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STATE THINK TANK SAYS SMALL FARMERS NOT BENEFITING FROM AGRI INSURANCE PROGRAM
The people of Benguet spend most of their time planting vegetables that they bring to the vegetable trading center in La Trinidad. Nonie Reyes
M
By Jasper Emmanuel Y. Arcalas
ost of those who benefited from the government’s agricultural insurance program (AIP) are government agencies and big farm owners, rather than the small and marginalized farmers, according to the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS).
In the policy note, titled “Is the Agricultural Insurance Program of the Philippines serving the poor?”, former National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) SecretaryGeneral Romulo A. Virola said government agencies, such as the Department of Agriculture (DA), have become “big” AIP beneficiaries, when it should be the smallscale Filipino farmers. “For instance, the Northern Mindanao region claimed P1.62 million in 2014 for 18 heads of cattle at P90,000 each. The DA, likewise, received P5.4 million
under NCI [Non-Crop Agricultural Asset Insurance] in 2014 due to the onslaught of Supertyphoon Yolanda,” Virola said in the policy note published on July 13. “These instances raise question on the capacity of the AIP to prioritize the needs of the marginalized rice and corn farmers,” Virola added. He noted that since 1993, the Philippine Crop Insurance Corp. (PCIC) has slowly expanded its AIP coverage for farmers managing bigger lands as huge as 209 hectares per farmer.
“In 1993 the AIP covered six HVCC [high-value commercial crops] farmers for an unusually large sum of insurance averaging P20.9 million. The said insurance had an average premium of P846,800 and a coverage of 209 hectares per farmer,” he said. From 2013 to 2014, the AIP had also covered farmers managing farms as large as 10 hectares in Ilocos reg ion and 30 hectares in Eastern Visayas for rice, 25 hectares in Zamboanga Peninsula for corn, and 55 hectares in Central Luzon and Davao
regions, according to Virola. He added that during the same period, farmers had been insured for HVCC for P157 million in Zamboanga Peninsula and P240 million in Davao region. The former NSCB secretarygeneral questioned if the size managed by farmers should be a factor for crop insurance. “While such coverage may be desirable, this still raises the question on whether or not the farm size should be a consideration in offering subsidies,” Virola said. Continued on A2
Dealing with criminals in cyberspace By Roderick L. Abad Contributor
C
YBERCRIMES and attacks h ave b e come com mon nowadays that all stakeholders—from both the public and private sectors, as well as netizens—should work together to prevent the commission of these technology-driven criminal activities, according to experts. “ We are at the time where people are growing more dependent on c yberspace. Lear ning is no longer confined w ithin the four wa l ls of a classroom. Work s a nd meet i ngs do not require one to be in the same room any more. Businesses are f lour ishing and trade has reached unprecedented growth as we grow more interconnected,” said A l lan S. Cabanlong, D e p a r t me nt of I n for m at ion a n d C o m mu n i c a t i o n s Te c h nolog y (DIC T ) assistant secretar y for Cybersecur it y and Enabling Technolog ies, dur ing the Techonomy Forum recently
held at the Maybank Per for ming A r ts T heater in Bonifacio Globa l Cit y, Tag uig. “What was considered irrelevant is now an important part of our lives. We can no longer separate our physical existence with the things we do on cyberspace. T his change, however, comes with a price. The more you get dependent on cyberspace, the more crimes [are] committed on it,” he added. Yearly, there’s a rise in cyber attacks and the methods are evolving, ranging from those with organized sophistication for st ate - sponsored at t ac k s, to groups or individuals with technological savvy to orchestrate these crimes. It is anticipated that threats on the lives of people and wealth of nations will become more serious in the future, proof of which is the Bangladesh bank heist in 2016, where hackers reportedly tried to steal a total of $951 million using the SWIFT network. In the Philippines, which is
PESO exchange rates n US 50.4810
ranked 46th as the most targeted country globally by Industrial Control Systems and critical infrastructure attackers, at least 68 government web sites were also attacked last year, following the United Nations International arbitration court’s ruling regarding the West Philippine Sea territorial dispute. With these risks, Cabanlong u nderscored t he i mpor t a nce of c ybersecur it y, w ith globa l economies increasingly be -
ing interlinked and connected through tech platforms. He said the DICT has presented plans and programs addressing the growing concerns on data integrity and security. The National Cybersecurity Plan of 2022—the first road map for the country—was unveiled last month. “[This is] a platform that will make cybersecurity effective in this country,” said the DICT official. “Primarily, it seeks to pro-
We can no longer separate our physical existence with the things we do on cyberspace. This change, however, comes with a price. The more you get dependent on cyberspace, the more crimes [are] committed on it.”—Cabanlong
tect the critical infrastructure, the government networks [both public and military], small and medium enterprises to large businesses, corporations and every Filipino using the Internet.” O n t he prote c t ion of t he state net works, the DICT has initiated the establishment of the nationa l computer emergenc y response team. T his w il l be the foca l point for nationa l ICT emergencies. “Your DICT is in a 24-hour shift in making everyone safe in cyberspace. Even with a very young department to address the colossal problem in cybersecurity, we assure you that we are making giant steps in addressing them,” he said.
Talents lack
WHILE adoption of ICT in the country is relatively high, it’s ironic that the talents needed to protect the nation and its people from online attacks and other tech felonies seemed wanting up to these days.
Cabanlong raised the department’s concern for lack of local cybersecurity experts, having only 84 certified information security systems professionals, and almost half work overseas. This makes the Philippines as the countr y with the lowest practicing c yber-secur it y professionals in the world, as compared to its Southeast Asian neighbors Indonesia, with 107; Thailand, 189; Malaysia, 275; and Singapore, 1,000. Meanwhile, a study conducted by Frost & Sullivan for the International Information System Security Certification Consortium revealed that there will be a shortfall of 1.5 million cyber-security professionals by 2020. “The rapid increase in the demand for cyber-security professionals far outpaces the supply in the work force. Let us admit it, even sophisticated up-to-date infrastructure are not enough to meet the level of security we need in cyberspace,” he noted. See “Cyberspace,” A2
n japan 0.4456 n UK 65.3426 n HK 6.4651 n CHINA 7.4403 n singapore 36.7509 n australia 39.0016 n EU 57.5584 n SAUDI arabia 13.4623
Source: BSP (14 July 2017 )
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PHL’s farm-insurance protocol flawed? Continued From A1
Virola said the Philippines’s AIP penetration rate is not “impressive” compared to countries implementing such subsidy, such as the United States, Japan, India and China. “From 1987 to 2013, the penetration rate of the AIP has not been impressive,” he added. “It has only achieved 4.5 percent for palay and 0.9 percent for corn, compared to 72 percent to 90 percent in the United States; 53 percent in Japan; 14 percent in India; and 10 percent in China [Mahul and Stutley 2010].” Virola said drastic decline in the penetration rate of AIP for palay farmers was observed in the nearly past three decades. “The penetration rate for palay had actually been much higher from 1988 to 1993, averaging about 10 percent,” he said. “It had gone below 2 percent from 2000 to 2008, but rose to 10.2 percent in 2013 after the agrarian-reform beneficiaries [ARBs] received subsidized coverage,” he added. Meanwhile, corn farmers covered by the government’s AIP since 1987 have remained below the 2-percent level, according to Virola. “In the case of corn, this rate had never been above 2 percent from 1987 to 2012. In 2013 it was only 2.3 percent.” Virola noted that it seems that the design of the government’s
AIP claims-processing protocols have some flaws, as some beneficiaries received “low” amount of insurance. “For instance, a rice farmer in Cagayan Valley region only received P38. Likewise, nine of 13 regions had received rice-claim payments less than P200 from 2013 to 2014,” he said. “ S ome cor n f a r me rs we re a lso insured for low amounts. Is t his an ind ication of some f laws in t he desig n of t he A IP claims-processing protocols? A rev iew of t he c la im-adjud ication policies is definitely called for,” he added. V i rol a re com me nde d t h at the government should reform its AIP to a more marginalized farmers-centric program in order to contribute in alleviating the country’s poverty incidence. “Assuming the AIP will continue to be operated more as a social-insurance scheme rather than as a private-insurance scheme, clear policies should be formulated and support mechanisms should be put in place to target the coverage of the marginalized subsistence farmers, the underserved regions like Bicol region and ARMM, the borrowing farmers who should be provided with easy access to credit, and other groups like the Pantawid Pa m i ly a ng P i l ipi no P rog ra m beneficiaries,” he said. The government should also
focus its AIP toward the crop that most of the subsistence Filipino farmers are planting today, Virola suggested. “ T he A IP star ted cover ing only palay and corn farmers. While the expansion of the AIP to cover other farmers and other product lines is to be expected, clear policies should be formulated to better guide the PCIC in targeting improvements in the AIP,” he said. “ If most of t he subsi stence fa r mers a re pl a nt i ng pa l ay or cor n, t he t a rget shou ld foc u s on i mprov i ng prog ra ms conc e nt r at i n g on t he s e c ro p s ,” he added. Citing data from the PCIC, term insurance program (TIP) had the biggest share in terms of the amount of AIP insurance, accounting for 42 percent, Virola said. This was followed by palay with 31 percent, HVCC with 13 percent and corn with 7 percent. “TIP has substantially grown in share of the AIP coverage in recent years. This can be perceived as possibly competing unfairly with the private sector,” Virola said. Virola added that there is also a need to redesign the premiums and premium subsidies by the government by “setting the premiums marginalized farmers need to pay as low as possible, regardless of farm location”. This kind of premiums and
premium design would provide the “ largest” possible support for the marginalized subsistence farmers, he added. Virola said there have been big percentage increases in the gross premiums of more than 50 percent in the years 1982, 1985, 1991, 2008 and 2009. Furthermore, a 176-percent jump in gross premiums happened in 2013, due to the premiums from/for the rice and corn farmers who were covered under the ARB program. “ This was sustained by an 88-percent increase in 2014, but followed by a 5-percent decline in 2015,” he said. “The PCIC needs to analyze this reduction in gross premiums to understand whether it indicates the saturation of the targeted beneficiaries [i.e., it has covered practically all the beneficiaries it has targeted to cover given its resources], the declining government support for the AIP, or the stretched capacity of the PCIC to sustain the program,” he added. Virola recommended that the PCIC charge the farmers only the net premiums based on the historical claims experience of the AIP, and the rest to be charged to subsidies from the government and lending institutions. “Another is to put a cap on the amount paid by the farmers, such as a certain percentage of the minimum wage,” he added.
Virola a lso noted t hat t here were reg ion a l d i s pa r it ies i n the g ross premiums being paid by Fi lipino far mers. Such d iscrepanc y cou ld be d isadvantageous to Fi lipino far mers situated in t y phoon-phone areas, he added. For example, borrowing farmers pay premiums ranging from 1.17 percent of the sum insured to 2.6 percent during the wet season, and from 0.56 percent to 2.33 percent during the dry season in low-risk areas. Meanwhile, borrowing farmers from high-risk areas pay from 3.5 percent to 7.79 percent during the wet season and from 1.69 percent to 6.99 percent during the dry season, according to Virola. “It should also be clarified whether there is a need for premium/premium subsidy differentials across regions and between low-risk areas and high-risk areas,” he said. “The existence of such differentials may disadvantage poor farmers located in typhoon-prone regions.” The PCIC, an attached government-owned and -controlled corporation of the DA, is the implementing body of the government’s AIP. It is mandated to provide insurance protection to farmers against losses of their crops and produce, as well as their livestock and far m-related equipment, arising from natural calamities or events beyond their control.
Cyberspace... Continued from A1
“We need to pair up with the right plan and the proper people. We already have the plan in place, what we need now are the right talents in the job, and that’s where the problem is,” he added. To bridge this gap, the DICT is working with the Commission on Higher Education (Ched) in integrating cybersecurity in the curriculum. The engineer said the North Atlantic Treaty Organization offered to use its curriculum as framework in creating the country’s own. Other cyber-security experts are also lending a hand. “We are looking at putting this in place as soon as possible, as we’re racing against time here. And while we continue collaborating with the Ched, we are also talking to colleges and universities to [have them] adopt our cyber-security curriculum,” he shared. “Cybersecurity is a [national] approach. We need everyone to be one with us in protecting ourselves. We look forward to your support in the full implementation of the National Security Plan 2022,” he added. The Techonomy Forum, the first-ever conference to tackle the vital role of technology and economy, gathered top executives and leaders in government, business and education to discuss its potential benefits to the different sectors and organizations in the country. It was copresented by Acer Philippines and Microsoft Philippines. With Verna Mae Barrozo
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A3
BSP quarterly report outlines growth challenges for remainder of the year By Bianca Cuaresma
F
r agile global economic recovery and foreseen weat her disturbances in the re m a i nd e r o f t he year remain the top challenges to domestic economic growth this year, a Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) report said. I n a re c e nt l y p u bl i s he d quarterly report on local economic and financial developments, the Central Bank said that while the country’s progress toward a high-trajectory growth appears to be on track, several external and domestic developments pose potential risks and challenges to the economic outlook. The Central Bank particularly cited the uncertain global growth path and protectionist policies of some advanced economies as major threats to the local growth story. “ T he globa l economic recover y in the near-ter m remains frag ile, w ith elevated pol ic y u ncer t a i nt y, i nc luding t he Bre x it process and inward-look ing agend a in
some advanced economies,” the BSP said in a repor t. “A possible shif t towa rd protectionist policies could be disruptive to trade and financial flows, as well as migration. These policies could have important implications for Philippine remittances, offshoring or outsourcing industry, and trade,” it added. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects global economic growth to accelerate from 3.1 percent in 2016 to 3.5 percent in 2017 and 3.6 percent in 2018. This projected pickup in global growth is said to come from stronger activity in emergingmarket economies.
Forex pressures
The BSP also said the continued normalization in US interest rates could inf luence i nve st me nt st r ate g ie s a nd lead to portfolio rebalancing, resulting in capital outf lows f rom emerg i ng econom ies, such as the Philippines, and exchange-rate pressures. In the last week of June, when favorable sentiment hounded Asian markets due to the US Federal Reserve’s openness to
raise interest rates further, the local currency began to slump back to the 50-to-a-dollar territory, hitting fresh 11-yearlows weekly. Aside from developments in the US, closer to home, Asian economic powerhouse China is also seen to pose risks to the local economy’s growth. “The rebalancing of growth sources in China has continued but vulnerabilities in the financial system remain due to the rapid expansion of its credit. Adverse developments in China have the potential to generate negative spillovers for the Philippines, given the increasing bilateral relations between the two economies in recent years,” the BSP said. While most threats to local economic growth remain outside the country’s borders, the BSP said in the domestic sphere, the impact of severe weather disturbances remains as one of the key challenges to the economy. The absence of severe weather disturbances allowed the agriculture, hunting, forestry and fishing (AHFF) sector to contribute 0.4 percentage point
to the 6.4-percent GDP growth in the first three months of the year. Notably, this is the highest contribution made by the AHFF sector in the past eight consecutive quarters, or since the first quarter of 2015.
Defensive moves
Meanwhile, per its assessment, the BSP said local institutions have enough room to maneuver policies to lessen the impact of these potential threats to the local economy. “A mid the uncertainties engulfing the global environment, the government remains focused on strengthening anchors and building defenses to protect the economy from negative surprises and buoy its sustainable growth momentum,” the Central Bank said in its report.
The BSP stressed that there is enough “elbow room” for fiscal authorities to further boost public spending. “ The narrowing debt-to-GDP ratio affords the government to increase the fiscal deficit-to-GDP ratio target to 3 percent for 2017 to 2022. The national government is keen on implementing its ta xreform agenda by pushing for the passage of the Ta x Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion Act,” the BSP said. “This allows greater flexibility to accelerate infrastructure spending and investments in human capital, and pursue much needed structural reform agenda, steering a stronger and more inclusive Philippine economy.” Additionally, the BSP said there is enough space on its end to adjust or
to leave policy settings unchanged, as what the global and local developments would necessitate. “ T here is enough legroom for monetar y polic y to suppor t economic activ it y whi le ensur ing price stability. Future monetar ypolic y decisions w il l remain data-dependent. The BSP continues to be vigilant against any risks to the inf lation outlook and will adjust policy settings as needed to ensure future inf lation remains consistent with the target, while being supportive of sustainable growth,” the BSP said in the report. The BSP will be having its next monetary-policy setting meeting on August 10. This would be the first Monetary Board meeting of BSP Governor Nestor A. Espenilla Jr. as central bank chief.
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Macron woos Trump with Parisian splendor in European lesson
D
onald J. Trump famously said in February that “Paris is no longer Paris.” After Emmanuel Macron showed him the town and met with him at the gilded Élysée Palace, the American president ladled praise on the French capital and the country’s 39-yearold leader.
He even suggested that his opposition to the Paris climate accord isn’t set in stone. It was Macron’s fourth meeting with Trump since his election in May. The two have acrimoniously clashed over climate change and Macron has made not-so-hidden allusions to his opposition to building “walls”. But in this latest encounter, they stressed their common positions, from trade to terrorism. Preceding the visit, French officials laid out their strategy to approach Trump: hold your ground where you disagree, and pivot to areas of agreement. And don’t forget his love of pomp and the military. As both leaders prepare to attend the Bastille Day parade together on Friday, that strategy appears to have worked. “You have a great president, and I think you’re going to have a very peaceful and beautiful Paris, and I’m coming back,” Trump said on Thursday at a news conference with Macron.
European ‘adjustment’
Macron had never held elective office before winning France’s presidency, and all his previous government positions have been in the economic domain. But he’s quickly put a stamp on international affairs, lecturing Russia’s
Vladimir Putin about meddling in France’s election during a May meeting in Versailles, and calling Trump last month to say France would join the US in any air strikes should the Syrian regime resort again to using chemical weapons. “What we’ve witnessed over the last month or so since Trump’s first trip to Europe is an adjustment in how Europe is going to deal with Trump,” said Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council for Foreign Relations who was the senior director for European affairs on the National Security Council under Barack Obama. “Macron gets stature. He’s raising France’s profile and its game after a period in which many French voters were profoundly apathetic about the French presidency.” In Europe, he’s pushing labor liberalization and tax cuts to win Germany’s confidence in his ability to make the French economy more competitive. Macron hosted German Chancellor Angela Merkel just hours before Trump and won assurances from her that she’s willing to consider greater solidarity within the euro zone.
Paris, not Pittsburgh
Even Trump’s position on climate change appeared to soften after spending the day with the French president. Trump announced the
Emmanuel Macron (left), France’s president and US President Donald J. Trump pose for photographs at the élysée Palace in Paris, France, on Thursday. The awkward relationship between Trump and Macron that began with a white-knuckle handshake and the US president’s repudiation of the Paris climate accords gets a chance for a reset with Trump’s twoday visit to France. Christophe Morin/Bloomberg via Getty Images
US withdrawal from the Paris climate accord shortly after Macron’s election, saying that he represents the citizens of “Pittsburgh, not Paris.” The 39-year-old Macron responded by inviting US climate scientists to relocate to France and mocking Trump’s campaign slogan with a web site called “Make Our Planet Great Again”. At the news conference, Trump was asked whether he would reconsider withdrawal from the Paris deal. “Something could happen with respect to the Paris accord,” he said. “We’ll see what happens. We’ll talk about that over the coming period of time. If it happens, that’ll be wonderful, and if it doesn’t, that’ll be OK, too.” Macron said he “respects” that withdrawal from the accord was part of Trump’s campaign platform.
Military alliance
Macron sought to stress that military matters and antiterrorism cooperation remain the bedrock of French-US relations. Both leaders noted that the US and France are each other’s oldest allies: troops of both countries will march on Friday to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the US’s entry into World War I. The US provides logistical and intelligence support to French
anti-militant operations in the Sahel region of Africa, and French warplanes, special forces and an artillery unit are part of the USled coalition against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. “We represent countries that have been allies forever,” Macron said at their news conference. “No matter what our functions, our histories go beyond us. The bonds between our countries are bigger than us.” Their positions on trade aren’t even as far apart as presumed, though Macron won his election on a free-trade platform, while Trump promised to protect US industry. “France and the US want to be able to take the necessary measures within the context of free trade that can help us protect the sectors where we are active,” Macron said, though he declined to directly address US threats to limit steel imports and European Union warnings of retaliation if it does. “We want to work together to develop efficient measures to combat dumping wherever it takes place.” Macron and their wives then held a private dinner at the Jules Vernes restaurant in the Eiffel Tower, from where they could admire a view of Paris. Chef Alain Ducasse canceled a planned event in Beijing, and flew back overnight from Hong Kong to be present in the kitchen. The menu included a selection of pate, Dover sole and filet of beef served with brioche, followed by hot chocolate souffle. As the night ended, it was clear that Trump’s mysterious friend “Jim”, whom he described in his February speech to conservative activists as a once-frequent visitor to Paris who recently discontinued his trips because of the threat of terrorism, was nowhere to be found. “My overall impression was that President Macron sought to emphasize the commonalities and not to harp on the known differences between him and the president on a whole bunch of issues,” said Jeff Rathke, a senior fellow and deputy director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The visit “is a success for President Macron, regardless of what their disagreements are”. Bloomberg News
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How Trump’s nominee for the Fed could turn central banking on its head
P
resident Donald J. Trump on July 10 nominated Randal Quarles to be one of the seven governors of the Federal Reserve (the Fed) system, the central bank of the United States. Before I get to Quarles and his qualifications, it’s important to understand the Fed and what it does. Its decisions are vital to every person on the planet who borrows or lends money (pretty much everybody) since it has enormous inf luence over global interest rates. Its board of governors also influences most other aspects of the global financial system, from regulating banks to how money is wired around the world. Quarles, for his part, is clearly qualified for a job at the pinnacle of financial regulation. He has held numerous positions in the US Treasury Department, including undersecretary for domestic finance under George W. Bush, and was the US executive director at the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He has also worked on Wall Street for The Carlyle Group and founded his own investment company, The Cynosure Group. He also has a law degree from Yale. The issue that I believe deserves careful scrutiny, however, does not involve his qualifications. Rather it’s a view of his that, if allowed to permeate the Fed, would represent a seismic shock to how the central bank operates and could potentially have severe consequences if—or when—we stumble into another financial crisis like the one we endured only a decade ago.
How the Fed controls the world
Currently, the Fed rules the f inancia l world using a ver y simple model: A handful of very smart people sit together at least eight times a year and decide how to execute the countr y’s monetar y policy. The implications are enormous. In the words of the Fed itself, decisions made in these meetings: “Trigger a chain of events that affect other short-term interest rates, foreign-exchange rates, longterm interest rates, the amount of money and credit and, ultimately, a range of economic variables, including employment, output and prices of goods and services.” Janet Yellen currently chairs this group, called the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), and its decisions, like those of the Supreme Court, are final. There are few or no absolute rules, and there is no appeal. Quarles, however, has described the discretionary decisions of this small group as “a crazy way to run a railroad”. Instead, Quarles argues that the Fed should use a rules-based approach, with little or no discretion. Economic data would be plugged into a simple model, which would spit out the decision the Fed should take. Since t he model wou ld be well-know n and the relevant economic data (such as GDP, inf lation rates, etc.) are already w ide ly pu bl ic i z e d , e ve r yone from Wall Street to Main Street who cares about interest rates would be able to predict how the Fed is going to react under such a rules-based approach.
The Taylor rule
While Quarles has not specifically referred to which rule he would favor, a frequently cited one is called the “Taylor rule”. It is named after Stanford economist John B. Taylor, who proposed it in 1993 as a new guiding principle for central bank decision-making. In recent years, the rule has gained much interest among people who watch and study the Fed. The Taylor rule states that the
Fed should establish short-term interest rates using a mathematical formula. It would use the current rate as a starting point and then factor in data tied to inflation and GDP, both based on the difference between the actual figures and the bank’s targets. Inflation is an important variable because price changes impact people’s standard of living, while GDP growth affects the number of jobs available in the economy. Since it would rely on a few human inputs from the Fed, the Taylor rule is somewhat flexible, enough to accommodate different situations by allowing central bankers to specify the importance of inflation compared with GDP growth. Some countries, like Germany, primarily focus on keeping inflation extremely low. Others, such as the US, try to balance both inflation and GDP growth roughly equally. Central banks in some developing countries, like those in Africa, often put stronger emphasis on boosting economic growth with less regard to inflation. But that’s about as far it will stretch.
Why does this matter?
In general, the Taylor rule would lead central banks to increase interest rates when inflation is high or when unemployment is very low. Conversely, the rule indicates central banks should lower interest rates when inflation is too low (or there is deflation), when economic growth is poor or unemployment is climbing. But therein lies the rub. Rules work well when things are “normal”, but when the unexpected happens, they become much less useful—even harmful. If the Taylor rule were an effective and straightforward method of transforming complex choices into simple, easy-to-understand decisions, the question is, why doesn’t every central bank use this rule? The answer is as simple as the Taylor rule itself. Sometimes a country faces an economic quandary, such as what the US experienced during the oil-price shocks of the late 1970s. Back then, inflation was too high and GDP growth was too low, leaving the country stuck in what is known as a period of stagflation. In these circumstances, the Taylor rule breaks down. It tells central bankers there is nothing they can do to improve economic conditions. The rule signals that interest rates need to be raised to combat high inf lation, yet, at the same time, that would weaken already-sluggish GDP growth. Had the US followed the Taylor rule back then, it would have done nothing. Instead, the Fed raised interest rates and broke the back of inflation expectations.
What’s crazier
Simply put, centra l bankers around the world—including those at the Fed—have not adopted rules-based monetary policy using the Taylor rule or another because in times of economic crisis, a simple precept usually fails to provide effective solutions. The current ad-hoc approach provides maximum f lexibility and allows central bankers to reach for untested methods that help them get the economy back on track. Quarles may be right. It might be a crazy way to run a railroad. But then again, monetary policy—and the $18.6-trillion US economy—is a bit more complex than operating a train on a set of rails. The crazy thing might be to do it any other way. Jay L. Zagorsky, The Ohio State
University/ AP
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A5
Second major title for Kang? B
EDMINSTER, New Jersey—Danielle Kang’s first Ladies Professional Golf Association victory was long overdue, coming in her 144th start, at the Women’s PGA Championship early this month. In the two weeks since, she has been racing to keep her life running on time. On Wednesday at Trump National Golf Club, she sprinted with her arms spread like wings to the 10th tee and flung herself into the embrace of Michelle Wie, who had stood patiently waiting for more than five minutes. Still out of breath, the 24-year-old Kang proceeded to tee up her ball and hit an errant drive. “Oh my gosh,” she said. “That’s terrible.” Wie, one of Kang’s best friends, chided her in mock exasperation. “You can’t just run up to the tee and hit,” Wie said. After hitting a second drive that found the fairway, Kang hit two approach shots. The second, from deep rough, grazed Wie’s mother, who had barely noticed that she had been hit by the time she was swallowed in a hug from Kang, who had rushed over to apologize. Kang’s smile seems to magnetically attract the cameras, but on the eve of the US Women’s Open here, her usual effervescence fell a little flat as she finished tuning up for what she hopes will be her second major championship in two starts. “I’m so overwhelmed,” Kang said.
Old-fashioned
SINCE she birdied the final hole for a one-stroke victory over the defending champion Brooke Henderson at Olympia Fields to win the second major of the year, Kang said she has been receiving about 700 messages a day on her phone and via social media. At first, she tried to reply to every message, but quickly fell into keystroke quicksand. In desperation, she handed her phone to her mother at the beginning of this week so she would have several hundred fewer distractions. Annika Sorenstam, a retired 10-time major winner, reached out to Kang the old-fashioned way—by tracking her down in the clubhouse—to offer her congratulations. She threw in some advice on how to handle the attention that can engulf a first-time major winner. Kang said Sorenstam had told her to carve out time for news media obligations but also to make time for herself. Kang, a California native of South Korean descent, tried to do exactly that last week; she canceled a media tour in New York so she could fly with her caddie, Cole Pensanti, to Los Angeles to visit the grave of her father, K.S. Kang, who died of brain and lung cancer in 2013. “I had to see him,” Kang said of her father, who had caddied for her when she won back-to-back US Women’s
Amateur championships, in 2010 and 2011. Her weekly routine once included texting or talking to him before and after every competitive round.
Bib
AFTER he was told he had cancer, Kang said, she felt as if she was playing more for him than for herself. “It gave him joy to see me play,” she said. After his death, she felt as if she had lost her greatest champion. She took her grief out on the game they both loved. “I felt like golf took away the time I could have spent with him,” Kang said. But her attitude and practice habits both started to improve after a night when she dreamed that her father had spoken to her. “You’re not practicing hard,” she said that he told her. Kang carries Dunhill cigarettes, her father’s favorite brand, in her golf bag. She lights one before every tournament because the smell reminds her of her father and calms her. When she visits his grave site, she lights a few, and on her most recent visit she did so again. She also had Pensanti’s caddie bib from Olympia Fields with her— her way of telling her father that she had practiced hard and it had paid off.
“I know what she’s going through,” Wie said. “The week after you win your first major is a blur, and then it all catches up with you, and you get tired and cranky.” As easy as the back nine felt to Kang on the Sunday she won the PGA, that’s how hard the back nine at Trump National felt to her the day before the scheduled start of the Open. Wie threw Kang a laugh line that pulled her through one hole when she said, “I unfriended you when you wouldn’t watch Beauty and the Beast with me.” A short while later, Kang’s mother, who had been walking several yards behind her, caught up to her and said, “You look way too stressed.” She calmed Kang down, and so did Wie, who told Kang: “Just breathe. You’re doing everything good.”
Danielle Kang warms up on the 10th tee during the practice round for the US Women’s Open at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey on July 12. New York Times NEWS SERVICE
New York Times News Service
Unfriended
BUT then, Kang believes her father already knew that. She said that she had felt his presence on the 72nd green at Olympia Fields before she sank the birdie putt. Since then, Kang has felt like a passenger looking at her life from the window of a speeding plane. “I’ve been on cloud nine and I’ve been trying to come down from it just so I can focus on this week,” she said. The 27-year-old Wie, the 2014 Open champion, can relate.
Pocari Sweat, Creamline to put perfect PVL records on the line
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OINT leaders Pocari Sweat and Creamline put their perfect records on the line as they get to test the mettle of each other in their much-awaited marquee matchup in the Premier Volleyball League Open Conference. After their 3-0 starts, only one will remain unscathed between the Lady Warriors and Cool Smashers in their 4 p.m. face-off at the Filoil Flying V Centre in San Juan City. The solo league lead is at stake, as well as a playoff berth for the semifinals. Meanwhile, Perlas-Banko (1-2) takes on winless Power Smashers (0-3) at 6:30 p.m., while in men’s division, Air Force (2-1) battles Cafe Lupe (0-3) at 10 a.m., while Megabuilders (3-0) eyes a fourth straight win against IEM (2-1) at 1 p.m. All eyes will be on the head-to-head between the two Most Valuable Player (MVP) front-runners with the four-time league’s best Alyssa Valdez taking up the cudgels for Creamline against two-time Finals MVP Myla Pablo, the face of Pocari Sweat franchise. Valdez and Pablo, the top contenders in the MVP race with an average of 26 and 23.7 points in three games, respectively, are reasons their teams remained unbeaten. Both drew stellar performances in all their first three matches.
However, it would be Valdez’s last game for Creamline before she flies to Japan on Monday for a training camp with the national team that will make her miss a couple of games. The Cool Smashers seek to give a perfect send-off for their star as a win would put them one game closer from clinching a spot to the semis. But it won’t be easy in facing the Lady Warriors, who dominated the last two
editions of the Shakey’s V-League and the first Reinforced conference of the inaugural PVL few months ago. “They are the champions. We prepared a lot. Good thing we had a one-week break going toward Pocari,” said Creamline
Manila-Negros derby kicks off
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EAGUE leader Meralco Manila faces Ceres Negros for the first time in the Philippines Football League (PFL) today at the Rizal Memorial Stadium. The Manila-Negros derby kicks off at 4 p.m., while Global Cebu hosts Davao Aguilas at 7 p.m. at the Cebu City Sports Complex. Meralco tries to widen its gap on top trying to add three more points in its 23 markers on seven wins in nine games. However, the Sparks are fancied in facing Ceres Negros, which is running for fourth place with 16 points. Ceres comes off from a 7-0 massacre handed to them by the visiting Ilocos United last week at the Panaad Park and Football Stadium in Bacolod City. Global, meanwhile, seeks to strengthen its grip of the second spot—20 points on 10 games built on six wins, two draws and two losses—when it eyes its third straight home win trying to duplicate the 2-1 first-round conquest over Davao Aguilas in June in Tagum City. Davao has yet to win a single game after nine outings collecting only four points from four draws but suffered as five losses. Meralco and Global was supposed to take on each other last Wednesday in Cebu but the league postponed their marquee matchup and decided to fix its schedule. Lance Agcaoili
Assistant Coach Oliver Almadro speaking for Head Coach Tai Bundit. “But we just have to enjoy ourselves and play against each other.” Pocari Sweat Head Coach Rico de Guzman, on the other hand, is still ruing about the complacency problem of his wards that he saw in their first three games. “It’s still our problem. Every time we get the lead we always tend to relax,” de Guzman said. “We cannot afford to play like that, especially when you’re up against a strong team like Creamline. They should follow our defensive pattern always.” Aside from the battle of the two MVPs, Creamline will also bank on seasoned spikers Rosemarie Vargas, Rizza Mandapat and Pau Soriano, as well as playmaker Jia Morado, who were all instrumental in their first three games when they take on the Lady Warriors, also bannered by Elaine Kasilag, Jeanette Panaga, Gyzelle Sy and Melissa Gohing. Lance Agcaoili
1 of Big 4 left at Wimbledon L
ONDON—Chants of “Roger! Roger! Roger!” filled the early evening air at the All England Club, so after his postmatch stretch, Roger Federer paused on a bridge connected to Centre Court and waved to his adoring public. “When you see that they’re there for you, it’s a bit of an unusual feeling. I’m very touched, actually, to have so much support,” Federer said. “I never would have imagined when I was younger that I would have experienced this.” Less than a month from his 36th birthday, Federer is still giving ’em what they want. When Wimbledon began, Federer and the rest of the Big 4—Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray and Rafael Nadal—had accounted for each of the past 14 men’s singles championships. Now, as the tournament heads to the semifinals on Friday, only Federer remains. Call him the Big 1.
“It’s nice to see different guys, maybe, but I’m happy that my dream run continues,” Federer said, “and we’ll now see what happens next.” Federer’s path through the draw has been impressive, to say the least. He has won every set he’s played this fortnight, the only semifinalist who can make that claim. He has won 63 of 66 service games. He has faced only 14 break points. He has made only 49 unforced errors, fewer than 10 per match. So the first question put to 2016 runner-up Milos Raonic after his 6-4, 6-2, 7-6 (4) loss to the seventime Wimbledon champion in the quarterfinals last Wednesday was: What does a guy have to do to beat Federer? “You know, you have to do a lot. It’s a stiff task,” said Raonic, who defeated Federer in the semifinals last year before losing to Murray in the final. “I guess
you can know what you have to do. It’s a lot harder to do it than just to know it.” He’s hardly the first to realize that, of course.
Tactics
AFTER being eliminated by Raonic a year ago, Federer took the rest of the season off to allow his surgically repaired left knee to heal properly. He already had missed last year’s French Open in May, ending a record streak of 65 consecutive appearances at Grand Slam tournaments, and then skipped the Rio de Janeiro Olympics and US Open, too. When Federer returned in January, he was fit and full of energy, and won his 18th major championship at the Australian Open. That was part of a 19-1, three-title start to 2017, before he took another break, sitting out the clay-court circuit and the French Open again.
“I could never really play quite so freely last year just because [now] I’m more focused on how the knee’s behaving, rather than how I need to hit my forehand or backhand or what’s not going to be good for my opponent,” Federer said. “This year, I’m just a normal tennis player again, where I can focus on tactics. I think that’s the difference. I’m playing very well. I’m rested. I’m fresh. I’m confident, too. Then great things do happen.” Such as becoming the oldest Wimbledon semifinalist since 1974. Perhaps his rivals at the top of the game should take note.
Injuries
DJOKOVIC, a three-time champion at the All England Club, did say he would think about taking time away from the tour because of an injured right elbow that became so painful on Wednesday he stopped in the second set of
Switzerland’s Roger Federer celebrates after beating Canada’s Milos Raonic at the end of their Men’s Singles Quarterfinal Match on day nine at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London on July 12. AP
his quarterfinal against Tomas Berdych. Murray, who won Wimbledon in 2013 and 2016, will consider an extended absence, too, after his sore left hip clearly hampered him while being beaten, 3-6, 6-4, 6-7 (4), 6-1, 6-1, in the quarterfinals by Sam Querrey. “We both had a very long, very tough year, a lot of matches, a lot of emotions, a lot of things in play,” Djokovic said. “Our bodies have taken a lot physically.” While No. 3-seeded Federer will face No. 11 Berdych next, and No. 24 Querrey—the first US man in a Grand Slam semifinal since 2009—meets No. 7 Marin Cilic, No. 1 Murray and No. 2 Djokovic are done at Wimbledon this year. So is No. 4 Nadal, a two-time champion who lost in the fourth round. “Of course I’m surprised,” Federer said, “to see them going out.” No one should be surprised that he is sticking around. AP
A6 Saturday, July 15, 2017 | Editor: Mike Besa
How to develop the mental toughness of a US Open champion By David MacKenzie 1. SELF-BELIEF Look at the names on that leaderboard, and you’ll notice they all have a manner about them which exudes self-assuredness and self-belief. They believe they are capable of winning a major championship. They are very comfortable with themselves—they know their strengths and their weaknesses and they are honest about their fears. They appreciate themselves deep down no matter what the result. 2. GRIT Champions have an huge desire to succeed but know that it’s a tough road to achieve it. They love the fight—it brings the best out of them. Teeing it up in those final few groups today will undoubtedly make them nervous, but they see that pressure as a privilege—it’s been earned. Strength comes from the struggle. 3. WORK ETHIC All the guys in contention today will have put in a lot of work to get where they are. It will have been instilled in them from a young age that success is not given, it’s earned. 4. ACTING SKILLS Champions can act themselves toward confidence. By using body language and self-talk, they can summon feelings of strength and power at will. They know the power of sports psychology. 5. FOCUS ON WHAT YOU CAN CONTROL There will be a lot going on out there today outside of a player’s control. Heavy winds are predicted and there always will be some good and bad luck involved in golf. All these players have become skilled in emotionally detaching themselves from things they can’t control, such as weather, course conditions, what other players are doing, bad bounces and most important, the past or future. They focus only on what they can control—hitting the best golf shot they possibly can and accepting the outcome.
The fourth green on the Norman Course. The bunker faces are overgrown and the edges undefined.
The rough on the Norman Course just off the cartpath will devour errant golf balls.
View from the clubhouse shows that overgrown grasses are
Eagle Ridge Golf and C
Healing the The 13th hole on the Faldo Course. The bunkers have been cut back and sand has been added but the faces are still overgrown.
6. POSITIVE ATTITUDE Every hole is a birdie opportunity. 7. ACCEPTANCE The champion will have to be accepting today. Focusing on the present (as if the past and future don’t exist) will be an essential skill for winning. The champion won’t be burning mental energy on how he wished he’d done this or that, instead, he’ll refocus and get back in the moment. 8. THEY NEVER STOP LEARNING To get to this point takes a “growth mindset”—champions learn from every round, regardless of the result. Talent and ability is nurtured, it’s not predetermined. Champions are not afraid of failure as it’s a great teacher. They adapt and grow without comparing themselves to others. 9. THEY KNOW HOW TO RELAX UNDER PRESSURE AND STAY PRESENT Champions are able to calm themselves down in the pressure moments. Notice this today. Good breathing, slowing things down, talking to the caddy, etc. will all be strategies they use to diffuse negative emotions, ease tension and stay calm in pressure situations. 10. CHAMPIONS HAVE GOALS (SHORT AND LONG TERM) They have goals. What does success look like for you? Whether it’s winning the US Open or winning the club championship, you must define and imagine it. Dream big and then figure out how you can take a small step towards it this week. David MacKenzie is a performance coach and the founder of Golf State of Mind. Throughout David’s playing career, he learned quickly how attitude, self-belief and mental toughness affect performance in golf. He knew that was the difference between his average and great rounds. But the question was how did one improve these valuable skills and feel more confident more often? While studying at the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland, David began in-depth research into sport psychology and how elite performers apply their minds to practice and play. He interviewed hundreds of elite golfers and sport psychologists. He shared what he discovered via his web site, Golf State of Mind and it quickly resonated with golfers of all levels. David was able to effectively communicate the mental and emotional issues that most golfers face on the golf course. The web site quickly became one of the most popular mental game resources for golf on The Web and David was able to utilize his audience by testing and proving new ways for golfers to reach “the peak performance” state more frequently.
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Story & photos by Mike Besa
wrote a feature on Eagle Ridge Golf and Country Club two issues back, titled “Quo Vadis, Eagle Ridge?” in which I lamented the state of the club’s four golf courses. It didn’t take long until I got a call from Eagle Ridge’s newly installed general manager Antonio “Boy Blue” Ocampo inviting me to the club to take stock of their efforts to rehabilitate the golf courses. Of course, I agreed immediately.
To be perfectly honest, I had high hopes for what I was to see at the club. I have strong feelings for the first golf club that I joined and want to see its four golf courses back in peak condition. But I tempered my expectations knowing that not a lot could be done in the short span of time. Driving into the club, my expectations seemed validated. As I approached the main clubhouse, you could barely see the facilities because the tall grass. Thankfully, management had given the main clubhouse a
fresh coat of paint, thus easing fears that not much had been done. I was met at the club by WG’s (the golf course maintenance contractor of Eagle Ridge) Tito Mojado. Mojado is no newcomer to the golf industry, having worked at Mimosa, Royal Northwoods and Clark Sun Valley at different times in his 23-year career as a golf-course superintendent. He has been with WG and Eagle Ridge Golf & CC for most of the last 10 years. Now I know for a fact that WG’s contract in previous years amounted to P6 million to
maintain all four golf courses at Eagle Ridge and the herbicides, pesticides and all the equipment needed were to be purchased by the club. Today, WG’s contract amounts to P4,600,000 and the herbicides, pesticides and equipment costs are also to be shouldered by them. Under the previous arrangement, the golf courses suffered. How was it going to be possible to rehabilitate all four golf courses with a smaller budget than before? First off, Eagle Ridge has closed the Dye
Course until further notice. It seems the Dye was the hardest hit and is going to take the most time and money to rehabilitate. Allowing members and guests to play there was sure to draw more ire from the members and guests, so the easiest thing to do was to close it until further notice while rehabilitation was going on. The Norman Course was closed for a month for core aerification and rehabilitation of the greens and to allow for selective herbicide application to rid playing surfaces of weeds, rehabilitation of the bunkers and general cleanup of the golf course.
Equipment Review: 2017 TaylorMade M2 Driver Point and shoot
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y first experience with the new M2 came during a special product preview of the new M Family hosted by Pacsports Philippines at the Southlinks Golf Club for the media and TaylorMade’s local brand ambassadors. Already being a fanatical owner of the original M1, I took the opportunity to acquaint myself with the 2017 M2. It was quite the revelation. It wasn’t the best time for me since I was nursing a soft tissue injury in my chest sustained in a car accident. But injured or not, I wasn’t about to pass up a chance to experience the new M Family on a golf course.
In my short time with the M2 on Southlinks’ tight fairways, I barely missed a fairway. Playing the M2 was a matter of point and shoot; just make sure you’re pointed in the right direction and pull the trigger. Presto! Another fairway hit. I made up my mind then and there that I had to have one. Now I’ve never gotten on well with the stock shaft offerings. While they’re fine for 95 percent of the golfing public, they were never quite right for me. Stock shafts force me to slow down my swing and swing smoothly. While not entirely a bad thing, they just don’t have the headroom for the times that I really want to let one rip. Not that my
swing speed is up there with that of a touring professional. Far from it. At my advanced status in life, I consider myself lucky to be able to maintain a swing speed of 98 miles to 100 miles per hour. Really, it’s more a matter of feel. I load the shaft considerably through my transition and lose feel of the clubhead when using lighter shafts. I was therefore heartened to discover that TaylorMade offers premium shaft upgrades at little or no extra cost. I did a lot of research before pulling the trigger. I tried as many of the shafts in TaylorMade’s web site as I could; borrowing friends’ clubs and trying demos and after much soul searching, I settled on the Graphite Design Tour AD TP. After conferring with Pacsports Philippines’s Randy Rana, I put in the order for my M2; 9.5 degrees of loft, the Graphite Design
Tour AD TP would be 45.5 inches long and the grip would have three wraps of tape under the grip to fit my pudgy mitts. Now all I had to do was wait for the club to make its way to our shores from TaylorMade’s Carlsbad headquarters. I took delivery of the M2 just in time for the Philippine Seniors and Mid-Amateur Championships at Mount Malarayat Golf and Country Club in Lipa City, Batangas. It was worth the wait. I loved the look of it. Its large footprint inspires confidence as you set it down behind the golf ball. It was every bit as easy to hit as I remembered. My fellow competitors in the Senior Open were suitably impressed with the accuracy and length of my drives and although I did deserve some credit, the confidence that the TaylorMade M2 gave me was in no small part responsible for my results off the tee. The M2 uses a new multimaterial
construction and advanced shaping by way of a breakthrough design technique called “Geocoustic”. Along with the new Geocoustic design, the M2 driver houses a newly designed Speed Pocket that is three times more flexible than its predecessor to improve on the already impressive performance of its predecessor. The new Geocoustic feature combines geometry and acoustical engineering to unlock more forgiveness and best-in-class sound. The new breakthrough in geometry is the sunken sole portion of the driver. This section utilizes an ultra-light, thick-thin 9-1-1 Titanium, a design that enabled engineers to free-up volume, while not raising the center of gravity. The Geocoustic feature makes the structure stiffer and easier to manage vibrations caused at impact. With this added stiffness, minimal sound ribs were needed to create best-in-class
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en’t just on the golf course.
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Saturday, July 15, 2017 A7
Work being done on the bunker on the fourth hole of the Aoki.
Country Club
he Eagle WG focused on the tee boxes and surrounding areas as well as the fairways, greens and the surrounding areas. The rough areas and areas more than a meter from the cart path are very heavily overgrown, a clear indication of just how long these areas were neglected. We toured the Aoki Course next. The Aoki was my favorite of the four and is the most unique design at Eagle Ridge. The course was closed and would remain so for a week while rehabilitation work was going on. There were certain areas (the areas surrounding the tee box of the second hole for example) that were very heavily treated with herbicide, as weeds and foreign grasses had invaded them. The bunker edges were overgrown and undefined. Weeds had begun to grow in the bunker sand itself. Mojado explained that work had begun on the bunker faces and that they were reducing the surface area of many of the bunkers to make them less expensive to maintain without affecting playability and the challenges to the golfer. The greens on the Aoki had also been core aeriated and top-dressed with sand. Some like the sixth green were responding nicely, while others like the second needed more work and time to recover. One of WG’s challenges is going to be doing all the necessary work with the size of their
workforce. Basically, the amount of manpower we saw on both the Norman and Aoki seemed inadequate for the work at hand, so progress will be slow going. This is why Mojado and WG have prioritized the playing surfaces and surrounds initially. When these are back to acceptable standards then they will turn their attention to the rough and intermediate areas. We toured the Faldo next. The Faldo is the centerpiece of the sprawling Eagle Ridge property. It is the most challenging golf course of the four, and is the one of which the members are the proudest. It was, therefore, heartening to find the Faldo in the best condition of the four. The playing areas were in acceptable condition although the rough areas by the tee boxes and just off the fairways were still overgrown. Still, other rough areas, such as the ones around the fifteenth, had been cleared, and the hole looks like it used to. But all was still not right on the Faldo Course. We chanced upon a group of Korean tourists on twelve, the long, double dogleg par five that were searching for their tee shots in the rough area just right of the cart path. That area used to be open and airy. It was heavily overgrown and the tourists had little chance of finding their golf balls. Many of the bunkers needed work as did most of the bunker faces. The greens seemed alright for the most part,
but quite a few had some bare spots that had not quite grown in yet. But overall, the Faldo is in the best shape of the lot. The golf courses aren’t the only things at the club that need attention. Driving up to the main clubhouse, the grass surrounding it is so long that you can barely see the clubhouse. The interior facilities are serviceable but are also in need of maintenance. Even some of the landscaped areas around the clubhouse were overgrown and in need of clearing. With two large tournaments set at Eagle Ridge later in the year, the club and WG have their work cut out for them. There’s much to do and only a few months to do it in. Management is confident that they’ll be able to deliver presentable golf courses on the dates due, and we hope and pray that they do. If they don’t..... Well, you can imagine what it will do for the reputation of the club. Money remains a problem for Eagle Ridge Golf and Country Club. This is the reason why during our tour of the three functioning golf courses, we only saw small groups of workers on the grounds. But they’re chipping away at the problem, slowly but surely. It will take some time, but things look to be heading in the right direction. We wish them the best.
JUNGOLFERS PUNCH TICKETS TO U.S. GIRLS’ JUNIORS
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unior golfers Samantha Bruce, Mikhaela Fortuna and LK Go successfully hurdled their respective sectional qualifiers to gain entry to the 69th US Girls’ Junior Championship to be held at Boone Park Golf Club in Augusta Missouri, from July 24 to 29. Bruce shot a 2 under 70 to post the only sub-par round to capture medalist honors by three strokes at the OGA Golf Course in Woodburn, Oregon, on June 24. The 5'11" incoming grade 12 student from Asumption College San Lorenzo led from the fourth hole and never looked back in an impressive win over a very tough field after being away from active competition for more than a year due to an injury. Fortuna also submitted a 2 under par 70 card at the Emerald Greens Golf Club in
PHOTOS BY MIKE BESA
Hastings, Minnesota, on June 22, but ran into a streaking golfer from Florida and had to settle for second place in her sectionals that awarded four slots to the main tournament. Former Boston College standout and the 2017 Porter Cup champion Go submitted a stunning 6 under par 66, but was still nosed by one stroke for low medal honors at the Cartersville Golf Club in Cartersville, Georgia, on June 26. Junia Gabasa and Kansas University varsity Annika Cedo finished one position away from an outright berth in their respective sectional qualifiers and now hold Alternate status for the championship. Go and Cedo are the beneficiaries of a new rule change that increased the age eligibility sound and feel of the M2. The freed-up volume allowed engineers to make the driver’s head larger, both the visible footprint as well as the club’s face (7 percent), ultimately making the driver not only appear more visibly forgiving, but feel more forgiving at the same time. I’m a believer. The latest version of TaylorMade’s M2 sounds the business; it sounds and feels powerful at impact. It’s louder than its predecessor and even more forgiving. Slight mishits still found the fairway, and center hits ended a long way down the fairway. Being able to order the M2 (or M1, for that matter) with the shaft of your choice makes the deal sweeter still. If you’re in the market for a new driver, the TaylorMade M2 should definitely be on your shortlist. Mike Besa
from 17 to 18 with both girls not reaching their 19th birthdays despite already tucking in one year of college golf in US Division I schools. This new rule should auger well for a lot of Philippine-based players who enter college relatively earlier than their US counterparts. Bruce, Fortuna and Go will join Yuka Saso, who got an outright seed to the championship for being a semifinalist in last year’s US Women’s Amateur Championship. Our boys were not as lucky, though, with only Wei-Wei Gao of Cebu going to the US Boys’ Junior Championship at Flint Hills Golf Club in Andover, Kansas, from June 17 to 22, as a seeded player after reaching the last eight in last year’s edition. Good luck to all our junior golfers!! Laban Pilipinas!!
A8 Saturday, July 15, 2017 • Editor: Efleda P. Campos
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How to make family business work across generations
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UTA Suzuki was studying finance with the goal of becoming an investment banker. Then his father called. “He came to me with a serious face and said, ‘I heard you’re good at math,’” Suzuki, 37, said. “We have a small problem. We need your help.” His father, Toshio Suzuki, was the chef and coowner of the restaurant Sushi Zen, which had been a New York City institution for more than 30 years. And his problem wasn’t so small. “When I looked at the books, it wasn’t healthy,” his son said. But the son wanted to help. “I thought it was a great opportunity to try out what I could do,” he said. “I stared at everything, from auditing, to regular food purchases, to how consistently everyone was cutting the fish.” And, in the process, he found himself working in a sushi restaurant. Five years later, Sushi Zen is closed, but father and son are continuing the family business in a new venture called Suzuki. There, the tables are turned, with the son running the business so his father can just make sushi. “When I was operating Sushi Zen, it was my duty solely to keep the business afloat and keep the guests happy,” the elder Suzuki, 71, said through a translator. “In the new
place, financing and management are covered by my son. I wanted to focus on training and bringing up my younger staff.” Conversations about family-business succession are as complicated as families themselves, but since the businesses are usually the primary driver of wealth in the family, it is essential to have such discussions, uncomfortable or not. That doesn’t mean they go smoothly, or even happen when they should. “The business and the family are usually so intertwined,” said Karen Reynolds Sharkey, national business-owner strategist at US Trust, the banking company. “The business is really another member of the family as they grow up.” The Suzuki family transition has been smooth so far. A younger brother has not expressed interest in the business, but advisers say that when transitions go smoothly, there has been a lot of planning, a bit of luck or both. “The challenges are, oftentimes, the kid doesn’t know anything about the business,” said Carl Genberg, national director of business transition planning for Wells Fargo Private Bank. “Does the kid want
to work in the business? To what extent is the kid humoring the parents about wanting to work in the business?” Jose Der emigrated from Cuba nearly 60 years ago and set up Der Dau, his custom boot-making business, in New York. It counts celebrities and fashion-conscious urbanites as clients. His son Joseph, 44, said he had been groomed since age 8 to take over the business. “I grew up becoming a cobbler and learned all the trades from him,” he added. His two sisters, by contrast, were not interested in the boot-making business, which made the succession decision easier. Still, taking something that his father created and making it his own wasn’t easy at first. “He’s very old school, very traditional,” Joseph said of his father. “I like fashion. I brought out a lot of funny colors, and it took off.” Der said that early on, when he wanted to make the family’s boots less traditional and more fashionable to attract clients like Madonna, he clashed with his father. When his father, who is in his 90s, let him do that, he said he learned a valuable lesson: “If two people work together and they can kind of compromise with each other, they can work as a great team.” For a family business to be passed on to a son or daughter, the critical factor is the desire of the
child to be involved. “At the end of the day, it starts with what the second generation wants,” Genberg said. “You’re going to make something work that doesn’t work?” Liza Towell Boyd, a top equestrian, had success riding other people’s horses since age 10. Her father, Jack Towell, said the family joked that her nickname was “cash machine”. “People would send me horses, and she’d ride them and make them famous, and I’d sell them,” said Towell, who owns Finally Farm in Camden, South Carolina. “She couldn’t get paid, but I could.” While Boyd, now in her late 30s, continues to compete on the national hunter-jumper circuit, she has taken on more responsibilities with the family business, from training horses to teaching children and upand-coming riders. “He’s my biggest cheerleader in competitions, but also on the business side, too,” she said. “You need someone there to teach you the ropes, and to be honest and to work really hard and be dedicated.” Married with children of her own, Boyd added collaborating with a parent is a life’s work. “The toughest part is it never ends,” she said. “My phone is ringing over and over and over again for a question” from her father. “When I married my husband I said, ‘You’re marrying my father too,’” Boyd recalled. “He’s the first person to call in the morning and the
there are two other restaurants within the space—traditional kaiseki dining and a sit-down sushi space— to offer different dining experiences and bigger margins. Daisy Medici, a managing director at GenSpring, a wealth-management firm, said she encourages families that run businesses to develop voluntary governance policies. “They need to put policies in place with how they’re going to work together,” she added. “We have riskmanagement policies, a code of [and] conduct, trust-distribution policies, vacation-home policies.” “It’s not a legal document,” Medici said. “It’s a morally binding document.” The likelihood of friction is high, but so is the opportunity to grow closer. The younger Suzuki, for instance, said that going into the restaurant business helped him understand what his father had been doing all those years. “I never experienced that fatherson relationship because he worked six days a week, and then on Sunday he slept because he was so exhausted,” he said. “I got to experience the day with him and the chefs.” Now that he is overseeing Suzuki restaurant, he added, he feels the pride of running something that helps his whole family. Where he struggles is calling himself his father’s boss. “I never pictured that I’d be hiring my father,” he said. “I try not to think of that.” New York Times News Service
Poor patient care at many nursing homes despite stricter oversight
Japan offers corpse hotels
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SAKA, Japan—The minimalist rooms at the Hotel Relation here in Japan’s third-largest city are furnished with plain twin beds. Flat-screen televisions adorn the walls. Plasticwrapped cups and toothbrushes are provided in the bathrooms. And just across the hall are the rooms where the corpses rest. Checkout time, for the living and the dead, is usually no later than 3 p.m. The Hotel Relation is what Japanese call an itai hoteru, or corpse hotel. About half the rooms are fitted with small altars and narrow platforms designed to hold coffins. Some also have climate-controlled coffins with transparent lids so mourners can peer inside. Part mortuary, part inn, these hotels serve a growing market of Japanese seeking an alternative to a big, traditional funeral in a country where the population is aging rapidly, community bonds are fraying and crematories are struggling to keep up with the sheer number of people dying. By custom, Japanese families take the bodies of their loved ones home from the hospital and sit for an overnight wake followed by a service the next morning in the company of neighbors, colleagues and friends. Then, in the afternoon, the body is sent to a crematory. But as neighborhood ties have weakened, funerals that once involved entire communities are increasingly the province of small, nuclear families. At the same time, Japanese society is getting old so fast, and deaths per year are climbing so quickly that families sometimes have to wait several days before a body can be cremated. The corpse hotels offer a practical solution—a place where a body can be stored at low cost until the crematory is ready, and where small, inexpensive wakes and services can be held outside the home. “We can say the supply doesn’t meet the demand,” mainly in urban areas, said Hiroshi Ota, an official at the Japan Society of Environmental
last person I talk to at night.” Dennis Shah started working in his father’s high-end wallpaper business, Chambord Prints, in Hoboken, New Jersey, straight out of business school in the 1980s. He had a good 20-year run before he realized he needed to take it in a different direction. “We were a factory, and business started to die out,” Shah, 52, said “Wallpaper was going out of style by 2005. I still had faith in the product.” So he contracted with several artists to create custom wallpaper, to reinvigorate the company’s product line. “One of the big things is my father’s way of being able to trust me and being able to delegate and to think strategically,” Shah added. His father, now 86, said he appreciated his son’s ability to inject a modern perspective. “Working together, we get ideas from each other,” HK Shah said. “I’m a 16th- century person. He’s a 21stcentury person. It helps us get better and better.” In some instances, the child needs to push back. Yuta Suzuki said his father’s vision for their new restaurant was to have a 10seat sushi bar where he used only the best 30 percent of a fish and served it to be eaten immediately. His son pointed out this was probably not the best way to turn a profit. So they compromised. The elder Suzuki controls the sushi bar, but
BAGUIO ARTIST
Baguio City-based artist Roland Bay-an makes a pencil sketch of a friend at the People’s Park. Bay-an is, by profession, a pencil-sketch artist. MAU VICTA
Crematories. While Japan has an estimated 5,100 crematories, Tokyo, with a population of more than 13 million, has just 26. “The demand for cremation will increase until the baby boomers disappear,” Ota added. Japan has funeral parlors, too, an industry that developed as people moved from the countryside to the cities, and it became difficult—and often impossible—to take corpses into high-rises. But they cater to larger groups and more elaborate ceremonies and, these days, that can seem a bit much. In the bubble economy of the 1980s, “Japanese funerals were based on showing off to other people, and people cared how they were viewed by others,” said Midori Kotani, executive researcher at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute, an arm of one of Japan’s largest insurance companies. “But fewer and fewer people talk to their neighbors, so they don’t have to show off or think about how they are viewed by them.” The corpse hotels are used by families who want a simpler affair, or want to skip a funeral alto-
gether. According to Kotani, about 30 percent of deaths in the Tokyo area are not marked by a funeral service, up from just 10 percent a decade ago. After cremation, families usually keep the ashes at home for 49 days before a burial service at a cemetery. On the 49th day, according to Buddhist tradition, the dead are believed to arrive at the next world. When Hajime Iguchi died at age 83 last autumn, his sister and brotherin-law held his wake and funeral at Sousou, a corpse hotel in the Tokyo suburb of Kawasaki City. Iguchi, a lifelong bachelor, had died in a nursing home after a protracted illness, and had few friends left. “Back in the day, we used to have funerals at home, but times have changed,” said his sister, Kunie Abe, 73. “Neighbors all used to know each other and would help one another out. But today, you don’t even know your next-door neighbor.” The demand for itai hoteru is likely to grow. Last year 1.3 million people died in Japan, up 35 percent from 15 years earlier, and the annual toll is expected to climb until it peaks at 1.7 million in 2040, ac-
cording to the Ministry of Labor, Health and Welfare. About 37 percent of Japanese women who died last year were over 90, with few surviving friends to mourn them. And close to one-fifth of Japanese men never marry or father children, leaving behind few relatives to plan or attend funerals. The number of people dying alone is also on the rise. In Tokyo, for example, the number of people over 65 who died alone at home more than doubled between 2003 and 2015, the latest year for which government figures are available. At the Hotel Relation in Osaka, about a third of the customers forgo a formal funeral. Instead, they sit in the rooms with their dearly departed for a day or two, with only close family in attendance, and then send the bodies for cremation. “In the past, if you heard someone held a funeral just for family members, people in the neighborhood would say, ‘What kind of people would hold a family-only funeral?’ But now it is accepted,” said Yoshihiro Kurisu, the hotel’s president. New York Times News Service
N 2012 Parkview Healthcare Center’s history of safety violations led California regulators to issue an ultimatum reserved for the most dangerous nursing homes. The state’s public health department designated Parkview, a Bakersfield, California, nursing home, a “special-focus facility”, requiring it to either fix lapses in care while under increased inspections or be stripped of federal funding by Medicare and Medicaid—a financial deprivation few homes can survive. After 15 months of scrutiny, the regulators deemed Parkview improved and released it from extra oversight. But a few months later, Elaine Fisher, 74, who had lost the use of her legs after a stroke, slid out of her wheelchair at Parkview. Afterward, the nursing home promised to place a nonskid pad on her chair but did not, inspectors later found. Twice more, Fisher slipped from her wheelchair, fracturing her hip the final time. The violation drew a $10,000 penalty for Parkview, one of 10 fines totaling $126,300 incurred by the nursing home since the special-focus status was lifted in 2014. While special-focus status is one of the federal government’s strictest forms of oversight, nursing homes that were forced to undergo such scrutiny often slide back into providing dangerous care, according to an analysis of federal health-inspection data. Of 528 nursing homes that graduated from special-focus status before 2014 and are still operating, slightly more than half—52 percent—have since harmed patients or put patients in serious jeopardy within the past three years. These nursing homes are in 46 states. Some gave patients the wrong medications, failed to protect them from violent or bullying residents and staff members, or neglected to tell families or physicians about injuries, inspection records show. Years after regulators conferred clean bills of health, levels of registered nurses tend to remain lower than at other facilities.
Yet, despite recurrences of patient harm, nursing homes are rarely denied Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement. Consequences can be dire for patients like Fisher. “She used to go to bingo every day, and she was very involved in the nursing home,” said her sonin-law, Eric Powers. He added although Fisher moved to a different nursing home for better care, “after this whole thing, she has to be on painkillers. She’s mainly in her room all the time. It’s the saddest thing in the world”. Parkview’s owner at the time of the violations, LifeHouse Health Services, did not respond to requests for comment. Dr. David Silver, who purchased Parkview last fall, said he had replaced top management and staff members who resisted a new approach. “We were not happy with the level of patient care,” he said. Regulators rarely return homes to the watch list, instead issuing fines for subsequent lapses. Some homes continue operating despite multiple penalties. “When you’re looking at these large corporations, that’s just the cost of doing business,” said Neil Gehlawat, who is representing Fisher in her pending lawsuit against Parkview. “It doesn’t have the effect of changing behavior.” Special-focus facility status is reserved for the poorest-performing facilities out of more than 15,000 skilled nursing homes. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, assign each state a set number of slots, roughly based on the number of nursing homes. Then state health regulators pick which nursing homes to include. More than 900 facilities have been placed on the watch list since 2005. But the number of nursing homes under special focus at any given time has dropped by nearly half since 2012, because of federal budget cuts. This year, the $2.6- million budget allows only 88 nursing homes to receive the designation, though regulators identified 435 as warranting scrutiny. New York Times News Service
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The Millennials BusinessMirror
Saturday, July 15, 2017
A9
Millennial in CdO finds fulfillment in ECHOstore
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Story & photo by Rizal Raoul Reyes | @brownindio
Here comes a wearable adult sex toy for couples
HE wanted to bring a part of Manila with her to Cagayan de Oro (CdO). And Celine Velez Palomares did.
The 33 year old brought with her her good memories of ECHOstore at the Bonifacio Global City. “I just happened to pass by that store,” she said. Before she knows it, she became a regular habitué of a boutique chain that offers a unique mix of social responsibility and food. She immediately set a meeting with ECHOstore founder Pacita Juan. After two years, and soon after, I spoke with Chit [Juan], “and thus started my entrepreneurial journey,” Palomares added in an e-mail to the BusinessMirror.
Ode to the past
PA LOM A R ES comes f rom an old prominent family in CdO, and her maternal grandmother inf luenced her in dreaming big. Her mother, a teacher by profession, taught her the training skills she has. And her father must have affected her entrepreneurial aspirations. The Velez family of CdO and the Palomares clans have made Celine a social register of sorts in the city. She is also passionate about networking. Another interesting development is the house Palomares and her friends found for the store. It’s the ancestral home of the NeriCabe family and where most of the family’s scions were born and raised. It’s a two-story structure on Domingo Velez Street and is about a hundred years old. The
floors are beautiful Narra planks, and the walls and windows look like one stepped out of Noli Me Tangere, she said. Palomares added the presence of an ECHOstore branch allows the people of CdO to pursue a healthy lifestyle by eating fresh vegetable salads from nearby farms in Bukidnon and the freshest produce from just around CdO. Moreover, t he EC HOstore founders even trekked with Palomares to Dahilayan, Bukidnon, to check out the biodynamic farms and the supply of grass-fed cows’ beef, and black pigs who feed on vegetables, rather than grain. They also tasted the soy milk and the vegetarian options available in the city.
Nuts and halal
WITH the many tourists f locking to CdO from Bukidnon and f rom I l iga n C it y, Pa lom a res said her business is assured of new customers and refer ra ls from her regular customers who bring their friends along. To promote inclusive growth in the province, she has also started sourcing local products, like laing, cashew nuts and even some halal products. “And this is the idea behind the ECHOstore sustainable lifestyle business model: look for community influencers who live the lifestyle,” Juan explained. “Make sure they work to include the pro-
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palomares
ducers and small suppliers in the supply chain. And source other products through the ecosystem already built by the founders since eight years ago.” T h e E C HO s t o r e no w h a s branches in Cebu City. There is a new one that opened in Ayala Center to supplement the flagship in Streetscape on Maria Luisa Drive, near the exclusive enclave of Cebu’s prominent families.
Natural choices
T R A NSFOR MING f rom sa les agent to entrepreneur, Celine has started a journey to influence her community in CdO through healthy eating and living with better, natural choices. “I’m happy my family is behind
my business venture,” Palomares explained. In the end, any business can only succeed if one has support from friends and family to begin with. And Palomares is surely on that path right now. Add to that the help she gives to small producers from the area, as well as the many communities ECHOstore’s supply chain supports. “I could have chosen to just get employed in a 9-to-5 job, and you need not take your challenges home,” she said. But this social enterprise gives her more fulfilment. “I feel good that our store is able to help people change to healthier lifestyles while helping our suppliers find regular markets.”
EW YORK—As a product designer, Janet Lieberman often finds flaws in everyday tech devices. This was particularly true when it came to vibrators, which she would spend hours shopping for on Amazon. “I had always bought cheap vibrators, and my bedside drawer was a graveyard for them,” said Lieberman, 31, who lives in Brooklyn and studied mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “You could replace the batteries but they still would stop working.” After splurging on a pricey vibrator for a boyfriend’s birthday that also quickly died, she had an aha moment. “I realized there was a need for well-engineered sex toys,” she said. “There’s no real trusted brand, and that’s what we’re setting out to be.” Along with her business partner, Alexandra Fine, whom she met in 2014 through the social-networking app Meetup, the pair set out to create a vibrator that was not only well crafted but made specifically for couples, and women in particular. “I was living in my grandmother’s pool house at the time,” Fine, 29, said. She had just graduated from Columbia, where she got a master’s degree in clinical psychology “with a focus on marriage counseling and sex therapy”, she added.
Embracing feminism
AFTER dozens of prototypes, they came up with their design: an egg-shaped vibrator made of medical-grade silicone that attaches to a woman’s nether region by means of two wings. Not only can the device be operated hands-free, it is also designed in a way that does not interfere with a couple’s intimacy. “We wanted to stimulate women with something nonobtrusive so you can look in [to] your partner’s eyes,” Fine said. They called the device Eva and, after raising $575,000 on Indiegogo in 2014, they went
to market in early 2015. To date, they have sold more than 65,000 units at $105 a pop. Eva, which is manufactured by a company called Dame Products, is among a recent surge of products that embraces feminism as part of its marketing. Like the “periodproof” underwear brand Thinx, it telegraphs a pro-women identity. “Our continuing mission: to design well-engineered sex toys, to heighten intimacy, and to openly empower the sexual experiences of womankind,” reads the company’s website. The message is amplified through Dame’s Instagram account, filled with posts like a pink neon sign that reads “My Body My Business.”
Pleasure gap
THE founders also have the lingo down. “Our mission is to close the pleasure gap,” Fine said during a recent tour of the company’s office in Brooklyn. “We want to fight any inequality between the sexes, but especially when it comes to sexual practices. We want women to claim their sexual pleasure and own it.” Kristina Monllos, a reporter at Adweek who covers marketing innovation and consumer trends, said Eva and Thinx appeal to millennial consumers who want ethically and socially minded products developed for their generation. “Young people across the gender spectrum are creating brands that live up to and express their own political ideals,” Monllos said. “We’re seeing this millennial version now where it’s a very stylized aesthetic coupled with these feminist, prowomen ideals.” Lieberman and Fine are hoping their cheerily designed vibrators will help sex toys shed some of their seedier connotations. “We fall into this really weird space between gag gift, pornography, medical device, health-and-wellness device and tech gadget,” Lieberman said. “We hope to change that.” New York Times News Service
Surviving a call center’s politics Millennial bashing in medieval times A France Ly
MILLENNIAL UNIVERSE
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NCE you survive the toxic—yet fun— environment of the call center industry, you realize you can survive anything. These major headaches for millennials are also the key things you need to manage and to survive: the boss (your team leader), the schedule and your officemates. This is a guide on how to deal with each. Let’s start with the officemates. You only have one type of officemate that will impact your life in the office: Your pseudo-bestie or PB. This could be your smoke buddy or lunch buddy. Your PB is the one person you always go around with, may it be on your 15-minute break or lunch time, where designated PB could treat you. Oh, the 15-minute break, to note, turns into 10 minutes because you need the extra 5 minutes to go to the restroom, to grab free coffee or water, or chase your clock in time, or else break time’s over.
Pseudo-bestie
YOUR PB comes in many shapes and sizes: the loud bakla (gay) that helps you stay awake by making you laugh, the girl or guy your age to whom you spill your life, love, family and, well if you really are close, even your money problems. You most likely meet this person at the start of training, or when you get introduced to your team. This special person in your life will end up as one of your motivations to actually stay in the company when things get too rough and complicated. They are your light. Even better is when you can be the PB to one or more people. How to survive with your bestie? Don’t get too attached to everyone else. Get to know everyone and learn to keep a specific
personality with them. Save the drama, negative comments and all negative feedback. If they get involved with your personal life, consider yourself screwed. Your personal life is not anyone’s business. Being professional in the office means keeping out of the way of others, respecting everyone no matter how annoying they are and accomplishing your goals together. Remember the real reason you got a job in the first place, and keep that as your goal and motivation. I’ve seen some trainees go AWOL (Absence Without Leave) when their PBs quit. Well, don’t make the same mistake. Give others the chance to be your mentor or friend.
Mentor
THE second person that will impact you and that will matter most is your mentor—the boss, coach, trainer, team leader, your “mommy” or “daddy”. He or she is your life saver and the person that will help you grow. Be on their good side. They’ll teach you techniques that you need to know: from how to avoid customers roasting you on call, how to get the lowest amount of minutes possible on call, (yes, it’s a requirement, and it’s annoying. Now you know why “Customer Service” always sound like they’re in a rush to get rid of you). Millennials, heed my words! As much as this person is scary or too high up for you to rub elbows with, seek guidance from them. Most millennials can’t stick with their jobs because they don’t have anyone to guide them. The way to fill your hunger to get promoted or get a better pay is through your team leader. More than this, they will be the one to save you when you mess up that one call with a really angry businessman that reports negatively about you. You’ll need to learn to love your team leader because at the end of the day, he or she will be the ones left behind cleaning up the mess you made.
Schedule
THE third thing you will need command of is schedule. If there’s anything that will literally kill you at work, it is schedule. You can’t complain about this, since you signed up for it. One week, you’re on the standard 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. shift, the next week you have the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift (hello 10 percent to 20 percent night-difference pay!). This, however, can cause major illnesses if your body isn’t used to it. One way out of this nightmare is if you get a certificate from a doctor stating that you need to stay in a specific shift (You’re welcome). If you don’t get lucky on having your day off on special days or can’t plot your leave on those days, deal with it because, again, that’s why you signed up for. Again, deal with it: That is the call-center life. On the bright side, you get double pay. There is always a bright side! The only way to survive your hectic schedule is to stay healthy and manage your schedule really well. Don’t schedule anything in advance unless you planned your leave on that day. Don’t make it an excuse that traffic is bad. If it stopped going at a snail’s pace in Edsa, it would be a miracle. Until then, make it a habit to be 30 minutes to an hour early, so in case traffic becomes be a special treat of armageddon, you’ll be late by 5 minutes. That’s the worst case scenario. Another thing is, don’t ever experiment on routes before work. The minute you mess up is the minute that’s going to be on your clock in time. As you know, every minute counts. If you want to survive in a call, center/ business-process outsourcing industry, just stick to your main reason you joined one in the first place. Keep it close to your heart, and let it soothe you or those stressful days, and you’ll be fine. Stick to your schedule, follow your boss and be sociable. France Ly describes herself as an old soul with a millennial brain.
S a millennial and a teacher of millennials, I’m growing weary of think pieces blaming my generation for messing everything up. The list of ideas, things and industries that millennials have ruined or are presently ruining is very long: cereal, department stores, the dinner date, gambling, gender equality, golf, lunch, marriage, movies, napkins, soap, the suit and weddings. In true millennial fashion, compiling lists like this has already become a meme. A common thread in these hit pieces is the idea that millennials are lazy, shallow and disruptive. When I think of my friends, many of whom were born in the 1980s, and my undergraduate students, most of whom were born in the 1990s, I see something different. The millennials I know are driven and politically engaged. We came of age after the Iraq War, the Great Recession and the bank bailout—three bipartisan political disasters. These events were formative, to an extent that those who remember the Vietnam War might not realize. The idea that young people are ruining society is nothing new. I teach medieval English literature, which gives ample opportunity to observe how far back the urge to blame younger generations goes. The most famous medieval English author, Geoffrey Chaucer, lived and worked in London in the 1380s. His poetry could be deeply critical of the changing times. In the dream vision poem, “The House of Fame”, he depicts a massive failure to communicate, a kind of 14thcentury Twitter in which truths and falsehoods circulate indiscriminately in a whirling wicker house. The house is—among other things—a representation of medieval London, which was growing in size and political complexity at a then-astounding rate. In a different poem, “Troilus and Crisey-
de,” Chaucer worries that future generations will “miscopy” and “mismeter” his poetry because of language change. Millennials might be bankrupting the napkin industry, but Chaucer was concerned that younger readers would ruin language itself. “Winner and Waster,” an English alliterative poem probably composed in the 1350s, expresses similar anxieties. The poet complains that beardless young minstrels who never “put three words together” get praised. No one appreciates old-fashioned storytelling any more. Gone are the days when “there were lords in the land who in their hearts loved / To hear poets of mirth who could invent stories”. William Langland, the elusive author of “Piers Plowman”, also believed that younger poets weren’t up to snuff. “Piers Plowman” is a psychedelic religious and political poem of the 1370s. At one point, Langland has a personification named Free Will describe the sorry state of contemporary education. Nowadays, says Free Will, the study of grammar confuses children, and there is no one left “who can make finemetered poetry” or “readily interpret what poets made”. Masters of divinity who should know the seven liberal arts inside and out “fail in philosophy,” and Free Will worries that hasty priests will “overleap” the text of the mass. On a larger scale, people in 14th-century England began worrying that a new bureaucratic class was destroying the idea of truth itself. In his book, A Crisis of Truth, literary scholar Richard Firth Green argues that the centralization of the English government changed truth from a person-to-person transaction to an objective reality located in documents. Today, we might see this shift as a natural evolution. But literary and legal records from the time reveal the loss of social cohesion felt by everyday people. They could no longer rely on verbal promises. These had to be checked against authoritative written documents.
(Chaucer himself was part of the new bureaucracy in his roles as clerk of the king’s works and forester of North Petherton.) In medieval England, young people were also ruining sex. Late in the 15th century, Thomas Malory compiled the “Morte d’Arthur”, an amalgam of stories about King Arthur and the Round Table. In one tale, Malory complains that young lovers are too quick to jump into bed. “But the old love was not so,” he writes wistfully. If these late medieval anxieties seem ridiculous now, it’s only because so much human accomplishment (we flatter ourselves) lies between us and them. Can you imagine the author of “Winner and Waster” wagging a finger at Chaucer, who was born into the next generation? The Middle Ages are misremembered as a dark age of torture and religious fanaticism. But for Chaucer, Langland and their contemporaries, it was the modern future that represented catastrophe. These 14th-century and 15th-century texts hold a lesson for the 21st century. Anxieties about “kids these days” are misguided, not because nothing changes, but because historical change cannot be predicted. Chaucer envisioned a linear decay of language and poetry stretching into the future, and Malory yearned to restore a (make-believe) past of courtly love. But that’s not how history works. The status quo, for better or worse, is a moving target. What’s unthinkable to one era becomes so ubiquitous it’s invisible in the next. Millennial bashers are responding to real tectonic shifts in culture. But their response is just a symptom of the changes they claim to diagnose. As millennials achieve more representation in the workforce, in politics and in media, the world will change in ways we can’t anticipate. By then, there will be new problems and a new generation to take the blame for them. Eric Weiskott/AP
BusinessMirror
A10 Saturday, July 15, 2017
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People browse through clothes on display on the first day of the Summer sales in Lille, northern France, on June 28. NYT
e-Commerce as a jobs engine? An economist’s unorthodox view
R In this May 13, 2016, file photo, a man uses his mobile phone near an Apple store in Beijing. AP
Apple to open data center in China with ties to govt
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AN FRANCISCO—Apple will open a data center in mainland China with ties to the country’s government, raising concerns about the security of iCloud accounts that store personal information transferred from iPhones, iPads and Mac computers there. The data center announced on Wednesday will be located in the Guizhou province and run by a company owned by the Chinese government. Apple is teaming up with the company, Guizhou on the Cloud Big Data, to comply with a new Chinese law requiring data-storage providers to keep the information of mainland China customers on computers located within the country. The Guizhou data center will store photos, video, documents and other personal information uploaded to iCloud accounts by Apple customers who live in mainland China, even when they’re traveling outside the country. Backups and other data stored in iCloud ac-
counts by customers outside China will continue to be stored in data centers in the US and, eventually, Denmark. Other major technology companies, including Amazon, Microsoft and IBM, have already made similar deals to run data centers in mainland China to remain in the good graces of the country’s communist government. But, Apple’s acquiescence is striking because CEO Tim Cook has made preserving customers’ privacy a company cornerstone. The Cupertino, California, company underscored that commitment last year in a high-profile battle with the US government over a legal demand to crack open
the iPhone of a suspected killer in a mass shooting. Apple has a strong incentive to toe the line in China because that country already is its third-largest market behind North America and Europe, with all signs pointing to it becoming an even bigger profit center. China currently accounts for about 20 percent of Apple’s revenue. Even though it’s working with a government-owned company, Apple sought to reassure customers in China that the arrangement won’t compromise their privacy. “As our customers know, Apple has strong data-privacy and -security protections in place, and no backdoors will be created into any of our systems,” the company said in a statement. What’s more, Apple said it will hold to the security keys protecting the data that people routinely back up in iCloud accounts. But experts believe the data center will make it easier for the government to retrieve the information through legal demands or other means. Apple will find it more challenging to resist any order from a Chinese court to give authorities there access to an iCloud account that they want to sift through,
Elecom mice now in PHL
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LECOM Co. Ltd. recently rolled out its mice targeting millennial Filipinos. We help digital-sav v y millennials stay ahead of the pack, whether in gaming, work or even school with the new mouse lineup, including Elecom’s commemorative “egg mouse”, the Japanese electronics company said. T he company launched its M-EG30 egg bluetooth mouse, M-IR07DRS wireless infrared mouse, M-DT1URBK DEFT wired trackball mouse and the M-XGM10DBBK wireless blue LED mouse. According to Elecom, its egg bluetooth mouse weighs as light as a single screw. The device can last for about two months in a single charge. It also has an infrared LED for low-powered consumption and
a built-in power switch that prevents battery drain. According to Elecom, its wireless infrared mouse is for use in places requiring minimal noise due to its built-in silent switch. The company claims the device can last as long as 30 months without charging. The M-DT1URBK DEFT wired trackball mouse is for gamers, while the Elecom M-XGM10DBBK wireless blue LED mouse is for users who want to fight wrist fatigue. A MP-115BK Fittio Mouse Pad, which comes with the latter device, features an integrated hand rest that distributes wrist weight, relieves wrist tension emanating from long-time mouse usage and fixes wrist position for better mouse-movement control. Rizal Raoul Reyes
predicted Nate Cardozo, a senior staff attorney specializing in privacy for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital-rights group. Currently, the Chinese government has to funnel those demands through the US court system, a more difficult process to negotiate. Cardozo recommends that Apple customers in mainland customer turn off the iCloud feature on their iPhones and other devices to protect their information from prying eyes. Data stored on the devices themselves should remain secure as long as they lock them with passwords that only the user knows. Even if the government seizes a device, Apple won’t have the keys to unlock data. But with iCloud, Apple does have the keys. The exception is passwords and credit-card data synced with iCloud Keychain. Ajay Arora, CEO of data-security specialist Vera, also warns that Apple’s partnership with a company owned by the Chinese government increases the chances that authorities could secretly pry their way into iCloud accounts. “It’s like Apple is putting the fox in charge of the henhouse,” Arora said. AP
ETAILING is dead. Sales clerks are losing their jobs by the thousands. The employment picture for young people with only a high-school education is going to get even worse. And all this is happening because of Amazon and its ilk, which are driving the shift among consumers toward e-commerce. We’ve heard this story over and over in recent months: The echo chamber keeps repeating that retail apocalypse is upon us. And yet, according to one economist, Michael Mandel, it is all wrong. We have it backward. Mandel is turning heads from Washington to Silicon Valley with a provocative and unorthodox argument: He asserts that the move toward e-commerce is creating more jobs than are being lost in the brick-andmortar retailing industry—and that these new jobs are paying much higher wages than traditional retail jobs. Mandel, chief economic strategist at the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington, contends that most economists are using the wrong job numbers to measure the ecommerce industry. He says that government numbers and conventional industry classifications don’t properly count all the jobs associated with e-commerce—in particular, the numbers miss large parts of the industry, like fulfillment centers and distribution warehouses. As anyone who has noticed the growing volume of big brown boxes being delivered to people’s homes can imagine, facilities like that, which are tied to the e-commerce sector, are expanding rapidly. Mandel has combed through the job statistics on a county-by-county basis and come to this counterintuitive view: From December 2007 to May 2017, by his count, the e-commerce industry has created 397,000 jobs in the US, and this compares with the loss of 76,000 jobs in the traditional retail industry. And those jobs related to e-commerce, he said, pay about 30 percent more than the brick-and-mortar ones. “To be honest, this was a surprise to me—I did not expect this,” Mandel told me. Then he added, matter-of-factly, “I’m just looking at the numbers.” Those numbers have helped him shape an optimistic, feel-good thesis about what is happening in our economy that may be worth considering, at least as a thought experiment. After all, the Progressive Policy Institute, a Democratic-leaning think tank,
says its mission is to “create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock”. Viewing e-commerce as an engine of jobs—not just any jobs, but good ones that are spread around the country—would be a new paradigm, for sure. But it’s one that admittedly requires a healthy dose of skepticism. “This could be transformational,” Mandel argued, contending that the rise of e-commerce could lead to “a reduction in economic inequality and geographic inequality”. Mandel said that over the past quartercentury, “production gains were not shared with the workers”. But now, he added, jobs at fulfillment centers are “decent paying”, often full time and usually with benefits. And many of those fulfillment centers are sprouting up across the country in “places you haven’t heard of in a while”. With a burst of enthusiasm, he said, “This could be the pendulum swinging back.” Of course, Mandel’s view flies in the face of established economic thought—and perhaps for good reason: His arithmetic relies on certain unconventional assumptions. “I’m highly dubious,” said John Challenger, president of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an executive outplacement firm that maintains a monthly index of job losses across the country. “It does sound crazy to me.” The warehouses that Mandel views as a source of job growth, Challenger added, “are being automated”. Is it possible Mandel is miscounting or, perhaps, double-counting? In truth, his argument relies to some degree on the assumption that many of the new jobs created in a category known by the government as “general warehousing” are tied to e-commerce. That may be a good assumption—but it’s impossible to know for sure. Mandel justifies his assumption with an example of how convoluted the current method for counting e-commerce jobs is: Amazon publicly says it has 12,000 employees in Kentucky, but the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports only 2,640 workers in Kentucky in the e-commerce category. “By contrast, the general warehouse industry,” Mandel wrote, “had more than 23,000 workers in Kentucky.” All of which is to say that we may not have as good a handle on the demographics of the job market as we think. The New York Times
Small biz heading to failure due to cyber attacks—ePLDT
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HILE small and medium enterprises (SMEs) see a promising future in the Philippine market, the proliferation of cyber threats impedes their sustainable growth, according to ePLDT Inc. The subsidiary of PLDT Inc. said its latest data shows that 98 percent of businesses in the country are working their way up to compete with more established companies. However, security breaches have become their barriers for growth, with 74 percent of small organizations reported to have been breached in 2015 alone, ePLDT said, citing the UK Government Security Breach Survey. “SMEs have become the prime target of cyber criminals because, compared with larger companies, these emerging businesses have
little to no cybersecurity strategy in place—making them easier to penetrate,” ePLDT added. “What’s even more alarming is that, hackers may use these growing businesses as their gateway to attack bigger companies—a scenario that is not entirely new in the digital era.” According to the firm, SMEs may not feel the pressing need to adopt cybersecurity architecture, “but working with a professional who can identify and mitigate cyber risks will go a long way in ensuring that the company is positioned for steady growth”. To note, ePLDT is selling cybersecurity solutions and services, like security-risk assessment, digital forensics, ransomware investigation and malware analysis and incident response. Oliver Samson
BusinessMirror
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Saturday, July 15, 2017
PHL mulls over mimicking Israeli start-up infra
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HE Philippines plans to copy the start-up ecosystem of Israel, according to an official of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT).
“We wanted to have something new in the latest edition of Geeks on a Beach [Goab] to enrich the
country’s digital start-up ecosystem. We want to learn from other countries how they developed
their ecosystem,” DICT Undersecretary Monchito B. Ibrahim told the BusinessMirror. “Definitely, one of the leading if not the best digital start-up ecosystem in the whole world is the Israeli system. They supply the whole world with a lot of their innovation.” Ibrahim spoke on the sidelines of the launching of the Goab, a conference of Information and communication technologies professionals supported by the DICT that aims “to
harness the start-up community in helping fix the country’s problems.” Ibrahim said the Israelis are also interested to work with their Philippine counterparts on how to develop the local start-up industry. “They were surprised to learn that we [have been] conducting this activity [Goab] for the past five years.” A side f rom educ at i ng t he youth, Ibrahim said the DICT hopes to inspire them to pursue
careers in science and technology and also engage in developing start-ups. “We need to develop local start-ups that can succeed in the global market for inspiration,” Ibrahim said. Align Commerce Corp. Chief Technology Officer Aldo Carrascoso agreed, saying “the strong and promising potential for the Philippines to be a location for tech start-ups is ‘tremendous’ because of the talent pool.” Rizal Raoul Reyes
A11
briefs
Lenovo opens Motorola kiosks
LENOVO Corp. announced on July 11 it recently opened a new kiosk for its Motorola brand at a shopping mall in Pasay City. The company said the move is part of Lenovo’s goal to increase its ranking in the global smartphone market. Other outlets across the city increase the visibility of Motorola in high-traffic shopping malls, Lenovo said. “The Philippines is an important market for Motorola,” said John Rojo, country manager, Lenovo Mobile Business Group Philippines. The kiosk’s opening follows the sale of the Motorola Moto E4 Plus via Lazada on July 7 for P8,999 ($178). Alladin S. Diega
Grab to award hackers who I.D. security weakness
RIDE-hailing and mobile-payments platform operator Grab Llc. announced on July 12 it will award hackers from $100 to $10,000 per valid vulnerability reported, depending on the impact and severity of the issue. “Working with the hacker community is an undeniably effective way to find security vulnerabilities,” HackerOne Inc. Chief Technology Officer and Founder Alex Rice was quoted in a statement as saying. “The launch of Grab’s public bug bounty program signals their commitment to working the largest hacker community to protect their over 45 million mobile customers.” The announcement of a bug bounty program came after Grab said it has tapped HackerOne to protect its customer data. Oliver Samson
Comodo, e-Safer unit to expand in Brazil
Microsoft Corp. President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith speaks in Washington on July 11, about Microsoft’s project to bring broadband Internet access to rural parts of the US. AP
Microsoft eyes TV white space for rural Internet M
ICROSOF T wants to extend broadband services to rural America by turning to a wireless technology that uses the buffer zones separating individual television channels in the airwaves. Microsoft plans to partner with rural telecommunications providers in 12 states stretching from Washington to Maine to get about 2 million rural Americans connected to high-speed Internet over the next five years. It’s also calling for regulatory cooperation from the Federal Communications Commission and broader support from the public sector to expand rural broadband to the more than 20 million people who don’t have it. Microsoft’s initiative, unveiled on Tuesday, comes as policy-makers struggle to extend high-speed Internet services to rural areas, which cable and phone companies have often shunned as cost prohibitive. Getting more people connected in rural areas has been a priority of President Donald J. Trump’s administration. Brad Smith, Microsoft president and chief legal officer, said the company won’t make money on
the operations, but could benefit from serving rural users with its services, many of which run ads or require paid subscriptions. The project still faces several challenges, including the costs of setting up antennas and servicebase stations, as well as the devices individual homes will need. Those costs are expected to decline over time, though.
In infancy
MICROSOFT has tried using the TV buffer zones, or white space, to provide broadband Internet in several countries. But the idea is “still in its infancy”, said Parmesh Ramanathan, an engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin. Ramanathan said this technology could prove cheaper than existing methods, such as laying down fiber-optic cables, but telecom companies will still need subsidies to make it economical. “It requires a sustained effort,” he said. “It’s not something where you can show profit in a quarter. They have to have longer-term vision.” The initiative also faces objections from the National Associa-
tion of Broadcasters, which said it was the “height of arrogance” for Microsoft to “demand free, unlicensed spectrum after refusing to bid on TV airwaves” in a recent Federal Communications Commission (FCC) auction. The group said the buffer zones, though currently unused, are important for preventing adjacent channels from interfering with each other. That’s less of a problem in most rural areas, said Doug Brake, a telecommunications policy analyst with the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a think tank that includes Microsoft among its donors. “In rural areas, there aren’t that many television broadcasters, so there’s a lot of unused spectrum,” Brake said. “The real challenge is getting the number of users, the scale. Is there enough of a market for the device manufacturers to build these devices?”
FCC guarantee
TO make it work, Microsoft said the FCC will have to guarantee that these buffer zones remain available nationwide—and make even more such zones available in rural areas. Other companies,
including Google, have made similar requests. Of the three TV channels that Microsoft wants the FCC to free up around the country for what it describes as “public” use, the biggest controversy has centered around one used by low-power television broadcasters that often provide niche programming to small communities. Brake said some of those stations “might get bumped off in a few markets” if those airwaves are reserved for broadband Internet service. Microsoft is already piloting its idea in a sparsely populated region of southern Virginia, where it’s providing $250,000 to the Mid-Atlantic Broadband Communities Corp. The South Boston, Virginia-based telecommunications provider will contribute another $250,000 and use a $500,000 grant from the Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission. The project is providing free Internet for local students to access educational web sites and charging customers who want expanded service.
White space
MID-Atlantic’s chief executive,
Ted Deriso, said he reached out to Microsoft several years ago after seeing the Redmond, Washington, company deploy the technology in other parts of the world. “We said, ‘Wow, the problems they’re trying to solve in rural parts of Africa are the same we have in rural Virginia, on the technology side,’” Deriso said. He added the use of television white spaces is great for rural areas with lots of trees, hills and other obstacles. “You need a type of technology that can go longer distances and has better penetration,” he said. “You’re trying to reach more customers without using a ton of equipment.” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai visited Deriso’s southern Virginia office on Tuesday to talk about the project, around the same time Smith was unveiling Microsoft’s plan to industry and political leaders at a Washington hotel near the White House. Microsoft said it will pilot its initiative in rural communities in Arizona, Georgia, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, New York, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin. AP
CYBERSECURITY solutions developer Comodo Group Inc. announced on July 6 it has partnered with TrustCert to provide Comodo digital certificates solutions and managed security services to the Brazilian market. TrustCert is a Brazilian division of e-safer that specializes in transport layer security and secure sockets layer digital certificates. Comodo said the partnership supports its strategy to expand reach into fast-growing global markets by establishing partnerships and enabling strategic relationships with local technology companies. Michael Fowler of Comodo said, “Expanding Comodo’s solutions in Brazil through TrustCert, with deep security background from its parent company eSafer, will provide customers with advanced cybersecurity solutions from a local specialist.” Oliver Samson
Alibaba increases stake in Lazada
ALIBABA Group Holding Ltd. announced on June 28 that it will invest approximately $1 billion to increase its stake in Lazada Group from 51 percent to approximately 83 percent. Alibaba said in a statement it will purchase the shares of certain Lazada shareholders at an implied valuation of US$3.15 billion for the company, reflecting a significant increase in the value of Lazada, since Alibaba first acquired its majority stake in April last year. The transaction will increase Alibaba’s total investment in Lazada to over $2 billion. Lazada will continue to operate under the same brand following this investment. Alladin S. Diega
BPO touts Microsoft solutions for success H AMMERJACK Pty. Ltd. credits solutions by Microsoft Corp. as the key for the Australian business-process outsourcing (BPO) firm’s success. “The key to a fully managed service is to use effective and efficient collaboration tools. Hammerjack uses the same digital solutions internally that we provide direct to Australian SMEs [small and medium enterprises], enabling a quality outsourced service model for our clients at a lower cost,” Andrew Mault, Hammerjack Pty. Ltd. Philippines country manager, was quoted in a statement as saying. Mault said this is something that Hammerjack has improved on with the help of Microsoft Teams, the new chat-based workplace that comes with the Office 365 suite. Since its beta release, Teams—with its
enterprise-level security, threaded chats, real-time file-editing and full integration with other Office 365 applications—has become a central part of the company’s day-to-day collaborative workflow. “Teams has made internal collaboration a lot easier,” Roy Figueroa, site director of the Hammerjack Makati office, said. “It allows us to quickly call up a team for, say, a new proposal, update shared files in real time, and to see that prompt action is being taken on our to dos.” Figueroa added the solution also allowed the firm to do away with about 50 percent of internal e-mail. “People tend to respond differently to email, and now that it’s all about Teams internally, our work is at once more efficient, seamless,
convenient and better organized,” he added. Mitch Yano, a process transitions lead, agrees. “The way it integrates with other Microsoft tools makes Teams almost like a one-stop shop,” Yano said. “You can log minutes of meetings, post comments, set to-do lists and checklists according to our internal teams, and even ‘like’ messages and use emojis. All this makes Teams a very good project management application, even if it’s designed as a collaboration tool first of all.” This ease of collaboration may be the key for other outsourced service providers to successfully sell to Australian SMEs, and deliver promised outcomes. Making sure these results—whether sales outcomes or transactional outcomes—are delivered consistently to a high quality and to a rational, clearly estab-
lished process is something that Hammerjack has been very successful at, with the aid of tools, like Teams, Office 365 and Dynamics 365. The rolling out of these Microsoft tools were an integral part of Hammerjack’s rapid growth in the past year. “At first, Hammerjack was focusing on a smaller number of clients. They were adopting the clients’ processes, bringing them offshore, but Hammerjack didn’t have the technology background and the BPO background back then to make managed services really attractive for Australian SMEs,” Mault said. “After we came on board in July 2016, we accelerated what Hammerjack could do for SMEs across a wider range of services, and at more competitive transactional pricing. And that was done by embedding key processes in
This undated photo provided by Hammerjack Pty. Ltd. shows employees using a Microsoft Corp. solution.
an approach to driving productivity and quality, and through adopting Microsoft technology,” he adds. “When the company started, they had an array of different applications, and it was really messy. The applications weren’t talking
to one another, and they had an application for this and an application for that. Once, we switched everything over to Microsoft, we could collaborate more easily to put together proposals, while making our service delivery more efficient, as well.” Alladin S. Diega
BusinessMirror
A12 Saturday, July 15, 2017
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Only 3.7% of apps to get support via telco contest
O
NLY five of the total 135 entries in a contest for computer developers would receive support from telecommunication companies (telcos), Globe Telecom Inc. announced recently.
The five application developed by teams of young people will be provided with “expert
mentorship” from Globe Telecom and Singtel Group, the former said. The five apps were chosen
from 10 finalists trimmed from 135 “social innovation-program creators” who submitted entries to the contest Globe Telecom launched in March. A Globe Telecom statement said the 10 finalists “were chosen for displaying unique and innovative views on several social issues that contribute to poverty in the Philippines, such as climate change and displacement, peace and security, health and wellness and education and learning, through the use of technology”.
The 10 apps include the following: Good Code, Eskwelanihan, iVolunteerPhilippines, The Spark Project, The Ultimate Learning Accelerator, Virtualahan, Liser Robotics, Bloodlife PH, and Wooper SMS Kiosk. Developed by Carl Myer Flor, Good Code aims to teach computer programming to school-aged children. The Eskwelanihan app was developed by Lorenz Joe Dela and aims to link donors with beneficiaries in the education sector. iVolunteerPhilippines of de-
veloper Jan Bernard Tan aims to recruit, engage and manage volunteers for non-governmental organizations in the country. The Spark Project by Patrick Dulay is a Filipino-based crowdfunding web site. James Centenera’s The Ultimate Learning Accelerator app is a chain of afterschool learning centers targeting children. The Virtualahan app of Ryan Gersava, meanwhile, is designed to train and employ people with disabilities. The Liser Robotics
app of Diogenes Armando Pascua uses educational robots to teach high-school children. The health apps are Bloodlife PH by Fleire Castro and Milk track by Oscar Ryan Santillan and Kevin Facun. The former is an online platform linking blood donors to recipients, while the latter is a web site used to deliver breastmilk to premature or ill infants. The Wooper SMS Kiosk app, also developed by Oscar Ryan Santillan, lets users send an emergency short message. Rizal Raoul Reyes
Visa acts to help small businesses go cashless
N In this February 27, 2013, file photo, a man uses the Near-field communication payment Visa system at the Mobile World Congress, the world’s largest mobile-phone trade show in Barcelona, Spain. Visa is looking to push more small businesses into updating their digital-payment technology, offering up to $500,000 to 50 US-based small-business owners that are committed to going cashless. AP
EW YORK—Visa is looking to push more small businesses into updating their digital-payment technology, offering up to $10,000 each to 50 US-based small-business owners that are committed to going cashless. The program will focus on restaurants and food establishments, Visa said on Wednesday, with the expectation that Visa will expand the program in the coming months and years to other industries and, possibly, other countries as well. Despite the proliferation of credit and debt cards, and the advent of technologies, like Apple Pay and Samsung Pay, cash remains a significant method of payment in many industries across the US and around the world. Going completely cashless often requires upgrades to current point-of-sale systems, which re-
mains an impediment for many small businesses, which is largely where cash remains king. “We are declaring war on cash,” said Andy Gerlt, a spokesman for Visa. To participate in Visa Inc.’s Cashless Challenge, small-business restaurants, cafés or foodtruck owners will need to describe what cashless means for them, their employees and customers. Visa isn’t doing this for charity. The world’s largest processor of credit and debit cards takes a fee from every payment that runs on its network. The more payments done through them, the more revenue Visa gets. Those fees, which can run into the thousands of dollars each year depending on how much the business sells, are the reason many small businesses prefer cash. “At the end of the month, when you look at a credit-card statement
and see how much you paid, it’s a real number that hits you right in the face,” said Matthew Geller, president of the National Food Truck Association, a trade group. Many food trucks accept credit cards to be competitive, but would rather have cash, he added. Visa argues that the benefits of going cashless can outweigh the costs for handling cash, which requires more intensive bookkeeping, physical transportation of cash, etc. Visa also argues that consumers prefer to use their cards, as well. Businesses that receive the award can use the $10,000 toward upgrading their point-ofsale systems so they are completely cashless. If there is spare money left over, the business owner can use the money toward marketing or other efforts to promote their small businesses, Gerlt said. AP
The more we share, the greater the solution
I
By Malone Gueverra
F this new era of connected health care is to be truly effective for health-care professionals and, most important, people, it must be made more collaborative. To empower people to manage their health and stay out of the hospital, or deliver effective treatment plans and ease the burden on medical staff, balanced partnerships between doctors and patients are key. An archipelago of over 7,000 islands, the Philippines can benefit greatly from connected health care, which helps to bridge the physical and geographical barriers between patients and their doctors. As has been demonstrated by other industries’ digital revolutions, consumers want greater influence over how they interact with organizations, especially when it comes to sharing personal information. But there is a great starting point: people surveyed in the Future Health Index 2017 research said they trusted the healthcare industry the most with their personal data. Our next step is to create clarity in the ownership of health-care data. Most health-care professionals (54 percent) think the responsibility for sharing health-care data between care providers lies with the professionals. About 57 percent said this responsibility should lie with both patients and
professionals. When ownership is shared, it could become more effective. However, more robust policies and platforms need to be put in place. Especially to address sensitivities—when asked what they would least want to be made public if their account or data was hacked, 55 percent of people surveyed chose health data over e-mail and social media. The greater trust people have in the way their data is handled, the more confident they will be of sharing it with healthcare professionals. It is encouraging to see that data sharing between patients and health-care professionals is already somewhat routine. Our research found around half (51 percent to 52 percent) of all health-care professionals said in the past year that at least some of their patients had shared with them blood-pressure or blood-sugar level data they tracked themselves with connected-care technology. Almost one-third (30 percent) of healthcare professionals think that accessible, secure information-sharing platforms between health-care professionals will have the most positive impact on citizens taking care of their health. Greater technology adoption will depend on improving the quality of data that the general population is able to record, along with assurances that technology companies look after that data re-
sponsibly. About 74 percent of the general population and 81 percent of health-care professionals said connected-care technology is important in improving home health care. With some tangible case studies, this could make a positive test case for the rest of the industry. It demonstrates how policy around the ownership and use of health data needs to evolve in a way that encourages people to be more active “owners” of it. People could be more vigorously encouraged to actively monitor and manage their own health outside of a formal health-care infrastructure, empowering them to engage in more meaningful relationships with health-care professionals when needed. Recording, assessing and using data more effectively can be an early diagnosis tool for people and health-care professionals, preventing conditions from occuring or worsening. The key to making the most of these metrics is to sharing it more effectively, securely and responsibly—through collaboration with partners who can make such seamless connectivity a reality. Malone Gueverra is health-systems general manager of Philips Philippines Inc. The views Gueverra expressed in this abridged column do not necessarily reflect those of the BusinessMirror’s.
Vivo fetes promo from Smart deal
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IVO Mobile Tech Inc. fetes its promotional tack from its four-month-old exclusive partnership with Smart Communications Inc. In the tie-up, Smart will provide Vivo with long-term evolution (LTE) prepaid subscriber identity modules (SIM) that will feature the following exclusive add-ons for 12 months: free 100-megabyte (MB) data per month upon activation of SIM and
a reward of an additional 300-MB data for every accumulated P150 worth of load within a month, according to Vivo. The Smart LTE prepaid SIMs will be given to customers for free, for every purchase of Vivo handsets. Vivo has yet to announce the specific units in the promo. “As part of our aggressive roll-out of our LTE network across the country, we are excited to work with top smartphone
manufacturers, like Vivo, to bring more LTE-capable devices into the local market,” said Patrick Tang, vice president and head for Smart postpaid brand and device management. “LTE gives the best mobile-data experience to our customers, and more LTE devices in the market means more people will be able to take advantage of the LTE network that Smart is putting in place.” Rizal Raoul Reyes