BusinessMirror May 14, 2021

Exporters told: Prioritize asset valuation

By Tyrone Jasper C. Piad @TyronePiad

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Workers has started ine one of five sewage treatment plants (STP) that West Zone concessionaire Maynilad Water Services Inc. (Maynilad) is building at the same time in Caloocan, Las Piñas, Central Manila, Valenzuela, and Muntinlupa, with a total cost of over P29 billion. The projects are part of a “commitment to protect the environment by making sure effluents meet legal standards,” said Maynilad President and CEO Ramoncito S. Fernandez. Story in Companies, B1. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

HILIPPINE exporters have been advised to prioritize t he v a lu at ion of t he i r tangible assets, including their freightage, amid shipment delays that may cause asset price volatility.

According to John Foord International Valuers of Industrial Plant and Property, knowing the exact value of their assets will help exporters arrange the appropriate insurance coverage for the companies.

“O u r posit ion i s t h at t he best way for fir ms to ensure

they have adequate insurance coverage for a l l their tang ible a sset s — a nd to m it igate t he r isk of f luctuating globa l asset pr ices—is to get the declared values of those assets regularly appraised by an independent professional firm,” John Foord CEO A ndrew Slev in said in an inter v iew w ith the BusinessMirror. “ We would adv ise Philippine ex porters and log istics ser v ice prov iders to engage w ith their clients to ensure that shippers a nd rec ipient s a re aw a re of the costs, r isks and timelines required in today’s situation,” he added.

The London-based independent advisory firm said having a regular asset appraisal can limit the risk of both under- and overinsurance, given that global asset prices change.

Slevin said that, in case of under insurance, a company may be paying too little in insurance premiums because of under declaration. This means the asset is priced at a lower amount compared to actual cost to replace at present valuation.

With this, the insurers are u n l i kely to pay out t he f u l l amount to cover the asset’s replacement in the event of claim, he explained. Slevin said this

could dent the company's balance sheet as a result because it would be paying the rest out of its own pocket.

“In the case of over-insurance, the cur rent replacement cost of t he asset [suc h as a piece of rea l estate or energ y facilit y] may have fa l len due to lower commodit y pr ices or technolog ica l innovation that has dr iven dow n the costs,” he ex plained.

T he companies, Slev in said, may be able to save money on premiums or secure better insu ra nce ter ms w it h upd ated declared va luations.

See “Exporters,” A2

WB: PHL REMITTANCES

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Friday, May 14, 2021 Vol. 16 No. 212

P25.00 nationwide | 2 sections 18 pages |

BUCKING THE PANDEMIC PHL ‘DEFINITELY ON ROAD TO RECOVERY’ –D.O.F TO E.U. ENVOY

By Bernadette D. Nicolas

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INA NCE Secretar y Carlos G. Dominguez I I I s a id t he Ph i l ip pines is “ definitely on the road to recover y” starting this year as the Covid-19 vaccination program is now being rolled out to safely reopen the economy.

Doming uez told European Union A mbassador Luc Véron in a v irtua l meeting that the Philippines is a lso f u l ly c apable of f u nd i ng it s a c ce le r at e d s p e nd i n g on its economic recover y program.

D om i n g ue z a nd Vé ron a lso d iscussed how the Philippines and the EU can broaden their cooperation to mitigate the effects of climate crisis and strengthen peace -bu i ld ing ef for ts in

Filipino Muslims pray and celebrate Eid’l Fit’r, which marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, on Thursday, May 13, at the Litex Covered Court on Commonwealth Avenue in Quezon City. NONOY LACZA

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By Bianca Cuaresma

@BNicolasBM

@BcuaresmaBM

HE Philippines remained among the top recipients of remittances in the Asia-Pacific region in 2020, despite the significant reduction of overseas Filipino workers (OFW) deployment during the year.

See “WB,” A2

PESO exchange rates n US 47.8700

Mindanao.

Vé r o n s a i d t h e s e t w o concerns were identified as the top 2 priorities during discussions with Philippine officials on the EU’s next Mu lt i - A n nu a l I n d i c at i v e Program (MIP) for 2021 to 2027.

He added MIP’s priority to support programs leading to a green and resilient economy in the Philippines is in line with Dominguez’s goal, as chairman-designate of the Climate Change Commission (CCC), to push for the ban on single-use plastics as a climate crisis mitigation measure.

In response, Dominguez welcomed EU’s focus on climate crisis mitigation and suppor t for his advocac y on the ban on single-use plastics.

See “PHL,” A2

Energy fallback, WPS potential OK–Win

By Butch Fernandez

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@butchfBM

HE chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy shared an upbeat outlook for the country’s back-up power supply to avert widespread brown-

outs when major supplier Malampaya gas field dries up.

“We already have a contingency measure because construction of importation terminals are underway even if Malampaya is gone,” Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian said, adding this means the private

sector can start importing natural gas, until potential power sources in the West Philippine Sea are put on line.

Gatchalian assured the public that “in short, we won’t have brow nouts,” whi le a lso dr iving home the importance of the

West Philippine Sea. He noted that, “ looking at its potential volume of oil and gas there, when it comes to oil, these will supply our economy for almost 17 years based on the Department of Energy [DOE] data.”

See “Energy,” A2

n japan 0.4408 n UK 67.7169 n HK 6.1623 n CHINA 7.4468 n singapore 36.1065 n australia 37.5444 n EU 58.1668 n SAUDI arabia 12.7646

Source: BSP (May 12, 2021)

News

BusinessMirror

A2 Friday, May 14, 2021

Exporters...

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Suez Canal blockage

The importance of asset valuation and insurance was highlighted amid the pandemic-induced disruptions resulting in shipment delays, with Slevin citing the unfortunate Suez Canal blockage that lasted a week.

“While the impact on material and equipment costs due to the Suez blockage was temporary and primarily regional, this incident has highlighted the fragility of current supply chains across a variety of sectors,” the John Foord head said. “It also showed how they can be unintentionally disrupted, causing asset prices to vary significantly.”

On March 23, the 220,000-ton container ship Ever Given was stuck in one of the major sea-level waterways and was only able to be released nearly a week after.

This disruption was to the detriment of 12 percent of global trade, Slevin noted, citing that around $10 billion worth of goods pass through it each day according to Lloyd’s List.

Slev in said that the conclusion of the week long shipping mess brought relief to asset and r isk managers monitor ing reg iona l and globa l por tfolios that are ex posed to commodities transported v ia the cana l, including oil.

“Immediately after the unblockage, oil prices dropped following an initial spike when the blockage was first reported about a week earlier—Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, fell almost 1 percent as ships were able to resume their journeys,” he explained.

“If the blockage had gone on longer, there would have been more serious implications for the supply of everything from computer chips to Covid-19 vaccines, which rely on the vital Suez connection linking Europe, Africa, and Asia,” Slevin added.

More challenges to come

The Philippine exporters and logistics service providers may have to hang tight for a bit longer as the disruption induced by the pandemic is seen to continue, Slevin explained.

The John Foord official said they will likely still face challenges in forecasting and navigating transportation controls and supply constraints.

The “sense of normality” will take time to return, he added.

“The diverse, and sometimes seemingly haphazard, national strategies to handle the virus across the world means that there is no single obvious path to a virus-free future, and we are likely to see different scenarios play out for some time, with travel bubbles perhaps being the best we can hope for,” he explained.

Logistics, Slevin said, not only ensures that “customers can get their goods and materials transported efficiently,” but a lso conveys to “customers the rea lit y of the situation in ter ms of costs, timelines and r isks.”

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DFA files fresh protest over 287 Chinese boats in WPS

By Recto Mercene @rectomercene

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HE Department of Foreign Affairs on Thursday filed a fresh diplomatic protest over the continued presence of 287 Chinese maritime militia vessels anchored in the West Philippine Sea (WPS).

“@DFAPHL fire diplomatic protest,” tweeted Foreign A f fa irs Secretar y Teodoro L. Locsin Jr., who had earlier promised to file a new protest for ever y day that Beijing does not pull out its boats from the WPS. At the same time, Locsin castigated the National Task Force for the West Philippine Sea (NTF-WPS) for issuing a press release on the Chinese vessels without informing the DFA first that it

had spotted nearly 300 boats anew, days after authorities had reported the numbers whittled down to just nine at one point.

He explained his irritation over this breach of protocol in an earlier tweet: “W hen press-released first, it states the fact of alien presence in Philippine territory construa ble a s p os s e s s ion — once aga in—u nt i l a d iplomat ic protest is filed. If the only news is diplomatic protest

over alien presence you kill 2 birds with 1 stone: possession & claim of right.”

He lamented that this habit of hitching on the bandwagon of Chinese protests is a disease that many in the Philippines have acquired.

“Maybe these idiots will have learned the protocol next time. I took this up with the President in Davao. We have a disease: everybody and his uncle wants to be a hero fighting China from the anonymity of a task force,” Manila’s highest envoy tweeted.

The NTF-WPS reported on Wednesday that at least 287 China vessels were spotted in the West Philippines Sea based on a maritime patrol conducted last May 4.

The Philippines has filed numerous diplomatic protests—at least 83 so far under the Duterte administration—over the lingering presence of Chinese vessels in the area, most notably in the vicinity of Julian Felipe Reef, where a little over 200 were spotted in early March.

However, the blue-hulled vessels, which are the mark of Peo-

ple’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia (PAFMM), have remained within the country’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), claiming they are also within the sovereign territory of Nansha Islands.

Meanwhile, Locsin appeared to have reached a modus vivendi with Presidential spokesman Harry Roque Jr., following their brief spat over who has the authority to speak on foreign policy matters. Locsin called out Roque after the latter said in a press briefing that Julian Felipe Reef is outside the Philippine EEZ, and that only the critics of Duterte had blown up the issue of the hundreds of boats at the reef.

Locsin told Roque on Wednesday to leave the foreign policy issues to him and the DFA. “Leave Harry alone, at least he can give as good as he takes; I like fighters,” Locsin tweeted on Thursday, after Roque was criticized as being haughty when speaking to the media during Palace press briefings.

“Provided he continues to torment the media. But mine is the last word because I speak for the President,” Locsin said.

MAYORS’ PROPOSAL ON QUARANTINE ‘BENEFICIAL’ TO NCR FOLK

By Claudeth Mocon-Ciriaco

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Correspondent

HAIRMAN Benjamin “Benhur” Abalos Jr. of the Metropolitan Ma n i l a Development Authority (MMDA) on Thursday gave assurances that the Metro Manila Council ’s (MMC) decision and recommendation will be “most beneficial ” to the residents of the National Capital Region (NCR). It will put ut-

WB...

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In a comprehensive report on world rem it t a nces, t he World Bank said the Philippines is the second-largest remittance recipient in the Asia Pacific, second only to China.

The World Bank said OFW remittances defied earlier predictions of shrinking flows due to the pandemic.

“A key factor behind this resilience was the growth by 5.5 percent of inflows from the United States, by far the largest source of remittances to the Philippines by almost 40 percent in 2020. Positive growth in remittances from the United States and Asia helped to

most importance to a balance between the health and safety of the public on one hand and the economy on the other.

Abalos said the MMC, together with representatives from Department of Health (DOH) and National Economic and Development Authority, among others, met on Wednesday night and gave their recommendation for the quarantine status come May 15.

mostly offset declines from the Middle East and Europe, which fell by 10.6 percent and 10.8 percent respectively in 2020,” the World Bank said.

“The decline from the Middle East reflects the absence of formal safety nets available to migrant workers in the face of the pandemic and the large repatriation of overseas Filipino workers,” it added.

This is in contrast to the projected 7.9-percent fall in Asia Pacific remittances in 2020.

The World Bank noted that the countr y’s strong remittance number also represents a bucking of the trend given the fall in deployment of Filipino migrant workers last year.

“Over in the Philippines, overseas deployment was estimated to have fallen by 70 to 75 percent in 2020 according to preliminary official estimates. In 2020, an annual cap of 5,000 was temporarily imposed on the overseas deploy ment of newly hired health-care workers to ensure adequate numbers of medical personnel to meet domestic pandemic response efforts,” the World Bank said.

“However, the body agreed to keep the recommendation confidential. This same re com me nd at ion w i l l b e presented to the IATF [Inter-Agency Task Force] at its meeting today [May 13] which in turn will be presented to President Rodrigo Duterte who has the final say on the matter,” Abalos said.

Abalos stressed that their recommendation was based on a l l factors presented, such as hospitals’ capacity,

Also, as of mid-March, a total of 390,917 Filipino migrant workers returned home from over 90 countries and 150 ships due to the pandemic, according to the World Bank, citing data from the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA).

Latest data from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) showed that Filipino migrant workers were able to increase their remittances back home in February this year, as larger economies around the world start to recover and reopen.

In particular, cash remittances to the Philippines hit a total of $2.48 billion in February. This is 5.1 percent more than the remittances sent to the country in February 2020 at $2.36 billion.

Broken down, cash remittances from land-based workers increased by 7.8 percent to $1.982 billion, while that of sea-based workers decreased by 4.6 percent to $495 million.

The BSP said the growth in cash remittances for the first two months of the year largely emanated from remittances coming from Filipinos in the US, Malaysia and Singapore.

arrival of vaccines, decrease in the number of new Cov id-19 cases, and present economic conditions.

“Rest assured that the decision and recommendation reached upon by the Metro Manila mayors will be most beneficial to the residents of the National Capital Region, putting utmost importance to a balance between health and safety of the public and on the economy,” Abalos concluded.

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Apart from climate crisis mitigation, MIP’s priority programs on good governance are also in sync with Dominguez’s objective as co-chairman of the Intergovernmental Relations Body (IGRB) coordinating with the Bangsamoro government in Muslim Mindanao to put in place a successful and functional autonomy in the region.

Véron said EU will continue with its projects to assist the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao ( B A R M M ), p a r t i c u l a r l y i n setting up its judicial system, creating jobs and livelihood opportunities, and improving community-based infrastructure in the region.

Dominguez also requested Véron to explore the possibility of providing assistance to the BARMM in improving governance and allowing its officials to witness and learn first-hand from the best practices implemented by the aut o no mo u s go v e r n me nt s i n other countries.

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He added: “W hen it comes to gas, based on the data of DOE, it can supply us close to 600 years, that’s how big the potential [is] of West Philippine Sea,” the senator said, even as he hastened to clarify this will take some time. “Of course, the caveat is we are still exploring,” he said, adding: “pwedeng lumiit yan pero [that could be smaller but], for sure, based on initial potential, 17 years for oil and 600 years for gas, [that’s how big the] potential [is].”

Gatchalian confirmed that Lopez-led First Gen is already at work, with construction under way to put it on line “ before the Malampaya gas field is depleted...[sometime] in 2024.”

So, he added, “ in other words, we won’t have brownouts.” Still the country is losing something in terms of the potential “[because of the] suspension of exploration [there].”

He recalled that explorations were stopped earlier but the ban was eventually lifted

by President Duterte in October 2020, affecting “11 potential service contracts in West Philippine Sea.” However, the senator added, only six of the 11 service contracts have “no problems” as they are operating “well within our exclusive economic zone.”

The five others are within the Philippines’s EEZ also, but are overlapped by the ninedash line, “and this is where we face issues,” he said, referring to China’s arbitrary and sweeping redraw of the South China Sea, on which it based its claim of nearly 90 percent of the area. The arbitral tribunal that heard Manila’s case against Beijing’s “excessive claims” in the SCS in 2016 declared the nine-dash line illegal and invalid.

So, Gatchalian said, even if these five others are within the Philippine EEZ, “China says they have jurisdiction because they’re within the nine-dash line.” And yet, per the Unclos, as declared by the arbitral award, “we have the right to explore there. We have the right to fish and to explore for oil and gas.”

Gatchalian suggests that those operating within the “nine-dash line” should just continue exploration since they are “within our exclusive economic zone.”

“According to Unclos [United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea], all the natural resources there, we can explore and exploit. We can use it to boost our economy, So those who are operating within the nine-dash line, we have the right to continue to explore,” he added.

On recent contracts awarded by Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi, Gatchalian agreed the government can continue awarding service contracts since these are within the EEZ. “ They can still award.

That area is big. Besides the 11, there are still others, so they can still award service contracts,” he said.

The senator asserted that the UN body was “very clear in its arbitral award.”

Gatchalian recalled that President Duterte stressed this point when he addressed virtually United Nations General Assembly last year. “He said that can never go away because that is now part of international law,” the senator said.

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The Nation BusinessMirror

‘Transparency’ in police ops: PNP to buy 30K body cams

By Rene Acosta @reneacostaBM

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HE Philippine National Police (PNP) is eyeing to acquire more than 30,000 body-worn cameras, which would be used to record the conduct of police anti-crime operations.

PNP chief General Guillermo Lorenzo Eleazar said that a total of 2,696 body cameras have already been distributed to different police stations and units in key cities across the country.

“We need additional 32,136 units to include all other support units,” Eleazar said, adding that the additional body cameras would complete the PNP’s requirement of 34,832 units.

“But in the meantime that there is still no budget for this additional procurement, we will make use of what we have and hopefully, this would convince our lawmakers to fund additional body cameras for the PNP in the spirit of transparency and effective law enforcement,” he added.

Eleazar is confident that the use of body cams would be implemented finally happen under his leadership.

The PNP chief said that he would initially want the body cameras used by policemen in the service of court-issued search warrants to clear up allegations of irregularities in such operations.

Eleazar said this would serve as protection “for both parties, the police operatives and the persons who are subjects of the warrant.”

“These body cameras will ensure transparency in police operations and, hopefully, put a stop to allegations that policemen are engaged in planting of evidence or even the summary execution of suspects,” he said.

According to the PNP chief, he has been in touch with the Supreme Court regarding the use of body cameras in the service of search and arrest warrants.

A meeting was held last month between the police and the High Court to discuss other matters as well.

At present, Eleazar said, the police force is still awaiting the guidance and the protocols of the Supreme Court in using the body cameras so that privacy concerns and other legal repercussions would be avoided.

Editor: Vittorio V. Vitug • Friday, May 14, 2021 A3

Govt defends ‘terrorist’ tag on Joma, 18 others

By Joel R. San Juan @jrsanjuan1573

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RANKING Department of Justice official on Thursday defended the designation of Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founder Jose Maria “Joma” Sison and several others as “terrorists,” saying such process had gone through proper evaluation under the mechanisms being followed by the Anti-Terrorism Council (ATC).

Justice Undersecretary Adrian Sugay said Sison and the other names were first referred to a technical working group (TWG) for purposes of evaluating the basis for the designation.

“The TWG then referred its recommendation/s to the council for consideration/adoption,” Sugay said.

Free to freeze

WITH the designation, Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque said the government, through the AntiMoney Laundering Council (AMLC) can now freeze the assets of Sison and his group.

Roque lauded the decision of the ATC, which, he said, would help prevent the perpetration of terroristic acts in the country.

“What is important is they will no longer be able to use their funds to continue their terroristic acts among others,” Roque said.

He pointed out the ATC decision is based on the definition of terrorists being used by no less than the United Nation Security Council through its resolution.

The Palace official also downplayed public concern the ATC could abuse its power to go after critics of the government.

He noted those people accused of being terrorists are still protected by the Bill of Rights, which guarantees “no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.”

Without due process?

SUGAY’S statement came after several groups lambasted the ATC for designating these individuals as terrorists without due process and evidence.

The ATC on Thursday issued Resolution 12 designating the

members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA) led by Sison as terrorists.

Aside from Sison, also designated as terrorists were his wife Julieta, Vicente Ladlad, Rafael Baylosis, Jorge Madlos, Rey Casambre, Abdias Gaudiana, Alan Jazmines, Wilma and Benito Tiamzon, Adelberto Silva, Ma. Concepcion Araneta-Bacala, Dionesio Micabalo, Myrna Sulante, Tirso Alcantara, Pedro Codaste, Tomas Dominado, Ma. Loida Pagpatoc, and Menandro Villanueva.

Both Sison and his wife are living in exile in The Netherlands.

“Most, if not all, of the designated individuals are out of the country or are at-large,” Sugay said.

The ATC has also issued a separate resolution designating as terrorists 10 individuals for their links with the terrorist group Abu Sayyaf and Daulah/Dawlah Islamiyah (DI).

They are Esmael Abdulmalik, Raden Abu, Esmael Abubakar, Muhiddin Animbang, Salahuddin Hassan, Radzmil Jannatul, Majan

Sahidjuan, Faharudin Benito Hadji Safar, Mudsrimar Sawadjaan and Almujer Yaddah.

The designation of the said individuals will lead to the freezing of their assets by the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) for 20 days.

The preventive freeze order may be extended under the provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 for up to six months upon approval by the Court of Appeals (CA).

“The issuance of the preventive freeze order is really up to the AMLC. The law provides that the ex-parte order to freeze should be issued without delay,” Sugay explained.

“As to the assets, the relevant data is with the AMLC and is subject to relevant provisions of the Anti-Money Laundering Law and the Terrorist Financing Prevention and Suppression Act,” the DOJ official said when asked whether the assets that would be covered by the freeze order are substantial enough to affect, paralyze or restrict alleged terroristic activities of the designated individuals.

Economy BusinessMirror

A4 Friday, May 14, 2021 • Editor: Vittorio V. Vitug

LGUs urged to allot at least 10% of IRA for food security programs

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By Jasper Emmanuel Y. Arcalas

aggravate,” he said.

“It should be mandatory for the LGU to set aside 10 percent of their IRA budget for food security. This will mitigate the effect of any reduction in the resources of the DA and help develop the agriculture sector,” he added.

Fausto said it is the task of the LGUs to coordinate with the DA to provide farm extension services to trickle down efficient production techniques and technology in food production to their jurisdiction since agriculture services have been devolved by the local government code.

Fausto said the government may explore issuing a Presidential Executive Order that may mandate the LGUs to allocate 10 percent of their IRA for food security-related programs.

Fausto lamented that despite contributing 10 percent to the country’s GDP, the agriculture sector only receives a “measly” 1.5-percent share of the annual national budget.

This, he pointed out, “show clear disparity in budget allocation and the lack of priority given by the adminis-

@jearcalas

HE Agriculture and Fisheries Alliance (AFA) urged local government units (LGUs) to allocate at least 10 percent of their internal revenue allotment (IRA) for food security-related programs starting next year following a hike in their share from the national revenue due to Mandanas ruling.

Philippine Chamber of Agriculture and Food Inc. (PCAFI) President Danilo V. Fausto cautioned that the Department of Agriculture (DA) may face budget cuts next year since the government will be implementing the Mandanas ruling, which hikes LGU’s IRA by 27.6 percent. PCAFI is a convener of the AFA. Fausto noted that with the in-

crease in LGU’s IRA, which is expected to reach over P1 trillion next year, the national government would be forced to “create fiscal space” but unfunding some projects.

“With the policy of the current administration giving low priority to agriculture, we can project that the unfair allocation of the national budget to DA will further

tration to food production leading to food sufficiency and food security.”

Worse, disparity in fund allocation by the DA is also evident given the miniscule support to the livestock and poultry sectors, despite contributing about a third of total agricultural output, compared to total budget poured in the rice sector, Fausto said.

Fausto pointed out that the livestock and poultry sector only received P3.21 billion in funding support this year compared to the P35.27 billion being allocated to the rice sector.

“National government should give priority to food security by providing a fair and balanced national budget based on its parity contribution to the growth of the economy and consequently from the DA, a fair and equal allocation of budget to the different agriculture sectors on the basis of their contribution to agricultural production,” he said.

“This should give elbow room for the DA to address issues on biosecurity, first border control, ASF [African swine fever] and other diseases,” he added.

₧75-B addl bill to vaccinate teenagers, booster shots–DOF

By Bernadette D. Nicolas @BNicolasBM

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ACCINATING adolescents aged 12 to 17 and acquiring Covid-19 booster shots for both adults and adolescents will cost the government an additional P75 billion, Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez said.

Dominguez told reporters on Thursday that they are expecting to vaccinate about 15 million adolescents after some countries have announced that they would also be vaccinating teenagers apart from adults.

Previously, the Philippine government was targeting to vaccinate a total of 70 million adults by year-end.

“With the announcement that some countries will inoculate teenagers and the expectation that we eventually will follow suit, we are anticipating an additional expenditure of about P20 billion to vaccinate the approximately 15 million kids aged 12 to 17,” Dominguez said.

“As we are also anticipating acquiring booster shots for next year for about 85 million teenagers and adults we will be needing another P55 billion,” he added.

Sought to clarify whether they are eyeing to vaccinate 15 million adolescents this year, Dominguez said: “To be conservative, I assume that it will commence this year but the final decision will be with the health authorities.”

As of Wednesday, only more than half a million Filipinos or 0.74 percent of the original 70-million target by the government have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19.

To fund these additional vaccination expenses while maintaining an “acceptable” fiscal deficit, Dominguez said the country would most likely “need to reallocate funds.”

For this year, the government expects the budget deficit to reach a new record-high of P1.78 trillion, or 8.9 percent of GDP, even higher than P1.37 trillion or 7.6 percent deficitto-GDP ratio it recorded last year.

President Duterte on Wednes-

day signed Administrative Order (AO) 41 ordering agencies under the Executive branch to identify “savings” from their released appropriations under the 2020 national budget.

Savings refers to portions or balances of any released appropriations which have not been obligated as a result of completion, final discontinuance or abandonment of a program, activity, or project for which the appropriation is authorized; or implementation of measures resulting in improved systems and efficiencies and thus enabled an agency to meet and deliver the required or planned targets, programs and services approved therein at a lesser cost, according to Section 67 of the General Provisions under the 2020 General Appropriations Act (GAA).

However, Dominguez said they might still have to determine how much savings would be gathered following this move.

Asked where the government is eyeing to use the savings, Budget

Secretary Wendel E. Avisado told the BusinessMirror the economic managers still need to discuss possible sources of funds and their respective usage.

“The economic team will still have to discuss the possible sources of funds and their usage then we will inform the legislature at the proper time,” Avisado said.

Under the AO, the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) will determine and recommend to the President the amounts that can be declared as savings under the national budget based on the submission of reports submitted by the agencies.

Apart from this, DBM was also ordered to determine and recommend to the President actual deficiencies in any existing item of appropriation under the same GAA that need to be augmented, including if necessary, items of appropriation for the provision of emergency subsidies to low-income households and disadvantaged or displaced workers affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.

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Pampanga OFW hospital to hire 300 health-care workers–DOLE

By Samuel P. Medenilla @sam_medenilla

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HE Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) has announced that it would hire about 300 medical healthcare workers to man its overseas Filipino workers’ hospital facility in Pampanga.

In an online news briefing on Wednesday, Labor Undersecretary Renato L. Ebarle disclosed that of the 293 positions to be employed in the facility, 260 are considered critical positions.

“We will start hiring by the third quarter of the year,” said Ebarle, who is one of the chairmen of the DOLE Committee on the Construc-

tion of the OFW Hospital and Diagnostic Center.

He said they are targeting to hold the soft opening of the P550-million hospital by October.

But he noted the formal opening of the OFW hospital, when all of its necessary equipment are installed in the facility, will be on the first half of 2022.

As of May 6, 2021, Ebarle said the construction of the hospital is 15.7 percent complete.

“This is way ahead of the schedule of 2.41 percent [completion] since our contractor is operating faster [than what we expected],” Ebarle said.

Once completed, the hospital would be able to accommodate 100 patients.

Privacy commission sets fines against erring data controllers and processors

By Tyrone Jasper C. Piad @TyronePiad

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ERSONAL information controllers or processors from the private sector found to be in violation of privacy laws may be penalized with fines between 0.5 percent and 5 percent of their annual gross income, the National Privacy Commission (NPC) said.

The privacy watchdog said on Thursday that fines to be imposed on erring personal information controllers or processors handling personal data are based on a draft circular containing guidelines on administrative fines.

Among the considerations in calculating the fines include the gravity of infraction, the number of data subjects affected, failure to notify the NPC and affected parties and negligent character of the offense, among others.

In determining the amount of the annual gross income, the data controller or processor should submit their latest financial statements, along with balance sheet and other relevant financial documents, for evaluation.

“The proposed circular considers the proportionality of the fine meted, its dissuasive effects, the costs of precaution, and other social, regulatory, and economic impacts that its adoption may create to all personal information controllers and processors,” Privacy Commissioner Raymund E. Liboro said.

In coming up with the appropriate range of fines, the NPC worked with

the University of the Philippines (UP) Law Center and an expert from the UP School of Economics.

The parties studied the right amount of penalty fees that can deter companies from violating privacy laws, while promoting innovation and growth by ensuring free flow of information.

Deputy Privacy Commissioner Leandro Angelo Y. Aguirre quipped that fines should not be viewed as an additional financial burden to the private sector.

“The fines are incentives for companies to protect all of us. Because if we are all protecting the information we process, that benefits both the companies and data subjects,” Aguirre explained.

“It serves to incentivize the implementation of appropriate measures, while ‘disincentivizing’ the misuse of data,” he continued.

Among the potential infractions cited in the circular are violations of any general privacy principles in processing personal data, failure to comply with the conditions for consent, violation of data subject rights and failure to implement measures protecting the security of personal data.

Liboro said NPC hopes this “administrative circular will further enhance the culture of data privacy accountability in the Philippines, incentivize compliance for the DPA [Data Privacy Act], build maximum data privacy resilience by encouraging full accountability, compliance, and ethics from our data users.”

DENR execs vow to boost forest protection campaign in N. Luzon

By Jonathan L. Mayuga @jonlmayuga

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HE Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) in Northern Luzon vowed to strengthen forest protection effort and combat illegal logging activities in the area.

The Regional Executive Directors in the Ilocos, Cordillera Administrative Region (C AR) and Cagayan Valley Region, for a starter, is eyeing to establish inter-region monitoring check-

points to monitor illegal transport of natural resources coming from the adjoining regions.

The plan to establish the joint checkpoints is a result of the tripartite agreement signed earlier in La Union by DENR Regional Executive Directors Cr iza ldy Barcelo of Region 1, Gwendolyn Bambalan of Region 2, and Ralph Pablo of CAR “to unify and streamline efforts toward achieving overall conservation and protection of the environment and natural resources.”

In a news statement, Bambalan said the joint stationary and mobile checkpoints will address the problems on the illegal transport of forest products, wildlife, and illegally extracted, removed, and transported minerals/mineral by-products and other natural resources.

“We have to strengthen the guard and stop the cutting at the source.

We also need to strictly monitor and check the destination,” the DENR Cagayan Valley chief added.

She said the Environment and

Natural Resources (ENR) monitoring checkpoints would be stationed in strategic locations near the forest conservation areas, protected areas, and development areas.

“While we are advancing our National Greening Program, it is also important that we protect the standing trees from being cut,” Director Pablo said in his message.

Under the draft operational guidelines, the assigned personnel at the checkpoints shall operate the monitoring station on a seven-day and 24-hour basis. They shall flag

down all suspicious vehicles loaded with forest products, minerals/ ores and wildlife passing through the stations for inspection through lawful means.

They shall also apprehend all vehicles and load of forest products, minerals/ores and/or wildlife with no proper document/permit to support shipment.

To effectively implement ENR laws, the team leaders and all personnel to be assigned at the checkpoints will undergo skills enhancement training.

The guidelines also state that the host Community Environment and Natural Resources Office (CENRO) shall solicit the support of the law enforcement agencies and local government units covering the monitoring stations.

During the virtual meeting facilitated by Region 2 Enforcement Chief Joel Daquioag, the concerned CENROs presented the feasibility, logistic needs and resources adjacent to the proposed monitoring checkpoints, including environmental threats.

DAR opens ₧6.57-M ‘Friendship and Unity Bridge’ in Tarlac town

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O promote friendship and unity, let us build bridges, not walls,” thus declared Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) Secretary John R. Castriciones as he formally opened to traffic the P6.57-million Sapang Bato Bridge in Barangay Santa Ines Centro, Santa Ignacia, Tarlac.

The 34.2-linear meter bridge plays a vital role in uplifting the standards of living of farmerbeneficiaries in the province as it enables them to transport their harvests from their farms to the market with ease.

Constructed under the Tulay ng Pangulo para sa Kaunlarang Pang-agraryo (TPKP), a program that took off the ground in August 2017, the project was initially stalled for years.

So far, over 120 bridges have already been constructed all over the country, according to DAR Undersecretary for Foreign-Assisted and Special Project Bernie Cruz.

Among those who joined Castriciones during the inauguration of the Friendship and Unity Bridge was Santa Ignacia Mayor Nora Modomo.

More bridges to follow

DURING the event, Castriciones announced the P13billion loan offered by the British government for the construction of more bridges under the same Tulay ng Pangulo program.

“We are very proud to have a project such as this for it helps enhance the economic life of our farmer-beneficiaries,” he said.

We are very proud to have a project such as this for it helps enhance the economic life of our farmer-beneficiaries.

Agrarian Reform Secretary John R. Castriciones Tarlac Vice Gov. Carlito David, himself an agrarian reform beneficiary, said bridges are vital rural

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infrastructure project that helps to “bridge the gap between the rich and the poor.” Jonathan L. Mayuga

News BusinessMirror

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Mayor taps Big Dome in QC’s Covid-19 vaccination program We estimate that the Big Dome will be capable of delivering 1,000 to 1,500 Covid shots per day.

By Rizal Raoul S. Reyes @brownindio

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HE Quezon City government is aiming to scale up its vaccination program when it announced on Thursday it would tap the iconic Smart Araneta Coliseum in Cubao as one of the city’s mega vaccination sites. Inoculations are expected to start on Saturday.

Mayor Joy Belmonte said that the Araneta group has allowed the local government unit (LGU) to use the famous 15,959-seat historic coliseum as one of its vaccination venues to priority groups.

“We estimate that the Big Dome will be capable of delivering 1,000 to 1,500 Covid shots per day,” said Belmonte.

Before being rebranded as Smart Araneta Coliseum, the Big Dome has been the venue of historic events such as the 1960 world super featherweight championship bout between Gabriel “Flash” Elorde and Harold Gomes, the 1975 Thrilla in Manila heavyweight title bout of Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier and the 1978 FIBA world finals between the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Yugoslavia.

The mayor said that measures for indoor settings, such as air and fan systems for adequate ventilation, will be installed to ensure the safety of everyone who plan to get their jabs at the facility.

“The QC LGU is grateful to the Araneta Group for offering the Big Dome to this program for free. It is a suitable site for a massive and critical government health drive since it offers adequate space and accessibility

@lorenzmarasigan

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to both our health-care workers and the public,” Belmonte said.

“This will help us strengthen our efforts to provide our QCitizens the protection they need against Covid-19.

The faster we vaccinate our people, the sooner we can achieve economic recovery,” she added.

Further, Business Permits and Licensing Department (BPLD) head Margie Santos said the Araneta Group also committed to provide their own medical personnel who would help inoculate people 60 years and older and individuals with serious health conditions or those belonging to A1 to A3 priority groups.

“We’re grateful to our partners in the private sector as they continue to work with us in order to provide us with spacious and comfortable venues and to augment our manpower resources,” said Santos.

She added that the Tzu Chi Medical Foundation Philippines, a nonprofit charitable organization, is also helping by sending their volunteer doctors, nurses, and staff to QC vaccination sites.

Just like the other partnerships formed earlier, Belmonte said she is confident of the success of the collaboration, adding, “We need an allof-city approach to overcome Covid-19 and ensure the speedy recovery of our economy.”

Earlier, the city government partnered with the Araneta Group in expanding its free Covid-19 swab testing initiatives. Araneta City was tapped in the fourth quarter of 2020 as a venue for the local government’s free RT-PCR tests for the general public.

Senate leaders eye extended sessions in race to finish bills

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ENATE leaders are mulling extended sessions from Monday to Thursday when Congress reconvenes regular sessions on Monday. Lawmakers are in a race to deal with unfinished business, from May 17 to June 4, before the two chambers of Congress adjourn anew for their next recess from June 5 to July 25.

Senate President Vicente Sotto III said the Monday-Thursday schedule is intended to extend their plenary sessions to 12 sessions instead of nine plenary sessions when the two chambers of Congress reconvene.

The Senate leader said he would formalize the proposal when they resume session on Monday. “I will propose to have session on Thursdays

which we had in the old Congress so we can have 12 days instead of 9 plenary sessions,” he added.

Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto readily agreed, saying: “I am amenable but we will surely discuss this in a caucus [to finalize the decision].”

For his part, Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon affirmed support for the proposed extended sessions to allow the Senate to complete unfinished legislative business.

Sotto said their priority list includes amendments to the Public Service Act and Retail Trade Liberalization Act, as well as the creation of a Department of Overseas Filipinos, among others. Butch Fernandez

DOH reminds Eid worshipers to self-isolate to protect kin

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S the Islamic holy month of Ramadan ended on Thursday, the Department of Health (DOH) reminded Muslim Filipinos who attended the Eid prayers to “immediately isolate” for a minimum of 14 days.

The DOH said those who went to their places of worship or any public places where they held prayer assemblies should “stay in a room separate from family members who did not physically attend any gathering.”

Earlier, the DOH issued a reminder for worshipers to strictly follow the minimum public health standards and local community quarantine at all times.

“Monitor if you will experience any of the following symptoms: fever, colds, lethargy, loss of smell and taste,

DOTr chief to transport groups: Shun fare increase demand amid pandemic

By Lorenz S. Marasigan

Quezon City Mayor Joy Belmonte

body aches, headache, sore throat, clogged nose, red eyes, diarrhea ,and skin rashes,” the DOH said.

Eid’l Fitr is the Muslim celebration marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan.

Covid cases

THE DOH, meanwhile, logged 6,385 additional Covid-19 cases, bringing the total number of infections in the country to 1,124,724 on Thursday.

There were also 4,289 recoveries and 107 deaths.

Of the total number of cases, 4.9 percent (55,260) are active cases, 93.4 percent (1,050,643) have recovered, and 1.67 percent (18,821) have died.

Claudeth Mocon-Ciriaco

Friday, May 14, 2021 A5

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RANSPORTATION Secretary Arthur P. Tugade said he’s not inclined to approve the implementation of a fare increase during his term, stressing that the pandemic has already caused too much economic burden to most Filipinos as it is.

Upon saying this, he appealed to transport groups and operators to desist from asking fare increases during the pandemic as their way of “helping” Filipinos during the health crisis.

“I am appealing to our jeepney drivers, bus operators: We have not implemented any fare increase because during my term, there will be no increases in fare rates. Stop charging passengers more than what is allowed,” he said.

In another development, Tugade also assured the local government of Cavite that his office will implement its free-ride service program

Bicam OKs panel report on grant of land deeds

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O help farmers and households secure rights to property, a congressional bicameral conference committee (bicam) has approved the committee report on the proposed Imperfect Land Title Confirmation Act. House Ways and Means Chairman Rep. Joey Salceda of Albay said the Bicam reconciled the disagreeing provisions of House Bill 7440 and Senate Bill 1931 and signed the report of the measure last Wednesday to improve the confirmation of imperfect titles by simplifying the procedure and requirements in granting land deeds.

Salceda said the passage of this reform is crucial for agricultural and economic recovery.

“Property rights, especially for the small property owner, is very important in equitable development. When people feel more secure on their rights to their property, they tend to develop it more aggressively. We need farmers and small landholders to use their lands efficiently as we recover from the Covid-19 pandemic,” Salceda added.

The bill is expected to be ratified

by Congress when session resumes on Monday, May 17.

“Small farmers suffer the most from having their titles unconfirmed.

They don’t have the money to litigate or undergo complex processes, and they can’t use their land or sell them in the meantime. It’s like they don’t own their lands,” Salceda said in a news statement.

“This measure will help small farmers and homesteaders. It makes it easier for them to get everything from borrowing capital from banks, to leasing their land to more efficient users, to earning income from their property,” he added.

According to Salceda, the present law governing land titles in the country requires the claimant to present a copy of the original classification approved by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Secretary, as well as a City or Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Office (CENRO/PENRO) certification, that should be accompanied by an official publication of the DENR Secretary’s issuance declaring that the land is alienable and disposable.

“These requirements can be difficult to secure given strict conditions and processes in the courts,” he said. Jovee Marie N. Dela Cruz

in the province. The free-ride service would benefit health-care workers, authorized persons outside of their residences, and other essential workers.

He added that the Cavite Extension of the Light Rail Transit (LRT) Line 1 is now making strides.

“We are pushing for the completion of the structures and stations so that before the term of the President ends, we will have a partial operability of the LRT 1 Cavite

Extension,” he said.

Targeted for completion in about four years after the delivery of easement, the 11.7-kilometer Cavite extension will connect into the existing system immediately south of the Baclaran Station and run in a generally southerly direction to Niyog, Cavite.

It will consist of elevated guideways throughout the majority of the alignment, except for the guideway section at Zapote, which will

be located at grade.

The new stations will be accessible to and from nearby community facilities, such as shops, schools, stadium and park, and will be located to suit passenger-flow routes from residential areas.

Pedestrian access to all new stations will be direct, safe and easy. Details, such as lighting to distinguish access points, pedestrian-cross striping and curb cuts for handicapped access, will be provided.

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The World BusinessMirror

Friday, May 14, 2021

Editor: Angel R. Calso • www.businessmirror.com.ph

Wealthy nations’ vaccine spree obscures global Covid misery S

South Africa Covid cases climb; officials say it’s not a third wave

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ass vaccinations, falling case counts and waning coronavirus deaths in a few wealthy countries threaten to obscure ongoing worldwide suffering from the pandemic that’s likely to last for months, and perhaps years, to come.

That’s Carl Bildt’s worry as the new special envoy to the World Health Organization-backed effort set up last year to dispatch vaccines and other weapons against Covid-19. Suppressing the virus that’s advancing in India and beyond depends on persuading rich nations to share excess doses and help close a $19 billion funding gap, Bildt said in an interview.

An independent review of the international Covid-19 response echoed Bildt’s concerns Wednesday, calling for Group of Seven countries to commit 60 percent of the money needed this year.

The report urged high-income nations to provide more than 2 billion doses to poorer regions by the middle of 2022.

“The risk is that if people in the UK, EU or US think the worst is over, the attention will shift,” he said. “The worst isn’t over.”

No stranger to high-stakes diplomatic efforts, Bildt was co-chair of the 1995 Dayton peace talks that ended the war in Bosnia. He earlier led Sweden as prime minister when the government negotiated its entry into the EU. Now he finds himself in the middle of an urgent campaign to galvanize support for the WHO’s Access to Covid-19 Tools Accelerator and push leaders to contribute more to the global fight.

For a few fortunate countries, optimism is on the rise. The US is preparing to vaccinate middle- and high-school students, a relatively low-risk group, before the start of summer camps and the next school year. Covid deaths could drop to as low as 1,500 per week

by June 5, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention forecast; the weekly toll was more than 8,000 in mid-March.

England reported zero Covid deaths in a daily update earlier this week, and the UK government is clearing the way for people to hug and meet indoors at pubs and restaurants. Officials in Europe, including Germany’s health minister, also expressed hope for decreasing cases.

Inefficient, inequitable

But as India grapples with a deadly surge among its population of 1.4 billion, worries are growing for many other spots all over the planet. Despite declines in the developed world, more than 600,000 new Covid cases are reported globally each day, as stubborn epidemics in countries like Colombia, Brazil and Malaysia burn on. Waiving patents on vaccines, a proposal the Biden administration supports, is promising but won’t address immediate needs for supply, said Ellen ‘t Hoen, director of Medicines Law & Policy, a research group based in the Netherlands.

“Anything that exists today should really go to places where the crisis is the most serious,” she said. “Maybe vaccinating teenagers in California shouldn’t be the priority at this point.”

Covax, the vaccine initiative that’s part of the ACT-Accelerator, has shipped just 60 million doses—less than a quarter of the number already administered in the US alone. In their report on the pandemic response, the independent experts recommended a

review of the Accelerator, citing shortcomings in the effort to ensure global access to shots, drugs and other supplies.

More international coordination is required to fix the inefficiencies and inequities, according to Robert Yates, executive director of the Centre for Universal Health at Chatham House, a Londonbased think tank.

“We’re not in good shape here,” Yates said. “Vaccines should be going to the countries and the age groups most in need, but that’s not happening.”

Global health officials stress that everyone is vulnerable if the virus keeps advancing, increasing the risk of concerning variants and prolonging the pandemic. Getting health workers immunized in developing nations should be the focus, said Bildt, who was named to the post at the end of March.

“As long as this is a pandemic that is spreading like wildfire in parts of the world, we’re not safe,” Bildt said.

Some wealthy countries have obtained far more vaccine than they need, and advocates say more should be shared. High-income countries have purchased almost 5 billion doses, middle-income nations have secured about 2.2 billion doses and poorer regions hold about 270 million, according to the Duke Global Health Innovation Center in Durham, North Carolina.

Paltry donations

Many pledged donations have yet to be fulfilled and some are paltry in the face of the crisis. Sweden promised to donate 1 million doses of AstraZeneca Plc’s vaccine and France intends to share half a million by the middle of June.

The US plans to give away just 60 million Astra shots.

“Both Europeans and Americans have ordered, wisely so, quantities that are very substantially in excess of what they need immediately,” Bildt said. “That means there is room to start to share when they get their situations more under control, and

we’re approaching that now. The EU and US have been talking about it. But we need to go from talking to actually doing it.”

Bildt, Sweden’s prime minister from 1991 to 1994, emphasized the importance of sharing doses fairly through Covax. “Otherwise there is a risk of handing out to friends only, and that I don’t think would be helpful.”

Economic benefits

The former Balkans mediator also said he’s concerned about a lack of life-saving oxygen and some regions “f lying blind ” without sufficient access to testing. While the ACT-Accelerator has attracted more than $14 billion so far, led by the US, Germany and Britain, there’s a risk it won’t hit its fundraising goal this year, a shortfall that could extend the pandemic, he said.

More money w ill likely be required next year.

“The rich countries through the likes of the G-7 and G-20 must come up with this money,” said Chatham House’s Yates. “That’s a no-brainer. By vaccinating the world we potentially save the economy trillions of dollars.”

G-7 ministers have affirmed the need for “adequate funding,” and encouraged all partners in the campaign to increase their support as the next crucial step in controlling the pandemic and strengthening health security.

For 10 high-income countries— including Canada, Germany, Japan, Qatar, South Korea, the UK and the US—investing the $19 billion required would produce more than $466 billion in economic benefits over five years, according to an ACT-Accelerator report last month.

“All governments are very much aware of the pandemic and aware of what’s happening in their own countries,” Bildt said, “but is there sufficient attention to the global scale of it, and the ramifications for everyone of not getting it under control globally? We have substantial work ahead of us.”

Bloomberg News

Political turmoil returns as Nepal suffers worst coronavirus surge

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AT HM A N DU, Ne pa l— Political turmoil has returned to Nepal, which has had eight different governments in a decade and is experiencing its worst Covid-19 surge with acute shortages of health facilities and oxygen for patients.

Their hopes for stability lost, the people are angry at the government and the politicians they elected.

“The leaders have failed us again while people are dying in their homes, street and hospital parking lots while the politicians are fighting on who gets to be the prime minister,” said Hari Sah, a plumber who was trying to buy rice and lentils for his family in the two hours people are allowed

to shop during an ongoing virus lockdown.

“These politicians are monsters who come to us for votes but when we really need their help they are busy hatching plans to grab power and indifferent to our sufferings,” said Narayan Magar, a driver who has been without work for months.

K hadga Prasad Oli became prime minister in 2018 with strong support from two-thirds of Parliament, but two splits in his ruling party this year helped push him out of office Monday. No political party now has a majority, and they’re unlikely to agree to a coalition government anytime soon.

It is likely to be weeks before a new government is formed while the country struggles to cope

with the pandemic.

The Himalayan nation has seen its highest new cases and deaths for the past few days, on Tuesday recording 9,483 new cases and 225 deaths, a near-30-fold increase in infections in one month.

Several hospitals in Kathmandu have stopped taking in new patients, declaring they have run out of beds and oxygen for patients.

Grande Hospital posted a notice that it wouldn’t accept new Covid-19 patients because the 100 oxygen cylinders per day the government provided was barely enough.

Gover nment hospit a ls a re treating patients on corridor floors, in beds on verandas and in waiting rooms while relatives line up to get oxygen.

Yet the caretaker government isn’t in a position to make major decisions to bring the country through the crisis.

“At the moment, all the political forces should have been working together putting aside all past differences to work to end the coronavirus crisis, but it is unfortunate for the nation and the people that they are focused entirely on who gets to be in power,” said Bhojraj Pokharel, former chief of the election commission in Nepal.

Nepal has had eight governments in 10 years, 11 in 13 years and 25 governments in the past 30 years. Oli’s Nepal Communist Party winning two-third of Parliament seats in the 2017 elections was a relief for the nation’s people, who finally got what appeared to be a stable government that would complete a full term and work for development of the country.

That did not last, as a party faction began to press Oli for its own leader to succeed him. The party finally split earlier this year. Another faction within the remaining party did not support Oli during the confidence motion in parliament Monday.

Oli has been criticized since the coronavirus pandemic began last year because he spent more time on his party’s squabbles.

His government has imposed lockdowns to try to curb infections but failed to work on preparations for further outbreaks. The latest lockdown, in effect since last month, has been extended to the end of May. “Our biggest enemy is Covid-19 right now,” Pokharel said. “To fight this big enemy, the nation needs to come together and all the forces need to unite for the battle.” AP

outh Africa is at risk of a third wave of coronavirus infections with new cases rising rapidly, although the country has yet to reach the “resurgence threshold,” the nation’s health department said.

The number of cases detected in the seven days through May 9 rose 46 percent to 12,531, and the Northern Cape and Gauteng provinces were particularly hard hit, the department said in a statement late Wednesday. While deaths rose 18 percent in the week, the number of hospitalizations didn’t increase.

“We have not yet hit the third wave, however we are at risk,” the department said. “We are on high alert.”

More than 1.6 million Covid-19 cases have been detected in the country so far and almost 55,000 of those diagnosed with the disease have died.

The actual toll is likely to be

far higher than the official tally, with a report by the South African Medical Research Council showing the country had 158,499 excess deaths between May 3, 2020 and May 8 this year. While more data is needed to determine the underlying causes of those deaths, it’s likely that “a significant portion” could be attributed to the coronavirus, the council said in its weekly report.

The government has faced criticism for being slow off the mark to distribute vaccines, with just 430,730 health workers having been given a Johnson & Johnson shot so far as part of a study. The inoculation of people over the age of 60 is due to begin on May 17, and the health department says it has secured sufficient shots to cover more than two-thirds of the population of 60 million by yearend. Bloomberg News

Ohio’s million-dollar idea: Lottery prizes for vaccine

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OLUMBUS, Ohio—Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine unveiled a lottery system Wednesday to entice people to get Covid-19 shots, offering a weekly $1 million prize and full-ride college scholarships in a creative bid to overcome the vaccine hesitancy that remains a stubborn problem across the nation.

The move comes as governors, health officials and community leaders are coming up with creative incentives to get more shots in arms, including insider access to NFL locker rooms and an Indianapolis 500 garage, cash incentives, various other promotions.

With three weeks to go before most state restrictions lift, DeWine rolled out the bigticket incentives during a prime-time address.

Beginning May 26, adults who have received at least one vaccine dose may enter a lottery that will provide a $1 million prize each Wednesday for five weeks. In random drawings, the state will also provide five full four-year scholarships to an Ohio public university—including tuition, room-and-board, and books—to vaccinated Ohioans under 18.

The money will come from existing federal pandemic relief dollars, DeWine said, and the Ohio Lottery will conduct the drawings.

State Rep. Emilia Sykes, the top House Democrat, questioned the use of federal funds.

“Using millions of dollars in relief funds in a drawing is a grave misuse of money that could be going to respond to this ongoing crisis,” she said.

DeWine acknowledged the unusual nature of the financial incentives.

“I know that some may say, ‘DeWine, you’re crazy! This million-dollar drawing idea of yours is a waste of money,’” he said. But the real waste, when the vaccine is now readily available, “is a life lost to Covid-19,” the governor said.

The White House and Treasury Department had no immediate comment on the governor’s plan.

All Ohio’s Covid-19 orders except those applying to nursing homes and other long-term care facilities will end June 2, the Republican also announced during the address. However, DeWine noted that stores and businesses still may require customers to be masked.

In announcing the mandates’ end, the governor cited the sharp drop in the numbers of Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations and the high vaccination rates among people 65 and older. He also said the vaccine is a “tested and proven weapon” that all Ohioans 12 and older can now avail themselves of.

“It’s time to end the health orders. It’s been a year. You’ve followed the protocols,” DeWine said.

“You’ve done what we’ve asked. You’ve bravely fought this virus.”

The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in Ohio did not increase over the past two weeks, going from about 1,522 new cases per day on April 26 to 1,207 new cases per day on May 10, according to data collected by the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering.

More than 4.2 million Ohioans—about 36 percent of the population—had completed the vaccination process as of Tuesday. But the number of people seeking vaccines has dropped in recent weeks, with an average of about 16,500 starting the process last week, down from figures above 80,000 in April. About 42 percent of Ohioans have received at least one dose.

“There comes a time when individual responsibility simply must take over,” DeWine said.

Business groups uniformly praised the decision. The news “is the logical next step in fully reopening our state for Ohio’s businesses and families,” said John Barker, president and CEO of the Ohio Restaurant Association.

“Removing these barriers comes at the right time and will assist the efforts of Ohio’s business community to restore Ohio’s economy,” said Andrew Doehrel, Ohio Chamber of Commerce CEO and president.

Dr. Lisa Egbert, president of the Ohio State Medical Association, said the organization supported the announcement but urged all eligible Ohioans to be vaccinated as soon as possible.

D eWine made the announcement even though his previous goal for dropping the orders hadn’t been reached. In a March 4 primetime address, the governor had said he would lift remaining mandates once the state hit 50 coronavirus cases per 100,000 people for two weeks. At the time, the figure was 179 cases per 100,000 people; it had dropped to 123 cases as of this week.

Despite DeWine’s message, he had little choice in removing the mandates. His speech came only a few weeks before fellow GOP lawmakers could have voted to immediately remove all mandates, per a bill passed earlier this year over the governor’s veto. That legislation takes effect June 23. House Republicans had signaled their intention to introduce a resolution Wednesday in preparation for a June 23 vote.

“There’s a strong sentiment that the health orders need to be dissolved,” House Speaker Bob Cupp, a Lima Republican, said earlier Wednesday.

Senate President Matt Huffman, another Lima Republican, also said Wednesday it was time for the end of mandates.

“Ohioans care about getting their businesses open and doing other things that will allow some freedom,” Huffman said.

Also Wednesday, DeWine spokesman Dan Tierney confirmed that employees of executive branch agencies—who have been working almost exclusively from home—would return to their offices in stages, beginning July 6.

DeWine implemented the current mask mandate in July as case numbers rose. That followed a mandatory mask order in April 2020 that he rescinded just a day later under intense criticism that the directive was “one government mandate too far.”

In addition to his daily or weekly midday briefings, DeWine previously addressed Ohioans about the pandemic in primetime speeches Nov. 11 and July 15.

Also Wednesday, a federal judge denied Republican Attorney General Dave Yost’s request for a temporary order preventing US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen from enforcing a provision of the American Rescue Plan Act that says states can’t use their recovery dollars to offset tax cuts or credits.

Judge Douglas Cole said Ohio has a strong chance of proving the tax rule unconstitutionally ambiguous. But the judge also found that granting the order against Yellen wouldn’t provide Ohio the relief it seeks, because Treasury’s rules for the money are still being worked out, the state hasn’t yet received its money and Yellen has not yet tried to recoup anything. AP

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Covid, Middle East turmoil stifle Eid al-Fitr celebrations

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AKARTA, Indonesia—Muslims celebrated Eid al-Fitr in a subdued mood for a second year Thursday as the Covid-19 pandemic again forced mosque closings and family separations on the holiday marking the end of Ramadan.

In the embattled Gaza Strip, the call to prayer echoed over pulverized buildings and heaps of rubble as Israeli warplanes continued to pound the territory in the worst outbreak of violence since the 2014 war.

Hamas, the Islamic militant group ruling Gaza, urged the faithful to mark communal prayers inside their homes or the nearest mosques and avoid being out in the open.

“It is all airstrikes, destruction and devastation,” said Hassan Abu Shaaban, who tried to lighten the mood by passing out chocolates to passersby.

Worshippers wearing masks joined communal prayers in the streets of Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta.

The world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation allowed mosque prayers in low-risk areas, but mosques in areas where there was more risk of the virus spreading closed their doors, including Jakarta’s Istiqlal Grand Mosque, the largest in Southeast Asia.

Indonesians and Malaysians were banned for a second year from traveling to visit relatives in the traditional Eid homecoming.

In Bangladesh, however, tens of thousands of people were leaving the capital, Dhaka, to join their families back in their villages for Eid celebrations despite a nationwide lockdown and road checkpoints. Experts fear a surge in cases in a country grappling with a shortage of vaccines and fear of Indian variants of the coronavirus spreading.

“I understand that we all miss our relatives at times like this, especially in the momentum of Eid,” Indonesian President Joko Widodo said in televised remarks. “But let’s prioritize safety together by not going back to our hometowns.”

Despite the similar ban a year ago, the number of daily cases in Indonesia had picked up by 37% three weeks after the holiday. Similar patterns followed other holidays in the country that has counted 1.7 million infections and more than 47,600 fatalities from Covid-19.

The Jakarta governor also ordered malls, restaurants and leisure destinations usually packed during the holiday period to shut.

With no congregational prayers at mosques, no family reunions, no relatives bearing gifts and cookies

for children, “Eid is not a grand event anymore,” Jakarta resident Maysa Andriana said. “The pandemic has changed everything...this is too sad!” she said.

While police set up highway checkpoints and domestic flights and other modes of transportation were suspended, anxiety lingers that people will defy the prohibition. Television reports showed city dwellers hiding on disguised trucks or fishing boats and officers at roadblocks being overwhelmed by desperate motorists.

“We followed the government decision that banned us visiting my parents for Eid last year, it’s enough! Nothing can stop me now,” said factory worker Askari Anam, who used alleys and shortcuts to avoid being stopped from visiting his hometown.

“Of course I’m worried,” he said when asked about possibly contracting the virus. “But I leave it to God.” Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin expressed concern of a virus spike and feared people would travel despite the ban.

In the southern Philippines, coronavirus outbreaks and new fighting between government forces and Muslim insurgents in one province prevented people from holding large public prayers.

Instead, most hunkered down in their homes, while in Maguindanao province, many families displaced by recent fighting marked the holiday in evacuation camps.

In Malaysia, Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin unexpectedly announced another nationwide lockdown from Wednesday until June 7 to curb a spike in cases. Inter-state travel and all social activities are banned, which means that like in Indonesia, Muslims cannot visit each other or family graves.

Muhyiddin acknowledged that many are angry with the lockdown but defended the need for drastic measures, saying hospitals have almost reached their capacity.

Malaysia reported 4,765 cases on Wednesday, pushing its tally to 453,222, nearly fourfold from the start of the year. Deaths also rose to 1,761.

“Is this government tyrannical? But I am not a tyrant,” Muhyiddin said, “Imagine if you have guests over, then the virus will spread. ... If the guest visits 10 homes, then 10 families will be infected with Covid-19 and in the end as soon as (Eid) ends, the number of positive cases in the country could jump to tens of thousands daily.” AP

West and rights groups accuse China of massive Uyghur crimes

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NITED NATIONS—Human rights groups and Western nations led by the United States, Britain and Germany accused China of massive crimes against the Uyghur minority and demanded unimpeded access for UN experts at a virtual meeting on Wednesday denounced by China as “politically motivated” and based on “lies.”

China’s UN Mission sent notes to many of the UN’s 193 member nations last week urging them not to participate in the “anti-China event.” And China’s UN Ambassador Zhang Jun sent text messages to the 15 Western co-sponsors of the meeting expressing shock at their support, urging them to “think twice” and withdraw it.

He warned that if they don’t, it will be “harmful to our relationship and cooperation.”

At the meeting, Britain’s UN Ambassador Barbara Woodward called the situation in Xinjiang “one of the worst human rights crises of our time.”

“The evidence, from a growing number of credible sources—including satellite imagery, survivor testimony and publicly available Chinese Government documents—is of grave concern,” said Woodward, who previously was the UK ambassador in China. “The evidence points to a program of repression of specific ethnic groups. Expressions of religion have been criminalized and Uyghur language and culture are discriminated against systematically and at scale.”

In recent years, an estimated 1 million people or more have been confined in camps in Xinjiang, according to foreign governments and researchers.

Most are Uyghurs, a largely Muslim ethnic group.

Authorities have been accused of imposing forced labor, systematic forced birth control and torture.

The Chinese government has flatly rejected the allegations. It has characterized the camps, which it says are now closed, as vocational training centers to teach Chinese language, job skills and the law in order to support economic development and combat extremism. China saw a wave of Xinjiang-related terrorist attacks through 2016.

Organizers said there were 152 participants in Wednesday’s event, including 51 countries, and speaker after speaker called on China to end its abuses against the Uyghurs.

Germany’s UN Ambassador Christoph Heusgen thanked “all the co-sponsors who came together despite some massive Chinese threats.”

He urged them to remain committed “until the Uyghurs can live again in freedom, until they are no longer detained, no longer victims of forced labor and other human rights abuses, until they can exercise freedom of religion and freedom of speech.”

Heusgen appealed to China to respect the Universal Declaration of Human Rights “and tear down the detention camps.”

“If you have nothing to hide, why don’t you finally grant unimpeded access to the (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights?” he asked.

US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the Biden administration “will keep standing up and speaking out until China’s government stops its crime against humanity and the genocide of Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang.”

“And we will keep working in concert with our allies and our partners until China’s government respects the universal human rights of all its

people,” she said.

Uyghur human rights activist Jewher Ilhan spoke about her father Ilham Tohti, a noted economist who has called for autonomy for Xinjiang and is serving a life sentence on separatist-related charges. “We don’t even know if he’s alive,” she said.

“Hundreds of thousands, even millions of Uyghurs are still being targeted,” said Ilhan, who now lives in the United States. “The fate of my father and my community is in the world’s hands now. We all need to join together and take action to stop this humanitarian crisis from continuing.”

A Chinese diplomat countered, saying: “I make it clear that China is here to tell the truth, it doesn’t mean in any way we recognize this event.”

He then showed a short video and said: “The truth is, it’s not about human rights in Xinjiang, it’s about using Xinjiang as a political tool to contain China.

The US and some of its allies make a presumption of guilt, and then fabricate so-called evidence.”

Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth, whose organization recently concluded that China’s atrocities amount to the crime against humanity of persecution, said the challenge is what to do about it.

“Beijing clearly calculates that through censorship, propaganda, intimidation, and threats it can somehow avoid accountability,” he said, pointing many actions including its “extraordinary lengths of disinviting people” from Wednesday’s event, its “endless charade” that has prevented Human Rights Commissioner Michelle Bachelet from visiting Xinjiang, and UN inaction.

Roth expressed disappointment that Bachelet, who was invited to the event, turned down the invitation. “I’m sure she’s busy. We all are. But I have a similar global mandate to defend human rights and I couldn’t think of anything more important to do than to join you here today. I certainly wasn’t deterred by the commute—all the way to my laptop,” he said.

“The good news is that the tide seems to be turning,” he said, pointing to more countries condemning China’s crimes. But he said more must be done.

Roth called for a UN Human Rights Council resolution on Xinjiang, for moving discussions to the UN Security Council, for seeking avenues to justice including the use of universal jurisdiction, and for considering creation of an international investigative mechanism similar to those for Syria and Myanmar.

“The true test of the significance of today’s event will be the follow-up steps that we all take,” he said.

Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard said the persecution of the Uyghurs is “a critical test” for the international human rights system to investigate allegations of “massive violations” by a government against its own people and hold those responsible accountable.

She called “the silence, fear and timidity” of Bachelet’s office and the UN Secretariat “frankly unacceptable and a breach of their mandate, as are the silence of many states.”

Callamard said supporting a multilateral response to what is happening in Xinjiang is not about “picking sides in a fight with China or supporting the US or anyone else, it is about fighting for human rights.” AP

Friday, May 14, 2021

A7

Nowhere to run: Fear in Gaza grows amid conflict with Israel

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AZA CITY, Gaza Strip— Screams and flying debris enveloped Umm Majed alRayyes as explosions hurled her from her bed in Gaza City. Groping in the dark, the 50-year-old grabbed her four children and ran as Israeli bombs struck their apartment building Wednesday, shattering windows, ripping doors to splinters and blasting away concrete.

People inspect the rubble of a destroyed residential building that was hit by Israeli airstrikes, in Gaza City on May 12. AP/Adel Hana

While casualties mounted this week in the most severe outbreak of violence between Israel and the Gaza Strip since a 2014 war, al-Rayyes and other Palestinians in the line of fire faced an all-toofamiliar question: Where should we go?

“This whole territory is a tiny place. It’s a prison. Everywhere you go, you’re a target,” al-Rayyes said by phone from a neighbor’s house, where she sought refuge with her teenage sons and daughters and a few bags of clothes after the Israeli airstrike that she says came without warning.

In Gaza, a crowded coastal enclave of 2 million people, there are no air raid sirens or safe houses.

Temporary United Nations shelters have come under attack in previous years of conflict. In the past two days, Israeli airstrikes brought down three huge towers housing important Hamas offices and some businesses after the Israeli military fired warning shots, allowing occupants to flee.

Fighter jets also targeted without warning multiple residential buildings, located in teeming neighborhoods where Israel alleged militants lived. In all, more than 65 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Monday, including 16 children. Among the dead were both militants and civilians, including at least two women and children who died during the apartment building strikes.

At a Gaza City hospital, distraught families told of pulling bloodied relatives from piles of rubble. One woman said her 4-year-old grandson and pregnant daughter-in-law were killed when an Israeli air raid hit their two-story building on Wednesday.

“They bombed them without any warning. The house had noth-

because authorities had ordered all schools closed.

The people killed by the indiscriminate fire at Israeli population centers included three women and two children, spreading fear on both sides of the border.

“There is always this undercurrent of anxiety, but this time is different,” Khattab said. Airstrikes shook the walls and windows of his apartment building during the devastating wars of 2008 and 2014, but the building that houses some 400 people collapsed on Wednesday.

In any other year, Palestinians would be thronging the dusty streets of Gaza City this week ahead of the Eid al-Fitr holiday, one of the biggest and most joyous festivals on the Muslim calendar that marks the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan. Markets would be hives of activity as shoppers stocked up on new clothes and pastries for feasts. Beachside restaurants would brim with families. Barbershops would be full of men getting fresh haircuts.

Instead, shops stood shuttered and the city’s streets were eerily empty. A lmost nothing moves on the roads except for ambulances and Hamas security vehicles. Bombs thunder in the distance. Plumes of black smoke billow from stricken buildings.

Residents walk by rubble-strewn stores and downed power lines, surveying the latest damage to a city already riddled with scars from intense clashes.

“It’s the same atmosphere of 2014,” Saud Abu Ramadan, a freelance journalist in Gaza City, said, referring to the bloody 7-week war that killed over 2,000 Palestinians, including hundreds of civilians, and inflicted widespread

ing but the kids,” Umm Mohammad al-Telbani cried in the hospital morgue.

The Israeli government long has accused Hamas of using civilians as human shields against retaliatory strikes; militants often launch rockets from civilian areas and set up command centers inside residential buildings. Yet Israel received heavy criticism for its tactic of bombing buildings during the 2014 war with Hamas.

Recalling the horror of past wars, Gaza residents say they feel nowhere is safe. They also cannot leave the narrow territory, one of the world’s most densely populated places. It has been under a crippling Israeli-Egyptian blockade since Hamas seized control in 2007. Along its borders, Gaza is encircled by sensor-studded fences, concrete walls, galvanized steel barriers and the Mediterranean Sea, where Israel restricts boats from Gaza to some 16 nautical miles offshore.

“There is nowhere to run, there is nowhere to hide,” said Zeyad Khattab, a 44-year-old pharmacist in Gaza City, who fled to the family home where he grew up in the central Gaza district of Deir alBalah with a dozen relatives when bombs pounded his residential high-rise. “That terror is impossible to describe.”

As Hamas and other militant groups fired hundreds of rockets into Israeli cities, including Tel Aviv, killing at least seven Israelis, worries grew that the latest violence could spiral into a protracted conflict. The Hamas barrages sent hundreds of thousands of Israelis running to bomb shelters across the country and hit numerous civilian targets, including a bus and a school in the city of Askhelon that was empty

destruction on Gaza’s infrastructure. “Warplanes are buzzing, and people are just trying to keep their heads down.”

This week’s mayhem stemmed from clashes at the most sensitive place in Jerusalem, the revered plateau site of Al-Aqsa Mosque and the iconic golden Dome of the Rock. Analysts long have considered flaring tensions at the compound, sacred to both Muslims and Jews, to be the most dangerous accelerant to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Islamic militant groups seized on the violence at Al-Aqsa as the trigger for their hail of rocket fire into Israel. The salvos at times overwhelmed Israeli missile defenses and brought air raid sirens and explosions echoing across Tel Aviv, Israel’s biggest metropolitan region, and other areas.

On Monday, the first night of the fighting, teenage boys in Gaza City clambered onto rooftops, cars and scaffolding to get a better view of the rockets alighting the sky and streaming toward Israeli cities in quick succession. Some cried out with joy, as if at a wedding. Shouts of “God is great!” erupted from the crowd.

“People here have been seething,” Adnan Abu Amer, a political scientist at al-Ummah University in Gaza City, said. “They take a pride and happiness in seeing Hamas defend the sanctity of AlAqsa and Jerusalem.”

But with the rush of outrage comes the anguish of knowing the conflict’s heavy toll.

“There is so much pain, but thank God the children have been through this before and they’re strong,” said al-Rayyes, who fled her falling apartment in Gaza City.

She corrected herself. “They’re pretending to be strong.” AP

Death of student in China triggers questions, protests

T

AIPEI, Taiwan—It was a call no parent wants to receive. On Mother’s Day, around 9 p.m., a woman in Chengdu in southwestern China was told that her son, who she had dropped off at school just hours ago, had died.

Distraught, she went to Chengdu No. 49 Middle School immediately, but could not even enter the school grounds, she wrote in a series of Twitter-like Weibo posts on Monday that were shared hundreds of thousands of times this week.

Her account disputing both the police and local government’s account of her 16-year-old son’s death has touched a nerve, becoming one of the most discussed topics on Chinese social media this week. One related hashtag #ChengduNo.49Middle# racked up more than 1.5 billion views alone on Weibo.

People online called for justice for the mother and questioned the actions of the school, police and local authorities.

On Tuesday night, videos of a protest in front of the school circulated. People clutching white flowers shouted “the truth!” again and again. The Associated Press could not independently confirm the veracity of the videos.

The incident reflected the frustration of many Chinese who, in trying to seek justice, are met with

local authorities’ deflecting blame and responsibility.

Many called on tightly controlled national media to report on the matter or advised the woman to seek intervention from central authorities in Beijing.

The school, which serves both middle and high school students, said in a statement on Monday that the student had fallen at around 6:40 p.m. on Sunday night, and that it was investigating and cooperating with the police.

The local branch of the education department in Chenghua district in Chengdu said in a statement Tuesday that the incident was a suicide.

Police issued a statement Tuesday saying they were investigating the death of a 16-year-old student at the No. 49 Middle School, and that they had excluded any criminal involvement. “The family has no objection,” the statement read. “We urge the public to not believe rumors and not transmit rumors.”

But rumors continued to swirl as people demanded more information.

Many wondered on the mother’s Weibo timeline if she had been silenced by authorities, pointing out that she had changed her username shortly after the posts spread widely and that the cellphone model, which is automatically recorded on each

post, also changed.

Other users questioned why there was a gap of roughly two hours between the school’s statement of the student’s time of death and when the mother claimed she was told of the news. Why did the school take two hours to notify her of her son’s death? Why could she not see his body on the same day?

Others simply repeated the line from the police statement, “the family has no objection.”

On Thursday, China’s official Xinhua News Agency published a report saying that the mother had met with the school on the night of the phone call, but that they had met at the local police department so as to not disturb other students.

The school’s director of safety said it took two hours to notify the family because they could not identify the student at first due to the severity of injuries to his head.

State broadcaster CCTV carried a live report from the school and surveillance footage of the student’s fall as seen through his shadow passing through trees.

The mother, who did not reveal her full name online, did not respond to multiple phone calls. A staffer for the school declined to comment saying they had not received directions to speak to media.

A police officer at the Chenghua district station directed the AP to the stations’ political department, which did not respond to phone calls.

“In the US, when George Floyd died in those dubious circumstances, people had all sorts of demonstrations, but when a high school student dies in dubious circumstances, we can’t get any sort of real information,” said Mike Liu, a 19-year old college student, who had followed the story closely online.

On Tuesday night, a large crowd gathered in front of the school, said the owner of a restaurant across the street who gave his last name as Pan. He said he saw roughly 100 people, as well as police officers and security guards everywhere.

Protests in China, while not uncommon, are usually quickly dispersed by authorities.

Photos of flowers laid in tribute in front of the school gate on Tuesday night, captured by a photographer for Beijing News, an official paper belonging to the Beijing city government, were quickly deleted from the newspaper’s website by Wednesday afternoon.

Online, people criticized Beijing News for posting the photos, and said the flowers were offered by people paid by foreign forces to stir up trouble. AP

A8

Friday, May 14, 2021 • Editor: Angel R. Calso

Opinion BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

editorial

Do not annoy China

I

N August 2020, Ant Group Co. Ltd. filed the documents for Initial Public Offering with a plan to raise $30 billion.

The firm revealed that it made a net profit of $2.6 billion in 2019. In October, the IPO was priced to raise $34.5 billion, and value Ant Group at over $313 billion in the dual Shanghai and Hong Kong listing.

That would have made Ant the 13th largest company in the world by stock market value assuming the price did not increase on listing day, which was almost positively going to happen. Even a 10-percent increase in price would have made Ant more valuable than Walmart, which is fantastic since Ant was founded only six years ago.

But then, just two days before Ant’s billion-dollar IPO on November 3, 2020, Chinese regulators extraordinarily suspended the process.

Apparently, no one gave much thought to the fact that Ant founder Jack Ma sort of disappeared from public view after he gave a speech on October 24, 2020 at 11 a.m. during the Bund Summit in Shanghai. Perhaps he was just busy getting ready for the IPO. Then again in the speech, Ma said some “annoying” things. He was critical of Chinese government regulators for stifling innovation and said Middle Kingdom banks have a “pawnshop mentality.”

Not satisfied, he went on to say that the regulatory environment was similar to trying to “use the way to manage a railway station to manage an airport.”

Maybe the Chinese government deserved that rebuke, at least from Jack Ma’s point of view. On September 16, 2020, a little over a month before the speech, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission issued new guidelines stating that funding from banks and shareholders should not exceed a microfinance company’s total net assets. This was potentially a huge blow to Ma’s company.

But then again in 2015, Ant Group raised $4.5 billion in funding with investors including China Investment Corp., CCB Trust, China Life, China Post Group, China Development Bank Capital and Primavera Capital Group. China Investment Corp. and China Post are state-owned and in truth, if a company has “China” in its name, the government has a finger in the pie.

File all this under “don’t bite the hand that feeds you.” Being on the World’s Richest list does bring perks and benefits. But in China, the first item on your resume must be “Member in Good Standing of The Communist Party Of China.” “Good Standing” are the operative words.

Wang Xing is a Chinese billionaire businessman and the CEO of Meituan-Dianping. Forbes estimates his net worth at $28.8 billion as of January 2021. Meituan is GrabFood, Lazada, and TripAdvisor rolled together 10,000 times over with 50,000 employees and 350 million people using its apps.

On April 26, China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) opened an investigation into “suspected monopolistic practices” of Meituan. It is only the second antitrust investigation into a domestic technology firm, Jack Ma’s Alibaba being the first.

On May 6, Wang Xing posted a poem online through the Twitterlike service that he founded, Fanfou. The 28-character poem was from a 1,100-year-old text. It tells a story of an ancient emperor, Qin Shi Huang, who burned books to silence intellectuals. But two uneducated people eventually overthrew him.

The poem was deleted on Sunday, May 9. On Monday, shares of Meituan closed down 7 percent, wiping out around $16 billion from the firm’s market cap. Wang Xing has not disappeared yet.

Since 2005

BusinessMirror A broader look at today’s business

Asia’s fastest-growing companies Sonny M. Angara

Better Days

T

he Financial Times, together with Nikkei Asia and Statista, recently came out with its ranking of High-Growth Companies in the Asia-Pacific region. To be included in the list, a company must meet the following criteria—generated revenue of at least $1 million in 2019; must be an independent company, meaning it is not a subsidiary or branch office of any kind; should be headquartered in any one of the 11 territories in the Asia-Pacific region; and revenue growth between 2016 and 2019 should be primarily organic or internally generated.

A total of 500 companies were included in the list—ranging from start-ups to industry giants. They were ranked based on their compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2016 to 2019. The top 20 companies in the list belong to the technology, energy, financial services and transport sectors. At 116 companies, Japan has the most number of entries in the list—overtaking the previous year’s leader, India, which has 95.

Looking at the top 10 companies, what stands out is their use of

2021: Another ‘annus horribilis’?

Dr. Rene E. Ofreneo

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technology, particularly artificial intelligence in their operations. For instance, Singapore-based Carro, which ranked first on the list, is an online used car marketplace that started in 2015 and has recorded a CAGR of 422.4 percent. The company offers car buyers and sellers the convenience of purchasing their desired vehicle at home and even within an hour. Apart from offering everything from in-house financing, insurance and after-sales service, Carro has also incorporated AI to scan images

of their vehicles to detect potential problems or defects. The company claims that this speeds up the process by 20 percent and reduces human error by up to 80 percent.

India’s TheMathCompany, at number 6, describes itself as “a modern, hybrid consulting firm that builds Custom AI Applications for Fortune 500 and equivalent companies.” Using their proprietary AI master engine called Co.dx, TheMathCompany allows their clients to streamline their operations and improve efficiency by enabling data extraction, feature engineering, algorithm development and performance monitoring, among others.

The Philippines, for its part, has 20 companies that made it to the list, including some brands already very familiar to most Filipinos. Just like many of the top companies in the list, the Philippine companies that innovated and embraced ICT emerged as disruptors or industry leaders—even potential world-beaters.

For instance, the Internet service provider, Converge ICT, is a relative newcomer in the industry but has already put its competition on notice with its aggressive expansion.

It has pioneered and launched the

First of two parts

T

he year 2020 will go down in Philippine economic history as the worst since the end of World War II. The arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic triggered a fullblown health-economic crisis. The crisis is continuing and there are indications that it will spill even to 2022 and beyond. The long-suffering Filipino people will experience more pains in 2021 due to unresolved health problems across the archipelago, collapse of a growing number of businesses (from micro and small to medium and big), widespread joblessness and loss of livelihoods (especially among the informal grassroots entrepreneurs and workers), spiraling prices of commodities, and inability of the government to provide ample social amelioration or social protection for all, including the needed vaccination of the majority of the citizenry.

Why is the Duterte administration unable to contain the virus spread despite having one of the world’s strictest and longest lockdowns? Why is it unable to emulate the economic performance of Singapore and Vietnam, both of which are now registering positive growth?

The reasons are not difficult to find.

First, the government failed to act early and decisively to prevent the spread of the virus. It imposed

a national quarantine to contain the spread of the virus only in the middle of March 2020, or two and a half months after the world was informed that a Wuhan virus was circulating around the world.

Second, the quarantine program was launched without a comprehensive and well thought-out medical response. It was primarily a harsh lockdown implemented by the generals who sit in the National Task Force (NTF) under the supposed guidance

of a non-consultative Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) for emerging diseases. The initial “enhanced community quarantine” locked down businesses and banned the movement of people. The results were immediate: 17.7 percent unemployment rate in April 2020. The ECQ was subsequently eased and a series of “modified” quarantine programs were implemented on a rolling basis across the country up to the end of 2020. Still, the economic results for the entire year of 2020 were horrifying: GDP shrinking by almost 10 percent and debt-to-GDP ballooning by over 10 percent.

Third, the pandemic revealed that the Philippines health system was totally unprepared for the pandemic. The health system (especially the government hospitals and public health facilities) is weak, underdeveloped and under-funded. It took the Department of Health (DOH) half a year to align the system with the WHO guidelines and protocols in managing pandemics. Worse, the Philippine Health Insurance Corp.

(PhilHealth), which supposedly covers all Filipinos, was found to be heavily hemorrhaging due to widespread corruption. In addition, the public health system has been suffering from decades of government neglect, preoccupation of neo-liberal policy makers to privatize health services, bad health governance, and failure to develop a grassroots-based pri-

first Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification protocol technology and introduced the first-ever Fiber to the Building technology in the industry.

Aidea, a global integrated design and technology firm, ranks 39th in the World Architecture 100’s annual survey of the world’s biggest architecture practices. They are recognized globally as a forerunner and expert on Virtual Design and Construction, the first Asian practice to embrace the leading-edge technology in 2005.

Mega Fishing Corp. uses stateof-the-art technology to track areas with healthy fish population. It also uses what it calls the Fish Pump, an innovation of the company that allows it to transfer its catch to a carrier boat in 2 to 3 minutes time instead of an hour by manual labor.

One thing we’ve learned from the list of high-growth companies is that it pays to be abreast of the latest technological advancements.

If a company has any aspirations of going global or attaining a triple digit growth rate, then some type of investment in ICT would be necessary. Ultimately, that means adopting (and investing in) an See “Angara,” A9

mary health-care system across the archipelago.

Fourth, the health-economic crisis bared once more the basic structural weaknesses of the economy. Services, the main sector in an economy that has failed to industrialize, immediately went down. Contraction was severe across different service industries such as tourism, entertainment and casinos, hotels and restaurants, education, and malls and department stores.

As to the industrial sector, disruptions in domestic manufacturing were massive. The same goes for its export counterpart, the producers of semiconductors and auto parts.

As to agriculture, the pandemic should have been an opportunity for the agricultural sector to grow because food is essential. And yet, the sector was prevented from fulfilling its potential due to the culture of importation, which was encouraged further by the neo-liberal policy makers in the name of fighting inflation in Covid times. Look what is happening to rice, pork, chicken and other agricultural products.

As to the two lifesavers of the economy—remittances of overseas Filipino workers and earnings from the call center/BPO sector, the situation is complex. Hundreds of thousands of OFWs were stranded in different overseas sites due to similar health-economic crisis in host See “Ofreneo,” A9

Opinion BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

The significance of the 2022 national elections

Agua de Mayo

selves because no one could decide if there is, technically an Agua de Mayo, and whether the priests of temples are able to gather enough rainwater to purify the entrances to ritual sites.

Not to have enough supply of water that is necessary for religion to persist is disaster. It spells doomsday.

The oldest of the seers and diviners gather in the main temple of the palace by the river. They consult their maps and look intently in the cracks and the light emanating from them around the crystal ball. What do we do? Where do we get sacred water to cleanse ourselves?

As true of seers and diviners, they speak in languages that are difficult to decipher. These seers and diviners are in fact the same persons who read the laws and interpret them.

They know that laws or rules are meant to be seen in different lights.

Everything depends on who is articulating the law.

As this goes on, neighboring island-kingdoms are occupying the outlying territories of this kingdom by the sea, this land abandoned by the fate of Agua de Mayo.

By the time two younger seers

related to the king have forced the group to accept the fact that, no, the Agua de Mayo has not yet arrived in our land, the kingdom by the sea has lost considerably their wealthiest islands.

Immediately, the king gathers everyone. They would decide on a strategy. Do they send emissaries to the neighboring kingdoms or do they declare all-out wars across seas and straits and channels? Or, do they talk about it?

Now, here is a problem: all these events are taking place in the Year of Fools.

No one knows presently anymore what that mea n s. Some people think it is a celebration of the year the kingdom was fooled into surrendering their land to a white invader who sailed from the other side of the globe. Some believe the word “fool” is a shorthand for innocence and purity. Only the blind bard knows the meaning of the Year of Fools. It means that fools would gain upper-hand, that those who are good in twisting facts would reign supreme, and that lies would be acceptable as truths in themselves.

In this kingdom by the sea, there lives also a band of righteous men and women who save their meat and subsist on porridge. This is a pathetic group because while they are pure

announced in the 3rd quarter of 2020 an over-optimistic V recovery program called “Reset-Rebound,” which did not fly. It was quickly changed in the 4th quarter of 2020 into “Recharge Philippines,” with two objectives: reduce morbidity and mortality rate due to Covid, and restart social and economic activities. In line with this, Neda, together with the other agencies in charge of the economy, pushed for the relaxation of the quarantine rules and protocols in order to bring back the economy to its “old normal.” The overall framework for recovery is based on the assumption that the economy will do well if it returns to the “old normal” because, according to the economic technocrats, the economy was doing well in the pre-Covid period.

Thus, in the last quarter of 2020 and at the beginning of 2021, the national government, on the instigation of the economic technocrats and desperate mayors, relaxed the enforcement of quarantine rules and protocols so that the economy can recover by going back to the so-called “old normal.” The problem is that the relaxation decision was made in a helter-skelter fashion amid the following realities on the ground: the medical response system to the pandemic was still in chaotic condition, most of the businesses were still in survival mode given the shrunken market (despite the Christmas season) and the demand for social distancing in all transactions, and the government officials still had no handle on how to protect the general population against the spread of the virus.

The best proof of the incompetent handling of the Covid crisis by the Duterte administration is reflected in the failure of the government to negotiate with the vaccine manufacturers for the early procurement of sufficient quantity of vaccines. The country is unable to get the tens of millions needed to develop herd immunity for a country of 110 million. If there will be nationwide vaccination, this is likely to be completed only sometime in 2022 or even beyond. Thus, the danger of recurring Covid surges.

Another proof of incompetence is the fact that up to the present, or more than a year after the Covid outbreak, the country still has no

reliable system of tracing, monitoring and surveillance of the Covid spread. In fact, the government was caught unprepared when the country saw a dramatic surge in Covid infections in March 2021 despite the warnings issued by some medical experts in late 2020.

Today, the hospitals of Metro Manila and surrounding provinces in Luzon are overwhelmed. The government is forced to revert to the old militaristic ECQ. And the healtheconomic crisis, which has not disappeared, has worsened. To repeat, the President himself summed up the situation: the country is “sinking deeper and deeper.” So what then is in store for the country, for the working people?

The following are the likely scenarios: 1. The Covid pandemic shall linger in the country in 20212022. As explained earlier, the government has botched the containment program and has not outlined the way out for the country. Vaccines or the lack of it shall remain a contentious issue. And so is the government’s mishandling of the health funds under PhilHealth as well as the bad health leadership provided by the IATF and the DOH, both of which are headed by a Cabinet member who seems to be immune from all charges of corruption and incompetence. To counter the Covid pandemic, the government shall have a rolling program of strict and modified quarantines.

Like in 2020, this shall continue to pull down the economy. The health crisis shall continue to hobble life across the archipelago, breeding a host of health, social and economic issues and uncertainties.

2. The economy shall remain in the negative territory in 2021. Even credit rating agencies are now openly expressing fears about the prospects for the Philippine economy, the worst performing in Southeast Asia (with the exception of Myanmar, whose military is at war with the people). For the first quarter of 2021, the economy shrunk by 4.2 percent, per latest official reports.

The three major sectors of the economy—services, industry and agriculture—shall have difficulty surviving, let alone recovering.

There will be a continuing decline in

Tito Genova Valiente

annotations

Manny F. Dooc

TELLTALES

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he countdown to the 2022 national election auspiciously began on May 9, Sunday, with the pealing of bells in Manila Cathedral and other major Catholic churches. The simultaneous tolling of the bells across the country marked exactly one year before the holding of the next national elections in the Philippines on May 9, 2022. It was a reminder to the sovereign people of their sacred duty to vote and to select the next president of our country. The bells were rung non-stop for 3 minutes to encourage qualified voters to exercise their right of suffrage.

The Catholic hierarchy has undertaken the initiative to rekindle peoples’ active participation in the forthcoming elections. The National Director of Caritas Philippines, Bishop Jose Colin Bagaforo, of the Diocese of Kidapawan, Cotabato has issued the call: “Let’s awaken and enliven once more our love for the country. Register and vote. Make your voices heard. If you want to see change, elections are the democratic way to effect change.” The church appeal is in support of the efforts organized by the Eleksyon 2022 Koalisyon, a non-partisan and multisectoral alliance of various civic and religious groups to ensure the success of the next presidential election. We cannot overemphasize the critical importance of the next polls. After six years of the Duterte presidency, our people clamor for changes and reforms. Many claim that we have elected round pegs in the square holes. Some elected officials don’t fit the system and they only create chaos instead of order and stability. After their term of office, they merely succeed in digging us deeper into the pit.

Our country’s problems are serious and manifold. Assault on our territorial integrity by a foreign power. Social injustice. Economic inequities. Widespread poverty and unemployment. Inadequacy of the health-care system. Poor standard of education. Ravaging impact of the pandemic. The ills and woes that bedevil us will not go away by poking jokes and hurling curses at them and the opposition. Red-tagging the socalled enemies of the state will only promote discord. National politics becomes toxic and each side of the political divide hankers to destroy the other instead of focusing on their work. Unless the problems are addressed and resolved, we shall wake up and live day after day to confront them.

If we want our democracy to survive, we should all work to have clean and honest elections in 2022. We need presidential aspirants who will not talk trash and falsehoods. We want to hear the reassuring words from presidential hopefuls who can give us a message of hope, not despair; optimism, not cynicism; candor, not lie. We should subject every candidate to meticulous scrutiny and skepticism. We should be able to hold every aspiring politician to account and hold him answerable

Angara. . .

continued from A8

innovation mindset, which coincides with an increased threshold for risk and willingness to leave one’s comfort zone.

In May 2020, I filed Senate Bill 1470 or the National Digital Transformation Act, which is part of our Tatak Pinoy (Proudly Filipino) initiative aimed at helping Filipino industries and professionals become more globally competitive.

Through the development of a national framework for digital competency, we hope to empower Filipinos to meaningfully navigate today’s digital world. We want to ensure that every citizen is given the opportunity to understand ICT and develop the

to his acts or misdeeds once he’s in office. Elections empower the people to get rid of or reject rapacious leaders who will debauch their hapless countrymen. There is a gulf between political promises and accomplishments, and voters should not be hoodwinked by charlatans who will promise anything just to get elected. Voters should think clearly and critically when making their choices. They should realize the severe consequences of their decisions. A president enjoys extensive power to change the course of history. Every voter should help shape the political process and improve the quality of political discourse in this country and upgrade the level of debate among the candidates.

Candidates should have a global view of the issue and not tarry on the trees that make up the forest.

We need to reboot or reset our political culture that will define to us the fundamental issues that need to be expounded and tackled during the campaign. We need a leader who can restore dignity to the office of the president. A president who will honor his words and whose public pronouncements can be relied upon by his people. Not one who speaks with gutter language unfit to be heard by minors watching the TV during the evening news.

The pealing of bells is symbolic.

It’s a call to all patriotic Filipinos to go out and vote in the coming 2022 national elections. Voting is a privilege, which we must exercise with extreme caution; we should not take it for granted. Needless to state, our future, and our children’s, depend on it. Let’s vote responsibly and elect a new president who will look after our interest. Let’s not betray our people by casting our ballots in favor of one who approaches us with bravado and dishonest intentions. Nor should we sell our vote to the highest bidder who, if elected, shall use the perks of his office to amass more privilege, pelp and power. Otherwise, the church ringing will be a requiem, a dirge. It signals the end of our return to good governance. This is a time for great change. Let’s not squander this opportunity to escape from the cycle of vicious politics. Go out and vote wisely. Either we reverse the tide or we continue along the path to political perdition. As Blase J. Cupich had once said: “We are a democracy, and we get the leader we deserve because we elect them.” necessary skills and ability to apply ICT in their everyday lives.

The measure also promotes the digitization of businesses according to their specific needs. This could mean maintaining a web presence, engaging in e-commerce, using the cloud, and transforming back-office functions such as payroll and human resource management.

Hopefully, one day we will see more Filipino companies breaking into the top 500 rankings and making their mark, not only here in the country, but globally too.

Sen. Sonny Angara has been in public service for 16 years. He has authored and sponsored more than 200 laws. He is currently serving his second term in the Senate.

E-mail: sensonnyangara@yahoo.com| Facebook, Twitter & Instagram: @sonnyangara

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here is a kingdom by the sea that subsists on rains, sunshine, and lies.

When May comes, they wait for the first rains to fall. The ancient lore speaks of the rain falling on the first day of May as the auspicious sign, the marker of good harvest and better life.

But in this kingdom, truth is basically…hmmm….relative. There is no truth unless there is power behind the speaker of truth. True enough, the most powerful men—and some women—have a monopoly of truth or truths. To extend that principle, there is no brain unless there is brawn behind the mind or the ideas.

So on the Year of Fools, in the month of May, the rains scatter themselves across the archipelago.

It rains the evening of the first day, the wetness extending up to the past midnight. This puzzles the old men who start to question the date. Is this the first day or the second?

In this kingdom by the sea, citizens love to quibble over small things. They have a passion for debate on topics like what is the best color for a beauty queen to be declared the symbol of the universe? They are ready to die on issues like who is the greatest thespian in the land. They write poems on all topics and themes— on the passion of the groin, the sensuality of armpits, the sanity of other writers.

And so they quarrel among them-

Ofreneo. . .

continued from A8

countries. And yet, OFW remittances monitored by the Central Bank indicate no aggregate decline. Why? During crisis periods, the heroic OFWs tend to save and send more just to help their suffering families at home.

As to the call center/BPO sector, there has been a softening of the demand for call center agents due to the rise of the DIY chat-bots and the obvious decline for their services from some ailing foreign clients. However, there are reports that new lines of BPO services have emerged from the Covid-stricken ICT-dependent global economy.

Fifth, the government was stingy in providing social amelioration to the people and recovery stimulus to those who lost their livelihoods and businesses. Under two successive laws—Bayanihan 1 and 2, the government was supposed to provide social amelioration assistance to 18 million families. It succeeded in reaching 14 million or so in an agonizingly slow manner, with beneficiary families not given continuous survival assistance. Ambulant families and workers with no permanent addresses were usually excluded.

In summary, 2020 was annus horribilis for the Filipino people. The economy and jobs were flattened not by the virus per se but more by the militaristic lockdowns and the poor health-economic programs of the government.

What then is in store for the Filipino people in 2021?

The statement of President Duterte in January 2021 sums up the situation on what is in store for the country and the people: “We are sinking deeper and deeper” (See ABSCBN News, “We are sinking,” February 01, 2021).

The problem is that there are no “mea culpas” being issued by Malacañang for the poor government responses to the health-economic crisis in 2020. Filipinos call these responses “mga kapalpakan” (botched policies/programs). Nor are there inspiring recovery programs for people’s livelihoods, jobs and businesses.

The National Economic and Development Authority (Neda)

Friday, May 14, 2021

A9

of heart, their words and actions are naïve and unattractive. They, however, know that there is magic in the Year of Fools. This comes in the form of a curse that would condemn the king or any ruler of the land to lose control of his faculty and admit directly his wrong doing.

The righteous men and women ecstatically wait for the right moment when their repugnant king would soon accept all his crimes and misdemeanors.

Comes that day: The king gathers everyone and, while standing at the balcony of the palace, he raises his hand and half-shouting and half-hissing, he says: “All my promises of good life are lies!”

An eerie quiet follows, first, then a deafening applause.

The righteous men and women look at each other and wonder what is happening.

Of course, they have forgotten that in this kingdom by the sea, truths become lies and lies become truths. And when TRUTHS, in big letters, are spelled out for the people, the land is always ready to twist them, make sense of them by making them senseless or, worse, spend eternities debating the concept of truth.

E-mail: titovaliente@yahoo.com

the deployment of overseas Filipino workers and there will be more displacements among those employed in various host countries. The winners are a few such as those able to establish niches in businesses using the Internet as a platform. Warning: some big corporations or banks might fail and might trigger a domino-like collapse in the corporate world. If this happens, as what happened in 1982-1985 at the height of the recession-depression during the waning years of the Marcos administration, the recession-depression of 2020 will appear mild.

3. Joblessness shall affect more than 10 percent of the labor force. The worst hit are the displaced due to business closures and the young labor entrants who joined the market in 2020 and those joining in 2021. What jobs are waiting for them? And what about those in the informal sector—the street vendors, home-based workers, informal transport operators/drivers, ambulant workers, agrarian workers, etc.?

Millions lost their livelihoods in 2020. Most of these livelihoods are not likely to come back in 2021. The same for the businesses of the solo, family and micro entrepreneurs.

4. The government shall continuously engage in deficit spending and massive borrowing. As a result, the national debt problem, which the neo-liberal economists claim have already disappeared, after four decades of backbreaking debt servicing by the nation, is back with the total amount exceeding P10 trillion pesos (over $210 billion) in 2020 and projected to reach over P12 trillion by the end of 2021. The future of Generations X, Y, Z is mortgaged. Ironically, the government passed a new tax law (CREATE) to reduce the tax rate for corporations. This measure, touted by the economic technocrats as the biggest stimulus, is highly questionable because it widens further the government deficits and is targeting investors at a time when the global pandemic is putting a brake on the flow of FDI worldwide.

To be continued on Monday Dr. Rene E. Ofreneo is a Professor Emeritus of University of the Philippines.

For comments, please write to reneofreneo@ gmail.com.

A10 Friday, May 14, 2021

Govt ready to repatriate 30K OFWs in Israel

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HE government is ready to bring home around 30,000 Filipinos in Israel amid the escalating violence between Palestinian and Israeli forces.

In an online press briefing on Thursday, Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said they are closely monitoring the 29,473 Filipinos in Israel following the exchange of rockets that affected Israeli cities and Jerusalem and Gaza.

“We are making preparations for the possible repatriation,” Roque said.

He noted the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) and the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) already have extensive experience for such operations.

While there is still no recommendation from DFA to initiate the repatriation, Roque said they urged Filipinos in Israel to be cautious to avoid being involved in the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) is also looking into the situation of overseas Filipino workers (OFW) in Israel through the private recruitment agencies (PRA).

“We are on high alert and are closely monitoring developments there,”POEA Administrator Bernard Olalia said in a phone interview.

POEA could instruct the PRAs to pull out their OFWs in Israel if the need for it arises.

The latest conflict in Israel started last Monday from street violence, which led to the arrest of 374 people, and has now escalated to missile attacks. Roque said they hope the issue will be peacefully resolved in the coming days.

Samuel P. Medenilla

Record domestic harvest seen to cut rice imports

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By Jasper Emmanuel Y. Arcalas

@jearcalas

HE country’s rice imports this year may fall by 14 percent to 2.1 million metric tons (MMT) on the back of a projected record-high domestic harvest, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) said.

Latest USDA data showed the Philippines’s total rice import volume this year is 350,000 MT lower than the 2.45 MMT it imported last year.

This, despite an upward revision made by the USDA for the country’s rice imports this year. The USDA hiked its import forecast by 5 percent to 2.1 MMT from its earlier estimate of 2 MMT as it projected a smaller crop harvest for this year from earlier estimates.

Nonetheless, despite a downward revision on the Philippines’s domestic rice production this year from 12.4 MMT to 12.3 MMT, it would remain as the largest output by the country on record, surpass-

ing previous record-high volume of 12.235 MMT in 2018, based on USDA data.

“With a smaller crop, the country is forecast to import more to satisfy rising demand,” the USDA said in its monthly global grain report released on Thursday.

USDA data showed the Philippines’s total rice consumption and residual this year will rise to a record-high of 14.5 MMT, which is 1.4 percent higher than last year’s 14.3 MMT. Likewise, the latest total consumption estimate was 100,000 MT higher than the earlier estimate of 14.4 MMT for 2020, USDA data

showed.

Given the abundant domestic harvest coupled by substantial rice imports, the country’s ending stocks this year could reach 4.709 MMT, 18 percent higher than last year’s 3.979 MMT, based on USDA data.

The BusinessMirror reported earlier that the country’s palay production this year is off to a good start as first-quarter harvest grew by 8.57 percent to 4.626 MMT, the highest volume produced on record for January-to-March period.

The production volume surpassed the previous first-quarter palay harvest record of 4.622 MMT in 2018, despite a 3.52-percent contraction in area harvested compared to three years ago.

Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) data analyzed by the BusinessMirror showed that total palay harvest area in the first quarter reached 1.148 million hectares, which was 42,000 hectares smaller than the 1.19 million hectares recorded in 2018.

However, palay harvest area during the three-month period was 4.55 percent bigger than the 1.098 million hectares recorded in the first quarter of last year, based on PSA data.

For this year, the Department of Agriculture (DA) aims to produce a new record-high volume of palay at 20.4 MMT, or 1 MMT higher than last year’s 19.4 MMT record.

If the DA’s goal materializes, then the country would achieve 95-percent rice self-sufficiency level, the department said.

DBM RELEASES 80.2% OF 2021 BUDGET OF P4.5T IN JAN-APRIL

By Bernadette D. Nicolas

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@BNicolasBM

HE Department of Budget and Management (DBM) has released P3.61 trillion or 80.2 percent of the P4.506-trillion 2021 national budget during the first four months of the year.

But this was significantly lower compared to the 90.1 percent release rate recorded in the same period last year when it released P3.69 trillion out of the P4.1 trillion 2020 national budget.

Allotment releases are issued by the DBM to enable agencies to incur obligations to finance the delivery of public services.

Out of the funds under the 2021 national budget, allotment releases from January to April amounted to P2.46 trillion or 80 percent of P3.077 trillion.

Broken down, releases to government departments reached P2.32 trillion, equivalent to 88.2 percent of this year’s program of P2.64 trillion.

Of the programmed P440.09 billion for special purpose funds, 31 percent or P136.5 billion was released. Special purpose funds are appropriations in the national budget provided to cover expenditures for specific purposes for which recipient departments/agencies have not yet been identified during budget preparation.

As for automatic appropriations, 70.2 percent or P1.004 trillion out of the P1.429 trillion program was released by

the budget department.

Releases under automatic appropriations during the fourmonth period were made for Internal Revenue Allotment (P695.49 billion), interest payments (P132.89 billion), block grant to Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (P71.67 billion), retirement and life insurance premiums (P56.62 billion), special account in the general fund (P30.57 billion), tax expenditures fund/customs duties and taxes (P9.62 billion), net lending (P7.18 billion), and pension of ex-presidents or widows of expresidents (P480,000).

Meanwhile, continuing appropriations from the 2020 national budget and Bayanihan 2 have amounted to P93.85 billion.

President Duterte earlier extended the validity of appropriations of the 2020 national budget until the end of this year while appropriations under Bayanihan 2 are still valid for obligation and disbursement until June 30 this year.

In terms of unprogrammed appropriations, P52.7 billion was released during the period.

Unprogrammed appropriations provide standby authority to incur additional agency obligations for priority programs or projects when revenue collections exceed targets or when additional foreign funds are generated.

Allotment releases for other automatic appropriations stood at P1.05 billion.

COA proposes abolition of Nayong Pilipino Fdn

By Ma. Stella F. Arnaldo

@akosistellaBM Special to the BusinessMirror

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O many Gen-X’ers, Nayong Pilipino has always meant endless school excursions and lunch with a mini-Mayon Volcano at our backs, or a quick bite of a sandwich in a nipa hut by a small version of the Banaue Rice Terraces.

Which probably explains the current affinity of many netizens to the Nayong Pilipino Foundation (NPF) board, which is blocking government’s plans to turn a portion of its 15-hectare property into a mega-vaccination facility with drive-through services.

But that Nayong Pilipino park of our collective memories, is long gone—the space across the Manila international airport has been taken over to extend the latter’s runway. The miniature tourist sites have been transferred to the Clark Freeport in Pampanga, and Nayon has not been operating even before the Covid-19 pandemic.

(Former First Lady Imelda Marcos was said to have been inspired to set up Nayong Pilipino after former First Lady of Indonesia Siti Suharto took her to the Taman Mini Park in Jakarta.)

The Nayong Pilipino of today is basically a barren piece of reclaimed land within the Pagcor Entertainment City, with overgrown weeds, tall grass (talahib) and a smattering of ipil-ipil shrubs.

“But definitely it’s not a forest,” said one former Nayong Pilipino board member under President Benigno Aquino’s term.

No projects to speak of

THERE had been plans to build a nature park, a cultural haven,

even. But in all this time, not much earth has been moved to create any of these. Instead, separate boards had contracts with two separate developers for casinos and a hotel, hoping the lease payments would eventually fund the park’s development.

It should come as no surprise then that the Commission on Audit (COA) had proposed the abolition of the NPF for failing its mandate under the Marcos-era President Decree No. 37, as well as its inadequate financial controls and duplication of functions with other government agencies.

“The Audit Team deemed that it would be advantageous to the government if NPF would be dissolved/abolished or merged and its resources would be transferred to other government agencies with established internal controls and sufficient manpower capable of protecting or safeguarding the resources for the benefit of the public,” said a COA report dated July 2020.

Fund depletion observed

AS NPF duplicated or overlapped functions with the National Parks Development Committee (NPDC), COA recommended a possible merger. Also an attached agency of the Department of Tourism, NPDC’s “vision and one of its mandates is to be the lead agency that will provide fully developed and wellmaintained parks for the Filipino’s wholesome recreation.”

The COA report said the NPF basically had no projects to show for, and yet depleted its funds from P1.232 billion in CY 2014 to P784.762 million as of December 31, 2019. It also found the NPF did not have or “[lacked] an established

internal control system in monitoring financial transactions thereby exposing NPF funds and resources to losses and wastage.”

COA noted even the Governance Commission for Governmentowned and Controlled Corporations has been giving a “failing grade” to the NPF because it had no projects.

The foundation was unable to submit financial statements from 2017 to 2019 and no pertinent documents have been submitted to support financial transactions totaling P461.762 million, in the form of deposits, withdrawals from banks, payments to suppliers of purchases and repairs, travel allowances and cash advances “casting doubt on the legality, propriety and reasonableness of these transactions.”

Also, auditors said NPF failed to remit value added tax amounting to some P19.13 million to the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), and did not withhold taxes i.e. VAT, Other Percentage Taxes (OPT) and Income Tax on various payments to suppliers contrary, “thereby exposing NPF to possible tax related suit and surcharges and interests.”

Lastly, “NPF did not collect the estimated VAT in the amount of P120 million corresponding to 12 percent of the P1 billion advance rental from Resorts World Bayshore City Inc. (RWBCI), hence, no VAT was remitted to the BIR; instead NPF collected VAT from RWBCI monthly, equivalent to the VAT of the monthly lease rental. Likewise, no Official Receipt (OR) was issued for the collection of the P1 billion advance rental, rather the OR is issued monthly to RWBCI, equivalent to the monthly lease rental, despite the actual amount collected is for the VAT only.”

Companies BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Friday, May 14, 2021

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MGreen solar power plant starts operation

By Lenie Lectura

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@llectura

he first solar power investment of MGen Renewable Energy Inc. (MGreen) has officially started commercial operations after it secured the green light of the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC).

The project proponent—PowerSource First Bulacan Solar, Inc. (PFBSI)—secured a clearance to operate the 50-megawatts (MW) solar plant from the regulators last May 12.

The P4.25-billion solar plant— BulacanSol—in San Miguel, Bulacan now provides clean and renewable

power to the Luzon grid.

“As the first operational project of MGreen, BulacanSol is a very important milestone that drives us to aggressively pursue more projects that will help us achieve our target of building a renewable energy portfolio with a capacity of up to 1,500MW in

the next five to seven years,” PFBSI Chairman and Meralco PowerGen Corp. (MGen) President Rogelio L. Singson said.

PFBSI is 60 percent owned by MGreen and 40 percent owned by PowerSource Energy Holdings Corp.

MGreen is the renewable energy unit of Meralco PowerGen Corp.

(MGen), which in turn is the power generation arm of Manila Electric Co. (Meralco).

BulacanSol now plays a significant role in One MERALCO Group’s long-term sustainability agenda.

Meralco Chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan said BulacanSol is a “modest step” into renewables but a significant one for the company. “We look forward to many more investments in renewables, particularly solar, as we attempt to achieve that balance in

fuel sourcing, which will ultimately be biased towards renewables.”

In June 2019, Meralco announced that it would join the shift to renewable energy and it will adopt sustainable practices for the One MERALCO Group. “Today, we realize the very first renewable power plant—the first of several that One Meralco has lined up for investment and sourcing,” commented Meralco President Ray Espinosa.

Singson said BulacanSol signifies the commitment of One MERALCO and PowerSource Group to help ensure energy security through clean, cost-competitive, and sustainable power.

“We pledge to continue building more environmentally conscious projects as part of our commitment to a sustainable energy transition for

the future generations.” The officials acknowledged the strong support BulacanSol received from national government agencies including the Department of Energy, ERC, and the Department of Public Works and Highways; as well as from the local government unit of San Miguel led

by Mayor Roderick Tiongson.

Construction activities for the plant started in December 2019 following the issuance of notice-to-proceed to SUMEC Complete Equipment & Engineering Co. Ltd., the engineering, procurement, and construction contractor for the project.

BulacanSol in February reached 1.5 million safe man-hours without lost time incident, reflecting the company’s commitment to safety and security in all its activities.

“We share this achievement with

our employees, engineers, contractors, and partners in the government and private sector who worked together to bring this project into reality. With their perseverance, determination and hard work, we are finally going to see the light,” said PFBSI President and PowerSource Chairman Aloysius B. Colayco.

The project pushed through notwithstanding hurdles encountered including delays brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic and a string of weather disturbances that limited movements at the power plant site.

“Not even the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns we experienced during the construction period hindered us from completing this renewable project,” Ricardo G. Lazatin, PFBSI Vice Chairman and PowerSource President and CEO, said.

Vista Land unit to issue debt notes Jollibee opens first

By VG Cabuag @villygc

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illar-led VLL International Inc., an affiliate of listed firm Vista Land and Lifescapes Inc., has executed a subscription agreement with its fund managers for the float of $170 million in the re-opening of its new notes.

The company said it signed an agreement with Credit Suisse (Singapore) Limited, DBS Bank Ltd. and The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Ltd., as managers for the said offshore bond float.

The new notes will form a single series with the company’s existing

$200 million, 7.25 percent senior guaranteed notes due 2027, which will now have a total issuance size of $370 million.

The new notes will be issued at a re-opening yield of 6.5 percent, plus accrued interest from January 20, 2021 to May 17, 2021, and a reopening price of 103.752 percent.

“The notes are guaranteed by VLL and its subsidiaries namely Brittany Corp., Crown Asia Properties Inc., Camella Homes Inc., Communities Philippines Inc., Vistamalls Inc. and Vista Residences Inc.,” the company said in a disclosure.

“The proceeds of the notes issue will be used to refinance existing indebtedness, purchase, develop,

construct, or improve assets, property and equipment, and for general corporate purposes.”

The said notes issuance is part of the company’s $2-billion medium term note program.

Vista Land said its income in the first quarter fell 14 percent to P2.1 billion from last year’s P2.43 billion, mainly due to higher interest expense.

“Coming from 2020, our preliminary first quarter headline numbers this year are quite encouraging. The company will continue with its digital innovations to efficiently and to safely serve its clients and customers,” Manuel Paolo A. Villar, the company’s president and CEO said.

He said the company expects to report total revenues of approximately P8.7 billion for the period, or about 12 percent lower than last year’s P9.9 billion, with real estate revenues at approximately P6.3 billion representing a decrease of approximately 13 percent year-on-year, and leasing income estimated at P2 billion representing a decrease of approximately 9 percent.

The company said its reservation sales continued to rise in the first quarter, registering at approximately P16.1 billion or an estimated 4-percent increase from the first quarter last year and an estimated 14-percent increase since the fourth quarter of 2020.

SEC gets Maynilad building ₧29-B STP projects special W citation from ARTA

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he Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said it has received special citations from the Anti-Red Tape Authority (ARTA) for its efforts toward improving the ease of doing business in the country.

In the Ease of Doing Business Summit held earlier in May, ARTA recognized the SEC as a “Doing Business Competitiveness Ranking Mover” for instituting the most number of reforms considered in the World Bank’s Doing Business 2020 Report.

In its citation, ARTA mentioned the measures adopted by the SEC toward protecting minority investors, which served as “Big Impact Indicator” and “Most Improved Indicator” of ease of doing business in the Philippines, based on the World Bank’s report.

“We thank the ARTA for recognizing the efforts of the hardworking men and women of the SEC to provide efficient business registration services to the public,” SEC Chairman Emilio B. Aquino said.

“We share this recognition with other government agencies, which enthusiastically agreed to partner with us, make the necessary adjustments on their end, and help in the overall implementation of our streamlining initiatives.” The Philippines ranked 95th in the 2020 Doing Business Report, jumping 29 places from 124th in 2019, with a score of 62.8.

The World Bank annually compares and ranks business regulations in 190 economies based on 10 ease-ofdoing-business indicators. The 2020 report showed the Philippines making improvements in three areas—on starting a business, dealing with construction permits and on protection of minority investors. VG Cabuag

est Zone concessionaire Maynilad Water Services, Inc. (Maynilad) is building several sewage treatment plants (STP) at the same time in Caloocan, Las Piñas, Central Manila, Valenzuela, and Muntinlupa with a total cost of over P29 billion.

“These projects are part of our commitment to protect the environment by making sure effluents meet legal standards. On top of these, we also spend much more on projects to provide clean and potable water to our more than 9 million customers,” said Maynilad President and CEO Ramoncito S. Fernandez.

Although quarantine restrictions have made it more difficult to facilitate these projects, pandemic or not, Fernandez said the work of a water concessionaire never stops as its

service is basic to its customers, “We might add that these projects generate jobs and business opportunities which have been drastically affected by the pandemic,” he said.

The CAMANA (Caloocan-Malabon-Navotas) and Las Piñas Water Reclamation Facilities will contribute around 16 percent additional sewerage coverage in the West Zone with a target completion date in 2025.

Maynilad is also building STPs in Barangays Cupang and Tunasan in Muntinlupa and Barangay Marulas in Valenzuela, which are targeted for completion within the year, and in Ayala Southvale in Muntinlupa.

For areas that have yet to be covered by STPs, Maynilad has been expanding its fleet of vacuum trucks units (VTU) that offer septic tank

cleaning. The company now has 110 VTUs, up from only 32 VTUs in 2007 when it took over the West Zone.

“Expanding wastewater services is a long and arduous process requiring massive investments and constant coordination with LGUs affected by our pipe-laying activities.

Nevertheless, we have a comprehensive wastewater management plan in place, and its completion will ensure full sewerage coverage in our concession area which will help to considerably reduce the pollution load into Manila Bay,” Fernandez added.

Maynilad currently operates 22 wastewater treatment facilities— up from only two in 2007 when the company was re-privatized—with a combined treatment capacity of around 664,000 cubic meters of wastewater per day.

‘EDC regenerative strategy paying off’

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opez-led Energy Development Corp.’s (EDC) “regenerative” strategy has helped the company create values amid the pandemic, its top official said Thursday.

EDC President Richard Tantoco was referring to various renewable energy (RE) projects lined up in anticipation of post-Covid business resurgence. These include the 29MW Palayan Bayan in its existing Bacon-Manito geothermal site in Bicol, the 3.6MW Mindanao 3 binary plants in its existing Mount Apo geothermal field, the 100MW Aya hydro project in Nueva Ecija and 20MW Tanawon geothermal plant also in Bicol.

“I cannot reasonably complain about the performance of the company [in 2020],” said Tantoco.

“It was fortunate that when the crisis happened, EDC was in good financial health. Our chairman [Federico R. Lopez] has prudently directed the group companies to practice fiscal discipline and keep debt at low man-

ageable levels. We were able to build up and maintain our cash reserves well in advance,” he added. EDC’s financial performance is one of six aspects of operations that EDC measures as part of its shift to the International Integrated Reporting Council’s integrated reporting (IR) framework, in line with a Lopez group–wide initiative last year toward a renewed mission of “forging collaborative pathways for a decarbonized and regenerative future.”

“Our shift to integrated reporting demonstrates our holistic approach to our business—one that carefully considers the capitals at our disposal and the strategies through which we can manage, develop and transform these capitals to continue creating and sharing value with our different stakeholders,” he added.

EDC’s recently released IR for 2020 detailed the company’s strategy, governance, and management of six capitals, namely: financial capital, manufactured capital, human capital, social

and relationship capital, intellectual capital, and natural capital.

In addition to reporting according to the IR framework, EDC also continues to align its disclosures with the Global Reporting Initiative Standards, a comprehensive framework for sustainability reporting adopted by many businesses worldwide.

Among many achievements in line with these six identified capitals, EDC reported a total of 9,111.8 gigawatt hours generation volume sold in 2020, across its geothermal, wind, solar and hydro operations, which enabled the company to help the country avoid over 7 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in lieu of coal.

EDC also poured a total of more than P256 million in social investments by way of its institutionalized programs in its 2 main CSR thrusts of education and the environment, as well as immediate public health and livelihood needs brought about by the pandemic. Lenie Lectura

store in Maryland J ollibee Foods Corp. on Thursday said it opened its first flagship store in the state of Maryland in the United States last month, making it the 12th state where the brand is present.

The restaurant in Westfield Wheaton Mall is 30 minutes away from Washington D.C., the capital of the US, and home to the White House.

The opening allows the brand to attract “gen pop” customers who are unfamiliar with the brand but are seeking out new food experiences, as well as tourists who come to the area for its iconic landmarks, the company said.

“We are happy to welcome our fans who have patiently waited for Jollibee’s arrival in the D.C., Maryland, and Virginia area, as well as introduce the brand to curious new customers,” Maribeth Dela Cruz, president of Jollibee Group North America, Philippine Brands, said.

“We are proud to serve flavorful food options and look forward to sharing our exciting menu with the Greater D.C. local community.”

Jollibee’s signature menu items include its world-famous Chickenjoy, Jolly Spaghetti, and Peach Mango Pie. As part of the brand’s safety

A service assistant carries an order of fried chicken. Bloomberg Newst

measures and in compliance with Covid-19 guidelines, consumers are prohibited from crowding into stores and the company implemented the call-and-pick-up order process.

Westfield Wheaton marks the brand’s first location in the state of Maryland and its 49th store in the US. Since the start of 2021, Jollibee has opened 5 new locations, putting the brand on track to achieve its goal of opening 300 store locations throughout North America by 2024.

The company said it will open in more locations throughout the year, including Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York City. VG Cabuag

NextGen leaders share insights on future-proofing businesses

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ILIPINAS Shell Petroleum Corp. (PSPC) has gathered emerging leaders to share insights on how to future-proof their businesses and to collaborate with other leaders.

In a forum organized by PSPC, company president Cesar Romero said that while the past year tested business systems and resources, the pandemic has also pushed the young workforce to reinvent the supply chain with nascent technologies to keep businesses running, transforming their industries for the new business landscape.

“Their experiences through Covid-19 have made them form insights and strategies to make their communities able to turn a crisis into an opportunity,” he said during the Next Generation Leaders Gamechangers Industry Forum.

Stephen D. Quila, Vice President for Shell Lubricants, said next-generation leaders are needed because “our own paradigms about leadership, management, and business are undergoing

critical shifts. Today is about bridging opportunities, characterized by resilience, anchored on courage and the will to change, especially when we don’t know all the answers. Our resolve will be tested against a backdrop of a continuously changing market landscape.”

Zoe Chi, Vice President of J&T Express Philippines, noted that most Filipinos are purchasing their goods online. She noted that among the local businesses that rose include surplus clothes and coffee and tea shops.

“Filipino entrepreneurs went above and beyond their duty and deserve support. J&T Express has been keeping up with this demand, reaching people no matter where they are located.” Lenie Lectura

B2

Companies BusinessMirror

Friday, May 14, 2021

PSE STOCK QUOTATIONS

May 12, 2021

Net Foreign Stocks Bid Ask Open High Low Close Volume Value Trade (Peso) Buy (Sell) FINANCIALs

ASIA UNITED BDO UNIBANK BANK PH ISLANDS CHINABANK EAST WEST BANK METROBANK PBCOM PHIL NATL BANK PSBANK RCBC SECURITY BANK UNION BANK BRIGHT KINDLE COL FINANCIAL FERRONOUX HLDG IREMIT MANULIFE PHIL STOCK EXCH VANTAGE

43.5 105.5 81.95 25.15 9.52 43.65 21.05 28.5 56.9 17.6 115.1 74.9 1.39 3.9 3.02 1.42 980 155 0.92

43.65 105.6 82.85 25.2 9.54 43.9 21.4 28.6 59 17.64 115.5 74.95 1.44 3.93 3.15 1.54 994 156.4 1.04

43.4 105.9 81.95 25.15 9.52 43.8 21.65 28.35 57 17.64 115.5 74.9 1.4 3.92 3.02 1.42 990 155 0.95

43.6 105.9 83 25.15 9.81 44 21.65 28.65 59.2 17.64 115.9 74.95 1.43 3.93 3.02 1.42 990 155 0.95

43.4 103.5 81.1 25.05 9.51 43.55 21.5 28.1 56.75 17.6 114.8 74.75 1.39 3.9 3.02 1.42 980 153.2 0.95

43.5 105.6 82.85 25.15 9.52 43.9 21.5 28.5 59 17.6 115.1 74.9 1.39 3.93 3.02 1.42 980 155 0.95

3,600 1,197,950 812,670 493,500 23,000 1,798,000 5,600 2,216,500 2,170 2,900 792,780 15,050 45,000 67,000 22,000 4,000 20 30,610 2,000

156,660 125,530,304 66,788,581.50 12,407,175 219,554 78,647,790 120,450 62,823,660 125,211 51,152 91,376,141 1,126,964 63,100 262,020 66,440 5,680 19,700 4,715,449 1,900

-4,350 -20,993,233 -21,804,885.50 -37,154 -17,587,580 -22,789,075 8,550 -8,820 43,371,304 -574,478 -1,393,450 -

INDUSTRIAL AC ENERGY 7.04 7.05 7.3 7.3 7 7.05 25,228,300 178,460,226 1.31 1.32 1.32 1.32 1.31 1.32 421,000 553,300 ALSONS CONS ABOITIZ POWER 23 23.05 23 23.25 22.8 23.05 8,462,200 195,397,155 0.78 0.79 0.82 0.82 0.77 0.79 20,408,000 15,976,010 BASIC ENERGY 31.2 31.25 31.2 31.3 31.05 31.25 384,200 11,976,335 FIRST GEN FIRST PHIL HLDG 67.3 67.4 67.6 67.6 67.25 67.3 26,550 1,787,806 273 274.2 274.8 274.8 272.2 274.2 77,860 21,308,740 MERALCO 14.36 14.38 14.36 14.5 14.34 14.38 1,022,400 14,699,156 MANILA WATER PETRON 3.33 3.34 3.4 3.4 3.3 3.33 2,207,000 7,315,620 3.91 3.94 3.9 4 3.9 3.9 128,000 501,160 PETROENERGY 13.2 13.36 13.36 13.38 13.18 13.36 271,300 3,602,124 PHX PETROLEUM PILIPINAS SHELL 21.55 21.75 22 22 21.4 21.75 261,200 5,669,775 10.42 10.44 10.38 10.44 10.38 10.42 71,500 744,822 SPC POWER 14 14.2 14.96 14.96 14.2 14.2 2,300 32,816 VIVANT AGRINURTURE 6.6 6.7 6.68 6.78 6.55 6.7 2,320,200 15,485,142 2.87 2.88 2.86 2.94 2.84 2.87 667,000 1,919,080 AXELUM 12.92 13.1 12.92 13.1 12.92 12.92 6,300 81,972 CNTRL AZUCARERA CENTURY FOOD 22.5 22.75 21.9 22.8 21.7 22.5 5,020,500 112,080,620 12.44 12.5 13.04 13.06 12.18 12.44 659,100 8,273,320 DEL MONTE 7.6 7.65 7.7 7.85 7.57 7.6 2,063,500 15,780,406 DNL INDUS EMPERADOR 9.46 9.47 9.52 9.61 9.47 9.47 309,500 2,938,601 67.75 67.9 69 69 67.8 67.8 266,000 18,193,689 SMC FOODANDBEV 0.62 0.63 0.61 0.62 0.61 0.62 220,000 135,230 ALLIANCE SELECT FRUITAS HLDG 1.4 1.41 1.4 1.44 1.39 1.41 10,895,000 15,436,950 61 61.9 61 62 60 61 395,970 24,158,845 GINEBRA 170.4 171 175 175 170 170.4 1,156,800 198,691,943 JOLLIBEE LIBERTY FLOUR 28.8 29 28.8 29.95 28.8 29 10,500 307,010 5.82 5.85 5.86 5.97 5.83 5.85 165,600 968,598 MAXS GROUP MG HLDG 0.27 0.275 0.285 0.285 0.265 0.27 8,500,000 2,326,950 SHAKEYS PIZZA 7.91 7.93 7.46 8 7.42 7.93 1,319,100 10,208,490 1.02 1.03 1.02 1.04 1.02 1.03 582,000 596,020 ROXAS AND CO RFM CORP 4.66 4.69 4.68 4.68 4.65 4.66 312,000 1,459,890 ROXAS HLDG 1.46 1.53 1.53 1.53 1.53 1.53 3,000 4,590 0.132 0.134 0.133 0.134 0.132 0.134 2,870,000 380,080 SWIFT FOODS UNIV ROBINA 133 134 132 134 130.9 134 611,860 81,558,785 VITARICH 0.79 0.8 0.8 0.82 0.79 0.8 5,928,000 4,827,610 2.48 2.5 2.49 2.5 2.48 2.5 32,000 79,590 VICTORIAS CEMEX HLDG 1.17 1.18 1.18 1.18 1.16 1.17 1,399,000 1,634,930 DAVINCI CAPITAL 2.6 2.67 2.69 2.71 2.6 2.6 1,306,000 3,445,460 11.72 11.82 11.9 11.9 11.82 11.82 14,300 170,012 EAGLE CEMENT EEI CORP 6.91 6.98 6.9 7.05 6.9 6.91 43,100 297,655 HOLCIM 5.43 5.44 5.49 5.5 5.44 5.44 87,300 477,649 6.6 6.64 6.7 6.79 6.56 6.6 128,600 852,556 MEGAWIDE PHINMA 12.02 12.3 12 12.3 12 12.3 144,000 1,761,688 TKC METALS 1.08 1.09 1.07 1.1 1.07 1.08 410,000 440,510 2.13 2.14 2.29 2.29 2.1 2.13 6,437,000 13,945,170 VULCAN INDL CROWN ASIA 1.85 1.88 1.86 1.88 1.85 1.85 636,000 1,186,950 EUROMED 1.94 1.95 1.91 1.95 1.9 1.94 93,000 179,010 4.57 4.6 4.6 4.6 4.6 4.6 2,000 9,200 LMG CORP MABUHAY VINYL 4.57 4.68 4.54 4.68 4.54 4.68 4,000 18,440 22.3 22.9 22.3 22.3 22.3 22.3 100 2,230 CONCEPCION 4.24 4.25 4.09 4.27 4.07 4.25 19,932,000 83,654,630 GREENERGY INTEGRATED MICR 9.12 9.16 9.26 9.26 9.11 9.16 234,800 2,149,041 1.07 1.09 1.07 1.09 1.07 1.09 220,000 239,560 IONICS 1.28 1.32 1.34 1.34 1.32 1.32 9,000 11,970 SFA SEMICON CIRTEK HLDG 5.72 5.73 5.82 5.82 5.68 5.73 6,688,300 38,142,203

23,639,168 -112,395,135 52,930 -6,001,860 -1,507,936.00 -9,853,224 -7,707,152 -2,639,180 -13,200 1,324,100 1,496 -3,542,975 1,325,515 426,740 -8,400,283 -1,025,042 -13,910 -8,000 21,439,736.50 -78,983,251 199,128 40,250 -3,675,862 -42,840 -41,940 11,880 2,424,803 -15,800 10,340.00 348,280 -15,402 -13,865 -45,836 -145,369 -1,230,000 2,140 -1,045,190 183,280 4,600 2,750,030 -923,649 115,000

HOLDING & FRIMS ABACORE CAPITAL 1 1.01 1.05 1.05 1 1 12,280,000 12,450,520 7.05 7.38 7.4 7.4 7 7.38 1,000 7,154 ASIABEST GROUP AYALA CORP 727 730 740 740 720 727 209,540 152,329,035 35 35.5 35.9 35.9 34.8 35 541,200 18,977,350 ABOITIZ EQUITY 9.98 9.99 10.12 10.12 9.94 9.98 2,964,900 29,631,337 ALLIANCE GLOBAL AYALA LAND LOG 2.98 2.99 2.98 3.01 2.96 2.98 926,000 2,769,540 6.68 6.82 6.82 6.82 6.81 6.82 1,400 9,545 ANSCOR 0.76 0.77 0.8 0.8 0.75 0.77 3,461,000 2,664,990 ANGLO PHIL HLDG ATN HLDG A 0.69 0.7 0.69 0.69 0.68 0.69 505,000 346,560 4.92 4.96 5 5.08 4.92 4.92 1,445,700 7,166,833 COSCO CAPITAL 5.46 5.47 5.51 5.58 5.44 5.46 6,375,400 34,912,521 DMCI HLDG FILINVEST DEV 8.1 8.19 8.19 8.19 8.19 8.19 6,000 49,140 0.27 0.295 0.27 0.295 0.265 0.285 2,600,000 731,350 FORUM PACIFIC 514 528 527 528 512 528 158,710 82,637,450 GT CAPITAL JG SUMMIT 50.3 50.55 51.2 51.45 50.3 50.3 921,570 46,709,196 0.84 0.85 0.9 0.9 0.85 0.85 2,117,000 1,824,720 LODESTAR 3.16 3.32 3.2 3.2 3.2 3.2 15,000 48,000 LOPEZ HLDG LT GROUP 12.96 12.98 13 13.1 12.74 12.96 2,515,300 32,597,366 0.38 0.475 0.45 0.45 0.38 0.38 130,000 57,000 MABUHAY HLDG 3.64 3.69 3.82 3.83 3.64 3.64 35,383,000 130,842,080 METRO PAC INV PACIFICA HLDG 3.53 3.6 3.6 3.6 3.52 3.6 23,000 81,700 2.65 2.66 2.65 2.72 2.61 2.66 471,000 1,255,300 PRIME MEDIA 1.19 1.22 1.21 1.21 1.16 1.19 284,000 337,070 SOLID GROUP SYNERGY GRID 365 375 371.2 375 367 375 700 259,472 923 923.5 927 930 920 923.5 157,480 145,421,655 SM INVESTMENTS SAN MIGUEL CORP 116.7 117.2 117.5 117.6 116.6 117.2 57,530 6,741,418 SOC RESOURCES 0.66 0.68 0.7 0.71 0.66 0.66 430,000 289,600 129.2 132.7 129.5 132.7 129.2 132.7 1,360 176,240 TOP FRONTIER WELLEX INDUS 0.24 0.249 0.243 0.243 0.24 0.24 6,140,000 1,478,340 0.221 0.225 0.227 0.227 0.215 0.225 3,640,000 804,570 ZEUS HLDG

-1,915,560 1,360 -47,217,145 -13,791,000 -5,735,663.00 18,500 -3,241,906 -2,260,815 -16,966,365 -34,260,202.50 172,000 -13,521,282 -91,806,860 -31,980 -88,898,845 -4,631,108 -16,793.00 11,050

PROPERTY ARTHALAND CORP 0.64 0.65 0.63 0.66 0.63 0.64 353,000 225,760 31.95 32 32.25 32.3 31.9 31.95 13,182,900 422,728,490 AYALA LAND ARANETA PROP 1.21 1.29 1.21 1.21 1.18 1.18 16,000 19,110 34.55 34.6 34.15 34.85 34.1 34.55 1,474,500 50,990,425 AREIT RT 1.36 1.37 1.39 1.39 1.36 1.36 201,000 274,490 BELLE CORP A BROWN 0.93 0.94 0.93 0.94 0.92 0.93 1,377,000 1,276,160 0.9 0.92 0.94 0.94 0.89 0.9 432,000 390,570 CITYLAND DEVT 0.121 0.126 0.127 0.127 0.121 0.125 900,000 110,030 CROWN EQUITIES CEBU HLDG 6 6.44 5.95 6.54 5.95 6.48 5,400 34,844 5.72 5.73 5.79 5.79 5.72 5.73 173,800 997,869 CEB LANDMASTERS 0.4 0.405 0.39 0.415 0.385 0.4 19,300,000 7,821,850 CENTURY PROP CYBER BAY 0.315 0.32 0.32 0.32 0.32 0.32 270,000 86,400 12.38 12.4 12.5 12.62 12.26 12.4 734,900 9,115,016 DOUBLEDRAGON 1.95 1.96 2 2 1.95 1.95 12,266,000 24,059,390 DDMP RT DM WENCESLAO 6.77 6.78 6.72 6.78 6.71 6.78 21,900 148,225 0.27 0.275 0.275 0.28 0.27 0.27 1,700,000 461,150 EMPIRE EAST 0.171 0.172 0.181 0.184 0.171 0.172 14,780,000 2,597,200 EVER GOTESCO FILINVEST LAND 1.09 1.1 1.1 1.11 1.09 1.1 3,844,000 4,220,160 0.82 0.84 0.84 0.84 0.82 0.82 145,000 119,740 GLOBAL ESTATE 7.14 7.4 7.2 7.49 7.08 7.13 74,100 540,427 8990 HLDG PHIL INFRADEV 1.3 1.32 1.31 1.33 1.3 1.32 472,000 618,340 1.62 1.64 1.72 1.83 1.6 1.62 2,692,000 4,615,770 CITY AND LAND 2.82 2.84 2.98 2.99 2.82 2.82 73,262,000 211,119,360 MEGAWORLD MRC ALLIED 0.39 0.395 0.405 0.41 0.385 0.39 35,280,000 13,853,500 0.51 0.52 0.54 0.55 0.5 0.52 6,438,000 3,366,640 PHIL ESTATES PRIMEX CORP 3.44 3.45 3.42 3.45 3.13 3.45 7,633,000 25,176,190 ROBINSONS LAND 16.82 16.84 17.1 17.1 16.8 16.84 729,100 12,319,200 1.49 1.52 1.52 1.52 1.49 1.49 83,000 125,500 ROCKWELL SHANG PROP 2.59 2.65 2.61 2.61 2.59 2.59 61,000 158,510 2.31 2.32 2.35 2.35 2.32 2.32 39,000 90,630 STA LUCIA LAND 32.5 32.75 33.9 33.9 32.5 32.5 32,224,500 1,072,989,070 SM PRIME HLDG VISTAMALLS 3.72 3.85 3.73 3.89 3.73 3.83 3,000 11,450 1.46 1.49 1.54 1.54 1.44 1.49 660,000 987,290 SUNTRUST HOME 3.51 3.57 3.69 3.69 3.45 3.57 1,791,000 6,352,040 VISTA LAND

SERVICES ABS CBN 10.94 11 11.08 11.08 10.94 10.94 36,700 402,232 8.64 8.65 8.56 8.75 8.56 8.64 1,390,200 12,032,594 GMA NETWORK MANILA BULLETIN 0.45 0.46 0.45 0.45 0.45 0.45 140,000 63,000 1,829 1,832 1,865 1,865 1,810 1,829 57,890 105,863,795 GLOBE TELECOM 1,245 1,250 1,268 1,270 1,241 1,250 240,375 300,738,920 PLDT APOLLO GLOBAL 0.189 0.19 0.195 0.195 0.188 0.189 224,910,000 42,710,780 18.9 18.96 18.84 19.06 18.8 18.96 5,566,500 105,420,344 CONVERGE 4.19 4.2 4.35 4.44 4.2 4.2 4,540,000 19,492,860 DFNN INC DITO CME HLDG 9.16 9.17 9.5 9.7 9.16 9.16 12,390,600 115,677,709 1.55 1.58 1.58 1.58 1.58 1.58 14,000 22,120 IMPERIAL 2.21 2.28 2.26 2.3 2.19 2.28 124,000 275,550 JACKSTONES NOW CORP 2.5 2.51 2.56 2.56 2.5 2.5 3,028,000 7,682,850 0.395 0.4 0.4 0.405 0.39 0.395 3,510,000 1,389,100 TRANSPACIFIC BR 2.57 2.59 2.55 2.57 2.52 2.57 197,000 499,400 PHILWEB 2GO GROUP 8.2 8.29 8.23 8.25 8.2 8.2 36,000 295,821 15.22 15.76 15.9 15.9 15.76 15.76 900 14,286 ASIAN TERMINALS 2.87 2.95 2.96 2.97 2.86 2.95 726,000 2,108,240 CHELSEA CEBU AIR 48.15 48.2 48.2 48.45 48.1 48.15 239,700 11,557,680 138.5 138.6 139.8 140 138.4 138.6 1,678,010 233,372,388 INTL CONTAINER 16 16.8 16.6 17 16 16 1,500 24,488 LBC EXPRESS LORENZO SHIPPNG 0.96 1.03 0.96 1.03 0.96 1.03 9,000 8,710 4.56 4.57 4.74 4.8 4.56 4.57 946,000 4,363,310 MACROASIA 2.14 2.18 2.25 2.25 2.12 2.18 219,000 472,620 METROALLIANCE A PAL HLDG 5.81 5.86 5.9 5.9 5.81 5.86 19,400 113,677 1.3 1.31 1.29 1.32 1.2 1.31 910,000 1,135,930 HARBOR STAR ACESITE HOTEL 1.51 1.57 1.51 1.57 1.51 1.57 91,000 138,820 0.081 0.082 0.083 0.083 0.08 0.081 52,050,000 4,233,930 BOULEVARD HLDG 2.72 2.9 3.05 3.05 2.71 2.9 119,000 339,240 DISCOVERY WORLD WATERFRONT 0.51 0.52 0.53 0.54 0.51 0.52 2,441,000 1,267,490 CENTRO ESCOLAR 6.71 7.25 6.7 6.7 6.7 6.7 100 670 0.345 0.355 0.35 0.35 0.345 0.345 310,000 107,400 STI HLDG BERJAYA 4.8 4.85 4.8 4.8 4.8 4.8 10,000 48,000 6.01 6.1 6.15 6.15 6 6.1 3,206,600 19,453,958 BLOOMBERRY 2.08 2.15 2.19 2.19 2.08 2.15 8,000 17,000 PACIFIC ONLINE LEISURE AND RES 1.49 1.55 1.57 1.58 1.49 1.55 1,589,000 2,494,840 2.08 2.09 2.03 2.09 2.02 2.08 531,000 1,103,770 MANILA JOCKEY 1.91 1.93 1.93 1.95 1.87 1.93 3,095,000 5,923,580 PH RESORTS GRP PREMIUM LEISURE 0.39 0.395 0.395 0.395 0.39 0.395 1,700,000 669,650 PHIL RACING 5.9 6 5.9 5.9 5.9 5.9 2,000 11,800 7.05 7.3 7.4 7.4 7.03 7.3 318,700 2,283,758 ALLHOME METRO RETAIL 1.27 1.28 1.28 1.3 1.27 1.28 641,000 816,920 PUREGOLD 32.95 33 33.5 33.6 32.5 32.95 7,050,800 232,411,465 49.8 49.95 51.1 51.2 49.3 49.8 2,810,410 140,859,282.50 ROBINSONS RTL PHIL SEVEN CORP 110.5 111.4 110 111.5 110 110.5 309,470 34,215,135 SSI GROUP 1.18 1.19 1.17 1.19 1.17 1.18 402,000 471,160 17.7 17.94 18.1 18.18 17.6 17.7 397,900 7,082,298 WILCON DEPOT APC GROUP 0.37 0.38 0.37 0.37 0.365 0.37 920,000 337,950 EASYCALL 6.13 6.49 6.23 6.49 6.12 6.12 10,700 66,049 390 412.8 412.8 412.8 412.8 412.8 20 8,256 GOLDEN MV PAXYS 2.33 2.47 2.33 2.33 2.33 2.33 30,000 69,900 1.76 1.77 1.95 1.95 1.73 1.76 58,019,000 104,013,550 PRMIERE HORIZON 4.1 4.12 4.13 4.13 4.12 4.12 3,000 12,370 SBS PHIL CORP

-660 -60,218,600 -18,887,405 -9,730 9,070 -120,734 -97,700 -1,434,424 -201,350 -95,598 -398,700 1,820 -1,084,030 -26,935 -17,020 -154,560 -94,444,300 227,100 137,600 5,495,040 -4,007,658 -92,720 410,289,205 -533,630 -69,285,795 -53,778,340 -3,664,810 12,551,158 1,057,780 -1,878,932 -4,684,980.00 16,440 -38,090 2,309,870 -11,226,377 -616,910 13,140 39,280 97,580 -194,640 -10,201,670 -97,000 43,450 -791,097 2,540 -67,207,720 -46,702,512.50 43,849 -4,580 -363,702 -212,400 390,280 -

MINING & OIL ATOK 8.37 8.45 8.7 8.84 8.35 8.35 231,700 1,986,704 -163,181 APEX MINING 1.57 1.58 1.65 1.66 1.57 1.58 6,173,000 9,877,410 440,090 7.99 8.11 8.27 8.28 7.99 7.99 1,647,000 13,261,358 58,616.00 ATLAS MINING 2.9 3.11 2.98 3.11 2.98 3.11 44,000 131,250 BENGUET A COAL ASIA HLDG 0.315 0.335 0.325 0.34 0.32 0.34 1,110,000 364,000 2.85 2.88 2.88 2.88 2.78 2.88 24,000 68,550 48,890 CENTURY PEAK 6.84 7.13 7.14 7.14 6.85 7.14 4,800 32,953 DIZON MINES FERRONICKEL 2.49 2.5 2.59 2.59 2.47 2.49 2,188,000 5,462,440 551,980 0.34 0.345 0.36 0.36 0.34 0.345 1,610,000 554,150 77,900 GEOGRACE 0.17 0.171 0.18 0.18 0.169 0.17 186,100,000 32,182,500 LEPANTO A LEPANTO B 0.173 0.174 0.182 0.184 0.171 0.173 16,210,000 2,849,140 0.014 0.015 0.015 0.015 0.013 0.014 707,800,000 9,960,600 MANILA MINING A 0.014 0.015 0.015 0.015 0.015 0.015 99,700,000 1,495,500 MANILA MINING B MARCVENTURES 1.28 1.31 1.3 1.36 1.28 1.31 464,000 605,990 136,080 1.48 1.5 1.55 1.55 1.48 1.48 265,000 393,290 NIHAO 5.3 5.31 5.57 5.57 5.3 5.3 9,694,600 51,984,443 -8,904,522 NICKEL ASIA ORNTL PENINSULA 0.9 0.93 0.92 0.96 0.91 0.92 1,055,000 967,770 6.84 6.85 6.83 6.91 6.6 6.84 2,232,000 15,144,186 806,495 PX MINING 12.26 12.3 12.6 12.8 12.2 12.26 2,618,100 32,396,464 479,564 SEMIRARA MINING UNITED PARAGON 0.01 0.011 0.01 0.011 0.01 0.011 20,800,000 215,300 17 17.1 17 17.18 17 17 156,200 2,662,822 ACE ENEXOR 0.012 0.013 0.013 0.013 0.012 0.013 70,300,000 845,700 ORNTL PETROL A ORNTL PETROL B 0.013 0.014 0.014 0.014 0.013 0.013 1,532,000,000 21,242,900 39,000 0.012 0.013 0.012 0.013 0.011 0.012 92,400,000 1,101,600 PHILODRILL 7.08 7.1 7.1 7.19 7.1 7.1 335,100 2,390,978 956,761 PXP ENERGY

PREFFERED HOUSE PREF B 99.7 100.9 101 101 101 101 80 8,080 101.3 101.5 101.5 101.5 101.5 101.5 2,780 282,170 HOUSE PREF A AC PREF B1 515 532 532 532 532 532 1,500 798,000 101.2 102.7 102.5 102.5 102.5 102.5 500 51,250 ALCO PREF B 44.5 44.6 44.5 44.6 44.45 44.5 50,300 2,238,400 -436,000 CEB PREF DD PREF 100.5 101.4 101.4 101.4 101.4 101.4 350 35,490 504 507 505 507 505 505 6,380 3,222,660 GLO PREF P 985 1,020 1,020 1,020 1,020 1,020 10 10,200 GTCAP PREF A GTCAP PREF B 1,035 1,045 1,045 1,045 1,045 1,045 260 271,700 101.6 102 102 102 102 102 4,700 479,400 MWIDE PREF 101 101.8 101 101 101 101 2,560 258,560 MWIDE PREF 2B PNX PREF 3B 103 103.5 104 104 103.4 103.5 3,100 321,200 1,023 1,039 1,024 1,038 1,024 1,038 10 10,310 PCOR PREF 2B 1,095 1,098 1,119 1,119 1,020 1,095 81,840 85,355,100 PCOR PREF 3A PCOR PREF 3B 1,141 1,155 1,141 1,155 1,141 1,141 1,050 1,198,750 79.6 79.9 79.9 79.9 79.9 79.9 170 13,583 SMC PREF 2C 76.5 77 76.5 76.5 76.5 76.5 3,400 260,100 SMC PREF 2E SMC PREF 2F 78.75 79.2 78.95 79 78.8 78.8 47,930 3,779,995 77.8 78.25 77.4 78.25 77.4 78.25 22,410 1,741,982.50 SMC PREF 2H 78 78.5 78.5 78.5 78.5 78.5 230 18,055 SMC PREF 2I SMC PREF 2K 75.9 76.5 76.5 76.5 76.5 76.5 7,000 535,500 -

PHIL. DEPOSITARY RECEIPTS GMA HLDG PDR 8.05 8.13 8.09 8.25 8 8.13 309,800 2,491,785 -1,994,825

WARRANTS LR WARRANT 1.63 1.68 1.73 1.73 1.62 1.68 494,000 812,890 -350

SMALL & MEDIUM ENTERPRISES ALTUS PROP 17.42 17.88 17.52 17.88 17.42 17.88 32,500 569,614 284,106 2.31 2.39 2.36 2.47 2.3 2.39 321,000 747,240 -14,170 ITALPINAS KEPWEALTH 5.11 5.15 5.16 5.16 5.15 5.15 2,500 12,881 2.53 2.67 2.53 2.53 2.53 2.53 21,000 53,130 MAKATI FINANCE 4.65 4.66 4.83 4.88 4.55 4.66 7,751,000 36,249,790 76,480 MERRYMART

EXHANGE TRADE FUNDS

FIRST METRO ETF 94.8 95.05 96 97 94.8 94.8 55,940 5,327,171.50 500,228.50

www.businessmirror.com.ph

2GO wants to modernize fleet to upgrade sea travel

I

By Lorenz S. Marasigan

@lorenzmarasigan

NTEGRATED transport and logistics provider 2GO Group Inc. made a “significant investment” in acquiring its youngest roll-on/roll-off passenger vessel, unveiling the ship on late Wednesday.

Called MV 2GO Maligaya, the vessel will link Manila, Visayas, and Mindanao via its Manila-CebuCagayan de Oro operations. It can also carry as much as 40 percent more cargo capacity than 2GO’s

current fleet of vessels. According to 2GO CFO Will Howell, the acquisition of the new vessel is part of the company’s fleet modernization efforts to provide high speed and reliability in the movement of

essential goods nationwide, while at the same time upgrading sea travel onboard experience.

“The vessel is from Japan. Without going into the full details of the cost, what I can tell you is that 2GO has made a significant investment in the vessel primarily to modernize our fleet. This vessel helps us with our capabilities so we can provide that end-to-end supply chain to our end customers,” he said during a press briefing.

Howell added that this investment is part of 2GO’s strategy and plans even before the pandemic. The new vessel, he said, will provide 2GO an early lead in terms of picking up the demand once sea voyage returns to normal.

“The economy will recover this

year, and perhaps next year, the logistics and supply side as well,” he said.

2GO COO Waldo Basilla said the new vessel shows the company’s leadership in the industry.

“This is a manifestation of 2GO’s commitment in providing superior products and services to our customers. The new addition complements the broader service offerings of the other business units under the 2GO Group. As a major player in the industry, it is imperative for us to take the lead in product innovation and unparalleled service to keep in step with world-class standards,” he said.

MV 2GO Maligaya adds to the company’s current fleet of 10 ships, which serve 20 major ports of call in the Philippines. The ship is set to sail its maiden voyage this month.

Top execs back campaign to boost IPO listing

T

he Philippine Stock Exchange Inc. (PSE) will be conducting a roundtable discussion entitled The Road to IPO on May 25 at 2:00 p.m. Top executives of PSE-listed firms will talk about their successful initial public offering (IPO) journey and share with potential listing applicants the benefits their companies enjoy from being listed at PSE. This event, according to the PSE, aims to equip entrepreneurs and business owners with knowledge and insights on the process of going public from the perspective of those who have actually gone through it.

Key panelists participating in The Road to IPO roundtable discussion are SM Investments Corporation Chairman Jose T. Sio, Bank of Philippine Islands President and CEO Jose Teodoro K. Limcaoco, Puregold Price Club, Inc. Director and Cosco Capital, Inc. President Leonardo B. Dayao, and Wilcon Depot, Inc. President and CEO Lorraine BeloCincochan.

Government support for the growth of the capital market through more listings will be highlighted in the keynote mes-

sage of Finance Secretary Carlos B. Dominguez III and the welcome remarks of Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Emilio B. Aquino.

“What better way to embolden companies to conduct an IPO than to hear meaningful insights from those who have successfully gone through the IPO route, and continue to reap the benefits of being a listed company. Companies who are considering listing to raise funds will find a lot of value in attending this roundtable discussion,” PSE President and CEO Ramon S. Monzon said.

“Business founders must realize that an IPO is not the end, but actually a catalyst to propel their companies to a higher level of growth and maturity. We are opening more avenues for entrepreneurs to learn more about the process of going public, as well as introduce reforms in our listing requirements in order to encourage more businesses to consider capital raising through the stock market.”

Companies interested in joining The Road to IPO roundtable discussion may contact PSE’s Marketing Services Department through marketingservices@pse. com.ph for more information.

Villar Group extends vaccine drive to employees’ families

By VG Cabuag @villygc

B

usinessman Manuel B. Villar Jr. has assured the company’s employees that Covid-19 vaccines the company ordered from Moderna and Oxford-AstraZeneca for its workforce would also be accessible to their families and household.

“All of us must contribute to revive the economy, and one way of doing that is by making sure we can vaccinate our workforce as fast as possible. The vaccination program will help us reopen the economy and allow us to support recovery efforts so we can get through the challenges of this pandemic,” said Villar, who sits as chairman in most of the group’s businesses.

The group recently held a webinar for its employees on the company’s vaccination initiative, which includes the conduct of a massive information campaign in gearing up for the vaccination of its employees.

Manuel Paolo Villar, president and CEO of listed firm Vista Land

and Lifescapes Inc., said the group continues to be proactive in engaging their employees through various programs that ensure the health and safety of its employees.

He reiterated the importance of getting vaccine information from real experts in the field.

“The health and safety of our employees has always been our top priority. We have been working hard to create a healthy and safe workplace for our employees and clients, and we hope to prepare everyone to get vaccinated,” he said.

“In the Villar Group we are one family and in a family we prioritize each other’s welfare and safety. Safety is our shared responsibility, and I look forward to the day when we can be back to doing our normal activities again,” AllValue Corp. President and CEO Camille Villar said.

Attendees of the webinar were from various companies of the Villar Group in real estate development, mall, retail, and other key industries in the Philippines. It currently operates in 49 provinces and 147 cities and municipalities across the country.

mutual funds

May 12, 2021

NAV One Year Three Year Five Year

per share

Return*

Y-T-D Return

Stock Funds ALFM Growth Fund, Inc. -a

204.28

8.98%

-7.67%

-4.57%

-10.1%

ATRAM Alpha Opportunity Fund, Inc. -a

1.2561

28.23%

-6.64%

0.5%

-4.33%

10.62%

-12.14%

-6.96%

-10.64%

-7.69% n.a.

-10.46%

ATRAM Philippine Equity Opportunity Fund, Inc. -a 2.7995

Climbs Share Capital Equity Investment Fund Corp. -a 0.7198 9.94% First Metro Consumer Fund on MSCI Phils. IMI, Inc. -a 0.6747 -0.47% First Metro Save and Learn Equity Fund,Inc. -a 4.5062

10.76%

First Metro Save and Learn Philippine Index Fund, Inc. -a,4 0.6422

-7.1% n.a.

-9.02%

-5.54%

-3.37%

-8.81%

1.65%

-9.5%

-8.21%

MBG Equity Investment Fund, Inc. -a

94.11

24.16%

-6.36% n.a.

-7.68%

PAMI Equity Index Fund, Inc. -a

41.7005

11.53%

-5.98%

-3.48%

-10.99%

Philam Strategic Growth Fund, Inc. -a

439.36

8.93%

-5.95%

-3.82%

-10.15%

Philequity Alpha One Fund, Inc. -a,d,5

1.0117

Philequity Dividend Yield Fund, Inc. -a

1.081

Philequity Fund, Inc. -a

31.4386

17.53% n.a. n.a.

-7.8%

12.56%

-5.03%

-2.64%

-7.46%

11.5%

-5.33%

-2.39%

-9.58%

9.08% n.a. n.a.

-11.07%

Philequity MSCI Philippine Index Fund, Inc. -a

0.8119

Philequity PSE Index Fund Inc. -a

4.2733

12.21%

-5.35%

-2.71%

-10.81%

Philippine Stock Index Fund Corp. -a

714.67

12.26%

-5.27%

-2.85%

-10.85%

Soldivo Strategic Growth Fund, Inc. -a

0.6504

10.11%

-9.52%

-6.08%

-9.53%

Sun Life Prosperity Philippine Equity Fund, Inc. -a 3.2546

8.39%

-7.41%

-4.17%

-10.19%

Sun Life Prosperity Philippine Stock Index Fund, Inc. -a 0.8161 11.7%

-5.63%

-3%

-11.07%

United Fund, Inc. -a

-5.26%

-1.63%

-9.03%

-5.09%

-2.22%

3.0193

9.96%

-15.48%

Exchange Traded Fund First Metro Phil. Equity Exchange Traded Fund, Inc. -a,c

95.883

12.29%

-10.85%

Primarily invested in foreign currency securities $1.2521

39.08%

4.66%

8.95%

4.09%

Sun Life Prosperity World Voyager Fund, Inc. -a $1.7419

ATRAM AsiaPlus Equity Fund, Inc. -b

37.8%

10.6%

11.86%

4.13%

-2.86%

Balanced Funds Primarily invested in Peso securities ATRAM Dynamic Allocation Fund, Inc. -a

1.6208

8.31%

-1.55%

-1.75%

ATRAM Philippine Balanced Fund, Inc. -a

2.1252

8.06%

-2.54%

-1.29%

-7.01%

First Metro Save and Learn Balanced Fund Inc. -a 2.4777

6.11%

-1.49%

-1.6%

-5.68%

First Metro Save and Learn F.O.C.C.U.S. Dynamic Fund, Inc. -a,1 0.1855

0.71% n.a. n.a.

NCM Mutual Fund of the Phils., Inc. -a

0.38%

0.18%

1.8765

4.8%

PAMI Horizon Fund, Inc. -a

3.5079

5.22%

-1.15%

-1.13%

-7.4%

Philam Fund, Inc. -a

15.7202

5.5%

-1.04%

-1.13%

-7.18%

Solidaritas Fund, Inc. -a

1.9652

6.39%

-1.95%

-1%

-6.16%

Sun Life of Canada Prosperity Balanced Fund, Inc. -a 3.3326 6.01%

-3.24%

-2.24%

-6.73%

Sun Life Prosperity Achiever Fund 2028, Inc. -a,d 0.9504

5.62% n.a. n.a.

-7.06%

Sun Life Prosperity Achiever Fund 2038, Inc. -a,d 0.8502

6.84% n.a. n.a.

-10.43%

Sun Life Prosperity Achiever Fund 2048, Inc. -a,d 0.8323

7.87% n.a. n.a.

-10.8%

Sun Life Prosperity Dynamic Fund, Inc. -a

5.17%

-7.84%

0.8181

-4.45%

-2.91%

-6.6%

-4.46%

Primarily invested in foreign currency securities Cocolife Dollar Fund Builder, Inc. -a

$0.03806

0.34%

3.1%

1.32%

-2.71%

PAMI Asia Balanced Fund, Inc. -b

$1.147

23.15%

3.07%

5.62%

-0.28%

Sun Life Prosperity Dollar Advantage Fund, Inc. -a $4.6505 28.24%

8.32%

8.46%

3.05%

Sun Life Prosperity Dollar Wellspring Fund, Inc. -a,3 $1.2045 15.23%

4.65%

4.81%

0.2%

-0.01%

Bond Funds Primarily invested in Peso securities ALFM Peso Bond Fund, Inc. -a

371.02

2.2%

3.13%

2.53%

ATRAM Corporate Bond Fund, Inc. -a

1.9129

-0.92%

0.91%

0.16%

0.66%

Cocolife Fixed Income Fund, Inc. -

3.2238

1.6%

3.91%

4.42%

0.28%

Ekklesia Mutual Fund Inc. -a

2.2607

-0.72%

2.31%

1.6%

-1.54%

First Metro Save and Learn Fixed Income Fund,Inc. -a 2.4334 0.47%

3.17%

1.76%

-0.81% -3.31%

Philam Bond Fund, Inc. -a Philam Managed Income Fund, Inc. -a,6 1.3228

4.4814

-0.75%

4%

1.82%

3.11%

4.31%

2.77%

0.12%

Philequity Peso Bond Fund, Inc. -a

3.9692

2.4%

4.43%

2.56%

-0.8%

Soldivo Bond Fund, Inc. -a

1.0283

0.81%

4.12%

1.78%

-1.31%

Sun Life of Canada Prosperity Bond Fund, Inc. -a 3.1918

2.15%

5.18%

2.8%

-0.44%

Sun Life Prosperity GS Fund, Inc. -a 1.7412

4.48%

2.13%

-0.79%

0.85%

Primarily invested in foreign currency securities ALFM Dollar Bond Fund, Inc. -a

$484.13

3.27%

3.13%

2.32%

0.05%

ALFM Euro Bond Fund, Inc. -a

Є219.88

2.66%

1.1%

1.19%

0.32%

ATRAM Total Return Dollar Bond Fund, Inc. -b $1.1762

-1.8%

1.88%

1.1%

-8.14%

First Metro Save and Learn Dollar Bond Fund, Inc. -a $0.0259 0.78%

1.59%

0.87%

-2.63%

PAMI Global Bond Fund, Inc -b

$1.0534

-0.16%

0.74%

-0.62%

-3.6%

Philam Dollar Bond Fund, Inc. -a

$2.4862

3.67%

5.04%

2.12%

-1.95%

Philequity Dollar Income Fund Inc. -a

$0.0627601

5.27%

3.55%

2.21%

0.71%

Sun Life Prosperity Dollar Abundance Fund, Inc. -a $3.1425 -0.16%

2.81%

0.95%

-2.52%

Money Market Funds Primarily invested in Peso securities ALFM Money Market Fund, Inc. -a

2.52%

0.18%

First Metro Save and Learn Money Market Fund, Inc. -a 1.0512 1.28% n.a. n.a.

130.05

0.3%

2.57%

0.5%

Sun Life Prosperity Money Market Fund, Inc. -a 1.3031

2.03% 1.92%

3.12% 2.89%

Primarily invested in foreign currency securities Sun Life Prosperity Dollar Starter Fund, Inc. -a $1.0567

1.42%

1.72% n.a.

0.41%

Feeder Funds Primarily invested in Peso securities Sun Life Prosperity World Equity Index Feeder Fund, Inc. -a,d,7 1.2363 n.a. n.a. n.a.

9.45%

Primarily invested in foreign currency securities ALFM Global Multi-Asset Income Fund Inc. -b,d,2

$1

11.11% n.a. n.a.

2.04%

a - NAVPS as of the previous banking day. b - NAVPS as of two banking days ago. c - Listed in the PSE. d - in Net Asset Value per Unit (NAVPU).

1 - Launch date is September 28, 2019. 2 - Launch date is November 15, 2019. 3 - Adjusted due to stock dividend issuance last October 9, 2019.

4 - Renaming was approved by the SEC last October 12, 2018 (formerly, One Wealthy Nation Fund, Inc.). 5 - Launch date is December 09, 2019.

6 - Re-classified into a Bond Fund starting February 21, 2020 (Formerly a Money Market Fund). 7 - Launch date is July 6, 2020.

"While we endeavor to keep the information accurate, the Philippine Investment Funds Association (PIFA) and its members make no warranties as to the correctness of the newspaper’s publication and assume no liability or responsibility for any error or omissions. You may visit http://www. pifa.com.ph to see the latest NAVPS/NAVPU."

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Banking&Finance

Relief for domestic air carriers sought by bill

By Jovee Marie N. dela Cruz @joveemarie

A

bill providing relief for the country’s domestic air carriers is being pushed by Rep. Sharon S. Garin of the AAMBISOWA Party-list.

According to Garin, the Philippine air transport sector faces an “existential threat” after the lockdown measures to stem the spread of Covid-19 has shut down commercial air travel.

The lawmaker cited the warning by the Center for Asia Pacific Aviation that most airlines will go bankrupt as passenger planes remained still on tarmacs around the world.

Because of this, Garin filed last Wednesday House Bill 9324 or the proposed Air Carriers Relief Act to provide economic relief for the air transport sector by extending loan payments, interest-free loans, loan guarantees and regulatory reliefs.

As prescribed in the bill, a “domestic air carrier” is a company duly organized and existing under Philippine laws with a legislative franchise or a certificate of public convenience and necessity from the Civil Aeronautics Board and an air operator certificate from the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines.

A total amount of P40 billion shall be appropriated for the following interventions: interest-free loans from the Development Bank of the Philippines, Philippine Guarantee Corp.

Special Guarantee Fund, regulatory fees and mandatory rapid testing.

The bill also highlights the proposed temporary relief from payment of excise taxes on purchases of fuel by Philippine air carriers for a period of two years.

With major carriers acknowledging huge losses due to prolonged lockdowns and mobility restrictions, Garin acknowledged the vital role of the Philippine air transport sector in the economy and warned that its members are facing an “existential threat.”

“Despite the debilitating effects of the lockdown to its operations, airline companies continue to support the nation in its recovery by continuing to fly our displaced overseas Filipino workers and assist in the delivery of medical equipment to key cities, including logistics support of the vaccine roll-out,” Garin said.

As the major facilitator of the flow of goods, investments, and people, Garin said that any economic recovery package can never be considered as economic stimulus without reliefs granted to the air transport sector.

With the catastrophic impact of Covid-19 on aviation industry, Garin also said airlines in different jurisdiction are already talking, issuing and releasing relief packages like the Australian Federal Government, New Zealand, India, Canada and US. “It is time for the true Bayanihan to recover and arise as one by extending assistance that our government can to support and help rebuild the air transport sector,” she said.

Associations as legacy makers

M

ANY things have happened since I first wrote here about legacy in the context of associations (“Legacy of Associations,” March 14, 2018). For one, the pandemic has put a stop on travel and business events, e.g., conferences and congresses, which are important activities that associations offer to their members. On the other hand, it gave momentum for associations to plan long term and think deeply on the impact these events provide, not only to members, but also to the destination.

Such is the case on the concept of associations as “legacy makers” brought to life in a webinar on themed, “How to Create Legacy with your Events” that my organization, the Philippine Council of Associations and Association Executives (PCAAE), recently conducted jointly with the Brussels-based Visit Flanders Convention Bureau (Visit Flanders).

Presenters Gemmeke de Jongh and Sam Versele, International Association Expert and Ambassador Relations Manager of Visit Flanders, respectively, made the case that legacy benefits people, society, and the destination in the long term.

Legacy, as they defined it and explained below, is something that “lives on” and what an association “leaves behind” long after its event has ended. It can be something small or large that brings about long-lasting physical, socio-economic, or cultural change. n The “Why”—Events are not the end goal but a means to an end. They are catalysts for change and have a far-reaching positive impact. Legacy demonstrates the social value of associations and their events. Associations need not think only of more events but doing better ones. n “For W hom and With Whom”—The event’s legacy is meant for member-attendees, residents of the destination (students, professionals, scientists, entrepreneurs), as well as organizations (businesses, non-profits, public sector) and places surrounding the venue. n The “How”—The four guiding principles include: (a) creating a positive impact in the long term at the policy level, at the association,

Association World Octavio Peralta member and community levels, and at the level of the organization of the event itself; (b) focusing on the participants, the local residents, the entrepreneurs, and the place of the event; (c) undertaking co-creation opportunities, i.e., working with various actors, e.g., local authorities, businesses, and academics; and (d) monitoring for improvement such as sharing lessons learned and enhancing efforts to do better.

So how can an association start its legacy-making journey? The roadmap can consist of: 1. Exploration—Think of the potential legacy project that your association can develop as well as harness all the support you can muster to start it.

2. Preparation—You need one to two years to develop and organize your event—i.e., determining its theme and objectives, setting up partnerships and embedding your event in the destination’s community.

3. Organization—You work on the details of the event—e.g., approach, program, catering, and location 4. Embedding—You have to follow up on this from six months to a few years after your event.

Legacy initiatives demonstrate that associations not only provide services to members but also benefits to a wider community. In turn, they contribute to a destination’s socioeconomic development.

The column contributor, Octavio ‘Bobby’ Peralta, is concurrently the secretary-general of the Association of Development Financing Institutions in Asia and the Pacific, Founder & CEO of the Philippine Council of Associations and Association Executives and President of the Asia-Pacific Federation of Association Organizations. The purpose of PCAAE— the “association of associations”—is to advance the association management profession and to make associations well-governed and sustainable.

PCAAE enjoys the support of Adfiap, the Tourism Promotions Board, and the Philippine International Convention Center. E-mail: obp@adfiap.org.

BusinessMirror

Friday, May 14, 2021

B3

Fitch Solutions warns PHL GDP faces cut in re-forecast

F

By Bianca Cuaresma

@BcuaresmaBM

ITCH Solutions warned on Thursday that the Philippines may be facing another cut in its growth forecast should Covid-19 cases continue to be uncontrolled in the coming months.

In a research note published on Wednesday, the international think tank warned of further cuts in its growth forecast and changes in their monetary policy projection if cases continue to be elevated in the country.

“We will be watching the Philippines’ Covid-19 containment efforts and vaccination programme. If the country continues to struggle with

the outbreak we could revise our economic growth outlook lower and with it, our outlook for policy hikes in 2022,” Fitch Solutions said.

The think tank, which is the research arm of the Fitch Group, has already revised the country’s growth forecast twice this year, due largely to worse than expected control of the virus.

The second cut was made just

Bank repeats warning on baring online data

B

DO Unibank again warned its clients against sharing information online as these can be used by scammers to access their online banking accounts and make new ones under their names.

“Scammers lurk online to steal personal information, which they use to access online bank accounts and steal money. They can also use it to open new bank accounts,” a statement by BDO said.

The bank noted that last year, Filipinos logged in four hours and 15 minutes on social media every day.

This record not only breaches its average of three hours and 53 minutes in 2019, but also the global average of two hours and 25 minutes in 2020, according to the bank.

The bank instructs its clients to review their profiles and reconsider sharing their full name, birthday, education background, employment, and other personal information.

“Choose the people who can see your posts. Social media platforms have privacy settings you can adjust to filter what others can see,” BDO’s statement said.

The bank also asked its clients to just add people on social media

that they actually know, especially if you’re sharing personal moments like birthday celebrations, family photos, or professional achievements.

The Philippines remains the world’s social media capital, ranking at number one for the 6th straight year in the annual report by research agencies Hootsuite and We Are Social, which tracks global social media and internet usage.

Local banks’ confidence in handling cyber financial threats slightly declined in 2020 as digital payments surged in the midst of lockdowns and movement restrictions to curb the pandemic.

A Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) survey earlier this year showed that only 58.3 percent of banks are ‘prepared’ to handle and manage cyberthreats. This is lower from 59.7 percent of banks that indicated preparedness to handle and manage cyberthreats in end-December 2019.

The top six cybersecurity threats that concern banks include cyberattacks - or attacks that aim to disrupt the banks system, steal money and steal their IP Address, direct hacking, malware, fraud, phishing and insider attacks.

this week, revising its forecast down to 5.3 percent from the earlier 5.8 percent.

On Thursday, the Department of Health (DOH) reported 6,385 new cases, bringing the country’s total number of Covid positive cases at 1,124,724.

Fitch Solutions also said there are downside risks to their forecast of three 25 basis point rate hikes in 2022, given the country’s “continued struggles with managing the Covid-19 pandemic.”

“The surge in new Covid-19 cases and the lockdown measures implemented since late-March and through to May will weigh substantially on domestic demand and threaten the longer-term outlook for the economy, given lost income, prolonged business disruptions and unemployment,” Fitch Solutions said.

“We highlight weak credit growth as a signal that monetary policy may need to remain accommodative over

an extended period of time,” it added.

The think tank also said that if the weak credit data continues through 2021, monetary policy conditions may have to be eased further.

Just this week, the think tank already said the renewed lockdowns to curb this will weigh substantially on economic activity in the second quarter of the year and that the retightening of travel, movement and operation in key cities in the country proves that it is “highly unlikely” that the economy will improve in the next quarter.

“We at Fitch Solutions believe the Philippines economy will continue to struggle amid its difficulties controlling the spread of Covid-19 and normalizing economic activity. The Philippines has been battling a rampant third wave of Covid-19 cases, which looks set to delay the economic recovery further,” the think tank said in a research note published on Wednesday.

Fee-based income pulls up PNB’s income in Q1

T

HE Philippine National Bank (PNB) reported higher net profit in the first three months of the year, owing largely to its fee-based income for the period.

In a disclosure, the bank said it recorded a net income of P1.8 billion, 34 percent higher than the P1.3 billion net income in the same period last year.

Broken down, the bank’s service fees and commission income increased by 300 million or 34.6 percent to P1.3 billion for the three months of the year from P961.5 million last year. The bank attributed this to higher credit card-related fees and underwriting fees.

Its net interest income, meanwhile, amounted to P8.2 billion, lower by 6.7 percent compared to the same period last year.

The bank’s total interest income decreased by 17.3 percent to P10.4 billion from P12.6 billion in the first quarter last year. PNB said this is due to lower yields on loans and receivables, trading and investment securities and interbank receivables.

Its total interest expense de-

creased to P2.1 billion from P3.7 billion for the same period last year primarily due to reduction in levels of high-cost deposits as compared to the same period last year.

The bank also reported a capital adequacy ratio of 14.77 percent, higher than the 14.72 percent CAR level of the bank in the first quarter of 2020. It is also above the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’s minimum requirement of a 10 percent CAR for banks.

Its Tier-1 ratio also improved at 14.11 percent in the first quarter of the year, from the 13.8 percent seen in the same period in 2020.

Just last month, the bank announced its issuance of property dividends to its stockholders. The bank said its board approved the declaration of shares of PNB Holdings Corp. as property dividends effective May 18 this year.

Property dividends occur when a company declares and distributes assets other than cash, such as shares of stocks in a company’s subsidiary or affiliate or tangible products of the company.

Bianca Cuaresma

Musk sends Bitcoin tumbling with u-turn on payments

T

ESLA Inc.’s CEO Elon Musk said the electric-vehicle manufacturer is suspending purchases using Bitcoin, triggering a slide in the digital currency.

In a post on Twitter last Wednesday, Musk cited concerns about “rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions,” while signaling that Tesla might accept other cryptocurrencies if they are much less energy intensive. He also said the company won’t be selling any of the Bitcoin it holds.

The largest cryptocurrency dropped as much as 15 percent to just above $46,000, before paring some of the retreat. It was down about 6 percent to $51,210 as of 7:03 a.m. in London last Thursday.

Other tokens such Ether and Dogecoin also slid.

The rush to sell briefly caused outages at some cryptocurrency exchanges. Bitcoin is still up more than fivefold in the past year.

Musk’s move comes after Tesla disclosed in February that it had purchased $1.5 billion in Bitcoin and planned to accept it as a payment. That announcement added legitimacy to the cryptocurrency as an increasingly acceptable form of payment and an investment, especially coming from a large member of the S&P 500 with a high-profile CEO who commands a big following among retail investors and the general public.

Tesla’s web site, which had a support page dedicated to Bitcoin, noted that the token was the only cryptocurrency that Tesla accepts in the continental US. Musk has also tweeted frequently about Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency started as a joke in 2013—and he quipped about being the

Cathie Wood’s Ark Investment Management LLC published a report last month saying cryptocurrency mining can drive investment in solar power and make more renewable energy available to the grid. Twitter Inc.’s Jack Dorsey retweeted a post on the white paper with the comment that Bitcoin “incentivizes renewable energy.” Musk replied to Dorsey’s tweet, saying simply, “True.”

MUSK BLOOMBERG

“Dogefather” before and during his stint hosting the “Saturday Night Live” show on May 8.

He tweeted on Tuesday, “Do you want Tesla to accept Doge?”

Tesla’s addition of Bitcoin to its balance sheet was the most visible catalyst during this year’s rally in the digital currency. Bitcoin jumped 16 percent that day, the biggest one-day gain since the Covid-19 induced financial markets volatility in March 2020.

Optimism grew after Mastercard Inc., Bank of New York Mellon Corp. and other firms moved to make it easier for customers to use or invest in cryptocurrencies, fueling the mainstream resurgence that took Bitcoin from about $29,000 at the end of last year to as high as almost $65,000 in April.

Bitcoin mining is consuming 66 times more electricity than it did back in late 2015, and the carbon emissions associated with it will likely face increasing scrutiny, according to a recent Citigroup Inc. report.

Musk is no stranger to considering the issue of crypto’s environmental impact.

‘Confusing’

MUSK’S tweet last Wednesday took many in the cryptocurrency community by surprise, including Nic Carter, founding partner at Castle Island Ventures, and a leading voice among defenders of Bitcoin’s energy use.

“Surely he would have done his diligence prior to accepting Bitcoin?” Carter said. “Very odd and confusing to see this quick reversal.”

It’s unclear what prompted the decision and Musk and Zachary Kirkhorn, Tesla’s chief financial officer, didn’t immediately respond to an email inquiry for comment. Kirkhorn in March added the tongue-in-cheek title “Master of Coin,” according to a regulatory filing.

Tesla’s first-quarter earnings were bolstered by the sale of 10 percent of its Bitcoin holdings.

Musk said last month the disposal was intended to demonstrate the token’s liquidity, and added that he’s retained his personal investment in the cryptocurrency.

Kirkhorn said on the firm’s earnings call in late April that Tesla believed in Bitcoin’s long-term value and planned to accumulate the tokens from transactions with customers. Bloomberg News

B4

Friday, May 14, 2021 • Editor: Gerard S. Ramos

Relationships BusinessMirror

Do people become more religious in times of crisis?

PHOTO BY BEN WHITE ON UNSPLASH

By Danielle Tumminio Hansen Seminary of the Southwest

O

rganized religion has been on the decline for decades in the United States.

However, during the Covid-19 pandemic, researchers found that online searches for the word “prayer” soared to their highest level ever in over 90 countries. And a 2020 Pew Research study showed that 24 percent of US adults stated their faith had become stronger during the pandemic.

I am a theologian who studies trauma and this shift makes sense to me. I often teach that traumatic events are, at their heart, crises of meaning that cause people to question assumptions about their lives, including their spiritual beliefs. The years 2020 and 2021 certainly fit that bill: The global Covid-19 pandemic has indeed led to traumatic experiences for many people, due to the isolation, illness, fear and death that it created.

QUESTIONING BELIEFS People who experience traumas tend to question some of the assumptions they might have had about their faith—what pastoral theologian Carrie Doehring calls “embedded beliefs.” These beliefs may include ideas about who God is, the purpose of life, or why evil events happen to good people.

So, for instance, many Christians may inherit an embedded belief from the tradition that God is all good and that evil emerges when God “rightly” punishes people for their sins. In other words, an all-good God would not punish someone without a reason.

Christians raised with that assumption might ask what made them incur God’s wrath if they contracted Covid-19. In such an event, the embedded belief in a punishing God may become something called a negative coping strategy—a coping strategy that has negative effects on a person’s life.

Here’s what this might look like practically: If a person believes they’re being punished by God, they may feel shame or despair. If they feel God is punishing them for no reason, they may feel confusion or try to identify something that is problematic or sinful about their identity. As a result, their faith becomes something that is a source of stress or cognitive dissonance rather than a source of comfort. If that happens, then the belief is functioning as a negative coping strategy that the person needs to address.

TRAUMA AND RELIGIOSITY Mental-health experts like Judith Herman have known for several decades that healing from trauma involves making meaning of the traumatic event.

Traumatic events are often confusing for people because they don’t make much sense. In other words, traumas differ from the expectations of everyday life, and as a result, they seem to defy meaning or purpose.

Spiritually, individuals may begin to recognize that some of their beliefs got challenged by the trauma. This is the time when spiritual meaningmaking occurs because people start to discern which embedded beliefs still make sense and which need to be revised.

During this stage of recovery, theologian and trauma expert Shelly Rambo explains that traumatized individuals may draw on prayers, personal reflections, rituals and conversations with spiritual experts such as chaplains, ministers and spiritual directors. These have been shown to function as positive coping mechanisms that help individuals feel more grounded in the aftermath of a trauma.

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Today’s Horoscope

By Eugenia Last

z

CELEBRITIES BORN ON THIS DAY: Miranda Cosgrove, 28; Cate Blanchett, 52; Tim Roth, 60; George Lucas, 77.

Happy Birthday: It’s important to look at all sides of a situation, but don’t miss out because you can’t make up your mind. Take action this year, and you will make headway. Set goals, remember budgets and have expectations in mind, and you will find it easier to move forward with clarity and cause. Pay close attention to contracts, documents and expirations. Your numbers are 6, 13, 23, 27, 31, 33, 44.

a

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Align yourself with people who have your back, share your beliefs and bring out the best in you. Put personal growth, physical fitness and meaningful relationships on your priority list. Romance will improve your personal life. Choose harmony over discord. HHHH

b

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Take better care of your finances. Don’t spend money lavishly when saving for a rainy day will ease stress.

Commit to taking care of your responsibilities and to making your position and intentions clear to the people you care about most. HHH

c

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Keep your facts straight. If you make a mistake, you will be held accountable. Pay attention to detail, and live within your means. Taking a chance on someone or something will backfire. HHH

d

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Mull over the good and bad of a situation before you get involved. Take a pass if someone pressures you for money. Consider what’s important to you, and contemplate the contribution that has the best impact.

Make realistic promises. HHH

e

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Your involvement in something you feel passionate about will connect you to like-minded people. Share ideas, concerns and remedies, and you will come up with a doable plan. Romance will enhance your life and encourage more stability. HHHH

f

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Someone will offer misleading information. Check facts, ask questions and don’t buy into someone’s plan.

If you want to make a difference, do something that will benefit you as well as those you care about most. HH

Over time, these resources help individuals develop more intentional beliefs, meaning consciously chosen beliefs that take their suffering into account. These might include reasons why the suffering occurred and what its significance is for the overall meaning of the person’s life. Doehring refers to these as deliberative, or consciously chosen, beliefs.

Individuals have a sense of commitment to these beliefs because they make sense in light of the trauma.

So in the hypothetical case of someone who believes God is punishing them for contracting Covid-19, that feeling of shame and despair may result from a failure to understand why God would treat them that way. These negative feelings would then function as negative coping mechanisms that prevent healing, as psychologist Kenneth Pargament and his colleagues have observed about similar situations where people felt God was punishing them.

The person might then try to alleviate their distress by questioning the assumption that God punishes people with illness, thereby starting a kind of spiritual quest or reassessment of beliefs. They may even start to think differently about God being a punishing deity. The shift between what the person assumed about God and this new, consciously chosen belief, is an example of the shift between embedded and deliberative beliefs.

TRAUMA AND ATHEISM Some people may argue that suffering logically ought to turn people into atheists. After all, the horror of something like the Covid-19 pandemic could easily make someone question how it would be possible for any deity to allow such horrors.

It would make far more sense to reason that creation is random, chaotic and determined only by some combination of the forces of nature and human decisions. The agnostic philosopher Bertrand Russell crafted such a proposal when he argued that Christians should accompany him to a children’s hospital unit because they would inevitably stop believing in God once they saw such profound suffering.

The way humans experience suffering spiritually, however, may not necessarily lead to atheism or agnosticism. Indeed, research from experts who study the intersection of psychology and religion— including psychologists of religion and pastoral theologians—has found that events that could be labeled as traumatic do not necessarily destroy faith.

Indeed, they can also strengthen it because faithbased beliefs and practices can help individuals make sense of their life’s story. In other words, trauma challenges so many assumptions about who we are, what our purpose is, and how to make sense of a traumatic event. Faith-based beliefs and practices offer meaningful resources to help navigate those questions.

This is why spiritual beliefs and practices across various religions can often lead to faith strengthening rather than weakening, following a trauma.

So even though people may have had limited access to buildings like churches or synagogues during the pandemic, they still had access to spiritual resources that can help them navigate traumatic events. This may explain data showing that some individuals are stating their faith is stronger than it was prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. THE CONVERSATION

g

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Put your time and energy into something that will enhance your awareness, qualifications and popularity. Use your charm, reach out to people of influence and share your insight into trends. Hard work will pay off. HHHHH

h

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Don’t consider an offer if you can’t afford to participate. Listen, then use the information you receive to formulate a plan that works well for you and is within your budget. Change begins with you, and your happiness is your responsibility. HHH

i

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Take a serious look at your relationships with others and determine who is good for you and who isn’t. Say no to people promoting indulgence, and gravitate toward those who bring out the best in you.

Make your intentions clear. HHH

j

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Take a moment to recap what’s happened, and it will be easier to bring about positive lifestyle changes that will encourage better health and less stress. Use your ingenuity, and you’ll come up with a way to bring in extra cash. HHH

k

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Do something special for someone you love. Discuss your ideas and positive suggestions; help will be yours. Avoid excessive consumption, and put more effort into fitness, health and being productive.

Romance is favored and will enhance your life. HHHHH

l

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Be careful what you say and do. Someone will misinform you or twist your words. Play by the rules, live up to your promises and avoid reputation-damaging situations. HH Birthday Baby: You are responsible, caring and generous.

You are accommodating and friendly.

‘women’s sports venues’ by gary larson The Universal Crossword/Edited by David Steinberg

ACROSS 1 Storybook elephant 6 Striker’s bane 10 “___ the night before Christmas...”

14 Like a yoga instructor 15 Old King of rhyme 16 Blog’s main page 17 Girls Trip actress who could aptly be a pool star?

19 Writer Bombeck 20 Put the kibosh on 21 Where to turn off 22 Sitcom star, say 24 Famous slapstick trio 26 Woes 27 Night Court actress who could aptly be a softball star?

32 Burn with hot water 35 Tear up 36 Tiny 37 Really, really 38 Musical practice piece 40 Tailor-made?

41 Video recorder, for short 42 Untidy one 43 Like Neptune’s atmosphere

44 Cheers actress who could aptly be a bowling star?

48 Back muscles, in gym slang 49 Doesn’t cook 53 Aquafina rival 56 Chest muscles, in gym slang 57 Org. that approves disinfectants 58 Zillions 59 Lincoln actress who could aptly be a soccer star?

62 Pest that may uproot a plant 63 What you used to be?

64 Academic journal edition 65 Recognizes 66 Fries or mashed potatoes 67 Rapunzel’s lock DOWN 1 Uncovers 2 Follower of “special” or “talent” 3 Huge celebration 4 Boxing legend Laila 5 Went back (on) 6 Deep divide 7 Garment that surrounds “cowboy hat” 8 Everyone

9 It encircles the waist 10 Belief in a god or gods 11 Promise, or part of a promise 12 Foam darts, perhaps 13 Marine animal with an elephant variety 18 Skating jump 23 Nickname that drops “imir” 25 Norway’s capital 26 Carded 28 Oranjestad’s Caribbean island 29 Must pay 30 What fills Time 31 Opposite of admit 32 Wallop 33 Indian tea 34 Spine-tingling video letters (RAMS anagram) 38 Snobs 39 Stocking stuffers?

40 Utters 42 Ollie’s partner in old comedy 43 Tones up 45 Adds to a schedule 46 Retired actress Sobieski 47 Like delicate fabric

50 ___’s Pieces 51 Top grade 52 Gets one’s feet wet?

53 Stops up, as a river 54 Succulent in a trendy juice 55 Flat fish 56 Responded in court 60 Yellowfin tuna 61 Syr. neighbor Solution to Tuesday’s puzzle:

Show BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Editor: Gerard S. Ramos

• Friday, May 14, 2021

B5

Oprah, Prince Harry reunite for Apple TV+ mental health show

PRINCE HARRY (left) and Oprah Winfrey

Ellen DeGeneres to end longrunning TV talk show next year

LOS ANGELES—Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry are teaming up for a series that will delve into mental health issues and feature segments from athletes and stars like Lady Gaga and Glenn Close.

The Me You Can’t See will be a multi-part documentary series that will debut on Apple TV+ on May 21. Winfrey and the Duke of Sussex will “guide honest discussions about mental health and emotional well-being while opening up about their mental health journeys and struggles,” according to Monday’s announcement.

“Now more than ever, there is an immediate need

to replace the shame surrounding mental health with wisdom, compassion, and honesty,” Winfrey said in a statement.

“Our series aims to spark that global conversation.”

In addition to Gaga and Close, participants will include NBA players DeMar DeRozan and Langston Galloway, Olympic boxer Virginia “Ginny” Fuchs and chef Rashad Armstead.

“The majority of us carry some form of unresolved trauma, loss, or grief, which feels—and is—very personal. Yet the last year has shown us that we are all in this together, and my hope is that this series will

show there is power in vulnerability, connection in empathy, and strength in honesty,” Prince Harry said in a statement.

Winfrey and the duke are the series’ cocreators and executive producers.

The announcement comes roughly two months after Winfrey’s explosive sitdown interview with Harry and his wife, Meghan.

Harry and his wife Meghan have dived heavily into streaming in their post-royal life, signing a deal with Netflix. Meghan has also narrated a documentary for Disney+. AP

Fabulous travels with Joanna Lumley and two Asian pop idols

By Mark Kennedy The Associated Press NEW YORK—Ellen DeGeneres is calling time on her long-running talk show.

The daytime host, who has seen a ratings hit after allegations of running a toxic workplace, has decided that the upcoming 19th season will be the last, ending in 2022. It coincides with the end of her contract.

“You may wonder why I’ve decided to end after 19 seasons. The truth is, I always trust my instincts. My instinct told me it’s time,” a tearful DeGeneres said on Wednesday during a taping for Thursday’s show.

“I promise you that we’re going to have a fantastic final season. It will be a season where I truly get to say, ‘Thank You. Thank you all.’ Every day will be a celebration,” she said.

She used humor to lighten the mood and the message.

“In 1997, I knew it was time to come out on my sitcom and live my truth,” DeGeneres said, recalling a vivid, inspiring dream in which a bird escaped its cage because it had to be free.

“Recently, I had a dream that a bird, beautiful bird with bright red feathers, came to my window and whispered, ‘You can still do stuff on Netflix,’” a deadpan DeGeneres said, drawing laughs from the virtual studio audience.

The Ellen DeGeneres Show, which started airing in 2003 and is distributed by Warner Bros., has a mix of dancing, games and giveaways along with A-list celebrities.

But the host, who built her brand on the motto “Be Kind,” opened season 18 in September with a lengthy apology.

Three of the show’s producers exited over the summer amid allegations of a dysfunctional workplace that harbored misbehavior, including sexual misconduct and racially insensitive remarks. While the allegations were “very hurtful to me,” they didn’t influence her decision to leave the show, DeGeneres told The Hollywood Reporter. “I wouldn’t have come back this season” if they had, she said.

“Although all good things must come to an end, you still have hope that the truly great things never will,” Mike Darnell, president of unscripted TV for Warner Bros., said in a statement Wednesday. “It was and is an indelible piece of the television landscape, and it will be sorely missed.”

Nielsen data shows The Ellen DeGeneres Show viewership dropped by 1.1 million people this season, from 2.6 million viewers to 1.5 million viewers.

DeGeneres was the recipient of the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2015 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom under Barack Obama in 2016. In addition to her talk show, she has had a hand in Fox’s The Masked Dancer, NBC’s Ellen’s Game of Games and HBO Max’s Ellen’s Next Great Designer.

DeGeneres’ scripted TV show Ellen became a historic landmark in TV history in the 1990s when her character came out as gay.

Joanna Lumley on her Silk Road Adventure, now streaming on Netflix.

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here are two friggingly fabulous travelogues in Netflix right now. One has Joanna Lumley as our indefatigable, elegant and enthusiastic guide, and the other by two of the most exciting, smart, odd couple from two powerhouse showbiz industries—South Korea and Taiwan.

I was not expecting much from Joanna Lumley’s Silk Road Adventure, having for its subject matter the astonishing and intimidating prospect of tracking the old Silk Route. If there are so-called big books in literature, then in travel documentary, tackling the Silk Route is indisputably the big book of tourism adventure. But, from the get-go in Venice and, believe it or not, reaching Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, one is hooked to this most non-judgmental, naïve at times, ever-curious and intimate look at these places that many of us, used to destinations oh too frequently traveled, may never get to visit.

The secret of Joanna Lumley’s adventure is Joanna Lumley. The person who I thought would provide a patronizing perspective about the “natives” in these places visited is the same reassuring presence as she moves from the comfort (and class-A budget) of Venice and into towns that will never be recommended to tony tourists.

The most fascinating premise of Joanna Lumley’s tour is that one can touch the silk in an old store in Venice, ponder on the provenance of these commodities, and proceed to visit where they were manufactured—from long ago. On my part, I sensed the giddiness as Lumley, like some ultra-fashionable, elegantly crazy aunt (she may mockingly protest this label), takes a gondola ride across the canal and allow the camera, through editing, to bring her into what seems like unchartered territories.

Suddenly, it is Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and at a certain point, hitting an area near the borders of China.

I love how Lumley takes a train, gets down at a solitary station where only barren hills overlook a sparsely populated town, and then goes by car into a community of nomads or shepherds. I love it particularly when in some cold poor villages, Lumley—ever lovely in her bandana and scarves— refuses to go native or, in one case, shyly says no to the prospect of milking an animal. It is a reassuring scenario because it tells us the “natives” will not force themselves upon us, contrary to the supposed ethics of participant-observation.

There are anthropologists and zoologists out there as tour guides, but we need not be like them in order to gain lessons from a travel that makes boundaries one of the most unnecessary inventions of nations

that always count themselves as member of a global family.

Feel the love of open and hidden spaces with Joanna Lumley’s Silk Road Adventure. There is another earlier travelogue that I feel you should watch and this is with Lumley again. It is Joanna Lumley’s Trans-Siberian Adventure, which starts from the cozy commercial confines of Hong Kong and terminates in Moscow via Mongolia.

The other travelogue is more complex: it has actors Lee Seung-gi of South Korea and Jasper Liu of Taiwan traveling to six Asian cities (Yogyakarta and Bali in Indonesia, Bangkok and Chiang Mai in Thailand, Pokhara and Kathmandu in Nepal).

I must confess I did not know these two charming, amiable and unpretentious Asian “idols” but as their trip progressed, I have to admit I became a fan.

And “fans” are at the core of this travel documentary: fans of the two guys recommend to them places to visit. But it is not as simple and as boring as that. A kind of unseen (well, partly) coordinator or travel manager facilitates (sometimes) or complicates (most of the time) the path these two young tourists.

The expression that it is not really the destination that matters but the process of going there, is wonderfully illustrated in this show. In Twogether, that adage gets a brilliant updating: the two men must complete missions together before they could leave that place and travel to the next. The ultimate test, however, is for them to find out who this fan is by finding out where she lives.

In the first episode, for example, Lee Seung-gi and Jasper Liu travel separately to Yogyakarta when

GMA Public Affairs breaks 15M subscriber mark on YouTube Digital powerhouse GMA Public Affairs forges ahead as one of the Philippines’s biggest and most-followed content creators, recently reaching 15 million subscribers on YouTube. The latest milestone comes just a year after the channel hit the 10 million subscriber mark that gave GMA Network its second Diamond Play Button, becoming the first Philippine TV company to receive two YouTube Diamond Creator awards.

With its wide array of videos that range from previously aired documentaries, docudramas, news magazines, lifestyle TV shows, to short-form journalism and explainers, GMA Public Affairs continues to attract new viewers and subscribers to its YouTube channel.

From April 2020 to date, it tallied a total of 2.8 billion views. The channel has also recorded 264 million hours of watched videos as of this writing.

GMA Public Affairs also remains ahead of ABS-CBN News, which only has 12.1 million subscribers and 1.9 billion

views from April 2020 to date.

Leading the most-watched videos that racked up GMA Public Affairs’ YouTube presence for the period cited is Imbestigador’s “Pag-iibigang nauwi sa karahasan” episode which recorded almost 40 million views.

Also included in the list are Wish Ko Lang’s “Ang kalbaryo ni Gwen;” Tunay na Buhay’s “Sanggol na may hydranencephaly, paano lumalaban?;” Ilaban Natin ’Yan’s “Misis, ginagawang punching bag ng kanyang mister kapag tinatanggihan niyang makipagsiping;” Tadhana’s “Obsessed na amo, may kakaibang regalo para sa kanyang houseboy” and “Babaeng hindi makuntento, pinagsabay ang magkaibigang seaman!;” Kapuso Mo, Jessica Soho’s “Ang lumolobong problema ni Jonalyn” and “Monster fish in the city?;” and Wagas’s “Woman gets impregnated by a ‘tikbalang.’”

On top of netizens from the Philippines, the YouTube channel of GMA Public Affairs has viewers coming from

various parts of the globe including the US, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Canada, Malaysia, Japan, Vietnam, Kuwait, Australia, the UK, Italy and Thailand.

Across popular platforms, GMA Public Affairs has more than 85 million followers. Data from Tubular Labs and CrowdTangle also showed that in 2020, videos of GMA Public Affairs’ various programs earned over 6.5 billion combined views on social media.

With 1.3 billion minutes, GMA Public Affairs emerged as the most-watched News and Politics media creator in the Asia-Pacific region in terms of total minutes last September 2020. Also in 2020, GMA Public Affairs was listed among the top 5 Philippine media creators on TikTok. Last month, GMA Public Affairs launched its online campaign “#JabWellDone,” which encourages more Filipinos to get vaccinated against Covid-19 and help curb the spread of the virus. The campaign organically reached over 8 million users on Facebook alone during the first week of its launch.

they meet to begin the first challenge. This episode is downright exotic and difficult. They are told to look for a lamp in a cave. Succeeding, they find the first clue inside the lamp, which tells them to go to another cave. In that second spot, they could ask a question about the next clue if they are able to catch a fish. The clues are photos of a detail in a map indicating the house of the fan from whom the challenges come. The search for clues go on until they complete the map and, on it, the photo of the fan’s home.

Many things come together to make the travelogue compelling. First, there are the personalities of Lee Seung-gi and Jasper Liu. Both are, hands-down, natural with the challenges. They freak out alright but eventually rise to the difficult tasks. Second, they never lose their sense of humor even as they do not allow in any sense of drama. They are what life coaches may call “authentic” characters. Third, their chemistry is amazing. There are releases hinting at a brewing “bromance” between the two. You do not have to go there to have fun watching Twogether.

There is also collateral entertainment: Imagine two personalities who do not know each other’s language.

Then, there is the fan answering to a call from the gate of her home and finding out it is her idol making a personal visit.

Impact on me? I wanted to go to Yogyakarta the day after watching the series.

In the absence of real travels amid this still ongoing pandemic, these journeys with Joanna Lumley and Lee Sung-gi and Jasper Liu are graces from the gods of adventures. These travel documentaries are all from Netflix, with Twogether being a Netflix Original Series. n

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eCommerce pioneers establish integrative online pharmacy and health platform

The Manila Hotel Café Ilang-Ilang offers halal-certified food for takeout and delivery

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HE end of the fasting period of Ramadan, the Eid al-Fitr, is the Festival of Breaking the Fast which is celebrated through prayer, gifts, and lavish feast. While the Philippines is predominantly Catholic, Islam is the second largest religion in the country. No

wonder, Filipinos have become fond of Halal foods.

Halal food is prepared following a set of Islamic dietary laws and regulations that determine what is permissible, lawful and clean. Any dish can be halal, as long as the meat used is religiously

slaughtered and no pork or alcohol is involved.

The Manila Hotel’s Café Ilang Ilang has a Halal kitchen certified by the Muslim Mindanao Halal Certification Board. This kitchen dedicated to Halal food preparation serves Indian and Middle Eastern-inspired halal dishes will whet your appetite and pay homage to its traditional roots.

Designed for proper breaking of the fast, The Manila Hotel’s Ramadan Special Halal Home Buffet set comes with dried dates and juice, chickpeas hummus, Fatoush mixed salad, roti and naan bread, vegetable biryani, tandoori chicken, lamb rogan josh, vegetable samosa, and baklava. The set is just one of the three choices for the Halal Certified Home Buffet.

“Our Lamb Rogan Josh is a musttry. It’s imported from Australia and it has the spices and sharpness that will surely be enjoyed by everyone. We can also customize the food according to our customer’s request. Say you don’t like chili, we can make it milder. We can tweak a dish to please your palate while still being true to its authentic taste,” says Chef Kiran Singh, the hotel’s Halal trained chef.

The Manila Hotel’s Halal Home Buffet sets or dishes are available for Takeout and delivery. Visit https:// www.manila-hotel.com.ph/takeout/ for the full menu; or call 8527-0011 or 0998-9501912.

GCash Futurecast 2021: Breaking boundaries to democratize access to financial opportunities, lifestyle choices

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ROM starting out as an e-wallet for making fast & secure online transactions to being the undisputed #1 mobile wallet app in the Philippines, GCash is now transforming itself once again to respond to the call of the times by launching new products & services to further its vision of making Filipino lives better everyday, with finance solutions made for all.

GCash as a platform has enabled Filipinos with digital finance which is easily accessible through their phones. With 1 in 3 Filipinos currently using the app after growing its user base from just more than 20 million in January 2020 to over 40 million to date, GCash is going beyond just providing seamless & secure transactions through cashless payments.

With new financial & lifestyle services, GCash now allows its users to shop, save, invest, get insurance coverage, and more -- all within the GCash app.

“We want to make a real difference in the lives of every Filipino and break the existing boundaries to enable financial freedom. We envision a Philippines where people have equal access to financial opportunities and lifestyle choices, where everyone, whether rich or poor, has a chance to unlock and achieve their dreams,” shared Martha Sazon, President & Chief Executive Officer of GCash.

Unlock Your Financial Potential

CONSUMERS can now unlock their life goals at any stage with GInvest, the new easy investment feature found in the GCash app that lets you invest for as low as P50 in professionally-managed local and global funds.

Amidst the pandemic, those who are looking for affordable coverage can turn to GInsure, where they can get insurance for medical emergencies such as Dengue, COVID-19, and accidents for as low as P300.

With this, consumers can also get financial assistance via Cash For Medical Costs and the recently launched Cash For Income Loss due to any cause - all accessible through GInsure within the GCash app.

For easy money management, GSave is the fully digital, secure, and hassle-free savings account that was built in partnership with CIMB Bank, wherein the only requirement to start is an ID and a smartphone. It’s fully accessible once the account is created; and has no maintaining balance, no fees, and no initial deposit.

As a better alternative to high interest loans and borrowing money for emergencies, GCredit serves as a fully-verified user’s personal credit line within the App, with the ability to provide those with high GScores up to P30,000 credit line and up to 3% prorated interest rate; the earlier the due is paid, the lower the interest rate.

“At GCash we want to be able to democratize access to financial services,” shared JF Darre, Head of Financial Services and Advanced Analytics of GCash.

“We aim to break down barriers of entry for Fillipinos

and make them realize that saving, investing, or even insuring one’s finances can be accessible to all.”

Unlock a new lifestyle with GLife

WITH the aim to provide more than just convenience, GLife is an e-commerce feature within the GCash app that now allows users to shop and avail themselves of exclusive deals from a wide array of merchants including GOMO, Gong Cha, Kraver’s, McDonald’s, Puregold and PureGO, Lazada, Recess, Boozy, Bo’s Coffee, Mama Lou’s, GawinPH, KFC, Datablitz, Cherry Shop, Gameone, Goama Games, and more. Users and merchants alike can leverage the GCash payment system making it an easier e-commerce experience for everyone, and making GCash the new super life app.

“We have more coming every week that will surely cover all your lifestyle needs.” said Winsley Bangit, Chief Customer Officer of GCash.

Unlock The Entrepreneur in You with GCash QR on Demand

AS part of its mission to help mobilize the economy and support all types of entrepreneurs, GCash introduces GCash QR on Demand: a new and better way to securely send and receive money without having to worry about “wrong sends” due to incorrect numbers, or giving away personal information such as their mobile numbers. Users can easily generate their own Personal QR and use this in place of giving their GCash number, for safe and hassle-free payments whether for personal use or for small businesses.

For fellow Filipinos abroad, GCash intends to aid and empower OFWs to take control of their finances by making

the same products and services accessible to them. Every OFW with a verified account can now cash-in to his/her own GCash wallet via international remittance partners, and remit those funds instantly in the app. Through GCash’s upcoming GPadala service, OFWs can also send money to a non-GCash user for cash pick up anywhere in the country.

“We have great ambition for 2021 for MSMEs and Filipinos in every corner of the globe; we know how this whole sector will be more critical than ever for our economy, and GCash can make a real difference in this sensitive People need it. The country needs it.”shared Fred Levy, Chief Commercial Officer of GCash.

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HANDFUL of the country’s top eCommerce executives recently consolidated to establish Mediclick PH, a new online-only pharmacy and health platform that aims to make the shift to online medicine as comprehensive and convenient as possible.

“The current pandemic has dramatically changed the way we go about our daily business. Some of the most affected are those who need medicine, whether for maintenance, serious conditions, or general wellness,” noted Tina Sabarre, founder and CEO of Mediclick PH. “While other local pharmacies offer online retail services, there are still apparent customer adversities when it comes to fulfilling pharmaceutical needs remotely and efficiently,” she added.

At present, the Philippine pharmaceutical retail sector is dominated by large drugstore chains that have physical stores across the country. Accordingly, over 99% of consumer sales are off-line, in-store transactions.

Mediclick PH hopes to encourage more customers, especially those who are unable to go out due to quarantine restrictions, to purchase their supplements and medicine through online means. “We are confident that our vast experience and expertise in eCommerce will provide our customers with the most seamless online pharmacy experience,” Sabarre emphasized.

Sabarre is the former country manager of Luxasia, and former country retail director of Johnson & Johnson. She is backed by angel investors and e-commerce luminaries such as Paulo Campos, eCommerce pioneer and founder of Zalora Philippines; Constantin Robertz, co-founder of Locad and former Zalora managing director, formerly Entrego and Rocket Internet; and JM Aujero, former VP of MYNT and Chief Sales Officer of BPI Direct BanKo. Also backing Mediclick PH is IPBiotech Inc., a thought-leader in the local pharmaceutical and biological sector.

IP-Biotech recently helped to bring in much needed COVID19 vaccines into the Philippines, including Coronavac (Sinovac), with more pharmaceutical

solutions in the pipeline.

“We see the convergence of first principles with Mediclick,” said IP-Biotech Chairman Enrique Gonzalez. “Mediclick is led by a strong team with both e-commerce and pharmaceutical experience, perfect timing in solving a major pain point for consumers, and innovation in the regulatory environment allowing online pharma.

We believe Mediclick has the potential to become one of leading eCommerce players in the country,” he added.

Currently, Mediclick PH provides online shopping and delivery of medicines, but according to Sabarre, their vision for the platform extends beyond this service.

“Our ability to get data and build analytics around it will allow us to move towards a more customized service for the patients and consumers,” Sabarre explained. “We are looking at a future where our platform can integrate seamlessly with the telehealth revolution and collaborate with other health tech companies that can provide more specialized healthcare solutions for the patient. Mediclick will then close the loop and fulfill the prescriptions or health protocols that the patient may need,” she concluded.

Visit https://mediclick.ph.

CSC issues examination fee refund

Unlock Social Impact

AS part of its holistic sustainability agenda for 2021-2025, GCash is one with the nation as it aligns itself with the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. This includes pursuing efforts beyond business results such as helping make financial literacy and education accessible for all.

Plans to make this happen include the Kaya Mo, GCash Mo Roadshow, the design and roll-out of Future-Ready Hackathons, and the launch of G NA! IDEAS Para Sa Pinas.

This 2021, GCash continues to pursue collaborations to achieve even bigger things with efforts like GCash For Good and the GForest platform.

“At the end of the day, we will all go back to our core purpose— to help one another in times of need and indeed unlock our desired impact on the society as a whole,” said Chito Maniago, GCash’s Vice President of Corporate Communications and Public Affairs.

TINA Sabarre

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EGISTERED examinees of the 15 March 2020 Career Service Examination-Pen and Paper Test, which was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, may claim the refund of their PHP500 application fee starting this May. This was announced by the Civil Service Commission (CSC) in Examination Advisory No. 1, s. 2021 dated 30 April 2021, as amended, as it advised examinees that they may opt to claim the refund in person, through bank deposit, or through the services of authorized remittance centers or payment facilities.

In view of the different community quarantine restrictions imposed throughout

the country, the CSC strongly urges examinees to refrain from proceeding without prior appointment or notice to any CSC Regional/ Field Office (CSC RO/FO).

The examinee must submit a filled-out Request for Refund Form (RRF), which can be downloaded from the CSC website at www. csc.gov.ph, as well as present an original and photocopy of his/her valid ID. The examinee will receive a notice/ advisory when the refund is ready for claiming. The examinee shall then proceed to his/her preferred conduit CSC RO/FO and present the notice/advisory together with a filled-out RRF and original and photocopy of his/her valid ID. Those with bank accounts may opt to receive their refund through bank deposit.

The examinee must fill out the RRF, scan it, and email it to the CSC RO along with a digital image (scanned or photo taken using a camera) of the front and back sides of any valid government-issued ID. Meanwhile, the CSC is finalizing the guidelines for the conduct of the Career Service Examination-Pen and Paper Test this year. Interested individuals are advised to standby for updates on the CSC website at www.csc.gov.ph and the CSC Facebook Page at www.facebook.com/civilservicegovph.

DepEd bats for vaccination of teachers, personnel

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ITH the country receiving more supplies of COVID-19 vaccine, Secretary Leonor Magtolis Briones has encouraged teachers and nonteaching personnel of the Department of Education to get immunized to protect their families, learners, and communities.

“We at the Department of Education, we would like to encourage our teachers to be vaccinated because it is not only a matter of protecting your personal rights, but it is also a matter of protecting the lives and health of children and staff who are also entrusted in our care,” Secretary Briones said during her virtual regional visit at the EduAKSYON: Aksyon at Solusyon para sa Edukasyon Region XI Presser.

Briones pushed for the inclusion of education frontliners in the A4 priority list of the National Deployment and

Vaccination Plan for COVID-19 (NDVP), which was recently approved by the IATF. The education chief also reiterated that teachers and personnel who fall under higher priority categories, including those who are medical frontliners (A1), senior citizens (A2), and with comorbidities (A3), can already register for vaccination in their respective local government units.

In addition, Briones also enjoined all DepEd staff to assist in educating the public about vaccines and vaccination procedures.

DepEd launches the Vacc2School: Ligtas na Bakuna Para sa Balik-Eskwela for teaching and non-teaching personnel.

The Department also eyes to conduct town hall meetings to address stakeholders’ concerns and planning workshops for championing vaccination advocacies.

Sports BusinessMirror

CALVO

NCAA ‘SPECIAL’ VIRTUAL SEASON UNFURLS IN JUNE

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HE National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) will go virtual when it kicks off its 96th season with new broadcast partner GMA Network on June 13.

NCAA Management Committee Chairman Father Vic Calvo, OP, of host Letran made the announcement on Wednesday, adding there will be no traditional games in basketball, volleyball, athletics and in six other sports on the league’s program.

“Against all odds we ‘Rise Up Stronger,’” Calvo told BusinessMirror stressing on the Season 96 slogan of “Rise Up Stronger.”

“The NCAA has adjusted very well to the ‘new normal’ and we feel blessed,” he said. “It shows our creativity. Never give up. We showed our creativeness.”

Opening day will be preceded by a show at 2:35 p.m. on May 23 over GMA’s GTV Channel 27 featuring athletes, coaches and teams from the league’s 10 memberschools. It will again air on Saturdays at 4:30 p.m. and Sundays at 5 p.m.

Taping for the show has started with Calvo taking his turn at the GMA studios in Quezon City on Thursday.

The season will practically carry a made-for-television concept with virtual skills-based competitions in basketball and volleyball, online chess and taekwondo’s poomsae.

Calvo said the safety of the students remain a priority in the Covid-19 pandemic.

“It’s more on the safety of student athletes,” he said. “That’s why the consensus is to shelve games in the traditional sports.” Josef Ramos

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CTOR Paulo Avelino has gone all out for eSports by teaming up with LuponWXC founder Nico “KuyaNic” Nazario in giving away streaming equipment to gamers.

“I’m helping a lot of local streamers who are in gaming,” Avelino told an online news conference recently. “I ordered a lot of streamers overseas to improve the quality of their stream and make them more convenient.”

Avelino and Nazario also announced their

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ENEVA—The International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Wednesday downplayed concerns over Japanese public opinion calling for the Tokyo Olympics to be canceled, before its virtual news conference was interrupted by an activist protesting the games.

The news conference followed a monthly meeting of the IOC’s executive board held amid a state of emergency in Tokyo to curb surging Covid-19 cases.

Polling

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| Friday, May 14, 2021 mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph Editor: Jun Lomibao

in Japan also persistently suggests people want the July 23 to August 8 Olympics to be called off, having already been postponed by one year.

“We listen but won’t be guided by public opinion,” IOC spokesman Mark Adams said, adding “everything is telling us...that the games can go ahead and will go ahead.”

Adams stood in for his boss, IOC president Thomas Bach, whose planned visit to Japan next week was called off Monday after states of emergency in Tokyo and other regions were extended through May. The final question of the news conference, held by video call, was offered to a reporter from Yahoo Sports. Instead, an activist appeared on the screen holding up a black and white banner opposing the

OBIENA PRESSURE-FREE AHEAD OF GAMES ERNEST JOHN “EJ” OBIENA will make the most of the remaining nine weeks before the Olympics.

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By Josef Ramos

RNEST JOHN “EJ” OBIENA is looking at his Tokyo Olympics campaign as a stage where he would be pouring everything he’s got.

“My goal is to perform my very best during the Olympic competition,” Obiena told BusinessMirror via overseas call from his training camp in Formia, Italy, on Thursday. “And I’m focusing more on each bar set.”

Obiena’s personal best of 5.86 meters—

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AMBOANGA City will bring a loaded lineup to the 2021 Chooks-to-Go Pilipinas VisMin Super Cup’s Mindanao leg.

Headlining the team owned by Councilor Pinpin Pareja and Michael Dela Cruz is the Go for Gold-San Juan core of Mac Cardona, Larry

Actor embraces eSports upcoming world-class gaming site in General Trias, Cavite, where games such as Mobile Legends and Dota 2 are regularly streamed on YouTube, FaceBook and Kumu.

“We are looking forward to expanding our talent pool with more games because the pandemic has hit everyone hard,” added Avelino, noting he is very happy to keep all his gamers intact during the pandemic.

LuponWXC is an eSports organization that

ATTOLICA, Italy—Australian cyclist Caleb Ewan won a crash-marred fifth stage of the Giro d’Italia on Wednesday and Alessandro De Marchi kept hold of the leader’s pink jersey.

Ewan’s victory in a sprint finish was overshadowed by several crashes in the final 15 kilometers. The most serious involved one of the favorites, Mikel Landa, who was taken away in an ambulance.

“He was in pain, we’re not sure if he has fractured his collarbone or his wrist,” Team Bahrain Victorious sporting director Franco Pellizotti said. “We’re disappointed but our Giro continues.”

The incident occurred after American cyclist Joseph Dombrowski hit a race marshal signaling an obstacle in the middle of the road, causing a crash.

handles and manages several streamers and shoutcasters. The company has a Mobile Legends pro team called Execration.

Avelino shared his experience as a gamer, playing CounterStrike in different internet shops or cafes while he was still base in Baguio City.

He expects the gaming industry to become “big as time goes by.”

“We want to strengthen the gaming industry for everyone’s interest,” he said. Josef Ramos

Dombrowski, who had been second overall after winning the previous stage, was able to continue but finished more than eight minutes behind Ewan. The consequences were more serious for Landa, who received swift treatment before being taken to hospital.

Pavel Sivakov’s hopes of overall victory are also in tatters after he was involved in another crash. The Ineos Grenadiers rider managed to get up and change bicycles but had no chance of catching the high-speed peloton.

Ewan was also involved in a late tangle with Tim Merlier but managed to stay upright and edge ahead of Giacomo Nizzolo in the final 50 meters of the flat and straight 177-kilometer route from Modena to Cattolica on the Adriatic coast. AP

AUSTRALIA’S Caleb Ewan (right) outsprints Italy’s Giacomo Nizzolo to win the fifth stage on Wednesday. AP

Williams’s 1,000th match ends in defeat at Italian Open

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OME—Serena Williams’s 1,000th tourlevel singles match ended in defeat as she marked her return to action with a 7-6 (6), 7-5 loss to Nadia Podoroska on Wednesday in the second round of the Italian Open.

The eighth-seeded Williams, who hadn’t played since the Australian Open, rallied from a break down twice in the opening set and saved the first three set points she faced in the tiebreaker before Podoroska converted her fourth. The Argentine went on to win in one hour and 58 minutes.

“It’s tough to have a first match on clay. It was definitely kind of good to go the distance and to try to be out there, but clearly I can do legions better,” said Williams, who has won the Italian Open four times. “Maybe I do need a few more matches, so I’m going to try to figure that out with my coach and my team and see what we would like to do. I have been training for months, but it feels definitely different on clay to make that last adjustment.”

which also stands as the Philippine record—he set while earning a silver medal in a Poland tournament in February, is still outside of the vicinity of the world and Olympic pole vault record.

Swedish-American Armand Duplantis owns the world record of 6.18 meters he set indoors in Glasgow February last year, while Obiena’s training buddy in Formia, Brazilian Braz da Silva, cleared 6.03 meters in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 for the Olympic standard.

“I’m not really aiming for any heights

Ex-Knights donning Zambo jerseys

Ewan wins crash-marred stage 5, De Marchi remains overall leader

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Tokyo Olympics.

“No Olympics anywhere, No Olympics anywhere,” he said, before using a profanity and adding “No Olympics in LA, No Olympics in Tokyo,” before the line was cut. The 2028 Olympics will be held in Los Angeles.

Adams made light of the interruption noting if Bach had been present it “probably would have made that stunt a little bit more interesting.”

The NOlympics LA group later claimed on its Twitter account it had “crashed the IOC’s press conference.”

A tricky week for the IOC comes just 78 days before the Tokyo Olympics are scheduled to open, which Adams said would be a “historic moment” for the world and make the Japanese people proud.

The 24-year-old Podoroska took a 5-2 lead in the second set but was broken at love the first time she tried to serve out the match. She broke Williams again in the 12th game to seal her third career win over a top-10 player.

“It’s special win. She’s a great athlete. She did too many things for our sport. It’s history,”

Podoroska said. “So for me it’s very special. But most of all, I’m happy the way I played. I felt again comfortable on clay, on my game, and that’s most important for me.”

Defending champion Simona Halep was forced to retire with a left calf injury in the second set of her match against fellow former No. 1 Angelique Kerber.

The third-seeded Halep was leading 6-1, 3-3 before her injury.

Second-seeded Naomi Osaka is also out after losing 7-6 (2), 6-2 to Jessica Pegula of the United States. Fourth-seeded Sofia Kenin lost, 6-1, 6-4, to Barbora Krejčíková.

Top-ranked Ashleigh Barty and former champion Karolina Pliskova earned straight-set wins, while Vera Zvonareva ousted 11th-seeded Petra Kvitova, 6-4, 3-6, 6-4. AP SERENA WILLIAMS: It’s tough to have a first match on clay. AP

Rodriguez, Jhonard Clarito and Aaron Jeruta that helped the Knights in the inaugural Maharlika Pilipinas Basketball League Datu Cup in 2019.

Joining the ex-San Juan Knights quartet is a knight of a different kind in 22-year-old Letran point guard Fran Yu.

Olympic Games typically dip in popularity in the host nation before momentum picks up when the games open and the sports begin.

“I am very confident that we will see public opinion hugely in favor of the games,” Adams said, adding that Japanese people strongly approved of Tokyo’s candidacy. It won a bidding contest in 2013 against Madrid and Istanbul.

Still, opposition has seemed to harden against an Olympics that has cost at least $15 billion of mostly taxpayers’ money.

Adams said there was private polling numbers known to the IOC and organizers in Tokyo though no details were given Wednesday.

Amid the uncertainty and disrupted plans for the ongoing four-month torch relay across Japan,

test events have continued to be held in Tokyo.

Olympic qualifying events have also been held worldwide.

Around 7,800 athletes have qualified for the games—70 percent of the total quota—with a further 10 percent set to be earned by June 29, Adams said. About 20 percent of entries are being awarded according to world rankings in some of the 33 sports.

A “large and growing number” of participants will be vaccinated against Covid-19 before arriving at the athlete village in Tokyo, Adams said.

The IOC has struck deals to buy Chinese vaccines and receive donations of doses from Pfizer to distribute to Olympic team delegations worldwide. AP

[whether it’s Olympic or world record],” said Obiena, who has two years left in his Electronics Engineering course at University of Santo Tomas.

The 25-year-old Obiena is expected to be in Tokyo on July 25. He will have four days of training before the men’s pole vault competition on July 30.

Obiena is one of eight Filipinos who have qualified for the Olympics so far, the others being weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz, gymnast Carlos Yulo and boxers Eumir Felix Marcial, Nesthy Petecio, Carlo Paalam and Irish Magno.

Rower Cris Nievarez was the latest to make it to Tokyo after having earned his qualification only on Monday.

Obiena, who has collected two gold, one

silver and one bronze medals from his European sortie prior to the Olympics, said he has gotten more motivated as the Games draw closer.

“It’s just a couple of months away so I’m trying my very best. I have my shot, so I want to be the best one I could produce,” he said. “I want to win. That’s my main driving force that pushes me every day, killing myself in training.”

Obiena has been embedded at the World Pole Vault Training Centre in Formia since the pandemic struck last year. He and da Silva share a room and are both under the keen eyes of world renowned coach Vitaly Petrov of Ukraine.

The Olympics are nine weeks away from July 23 to August 8.

Letran Athletic Director Fr. Vic Calvo has already transmitted Yu’s special guest license application to the Games and Amusements Board last May 12. The GAB’s professional basketball division head Dioscoro Bautista is reviewing the application.

Big man Gabby Espinas and gunner Jaypee Belencion will also play as “imports” for Zamboanga City with Zamboangueños Jens Knuttel, Rudy Lingganay, Med Salim and Kyle Neypes leading the team’s homegrown talents.

Completing the squad are Jonathan Parreno, Jayson Rebollos, Jeff Bernardo, Totoh Indahan, Jerome Ferrer, Wang Alvarez and Niel Jumao-as.

Ateneo de Zamboanga’s Tony Pardo is the head coach while Ronie Gallo and Ken Basiri afe his assistants. Joining them are strength and conditioning coaches Glenn Archangel and Robelino Sardena and staff member Raymond Mapanao and Jaytone Rakim.

The Mindanao leg is set on May 30 at a stillto-be-determined local government unit.

Motoring BusinessMirror

Henry Ford Awards Best Motoring Section 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 2011 Hall of Fame

Editor: Tet Andolong

B8 Friday, May 14, 2021

Volkswagen T-Cross soon-to-arrive, now available for reservation Story by Randy S. Peregrino

rating in the European New Car Assessment Program (NCAP), the Australasian NCAP, and Latin NCAP with its myriad of standard safety features and strong body structure. There’s an electronic stabilization program (ESP), cruise control, tire pressure monitoring system, and additional safety features (for the SE variant). Additionally, there are six airbags, a rear camera, rear park distance control (PDC), and autonomous emergency braking (AEB).

A

FTER its successful preview, the Volkswagen T-Cross is finally arriving soon. In a recent online event, Volkswagen Philippines presented more details about the upcoming subcompact SUV. The Ayala-backed country distributor is confident that the vehicle’s muchanticipated arrival would herald Volkswagen’s global “refresh” in the country.

Since its global debut in 2018, the multi-awarded T-Cross has been one of the new vehicles drawing attention. Two years later, the T-Cross has sold approximately 300,000 units worldwide—a milestone achieved despite the limitations brought about by the pandemic. One of the things which contributed to the overwhelming success of the T-Cross is its design and engineering.

It truly embodies that singular design statement, “I am more than one thing.”

“I am cool” The trendy exterior design and youthful interior layout exude sophistication with a fun sense of style. The available unique colors wrap the hip exterior styling such as Tribu, Syringa Violet, Romance Red, Polar White, and even Chinchilla Gray.

Volkswagen believes that these shades adopt the importance of aesthetics by combining young urban fashion with its style and functionality.

Volkswagen Philippines will offer the T-Cross in 180 MPI AT S and the180 MPI AT SE variants. Both grades come with a EURO 6 1.5-liter engine paired with a six-speed Tiptronic AT generating 111 hp and 145N-m of maximum torque. According to Volkswagen, these figures are ideal for achieving optimum fuel efficiency while providing enough power to keep up on pace and cruise.

More so, every T-Cross unit that

After-sales advantage and low cost of maintenance

The trendy T-Cross subcompact SUV in radiant and unique Tribu color. Volkswagen Philippines rolls out of the German automaker’s manufacturing hubs in Germany, Brazil, and China carries that multifaceted design and engineering excellence the brand is known for over the years. The T-Cross received numerous recognitions from BusinessCar Awards 2019 in the United Kingdom (Best Compact SUV), the 2020 Continental

Tyres Irish Car of the Year in Ireland (Compact SUV of the Year), Frankfurt Motor Show 2019 in Germany (Best “Exterior Volume Brand”), UOL Carros 2019 and L’Auto Preferita in Brazil (Compact SUV of the Year), and the 5th annual Cars.co.za Consumer Awards in South Africa (Compact Family Car category winner).

Generous cargo bay offering 329 liters of space. Volkswagen Philippines

“I am versatile and comfortable” Offering the longest wheelbase (2,651 mm) in the five-seater subcompact SUV class, the T-Cross can comfortably seat five persons.

Moreover, there’s still 329 liters of luggage space at the back, which can even expand to 1,319 liters with rear seats folded. That’s more than enough space for work, weekend hobbies and recreation.

In terms of amenities, everything is in place. The controls and infotainment system with Apple CarPlay and App connect is easy to access. There’s available rear air-conditioning and USB sockets for the rear passengers, as well as soft seat cushions perfect for long out-of-town drives. Interestingly, the dashboard and other interior panels have color accents the same as an exterior color.

“I am safe” The T-Cross earned its five-star safety

Meanwhile, the T-Cross would come laden with significant ownership value in aftersales. With its oncea-year periodic maintenance service (PMS), the T-Cross is on average 40 percent more affordable to maintain compared to its competitors in the segment for five years of ownership.

It would be on top of the warranty coverage of three years, or 100,000 km (whichever comes first), spare parts warranty of 2 years, and; service quality consistent with Volkswagen standards worldwide.

The T-Cross 180 MPI S would be offered at P1.098 million, while the 180 MPI SE would sell at P1.198 million with an additional discount of P30,000.

These introductory prices and discounts will be available for those who reserve their T-Cross units before the market introduction this May. For reservations, customers may call Volkswagen BGC at (02) 8558-5888; Volkswagen Quezon Avenue at (02) 8558-5818; Volkswagen Pampanga at (45) 961-1895; Volkswagen Alabang at (02) 8558-5807; Volkswagen Santa Rosa at (0935) 427-8545; Volkswagen Cebu at (32) 517-8226; Volkswagen Iloilo at (33) 331-2622; Volkswagen Bacolod at (034) 435-7575; and Volkswagen Cagayan de Oro at (088) 851-7960. Customers may also log on to www.volkswagen.com.ph for more details.

Budget tips for Gen Zs; Isuzu ‘BLOWBAGETS’

makes for easier payment car loans, guaranteeing great resale options by the end of the term.

M

“Distinguish between wants and needs from your online 100 shopping items. Buy only enough for the whole family.

Make use of cashbacks and rewards program.

“Always go for value-formoney. Explore payments light on the pocket. With Toyota Vios, you don’t only get your money’s worth, but also for its added-value-benefits, such as free periodic maintenance service (PMS), extended warranty, and free car insurance.

Y good friend, Nadinne Capistrano, writes to say she has some tips to help millennials and Gen Zs navigate their financial road map. Here: “Today’s challenging circumstances underscore the importance of proper financial management among millennials and Gen Zs. “While health and safety remains top priority amid the pandemic, staying afloat may be the biggest challenge of millennials and Gen Zs. With many getting pay cuts or losing jobs, learning to manage finances is part of adulthood.

“Here are a few tips while in quarantine:

Learn budgeting

“Apply the 50-30-20 rule.

Allocate 50 percent of income to basic necessities, 30 percent leisure and 20 percent financial goals. Take note of bills’ due dates and pay on time. Use an Excel spreadsheet, an app or even a pen and paper to keep track of expenses.

“Reduce monthly expenses.

Streaming service or downgrade mobile postpaid plan? Switch to prepaid or make it a habit to unplug idle devices?

“The Toyota Financial Services’ Balloon Payment Plus

Spend Wisely

Start investing

“Building and diversifying financial investment portfolios is a good idea for young adults.

With retirement decades away, not only is there more time to learn and recover from possible losses, investing can also help one achieve financial freedom earlier.

“With work from home and less socializing still the norm, another investment worth considering is learning. Take up a new language. Read more books.

Enroll in an online certification course. Investing in education is a great way to help increase one’s personal development and professional value.

“Owning a car gets you faster to your workplace, the grocery store and frees you from public queues.

More importantly, you millennials and Gen Zs driving your own car drives the virus away.

“Don’t experts say stay 6 feet away from people? But

with public transportation, this is next to impossible to accomplish.

“The Vios is perfect for millennials and Gen Zs because it delivers performance that levels up the lifestyle.

“Recently named the Most Reliable Car Brand for 2020, the Vios is easy to maintain, has a spacious interior, and boasts of an impressive engine performance.

“Depending on one’s goals, either the XE variant or the GR-S suits any one’s taste to the hilt. And every Vios has an impressive resale value—truly a bang for one’s buck.

“Consider, too: The Vios is proudly Filipino made. Buy it and you help support your fellow Filipinos in the local automotive industry.”

I can hear Toyota hotshot Tini Arevalo saying, “Good job, Nadinne.”

Honda cashless deals

COLENE Jalalon tells us of Honda Cars’ superbly creative cashless payment option through GCash and PayMaya.

“This is to help ensure a safer and more convenient way of transacting business at Honda dealerships,” Colene says.

For more details, visit www. hondaphil.com.

Isuzu ‘BLOWBAGETS’

JOSEPH Bautista, a top gun at Isuzu Philippines Corp. for the longest time, has come up with IPC’s innovative “BLOWBAGETS” designed to put Isuzu models in tip-top shape this summer.

Inspired by the popular

A French experience from Peugeot & Metronome

I

N these trying times, when our health and our safety take precedence over everything else, we’ve taken great measures to ensure that we and our loved ones are protected.

Often, we’ve had to sacrifice personal rewards like travel and dining out.

Which is why Peugeot Philippines and French specialty restaurant Metronome recently came together to offer an experience worthy of their clients. For the months of May through June 2021, every purchase of a Peugeot 3008 SUV or a Peugeot 5008 SUV will come with gift vouchers that can be used for up to two visits to Metronome.

“While we’ve always seen the purchase of a Peugeot as a reward in itself, we felt that offering something that people have been missing would be an added treat. Partnering with Metronome, a French fine dining restaurant which has also gained its fair share of followers was a natural course of action. We’re very excited to offer our customers a great ride and a great dining experience in one,” said Dodie Gañac, Peugeot Philippines’s Director for Sales. “On top of these, our dealerships have come up with some fantastic ownership packages that will surely be of interest to discerning car buyers. We’d like to invite people to come to our branches and check out our products.”

Metronome is the French fine dining restaurant owned by renowned restaurateur Elbert Cuenca. It is located at the ground floor of The Grand Midori along Bolaños Street in Legazpi Village, Makati. Peugeot sales outlets are located in Pasig, Alabang Town Center, Quezon Avenue, Pampanga and Iloilo. mnemonic, Joseph, Division Sales head, said IPC’s all-time thrust is to employ certified expert technicians to help protect drivers and passengers on the road.

He said that from now until June 30, customers are given discounts on:

n Battery replacement (Isuzu battery) 20 percent. n Lightbulb replacement 20 percent labor, 20 percent parts. n Oil complete PMS or change oil free 1 liter engine oil. n Wiper blade replacement 20 percent labor, 20 percent parts. n Brake service package 20 percent labor. n Air free health report for PMS. n G (Gj) Express Caltex SavePlus Cards. n Engine check-up 20 percent labor. n Tires wheel alignment 20 percent labor. n Safety features on routine checks/all vehicles.

He also said thorough functional checks on stability control systems of the All-New D-MAX are likewise on tap, per DTI Fair Trade Permit No. FTEB-116968 Series of 2021.

Keep punchin’, Joseph!

PEE STOP Happy birthday to May Uy (May 15), the beauteous wife of Ramon Uy, the Lexus-driving and respected Bacolod businessman-environmentalist and chief exponent of vermicompost fertilizer technology in Western Visayas. Here’s wishing you many more birthdays to come, Mareng May. Cheers!