects the referendum result and the decision to leave the European Union,” Corbyn said in an e-mailed statement before the meeting. “But a Labour Brexit would look very d if ferent to the race-to -thebottom tax haven backed by this Conservative Government.”

T he gover nment w i l l a l so publish three “position papers” on Thursday, covering nuclear materials and safeguards issues, ongoing union judicial and administrative proceedings and privileges and immunities.

The papers will be presented to the EU for discussion when formal Brexit negotiations resume in Brussels next week. Bloomberg News

www.businessmirror.com.ph

China’s push for tech start-ups at risk from net crackdown

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hina wants to create the world’s next Silicon Valley, but will the world’s top inventors and entrepreneurs want to work in an environment cut off from the global Internet?

That’s the question now rattling through start-up communities from Beijing to Shenzhen, as the country’s government takes the first steps toward closing one of the few remaining paths around its strict censorship controls.

Chinese officials are said to have told telecommunications carriers to block individuals from using personal virtual private networks (VPNs) by February. That would eliminate the way local people, students and expats now access banned web sites—to search on Google, connect with friends on Facebook, read stories from the New York Times or check the latest Twitter posts from Donald J. Trump.

China’s government plans to allow businesses to keep using VPNs for access to the outside world—if they obtain approval for corporate lines and register their usage.

But it’s not clear how easily businesses will get VPNs approved and, even if they do, employees may be out of luck when they work from home or from their smartphones on the road. Ambitious entrepreneurs and start-ups may be hardest hit.

“VPNs are absolutely critical and foundational to almost any businesses in China, large or small—and especially important for innovative businesses,” said Andy Mok, Beijing-based managing director at Red Pagoda Resources, which advises start-ups and other companies in China. “Denying access to VPNs in China would demolish the entire stack of the start-up ecosystem here.”

Already, China operates one of the world’s most far-reaching censorship systems. Companies, like search giant Baidu Inc., are required to block certain web sites and adjust results for sensitive terms like “Tiananmen Square” and “Falun Gong”, while government officials scout for new violations or leaks.

VPNs have allowed people a way around those controls with software that makes it appear like they’re accessing the Internet from another country. Many professionals, including academics, freelance photographers and star tup workers, would suffer if the new restrictions are imposed as planned.

For example, the founder of a Beijingbased agricultural-technology start-up with fewer than 30 employees uses a personal VPN to get information and research from blocked overseas news sites.

The person said the company also uses Facebook and Twitter to promote products to clients abroad—as do many other China-based star t-ups seeking to expand internationally. The person declined to be named to avoid inviting government scrutiny.

At a Beijing-based video-sharing company, whose business is to transfer content from sites such as YouTube— which is blocked in China—to domestic sites, a government notice in January signaling the government’s intention to crack down on personal VPNs caused panic among the staff because their business is reliant on the technology, according to an employee who declined to be named to avoid scrutiny.

“If they take VPNs away from the business community—unless you’re working for a major multinational with a corporate VPN—how is China going to fulfill Li Keqiang’s vision of being an innovative nation?” said James McGregor, Shanghai-based chairman of China Region at APCO Worldwide Inc., a business consultanc y. “What about students, academics, start-ups, small businesses, business travelers in China?”

Chinese regulators, for now, are trying to assuage fears of a wider crackdown.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Te c h n o l o g y i s s u e d a s t ate m e nt o n Wednesday in which it emphasized its original January notice governing VPN use should remain the main point of reference, and promised not to sever legitimate means of accessing the global Internet. Yet, frequent users are mindful of the country’s spotty record on that front.

Many software developers in China rely on overseas code libraries, which may be inaccessible without VPNs. For instance, the popular developers’ site Github was briefly blocked in China in 2013.

“Despite all the advances that China has made, there’s still a lot of product innovations that happen abroad that entrepreneurs in China can and need to learn from, and they often learn through overseas news sites,” Mok said.

Bloomberg News

Senate Republicans, preparing new health bill, have no votes to spare

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A S H I N G T O N —T h e likely defection of two Senate Republicans has left their leaders no margin for error as they move on Thursday to unveil another version of their bill to repeal much of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)—without an assurance that they have the votes even to begin debate next week.

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky flatly declared on Wednesday that he would not vote to take up the bill, which he said left too much of President Barack Obama’s health law in place. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine has gone almost as far, saying that the bill cuts too much and that only major revisions could win her over.

The loss of a single additional senator would doom, at least for now, the Republicans’ effort to make good on their seven-year promise to uproot the health law.

Unity is proving elusive. A lunch meeting of Republican senators on Wednesday ended with no clear consensus.

After scrapping plans for a vote last month, the Senate majority leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, wants to try again next week. But senators have shown few signs of substantial progress toward the needed 50 votes.

Paul said on Wednesday that the revised version of McConnell’s bill was even worse than the original proposal. The new version, he said, provides more subsidies to insurance companies, and it keeps some of the taxes imposed by the ACA that the original bill would have repealed. “We promised the American voters that we would repeal Obamacare,” Paul added. “But

Sen. Patty Murray (Democrat-Washington) with children with preexisting conditions covered by the Affordable Care Act during a news conference about health care, on Capitol Hill in Washington on July 12. Tom Brenner/The New York Times

when you’re keeping half the taxes, most of the regulations and creating a brand-new insurance bailout superfund, that to most people just doesn’t look like repeal.”

Collins has been a vocal critic of the bill for very different reasons.

“If the Medicaid cuts remain the same in the new version of the Senate bill, I will vote no on the motion to proceed,” she said last Wednesday, referring to the first step required to begin debate.

As Senate Republicans struggled for agreement on the contents of their repeal bill, President Donald J. Trump exerted pressure.

“I am sitting in the Oval Office with a pen in hand, waiting for our senators to give it to me,” he said in an interview with Pat Robertson, the founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network.

Tr u mp of fere d a w a r n i ng about what would happen if the Senate failed.

“Well, I don’t even want to talk about it because I think it would be very bad,” Trump added. “I will be very angry about it, and a lot of people will be very upset.”

Republicans hold 52 seats in the Senate and can afford to lose only two of their members on votes to take up and pass the legislation, which is opposed by all the Democrats. Vice President Mike Pence would cast the tiebreaking vote if there is a 50-50 split.

“We just have differences that are legitimate about how the health-care legislation affects our states,” said Sen. Rob Portman, Republican-Ohio, who said before the Fourth of July recess that he did not support the repeal bill as it had been written. “Some people feel strongly one way, and others another way. But we’re trying to find middle ground.”

McConnell has been considering changes in his bill that would increase insurance subsidies for low-income people and preserve two taxes imposed on high-income people by the ACA. The bill is still expected to make huge changes in Medicaid, putting caps on federal payments to states and rolling back the expansion of the program under the ACA that has extended insurance to millions of people.

One issue still up in the air is a proposal by Sen. Ted Cruz, Republican-Texas, that would allow insurers to sell less comprehensive plans if they also offered at least one option that complied with federal standards. The strippeddown plans could omit certain types of coverage, such as maternity or mental-health care.

Groups represent ing pat ie nt s a nd i n s u re r s f lo o d e d S e n at e of f ic e s l a s t We d ne s day w ith correspondence o p p o s i n g t he pro p o s a l . “The Cruz proposal would result in higher, not lower, premiums for people with serious and chronic conditions,” said a letter from 13 patient-advocacy groups, including the American Heart Association and the lobbying arm of the American Cancer Society.

Scott P. Serota, the president and CEO of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, said the Cruz plan “would create two sets of rules for health-insurance products” and could make coverage unaffordable for people w ith preexisting conditions.

Sen. Mi ke Round s, Republ ic a n- Sout h Da kot a , su g gested s ome k i nd of re g u l at ion to l i m it t he d i f ference i n pr ices for compl i a nt a nd noncompl ia nt i n su ra nce pl a n s, so pre m iu m s wou ld not be “out rageou sly h ig h ” for people w it h pree x i st i ng cond it ion s.

But, that was dismissed by Paul as a form of price controls.

And Cruz pushed back against insurers’ criticism.

“Insurance companies have made billions of dollars under Obamacare,” Cr uz said, “and their focus appears to be on maximizing their own subsidies at the expense of consumer choice”.

Democrats may not have the votes to stop the Republican push to repeal the ACA, but they do have Senate rules to help them.

Under the procedure that Republicans are using to speed passage of the health-care bill, senators can object to a provision if it does not change federal spending or revenue or if the budgetary effects are “merely incidental” to some policy objective.

Republicans and Democrats are mak ing for ma l presentations this week to the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, who serves as a sort of referee, deciding whether specific provisions of the bill comply.

New York Times News Service

www.businessmirror.com.ph

The World

Brazil’s ex-prexy sentenced to 10 yrs for corruption

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IO DE JANEIRO—The former president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was found guilty of corruption and money laundering on Wednesday and sentenced to nearly 10 years in prison, a stunning setback for a politician who has wielded enormous influence across Latin America for decades.

The case against Silva, who raised Brazil’s profile on the world stage as president from 2003 to 2010, stemmed from charges that he and his wife illegally received about $1.1 million in improvements and expenses from a construction company for a beachfront apartment.

In exchange, prosecutors said, the company was able to obtain lucrative contracts from Petrobras, the statecontrolled oil giant.

His conviction tarnishes his legacy as one of Brazil’s most commanding political figures, a charismatic leader who grew up poor, challenged the military dictatorship and nurtured global ambitions for his nation, helping to land the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.

“This goes far beyond himself and his political career, which is seriously damaged—it’s Brazil’s reputation,” said Christopher Sabatini, executive director of Global Americans, a research group in New York. “He was a brand. Brand Brazil.”

But Brazil’s economic fortunes eventually turned and, plagued by scandals, Silva’s leftist Workers’ Party lost the presidency last year when the Senate impeached his hand-picked successor, Dilma Rousseff, in a power struggle that consumed the nation.

Silva, 71, who has called the charges against him a “ farce”, has been planning a politica l comeback. Despite multiple corruption allegations against him, he has announced his intention to run for president in next year’s election and has been widely considered a leading contender.

The ruling could be a crippling blow to his aspirations.

Judge Serg io Moro, who issued Wednesday’s verdict, said that under Brazilian law, Silva would be ineligible to run for office for twice as long as his sentence, or 19 years.

Legal scholars interpreted the ruling to mean that Silva could still run for president while the case is being appealed. But if he fails on appeal, they said, it could either leave the Workers’ Party without an obvious candidate in next year’s vote or prevent him from taking office.

The conviction is the latest salvo by Brazil’s judicial branch, which has declared war on the country’s entrenched culture of corruption.

Brazil’s current president, Michel Temer, was charged last month with corruption, part of a near constant stream of allegations and charges that have ripped through the nation’s political establishment in recent years.

Moro, who oversees cases stemming from a broad graft scandal surrounding the state-controlled oil company, said Silva’s actions were part of a “scheme of systemic corruption” in Petrobras.

“The president of the republic has enormous responsibilities,” Moro wrote.

“As such, his culpability is also” enormous when he commits crimes, he added.

Silva—commonly known as Lula— presided over a period of robust economic growth in Brazil and remains a widely popular figure, credited with leading a social transformation that lifted millions from poverty in a nation with one of the world’s biggest disparities between rich and poor.

Despite the corruption allegations against him and his party, Silva has been leading in recent public opinion polls on the election.

Moro, the judge who convicted him, is often cited as Silva’s closest rival in

hypothetical matchups in the presidential race, though Moro has ruled out running for office.

“We view this as an attempt to push Lula out of the electoral process,” said Sen. Gleisi Hoffmann, who recently took the helm of the Workers’ Party. “A presidential election without the participation of Lula is fraudulent and undemocratic. If you want to take him out of the running, then put up a candidate and run against him in the electoral booth.”

Silva’s lawyers said in a statement issued on Wednesday night that the former president is innocent. They called him the victim of a politicized prosecution, “a famous strategy that has been used to brutal effect by various dictatorships throughout history”.

In the verdict, Moro said that the former president had sought to intimidate the court, which the judge argued could be grounds for ordering his immediate arrest. Yet, Moro wrote, he deemed it “prudent” to allow Silva to remain free pending an appeal.

Sending a former president to jail would be a “traumatic” event, he wrote.

W hile Silva’s conviction involves rel at ively modest sums, especia l ly compared with the staggering scale of some corruption cases in Brazil, prosecutors have described him as the mastermind of an enormous kickback scheme that enabled his party to buy support in Congress.

The case against him began with a probe into money laundering at a gas station.

But as prosecutors continued digging, they said they discovered billions of dollars worth of bribes involving Petrobras and powerful contractors like Odebrecht, a large construction company with deep ties across the hemisphere.

The case—which became known as the Lava Jato, or Car Wash, scandal—has ensnared other powerful politicians and put dozens of lawmakers under a cloud of suspicion.

Eduardo Cunha, former speaker of the House, was sentenced in March to 15 years in jail for money laundering and corruption uncovered during the Petrobras investigation. And Temer, the current president, is working furiously to avoid being put on trial, hoping to convince lawmakers not to send the charges against him to the Supreme Court, the only venue where senior sitting politicians can be prosecuted.

The investigations have left Brazilians with few prominent politicians untainted by allegations of corruption.

Wary politicians, meanwhile, have been considering passing an amnesty law to shield themselves, arguing that such protection is warranted to avert a collapse of the political system.

Mauricio Santoro, a political scientist at the Rio de Janeiro State University, called the sentence against Silva a momentous turning point in a deeply polarized nation.

“We have almost half of the country wanting Lula to be president and the other half wanting him jailed,” Santoro said.

“This puts a huge responsibility in the hands of the judges” ruling on the appeal.

Even if Silva wins the appeal, he said, the case adds to the sense that Brazil’s crusading judiciary has changed the rules of the game for politicians. Past presidents widely suspected of corruption managed to keep prosecutors at bay.

“We are living in a very different Brazil,” he added. New York Times News Service

BusinessMirror

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the former Brazilian president, during a news conference in São Paulo, Brazil, on March 28, 2016. Da Silva was found guilty of corruption and money laundering on July 12, and sentenced to nearly 10 years in prison. Lalo de Almeida/The New York Times

Friday, July 14, 2017

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

Genetic therapy for cancer nears FDA approval

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Food and Drug Administration (FDA) panel opened a new era in medicine on Wednesday, unanimously recommending that the agency approve the first treatment that genetically alters a patient’s own cells to fight cancer, transforming them into what scientists call “a living drug” that powerfully bolsters the immune system to shut down the disease.

If the FDA accepts the recommendation, which is likely, the treatment will be the first gene therapy to reach the market. Others are expected: Researchers and drug companies have been engaged in intense competition for decades to reach this milestone.

Novartis is now poised to be the first. Its treatment is for a type of leukemia, and it is working on similar types of treatments in hundreds of patients for another form of the disease, as well as multiple myeloma and an aggressive brain tumor.

To use the technique, a separate treatment must be created for each patient—their cells removed at an approved medical center, frozen, shipped to a Novartis plant for thawing and processing, frozen again and shipped back to the treatment center.

A single dose of the resulting product has brought long remissions, and possibly cures, to scores of patients in studies who faced death because every other treatment had failed. The panel recommended approving the treatment for B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia that has resisted treatment, or relapsed, in children and young adults aged 3 to 25.

One of those patients, Emily Whitehead, now 12 and the first child given the altered cells, was at the meeting of the panel with her parents to advocate approval of the drug that saved her life.

In 2012 as a 6 year old, she was treated in a study at the Children’s

$300K The predicted cost of the treatment

Hospital of Philadelphia. Severe side effects—raging fever, crashing blood pressure, lung congestion—nearly killed her. But she emerged cancer-free, and has remained so.

“We believe that when this treatment is approved, it will save thousands of chi ldren’s lives around the world,” Emily’s father, Tom Whitehead, told the panel. “I hope that someday all of you on the advisory committee can tell your families for generations that you were part of the process that ended the use of toxic treatments, like chemotherapy and radiation, as standard treatment, and turned blood cancers into a treatable disease that, even after relapse, most people survive.”

The main evidence that Novartis presented to the FDA came from a study of 63 patients who received t he treatment f rom April 2015 to August 2016. Fifty-two of them, or 82.5 percent, went into remission—a high rate for such a severe disease. Eleven others died.

“It’s a new world, an exciting therapy,” said Dr. Gwen Nichols, the chief medical officer of the

Emily Whitehead, 12, who at age 6 was the first child ever given altered cells to treat cancer, with her parents Tom and Kari Whitehead, in Beltsville, Maryland on July 11. A Food and Drug Administration panel unanimously recommended the approval on July 12 of Novartis’s treatment to genetically alter a patient’s own cells to fight leukemia, transforming them into what scientists call “a living drug” that powerfully bolsters the immune system. T.J. Kirkpatrick/The New York Times

Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, which paid for some of the research that led to the treatment.

The next step, she said, will be to determine “what we can combine it with, and is there a way to use it in the future to treat patients with less disease, so that the immune system is in better shape and really able to fight.” She added, “This is the beginning of something big.”

At the meeting, the panel of experts did not question the lifesaving potential of the treatment in hopeless cases. But they raised concerns about potentially life-threatening side effects— short-term worries about acute reactions, like those Emily experienced, and longer-term worries about whether the infused cells could, years later, cause secondary cancers or other problems.

Oncologists have learned how to treat the acute reactions and, so far, no long-term problems have been detected, but not enough time has passed to rule them out.

Patients who receive the treatment will be entered in a registry and tracked for 15 years.

Treatments involving live cells, known as “biologics” are generally far more difficult to manufacture than standard drugs, and the panelists also expressed concerns about whether Novartis would be able to produce consistent treatments and maintain quality control as it scaled up its operation.

Another parent at the meeting, Don McMahon, described his son Connor’s grueling 12 years with severe and relapsing leukemia, which started when he was 3. McMahon displayed painful photographs of Connor, bald

France’s Macron prepares to welcome Trump

P

AR IS—President Donald J. Trump arrived in Europe on Thursday for the second time in less than a week, having accepted a rare outstretched hand from a leader on the continent, where he is deeply unpopular.

The invitation by France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, might not only give Trump a brief respite from his domestic political woes, but also establish Macron’s standing as Trump’s primary point of contact in Western Europe.

It is a position Macron appears to have fallen into almost by default, as the British focus on their exit from the European Union; Germany’s chancellor expresses open disdain for Trump; and the southern Europeans remain in perennial fiscal difficulty. But it is also a role that Macron has assumed with relish: The whiz kid of French politics has a seemingly limitless confidence in his capacity for seduction.

How the relationship will work with Trump remains to be seen.

The invitation by Macron, at 39 France’s youngest president in modern times, to Trump, 71, the oldest person ever elected to the White House, is consistent with Macron’s developing hard-nosed pragmatism in global affairs.

It is, however, an unlikely partnership, given Trump’s professed admiration for Marine Le Pen, the far-right populist Macron defeated in the May 7 election, and the gulf

French President Emmanuel Macron (left) with President Donald J. Trump standing behind other Group of 20 leaders in Hamburg, Germany on July 7. Trump’s visit to Paris on Bastille Day will take him to a city he has repeatedly derided—and at the side of a French leader best known to Americans as the earnest young man with the endless handshake. Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

between Macron’s technocratic, pro-European and youth-oriented approach and Trump’s nationalistic, America-first message.

On Sy r ia, Macron has re nounced the demise of President Bashar al-Assad as a precondition of peace talks. He invited Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, to a meeting in France, where he challenged Putin with tough words on Syria and on gay rights. On Africa, he gave a sober—if impolitic— warning about high birthrates.

Macron’s aides believe that working with America is inevitable and indispensable and that, for better or worse, it must be done through the current president.

The French president has already taken a softer line toward Trump than some of his European counterparts, notably Angela Merkel, the German chancellor.

His early hopes that Trump might adopt Europe’s position on climate change were dashed when Trump announced America’s withdrawal from the 2015 Paris climate accord, which the French consider a preeminent diplomatic achievement.

Macron responded with a semimocking speech in English, promising to “Make Our Planet Great Again”, and reiterated an ironic invitation to US scientists “fighting obscurantism”, as he put it during his campaign, to come to France.

Yet not long after, Macron’s Spokesman, Christophe Castaner emphasized the importance of not isolating Trump, of “bringing the president of the United States back into the circle”. Already that attitude has some French commentators accepting the idea that Macron “has become the privileged

interlocutor” of Trump in Europe, said Nicolas Tenzer, who teaches at Sciences Po, a leading university for political science, and who heads a think tank here.

And this, in spite of the vast ideological and political gulf between the two. “In the TrumpMacron relationship, opposites attract,” said Denis Lacorne, a leading French specialist on America. “Macron has positions much closer to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. He’s a pluralist. He’s got a world vision that’s exactly the opposite of Trump’s.”

The America that fascinates Macron—Silicon Valley and the c u lt u re of st a r t-ups—is not Trump’s America, but Macron, a former investment banker, is a pragmatist, not an ideologue.

“The English are bogged down in Brexit, and ” Trump’s “relations with Merkel are a disaster”, Tenzer explained. Has Macron gained that position in regard to the US leader “ by his own will, or is it simply by default?”

Lacorne asked.

“I think with Macron, there is a capacity to decide and react very quickly,” Lacorne said.

He noted the French president had moved fast to fill the perceived Anglo-German void, even if it was too soon to declare a renaissance in the relationship between France and America, one of the world’s oldest geopolitical alliances.

New York Times News Service

and intubated during treatment.

And he added chemotherapy had left his son infertile.

A year ago, the family was preparing for a bone-marrow transplant when they learned about the cell treatment, which Connor then underwent at Duke University.

He has since returned to playing hockey. Compared with standard treatment, which required dozens of spinal taps and painful bonemarrow tests, the T-cell treatment was far easier to tolerate, McMahon said, and he urged the panel to vote for approval.

T he t reat ment wa s de ve lo p e d b y r e s e a rc h e r s at t h e U n i v e r s it y o f Pe n n s y l v a n i a a nd l icensed to Nova r t is. Use will not be widespread at first, because the disease is not common. It affects only 5,000 people a year, about 60 percent of them

children and young adults. Most children are cured with standard treatments, but in 15 percent of the cases—like Emily’s and Connor’s—the disease does not respond, or it relapses.

Analysts predict that these individualized treatments could cost more than $300,000, but a spokesman for Novartis, Julie Masow, declined to specify a price.

Although the figure may seem high, people with cancer often undergo years of expensive treatment and repeat hospital stays that can ultimately cost even more.

Because the treatment is complex and patients need expert care to manage the side effects, Novartis will initially limit its use to 30 or 35 medical centers where staff will be trained and approved to administer it, the company said.

New York Times News Service

Top US diplomat to return to Qatar for talks with emir

D

UBAI, United Arab Emirates— The US’s top diplomat was expected to travel back to Qatar on Thursday for more talks with the country’s 37-year-old emir, a day after wrapping up discussions with the king of Saudi Arabia and other officials from Arab countries lined up against Qatar.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s travels have, so far, not led to any signs of a breakthrough in an increasingly entrenched dispute that has divided some of America’s most important Mideast allies. Tillerson’s trip from Kuwait to the western Saudi city of Jiddah followed discussions last Tuesday with Qatari emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani that ended with the signing of a counterterrorism pact.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain severed relations with Qatar and cut air, sea and land routes with it over a month ago, accusing Doha of supporting extremist groups. Qatar denies the allegations.

The quartet has given no indication it would be willing to back off from its hard-nosed stance. Just hours before Tillerson’s arrival in Jiddah, the four Arab states said the counterterrorism deal that Qatar signed with him last Tuesday was “not enough” to ease their concerns.

Tillerson’s visit to Saudi Arabia included talks with King Salman and his powerful son Mohammed bin Salman, who was recently elevated to the role of crown prince, placing him next in line to the throne. He also met with the for-

eign ministers of the four countries in the anti-Qatar bloc. Officials gave little indication of what was discussed, but Tillerson was likely to press the bloc to ease up on some of its demands after he secured the deal for Qatar to intensify its fight against terrorism and address shortfalls in policing terrorism funding.

The four anti-Qatar countries last month issued a tough 13-point list of demands that included shutting down Qatar’s flagship Al-Jazeera network and other news outlets, cutting ties with Islamist groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, limiting Qatar’s ties with Iran and expelling Turkish troops stationed in the tiny Gulf country.

Qatar has rejected the demands, saying that agreeing to them wholesale would undermine its sovereignty.

The head of Qatar’s government communication office, Sheikh Saif bin Ahmed Al Thani, has accused the quartet of organizing “a smear campaign in the international media to damage Qatar’s reputation” and said they are “not interested in engaging in honest negotiations to resolve our differences”.

The anti-Qatar bloc took partial credit for the US counterterrorism deal Qatar signed last Tuesday, saying it was the result of “repeated pressures and demands” by the four countries and others, but that it failed to go far enough. While welcoming US-led efforts to dry up terrorist funding, the four maintained a hard line that Qatar must meet their list of what they said were “fair and legitimate demands”. AP

The Regions BusinessMirror

news@businessmirror.com.ph

Editor: Efleda P. Campos • Friday, July 14, 2017

A9

WB, ADB willing to help rebuild Marawi City

M

By Cai U. Ordinario

@cuo_bm

ULTILATERAL development banks have expressed their willingness to extend loans and technical assistance to help the government rebuild Marawi City, the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) said.

Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto M. Pernia recently told reporters the World Bank has offered to extend an emergency loan, while the Asian Development Bank offered to extend a technical-assistance grant.

“It’s a TA grant so it should be faster than a loan, and also the World Bank is looking at an emergency reconstruction and development loan, an additional emergency loan,” Pernia said. “The ADB has also expressed interest in formulating a TA project for the rehabilitation and reconstruction of Marawi City,” he said.

Per n i a sa id , however, t he government has yet to estimate how much it will need to rebuild Marawi City because the fighting is ongoing.

Earlier, the European Commission has announced its P49 million worth of humanitarian-aid financing to civilians who escaped from Marawi City.

The assistance is expected to benefit over 50,000 people affected by the ongoing fighting between the Armed Forces and Islamist militants who have taken over parts of the city.

Meanwhile, Pernia said the

damage caused by the recent earthquake in Leyte was estimated at P51.79 million.

The amount may be smaller than expected, since the earthquake did not cause the total destruction of roads and bridges in the province.

Based on data released by the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council on Thursday, the damage caused by the earthquake has reached P107.18 million. This covers 80 damaged schools, five health facilities, 29 public/government establishments, two commercial buildings and 1,136 houses.

Of the houses damaged, 316 were totally damaged, while 820 suffered partial damage. Some 363 damaged houses were found in Ormoc City while 773 houses were in Kananga.

The earthquake affected 1,173 families, or 6,020 persons, in 15 barangays. Around 90 families, or 374 Filipinos, are being served in one evacuation center in Kananga.

A total of 1,083 families, or 5,646 persons, are cur rent ly staying with their families or friends.

ARMM asks LGUs to distribute new round of relief packs

By Manuel T. Cayon

@awimailbox Mindanao Bureau Chief

D

AVAO CITY—The Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) government has asked anew the assistance of local governments in Lanao del Sur to help distribute the new round of food packs, equivalent to two weeks’ sustenance for an evacuee family.

The new round of food packs would be good for the more than 33,000 families displaced by the Marawi crisis.

ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman dispatched an initial 2,500 food packs to the local governments of Lanao del Sur, Marawi City and the town of Saguiaran, an evacuation town nearest Marawi City.

A single food pack contains half a sack of rice or 25 kilos, a kilo of monggo beans, fresh and dried fish, 10 canned goods and two dozens of 3-in-1 coffee.

A pack is intended to meet the food requirements of a family of four for at least two weeks, the ARMM’s Humanitarian and

Emergency Action Response Team (HEART) said.

The new round of food-pack distribution would cover 165,000 individuals staying in evacuation centers and the homes of relatives and friends in Lanao del Sur. As of Monday, the estimated total number of evacuees reached 42,000, with the rests/preferring to stay in Iligan City, said Jo Henry, communications officer of the ARMM-HEART. The Department of Social Welfare and Development also provides food packs to the displaced persons.

Hataman said additional deliveries will be made to the LGUs in the coming days to complete the total number of food packs, as he already asked their help in the distribution of the food packs “to ensure that the assistance will reach the beneficiaries as quickly as possible”.

The fighting in Marawi City, now on its seventh week, has displaced more than 246,000 residents.

Henry said the recipient fami-

lies were identified and evaluated through the Disaster Assistance and Family Access Card (Dafac) system.

The government was using the Dafac system to evaluate the status and appropriate needs of affected families and ensure efficient relief distribution.

Henry said upon the instruction of the regional governor, the ARMM-HEART started distributing the two weeks worth of food packs to families, with Dafac, in the days leading to the end of Ramadan last month, so that the families will have something to prepare for during the celebration of Eid’l Fitr.

She said in addition to its humanitarian and relief operations, the ARMM government has also assisted the national government in drawing up plans for the recovery, reconstruction and rehabilitation of Marawi City and other affected areas. The task force created by President Duterte to oversee this operation, the Task Force Bangon Marawi, would coordinate its efforts with the regional government.

BLANKET CATCH A tandem of fishermen spread their nets for an early morning catch from the waters of Sabangan, Ilocos Sur. LAILA AUSTRIA

Manila traffic helps boost SBMA income

By Ashley Manabat Correspondent

C

L A R K F R EEP ORT—T he horrendous traffic in Metro Manila is actually helping boost the revenues of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) in Zambales.

“We are up P614 million. Our biggest income is the port operations and we are being helped immensely by the traffic in Manila,” said SBMA Administrator Wilma Eisma during the Balitaan media forum organized by the Capampangan in Media Inc., in cooperation with the Clark Development Corp., last week.

Eisma said SBMA doesn’t have any form of government subsidy and the income is derived from the authority’s operations alone.

“Businessmen are losing money because of the traffic in Manila and Subic is not only cheaper in terms of operations, but just the ease in doing business and doing things right are big factors,” she added.

Eisma also said SBMA has approved and signed some very exciting prospects, including the development of a new industrial park and a solar farm at the Redondo Peninsula, an area which was used by the US military as bombing target practice.

However, the fate of Dynamic Konstruct International Eco Builders Corp. (DKIEBC), which has signed an agreement with SBMA in the development of the industrial park and a solar farm in the peninsula, will be known after the board meeting on July 13.

Eisma said DKIEBC was not able to come up with a deposit of P500 million, after the deadline expired on July 12.

She said the money is meant “just to make sure that they can do the job and they have the money to do it”.

“I’m prepared to rescind the contract if they don’t meet the deadline,” she added. “But I cannot preempt the July 13 board decision.”

Eisma described the project as very ambitious that is why they have to be cautious.

“It’s more like an industrial city with a solar farm, which is selfsufficient in electricity and even in water they are looking in desalination, including creating their own energy in waste to energy projects,” she said.

Eisma added the project started with the time of chairman Roberto Garcia and “it carried over to our time”.

She said she was the last holdover in the voting because “I wanted to make sure that they have the money to support it because it’s

really a grand project.”

Eisma said just like in Clark, “We don’t have property to lease out in Subic. We have in theory 64,000 hectares, but only 14,000 are actually usable and now we are going to the new frontier like the Redondo Peninsula.”

Eisma, a lawyer by profession, said they are now in talks with local government units (LGUs) to consider going out because under the law, “We can come out with business incentives outside the fenced area.”

Some of the business incentives include the 5-percent income tax, visa-free assistance and tax-free importations, unlike regular investors which pay the regular tax rate.

But it has to be very carefully implemented and strictly monitored, she added.

Eisma said they already met with the mayors of Hermosa, Morong, Subic, Castillejos, San Antonio and San Marcelino to come up and identify contiguous areas of up to 400 hectares in their respective areas which can be leased to investors.

Meanwhile, Eisma said recently she had been chosen by the Board of Investments to help sell the Central Luzon growth corridor. That is why she joined the business investments mission in Taiwan and, in two weeks, she will join another mission to South Korea.

Remains of 6 people believed executed Yolanda Memorial and Learning Center to rise in Tacloban

by Maute-IS found in Marawi City

By Elmer V. Recuerdo

T

HE military said on Thursday it discovered the remains of civilians believed executed by members of the Maute-Islamic State (IS) group in Marawi City, which is still being cleared by government troops from terrorists.

The remains of about four to six people were discovered by elements of the Army’s 51st Infantry Battalion at around 9:47 a.m. on Wednesday in an area identified by the military as one of the execution sites of the terrorist group.

“The skeletal remains are believed to be that of six individuals whom the Maute/ASG Sayyaf [Abu Sayyaf Group] executed in the early part of the crisis as shown on the video released by them and posted on the internet,” the Joint Task Force Marawi said.

Armed Forces Western Mindanao Command commander Lt. Gen Carlito Galvez Jr. said, “The brutal execution is proof of their un-Islamic ways. These terrorists do not respect anyone or anything.”

“While these terrorists kill people indiscriminately, respecting no one in trying to dissect our land, our soldiers will continue to liberate Marawi City, bearing in mind that this city belongs to our Maranao brothers and sisters, and this land belongs to the Filipino people,” he said.

Brig. Gen. Rolando Joselito Bautista, commander of Joint Task Force Marawi, also condemned the brutal ways of the “Maute/ASG”.

“These brutal and inhuman actions of the Maute/ASG will not go unpunished. Our soldiers will do everything in their power to bring these terrorists to justice. We owe this to the victims, we owe this to our people,” Bautista said.

“We will pursue the Maute/ASG terrorists who attacked and caused the destruction of Marawi. We will make the Maute/ASG terrorists accountable in the destruction of Marawi and the countless crimes they committed against our Maranao brothers and sisters, and the whole Filipino nation,” he added.

The discovery of the six bodies brought to 45 the total number of civilian cadavers recovered by soldiers.

Meanwhile, the Joint Task Force Tawi-Tawi and members of the TawiTawi Provincial Police Office arrested on Thursday two members of the ASG, wanted by Malaysian authorities for kidnapping charges.

The suspects were identified as Ara Samindi and Omad Harun alias Halipa, who were nabbed at Lagaan Island and at Poblacion, respectively, both in Taganak, Tawi-Tawi.

Joint Task Force Tawi-Tawi commander Brig. Gen. Custudio Parcon said both suspects were connected to the ASG and kidnap-for-ransom leaders A lden Bagadi alias Sayning, Majan Sahijuan alias Apo Mike and the late-Abraham Hamid, all subleaders of the A SG based in Sulu. Rene Acosta

Correspondent

T

ACLOBAN CITY—The Regional Development Council (RDC) approved during a full council meeting last month the establishment of a Yolanda memorial and learning center that will not only serve as a constant reminder of the havoc caused by the supertyphoon, but also an educational center on disaster mitigation and climate-change adaptation.

The project, proposed by the city government of Tacloban, the Departments of Tourism and Science and Technology, has an estimated cost of P602 million, including the operation and maintenance expense of its first year of operation.

The creation of the memorial and learning center is a priority project of the RDC to support its thrust of “pursuing a vibrant tourism industry and resilient communities” as indicated in the regional development plan for 2017 to 2022. A copy of the approved project proposal and program of work was furnished to the BusinessMirror.

The Eastern Visayas Yolanda Memorial and Learning Center will be established in a 1-hectare property of the city government at the Tacloban North Resettlement Area in Barangay Suhi, where some of the families living in hazard zones were relocated.

Based on the proposal, the design

of the center buildings will be spiral in shape to depict cyclical movement of storms. A circular building will be placed in the middle of the spiral buildings to represent the eye of the storm.

The project will have two main components, the Memorial Museum that will house memorabilia, a compendium of photos, video materials, anthology of stories of survival and related literature; and a learning center with climate-change research materials, training rooms, a laboratory for weather tracking using the latest technologies, and rehabilitation and recovery plans and initiatives.

“The valuable lessons learned and good practices instituted are best shared through an Eastern Visayas Yolanda Memorial and learning center,” explained the rationale of the proposal. “The establishment of the Center responds to the Yolanda Comprehensive Rehabilitation and Recovery Plan’s objective to increase resilience and capacities of communities in coping with future hazard events.”

The museum will not only be a memorial to a disaster, “but a salute to the power, character and grace of the human spirit”, it added.

“The memorial will tell our story: A story of a people who lost so much, yet were determined to rise above the unparalleled disaster, showing the world their resilience and faith; a people fired up with courage, strengthened by humor and buoyed

up by overwhelming help, sympathy and prayers from all corners of the world,” its rationale added.

“The learning center will not only be a repository of photographs, records and remnants of a disaster, but will be one that strongly advocates and imparts lessons on risk reduction, disaster and crisis preparedness, resilience, climate-change adaptation and care for the environment.”

The plan is to establish three buildings in the area for a museum, a knowledge center and a research laboratory.

The museum and knowledge center will have a reception area where guests will be welcomed to register and pay an entrance fee. There will be foyers that will lead to two of its five halls.

At the beginning of the museum tour, a guide will brief the guests about the center and its facilities.

A short documentary on Supertyphoon Yolanda will be shown before the guests view the gallery of photos and memorabilia. The photo gallery will showcase still photos, newspaper clippings and assorted items.

It will also show photos of Leyte, Biliran and Samar islands before and after the typhoon to show the extent of the damage brought by the typhoon, pictures of national and global search, rescue and relief operations, images of resiliency, strength and hope reflected on the faces of the people, snapshots of government and non-governmental organization initiatives on rehabilita-

tion and photos of building back better and recover.

T he second ha ll, the Yolanda Knowledge Center and Simulation Room, envisions to instill on the visitors an awareness and comprehension on disasters and crisis situations and the risks and vulnerabilities that communities are exposed to through audio-visual presentations, interactive platforms, posters and simulators.

There will be different simulation machines that will allow guests to experience different climatic and weather conditions, like typhoons, storm surges and tsunamis. There will be trained center guides who will explain the different weather phenomena to the visitors.

The third hall will house the Yolanda Art Gallery, a souvenir shop and a mini-theater where locally and internationally produced films inspired by Yolanda will be shown. The theater, will also serve as a venue for local film makers to showcase their independently produced films.

The fourth hall will be a lecture room and library where trainings and workshops on climate-change adaptation, disaster-risk reduction and management, safety, first aid and rescue and related topics can be held regularly. A library will also be set up as a repository of reading materials related to Yolanda, climate change and disaster preparedness.

A10 Friday, July 14, 2017 • Editor: Angel R. Calso

Opinion BusinessMirror

editorial

It’s Duterte’s fault

J

ohnny Depp will always be Captain Jack Sparrow as Robert Downey Jr. will always be Iron Man/Tony Stark. The actors and the characters are intertwined and locked together. It is improbable that any other actors could play those roles in the way various performers have given cinema life to iconic personalities, such as Batman and James Bond.

Every organization has a leader and sometimes the person becomes more than just the title, but becomes the personification of the organization. Mark Zuckerberg is Facebook as Elton Musk is Tesla Inc. It is easy then to make statements like “Zuckerberg wants to destroy our privacy”.

You may know, for example, that Manuel V. Pangilinan is the chairman of the board and president and CEO of PLDT Inc., which is the parent company of Smart Communications Inc. But what is the name of the person who is in charge of Smart? If your Smart wireless signal is bad, whose desk do you threaten to jump up and down on to get better service?

When it comes to government and public policies, “It is Duterte’s fault” as it used to be “Aquino’s fault”.

Common sense tells us that no single person is responsible for the decisions and actions that a government—or a corporation for that matter—makes and takes. No member of the Henry Sy family trained the SM department store cashier that gave you good or bad service. A bill passed into law is the collaborative effort of all the legislators and the Executive branch. Decisions from Malacañang do go through discussions now and in the past, regardless if you think a particular president has been sent as a divine blessing or as a divine punishment.

However, this idea of equating government almost exclusively with an individual is becoming more extreme. The immigration situation in Europe is German Prime Minister “Merkel’s fault”. The US military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq are “Bush’s war”. While leaders should take responsibility for the actions of the organizations they are in charge of, it creates a public mind-set that problems—and solutions—are only a result of who is in charge.

Political historian Joshua Knowlton has written a lengthy academic essay on this topic and cites in his opinion that this trend began during the time of US President Ronald Reagan. Reagan’s economic policies were first labeled “voodoo economics” by his opponent George H.W. Bush who interestingly became Reagan’s vice president. The press changed this to “Reaganomics” and now we have “Abenomics” in Japan and previously “Aquinomics” and now “Dutertenomics” in the Philippines.

While it may be easy to label a policy that has a name and a face, the emphasis goes to the name and not the policy. Further, this labeling lends itself to promoting a political agenda, which can be far removed from the discussion of the policy itself. Dutertenomics becomes sensible or not based on whether you voted for Duterte.

With that way of thinking, you do not even need to know what the economic policies are all about.

In addition, to put the success or failure of government initiatives solely on the shoulders of the individual at the top makes it much easier to blindly follow the leader and not the direction the nation is moving to. It is our responsibility to understand and take charge of where we are headed.

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Opportunity James Jimenez

spox

L

et’s face it. With Congress in recess until nearly the end of the month, there won’t be any concrete new developments relating to the possible postponement of the 2016 Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) elections. At most, there is the call of the National Youth Commission to de-couple the two elections, which they theorize would mean that the SK would push through, despite the postponement of the Barangay polls.

I’ve heard that this approach has its adherents in Congress, as well as its share of disagree-ers. In any case, we’ll all have a lot more clarity on how things will eventually shake out, after the State of the Nation Address. I’m fairly certain that the more than 20.7 million qualified SK voters are going to be crossing their fingers until then. It’s a shame if they’re disappointed.

You can argue all you want that the SK system is flawed and all of that, but wasn’t that precisely the reason the SK elections were

postponed in 2013? Back then, the argument was that the SK needed an intervention to rid it of the problems that weighed it down: allegations of corruption, the obvious bent toward dynastism and the general perception that the elected SK officials simply weren’t doing anything significant.

Republic Act 10742 was that intervention, enacted precisely to address these problems. And the good news is, even just a cursory reading of this SK Reform Act of 2015 promises great things. It

It’s all a pyramid scheme John Mangun

OUTSIDE THE BOX

T

he traveling salesman walked into the hotel, laid a $100 bill on the counter, and asked to see a room for the night.

While the salesman was upstairs, the hotel owner took the money and went to the farmer to settle his debt. The farmer took the money to the carpenter to pay his bill for some repairs.

The carpenter went down the road to the grocery store to bring his past due account up to date. The grocery store owner then went to see the innkeeper to settle his obligation for a company party held at the hotel.

The salesman returned to the front desk, informed the owner that he would not stay at the hotel, put the $100 bill back in his pocket and left.

As a result of these financial transactions, the net worth of each individual was increased by $100 as their debts were paid off. The town’s economy saw an increase in its net worth as $500 of debt was eliminated.

The increase in economic activity occurred in the past and no additional money came into the

economy from the salesman’s visit.

The point is that in a “closed economy” like the one from my silly story, there cannot be any real economic growth. No matter how much business is transacted between the parties mentioned, the town’s economy will never be any larger than it is today. While a potential increase in population through births will grow the size, the per capita GDP is unlikely to ever change.

The fact is that all growth is based on the same basic idea of a “pyramid

expands the membership of the SK electorate to include everyone from the age of 15 to 30, thereby vastly increasing the number of stakeholders in the outcome of the elections and—perhaps more important—in the performance of the elected SK officials.

It also mandates the creation of Local Youth Development Councils (LYDCs), created for the express purpose of assisting in the planning and implementation of plans and programs of the SK. This sort of support and oversight mechanism used to be something that the barangay officials were expected to provide. But with the SK and barangay officials often coming to a cozy accommodation—due in no small part to familial ties—any “support and oversight” quickly became merely illusory. Multilateral LYDC’s, on the other hand, together with the Reform Act’s antidynasty provision, will most probably eliminate much of this chumminess and so increase the focus on actual, meaningful, performance.

And the youth of this country— millennials, if you like—are perfectly capable of achieving tangible and impactful work. For all their

annoying affectations (well, annoying to old fogeys like me anyway)— team-this, team-that; the all too liberal sprinkling of po and opo in their sentences, often for passiveaggressive effect; calling everyone ate or kuya and so on—millennials simply cannot be accused of apathy (the way us Gen-Xers often were).

For the most part, millennials display high levels of social awareness and participatory zeal, fueled most likely by social media. Also because of social media, millennials often demonstrate a startling degree of openness to new ideas and concepts, often displaying inspiring audacity in how quickly they adapt to new conditions and situations. You and I might disagree with the wisdom of Yolo, but what is that if not a creed of boldness, no matter how misguided it often turns out to be?

But most of all, the youth of today are retaining their sense of wonder and sunny optimism for much longer than those of us from older generations retained our idealism.

Imagine what these millennials can do, if they were simply given the opportunity; imagine what we, as a nation, would lose if they were not.

scheme” in that new participants must continuously be brought into the system. Exporters sell goods aboard and bring in new cash to spend in the local economy. Local companies that invest abroad eventually return at least a portion of their profits to be spent locally. Obviously, foreign investment and remittances contribute to the pyramid scheme of economic growth.

We commented that the Philippine Stock Exchange index has risen from 1,000 to near 8,000 in the past 14 years. However, the reason for that is because new money has come investing in stocks. The approximately P16-trillion market capitalization—or value—of the stock market did not happen by magic. It is because over those 14 years, approximately P13 trillion worth of shares have been bought. Or, put another way, approximately P13 trillion has been put into the stock market.

The sort of legal definition of a pyramid scheme is a form of investment in which each paying participant recruits two further participants, with returns being given to early participants using money contributed by later ones. So what is the difference with the stock market?

If you bought shares of PLDT back

in 2002 at P230, the reason the price went to P3,450 in 2014 was because other participants contributed to the price increase after you did. If you bought a prime property in Makati 30 years ago for P3,000 a square meter and it is now worth P250,000, it is because of the “late participants”.

You can say this is a result of supply and demand and that is true.

But if the Philippine economy was the same size as 30 years ago, there would not be any demand above P3,000 per sq m.

An open economy that allows money to flow in and out—like the Philippines—brings in new participants and money. The Philippine economy has increased nearly 750 percent since 1980. Cuba’s closed economy, which restricts money flow, increased by 400 percent. The USSR economy—another closed one —grew by 175 percent between 1965 and 1989.

It is not a matter of “globalization”.

It is allowing money to flow wherever it wants to flow.

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

Must address issues

Mapping Buhi culture and searching for the best coffee

BusinessMirror

Alvin Ang

Tito Genova Valiente

annotations

EAGLE WATCH

A

S the country enters the second year of the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte, various analysis have been made of his first year in office. The assessments largely focused on the administration’s war on drugs and criminality and its lack of focus on other issues. Instead of making an assessment, we would like to look ahead and point out critical issues that are currently or not being addressed at all. We premise this view from the societal challenges that led to this administration’s victory in last year’s election.

Our column prior to the election last year pointed out that the survey, known as Ambisyon 2040, has a lot to say about the aspirations of our people. The results showed that the issues that matter the most are as follow: eradication of poverty and hunger; adequacy of jobs; provision of housing; education and health as the most pressing needs. It also talks about the issues that hound ordinary people each day. On top of these are petty corruption and ease and efficiency of government transactions—showing the people’s frustrations on the government’s inefficiency at the local and national levels.

Some of these are already being addressed in different levels. We focus on how the aspirations on jobs, finance and transport need more attention.

On jobs, recent results of the labor force surveys (LFS) have been encouraging. In fact, the October 2016 round showed that unemployment have reached about 5 percent—the lowest in decades. The quality of jobs have also improved with more people entering wage employment.

However, the government is seen to be more focused on pushing entrepreneurship, as evidenced by recent policy pronouncements. This is coupled with the existing support being provided for the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as the centerpiece of our hosting of the Asean Summit.

Nonetheless, the push might not be what is desired since the Ambisyon survey says that a majority still wanted to have jobs than be in business. The desire to have jobs are higher in C, D and E classes where 41 percent, 42 percent and 50 percent of the respondents said so.

Related to jobs and income, the Ambisyon survey also asked questions related to their current financial status. In particular, the survey revealed that people are having difficulty to save. About 23 percent does not have enough savings to last expenses for a month, while 19 percent has savings to last three weeks.

This difficulty in saving is also described in the BSP 2015 Financial Inclusion Survey, which says that 43 percent of the population has savings. In our own study called the Remittance Investment Climate for Rural Hometowns (Ricart), we found out that about 35 percent of the respondents we have surveyed have savings.

In particular, 43 percent of migrant families and 58 percent of nonmigrant families spend more than what they earn. The difficulty of saving has been traced to incomeand price-related challenges as can be seen in the chart below.

The primary reason for lack of

Our column prior to the election last year pointed out that the survey known as Ambisyon 2040 has a lot to say about the aspirations of our people. The results showed that the issues that matter the most are as follow: eradication of poverty and hunger; adequacy of jobs; provision of housing; education and health as the most pressing needs. savings is the prevalence of loans.

This is consistent with our findings in Ricart, where people have more loans than savings.

But what is more critical to consider is that people are not able to save because of personal illness and natural disasters.

These are things preventable by insurance. In the BSP Financial Inclusion Survey, only 16 percent has life insurance and 25 percent has health insurance, even if 67 percent and 77 percent of the respondents, respectively, are aware of both types of insurance.

In our Ricart study, only 7 percent has life insurance and 39 percent has PhilHealth coverage.

After these, increasing prices and low salary impede savings.

Relatively, prices have not risen as fast as they were a decade ago but to lower-income people, a slight increase in the price of basic commodities will significantly affect their capacity to buy. Interestingly, the lack of savings also revealed that it is because they are being used to fund their business capital. This may be because of a mismatch of funding for entrepreneurs and the market for funds.

The lending to SMEs by the banking system has fallen from 20 percent in 2008 to less than 10 percent in the first quarter of 2017. Funds are available but may be difficult to access by smaller entrepreneurs.

Finally, a reason for low savings is the high cost of transportation.

This is related to prices in general. But, the other elements of the Ambisyon survey also reveal that an overwhelming majority wanted to have at least one vehicle and 35 percent wanted a good and affordable public transportation. This is something that the current administration is lagging severely behind.

Traffic and the lack of consistent and reliable public transportation are commonalities in almost all major cities of the country. It has reached disaster levels and is significantly affecting the budget of people. Thus, it will be tricky to apply additional taxes on oil. These points are imperative that need to be given more effort and emphasis beyond rhetorics. For certain, they will come up again as key issues in the 2019 midterm elections.

Reason why Savings is Difficult

NONE

Finding a secured job

High cost of everyday transportation

Lack of capital for business or livelihood

High cost of goods

Small salary

Unexpected expenses caused by disasters

Illness in the family

Lots of loans

Source: Ambisyon 2040

F

or all the alliteration, the search for the best coffee does not always end in the mapping of culture. But, in Buhi, anything in terms of knowledge is possible.

I was in the town of Buhi, which I insist now should be spelled “Boi”, the better to shake off the colonial mind that permeates everything that is old in the region. The origin of the town has something to do with a group of people that were let loose, freed. Nakabuhi is the word for that situation. It is said that a volcanic eruption of Mount Mayon was the reason for the people fleeing and surviving the catastrophe to found this town.

Slaves as we are to Spanish archiving, the town is known to have been established in 1578.

By its location, Buhi is an interior town. Like its lake, the famous Lake Buhi, said to have only one outlet, Buhi in one’s map feels as if one enters it only from Iriga and goes out by way of the same road. That, of course, is a city boy perspective. The hills and mountains around it provide passes to the other parts of the province.

I was in Buhi last week to prepare for a cultural mapping of the town.

The approach is used to surface the cultures and stories of a town without the use of experts and other ethnographic authorities. Cultural mapping demands that we view and describe the culture of the town from below, using local knowledge.

As I explained the unique approach, which also requires the facilitator to learn to listen to the “uneducated”, the mayor of the town, Margie M. Aguinillo, expressed her interest in this process.

We scheduled the mapping for another weekend. The good mayor invited us then to have a merienda in the town’s café. It used to be a moviehouse.

The town has changed, I told Mayor Aguinillo, who is also the first female mayor of the town. We never had coffee when, as young men, we

Friday, July 14, 2017 A11

visited Buhi (my father is from this town). Coffee wes served in homes.

Brewing and drinking coffee then required no skill. One assumed all coffee to be good.

In cafés, drinks and pastries were subjected to judgment.

In Iriga, on our way to Buhi, Kristian Sendon Cordero, the Bikol poet who is going off to the famed Iowa Writer’s Workshop in August, was showing me the café in his city. This focus on coffee stems from my two succeeding columns on cafés, love and promises. Cordero is obsessed with all three. In the café, he observed how coffee is really appraised for its bitterness. For the coffee we were having, he noted how the drink got bitter as we consumed it.

In the Buhi café, down in what used to be the orchestra of the old moviehouse, the coffee was not bit-

ter enough. It was special, though.

As I sipped the coffee, I kept looking up to the gorgeous staircase leading to the balcony. What films were shown here? Did the audience laugh heartily? Did they weep over the sad scenes? What love affairs were consumed in the dark?

The Buhinons or Boinons are famous for claiming their place to be unique. Their lake contains the sinarapan, considered to be the smallest commercial fish in the world. They are proud of their language and calls it difficult and different from the other Bikol languages (I cannot speak it).

In Benita’s and Flora’s Bakery and Café, I could not make sense of my coffee. The taste was as elusive and piquant as the mother tongue of the people of Buhi.

E-mail: titovaliente@yahoo.com.

Segunda Mana’s flagship outlet opens in Fairview Terraces Rev. Fr. Antonio Cecilio T. Pascual

SERVANT LEADER

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aritas Manila believes that progress must be an empowering process and geared toward integral human growth, especially the spiritual and socioeconomic development of the poor.

As part of efforts to strengthen its social entrepreneurship programs, the Archdiocese of Manila’s lead social services and development ministry, Caritas Manila, opened its Segunda Mana’s flagship outlet in Fairview Terraces, Novaliches, Quezon City, on July 12.

The opening of the charity outlet was graced by His Excellency Novaliches Bishop Antonio Tobias, DD, with the Vicar General of Diocese of Novaliches Fr. Tony Labiao and yours truly.

Also present during the ribboncutting rites were members of the clergy of the Diocese of Novaliches, Nuns from the Restorative Justice

Ministry of Caritas Manila, representatives from the Management of Fairview Terraces, as well as Quezon City officials, led by Councilor Aly Medalla and Novaliches Proper Punong Barangay Asuncion Visaya, and Caritas Manila Board of Trustees member and treasurer Mrs. Rosario Villar.

The first charity outlet of Segunda Mana in the Diocese of Novaliches features artworks, preloved items, such as clothes, shoes, bags, toys, home and fashion accessories, at affordable prices. The Caritas Manila’s Segunda Mana advocates the 3Rs: reuse, reduce and recycle. These charity outlets, likewise, provide

employment to almost 6.7-percent unemployed from the urban-poor sector and livelihood to families who make trading as their source of income.

Also made available are products of Caritas Margins from food, home care and personal-hygiene products, bags and more, made by urban-poor partners trained under the Caritas Manila skills-training program; and accessories, as well as handicrafts and artworks by resident-inmates under the Caritas Restorative Justice program.

For his part, Bishop Tobias encourages the faithful in his diocese to support Segunda Mana by donating and patronizing its charity outlets.

“Instead of hoarding our things in our storerooms, let’s bring them out and help those who are in need.

Everyone has goodness in their hearts. Let’s bring it out, share the joy of giving and honesty. Clean our spaces as we clean our souls. Let’s live as the sources of God’s mercy,” Bishop Tobias said.

Caritas Margins works hand in hand with the Caritas Manila’s livelihood program, providing skills training, like tailoring, food processing and production of herbal

Trump stalls an engine of new business

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N President Donald J. Trump’s latest effort to wall the US off from the rest of the world, his administration has ditched a plan to make it easier for successful foreign entrepreneurs to come and work in America. The decision may play well with the president’s nationalist base, but it will not help the US economy.

The administration has delayed (and will probably kill) the International Entrepreneur Rule, which was designed to provide a special “start-up visa” for entrepreneurs who attract funding for businesses

in the US. The rule was intended to benefit entrepreneurs whose ideas had attracted at least six-figure funding from either private investors or a government entity. They were to be selected on a case-by-case basis, after demonstrating that they would provide a “significant public benefit” through rapid growth and job creation, and could stay in the US on renewable 30-month visas.

The goal of the rule, which was finalized under President Barack Obama and scheduled to take effect next week, was straightforward: “To increase and enhance

entrepreneurship, innovation and job creation in the United States.”

It’s unclear what the Trump administration believes it will achieve by discarding the plan. What’s more, it couldn’t come at a worse time. The US economy is far less dynamic than it needs to be, with start-ups accounting for a declining share of both companies and employment.

One-third of venture-backed companies in the US, meanwhile, have at least one immigrant founder.

The Trump administration’s reflexive hostility to all things foreign— including good business ideas that

soaps, perfumes and home-care products. It helps the livelihood of poor communities by encouraging their entrepreneurial spirit. To date, Caritas Margins supports over 900 microentrepreneurs in Metro Manila and the provinces by providing them livelihood opportunities and in marketing their products.

You can support Segunda Mana by donating items that you no longer need, have excess of, or your company’s old but reusable items, slowmoving and old inventories. You may visit any of our charity outlets and our main office at 2002 Jesus Street, Pandacan, Manila.

Proceeds of both Caritas Margins and Segunda Mana help sustain the Caritas Manila flagship Youth Servant Leadership and Education Program, which focuses on education for the underprivileged youth, supporting 5,000 scholars nationwide.

To know more about Caritas Manila, visit www. caritasmanila.org.ph. For your donations, call our DonorCare lines 563-9311, 564-0205, 09997943455, 0905-4285001 and 0929-8343857. Make it a habit to listen to Radio Veritas 846 in the AM band, or through live streaming at www.veritas846.ph. For comments, e-mail veritas846pr@ gmail.com.

venture capitalists wish to back—is counterproductive.

Last month, as the administration was contemplating the elimination of the start-up visa, a group of Republican senators wrote to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly saying the change would make it harder for the US to attract entrepreneurs and their investment. Investment money will still find its way to clever entrepreneurs who might’ve benefited from the program, of course.

The only difference now is that they won’t be creating businesses and jobs in the US. Bloomberg View

2nd Front Page BusinessMirror

A12 Friday, July 14, 2017

DOT urges local govt of Palawan to preserve PHL’s ‘Last Frontier’

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Stephanie tumampos

4 OF 10 NONPOOR FILIPINO HOUSEHOLDS COULD SLIP INTO POVERTY IN 3 YEARS

By Cai U. Ordinario @cuo_bm

T

he lack of access to transportation, decent employment and timely government intervention could send a lot of nonpoor households to poor status in three years, according to the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS).

In a policy note, titled “Estimating Filipinos’ Vulnerability to Poverty”, PIDS supervising research specialist Christian D. Mina and senior research fellow Celia M. Reyes said four of 10 Filipino households are vulnerable to poverty.

The authors added that around 47.6 percent of the vulnerable households were nonpoor in 2009, while 27 percent were also not poor between 2003 and 2009. This group also accounted for 23.2 percent of the total nonpoor households.

“Even if households were initially nonpoor, they tended to slip down into poverty if they did not have access to transport infrastructure and/or irrigation facilities, or had more members in vulnerable employment [e.g., self- employed; who are usually less educated and can easily accept casual wage jobs],” the authors said.

The authors added 77.4 percent of poor households were classified as vulnerable. They said a household is considered vulnerable if its estimated vulnerability to poverty is below the vulnerability threshold.

The majority of nonpoor but vulnerable households were predicted to be poor only in, at the most, two periods from 2010 to 2012, thus tagged as relatively vulnerable, and were more susceptible to idiosyncratic shocks.

The study showed that vulnerable households were more susceptible to unobservable idiosyncratic shocks than covariate shocks.

Idiosyncratic shocks include birth, injury or accident, serious illness, death,

A boy was photographed in one of the islands of El Nido in Palawan, which was recently voted as the “World’s Best Island” by readers of Travel + Leisure magazine. NONIE REYES

By Ma. Stella F. Arnaldo

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@akosistellaBM

Special to the BusinessMirror

HE Department of Tourism (DOT) cheered the recent award of Palawan as the World’s Best Island in 2017 by the prestigious Travel + Leisure (T+L) magazine, the province’s second recognition in a row.

Also making it to the top 10 World’s Best Island list this year is Boracay (No. 3), a slight drop from last year’s No. 2 spot. Cebu, which was No. 6 on the list last year, failed to make it to the 2017 list.

Tou r i sm Sec ret a r y Wa nd a Corazon T. Teo urged Palawan’s local leaders to protect the province, known as the Philippines’s “Last Frontier” for its virgin rain forest, unspoiled beaches and other natural wonders.

“We are truly proud of our country’s Last Frontier for the accolades gained and we enjoin the community, industry and local government leaders to continue preserving this valuable travel jewel for our future guardians and visitors to enjoy,” she said in a news statement.

These international accolades are seen boosting the promotional efforts of the DOT to attract more

foreign visitors to the Philippines.

The government agency recently reported a 14.4-percent increase in visitor arrivals in the first five months of 2017, reaching 2.88 million. (See, “Chinese, Taiwanese lift 5-month tourist arrivals,” in the BusinessMirror, July 9, 2017.)

“This record-breaking numbers, which began during the Miss Universe month, clearly indicate a bright outlook for Philippine tourism,” said Teo, who promised to help improve the tourism industry’s performance.

The DOT head also attributed the burgeoning visitor arrivals to the aggressive marketing efforts abroad and high-profile inter nat iona l events held in the country within the last 12 months, like the Madrid Fusión Manila, meetings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations

and the recent United Nations World Tour ism Organizat ion (UNWTO) Conference on Tourism Statistics. “ The DOT will continue to tap new and emerging markets, including littleknown tourist destinations and sites, which are priority growth areas for tourism development,” Teo added.

She expressed confidence that the positive streak in visitor arrivals would likely continue throughout the rest of the year and break last year’s 5.9-million record. The DOT sees foreign visitor arrivals reaching some 7.5 million to 8 million in 2017, owing to the 1 million tourists committed by Beijing.

Meanwhile, T+L readers chose Palawan as the No. 1 island in Asia, then No. 1 worldwide, besting Santorini in Greece, Maui in Hawaii, the Galapagos Islands and Seychelles.

On its web site, T+L said, “There’s nothing quite like immersing yourself in the natural wonders of the Philippine archipelago, which many of our readers described as ‘rustic’, ‘romantic’, ‘affordable’ and ‘relaxing’. As one fan succinctly wrote, ‘It’s the single most beautiful place on earth.’ Palawan, which consists of an eponymous main island, in addition to some 1,800 surrounding islets and island outposts, is a repeat winner on the list, first

scoring the No. 1 spot in 2013.”

Aside from its limestone cliffs and caverns, colorful coral reefs and lush mountains, Palawan also has secluded white beaches, hidden lagoons and the Puerto Princesa Underground River (PPUR), a Unesco World Heritage site.

Discovery Shores Boracay was ranked No. 7 on the 10 Best Resorts Hotels in Southeast Asia, which was topped by the 137 Pillars House in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

“We are honored to be listed as one of the top 10 Best Resort Hotels in Southeast Asia in Travel + Leisure magazine’s World’s Best Awards 2017. This is indeed another reason to celebrate on our 10th year,” Discovery Shores said on its Facebook page. The magazine’s World’s Best Awards, which is acclaimed as one of the leading barometers of travel destinations, will host a celebration in New York City on July 26 (July 27 in Manila) in honor of this year’s winners.

Teo, along with Palawan local government executives, recently hosted a visit of officials from the UNWTO, led by its SecretaryGeneral Taleb Rifai. They visited the PPUR, as well as an indigenous community in Sitio Sabang, Barangay Cabayugan, where they planted mangrove seedlings, interacted with community stakeholders, including native tour guides, souvenir makers and boatmen.

BCDA to build momentum for infra push Continued from A1

The BCDA official also mentioned the proposed Subic-Clark railway project as a component of the Central Luzon infrastructure program. This project, he said, “will initially be a cargo railway”.

“The focus now is to build connectivity,” Dizon explained. He said that, as part of the project, there will be a P12-billion road project that will be composed of a four-lane carriage way and a two-lane railway.

Long overdue

Meanwhile, Dizon also announced the opening of the tender for Phase 1 of the Clark airport expansion project on July 21, and asked international, regional and local companies to

join in building “Asia’s newest gateway”.

“This project is long overdue,” Dizon said, adding the proposed Clark airport terminal will have a direct connection to the SubicClark-Tarlac Expressway, as well as to the Manila-Clark Railway.

The airport project would entail the construction of new passenger terminals; building of new access roads, ramps and taxiways; expansion of freight and cargo facilities; and building of a second and third runway.

The airport expansion has been described as an ambitious plan to increase airport capacity from the current 4.2 million passengers per annum to 8 million in the first expansion phase, 22 million in the second phase, 46 million in the third and 80 million in the ultimate phase.

Biggest component

Dizon said the biggest project of them all, however, would be the Clark Green City, or the Global Gateway Clark project, which will be located in a 177-hectare area that will cover both the tourism and techno-industrial areas at Clark Freeport.

The $5-billion project, according to proponents, will be composed of four zones: the Aeropark, which will take in research and development firms, information-technology ventures, business-process outsourcing and educational institutions; Business Park, which will have the prime lots for retail companies, as well as pocket gardens and residential units; Town Center for retail establishments; and the Logistics Park for warehousing, distribution and light manufacturing concerns.

In addition to these, Dizon said the Clark Green City will also include a government center, in line with President Duterte’s directive for government centers to start moving to Clark; an agro-industrial park; a mixed-use complex; an integrated care development; and the socalled Philippine Sports City, which will be Duterte’s legacy project for Filipino athletes.

“The BCDA is master-planning properties to integrate development, not to compete with each other,”Dizon added. During his presentation, the BCDA official, likewise, called on the private sector to participate in the projects.

“The government cannot build all of these.

We’re going to need help from the private sector,”Dizon said, adding that the government would be providing infrastructure support to facilitate the building program.

See “Poverty,” A2

ERC explains decision to extend CSP validity

By Lenie Lectura

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@llectura

he Energ y Reg u lator y Com m i ssion ( ERC ) on Thursday said its decision to extend the validity of the Competitive Selection Process (CSP) policy was meant not to favor any power stakeholder, but merely to address the valid concerns raised by the distribution utilities (DUs) and powergeneration companies (gencos).

“The extension of the CSP implementation was not intended to benefit any electric power industry participant, but to give time to those who have already completed their power supply agreements [PSAs] but failed to submit the same to the ERC prior to the effectivity of the CSP,” ERC Officer in Charge Alfredo Non said.

Non and the rest of the ERC commissioners are facing criminal and administrative cases before the Office of the Ombudsman. The ERC commissioners are also being probed by the House Joint Committees on Good Government and Public Accountability.

During a committee hearing on July 4, the ERC clarified that its collective decision to extend the CSP was meant to address issues and concerns submitted by numerous industry participants pertinent to the implementation of the CSP scheme.

The ERC, soon after its promulgation of the CSP in November 2015 until April 2016, received letter-inquiries from DUs and gencos assailing the legal implications of the CSP to the PSAs that are currently existing, due for renewal, submitted to the ERC for approval,

The ERC developed and promulgated the CSP as an additional safety net to promote consumer interest, though it is not a mandatory requirement under the Epira.”—Non

or otherwise already executed.

The commission said it was constrained to restate the effectivity of the CSP through a resolution in March 2017 to allow a transition period and avert any possible legal complexities between the parties as a result of the CSP implementation. “ T he E RC d e v e lo p e d a nd promulgated the CSP as an additional safety net to promote consumer interest, though it is not a mandatory requirement under the Epira [Electric Power Industry Reform Act]. It must be emphasized that the imposition of the CSP does not mean an abandonment of the thorough evaluation process of the ERC, nor is it tantamount to the approval of the PSA,” Non explained.

The ERC also vowed to resolve the PSA petitions of the Manila Electric Co. within three months, and will ensure that the cross-ownership limitations provided in the Epira will not be breached.