Businessmirror march 17, 2017

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Friday, March 17, 2017 Vol. 12 No. 156

‘DOLE’s no-endo policy unrealistic’ E

By Cai U. Ordinario

@cuo_bm

nding contractualization in the Philippines will take more than the issuance of an order by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), with implementation deemed to be the bigger challenge due to the current labor-market condition, local economists said on Thursday.

DO 174

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motoring

DPWH OVERSEES NLEXHARBOR LINK PROJECT »E1

The department order that specifies more stringent rules on labor contractualization

Economists made the pronouncement after Labor Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III issued Department Order (DO) 174 on Thursday, which specified more stringent rules on Continued on A2

Jimenez: Naia expansion better option

ford sells 1,500 vehicles in february »E2

By Ma. Stella F. Arnaldo

@akosistellaBM Special to the BusinessMirror

T

he government should just expand the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia) to accommodate more runways and passenger terminals to take advantage of its strategic location in the city.

hyundai launches ‘carazy’ promo debut »E3

JIMENEZ: “Our airport is located where it should be.

The trend all over the world is the city airport.

This was the opinion of former Tourism Secretary Ramon R. Jimenez Jr., when asked by businessman Ramon R. del Rosario Jr. about what he thought was the best way to solve the current airtraffic congestion at the Naia, at Thursday’s Phinma Forum at the Tower Club. Del Rosario, former ambassador and president of the influential Makati Business Club, is CEO of Phinma Inc. “Our airport is located where it should be,” said Jimenez, whose iconic ‘It’s More Fun in the Philippines’ branding campaign helped power visitor arrivals in the country to 5.9 million in 2016, from only 3.01 million in 2009. “The trend all over the world is the city airport,” he explained during the open forum, adding that

Mining investors start cutting PHL exposure O Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop (right) smiles beside former Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario before she addresses the Stratbase Albert F. del Rosario Institute for Strategic and International Studies on regional challenges and opportunities for Australia and the Philippines at a hotel in the financial district of Makati on Thursday. Del Rosario also served as a speaker at a forum organized by Phinma Inc. on Thursday.

Bishop, meanwhile, is in the country to discuss mutual interests in counter terrorism; maritime and regional security; and peace and development in Mindanao. AP/Aaron Favila

Tokyo’s Haneda Airport was an old facility that was turned into an international airport when Japan realized “it needed an airport close to the city. [Manila] already has an airport in the city.”

He urged the Duterte administration to just “bite the bullet

PESO exchange rates n US 50.3180

and buy up the properties around the Naia,” so it could expand the present airport to accommodate another runway and more passenger terminals, if needed. He did concede, however, that the investment in purchasing those properties would probably cost as

much as expanding the Naia itself.

But Jimenez pointed out about 60 percent of Metro Manila’s 12.9 million population and business activities “go through Manila anyway,” providing the Naia a steady stream of passengers and visitors.

See “Jimenez,” A12

ceanaGold Corp. is targeting an expansion of its new gold operation in the US, amid a dispute between mining companies and the Duterte administration in the Philippines.

“There has been significant damage done to the reputation of the Philippines as a place to invest, and as a place for foreign investment, and I would put us in that category,” CEO Mick Wilkes said in an interview. “My investors would now prefer that they had less exposure to the Philippines than more exposure.”

In contrast, the company’s operation in South Carolina already fits in with President Donald J. Trump’s “America First” ambitions, according to Wilkes. “It’s part of our formula—local hiring, use local businesses, maximize the benefits to the local economy,” he said. About 84 percent of the site’s 314 employees are

from the local community, according to a filing this month.

Environment Secretary Regina Paz L. Lopez wants to close 23 of the 41 metal mines in the Philippines, and suspend a further five, including Melbourne-based OceanaGold’s Didipio gold and copper operation. The government’s actions will likely be a deterrent to additional project spending by OceanaGold, as well as other foreign miners and businesses, Wilkes said.

OceanaGold, the fourth-largest Australian gold producer by market value, last month filed an appeal against the suspension order and is continuing production as normal from Didipio, among the world’s lowest cost gold mines. It’s committed to retaining the asset and supports the nation’s efforts to improve See “Mining,” A12

n japan 0.4439 n UK 61.8559 n HK 6.4800 n CHINA 0.0446 n singapore 35.9132 n australia 38.7801 n EU 54.0264 n SAUDI arabia 13.4210

Source: BSP (16 March 2017 )

A2 Friday, March 17, 2017

BMReports BusinessMirror

‘DOLE’s no-endo policy unrealistic’ Continued from A1

contractual arrangements.

“The issue is not the order but can we implement it? Also, with unemployment and underemployment remaining high in urban areas, this will be a challenge,” Ateneo de Manila University EagleWatch Senior Fellow Alvin Ang told the BusinessMirror.

University of Asia and the Pacific School of Economics Dean Cid Terosa agreed with Ang, saying the government cannot “simplify” the labor market into “ just firms and workers”.

Terosa said there are different types of firms and workers and that demand and supply conditions are not the only considerations in crafting policies for the labor market. “[The order] is a cause for concern. While it seeks to improve the quality of work of Filipinos, it appears oblivious to the realities of the labor market and firm-level operations,” he said.

“I’m certain that affected parties would protest in the coming days.

Productivity might dip and underemployment could rise in the short run,” Terosa added. Bello signed DO 174, or the Rules Implementing Articles 106-109 of the Labor Code, after months of negotiations between labor groups and companies.

In a statement, Bello said the DOLE would have wanted to have a “consensus department order” but the nine-month-long dialogue between the opposing groups did not result in a “happy compromise”.

“Given the impasse and taking into consideration the social and economic impact of prolonged policy uncertainties, I think it would be for the benefit of the greater public if the department through the secretary of labor would finally put closure to this issue, and exercise the power and discretion given him under the law,” he added.

The DOLE said the new department order prohibits laboronly contracting; farming of work through “cabo”; contracting out of job or work through an in-house agency; contracting out of job or work through an in-house coop-

erative, which merely supplies workers to the principal; contracting out of a job or work by reason of a strike or lockout, whether actual or imminent; and contracting out of a job or work being performed by union members and such will interfere with, restrain or coerce employees in the exercise of their rights to self-organization as provided in Article 259 of the Labor Code, as amended.

It also prohibits contractors and subcontractors to require their employees to perform functions which are currently being performed by the regular employees of the principal; sign, as a precondition to employment or continued employment, an antedated resignation letter; a blank payroll; a waiver of labor standards including minimum wages and social or welfare benefits; or a quitclaim releasing the principal or contractor from liability as to payment of future claims; or require the employee to become member of a cooperative; repeated hiring of employees under an employment

contract of short duration.

The DO also prohibits the signing of a contract that fixes the period of employment to a term shorter than the term of the service agreement, unless the contract is divisible into phases for which substantially different skills are required and this is made known to the employee at the time of engagement; and such other practices, schemes or employment arrangements designed to circumvent the right of workers to security of tenure.

It shortens the validity of the certificate of registration of contractors and subcontractors from three to two years and increases the registration fee from P25,000 to P100,000.

To ensure the effective implementation of DO 174, Bello directed Labor Undersecretaries Joel Maglunsod and Bernard Olalia to review the enforcement framework of labor laws and standards under DO 131-B, Series of 2016, or the Revised Rules on Labor Laws Compliance System.

He also requested President Duterte for the creation of 200 plantilla positions for Labor Laws Compliance Officers, which will be deployed in the DOLE Regional Offices. Maglunsod and Olalia will supervise these regional inspection teams.

Bello said the DOLE will push through its plan to deputize labor groups to take an active part in inspection, thus assessing the more than 90,000 establishments in the country targeted this year.

Groups, such as the Philippine Association of Legitimate Service Contractors Inc., had warned that outlawing labor contractualization may increase the ranks of the unemployed. Manpower Group Solutions said the most affected will be the construction sector, where 71 percent of laborer are considered end-of-contract workers.

But labor groups said Filipino workers are suffering the “serious social consequences” of employment arrangements, which are skewed against them, such as the illegal practice of labor-only contracting.

Rice output seen hitting 4.44 MMT in Q1, up 13% Continued from A12

The PSA noted that continuous and heavy rainfall and strong winds affected the vegetative and reproductive stages of the crop and resulted in the decline in the rice production of Capiz, Leyte, Compostela Valley, Bohol, Aurora, Aklan and Negros Oriental.

The PSA said harvest area in the January-to-March period may contract to 1.15 million hectares, from 1.16 million hectares, or by 0.3 percent. Also, yield per hectare may decline to 3.85 metric tons (MT), from 3.92 MT.

“Probable decreases in area and yield in Davao, North Cotabato, Surigao del Sur, Negros Occidental, Zamboanga Norte, Surigao del Norte, Misamis Occidental may be due to floods caused by tropical depression Auring and low pressure area,” the PSA report read.

The report noted that about 226,380 hectares of the updated standing crop have been harvested.

Also, the PSA said almost 678,160 hectares, or 73.8 percent, of the planting intentions for the April to June crop have been realized.

“Of the 1.6 million hectares standing palay crop, 48.6 percent

were at vegetative stage; 30.5 percent, at reproductive stage and 20.9 percent, at maturing stage,” the PSA report read. The PSA also revised its forecast for corn output in the first quarter to 2.38 MMT, 0.7 percent lower than its earlier projection of 2.40 MMT. However, the figure is still higher than last year’s level of 1.92 MMT, or by 24.1 percent.

“Harvest area may contract to 698,400 hectares from 700,700 hectares. Yield may decrease to 3.41 MT per hectare, from 3.42 MT per hectare,” the report read.

The PSA said the probable decrease in output could be traced to

the adverse effects of flashfloods in North Cotabato, Cagayan, Davao, Bukidnon, Misamis Oriental and Misamis Occidental.

“Reports of rat infestations in South Cotabato, Sarangani, Capiz and Sultan Kudarat and crop damage brought about by green and brow n plant hoppers in Sultan Kudarat may cause yield reduction,” the PSA report read.

It also noted that about 171,640 hectares of the updated standing crop have been harvested and that around 205,520 hectares, or 52.4 percent, of the planting intentions for the April to June 2017 harvests

have materialized.

Earlier Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol said agriculture production in the first three months of the year could grow by 2 percent, as favorable weather encouraged farmers to plant more crops.

Piñol said the crops subsector would still be the main driver of the farm sector’s growth during the January-to-March period, particularly rice and corn.

The Department of Agriculture (DA) is eyeing a total palay production of 18.57 million metric tons (MMT), 5.33 percent higher than last year’s output of 17.63 MMT.

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PHL meat. . .

Continued from A12

to 741.184 MT. Cham attributed the rise in beef and lamb-meat imports to the increasing popularity of affordable buffet restaurants in the country, as well as the growth in the demand of local processors for raw materials, such as offal.

“The increase in mechanically deboned meat and pork offal seem to indicate that,” he said.

BAI data showed that imported chicken MDM last year amounted to 168,686.86 MT, 7.07 percent higher than the 157,546.08 MT purchased in 2015. Pork offal imports also rose by 8.52 percent to 118,125.18 MT, from 108,855.58 MT in 2015.

MDM accounted for 71.86 percent of the total chicken meat imported in 2016, while offal accounted for 42.84 percent of the total pork imports.

The volume of imported chicken MDM alone was bigger than the combined beef meat, lamb meat, buffalo meat, duck meat and turkey meat purchased from abroad.

Data from the BAI showed that buffalo-meat imports reached 38,833.9 MT, 12.51 percent lower than the 44,388.54 MT recorded in 2015.

Also, purchases of imported duck meat declined by 30.36 percent to 223.884 MT last year, from the 2015 record of 321.510 MT, while turkey-meat imports went down by 38.2 percent to 2,481.06 MT, from 4,014.79 MT in 2015.

Local traders are allowed by the government to import meat products under the minimum access volume (MAV) scheme of the World Trade Organization. This year the MAV allocations for pork meat and poultry are at 54,210 MT and 23,490 MT, respectively, according to the government data obtained by the BusinessMirror.

The government granted licenses to 114 private firms to import 54,210 MT of frozen pork. These include Century Pacific Food Inc., Foodsphere Inc., Mekeni Food Corp., Pampanga’s Best Inc., Mayon Consolidated Inc. and Jollibee Foods Corp.

Pork imported within the MAV are slapped a 30-percent tariff, while those outside of MAV are levied a 40-percent tariff.

As for frozen-poultry meat, 124 firms were allowed bring it in under MAV. These include Delichicken Corp., Virginia Foods Inc., The Purefoods-Hormel Co. Inc., Puregold Price Club Inc. and Rustans Supercenters Inc. The government imposes a 40-percent tariff on poultry-meat imports.

RCEP. . .

Continued from A12

Wignaraja said the Philippines has a lot of potential in the services sector, particularly in the business-process outsourcing industry and the tourism industry. Recent developments in the region, such as the warming of relations between China and the Philippines, could encourage some manufacturers to locate in the country.

In this way, the Philippines stands to benefit from the windfall of Chinese investments, and this is always good for a country whose foreign direct investments have not been that high.

Wignaraja said the conclusion of the RCEP would also make even the United States take a pause on its “America First” policy.

“The [country] has a wonderful chance in its chairmanship of Asean to try to push for a deal to be done, to be signed during its chairmanship and that would be a wonderful thing to achieve, a real feather in the cap of the Philippines,” Wignaraja said. “If RCEP gets done, it would be a very good signal to the world that the world is open for business, that Asia is open for business, and the Philippines has done it.”

The RCEP is a trade deal between the 10 countries of Asean, including the Philippines, and six other countries —Japan, South Korea, China, Australia, New Zealand and India.

The Nation BusinessMirror

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Editor: Dionisio L. Pelayo • Friday, March 17, 2017 A3

Duterte faces first impeachment complaint

By Jovee Marie N. dela Cruz

A

@joveemarie

MEMBER of the independent minority bloc in the House of Representatives on Thursday filed the first impeachment complaint against President Duterte.

Party-list Rep. Gary Alejano of Magdalo said the impeachment complaint was based on Duterte’s alleged culpable violation of the Constitution, bribery, betrayal of public trust, graft and corruption and other high crimes.

The complaint was filed on the first day of Congress’s Lenten break and a day after the House leadership removed 12 leaders who voted against death penalty from ranking positions and committee chairmanships.

“We are of the firm belief that President Duterte is unfit to hold the highest office of the land, and that impeachment is the legal and constitutional remedy to this situation,” said Alejano, a former

Marine captain.

However, Palace allies, led by Speaker Pantaleon D. Alvarez, were quick to dismiss the move to unseat Duterte.

In addition, Alejano said all the actions of Duterte that were enumerated in the complaint “constitute proper grounds for his impeachment pursuant to Sections 2 and 3, Article XI of the 1987 Constitution.” “ D ute r te com m it te d h i g h crimes of bribery, multiple murder and crimes against humanity when he adopted a state policy of inducing policemen, other lawenforcement authorities and vigilante groups into the extrajudicial killings of more than 8,000 per-

sons who were merely suspected of being drug offenders,” he said.

Alejano said Duterte’s involvement in multiple murder as mastermind of the Davao Death Squad is one of the grounds for the complaint.

“He committed graft and corruption with the hiring of 11,000 ghost employees when he was still a mayor of Davao City; and his unexplained wealth amounting to more than P2 billion in deposits and credits that flowed into his numerous bank accounts,” he said.

The lawmaker said the filing of this complaint will prove that there is no destabilization plot against Duterte, saying impeachment is a constitutional process of ousting a sitting president.

Alejano said he will still file a supplementary complaint regarding the President’s alleged secret arrangement with China over the ownership of Benham Rise.

Dismissive

ALVAREZ initially greeted the filing of the complaint with a dismissive text message: “We are all entitled to our own stupidity hehehe.”

He later sent another message saying: “All charges are fabri-

cated, they seem to believe their own lies.”

Alvarez expressed confidence that the impeachment complaint against Duterte will not prosper in the lower chamber.

“Not only confident, but very, very confident [that it will not prosper],” he said.

“When you allege something, you have to prove it, that’s the rule, that’s the law,” Alvarez added.

He said the complaint by Alejano will be rejected, owing to lack of substance.

“Let’s not talk about the numbers game here. I don’t think the complaint is sufficient in substance,” Alvarez added.

For his part, House Majority Leader Rodolfo C. Fariñas said it has turned out that the Senate hearing on the alleged Davao Death Squad was a preview or dry run of the impeachment complaint.

“I cannot imagine how Representative Alejano can state under oath in paragraph 3 of the ‘Verification’ of his complaint that ‘I/We hereby confirm and affirm that the material allegations made therein are true of my/our own knowledge and as culled from

authentic records’,” he said.

Fariñas said Alejano is the lone complainant, “yet, the ‘verification’ uses both the singular and plural pronouns ‘I/We’ and ‘my/our’.”

“Which goes to the second and most important observation: the allegations made in the complaint are obviously not of his own knowledge, since most of them are palpably hearsay, either from what he read or saw on the news or from tales of Sen. [Antonio] Trillanes,” he said.

According to Fariñas, most of the allegations were allegedly committed when Duterte was mayor or vice mayor.

“An official is impeached for acts committed in his present office. Since the allegations made while he was mayor were widely publicized and known by the voters when they elected him as President, the clear mandate given to him by the people has to be respected. This is the jurisprudence even with respect to elected or reelected local officials,” he said.

In Malacañang, Presidential Spokesman Ernesto C. Abella said the impeachment complaint against

Duterte was “too well coordinated as to seem coincidental” and “part of a larger scheme of things”.

At the same time, Abella maintained that Duterte had not committed any of the offenses he is accused of, including sanctioning the thousands of extrajudicial killings that have marked his war on drugs.

Sen. Panfilo M. Lacson Sr. said the Magdalo Party-list “should not be criticized, much less mocked, for filing the impeachment complaint.”

“At least this time they are not doing an Oakwood,” he added, referring to the short-lived mutiny by junior military officers, who included Alejano and Trillanes, against then-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in 2003.

“All I can say is, without necessarily associating myself with them in the matter of impeaching PRRD [Duterte], my simple message is, good luck to them,” Lacson added.

Senate Majority Leader Vicente C. Sotto III refused to comment because, “in case it reaches the Senate, we will be an impeachment court and, therefore, should be impartial.”

With Butch Fernandez

Economy

A4 Friday, March 17, 2017 • Editors: Vittorio V. Vitug and Max V. de Leon

BusinessMirror

Duterte’s Asian push boosts PHL investments—Dominguez

T

By Rea Cu @ReaCuBM & Catherine N. Pillas @c_pillas29

he Duterte administration’s push for greater integration with Asian economies is seen to lead to substantial investment inflows for the country this year, starting with P326 billion worth of projects, as well as rapid tourism growth and robust exports, according to the Department of Finance (DOF).

During the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) general membership meeting held at the Makati Diamond Residence on Wednesday, Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III pointed out that an estimated P326 billion worth of projects that have begun construction, or will be built starting this year, are among the investments that will lead to the “blossoming of opportunities for Filipino businessmen”.

According to the finance chief, as the country shifts its source of growth from consumption to investments-led, one factor that needs to be addressed is improving the country’s low savings rate as 86 percent of Filipinos remain “unbanked”. “ To be an investments-led economy, we need to improve our savings rate. The key to this is the deepening of the country’s capital markets and the broadening of access to the formal business sector,” Dominguez said.

Businesses are expected to be busy starting this year, as the Duterte administration rolls out its big-ticket infrastructure projects, with an aim to stimulate the economy, create jobs and generate more financing opportunities for the country’s banking and insurance sectors, according to the DOF. “It is not only the large businesses that will benefit from the multifold

opportunities that will open up in the near future. Our closer relationship with China, Japan, South Korea and the Asean will translate into rapid tourism growth and bountiful export markets. This will mean stronger demand for processed food, in-person service enterprises, household items and consumer electronics,” Dominguez added.

The large-scale infrastructure projects that will start this year include the Clark-Subic Rail, Tutuban-Clark Rail and the 581-kilometer South Line of the NorthSouth Railway Project connecting Tutuban, Calamba, Batangas and Bicol. Construction has also begun on the Panguil Bay Bridge in Mindanao, while groundbreaking rites are set this year for the Clark International Airport, the Metro Manila Bus Rapid Transit System and three bridges across the Pasig River, two of which will be built through Chinese grants.

“I am well aware that the congestion at the ports imposed heavy costs on our manufacturers, especially those whose competitiveness depends on just-in-time deliveries of both raw materials and finished products. The congestion is both an infrastructure and administrative problem. As we upgrade our port infrastructure, we should also remove unnecessary procedural hindrances to the flow of goods,”

Dominguez said.

Beyond 2017, the Duterte administration will start the construction of long-span bridges between Bicol and Samar, and between Leyte and Surigao, which will finally make land travel between Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao possible, he added.

Regional airports will also be rehabilitated, or new ones will be built, to ease travel across the country’s three island groups, while in Mindanao, a 2,000-km railway that will connect its key cities and boost the economies of the country’s poor regions is also in the pipeline.

“When I said we will start these projects, we do not mean just bidding out projects, signing contracts, or attending opening ceremonies. In this administration, start means groundbreaking and actual construction. We will no longer tolerate the wishy-washy promises that implementing agencies have been accustomed to making in the past,” Dominguez said.

The Duterte administration, he said, is also committed to address other factors that have made the Philippine economy less attractive to investors, such as its high energy costs, restrictive economic policies, corruption and uncertainty over contracts.

“You can count on this administration to be aggressive in building these infrastructure,” he added.

Cross-border trade

Intra-Asean trade is expected to significantly increase, and linkage between the regional bloc’s micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) with Asean and global

multinational enterprises (MNEs) to further strengthen.

An Asean investments committee agreed to push an action agenda to facilitate cross-border trade. The Asean Coordinating Committee on Investments (CCI) met in Manila recently and agreed to make the Focused and Strategic Action (FAST) Action Agenda on Investment as among the its priorities for the year.

The FAST Action Agenda includes among others:

Asean-wide assessment of the outstanding issues on Trade Related Investment Measures (TRIMS). In this area, the committee will come up with a document identifying the TRIMS plus elements that Asean may commit and adopt as a common Asean negotiating strategy.

MSMEs’s link with MNEs, where the key outcome are possible letter of intents (LOIs) and business collaboration between these MSMEs and MNEs. For this year, the Philippine will host a mission from Asean, and will be conducting a conference and business meetings will be undertaken.

“Our goal is to showcase MSMEs as possible suppliers of products and services to MNEs. As we encourage them to strategically enhance their productivity, we will open up more opportunities for them to participate in the regional and global value chains,” said Board of Investment Executive Director Ma. Corazon Halili-Dichosa, serving as the Philippine Head of Delegation to the CCI, in a statement.

During the committee’s meeting, Philippines committed to host a conference for MSMEs and MNEs from all over the region.

To be an investments-led economy, we need to improve our savings rate. The key to this is the deepening of the country’s capital markets and the broadening of access to the formal business sector.”

—Dominguez

House bill on BSP regulation, supervision of payment systems hurdles 2nd reading

By Jovee Marie N. dela Cruz @joveemarie

T

he House of Representatives has approved on second reading a measure providing for the regulation and supervision of the payment systems in the Philippines.

House Committee on Banks and Financial Intermediaries and PDP-Laban Rep. Ben Evardone of Eastern Samar, one of the authors of the measure, said the House Bill 5000 will provide payment systems, which is a vital part of the economic and financial infrastructure of the country.

“They provide the critical networks in financial systems enabling a variety of financial transactions to be cleared and settled. The volume and magnitude of financial transactions passing through such payment networks justify the need for payment systems to be safe and efficient. It is also indispensable that they are reliable, as it plays a key role in building public confidence and helping maintain financial stability,” Evardone said.

While the growth and development of payment systems are indicative of their valuable contribution to the movement of funds in the economy, he said their operations can give rise to risks, which, if left unaddressed, can also adversely impact financial stability and the economy, as a whole.

“By linking financial institutions together for the purpose of transferring monetary claims and settling pay-

EVARDONE: “Developments in the payment system can affect the speed and predictability of the turnover of monetary balances, which may influence the overall demand for money in the economy.”

ment obligations efficiently, payment systems become channels through which financial risks can be transmitted across financial institutions and markets,” he said.

Evardone added central banks are keen in monitoring developments in the payment system to assess their impact on the demand for money, the influence of monetary-policy transactions and the efficiency and stability of critically related financial markets.

“Developments in the payment system can affect the speed and predictability of the turnover of monetary balances, which may influence the overall demand for money in the economy,” he said.

Currently, Evardone said there are a number of central banks, which have mandates to oversee payment and settlement systems, including Bank Indonesia, Bank Negara Malaysia, Central Bank of Myanmar, National Bank of Cambodia, Bank of Lao PDR, Monetary Authority of Singapore, Deutsche Bundesbank, Bank of France, Banco de España, Bank of Japan and State Bank of Vietnam.

“Unlike the central banks mentioned, the powers of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas [BSP] as provided in its charter and other special laws do not extend to entities which operate payment systems.

Neither is the Bangko Sentral granted the power to oversee payment systems in the country,” he said.

The bill specifically seeks to provide the authority to the BSP to oversee the payment systems in the Philippines, and exercise supervisory and regulatory powers for the purpose of ensuring the stability and effectiveness of the monetary and financial system.

In the exercise of this authority, the bill said the BSP shall be guided by internationally accepted standards and practices.

To ensure proper implementation of this mandate, the bill also requires the BSP to coordinate with other regulators and other concerned agencies to avoid gaps, inefficiencies, duplication and inconsistencies in the regulation of other systems that are related to or interconnected with payment systems; and shall endeavor to coordinate with regulators or overseers of payment systems of other countries to facilitate safe, efficient and reliable cross-border payment transactions.

Under the bill, whenever a person or entity willfully violates this Act, rule or regulation, directives or orders duly promulgated by the Monetary Board pursuant to this act, that person or entity shall be punished by fine or imprisonment, or both, at the discretion of the court.

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DENR pitches call for water recycling

By Jonathan L. Mayuga @jonlmayuga

T

he Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) is pitching calls on the importance of water recycling by maintaining reliable and effective wastewater treatment, as it leads a weeklong activity to highlight the celebration of the World Water Day (WWD) on March 22.

The DENR, together with the River Basin Coordinating Office, the National Water Resources Board and the Ayala-led Manila Water Co. Inc., has lined up a series of activities to commemorate the event aimed at raising awareness on the importance of water recycling.

Untreated wastewater discharge is a serious environmental issue. The Laguna de Bay, one of the country’s largest freshwater lake, is heavily polluted, owing to wastewater draining to the lake. Rivers, particularly in highly urbanized area, are also polluted partly because of discharge of untreated wastewater from households and industries.

Under the watch of Environment Secretary Regina Paz L. Lopez, the agency mandated to manage the country’s environment and natural resources, is underscoring the need to protect watersheds against destructive development projects—particularly mining—to ensure water security and prevent future supply shortage.

As a kickoff to WWD, a photo exhibit highlighting the importance of both water and wastewater was opened on Wednesday at the Market! Market! Shopping Mall in Taguig City. The exhibit is open to the public until Friday, March 17.

The photo exhibit showcases vivid images depicting the negative ecological and health impacts of untreated wastewater, as

well as the various efforts of government and the private sector to address the problem, consistent with the WWD 2017 theme: “Water and Wastewater”.

In a news statement, DENR Assistant Secretary for Staff Bureaus Nonita Caguioa said this year’s theme aims to highlight the symbiosis between water and wastewater in the quest for sustainable development.

Wastewater is a valuable resource in the circular economy and its safe management could be an efficient investment in the health of humans and ecosystems, Caguioa said.

“Treated wastewater can act as a droughtresistant source of water, especially for agriculture and industry, source of nutrients for agriculture, soil conditioner and source of energy or heat,” she added.

“In effect, wastewater management is a key to poverty reduction for it sustains ecosystems services. It improves food security, health and, ultimately, the economy,” Caguioa added. Untreated, she said wastewater can cause environmental damage and serious health problems.

Wastewater contains a number of pollutants and contaminants such that when discharged to freshwater bodies and marine waters without being treated, can cause water pollution that is harmful to aquatic life.

When discharged on lands, wastewater can leach into underground water tables and potentially contaminate aquifers and underground water.

Wastewater is also a big health issue as it carries and transports a myriad of diseases and illnesses.

According to the World Health Organization, about 2.2 million people die each year worldwide from water-related diseases, mostly children in developing countries.

Mining sector got P991M perks, other incentives in 2014–PSA

By Cai U. Ordinario

F

@cuo_bm

ilipinos spent nearly a billion pesos in subsidies for the mining sector in 2014, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).

Based on the 2014 Annual Survey of Philippine Business and Industry, the PSA said the government extended as much as P991 million in tax perks and other incentives to the sector.

“Establishments engaged in mining of nonferrous metal ores, except precious metals in Caraga, were the most recipient of subsidies in 2014 amounting to P974.9 million,” the PSA said.

These subsidies are grants in the form of financial assistance, tax exemption or tax privilege given by the government to aid and develop an industry.

In 2014 the value of output generated by mining and quarrying establishments reached P202.1 billion.

Combined value of the top 2 industries in terms of value of output generation amounted to P179.3 billion.

Mining of nonferrous metal ores, except precious metals, accounted for more than half at 57.3 percent and extraction of natural gas shares 31.4 percent of the total.

Among regions, Mimaropa generated P74.1 billion, or 36.7 percent of the total value of output.

Caraga and Central Visayas followed with respective value of output shares of 26.4 percent at P53.3 billion and 11.9 percent, or P24.1 billion.

Further, the income-per-expense ratio for establishments with total employment of 20 and over stood at 1.50, which means that for every peso spent, corresponding income of P1.50 was generated.

Firms engaged in the extraction of natural gas recorded an income-per-expense ratio of 2.76, the highest among industries.

Establishments in the mining of nonferrous metal ores, except precious metals, and support activities for other mining and quarrying occupied second and third spots, with ratios of 1.39 and 1.38, respectively.

In 2014 there were a total of 135 establishments with total employment of 20 and over engaged in mining and quarrying activities.

Firms in the mining of nonferrous metal ores except precious metals and quarrying of stone, sand and clay had the highest number, with 51 establishments each or a combined share of 75.6 percent out of the total.

This was followed by support activities for other mining and quarrying; and mining and quarrying, with nine establishments, or 6.7percent share each of the total.

In terms of region, Central Visayas registered the highest number of mining and quarrying establishments with 19, or 14.1 percent of the total.

Caraga came in second with 17 establishments, or 12.6 percent of the total, followed by Calabarzon, with 16 establishments, at 11.9 percent.

Meanwhile, no mining and quarrying establishment with total employment of 20 and over was recorded in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao in 2014.

CAAP9th Anniversary A BusinessMirror Special Feature

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The Future is in the Skies

secretary Tugade with aviation stake holders at cns atm

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By Leony R. Garcia

he Philippines was transitioning to independence from the United States when an office under the US Department of Commerce and Communications regulated air commerce through Legislative Act 3909, the Air Commerce Act of 1931, the first ever aviation law passed by the American government.

The law, which set air-traffic rules, schedules and rates, was later amended to include the licensing of pilots and aircraft certification.

It also gave birth, five years later, to the Bureau of Aeronautics, which was created under Commonwealth Act 168 or the Civil Aviation Law of the Philippines.

The bureau soon became the National Airports Corp. in June 1948 to serve as an agency for the development, administration, operation and management of government-owned landing fields, except those under the Armed Forces.

When the corporation was abolished in 1950, it was replaced by the Civil Aeronautics Administration, which, under Republic Act 776, or the Civil Aeronautics Act of the Philippines was split into two offices: the Civil Aeronautics Board and the Civil Aviation Authority. While CAB oversaw the business side of air travel, the aviation authority enforced aviation rules and regulations.

The CAA was soon renamed the Bureau of Air Transportation in 1979, and then as the Air Transportation Office (ATO) in 1987. More than

another name change, the bill passed in 1987 gave the ATO regulatory and operational functions. The office eventually evolved into the modern-day Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) when Republic Act 9497, or the Civil Aviation Act of 2008, was enacted, expanding the scope of its authority over all air travel.

From mere policy-making and regulation the newly created CAAP was practically given full control of the skies and the authority to chart the future of Philippine aviation and has recently celebrated its 9th year under its new name.

Philippine Airlines, the first Asian air carrier

Flying is said to have started in the Philippines the moment Filipinos believed they could fly. It took longer for the archipelago to actually take off but its strategic place in the Orient cemented its integral role in the ever-evolving story of global aviation.

After launching the first heavier-than-air flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on the morning of December 7,1903, siblings Orville and Wilbur Wright practically marked the Philippines’s

important place in world aviation, setting the country as a flight-education hub along with the American states of Maryland, Alabama, Texas and California.

The Wright brothers helped establish the flying schools around the United States and in the Philippines putting into motion aviation development in the two countries.

The two countries may be thousands of miles apart but, even, then flight evolution in both happened almost simultaneously, giving the Philippines, as an American colony and strategic military base, its firsts.

Then Lt. Col. Dwight Eisenhower, who later became the 34th US President, learned to fly in the Philippines, performing his first solo flight on May 19, 1937 under the tutelage of Philippine Army Air Corps Lt. William Lee.

Philippine Airlines (PAL) made history on July 31, 1946 as the first Asian air carrier, chartered by an American serviceman, to fly across the Pacific and into the US. It also eventually became the first Southeast Asian airline to fly commercially to Europe.

As a pioneer in commercial flight and among the roster of top international airlines with routes covering three-fourths of the globe, PAL helped organize Japan Airlines, providing the new formed firm a Douglas DC-3 commercial transport (a twin-engine monoplane called the skysleepers because it could accommodate 14 overnight passengers), pilots and training for flight attendants and other crew members.

After PAL completed in 1941 its first commercial flight with five passengers from Makati to Baguio City, airlines emerged one after the other, initially offering air cargo and airmail services. Air travel was soon introduced when demand for an efficient and faster mode of transportation to do business in the Philippines and overseas grew among industrialists and members of the Filipino elite.

This gave birth to the need for airspace regulation in the Philippines.

World’s order in the air

Among trailblazers in the global aviation, the Philippines is also one of the first signatories in

Message

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he Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines commences with its weeklong 9th Anniversmy celebration. We have good reason to celebrate the fruits brought about by years of continuous competence build up and capital upgrade. We give thanks to all who have labored to bring us back and, continue to work hard to maintain current global aviation ratings. We have seen how provisions laid down to address situations that tested our effectiveness in airport operations resulted in invaluable lessons on providing a safe, secure and sustainable Philippine civil aviation atmosphere. We have also borne witness to the flexibility of our plans that rightfully provided options given prevailing circumstances.

Looking forward, discussions are on-going with other government entities to provide for a system that may be immediately activated by commercially operating airports during extended service interruption in nearby facilities. We are ramping up capabilities to anticipate the growing complexity of regulatory requirements brought about by our region's impending robust growth of civil aviation. A comprehensive plan by the national government targeting better connectivity among the various modes of transport is targeted to be in operation during the current administration. All of these are in compliance with parameters set by the International Civil Aviation Organization and other global standard­giving bodies.

On the home front, initiatives to provide New Generation Aviation Professionals are being strengthened to include learning activities in .coordination with .other local and global training institutions.

Operational reliability and regulatory consistency are key elements to CAAP's medium­term plan towards sustainability. And as we strive to uplift standards in all areas of civil aviation, we take heart in knowing that we can always rely on the dynamism shown by our public servants who incessantly work towards true, significant change for the Filipino riding public.

Maraming salamat po sa kanilang lahat at, Mabuhay ang CAAP!

CAPT. JIM C. SYDIONGCO Director General

the Convention on International Civil Aviation, or the Chicago Convention in 1944, which gave birth to the United Nations’s International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).

The convention basically put in place the ICAO as the “world’s order in the air,” coordinating and regulating international air travel and setting the pace at a time when countries were establishing their respective aviation authorities. The international organization regularly audits and inspects some 100,000 flights around the world to make sure they are safe, efficient and secure.

Today, by adherence to flight departure slot schedules as mandated by CAAP, flights at NAIA posted an 80.2 percent OTP: handling and ground-handling performance. CAAP is strictly implementing the rule, allowing a maximum of

40 flights movements per hour, which is the required combined number of take offs and landings hourly by air carriers operating at Manila’s international airport.

Improving CAAP’s air-traffic service system will significantly reduce fuel burn and carbon emissions and increase efficiency by way of information exchange with stakeholders that would avoid delays on inbound aircraft on the country’s airports.

Meanwhile, the CNS/ATM or Communication, Navigation, Surveillance/Air Traffic Management is also already in place. This technology has a computer-based flight-data processing system that will enable aircraft operators to meet their planned times of departure and arrival and adhere to their preferred flight profiles with minimum constraints and without compromising

agreed levels of safety.

The system improve the handling and transfer of information, extend surveillance and improve navigational accuracy that will lead to reductions in separation between aircraft, allowing for increased airspace capacity and achieve reduced flight operating costs and delays.

The P9-billion Japan International Cooperation Agency assisted CNS/ATM facility will be turn over by main contractor Sumitomo-Thales JV to CAAP management by July this year. When fully operational, the facility can monitor 80 percent of the Manila Flight Information Region as assigned to the Philippines’s ICAO.

CAAP will need 500 air traffic controllers (ATC) in the next five years when the CNS/ATM system becomes fully operational toward the end of this year.

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Friday, March 17, 2017

The World BusinessMirror

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

Saudi king’s visit highlights China’s Mideast ties

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EIJING—Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdul-aziz al Saud began a visit to Beijing on Thursday that highlights growing ties underpinned by China’s thirst for Saudi oil and the kingdom’s status as a key link in Beijing’s bid to connect China to Europe through infrastructure development.

Sa l m a n went i m med i ate ly into ta l k s w it h President X i Jinping, following a formal welcoming ceremony at the Great Hall of the People, the seat of China’s legislature. The 81-yearold-monarch ’s visit is part of a monthlong swing through Asia in a push to develop a less oildependent growth strategy.

During Salman’s visit to Tokyo earlier this week, the Saudi sovereign-wealth fund announced a new $25-billion-technology fund with telecom giant Softbank.

Beijing for its part is rolling out a trade and investment initiative across Central Asia and the Middle East called “One Belt, One Road ”, and sees the desert kingdom as a regional linchpin.

In opening remark s at t heir me e t i n g , X i s a i d he l o ok e d for ward to discussing projects under development, and said resu lts so far “ have sur passed our ex pectations”.

Security ties between the two have also grown significantly, with the Saudi Air Force deploying Chinese unmanned attack drones, and the two militaries

1,500 The number of people, including businessmen, princes and support staff, in a dozen of aircraft who accompanied Saudi Arabia’s King Salman in his visit to Beijing

holding joint counterterrorism exercises in western China.

Chinese navy vessels have also visited the Saudi port of Jeddah as part of increasingly active maneuvers in the Gulf of Aden.

Chinese officials say their overriding security interest in the Middle East is to prevent et h n ic Uighu r f ighters, who have left wester n China and joined militant groups in Syria a nd Iraq, f rom ret u r ning to str ike at China. “China’s Uighur ethnic minority is a key, if sometimes under-appreciated

Chinese President Xi Jinping (right) assist Saudi Arabia’s King Salman down a ramp during a welcome ceremony held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, on Thursday. AP/Ng Han Guan

factor in Beijing’s Middle East strateg y,” said Andrew Scobell, a political scientist at the R AND Cor p.

Xi has signaled his desire to play a bigger role in the region as part of China’s quest for resources, markets and increased global influence on a par with its economic heft. In a major speech before the Arab League in Cairo last year, Xi indirectly alluded to

Tillerson: Asia allies ‘critical’ for tackling N. Korea

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OKYO—US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Thursday cooperation with allies Japan and South Korea is “critical” to addressing the threat from North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.

Tillerson was speaking as he met with Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida on his first trip to Asia as the top US diplomat.

North Korea is expected to top the agenda at Tillerson’s talks in Tokyo. Last week North Korea testfired four missiles that landed in the `ocean off Japan. Tillerson will

meet later on Thursday with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Japan and South Korea both host tens of thousands of US troops. Washington has been urging the two nations to step security cooperation despite their historically strained relations.

T his week the nations’ three nav ies have conducted missile defense infor mat ion-sha r ing dr il ls in the reg ion Til lerson sa id st reng t hen i ng US re l ations w ith Japan and tr ilatera l cooperation among a l l t hree “ is cr itica l in par ticu lar as we

address Nor th Korea’s nuclear and missile programs”.

Kishida said the fact that Japan was Tillerson’s first stop showed the importance Washington attaches to the relationship.

He said the US and Japan had an “unwavering bond”.

On Friday Tillerson travels to South Korea, where US forces are engaged in annual military drills that have angered Pyongyang.

He then goes to China. Washington wants Beijing to exert more pressure on North Korea over its provocative behavior. AP

‘Sakura’ Filipina tourist Maria Luisa Tanyag touches the sakura (cherry blossoms), which bloomed early in Shibuya, Tokyo. The blooming of

cherry flower usually starts from warmer areas in Japan’s south in January and ends in the north in mid-May, with most areas filled with the flowers by late-March and April. Signaling the start of spring, the cherry blossom season is short—only one week after the opening of the first blossoms. To the Japanese, the blooming of cherry blossoms is a reminder that life is beautiful, but that it is also short.

how the US presence had waned, and how China hoped to present an alternative.

“Instead of looking for a proxy in the Middle East, we promote peace talks,” Xi said. “Instead of attempting to fill the vacuum, we build a cooperative partnership network for win-win outcomes.”

A relative newcomer to the Middle East’s complicated politics, China has tried to maintain

friendly ties with all sides, des pite somet i mes con f l ic t i ng geopolitical interests.

Beijing has backed President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian conf lict, while Saudi Arabia has insisted on Assad ’s ouster and has supported the Syrian opposition, including Islamic militant groups unfriendly to Chin a over B eiji ng ’s somet i mes harsh treatment of its Muslim

minority. China has also maintained close ties to Saudi Arabia’s bitter enemy Iran.

Salman, who is traveling with a 1,500-strong company of businessmen, princes and support staff in close to a dozen aircraft, is next due to visit the Indian Ocean island nation of the Maldives. Along with Japan, he earlier visited Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei. AP

Dutch PM Rutte claims win over ‘wrong kind of populism’ T HE H AGUE , t he Net he rl a nd s — D utc h P r i me Minister Mark Rutte on Wednesday claimed a dominating parliamentary election victory over anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders, who failed the year’s first litmus test for populism in Europe. Provisional results with over half the votes counted suggested Rutte’s party won 32 seats in the 150-member legislature, 13 more than Wilders’s party, which took only third place with 19 seats. The surging Christian Democratic Appea l Chr istian Democrats claimed 20.

Following Britain’s vote to leave the European Union (EU) and Donald J. Trump’s election as the United States president, “the Netherlands said, ‘Whoa!’ to the wrong kind of populism,” said Rutte, who is now poised for a third term as prime minister.

“We want to stick to the course we have—safe and stable and prosperous,” Rutte added.

Wilders, who campaigned on radical pledges to close borders to migrants from Muslim nations, close mosques, ban the Koran and take the Netherlands out of the EU, had insisted that whatever the result of the election, the kind of populist politics he and others in Europe represent aren’t going away. “Rutte has not seen the back of me,” Wilders said after the results had sunk in.

His Part y for Freedom clinched 24 seats in 2010 before sinking to 15 in 2012, and Wednesday’s total left him with about 12 percent of the electorate, far less than populists in Britain and the United States have scored. “ Those are not the 30 seats we hoped for,” Wilders told reporters early on Thursday,

adding he’d “rather have been the biggest party”.

Both France and Germany have elections this year in which farright candidates and parties are hoping to make an impact.

French President François Hollande congratulated Rutte on his election success and his “clear victory against extremism”.

In Germany Socialist leader Martin Schulz tweeted, “I am relieved, but we need to continue to fight for an open and Free Europe.” Rutte, who for much of the campaign appeared to be racing to keep pace with Wilders, may have profited from the hard line he drew in a diplomatic standoff with Turkey over the past week.

The fight erupted over the Netherlands’s refusal to let two Turkish government ministers address rallies in Rotterdam about a referendum that could give Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan more powers. It gave Rutte an opportunity to show his statesmanship by refusing to bow to foreign pressure, a stance with widespread backing in the nation.

“I mean this is your electoral campaign dream, right? You can’t script this if it was a movie,” Amsterdam Free University political scientist Andre Krouwel said. “It’s really helped Mark Rutte to take the lead and a big lead over Geert Wilders.”

Under br i l l i a nt sk ies, t he Dutch went to vote in huge numbers, with turnout estimated to have reached at 82 percent.

In a subplot of the elections, the Green Left party registered a historic v ictor y, turning it into the largest party on the left wing of Dutch politics, together with the Socialist Party.

The provisional results showed

the Greens leaping from four seats to 14 in parliament after a strong campaign by charismatic leader Jesse K laver, who invites comparisons to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

It remains to be seen if the 30-year-old Klaver will take his party into the next ruling coalition, which looks likely to be dominated by Rutte’s VVD and other right-leaning parties.

The Labor Party of Eurogroup President Jeroen Dijsselbloem appeared to have been punished by voters in the election, plunging from 38 seats at the last election to just nine, according to the Ipsos exit poll.

Because of the result, it looked unlikely Dijsselbloem would be able to hang on to his post of leading the 19-nation Eurogroup, which manages the currency of the EU nations that use the euro.

Rutte had framed the election as a choice between continuity and chaos, portraying himself as a safe custodian of the nation’s economic recovery, and casting Wilders as a far-right radical who was unprepared to make tough decisions.

Although he drove through unpopular austerity measures over the last four years, the Dutch economic recovery has gathered pace, and unemployment has fallen fast under the prime minister.

Wilders, meanwhile, attempted to tap into discontent among voters who sa id t hey were not benefiting from the economic recover y. Even if his party had placed first in the election, Wilders stood a remote chance of becoming prime minister in the Netherlands, where a proportional representation system all but guarantees coalition governments. AP

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Republicans reject Trump’s wiretapping claim vs Obama

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A SH I NGT ON — I n a striking repudiation, Republicans on Wednesday threatened subpoenas and vented openly about t he l ac k of ev idence beh i nd President Dona ld J. Tr ump’s t weet t h at President Ba rac k Obama had w iretapped his phones in Tr ump Tower dur ing the 2016 campaig n.

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes, Republican-California, told reporters on Capitol Hill “I don’t think there was an actual tap of Trump Tower” and that Trump, if taken literally, is simply “wrong”.

Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, said he had provided no information to Trump that might have formed the basis for the president’s claim.

And two Republican senators threatened to block Trump’s nominee for deputy attorney general until they get clarity from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) about the accuracy of the president’s assertions. One of them vowed to issue subpoenas, if needed.

But Tr ump appea red def iant. In a Fox News inter v iew, he hinted at a broader meani ng to h i s Tw it ter messages and sug gested that his online a sser t ion s wou ld e vent u a l ly be v indicated, say ing “w iretap covers a lot of different things”.

Trump added, “I think you’re going to find some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks.”

It is unclear if Republicans will accept an effort by Trump and his aides to redefine what he meant.

Nunes told reporters on Wednesday that lawmakers would have to confront that issue as hearings of the intelligence committee open on Monday.

In one of the most significant signs of pressure from within Trump’s own party, Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Republican-Iowa, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said he would block the

nomination of Rod J. Rosenstein to be deputy attorney general unless the FBI answered his questions. Rosenstein had been expected to win Senate confirmation easily. The Judiciary Committee has primary oversight of the FBI. Sen. Lindsey Graham, Republican-South Carolina, joined Grassley in the threat.

“We’ll hold up the deputy attor ney genera l ’s nom i nat ion until Congress is provided with information to finally clear the air as to whether there was ever a warrant issued against the Trump campaign,” Graham said on NBC’s Today program.

A delay on Rosenstein’s appointment would create a number of problems for the Justice Department. In particular, he was ex pected to oversee any department investigations into Russia’s meddling in the presidential election after Sessions recused himself because Sessions wa s a n adv iser to t he Trump presidential campaign.

P re v iou s p re s i d e nt s h av e faced similar upr isings w ithin their ow n par ties: Democratic law makers initially denounced President Bil l Clinton’s behavior w ith an inter n that led to his impeachment in the House, a nd R e p u b l i c a n f r u s t r at io n w ith the Iraq War, as President George W. Bush ’s approval ratings fel l, hampered Bush ’s second-ter m agenda.

But rarely does a president clash so forcefully with his own party so early in his first year.

Trump already faces a difficult dynamic on the Hill as he struggles to push through a major overhaul of the nation’s health-care system that is already dividing the Republican-controlled Congress.

To overcome that intraparty opposition—not to mention the hostility to his health-care plan from Democrats—Trump will need to woo the very Republicans who are increasingly growing weary of defending his online assertions.

New York Times Service

Russian agents behind Yahoo! breach, US says

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n a development that can only heighten the distrust between US and Russian authorities on cyber security, the Justice Department on Wednesday charged two Russian intelligence officers with directing a sweeping criminal conspiracy that broke into 500 million Yahoo! accounts in 2014.

The Russian government then used the information it obtained from the intelligence officers and two others named in the indictment—a Russian hacker and a Kazakh national living in Canada—to focus on foreign officials, business executives and journalists, federal prosecutors said. The targets included numerous financial executives, executives at a US cloud computing company, an airline official and even a casino regulator in Nevada.

Details of the wide-ranging attack come as the US government is investigating other Russian cyberattacks against American targets, including the theft of e-mails last year from the Democratic National Committee and attempts to break in to state election systems. Investigators are also examining communications between associates of President Donald J. Trump and Russian officials that occurred during the presidential campaign.

That US and Russian authorities are often at loggerheads in their approaches to criminal breaches was made clear in the indictment.

The two Russian agents were supposed to be helping Americans hunt for hackers but were instead working against them.

And one of the outside hackers, a Russian named Alexsey Belan, had been indicted twice before for three intrusions into American e-commerce companies and had been arrested in Europe, but escaped to Russia before he could be extradited.

Prosecutors said they received no response to their requests to the Russian government to turn over Belan to US authorities.

The hackers also used the Yahoo! data to send spam and steal credit-card and gift-card information. In addition, they sought to break into at least 50 Google accounts, including those of Russian officials and employees of a Russian cyber-security firm.

On Wednesday prosecutors unsealed an indictment containing 47 criminal charges against the two agents of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), as well as two outside hackers with whom they worked on the scheme, one of the largest known thefts of data from a private corporation.

This is the first time officials of Russia’s FSB have been indicted on cybercrime charges in the US, said Jack Bennett, special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) San Francisco office. Yahoo worked with the FBI on the investigation for two years, he said.

The four men together face 47 criminal charges, including conspiracy, computer fraud, economic espionage, theft of trade secrets and aggravated identity theft, the Justice Department said in a news release.

The two agents of the FSB who were charged are Dmitry Aleksandrovich Dokuchaev, 33, a Russian national and resident, and Igor Anatolyevich Sushchin, 43, a Russian national and resident. The other two defendants are Belan, 29, a Russian national and resident; and Karim Baratov, 22, a Canadian and Kazakh national and a resident of Canada. Baratov was arrested on Tuesday in Canada.

“The criminal conduct at issue, carried out and otherwise facilitated by officers from an FSB unit that serves as the FBI’s point of contact in Moscow on cybercrime matters, is beyond the pale,” the acting assistant attorney general, Mary B. McCord, said in a statement.

Yahoo! disclosed the theft of the data last September and said it was working with law enforcement authorities to trace the perpetrators. The hackers were able to use the stolen information, which included personal data as well as encrypted passwords, to create a tool that let them access 32 million accounts. In a statement, Yahoo! thanked the FBI and Justice Department for its work.

Yahoo! has said for months that it believed that hackers sponsored by a foreign state were behind the attack, but it had refused to provide details of what occurred because the federal inquiry was ongoing.

New York Times News Service

Protesters demonstrate against President Donald J. Trump’s revised travel ban, outside the US Customs and Border Protection headquarters in Washington, on March 7. Trump’s new executive order sharply restricting travel from the Middle East is set to go into effect just after midnight on Thursday, even as the measure faces an array of legal challenges from nonprofit groups and Democratic state attorneys general. Al Drago/The New York Times

Fed judge blocks Trump’s new ban on travel to US

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federal judge in Hawaii issued a nationwide order on Wednesday evening blocking President Donald J. Trump’s ban on travel from parts of the Muslim world, dealing a stinging blow to the White House and signaling in pointed language that Trump will have to account in court for his heated rhetoric about Islam.

The ruling was the second major setback for Trump in his pursuit of a policy he has trumpeted as critical for national security. His first attempt to sharply limit travel from a handful of predominantly Muslim countries ended in a courtroom fiasco last month, when a federal court in Seattle halted it.

Trump reacted to that setback with fury, lashing out at the judiciary. He did so again at a rally in Nashville, Tennessee, on Wednesday night a couple of hours after the ruling.

Raising his voice to a hoarse shout, Trump criticized the judge, Derrick K. Watson, as well as the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the earlier court ruling and will hear any appeal of the Hawaii decision.

“You don’t think this was done by a judge for political reasons, do you?” he asked the crowd. “This ruling makes us look weak— which, by the way, we no longer are, believe me.”

After the first judicial defeat, Trump issued a new and narrower travel ban on March 6, trying to satisfy the courts by removing some of the most contentious elements of the original version.

With cheers mounting from his loyal crowd on Wednesday night, Trump even said he might reissue the initial version of the order, rather than the one halted on Wednesday, which he described as “a watered-down version of the first one”.

After he signed the revised ban, Democratic attorneys general and nonprofit groups that work with immigrants and refugees raced

120 The number of days the revised travel order by US President Donald J. Trump would have also stopped all refugees from entering the US

back into court against Trump, alleging that his updated decree was still a thinly veiled version of the ban on Muslim migration that he had pledged to enact as a presidential candidate.

Watson, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, ruled that the state of Hawaii and an individual plaintiff, Ismail Elshikh, the imam of the Muslim Association of Hawaii, had reasonable grounds to challenge the order as religious discrimination. And he concluded that allowing the travel restrictions to go into effect at midnight, as scheduled, could have caused them irreparable harm.

Watson f lat ly rejected the government’s argument that a court would have to investigate Trump’s “veiled psyche” to deduce religious animus. He quoted extensively from the remarks by Trump that were cited in the lawsuit brought by Hawaii’s attorney general, Doug Chin.

“For instance, there is nothing ‘veiled’ about this press release,”

Watson wrote, quoting a Trump campaign document, titled “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

Watson singled out Elshikh, an American citizen whose Syrian mother-in-law had been pursuing a visa to enter the United States, as having an especially strong claim that the travel regulations would harm him on the basis of his religion.

“This is a great day for democracy, religious and human rights,” Elshikh, who was out of the country, said in a message relayed through Hakim Ouansafi, the chairman of the Muslim Association of Hawaii.

“I am very pleased that the processing of my mother-in-law’s paperwork will not stop now but more importantly that this Muslim ban will not separate families and loved ones just because they happen to be from the six countries.”

Elshikh, who is Egyptian and prev iously worked in Mic higan, was recruited to the Hawaii mosque more than a decade ago, Ouansafi said. And when the association began recruiting someone to serve as a plaintiff, the imam, who became a citizen last year, agreed to do so without reservation, Ouansafi said.

After Elshikh became the face of the lawsuit, he received several threats from the mainland, Ouansafi said. “If we lived in any other state, I would not have asked him to come forward,” he said.

In addition to the Hawaii suit, federal judges in Washington state and Maryland heard arguments in several other cases challenging the constitutionality of Trump’s order, including one brought by a coalition of Democratic attorneys general, and others from a collection of nonprofit groups. Watson was the only one who ruled on Wednesday.

Administration lawyers have argued that the president was merely exercising his national security powers. In the scramble to defend the executive order, a single lawyer in the US solicitor general’s office, Jeffrey Wall, argued first to a Maryland court and then, by phone, to Watson in Honolulu that no element of the order, as written, could be construed as a religious test for travelers.

Wall said the order was based on concerns raised by the Obama administration in its move toward stricter screening of travelers from the six countries affected. “ W hat the order does is a step beyond what the previous administration did, but it’s on the same basis,” Wall said in the Mar yland hearing.

After Trump’s speech in Nashville, the Justice Department released a more muted statement disputing the Hawaii decision, calling it “flawed both in reasoning and scope.” Sarah Isgur Flores, a spokeswoman for the department, said it would continue to defend the legality of the presidential order.

Refugee organizations and civil rights groups greeted the ruling with expressions of triu mph a nd re l ie f. M a r ie le n a Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, hailed the ruling on a conference call as “a strong and unequ ivoca l reject ion of t he politics of hate”.

At the same time, advocates for refugees and immigrants acknowledged that significant uncertainty would hang over some of their more practical decisions, as a longer legal process plays out around Trump’s order.

“It’s a preliminary decision, but it recognizes that there continue to be problems with the constitutionality of this revised order, particularly with discriminatory intent toward Muslims,” said Betsy Fisher, policy director at the International Refugee Assistance Project at the Urban Justice Center.

The second, now-halted executive order preserved major components of the original. It would have ended, with few exceptions, the granting of new visas and green cards to people from six majority-Muslim countries—Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen—for at least 90 days.

It would have also stopped all refugees from entering for 120 days and limited refugee admissions to 50,000 people in the current fiscal year.

Barack Obama had set in motion plans to admit more than twice that number.

New York Times News Service

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The World BusinessMirror

Friday, March 17, 2017

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In Mosul, heavy but not crushing blow to IS

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OSUL, Iraq—Iraqi troops have surrounded western Mosul and military leaders vow it’s only a matter of time until they crush the last major stand of the Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq. But the militants are positioning themselves to defend the remains of their socalled caliphate in Syria and wage an insurgent campaign in Iraq.

The extremists are carrying out what looks like an organized, fighting withdrawal: a core of fighters is holding out in the city using hundreds of thousands of civilians as shields, tying down and bleeding the Iraqi military in urban combat.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon and Iraqi officials say the senior IS leadership has escaped to regroup in Syria and the deserts along the border to prepare for the future. “ T hey know they w ill lose Mosul, but they want this to be a hard fight,” said Maj. Saif Ali, a commander in the Iraqi special forces on the front lines. The civilian population is, perhaps, the

2,000 The number of Islamic State militants holed up in western Mosul

main reason IS fighters have been able to hold out so long and turn Mosul into such a grueling battle.

It took months for Iraqi forces to drive them out of eastern Mosul while trying to avoid high casualties among residents amid houseto-house battles.

Displaced Iraqis, who fled fighting between Iraqi security forces and Islamic State militants, gather for food at a camp for internally displaced people, in Hamam al-Alil, some 10 kilometers south of Mosul, Iraq. AP/ Khalid Mohammed

Now some 2,000 militants, by a coalition estimate, are holed up in western Mosul with 700,000 civilians. IS fighters are holding most of those civilians hostage as shields, while forcing some to flee as cover for their troops.

Mosu l ’s fa l l w il l be the biggest blow yet to I S, l a rge ly brea k ing its hold over ter r itor y in Iraq and ending its r u le over ha lf the ca liphate, which at its height stretc hed f rom nor ther n Sy r ia through wester n Iraq. T he largest cit y in IS

ter r itor y, Mosu l prov ided the g roup s i g n i f ic a nt f i n a nc i n g f rom t a x ing t he popu l at ion, factor ies to ma ke weapons and space to gather freely.

But the IS group’s durable organization ensures it can fall back to the next fight.

The battlefield

Last weekend Iraqi forces completely encircled western Mosul by capturing the last road into the enclave of about 40 square kilometers, comprising some of the city’s most densely built districts.

“Any of the fighters who are left in Mosul, they’re going to die there because they are trapped,” Brett McGurk, the special presidential envoy for US-led coalition against IS, said last Sunday.

In the month since the assault on the west began, troops have retaken the city’s airport, a sprawling military complex, the main government compound and a ribbon of neighborhoods on the southwest side of Mosul.

The offensive is being waged from three directions with two divisions of special forces and a force of federal police advancing along the Tigris River, which divides the city into its western and eastern half.

Use of artillery and airpower has been dramatically stepped up, mostly by the Iraqi air force. “They are causing the real destruction,” said federal police Cpl. Abbas Takleef, whose unit retook the government complex last week.

Iraqi officers have frequently expressed impatience with extensive vetting of air strikes required by the US-led coalition to avoid civilian casualties. Recently, the coalition enabled more of its officers on the scene to approve strikes, speeding up procedures.

But more intense bombardment could translate into deaths among residents. Airwars, an independent group that tracks casualties from the campaign, said several hundred civilians have been killed in March alone.

The civilians

R esidents trapped in western Mosul face dwindling supplies of food and fuel. Limited provisions enter through smuggling routes still in use despite the siege, according to a senior humanitarian official who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

But prices have skyrocketed: the price of a kilogram of sugar has leaped from $1 to more than $20.

Bassam and his wife Asma, residents of a western neighborhood just recaptured by Iraqi forces, said they survived because they began stockpiling provisions back last October, before the Mosul assault began. Shops completely ran out of food more than two months ago, they said.

The couple asked to only be identified by their first names, fearing for the safety of relatives still under IS rule.

Around 50,000 civilians have fled in the past four weeks, according to the United Nations. Escape is incredibly dangerous: IS has threatened to kill anyone caught trying to get out, and residents have to cross dangerous front lines to reach safety.

But at times, the militants allow large groups to leave, giving cover for their own fighters to move, as well.

A li, the special forces major, said that one night more than 5,000 civilians crossed out through front lines near his position. Soon after, militants who had slipped into governmentheld territory struck his forces from the rear, hitting a house and nearby school being used by the Iraqi troops. A sniper with a night scope killed a young soldier on the roof of the house, and a rocket-propelled grenade wounded a soldier at the school.

The attacks rattled the soldiers as they tried to regroup for the next push, said Lt. Col. Nour Sabah, who was stationed at the school.

“They are trying to exhaust us,” he said.

What’s next for IS?

The well-organized IS counterattacks point to how the militants are maintaining command and control even as their grip on Mosul falls apart.

The IS’s top leader Abu Bakr alBaghdadi and his senior lieutenants escaped Mosul even before the assault on the city began last mid-October, Iraqi and coalition officials believe. They likely went to Raqqa in Syria, though some may have set up in desert hideouts along the border.

“They’re not willing to share the risk that they demand of their fighters to fight to the death,” US Army Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, who heads the US-led coalition

against IS, said at a Pentagon press briefing.

Also escaping are many middle-rank IS fighters, the rough equivalent of a military’s captains and majors crucial to keeping structure. A lieutenant-colonel with Iraqi intelligence estimated hundreds of IS fighters have fled west Mosul among the civilians.

He spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

Those fighters could form the backbone of an IS rebirth as an insurgent force.

From the relative safety within the territory the IS group still holds in Syria and the pockets remaining in Iraq, along with any sleeper cells the militant group has inside Iraqi government-controlled territory, IS can carry out insurgent operations in Iraq, including suicide bombings, much as it did before 2014 in its incarnation as al-Qaeda in Iraq.

From Syria, the group can also plot attacks in the West.

“The caliphate will not vanish,” IS pledged in an internal publication found north of Mosul by Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, a researcher with the Middle East Forum who studies the group.

He said the document appeared to anticipate that urban areas, like Mosu and Raqqa, would be lost.

“It adopts the idea that the Caliphate does not end with loss of territory, and the West, in particular, should realize the next generation of the caliphate’s soldiers are being nurtured within their borders,” al-Tamimi said.

What’s next in the fight

The next likely target is Raqqa, in northern Syria. US-backed Kurdish-led forces are trying to cut off supply lines into the city, and US officials have said an assault could begin with weeks.

There too, however, the militants are dug in for long and potentially grueling fight.

From there, the last stronghold of the militants could be the Deir el-Zour region in eastern Syria, near the border with Iraq.

Iraqi forces will likely need weeks of rest and resupply after Mosul. But then the fight will also continue in Iraq to mop up the last pockets held by militants along the border. Also crucial to recapture are Iraqi border crossings still in the militants’ hands, a step that would crimp—though not completely stop—IS’s ability to move supplies and fighters into Iraq.

Senior military and intelligence officers warn that addressing Iraq’s political divisions will be just as important.

In the past, the militants have been able to rebound from defeat by exploiting anger among Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority, which feels marginalized by Shiites. And Iraq will have to deal with the monumental task of rebuilding cities destroyed in the fight against IS. Slowness in doing that could fuel Sunni resentment.

The US ambassador to Iraq, Doug Silliman, said the next task will fall to the Iraqi government to return services to territory retaken from IS to deliver a lasting defeat to the group, at the Sulaimani Forum earlier this month.

“The military victories will not be enough,” he said. AP

Malaysia: Family consented to decide on Kim’s body

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UALA LUMPUR, Malaysia—A senior Malaysian police official said on Thursday the family of Kim Jong Nam, who was killed last month, has given consent to Malaysia to decide what to do with his body.

Officials say the police confirmed Kim’s identity using the DNA of one of his children. Kim was holding a diplomatic passport by the name of Kim Chol when he was attacked on February 13 at Kuala Lumpur’s airport by two women who

smeared the banned VX nerve agent on his face. He died within 20 minutes.

Deputy national police Chief Noor Rashid Ibrahim said Kim’s family would let the government decide what to do with his body. “I was made to understand that they are leaving it to our government to deal with it [body]...yes, they have given their consent,” Noor Rashid said.

He said any decision would be subject to negotiations between the two countries amid a diplomatic standoff over the killing.

Noor Rashid declined to comment whether the two women had been given different components that would form a binary version of VX, but described it as a “professional job”.

National police chief Khalid Abu Bakar separately told reporters that four North Korean suspects who are believed to have fled Malaysia on the same day of killing has been put on Interpol’s red notice list.

Khalid did not confirm Noor Rashid’s comments. AP

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Kadamay: NHA’s socialized housing to disenfranchise poor and homeless

By Catherine Joy L. Maglalang Correspondent

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HE National Housing Authority’s (NHA) plan to include the poor and homeless of Bulacan in its socializedhousing program will only put into motion the same problems for the poor and homeless under the Aquino administration, Kadamay said on Thursday.

The urban-poor group said this move was meant to mislead the people in the occupation by offering them housing projects, while the agency continues to neglect the pressing issue at hand: socialized housing does not work and communities built on this have made the poor suffer even more.

“Socialized housing, as outlined in the Urban Development and Housing Act [UDHA], is inherently flawed. It requires ‘beneficiaries’ to pay the sky-high costs of amortization and without any proper utilities. Water and electricity are routed through private corporations and developers, which, in turn, double or triple the rates.

Many of those relocated through socialized-housing schemes end up without a home and are forced to go back to the cities due to the high cost of living and lack of livelihood or jobs in the area,” Kadamay Chairman Gloria Arellano said. “We reject this offer. Walang bago dito, ang nais lamang ng NHA ay magkaroon ng mga bagong pagkakakitaan sa paniningil sa mga tao.”

Kadamay cited Article V, Section 18 of the UDHA, which gives way to corporations in collaboration with NHA to turn housing into a money-making, public-private partnership scheme. UDHA and NHA give hefty and numerous tax cuts and incentives to corporations that go through this process. In the end, the NHA is able to rake in the profits through amortization.

A study by the PIDS in 2012 showed the collection efficiency

of amortization in off-city relocation sites is only at 4 percent.

Also, there was a significant reduction in household income by around P3,466. People became poorer when entering socialized housing. This decline is still evident today.

Kadamay said the occupied homes are idle and have been for years. The group scored how the government is pitting the poor against one another and when the agency talks about “beneficiaries” of socialized housing, it pertains to those in communities that have yet to be demolished.

“The supposed beneficiaries are actually targeted to be victimized by the NHA. Wala kaming inagawan ng bahay dahil walang nakatira doon. Iyung mga sinasabi nilang beneficiaries ay mga maralitang ide-demolish pa lang. Kung totoo nga na danger zone ang mga sinasabi nilang lugar, bakit hindi paunlarin ang komunidad imbis na wasakin? Kahit kalian hindi gumawa ang NHA ng paraan para sa on-site development. Pagkatapos nito ay dadalhin sila sa mga relocation sites para singilin naman ng iba’t ibang bayarin. Kahit ang NHA, alam na ayaw ng maralita sa off-city relocation,” Arellano said.

Kadamay said this trend is all too familiar and became extremely apparent during the Aquino Administration where hundreds of thousands of homes were demolished. Arellano said the Duterte administration is now paralleling this cycle.

“Duterte is following Aquino’s anti-poor and neoliberal housing policies that further impoverished the urban poor at every turn. By retaining the UDHA and the NHA’s corrupt practices, problems for the urban poor will keep repeating themselves. The UDHA must be scrapped to make way for free and mass housing for the poor,” Arellano said as the UDHA anniversary approaches on March 24.

Davao City marks 80th year with historical float parade

CA allows miner to resume gold operation in Masbate

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By Joel R. San Juan

@jrsanjuan1573

HE Court of Appeals (CA) has dismissed the petition of a writ of kalikasan and an environmental protection order against the operation of a gold mine in Aroroy, Masbate, after it found the allegations raised by an environmental group untrue.

In a decision issued on March 8 and penned by former appellate court Associate Justice and now Supreme Court Associate Justice Noel Tijam, the CA’s Fourth Division held petitioners Ang Aroroy Ay Alagaan Inc. and four private citizens failed to substantiate their allegations the operations of mining firm Filminera Resources Corp. had adversely affected the environment in and around the municipalities of Aroroy and Baleno in Masbate, or that these had any impact on the petitioners’ livelihoods.

Concurring with Tijam’s were Associate Justices Francisco P. Acosta

and Eduardo B. Peralta Jr. “Petitioners’ allegations in the petition, therefore, absent any concrete proof, are bereft of any merit. Petitioners simply failed to substantiate their claims that any environmental damage is directly attributable to Filminera’s mining activities. Their uncorroborated claim of that fact, even under oath, is self-serving,” said the CA. The CA added Filminera “was able to controvert with overwhelming evidence, the allegations put forth by the petitioners.”

The appellate court rendered its decision after studying several sets

By Rizal Raoul Reyes Contributor

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LEADING official from Mindanao said trade and investments are highly needed to facilitate peace and order in conflicted areas like the southern part of the Philippines and its neighboring countries in the region.

In a recent business forum during the second leg of the four-day Global Peace Convention 2017 held in Manila last February 28 to March 3, Sulu was cited as one of the areas in the Philippines that highly needs more businesses and investments to alleviate poverty and bring stability to its impoverished people.

“The problem in the south is the problem of the entire country as well as the problem of the whole Southeast Asian region,” said former Sulu Gov. Abdusakur Mahail Tan, during his talk in the forum.

Tan is also the president, chairman and CEO of AMT Group of Companies.

He said perpetration not only takes place in the waters of Sulu, but even outside of the Sulu Sea. “We hope entrepreneurs [or] big businesses would invest and bring development to the South because they can provide employment and livelihood for our people. Besides, this would redound to poverty alleviation,” he said.

Sulu, a province in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), has beautiful

By Charles R. Pepito | Correspondent

By Manuel T. Cayon Mindanao Bureau Chief

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AVAO CIT Y—This city marked its 80th charter day with a history parade predating to the early-1900s, when it was informally called “Little Tokyo” by migrant Japanese workers in abaca plantations.

The city charter was inaugurated on March 1, 1937, by then-Secretary Elpidio Quirino, who later became President, although succeeding commemoration was held in the middle of the month.

But the city’s history predates that official declaration as a chartered city, to the time in 1848, when José Cruz de Oyanguren of Vergara, Spain led a Spanish contingent and established a Christian settlement in an area of mangrove swamps, which is now Bolton Riverside.

Davao was then ruled by a chieftain, Datu Bago, who had a settlement on the banks of the Davao River.

A street has been named Uyanguren and is the busiest Chinatown

section near the first wharf, while Datu Bago has been honored with the name of the highest award given annually to outstanding Davaoeños.

From a former abaca economy in the 1900s, the city has since become Mindanao’s premier southern seaport, with a population size estimated to be 1.67 million last year, a size that is the fourth largest, next only to the three populous cities in Metro Manila.

From almost a dead town in the middle of the 1980s after being made the laboratory of the New People’s Army for its urban warfare and the government’s armed vigilante unit, the Alsa Masa, the city rose to become the country’s fastest-growing region with an economy worth P217.14 billion, or more than $4 billion.

While it remained an agricultural area and noted for its endemic fruits, like durian, mangosteen and lanzones, with coconut and banana as major exports, its construction sector continued to be bullish, with P7.651 billion worth of projects registered in 2015.

of pleadings and holding a series of hearings last October and November, when evidence and testimony from both sides were presented.

The petitioners claimed Filminera was operating without the needed permits, including a valid environmental clearance certificate (ECC).

The petitioners said the mine operations had caused pollution in the waters in and around Aroroy and Baleno that affected the health and livelihood of residents.

The CA said the mining firm was able to present evidence to disprove the petitioners’ claim using data from government agencies, like the Environmental Management Bureau (EMB), and its own regular multipartite water testing conducted with local stakeholders.

The mining company was also able to provide the appellate court copies of the permits necessary for its operation, including a valid ECC. “In sum, the petitioners failed to substantiate their claims that Filminera’s operations caused environmental damage of the mag nitude contemplated under the writ of kalikasan. The evidence it presented is inadequate to establish the factual bases of its claims,” the CA said.

“Respondents were also able to

show the permits necessary for its operations, all of which were not sufficiently rebutted by the petitioners.”

The CA said the studies on water quality submitted by the petitioners did not prove the presence of cyanide or mercury hazardous to the environment or inhabitants.

The CA also said water-sampling tests from the petitioners showing the presence of mercury could not be attributable to Filminera since these were made even before the miner began its operations.

Filminera said it did not use mercury in any of its processes, and the contamination likely resulted from the unregulated operations of 3,000 small-scale miners in the area who use mercury.

The CA’s decision also included testimony from the petitioners’ own expert witnesses who admitted the water-sampling tests they presented showed results that were not harmful to humans and wildlife, or that had exceeded the standards set by the Department of the Environment and Natural Resources.

The CA said the petitioners also failed to show evidence of their allegations that Filminera had gone beyond their allowed operating area, or that they had encroached on any waterways.

Ex-Sulu gov: Trade, investments to spur peace and order in troubled areas

Ateneo de Cebu holds first-ever Marketing Expo THE migration to Mindanao of people from all over the country during the administration of President Ramon Magsaysay in the 1950s turned the island into a melting pot. Some groups, though, blames this packaging of Mindanao half-a-century ago as the cause of the bloody political conflict in the South. MANUEL CAYON

Editor: Efleda P. Campos • Friday, March 17, 2017 A9

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HE Sacred Heart School-Ateneo de Cebu is holding the first Marketing Expo on Friday at the Pope Francis Servant Leadership Hall, Eduardo J. Aboitiz Senior High School Building in Canduman, Mandaue City.

The event is organized by the Grade 11 students of the Accountancy, Business and Management (ABM) strand taking up Principles of Marketing and Research in Daily Life 1.

The first Marketing Expo is a student-led event anchored on the theme “The purpose of any business is to love people, to serve people and to bless people”. The expo aims to integrate framework for 21st-century learning to produce effective citizens in a domestic and global economy that are a lifelong learner, holistically developed, globally oriented and locally grounded.

The 28 businesses owned and managed by ABM students have had their five-day, income-generating project to finance the school’s expo. They are also inviting ABM senior highschool students of Canduman National High School.

The event also highlights the launching of Prime Magazine, the official senior high-school publication of the Sacred Heart School-Ateneo de Cebu. Proceeds out of the sponsorship of the event will go to the Social Involvement Office of the school to support its student-formation program.

“This is our simple way of periphrases of the society. That, indeed, business is not only created for profit but, at the same time, to love, serve and bless people,” said Madame Annie F. Abucay, the assistant principal of senior high school. Abucay said the students make the school proud as they set the bar in organizing the first Marketing Expo.

“Let this be a keystone for your success in future learning, work and life. Let this further engage and inspire you to connect learning with real-life problems and issues. Through this event, may you be inspired to gain skills, learn, relearn, and be more responsible citizens, contributors and innovators,” Abucay said.

“Create ripples of change. Be the beacons of hope. Be the light.

Always Magis. Always Lux Oriens. Always ADMG,” she added.

beaches known for their reefs, corals, shells and pearls.

Apart from its rich history, it is endowed with agricultural wealth, including major products like coconut, cassava, abaca, coffee, native mangoes, and exotic fruits including durian, mangosteen and lanzones.

Its vast aquatic resources have spawned seaweed-growing and fishing as major industries, Sulu contributes 40 percent of the total Philippine export on carrageenan.

Infrastructure-wise, it now has one major airport and three seaports (Jolo, Siasi and Maimbung). There are also five banking institutions currently located here.

Despite all these developments,

however, poverty incidence in Sulu remains high at 61.8 percent.

Tan said economic development in their province is being hampered by instability, unrest and a long-running separatist insurgency. He said the lack of livelihood opportunities and development has contributed to the problem on peace and order in the region.

“We felt neglected. While we were trading in the past, we became the backdoor. Now, they call us [the] ‘backdoor,’ but we were [actually the] ‘front door.’ We were not economic in volume, but civilizations started in our area. We are looking at trade and investment, as well as economic development as the answers to our problem in the South,” Tan said.

A10 Friday, March 17, 2017 • Editor: Angel R. Calso

Opinion BusinessMirror

editorial

Government’s miserable failure

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he Commission on Appointments hearing for a new secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources has proven one point.

The Philippine government, now and through at least the past two presidential administrations, has been an absolute failure with regard to the constitutional mandate of the State to “increase the productivity of natural resources in order to meet the demands for forest, mineral and land resources of a growing population”, and to “enhance the contribution of natural resources for achieving national economic and social development”.

The Executive branch, which has the mandate to uphold and enforce the law of the land, has failed. The Department of Justice has failed by not prosecuting the law breakers. The judicial system has not brought justice to the Filipino people. The legislature has not written tax laws to insure that the nation and the people benefit from the mining industry.

There are some naïve individuals and groups that believe the Philippines cannot and should not exploit its mineral resources. Here is the big picture.

Global mining drives 45 percent of the world’s GDP. Mining-product revenues contribute 11.5 percent to global GDP; mining service industries a further 21 percent to 23 percent; and fertilizers for agriculture then take mining’s combined direct and indirect contribution beyond 45 percent. The world would need to dedicate twice the amount of land to agricultural activities were it not for mining’s contribution to agricultural productivity.

Many arguments against the mineral industry sound like, “Killing is bad, so why don’t hunters just buy store meat that’s made without hurting animals?”

But we are told mining can only be done properly in rich nations, like Australia, Canada and the United States. Yet, the facts prove differently.

Indonesia and Vietnam see mining directly contribute nearly 3 percent to their respective economies. For Peru it is over 6 percent; and in Chile, 12 percent of the economy comes from mining.

But here is the real economic story as told by India. The mining industry contributes 2.2 percent to 2.5 percent of the GDP, but going by the GDP of the total industrial sector, it contributes around 10 percent to 11 percent. If you want a self-sufficient heavy manufacturing and construction industry, you need iron ore for steel. The energy, construction and transportation industry needs stainless steel, which requires chromium. Nickel is the vital component for everything, from rechargeable batteries (solar energy anyone?) to electric guitar strings and plating on plumbing fixtures. Without copper, there is no electricity.

All of those minerals are found in commercial quantities in the Philippines.

Perhaps, the universe has simply played a cruel joke on Filipinos.

On one hand, the Divine Powers blessed the nation with $2 trillion of mineral wealth and the third-largest amount of gold of any country on earth. But in return, the people were also given elected leaders and appointed bureaucrats that are too incompetent to make that wealth benefit the people.

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BusinessMirror A broader look at today’s business ✝ Ambassador Antonio L. Cabangon Chua

Lessons from Dili James Jimenez

spox

I

N the United Kingdom-based Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index for 2016, Timor Leste ranked 43rd most democratic country worldwide, based on five variables: electoral process and pluralism, the functioning of the government, political participation, political culture and civil liberties. In three out of these five categories, the Philippines outstripped Timor Leste. The two categories in which we didn’t quite do as well were the functioning of government and political culture. The final tally, however, placed Timor Leste fifth in Asia and first in Southeast Asia, ahead of the Philippines at 50.

How did that happen? Clearly, our low rankings in those two categories had something to do with it; I had the opportunity to get a very good idea exactly what.

This past week, I was fortunate enough to be with the people and organizations involved in the preparations for this landmark debate in Timor Leste. Upon the invitation of Debates International and the National Democratic Institution, I’ve been helping out, sharing insights and best practices and so on. And one of the most noteworthy things about this debate is how remarkably purposive it is.

The National Elections Commis-

sion (CNE) has given the guidance that this debate is intended primarily to educate the voters on the role of the president they will be electing, Monday next week. Apparently, the CNE wants to ensure that voters appreciate the role of a president in a parliamentary form of government, as opposed to the role that same position plays in a presidential form of government.

In other words, the debate will be educating the electorate on a fairly complex concept in a manner that also gives the candidates one last chance to distinguish themselves in the voters’ minds. That’s synergy of a high order.

And Jesus said unto Paul of Ryan…

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In contrast, our debates last year focused more closely on the platforms of the candidates, merely allowing the voters to compare them against each other and, to be perfectly frank, to provide an opening for the candidates to address personality-based issues that had been raised against most of them. While that same dynamic will certainly be at play here, the CNE’s guidance ensures that the voter education function of the debate won’t be merely incidental.

This deliberate structuring of the debate for the purpose of facilitating voter education on a complex concept—i.e., the role of the president in a parliamentary vis-à-vis a presidential form of government—reflects the Timorese determination to make their democracy work.

Going back to the Democracy Index again, we find that one of the key variables is “political culture”, or the existence of an atmosphere conducive to the thriving of democratic principles. And one of the most important things that can be done toward that end is to foster the emergence and maintenance of an informed electorate. Tonight’s debate will do exactly that.

Instead of simply setting out to present the voters with a field of candidates to choose from, the Timorese debate will be, first and foremost, defining the job for which the

New york times

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woman who had been bleeding for 12 years came up behind Jesus and touched his clothes in hope of a cure. Jesus turned to her and said: “Fear not. Because of your faith, you are now healed.”

Then spoke Pious Paul of Ryan: “But teacher, is that wise? When you cure her, she learns dependency. Then the poor won’t take care of themselves, knowing that you’ll always bail them out! You must teach them personal responsibility!”

They were interrupted by 10 lepers who stood at a distance and shouted, “Jesus, have pity on us.”

“No!” Pious Paul shouted. “Jesus! You don’t have time. We have a cocktail-party fund-raiser in the temple. And don’t worry about them—they’ve already got health-care access.”

Jesus t ur ned to Pious Pau l, puzzled.

“Why, they can pray for a cure,” Pious Paul explained. “I call that universal health-care access.”

Jesus turned to the 10 lepers. “Rise and go,” he told them. “Your faith has made you well.” Then he turned back to Pious Paul, saying, “Let me tell you the

story of the good Samaritan.

“A man was attacked by robbers who stripped him of clothes, beat him and left him half-dead. A minister passed down this same road, and when he saw the injured man, he crossed to the other side and hurried on. So did a rich man who claimed to serve God. But then a despised Samaritan came by and took pity on the injured man. He bandaged his wounds and put the man on his own donkey, and paid an innkeeper to nurse him to health. So, which of these three should we follow?”

“Those who had mercy on him,” Pious Paul said promptly.

Jesus nodded. “So go ——” “I mean the first two,” Pious Paul interjected. “For the Samaritan’s work is unsustainable and sends the wrong message. It teaches travelers to take dangerous roads, knowing that others will rescue them from self-destructive

behaviors. This Samaritan also seems to think it right to redistribute money from those who are successful and give it to losers. That’s socialism! Meanwhile, if the rich man keeps his money, he can invest it and create jobs. So, it’s an act of mercy for the rich man to hurry on and ignore the robbery victim.”

“How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of Heaven,” Jesus mused to himself. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter heaven.”

“Let me teach you about love, Jesus— tough love!” Pious Paul explained. “You need a sustainable probusiness model.

And you need to give people freedom, Jesus, the freedom to suffer misery and poverty.”

“The Lord God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor,” Jesus replied, emphasizing the last two words.

Then he turned to a paralyzed beggar at his feet. “Stand up!” Jesus told the man.

“Pick up your mat and go home.” As the man danced about joyfully, Pious Paul rolled his eyes dismissively.

“Look, Jesus, you have rare talent, and it should be rewarded,” Pious Paul said. “I have a partner, The Donald, who would like to work with you: He’d set up a lovely hospital, and the rich would come and pay for you to heal them. You’d get a percentage, and it’d be a real money-spinner. Overhead would be minimal because every morning you could multiply some loaves and fishes. You could strike it rich!”

“Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of God,” Jesus said. “But woe to you who are rich, for you have already

candidates are aspiring. By helping the voters understand what the job entails, the debates will also effectively guide the voters in determining who the best choice will be.

With this kind of emphasis on voter education motivating the debate, is it any wonder that Timor Leste scored a 6.88 in the Democracy Index’s political culture category, as opposed to the Philippines’s 4.38? And since political culture has a significant impact on how elections go, which, in turn, has a direct correlation with how well government functions, it should not be a surprise either that in that category, Timor Leste notched a 7.14 as against our 5.71.

The lesson should be clear enough.

Electoral process and pluralism, political participation, civil liberties­— categories in which the Philippines scored very high—are simply not enough to carry the day. In the end, political culture and its effect on how well the elected government functions matter a great deal.

I came to Dili to share insights on how to stage presidential debates. I’m happy to report that Dili seems to have ended up teaching me much more about the value of these debates.

James Arthur B. Jimenez is director of the Commission on Elections’s Education and Information Department.

received comfort.”

“Oh, come on, Jesus,” Pious Paul protested. “Don’t go socialist on me again.

Please don’t encourage class warfare. The best way to help the needy is to give public money to the rich. That then inspires the poor to work harder, galvanizes the sick to become healthy, forces the lepers to solve their own problems rather than kick back and depend on others. That’s why any realistic health plan has to focus on providing less coverage for the poor, and big tax benefits for the rich.

When millions of people lose health care, that’s when a country is great again!”

“From everyone who has been given much,” Jesus told him, “much will be required.”

“Well, sure, this hospital would have a foundation to do some charity work.

Maybe commissioning portraits of The Donald to hang in the entrance. But let’s drop this bleeding heart nonsense about health care as a human right, and see it as a financial opportunity to reward investors. In this partnership, 62 percent of the benefits would go to the top 0.6 percent—perfect for a health-care plan.”

Jesus turned to Pious Paul on his left and said: “Be gone! For I was hungry and you gave me no food; I was thirsty, and you gave me no drink; and I was sick, and you did not help me.” “But, Lord,” protested Pious Paul of Ryan, “when did I see you hungry or thirsty or sick and refuse to help you? I drop your name everywhere. And I’m prolife!”

“Truly, I say to you,” Jesus responded, “as you did not help the homeless, the sick—as you did not help the least of these, you did not help me.”

Opinion BusinessMirror

opinion@businessmirror.com.ph

Empowering women’s choices

Radio Veritas opens Lenten exhibit at Lucky Chinatown Mall Rev. Fr. Antonio Cecilio T. Pascual

SERVANT LEADER

Imelda Canuel

WOMEN STEPPING UP

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usiness and Professional Women (BPW)—Makati came together to celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8 at Commune Café. Women in different stages in their careers and of various backgrounds, styles and interests gathered adhering to the principle of women helping women step up. The room’s energy and openness were palpable, with members and guests actively listening and ready to share themselves with others.

In her opening remarks, Camille Escudero, president of BPW-Makati, shared how BPW was founded in Switzerland. Back in 1930 women were lobbying for the right to work outside their homes, the right to receive timely pay, the right to better working conditions, the right to vote and the right to enter university or seek advanced education. It was a time when women around the world were campaigning for various civil, social and welfare reforms. These were the liberties women before us have fought for—liberties that we are enjoying today.

As today’s women now have different challenges, the thrust of organizations like BPW has been to achieve true quality and to level the playing field for all. Still, Ms. Escudero shared she and some BPW members had brainstormed on how the organization can be relevant to its current members, its purpose and alignment with the International Federation of BPW, and the essence of what BPW will stand for.

From their discussions, four core values emerged that reflect BPW-Makati members’ experiences within the organization. These are diversity, best self, self-empowerment and supportive community. n Diversity: Members of BPWMakati are entrepreneurs and professionals coming from different industries. We come into the organization valuing the difference each one brings as we build on each other’s strength. n Best self: We share our best selves with others, knowing that in whatever stages of our lives we are in, we can contribute, find fulfillment in our life choices, find lessons when things turn awry and be grateful for our successes. n Self-empowerment: We help and guide each other in reaching our career objectives, nourish our talents and enable women to “be in their own empowerment”—to not second-guess ourselves and own up to our choices. BPW-Makati also connects its members to the global international network of women, conferences and forums. n Suppor t ive commu nity: BPW-Makati’s founding chairman, Ambassador Delia Albert,

expressed it best when she said one of the goals in establishing BPW is to narrow the gap between rich and poor women in the country. This value resonates, as each member has projects and collaborations with each other, and with other women groups and communities nationwide.

These values now also represent four communities or “circles” within BPW-Makati, all of which aim to support women in reaching their various professional and personal goals.

BPW-Makati also provides access to other women organizations via the Philippine Women’s Economic Network. This is composed of Women’s Business Council, Filipina CEO Circle, Network of Enterprising Women, SPARK! Philippines and Women Corporate Directors. In this network, we support activities of each organization. For example, on March 16 to 17, BPW-Makati will be suporting the Women’s Business Council in their activity called, “S.T.E.A.M. Ahead in Asean: A Forum on Women in Technology.”

This forum will serve as a platform to showcase and celebrate women entrepreneurs leading in technology and innovation. Through a series of talks, interactive panels and workshops, the conference is an opportunity for collaboration, learning and networking among women entrepreneurs across the Asean.

“We make change work for women” is the theme of this year’s Women’s Month celebration. The current direction of BPW-Makati provides not only a system and a structure for working and supporting each other, but it also offers a road map to empower women by making internal and external changes work for them.

To borrow the words of Escudero, “In BPW, we embrace our uniqueness, support each other’s choices, inspire positive change—thus, we empower.”

Imelda Canuel is a development consultant working with several women communities nationwide through projects on product and business development and market matching. Business and Professional Women (BPW)-Makati is a member of BPW International and is a nonprofit organization aligned with the United Nations Women Empowerment Principles. For more information, e-mail bpw. makati@gmail.com.

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S part of the station’s observance of the Lenten season, Radio Veritas 846, the leading faith-based AM station in the Philippines, will open a Lenten exhibit in remembrance of Christ’s Passion starting on Saturday, March 18 until April 12 at the Lucky Chinatown Mall in Binondo, Manila.

The exhibit, which will feature images and replicas depicting the passion of Christ and the images of Mary, Mother of God, including Mater Dolorosa, among others, is open to all who wish to deepen their faith in God, especially during this season of Lent. This is one of the good ways to commemorate the sacrifices of Jesus Christ for us

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hina’s National People’s Congress (NPC), which concluded on Wednesday, didn’t do much to ease the main worry about the world’s second-biggest economy: its large and growing pile of debt. In fact, to keep GDP growth ticking over at 6.5 percent or more, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang pledged a 12-percent expansion in credit this year. That implies about $2.7 trillion in new lending—larger than the United Kingdom’s GDP. That’s not as troubling as it sounds, however. The reality is that China is a big economy, with a substantial stock of existing borrowing, and a valid need to borrow more if it’s to prevent demand sputtering out.

No one should be surprised China’s borrowing needs in 2017 look to be immense. They’ll be even larger in 2018, and bigger still in 2019.

Indeed, it would be more worrying if China suddenly stopped borrowing so much. True, Chinese leaders should kick the habit of rolling over nonperforming loans and instead,

kill off more zombie companies, especially in the state sector. Shock treatment, however, wouldn’t result in a more dynamic industrial sector or more efficient banking system.

More likely, a sudden halt to lending would lead to an economic collapse and financial meltdown—with global implications.

As People’s Bank of China Deputy Governor Yi Gang noted on the sidelines of the NPC, before China can deleverage, it first needs to stabilize leverage. Whether or not it’s doing so is the relevant metric to judge China’s

so that we may have a meaningful Lenten observance.

The opening and blessing of the exhibit will be led by Rev. Fr. Andy Lim, rector of Minor Basilica of Saint Lorenzo Ruiz and Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary Parish, or more popularly known as the Binondo Church, together with Rev. Fr. Roy Bellen, Radio Veritas vice president

The exhibit, which will feature images and replicas depicting the passion of Christ and the images of Mary, Mother of God, including Mater Dolorosa, among others, is open to all who wish to deepen their faith in God, especially during this season of Lent. This is one of the good ways to commemorate the sacrifices of Jesus Christ for us so that we may have a meaningful Lenten observance. for operations, on Saturday, March 18 at 2 p.m. The exhibit is free and open to the public during mall hours from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. For inquiries, call Renee Jose or Rey Isabela at (02) 925-7932 to 39 local 129.

Last November Mary and the Saints: An Experience of Miracles and Healing Grace was held at SM Mall of Asia, where popular images of Mary

from various parts of the country, as well as images of the saints associated with miracles and healing, such as Saint Padre Pio and the life-size statue of sleeping Saint Joseph, were featured.

Radio Veritas 846, which marks its 48th year in Catholic broadcasting, is the No. 1 faith-based AM radio in the Philippines, and is owned and operated by the Archdiocese of Manila. Established in 1969, the Ramon Magsaysay recipient Catholic radio station continues to be the leading social communications ministry for truth and evangelization in the country today.

To know more about Caritas Manila, visit www. caritasmanila.org.ph. For your donations, please call our DonorCare lines 563-9311, 564-0205, 0999-7943455, 0905-4285001 and 0929-8343857.

Make it a habit to listen to Radio Veritas 846 in the AM band, or through live streaming at www.veritas846.ph. For comments, e-mail veritas846pr@ gmail.com.

Greening our cities, greening our tax system Jerik Cruz

EAGLE WATCH

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HIS few would question: the state of Metro Manila is now a national catastrophe. Only the annual costs of carmaggedon (P1,095, based on National Economic and Development Authority P3 billion-a-day estimates,) already surpass our yearly losses from natural disasters (P206 billion) more than five times over.

Yet, our traffic ordeals are just the most garish displays of our country’s urban nightmare. All across the Philippines, untrammeled urban expansion has propelled our cities’ built and natural environments far beyond their limits. Car pollution has spiked by at least 44 percent in the last decade; land conversions have surged in Regions 3, 4-A, 6 and 10, drowning peri-urban ecosystems in unruly sprawl; disaster risks have risen to stratospheric heights, with Metro Manila now pegged by the Cambridge Center for Risk Studies in 2015 as the fourth riskiest conurbation on earth.

Gates of hell or incubators of sustainability?

Gates of hell, urban monstrosities: often the images with which we portray our urban present cast our cities with a destructive, even dystopian tinge.

But, in truth, our cities need not be gas-guzzling abominations. When managed well, in fact, they are not only engines of economic dynamism, opportunity and innovation—they can and should be among our prime incubators of sustainable futures for ourselves and our planet.

Thanks to trailblazing work by organizations, such as the

It’s time to hit pause on China panic

By Tom Orlik | Bloomberg View

Friday, March 17, 2017 A11

progress. And against that yardstick, it’s not doing that badly.

At the end of 2015, credit growth was expanding about 14.4 percent a year. Nominal GDP growth measures the economy’s ability to generate income to repay borrowing. Back then, with China in a deflationary slump, nominal growth came in at just 6.4 percent. In other words, China was taking on credit more than twice as fast its ability to repay it—an unsustainable trajectory.

Now, though, the picture looks a little less bleak. While credit growth had edged above 15 percent by the end of last year, nominal GDP growth had accelerated to 9.6 percent. Such a path is still unsustainable, but less so than before. In 2017 with producer prices rising at a rapid clip and monetary policy a shade tighter, it’s likely nominal growth will be a little faster, and credit growth a little slower.

To put it another way, the big message of the NPC isn’t that China’s

International Institute for Environment and Development, we now know just how vital cities will be over the next century for turning the pledge of sustainable development from promise to reality. No known country in history, to begin with, has lifted most of its population out of material poverty without urbanizing; and unless we forgo commitments to securing a high quality of life for all, only through compact, resource-efficient, green cities does it seem possible to guarantee universal high living standards, while minimizing our collective footprint on the global environment.

We will only realize such cities if they are built on affordable mass transit; high-density, mixed-use spaces with accessible in-city housing; and well-planned, well-governed, ecologically sound and disaster-resilient urban systems. Though we are leagues away yet from realizing these goals in the Philippines, the momentum for decisive action has finally began to snowball.

Train and the promise of green taxes

For one, plans for developing bus rapid-transit systems in Metro Manila and Cebu are already slated for completion starting in 2018. But

Indeed, it would be more worrying if China suddenly stopped borrowing so much. True, Chinese leaders should kick the habit of rolling over non-performing loans and instead kill off more zombie companies, especially in the state sector. Shock treatment, however, wouldn’t result in a more dynamic industrial sector or more efficient banking system. doubling down on an unsustainable strategy. It’s that the economy’s debt load may be edging toward a more manageable trajectory. To be sure, plenty could happen to knock China off course. At home, a slowing real-estate market could eat away at demand. Auto sales have swung into reverse, after the government lifted tax incentives for buying new cars.

And the real risk comes from a man that had to wait until the end

We will only realize such cities if they are built on affordable mass transit; high-density, mixed-use spaces with accessible in-city housing; and well-planned, wellgoverned, ecologically sound and disaster-resilient urban systems.

Though we are leagues away yet from realizing these goals in the Philippines, the momentum for decisive action has finally began to snowball.

most vexing urban problems is both vast and enormously promising.

On one hand, at the national level, the Philippines’s National Tax Research Center has already estimated that imposing carbon taxes on carbon-polluting electricity sources could yield up to P122 billion in revenues, which can be used to finance local sustainability initiatives nationwide.

Yet, other possible green levies are worth mulling over, especially at local government levels. Property taxes, idle-land taxes and development fees, for example, could all be redesigned to curtail urban sprawl and favor high-density development. Once quality commuting alternatives are furnished, congestion pricing schemes and parking levies, like those in Singapore, could be trialed in central business districts to buttress the ongoing antitraffic crusade. Existing disaster-resilience criteria already incorporated into local government units’ internal revenue allocation procedures and the Performance Challenge Fund could also be expanded to include broader sustainability priorities, such as for density-heightening and resource efficiency-enhancing projects.

We are just beginning to imagine ways in which green taxes can be realized in the Philippines— but which specific form they take is less important than their common promise for all Filipino urban dwellers. We need not have cities that are environmental blights, national catastrophes.

Bolstered, among others, by green fiscal systems, the day may yet come that they will lead our way towards inclusive urban development and ecological sustainability.

the nationwide impact of measures against our urban woes will be even more marked if the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (Train) bill (HB 4774), now being deliberated in Congress, is passed into law without compromises.

Spanning an array of tax adjustments, such as restructuring personal income taxes in favor of the poor and the middle class, and reducing exemptions against value-added taxes, no less prominent in the reform package have been proposals to hike fuel excise taxes by roughly P6 per liter by 2020, and at least doubling automobile excise-tax rates, except on mass transportation and freight vehicles. By discouraging excessive private-car use and its impacts on the urban environment and traffic, both reforms will actually function as de facto green measures.

Told in these terms, not only can the TRAIN bill’s fuel and car taxes rebalance lost tax revenues from slashing income-tax rates for the poor and the middle class— they can form the first of a new generation of “green taxes” in the Philippines.

As taxes that address both revenue and broader environmental objectives, by encouraging and penalizing environment-friendly and harmful activity, the scope for adopting such green taxes to address some of our

Jerik Cruz is a lecturer in the Ateneo de Manila University Department of Economics. His areas of focus include, among others, local public finance and the economics of sustainability.

of the NPC for a mention: the United States’s President Donald J. Trump.

In his closing press conference, Li noted the potential costs of a trade war and expressed confidence that one could be avoided.

In the still-early days of the new US administration, there are many hints about the direction of China policy, but little certainty. Not all scenarios are unfavorable. The US economy is already running hot, for instance, with unemployment back to precrisis levels. If a trade war is indeed avoided, US demand should drive stronger Chinese exports. While a Federal Reserve (the Fed) rate hike and a strong dollar would make it harder to handle the yuan, those stresses would be bearable as long as exports continue to prop up growth.

Other possibilities are darker. A Trump administration could impose comprehensive controls on China’s exports. In an extreme scenario, the 45-percent tariff Trump touted on

the campaign trail would hammer China’s overseas sales and knock 0.7 percentage points off GDP growth.

To offset that, the government would have to expand credit even more than it already is. And even if that extreme threat never materializes, US policy could still turn Chinese exports from a growth boost to a burden.

Add Fed tightening to the equation and the stresses on China could really pile up. The People’s Bank of China would face an unpalatable choice. It could raise rates to offset a falling yuan, further undermining the real economy. Or it could keep rates low to buoy growth, at the risk of a sliding yuan and renewed capital outflows. That would drain funding from the financial system.

The buzzword for China’s leaders in 2017 is stability. Despite some scary credit numbers, the current trajectory puts them on track to achieve it. Trump, though, could still blow China off course.

2nd Front Page BusinessMirror

A12 Friday, March 17, 2017

RCEP to give PHL better market access than existing trade deals

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By Cai U. Ordinario

@cuo_bm

he Philippines should push for the conclusion of negotiations for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) in this year’s annual Asean Meeting, as the deal could translate to better market access for its exporters than its existing free-trade agreements (FTA), the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said.

22%

The average utilization rate of existing trade agreements, according to the ADB

ADB Advisor at the Office of the Chief economist Ganeshan Wignaraja said the RCEP would not be like the usual trade pacts—especially for the Philippines—where the utilization rate of market-access agreements is only 22 percent.

He explained that because the RCEP covers many countries, including

those that the Philippines does not have bilateral FTAs with, firms would have greater incentive to use the RCEP and benefit from it.

“When you get bigger agreements, bigger parties, such as [in the case of] RCEP, my expectation is utilization will rise because there’s more benefit to the firm to want to undergo the rules of origin,” Wignaraja told the BusinessMirror.

Wignaraja also said he has high expectations for the RCEP, particularly its potential to harmonize rules of origins and tariff schedules across countries. However, the gains to be made in the RCEP, particularly where the Philippines is concerned, will not be immediate. He stressed that “FTAs alone cannot create exports”.

Along with efforts to push the

conclusion of the RCEP, Wignaraja said the Philippines must implement domestic reforms to make it more competitive should the RCEP be signed. These reforms include improving infrastructure and social-safety nets, as well as technical and financial support for small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

Wignaraja said these will not only help SMEs take advantage of the RCEP, but also create mid-sized firms that are still missing in the production and supply chain.

The “missing middle” among firms has also prevented the Philippines from playing a greater role in the global value chain, whose importance is expected to increase in the near- to long-term.

See “RCEP,” A2

PHL meat imports rose to record high in 2016

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he country’s meat imports rose to its highest in 2016 at 646,503.7 metric tons (MT), 10.28 percent higher than 586,263.900 MT imported in 2015, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI).

Data obtained by the BusinessMirror from the BAI also showed that meat imports have been steadily growing: 390,519.15 MT in 2010; 408,741.67 MT in 2011; 411,351.07 MT in 2012; 461,343.01 MT in 2013; and 559,887.34 MT in 2014.

646,503.7 MT The volume of the country’s meat imports in 2016

The Meat Importers and Traders Association (Mita) attributed this to the continuous expansion in the country’s economy, resulting in an increase in the purchasing power of Filipinos.

“The economy is improving so the increased consumption could be a reflection of this,” Mita President Jesus C. Cham told the BusinessMirror in an interview.

Data from the BAI, an attached agency of the Department of Agriculture (DA), showed that the US and Germany were the two sources of imported meat last year.

The US accounted for 20.33 percent of all the meat imports.

Purchases from the US reached 131,443.88 MT, 13.28 percent higher than the 116,035.89 MT recorded in 2015.

Meat imports from Germany also rose by 22.3 percent to 92,436.274 MT, from 75,583.428 MT posted in 2015.

Pork accounted for 42.65 percent of the total meat imports in 2016.

The country bought 275,759.02 MT of pork last year, 9.05 percent higher than the 252,864.01 MT imported in 2015.

Data from the BAI showed that the country’s chicken imports expanded by 18.44 percent last year.

Purchases reached 234,742.76 MT, higher than the 2015 record of 198,193.29 MT. Purchases of other meat products from abroad also recorded increases last year, the BAI said. On an annual basis, beef imports went up by 8.61 percent to 93,721.925 MT, while lamb meat imports surged by 31.21 percent See “PHL meat,” A2

ASEAN Forum The “S.T.E.A.M. Ahead in Asean: A forum on Women and Technology” opened on Thursday at Microtel by Wyndham in Mall of Asia,Pasay City. Diane Eustaquio (from left), moderator and executive director of Ideaspace; Christopher Buono, Asia-Pacific vice president of Information Center Technology; and Valenice Balace, founder of Honesty Apps, field questions at the plenary panel discussions on “Unlocking the Asean Market.” ROY DOMINGO

Mining. . .

Continued from A1

the mining sector, Wilkes said. Lopez, a campaigner-turned-minister, argues the industry damages the environment and typically fails to do enough to alleviate poverty in local communities.

Philippine lawmakers ended a confirmation hearing on Tuesday on Lopez without reaching a decision, prolonging uncertainty over her plans to close mines with a next hearing likely in May. A separate government review of mines threatened with closure or suspension could take as long as three months, Wilkes said in the interview on Wednesday. First gold was poured at OceanaGold’s Haile operation in South Carolina, where the company has the

Jimenez. . .

Continued from A1

He did say the country was large enough “to have four major international gateways”, but for Manila, the present location of the Naia is already favorable. The Department of Transportation (DoTr) policy to solve the air-traffic congestion at the Naia is to have multiple airports around the Manila. The Solar Entertainment Group of the Tieng family, for instance, has proposed to expand the Sangley Airport in Cavite to include port facilities for

backing of key local officials, including Nikki Haley, now US ambassador to the United Nations and previously the state’s governor, according to Wilkes.

“It’s certainly an easier place to operate and we have got a strong relationship with the government and the community there, that bodes well for the future,” Wilkes said. OceanaGold expects Haile to produce about 150,000 to 170,000 ounces of gold in 2017 and is targeting an expansion to lift annual output to as much as 250,000 ounces after 2020.

Wilkes also expects to maintain production levels in New Zealand, where the company has two operations, supporting total annual output for the producer of 500,000 ounces to 600,000 ounces through 2030, he said.

OceanaGold advanced 4.8 percent to A$3.97 in Sydney trading on Thursday

after the US Federal Reserve raised its benchmark rate, as inflation approaches a 2-percent target. The producer has fallen 9 percent since the Philippines first announced plans to suspend some mines last September. Factors, including inflation and uncertainty over European elections, will support higher gold prices, which could rise to $1,350 to $1,400 an ounce over the next 18 months, according to Wilkes. Bullion for immediate delivery traded at $1,227.08 an ounce at 5:48 p.m. in Sydney on Thursday, according to Bloomberg generic pricing.

The producer, which has completed acquisitions worth about $570 million in the past two years, could seek to continue to add to its portfolio. “To get another operation, or one or two projects, in North America or in Australasia would be great,” Wilkes said. Bloomberg News

ships. Businessman Ramon S. Ang of San Miguel Corp., for another, has proposed a new airport and terminal in Bulacan. The GMR-Megawide consortium, meanwhile, has submitted a proposal to expand the Clark International Airport in Pampanga.

Also at the forum was Roberto Laurel, president of the family-owned Lyceum of the Philippines University (LPU), who spoke about the success story of The Bayleaf Hotel, a “teaching hotel” beside its campus in Intramuros.

He told the BusinessMirror that the university was considering to expand its hotel portfolio

outside its present campuses, and is looking at Baguio as its next destination.

While LPU has no campus in Baguio, he said, they can attract the students in the universities in the area to sign up for onthe-job training at the hotel. LPU recently opened a boutique hotel 148-room Bayleaf Hotel in Cavite.

A series of forums was held by the Phinma Group tackling various issues, including tourism, in celebration of its 60th anniversary. It has business interests in education, energy, hotels, housing, steel products and strategic consulting.

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Rice output seen hitting 4.44 MMT in Q1, up 13%

By Jasper Emmanuel Y. Arcalas

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@jearcalas

hilippine rice output in the first quarter could expand by nearly 13 percent to 4.44 million metric tons (MMT), from 3.93 MMT recorded a year ago, according to the latest report of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).

The latest rice production estimate, however, is 2.1 percent lower than the 4.53 MMT initially projected by the PSA in January, as some palay-producing areas is expected to record slight declines in output.

Probable increments in production are foreseen in all regions, except Calabarzon.”

—PSA In the January round of its survey, titled “Rice and Corn Situation Outlook”, the PSA said the probable increase in first quarter rice output is due to the expansion in harvest area. The availability of irrigation water and the use of high-yielding rice varieties would also boost production.

“Probable increments in production are foreseen in all regions, except Calabarzon,” the report read.

However, the latest data in the agency’s report titled, “Updates on Palay and Corn Forecasts”, indicated that typhoons and pests would cut rice harvest in some areas.

“In Iloilo the probable decrease in palay production may be attributed to lower yield as a result of incidence of bacterial leaf blight, rice blast and weeds,” the data read.

“Reports of rat infestation, rice black bug, plant hoppers and stem borer in Sultan Kudarat, Leyte, South Cotabato, Cavite, Guimaras, Misamis Occidental and Sarangani may also contribute to lower palay production,” it added.

Continued on A2

Senate eyes probe vs ex-B.I.R. chief linked to fake stamps

By Butch Fernandez @butchfBM

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enate probers were asked to look into reports about fake cigarette-tax stamps alleged to have proliferated during the tenure of ex-Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) Commissioner Kim Jacinto-Henares.

In seeking an inquiry in aid of remedial legislation, Sen. Emmanuel D. Pacquiao cited reports that tobacco firms managed to dodge paying the right taxes by resorting to “fake-tax stamps” on cigarette packs. In an interview, Pacquiao told Senate reporters that Henares could be “held accountable” for the proliferation of fake-tax stamps during her watch.

“Maybe huge amounts of money were involved in this or massive corruption happened so this must be investigated,” he added.

Reports reaching the Senator indicated that BIR Commissioner Caesar R. Dulay was told that Mighty Corp. was “consulting

a former top BIR official to help defend the cigarette company from tax-evasion charges.”

Earlier, Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III affirmed the Duterte administration’s commitment to run after tax evaders.

Mighty Corp. clarified that BIR devices used to scan tax stamps malfunctioned, resulting in erroneous reports that its products had fake tax seals.

“Mighty Corp. confirmed… the Bureau of Internal Revenue’s malfunctioning taggant excise stamp validating devices, which produced varying results when used today against its products that were seized in last Thursday’s unlawful raid in its warehouses in Pampanga,” officials of the cigarette firm said.

Mighty Corp.’s lawyer Sigfrid A. Fortun added the devices used by BIR examiners on the seized cigarette cartons registered a green light, indicating these were genuine stamps, but later registered red or bogus marks for stamps in the same carton.