Issuu

“Hillary Clinton is guilty. She knows it, the FBI knows it, the people know. And now it’s up to the American people to deliver justice at the ballot box on NovEMBER 8.”—Donald Trump, at a rally in Michigan after FBI Director James Comey informed Congress that the bureau had found no evidence in a review of newly discovered e-mails to warrant criminal charges against Hillary Clinton. AP

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“By lumping the displaced hostile populations in with the extremists, you’ve basically confined the problem to one place. Once that is done, the regime will go after it hard and no one will be able to make much of a fuss internationally.”—Faysal Itani, a resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, after the Syrian government forced insurgents and opposition supporters to relocate to northern Idlib province as part of truce deals. AP

“This election is a moment of reckoning. It is a choice between division and unity, between strong, steady leadership and a loose cannon who could put everything at risk.”—Hillary Clinton, to supporters in New Hampshire about the differences between her and Republican rival Donald Trump. AP

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2015 environmental Media Award leadership award 2008

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A broader look at today’s business n

Friday, November 11, 2016 Vol. 12 No. 30

Benign inflation prompts BSP to retain key rates T

he monetary authorities showed resolve and kept a steady hand over the monetarypolicy levers, whose settings they refused to adjust and kept them frozen instead on Thursday, as overseas markets quickly rebounded from an unexpected US election turnout and as domestic inflation continued to remain manageable despite expected upticks in the coming months.

1.6% The actual below-target inflation from January to October

Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Governor (BSP) and Monetary Board (MB) Continued on A2

inside

for better? or for Worse?

Sports

DISAPPOINTED O WARRIORS

BusinessMirror

| Friday, November 11, 2016 mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph Editor: Jun Lomibao Asst. Editor: Joel Orellana

DONALD TRUMP has little track record with the Olympic movement.

AKLAND, California—Golden State Warriors forward David West is disgusted with the choice of Donald Trump for president. “The guy who got elected, it’s not just the fact he got elected but people voted for him,” West said after shootaround on Wednesday. “That’s the disheartening thing. I just think a lot of the things he was saying publicly, the majority of this country feels privately. They proved that through their vote.... He got the platform.” The Golden State Warriors met as a team on Wednesday before shootaround to discuss Trump’s win over Hillary Clinton. Coach Steve Kerr expressed disappointment in the result and the discourse in the election, saying Trump regularly used “racist, misogynist, insulting words” more appropriate for The Jerry Springer Show than a presidential election. “The whole process has left all of us feeling disgusted and disappointed,” Kerr said. “I thought we were better than this.” Kerr said it was tough to face his wife and daughter on Tuesday night as the votes were announced and then again as he faced his players before their game against Dallas. Players like West were still in shock over Trump’s win. “The message was loud and clear last night,” said West, who is African-American. “I don’t think there’s any room to sort of not face the obvious truth. He speaks for the majority of the people in this nation, his attitudes about black people, about Muslim people, about women, about just about every sort of political group you can name. Folks agree with his positions, and you can’t deny that because

folks voted for him. So, I think, throw that on the table. So this whole fairy-tale about some post-racial, this utopia that Obama supposedly created, it’s all bull. That’s the bottom line when you look at what the results say from last night. This nation has not moved a thread in terms of its ideals.” The Warriors, whose brass have said how seriously the franchise takes its role as a positive influence in the community, are going ahead with their plan discussed in the preseason to bring in civic leaders to meet with players and staff in an effort to build trust and improve communication. The meeting is scheduled for November 29. West called it “a shame” voters hid behind their ballots to show who they really are. He said the choice of Trump is “unnerving and unsettling when you think about some of the things he’s said, hasn’t apologized for. The man’s 70 years old, so he is who he is.” Golden State has discussed 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s national anthem protest. Kaepernick said on Tuesday he didn’t vote for president after he criticized both candidates in late August and called Trump “openly racist.” “I really didn’t play too close of attention because I have been very disconnected from the systematic oppression as a whole, so for me it’s another face that’s going to be the face of that system of oppression,” Kaepernick said on a conference call with reporters covering the upcoming opponent Arizona Cardinals. “To me, it really didn’t matter who went in there, the system’s still intact that oppresses people of color.” AP

several Olympics. She was First Lady when the US last hosted the Summer Games—in Atlanta in 1996. President Barack Obama went to the IOC vote in Copenhagen in 2009 to support Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics. Chicago was still eliminated in the first round, with the games awarded to Rio de Janeiro. Clinton’s presidential campaign has some close ties to Los Angeles bid leaders. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti is a Democrat who spoke at the Democratic Party convention in July which formally nominated Clinton. Bid chairman Casey Wasserman was also a prominent Clinton backer. Garcetti acknowledged in an AP interview in August during the Rio de Janeiro Olympics that some IOC members could be turned off by a Trump victory. “I think, for some of the IOC members, they would say, ‘Wait a second, can we go to a country like that, where we’ve heard things that we take offense to?” Garcetti said then. Garcetti remains more important to the bid than

Trump, according to American IOC executive board member Anita DeFrantz. “It’s the city that hosts the games, and it’s the mayor that signs the documents. It is not the president,” DeFrantz told The AP in Lausanne on Wednesday. Pound believes Los Angeles leaders will urgently want to meet with Trump to see if he is “an enthusiastic supporter of this venture or not.” “Your most important campaign is at home,” Pound said, suggesting that IOC voters and Olympic sports leaders can be swayed closer to election day. “The road show only happens in the last few months.” Before that final stretch of campaigning, the city’s biggest rival—Paris—could have its own domestic politics to explain. In May France elects a president in a contest many predict will include far-right candidate Marine Le Pen among the two candidates in a second round of voting.

FOR BETTER? OR FOR WORSE? L

By Graham Dunbar The Associated Press

AUSANNE, Switzerland—Donald Trump’s election as US president has the potential to influence Los Angeles’s chances of hosting the 2024 Olympics. For better or worse. Some International Olympic Committee (IOC) members—who will choose among Los Angeles, Paris and Budapest, Hungary, in a vote next in September—cited possible pros and cons on Wednesday of Trump’s role in the American bid. As a polarizing presidential candidate, Trump’s words on Muslims, Mexicans and other issues could have offended some of the 98 IOC members from around the world who will select the host city. “It may have,” the IOC’s longest-serving member, Dick Pound of Canada, told The Associated Press (AP).

At the same time, Pound did not rule out the possibility that Trump could help win votes if he travels to Lima, Peru, in September to pitch the Los Angeles bid in person to the IOC ahead of the secret ballot. “If he is there, and evidently he is someone who feeds off his audience, there is no reason to think he can’t work this audience, as well,” Pound said. South African IOC member Sam Ramsamy, whose country has been described by Trump as a “very dangerous mess,” dismissed any lingering effect with 10 months left before the 2024 Olympic vote. “He has been rude to everybody,” Ramsamy told the AP. “I don’t believe it will affect bidding in any way.” In a statement on Wednesday congratulating Trump, the Los Angeles 2024 bid committee said the Olympics can “transcend politics and can help unify our diverse communities and our world.” Citing 88 percent support for its bid, the committee pointed

to strong bipartisan support at all levels of government. “We look forward to working closely with President-elect Trump and his administration across the federal government” to deliver a successful Olympics, the statement said. IOC President Thomas Bach offered a brief statement to the AP on Trump’s election. “Let me congratulate President-elect Trump on his victory and wish him all the best for his term in office for all the people of the United States and of the world,” he said. Swiss IOC member Rene Fasel suggested that if Trump spoke offensively during the presidential race, it was a tactic to woo voters that worked. “You saw his speech today and it’s already a different man,” Fasel said, citing Trump’s first public address as president-elect which sought to be more inclusive. While Trump has little track record with the Olympic movement, his opponent, Hillary Clinton, was a supporter of New York’s failed bid for the 2012 Games and has attended

Motoring

Friday, November 11, 2016

A stockbroker at the Philippine Stock Exchange puts a thumbs up after Asian shares rallied on Thursday, extending a surprising global recovery, as Donald Trump’s conciliatory acceptance speech comments helped soothe world financial markets spooked by his unexpected US election victory. NONIE REYES

Own a superherO

Trump’s win poses significant new risks for Asia

Story & photos by Ronald Rey M. de los Reyes

‘T

HERE is a superhero in all of us. We just need the courage to put on the cape,” Superman said.

(From left) Suzuki Philippines managing Director and Treasurer Norminio mojica, General manager for Automobile Shuzo Hoshikura and Assistant to the General manager Kennosuke ouchi

And by these words, Suzuki Philippines valiantly brought to the fore a new line in the utility-commercial vehicle segment that prides itself with superior loading capacity, a new-generation environment-friendly and fuel-efficient diesel engine—ladies and gentlemen, the new Suzuki Super Carry. Recently launched at the Mega Tent in Libis, Quezon City, this workhorse will surely carry any business venture to new heights. “Super Carry is brought to the Philippine market with the objective of improving business processes and operations, especially among small- and medium-sized businesses, which comprise more than 90 percent of the overall sales in the country,” said Shuzo Hoshikura, Suzuki Philippines general manager for automobile. “We seek to help more businesses flourish and reach their maximum potential, and what better way is there than through this reliable workhorse,” he added. This utility commercial vehicle could carry heavy materials with up to 3.25 square meters in space and maximum capacity of 735 kilograms. Armed with light steering wheel and a low turning radius of 4.3 meters, which allows effortless driving no matter how hefty the cargo, the Super Carry provides easy maneuverability even in tight areas as proven by a short test-drive they conducted in the parking grounds during the launch. This loader sports the latest automotive technology— the 793cc, two-cylinder and DD is Euro 4-diesel engine mated to a five-speed manual transmission with a peak power of 32 hp at 3,500 rpm and 75 N-m of maximum torque at 2,000 rpm—making the vehicle more costefficient and eco-friendly compared to others of the same caliber. Not to mention sipping fuel driblets of 22.07 km/l, the Super Carry is a sure-worthy errand boy doing rounds in the city if you ask me. Its new engine is also suited with an Engine Control Module (ECM), which easily monitors its condition and guarantees its continuous peak performance. From the outside, the Super Carry may be your typical runabout work-loader, as it features plain front bumper and halogen headlights. It’s a tad higher than the previous model at 1,883 tall and measures 3,800-mm long, 1,562-mm wide and a 2,110-mm wheelbase, while its cargo bed is 2,183-mm long, 1,488-mm wide and a bed height of 300 mm. Interior-wise, however, Suzuki designers have given careful thought on the comfort and convenience for its driver and passengers. The driver seat, for example, can be adjusted up to 90 mm, coupled with the extended portion of the passenger seat, where there is enough legroom and space to lie down in between long drives. The cabin endows numerous cubbyholes, trays, pockets and storage spaces for documents, food items and other necessities. A din audio unit with built-in speaker featuring AM/ FM tuning, USB/SD interface, auxiliary input and LCD display make driving more enjoyable. Underneath the seats, meanwhile, are thick glass fiber heat shields for better insulation, paired with balloon-type weather strip that lessens noise, vibration and harshness (NVH). Its bigger rear window can readily be opened with an ergonomically placed locking mechanism. This allows a large amount of air to flow inside the cabin when needed. Safety-wise, this Super Carry is protected by a lock-on fuel tank cap, a secured spare tire mounting bracket and battery with provision of lock. Continued on E4

Motoring

DESPITE GLOBAL GLOOM, PHL SEEN ATTRACTING MORE INVESTMENTS By Catherine N. Pillas @c_pillas29 & Bianca Cuaresma @BcuaresmaBM

$711M

he country’s “solid macroeconomic fundamentals”are enticing more foreign and local businessmen The net FDI inflow to the to increase their investments in the Philippines, Philippines in August the Board of Investments (BOI) and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said on Thursday. The BOI said it expects to approve investment pledges, amounting to P52 billion, for 44 more projects in the pipeline in the coming months. Trade Undersecretary and BOI Managing Head Ceferino S. Rodolfo said these investments would “elevate” the country’s competitiveness, such as in various resource-based sectors. “What we are seeing in the real sector that relies on fundamentals of the economy, the fundamental strengths of the economy, is that growth is being sustained or even accelerated,” Rodolfo said in a statement. Projects for registration will mostly come from the energy sector, which would account for 57 percent of the projected investment pledges or P29.57 billion.

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SEC okays listing rules for PPP firms

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business news source of the year

See “Investments,” A2

STEVE KERR: The whole process has left all of us feeling disgusted and disappointed. I thought we were better than this.

sports

2016 ejap journalism awards

ust when China’s economy seemed to be stabilizing, Donald Trump’s election as US president poses significant new risks. Not just for Chinese growth, but the entire Asia region. That’s because the president-elect campaigned on a policy platform with protectionism at its center. Trump wants

PESO exchange rates n US 48.6740

to slap punitive tariffs on Chinese goods and label the world’s No. 2 economy a currency manipulator. Such a move would hurt Chinese exports. But it could also trigger a trade war if Beijing retaliates, catching other Asian economies in the crossfire. See “Trump’s win,” A2

31%

The contribution of Filipino workers in the US to the PHL’s total remittances

By VG Cabuag

@villygc

he Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has given its go signal to the proposed listing rules for companies that bagged public-private partnership (PPP) projects at the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE). “In support of President Duterte’s programs to sustain economic growth, listing PPP companies at the bourse will provide additional source of funding for the projects,” the SEC said. The PSE initiated the move to have separate listing rules and regulations for companies involved in PPP projects, in a bid to drive up the number of initial public offerings. A company may apply for the said PPP listing if it, or a special purpose company incorporated just for the project, already bagged a contract. The said firm will be exempted from the three-year minimum track record and operating history requirement. The minimum project cost should be at P5 billion, as indicated in its financial bid, but there will be no secondary offering, or existing shareholders of the PPP company are not allowed to offer their shares in the firm during the initial public offering period. Continued on A2

n japan 0.4597 n UK 60.4726 n HK 6.2759 n CHINA 7.1815 n singapore 34.7995 n australia 37.2794 n EU 53.1033 n SAUDI arabia 12.9821

Source: BSP (10 November 2016 )

BMReports BusinessMirror

A2 Friday, November 11, 2016

Benign inflation prompts BSP to retain key rates Continued from A1

Chairman Amando M. Tetangco Jr. announced the decision to keep the interest rate on the overnight borrowing, alternately called the reverse repurchase rate, unchanged at 3 percent. The corresponding interest rates on the overnight lending and deposit facilities were similarly kept steady and the reserve requirement ratios, likew ise, left unchanged. Tetangco said the Monetary Board decision was based on the assessment that inflation continued to be manageable, with an outlook of a “gradual return” to the inflation-target range over the policy horizon. This has reference to the fact that actual year-to-date inflation, seen ranging from 2 percent up to 4 percent, has stayed belowtarget at 1.6 percent. The BSP chief also acknowledged that prospects for continued growth across economies remain

Investments. . . Continued from A1

The other projects are in the manufacturing sector, which would account for P7.77 billion, or a 15-percent share; agriculture sector, P6.58-billion; realestate activities sector, P6.37 billion; logistics or water transport, P1.07 billion; and other varied sectors, P665.30 million. Last month the BOI reported that investments registered with the agency grew by 193 percent to reach P51.03 billion in September 2016, up from P17.41 billion generated in September 2015. The increase in investments for the month was due to the approval of two big-ticket projects—Light Rail Manila Corp.’s P30.37-billion Public-Private Partnership project for the operations and maintenance of the Manila Light Rail Transit 1 Integrated Railway System-Cavite Extension; and Energy Development Corp.’s P16.42-billion

modest and uneven. “Moreover, monetary policies in major advanced economies continue to be asynchronous and the prospects uncertain,” Tetangco said in a prepared statement following the seventh rate-setting meeting for the year.

Prices to rise faster in coming months While inflation was expected to hit below the government’s 2-percent to 4-percent target for the year, Tetangco said latest assessments indicate the balance of risks to the inflation outlook tilted to the upside. This, he said, was due to pending petition for adjustments in electricity rates and the proposed tax-reform program initiated by the Department of Finance. Slower global economic activity continues to be a key downside risk to inflation, according to the BSP. Deputy BSP Governor for the Monetary Stability Sector Diwa C. wind-energy resources project in Iloilo. “The mass-transport project, for example, will be a big help for the commuting public, while the renewable-energy projects will improve and sustain the quality of life of the people,” Rodolfo said. On a year-on-year basis, BOI-approved investments grew 49 percent to P286.44 billion in January to September, from P192.39 billion posted in the same period last year. The investment pledges were generated from 255 projects with a total estimated job generation of 46,716 at full operations. The BOI said the largest share of approved investments during the period was intended to finance projects in the power sector, which accounted for 48-percent share to total approved investments during the period. Topping the list of foreign country investors is Singapore with P12.90 billion, or a 26-percent share, to total approved foreign investments. The Netherlands came in second

Guinigundo said the forecast inflation for this year and next had been scaled up at the Monetary Board meeting. Guinigundo said the inflation for 2016 was reset to 1.8 percent, from forecast of only 1.7 percent at the September meeting of the monetary Board. This year’s inflation, meanwhile, was seen to rise to 3 percent, higher than earlier forecast of 2.6 percent. “At least three reasons are behind this upgrade in the inflation forecast. One is the higher September and October inflation rate. Next is the rebound in petroleum prices,” Guinigundo told reporters on Thursday. “And finally, the weaker peso. We’ve seen how the peso depreciated in recent months and this is expected to contribute to more inflationary pressures for the next two years,” the deputy governor said. Local market movement affected by global developments. The local currency weakened to

48.66 per dollar on Thursday, lower than the 48.59 per dollar closing rate reported the previous day. Total traded volume was a mere $357 million, from $765.9 million the previous day. As a consequence, Guinigundo said the BSP was “not [too] concerned about the level of the exchange rate.” “It’s very difficult to make attributions in terms of the factors behind the exchange rate. As you know, the exchange rate is driven by both fundamentals and sentiment,” he said, when asked if the slump in peso value on Thursday related in part or in full to Donald Trump’s victory at the US presidential races. Guinigundo also said it was too early for the BSP to gauge the impact of Trump’s win on the local economy. “Just looking at the acceptance speech of Trump, we see the disconnect between the pronouncements during the campaign and what he pledged to do moving forward.

Basically, he had three messages before. One, he wanted to tighten immigration. Two, he wanted to keep jobs at home. And third, he wants to keep away cheap imports coming from abroad,” Guinigundo said. “Of course, the first one will affect our remittances. Second one, our BPOs [business-process outsourcing]. If they want to keep jobs at home then outsourcing may not be encouraged. And third, keep away cheap imports that would affect our exports,” he added. Guinigundo further said if Trump were to promote the common good as he said in his acceptance speech, then he has to reconsider earlier plans for immigrants, BPOs and the open trade policy that has benefited the US. “So, I think it’s important to first continue to observe what the US president will announce, especially during his inauguration, in terms of more specific economic programs,” he said.

with investments amounting to P8 billion; followed by Japan, P6.83 billion; and South Korea, P6.42 billion. The National Capital Region (NCR) attracted the lion’s share of investments at P74.13 billion, or a 26-percent share, to total approved investments. Other regions are apparently gaining headway, particularly Region 3, which came in second with committed investments worth P45.16 billion, accounting for 16 percent. Significant investments were also directed to Region 4A (P32.95 billion, or 11-percent share); Region 7 (P20.78 billion, or 7-percent share); and Negros Island region (P19.26 billion, or 7-percent share).

the Philippines registered a net inflow of $711 million in August alone, bringing the total eight-month FDI inflow to $5.4 billion. “The sustained FDI inflows were buoyed by investors’ confidence in the economy on the back of the country’s solid macroeconomic fundamentals,” the central bank said in a statement. The August FDI inflow was 32 percent larger than the previous year’s $539 million. This was on account of the strong increase in the investments of debt instruments doing the period. This increase in debt instruments, or intercompany borrowings, was up by 44.2 percent during the month to hit $636 million. This surge more than compensated for the decline in net equity capital placements to $8 million, from the $37 million last year. The bulk of these gross equitycapital placements were sourced mainly from the US, Singapore, the Netherlands, Japan and Hong Kong. These equity-capital placements were channeled mainly to real estate,

manufacturing, wholesale and retail trade, electricity, gas and steam and air-conditioning supply and arts, entertainments and recreation activities. Reinvestment of earnings, meanwhile, grew by 9.9 percent to hit $67 million during the month. The surge of long-term foreign investments to the Philippines contrasted the decline in its counterpart short-term foreign investments in the same month. Earlier data from the central bank showed investors’ hesitance to make business deals during the so-called ghost month reflected on foreign portfolio investments in August. In particular, foreign portfolio investments—or more popularly known as “hot” or “speculative” money—hit a net inflow of $427.07 million in August. While this was a turnaround from the $542.54-million net outflows in the same month last year, the figure was significantly lower than the $1.1-billion net inflow recorded in July.

Long-term investments

The BSP said funds with a longer intent to stay in the Philippines grew as of end-August this year, bucking downside risks of investor shifts due to global uncertainty and the negative effect of the so-called ghost month. Foreign direct investments (FDI) to

SEC okays listing rules for PPP firms Continued from A1

Firms, however, need to submit its business plan, which may include its plans for liquidation and winding up, or a proposal for a new business, at least three years before the scheduled expiration of the contract. The PSE will have the power to delist any PPP company unless it submits documents that explain their ability to continue to operate, a clause that will be useful in case of pretermination of contracts or agreements that will not be renewed. The said PPP listing initiative was a product of several roundtable discussions and consultations with public and private stakeholders on developing the capital markets for PPPs initiated by the PPP Center, the PSE, the SEC and the Asian Development Bank. The PPP Center said earlier it plans to institute a framework to ensure the availability of longterm refinancing options to the private sector while ensuring that the government and the private sector’s contractual commitments and undertakings on the PPP project are not impaired.

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Trump’s win. . . Continued from A1

Other worries: a planned major regional trade pact, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, likely won’t get off the ground. Slower trade flows and rising uncertainty means less investment and weaker growth. Then there are controls on movement of people, the risk of capital repatriation back to the US and major security concerns. “Profound changes in US trade and security relations with the region are likely and probably negative,” economists at Morgan Stanley wrote in a note. Targeting China with trade barriers could pose an unpleasant choice for policy-makers in Beijing: accept the hit to growth from weaker exports or respond in kind, economists at Goldman Sachs Inc. wrote in a note. A weaker yuan could trigger an acceleration in capital outflows, pressuring China’s international reserves and draining money from a slowing economy. “One possible measure would be to allow a somewhat faster weakening of the yuan, although from China’s perspective this or other trade measures could carry the risk of escalation,” the Goldman economists wrote. An investor survey conducted in July by Nomura Holdings Inc. flagged a long list of worries under a Trump presidency: from a possible rise in trade protectionism to threats to regional security if the US cuts its military commitments in Asia. The conclusion is clear: after Mexico, Asia is most at risk. In Nomura’s report, titled “Trumping Asia”, 77 percent of respondents in its survey expect the US will brand China a currency manipulator under Trump and 75 percent predict he will impose tariffs on exports from China, South Korea and Japan. Only 37 percent think he will follow through with a pledge to build a wall along the Mexican border. Nomura didn’t disclose how many respondents it surveyed. Investors’ fears aren’t unwarranted. Asia is the world’s manufacturing hub and many nations are export-dependent, putting them at risk if trade barriers start rising. China was the US’s biggest trading partner last year, and if trade restrictions are imposed on the nation, the knock-on effects on the rest of Asia would be substantial, according to Nomura. None are more vulnerable in Asia than South Korea and the Philippines. South Korea faces a possible backlash from two sides: Trump has criticized a 2012 free-trade agreement with the country, saying it has destroyed almost 100,000 American jobs; and he has vowed to force South Korea to meet the full cost of security guarantees provided by the US, which may add to fiscal woes there, Nomura said. The Philippines faces risks because of possible immigration restrictions. The US is host to 35 percent of the total number of Filipinos working abroad, and Nomura estimates they account for about 31 percent of total worker remittances, a key source of foreign inflows for the local economy. The Philippines has one of the biggest export exposures to the US in Southeast Asia, and Trump’s pledge to bring jobs back to the US may threaten the nation’s burgeoning business-process outsourcing sector. The industry caters mostly to US companies and attracts revenue that may equal the size of total worker remittances, about 9 percent of GDP, over the next two years, according to Nomura. To be sure, it remains to be seen how much Trump delivers on his campaign rhetoric. His promise to ramp up fiscal spending could cushion the US economy, which is a potential positive for world growth, too. But even then, the absence of any new trade agreements would probably offset that. Bloomberg News

BMReports BusinessMirror

A4 Friday, November 11, 2016

news@businessmirror.com.ph

Lethargic trade growth seen to persist By Cai U. Ordinario

@cuo_bm

eak exports caused the country’s trade deficit to widen to $17.81 billion in the January-to-September period, according to data released by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) on Thursday. PSA data showed the country’s trade deficit for September alone reached $1.89 billion. However, this is the lowest since February 2016, when the trade deficit was at $1.1 billion. “I believe trade performance will continue to be lukewarm. Yes, the deficit will be reduced, but the lethargy will continue until the first quarter of 2017,” University of Asia and the Pacific (UA&P) School of Economics Dean Cid Terosa told the BusinessMirror. The country’s total trade stood at $101.196 billion in the first three quarters of the year. This is higher than the $96.653 billion posted in the same months last year. Total trade is composed of the $59.51 billion of imports and $41.69 billion of exports during the January-to-September period. The country’s exports amounted to $5.211 billion in September 2016, a 5.1-percent increase from the $4.96-billion recorded value in September 2015. Total imports amounted to $7.101 billion, an increase of 13.5 percent in September 2016 from $6.255 billion recorded during the same period a year ago. Terosa said risks to the country’s trade performance include slow world-market growth and geopolitical uncertainties and risks. “[US President-elect Donald] Trump has voiced a protective stance for America during the campaign, and, if he pursues that line of think-

$17.81B The country’s nine-month trade deficit ing, our export of goods and services could take a hit,” Terosa added. EagleWatch Senior Fellow Alvin Ang said that, while it was “normal” for the country to have a trade deficit, what is more important is how capital imports are being used and whether they are being used to boost the country’s exports moving forward. This is one of the problems when it comes to PSA data, Ang said, since the breakdown of what these capital goods are were not made readily available. This makes it difficult to analyze the data being released by the government. Nonetheless, Ang said the country’s trade prospects, particularly exports, may have a ray of hope, particularly next year, when the Philippines starts exporting cars under the government’s trade program. Apart from this, Ang said exporters must also heed the advice of economists and policy-makers to diversify their products. The country needs to export more than just electronics, particularly at this time when global demand for electronic products is weak. However, the National Economic

Senators see early approval of bill expanding law protecting journalists By Butch Fernandez @reneacostaBM

HE Senate Committee on Public Information is set to endorse quick plenary approval of a bill expanding coverage of the Press Freedom Law protecting the right of print journalists not to reveal their sources of information, also known as the Sotto Law, to include in its ambit broadcast, wire agencies and online media practitioners. “This time, we are covering the whole spectrum,” Sen. Grace Poe, the committee chairman, said, summing up Wednesday’s public hearing on a remedial legislation embodied in a bill sponsored by Majority Leader Vicente C. Sotto III. It seeks to update Republic Act (RA) 53, authored by the late Sen. Vicente Yap Sotto Sr., which protects a publisher, editor, columnist and reporter from being compelled to name their news source. Poe, speaking to reporters after the hearing, clarified the amending legislation initiated by Sotto would be limited to “legitimate journalists” to now include editors and reporters of online media, as well as radio and television news outfits. “Bloggers would not be covered,” she added, noting that “they fall under freedom of expression.” Poe indicated smooth sailing for the Sotto bill, saying resource persons invited to to the committee hearing all agree it is time to amend the the two decade old law protecting journalists from revealing their sources to protect freedom of the press. He acknowledged that their

RA 53 The law that protects a publisher, editor, columnist and reporter from being compelled to name their news source

counterparts in the House of Representatives have already approved the proposals to amend RA 53, to include as exemption journalists in broadcast, online and wire agencies, from revealing sources of information obtained in confidence. She recalled that amendments to R A 53, popularly known as the Shield Law or the Sotto Law were proposed since the 13th Congress, noting that RA 53 was first amended in 1956 to limit the nondisclosure of sources to only when the security of the State will be compromised. “During this time, the practice of journalism was mainly confined to print media. Of course we’ve come a long way since then, it’s high time that we make these relevant changes now.” She added that current proposals seek to expand the coverage of those protected by the current law. These bills acknowledge that that journalism has now taken on a multimedia character. “Thus, these seek to protect broadcast, radio and online journalists from divulging their sources, except for certain instances,” Poe said.

and Development Authority (Neda) believes that the country’s renewed ties with China and other Asian countries would be enough to counter risks to the country's trade performance. Most Asian countries also posted positive gains in exports for September 2016, pointing to a recovery in global trade. Neda Director General Ernesto M. Pernia said that, aside from lifting the ban on bananas, China has also announced its intention to buy more high-value commercial crops from the Philippines, like mangoes and coconut, as well as high-end fishery products, like lapu-lapu, crabs and tuna. “Recent developments in China and Japan, which are the Philippines’s largest trading partners in Asia, provide good prospects for merchandise trade. The steady growth of China’s economy is a welcome development, and the Japanese government also appears to be on track in reviving its economy,” the Cabinet official said. Apart from these, Pernia said upticks in the prices of petroleum crude may push up Philippine import payments in the near to medium term. Pernia said the strong outlook of the domestic economy is also seen to prop up purchases of imported goods. China is the country’s biggest source of imports at a share of 19.7 percent in September 2016. Payments were recorded at $1.398 billion, an increase of 52.3 percent from $917.80 billion in September 2015. Revenues from the country’s exports to China, on the other hand, reached $633.36 million, generating a total trade value of $2.031 billion and $764.46 million in trade deficit. Imports from Japan contributed 12.1 percent, or $857.53 million, to the total import bill in September 2016. It grew by 28.5 percent from its September 2015 value of $667.30 million. Export receipts from Japan in

LT SUPPORTS HERO FOUNDATION LT Group Chairman Dr. Lucio C. Tan (left) presents a P2-million check from Cobra Energy Drink to the

Hero Foundation through its president, Bernard Vincent Dy (second from left). The donation is in support of the Hero Foundation’s educational-assistance program for orphaned children and siblings of soldiers killed in action or incapacitated in the line of duty. Also in photo are Basic Holdings President Lt. Gen. Salvador Mison, AFP (Ret.), and Asia Brewery Inc. COO and Hero Foundation trustee Michael Tan.

September 2016 reached $1.118 billion, yielding a total trade value of $1.976 billion and a favorable balance of trade of $260.79 million. Imports from the United States accounted for 9.1 percent of the total amounting to $644.92 million, an 8.2-percent drop from $702.87 million in September 2015. Exports to the US amounted to $737.3 million, yielding a two-way trade value of $1.382 billion and a trade surplus of $92.38 million. “Amid these mixed developments and with risks mostly on the downside, the Philippines will continue to focus on bringing Philippine exports to more diverse markets,” Pernia said.

“Along with our improved bilateral relations with China, the country will correspondingly maximize opportunities from existing free-trade deals, most notably the recently signed Philippines-European Free Trade Association agreement,” he added. By economic bloc, East Asia was the biggest source of the country’s imports in September 2016, as it accounted for 46.2 percent of the total imports valued at $3.277 billion. It increased by 22.1 percent from $2.683 billion in September 2015. Total exports to countries in East Asia amounted to $2.715 billion, resulting in a total trade of $5.992 billion and a trade deficit of $562.49 million.

CommoditiesimportedfromAsean member-countries were valued at $1.914 billion, contributing 27 percent to the total and registered an increase of 25.8 percent, from the $1.521 billion recorded in September 2015. Earnings from exports to Asean member-countries were worth $748.63 million, resulting in a total trade of $2.663 billion and a trade deficit of $1.165 billion. Imports from the European Union (EU) were valued at $505.12 million, down 19.9 percent, compared to a year ago value of $630.68 million. Exports to the EU, meanwhile, were worth $690.62 million, resulting in a total trade of $1.196 billion and a trade surplus of $185.50 million.

Air Juan boosts local tourism PHL to host Asean businesses via island linkages Ports Association meet By Ma. Stella F. Arnaldo Special to the BusinessMirror

IR Juan Aviation Inc. aims to boost local tourism businesses with the expansion of its services, which now include scheduled operations to key destinations in the country. In an interview with the BusinessMirror, Jose Rafael Ledesma, president of Air Juan, said the airline, which was set up in 2012 as a charter service, now offers scheduled daily flights to several resorts in Busuanga (Coron), Palawan; twice a week to Puerto Galera in Oriental Mindoro; six times a week to Boracay, Aklan; and daily to Subic, Zambales, using its nineseater Cessna Grand Caravan Amphibians (seaplane). “We are the only biggest and commercial seaplane operator here in the Philippines,” he stressed, allowing passengers the convenience of checking in an uncongested terminal and delivering them “door-to-door,” meaning the seaplane takes off from the carrier’s dock at the CCP Complex and lands in the waters by the resorts. “We essentially have our own airport in that respect. And that already on its own provides great time savings; you don’t have to be there two hours before, you don’t need to line up, queue and what not,” he added. Ledesma is confident that the carrier would post higher profit margins in 2017, enhanced by its scheduled services, which are projected to account for about 30 percent of its revenues next year. Air Juan has also been flying scheduled services connecting Coron to Boracay, Coron to Puerto Princesa, and Cuyo, also in Palawan, to Puerto Princesa, using landplanes, the Cessna Grand Caravan Ex. The airline’s fleet also includes two Bell 407GX helicopters, aside from the four seaplanes, two landplanes and two jets—a Cessna Citation and Cessna Sovereign. “Over the past two years when we started operating our seaplanes, the primary activities were to really identify the areas that would be best served by the seaplanes,” Ledesma explained the reason for offering scheduled seaplane services. “And since then, we’ve been flying those destinations almost on a regular basis, and it’s only come to this point when we’ve really identified which areas can be considered scheduled due to the demand and the destination itself. And so we found we’re on the cusp of the peak to the ultrapeak season, it would be a great time to offer scheduled services.” The airline also helps increase the number of businesses in

the tourism sector or strengthen existing tourism business with its ability to link the many islands in the country. Ledesma cites the luxury island resort of Ugen island off Sorsogon, whose owners would not have pursued its development if there were no seaplanes that would make it accessible to its guests. “Air Juan, through its services, not only provides memorable leisure experiences to our travelers but it also provides opportunities for new businesses to open up in the tourism space, thrive in those businesses, and also for the existing business owners in the tourism space to grow their business because we provide them accessibility where there was very little accessibility in the past,” he underscored. “With that in mind, we believe the future of Air Juan and tourism in the Philippines has endless potential now.” As the seaplane service just started, passenger load factors are still low, but the company official expressed confidence that this would soon pick up, as the usual holiday/ vacation season has already started with peak and super peak seasons carrying over until May next year. Also, the carrier has tied up with 10 resorts, and now offers vacation packages that would cater to most types of tourists. “The response has been encouraging [both from passengers and resorts].... We not only sell seats on the planes, but we also sell rooms. We sell vacations,” Ledesma said. “We are now in the process of launching various tieups with about 10 resorts,” he added, which include Busuanga Bay Lodge, El Rio y Mar, Two Seasons Coron and Huma Island, all in Palawan. Other resorts are in Boracay, which include The Lind, Discovery Shores, Shangri-La Resort, Two Seasons Boracay and Movenpick; Buri Resort and Spa and Infinity Resort in Puerto Galera; and Lighthouse Marina Resort in Subic. The carrier hopes to hit as many markets as it can, offering affordable (e.g., P4,500 one way, Manila-Puerto Galera) to upscale price points (e.g., P12,000 one-way, Manila-Boracay). Its vacation package, dubbed “Flight and Stay,” range from P25,500 per person (three days/two nights, Sunday to Tuesday) to P33,500 (three days/two nights, Friday to Sunday), which includes airfare and accommodations at Busuanga Bay Lodge, for instance. “We feel that is the way to go for us is to really establish packages with the resorts so for the customer, their not having to look at the flight, then ‘I have to book my resort.’ The types of resorts we’re offering will range from the high-end and medium-priced to affordable resorts. What’s key for us here is to provide potential passengers as many options and destinations to go to, so they will, in the course of looking at those destinations, might be good to try the seaplane,” he said.

he Philippines, through the Philippine Ports Authority (PPA), is hosting the 42nd Meeting of the Asean Ports Association (APA) on November 15 and 16. The event, which will be held at the Solaire Resorts in Parañaque, is expected to be attended by the top port executives and decision-makers from the membernations of the APA. Transportation Secretary Arthur P. Tugade will deliver the keynote speech to start the meeting, while PPA General Manager Jay Daniel R. Santiago and APA Chairman and PT Terminal Petikemas Surabaya of Indonesia Head of Corporate Secretary Dothy will give the welcome remarks and opening address, respectively. The nine-member APA includes Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Each member is required to present a paper that will serve as the springboard for future development and cooperation among member-countries. One of the issues to be tackled in the meeting is port infrastructure, which will be the focus of the Philippine presentation, specifically the PPA’s Port Infrastructure Development Plans. The Port Infrastructure Development Plan of the PPA, meanwhile, identified five priority ports for modernization, namely, Davao, Cagayan de Oro, General Santos, Iloilo Container Port Complex and Zamboanga ports, which are already considered international gateways. “We are developing these ports, as these handle the majority of our import and export product not only within Asean but also worldwide,” Santiago stressed. “The APA meeting, which we will be hosting, is a great avenue for the Philippines to assure our Asean neighbors and the world that we are doing beyond what is needed for us to properly respond to the demands of the global supply-chain market,” Santiago said. Last year, during the 41st APA Meeting held in Brunei Darussalam, the PPA stressed on the capacitybuilding initiatives it is undertaking like the “Train for Trade” program with the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, as well as its partnership with the World Maritime University, the International Association of Ports and Harbors, and the Permanent International Association of Navigation Congress, among others, all aimed at improving the professional capability of its employees.

AseanFriday BusinessMirror

A5 Friday, November 11, 2016 • Editor: Max V. de Leon

news@businessmirror.com.ph

Najib growth push stymied by banks cautious on loans

alaysian banks turning cautious on lending are adding to Prime Minister Najib Razak’s woes as economic growth falters. A sell-off in the ringgit and added volatility in global stocks after Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential elections give Malaysian banks no incentive to step up appetite for risk. Loan growth will likely weaken to at least a 12-year low in 2016, according to projections by AmInvestment Bank Bhd. and RHB Research Institute Sdn., and data compiled by Bloomberg. Once among Southeast Asia’s powerhouses, Malaysia’s economy is faltering, with the World Bank forecasting growth of less than 5 percent from 2016 to 2018. Expansion was probably unchanged at 4 percent last quarter, according to a Bloomberg survey, as the slump in commodity prices curtail government spending and credit growth weakens. “What is worrying to us is

tightness of credit,” said Weiwen Ng, an economist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. in Singapore. “Appetite for loans still remain weak while banks are cautious of nonperforming loans, hence they are wary of lending.”

Property, car loans

Risks to global growth are crimping Malaysian companies’ appetite to borrow and spend. Banks are also wary of lending more to households, already one of the most indebted in Asia. Malaysia also has to contend with a funding scandal surrounding the premier that’s being investigated by authorities around the world. To retain support, Najib last month allocated more funds for the poor, promised civil servants a bonus

and introduced extra assistance for farmers. Growth slid to 4 percent in the second quarter, the slowest pace since at least 2011. The central bank is scheduled to release third-quarter data on Friday. Trump’s victory adds to uncertainty and clouds the outlook for emerging-market assets, such as the ringgit, which fell as much as 0.9 percent against the dollar on Wednesday. Loans will probably rise 5 percent to 6 percent this year and next, AmInvestment forecast. That would be the slowest since at least 2004, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. RHB Research estimates growth of 4.3 percent this year. “Corporates are more careful in terms of their investments and, at the same time, households are quite highly leveraged so the growth even from the household sector has also slowed down,” said Fiona Leong, an analyst at RHB Research Institute Sdn. in Kuala Lumpur. Mortgages are also weakening following the central bank’s cooling measures on the property sector while car loans have faltered, said Kelvin Ong, a banking analyst at AmInvestment Bank Bhd. in Kuala Lumpur. Bloomberg News

Friday, November 11, 2016

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How Trump could affect key areas of economy

onald Trump won the presidency by pledging to restore a vanished and golden economic era, when growth roared, factory jobs flourished and America sat unchallenged atop the global economy. Yet, he never offered much of a road map. Which is why it’s far from clear how Trump will affect the economy, even though his agenda enjoys the advantage of Republican control of both the House and Senate. Trump has pledged to revitalize the mainly white working class that elevated him—a tough task given an aging US work force, dwindling options for people with little education and years of stagnant pay. Trump has said he’d slash taxes, strong-arm US trading partners, end commitments to environmental rules and make it easier to drill for oil. He’d lift federal regulations, void President Barack Obama’s health-care law and curb immigration. And, of course, build a wall on the Southern border—and force Mexico to pay for it. Those steps, Trump says, would turbocharge the economy. Yet, many economists warn that his plans could spike the national debt, ignite trade wars and, perhaps, cause a recession. It’s impossible to tell how his presidency will affect the economy and financial system just because so much is unknown, said Michael Arone of State Street Global Advisors: “What policies will he pursue? How he moves from election to governing is unknowable.” Here’s how Trump’s presidency might affect sectors of the US economy and financial system:

Economy and Federal Reserve

The president-elect has said he can get the economy to grow nearly 4 percent a year; it’s now running at half that pace. He would ignite that growth, he’s said, by cutting taxes by roughly $6 trillion over 10 years, expanding oil and natural-gas production and slashing most federal regulations. Yet, few analysts think the economy can expand much faster. An aging population means the work force is adding fewer people, a recipe for tepid growth. And productivity—output per hour worked and vital to economic health—is chronically sluggish. Those trends help explain why the Federal Reserve (the Fed) says the economy’s long-term annual growth is a slow 1.8 percent. That’s a rationale for keeping interest rates near historic lows, especially with inflation tame. Trump has called Fed Chair Janet Yellen essentially a puppet of Obama. Yellen has inflated a stock bubble, Trump argues, by keeping rates too low for too long. Yellen’s term as chair will end in early 2018, and Trump won’t likely renominate her for a second term. Still, analysts don’t expect Yellen to resign before her term ends, in part because of the disruption it might cause in financial markets. The Fed has been considered all but sure to raise rates at its next meeting in mid-December, reflecting a strengthened US economy. After Trump’s victory, investors still peg the likelihood of a December rate hike at 81 percent, according to the CME Group.

Infrastructure

Trump has vowed to fix roads, bridges and airports—a sticking point in recent years as Congress

The percentage of US economic growth Donald Trump plans to have each year

and Obama failed to compromise on ways to pay for repairs to aging infrastructure. As president, he said, he’d rely on tax credits to incentivize development. His advisers have asserted that $140 billion in tax credits could generate $1 trillion more in infrastructure investments over 10 years. T he approach might speed construction, though tax credits would likely favor profit-generating projects. It’s uncertain whether tax credits would lead to upgraded decaying sewer systems in impoverished cities with a shrinking tax base. Overall, the funding would provide what economists see as an urgent priority. Public spending on transportation and water infrastructure has sunk below its 2003 levels, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Beth Ann Bovino, US chief economist at Standard and Poor’s, has estimated that each dollar spent on infrastructure returns $1.30 to the economy.

Taxes

Trump’s election could mean a big tax cut for affluent Americans, particularly the richest 1 percent, and a much smaller tax cut for many others. Analysts say those tax cuts would likely boost growth in the short run. But if all his changes were enacted, they would balloon the budget deficit and potentially lift interest rates and shrink the overall economy, economists say. Nearly half the benefits from Trump’s proposed tax cuts would flow to the top 1 percent, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. They’d receive an average tax cut of $215,000, lifting their after-tax income by 13.5 percent, the policy center found. The top 0.1 percent would get a tax cut exceeding $1 million. Trump has proposed reducing the top bracket’s tax rate from 39.6 percent to 33 percent. He’d end taxes on estates and repeal some taxes on investment income. The corporate income-tax rate would sink to 15 percent, from 35 percent. On average, middle-income households would receive a tax cut of $1,010, lifting their after-tax income 1.8 percent, the Tax Policy Center says. But some middle- and lower-income households would face tax increases. That’s because his plan eliminates the personal exemption, which lets households reduce taxable income for each household member. Trump would replace that with higher standard deductions. But for many single parents and families with three or more children, the standard deduction wouldn’t offset the loss of personal exemptions.

Trade

Trump says the economy’s sluggish growth is due to trade deals negotiated by incompetent leaders who betrayed workers, choosing, instead, to favor rich donors. Mexico, China and Japan, he argues, operate by rules that have hurt the United States. He says agreements to open markets, like the North American Free Trade Agreement, led firms to ship factory jobs abroad—a trend he would stop by renegotiating these deals and penalizing US companies that move manufacturing operations offshore. Trump says the result of these trade deals is a $500-billion trade gap that he’d close by raising tariffs if necessary to restore factory jobs. Yet, foreign governments could view the threat of higher tariffs as the start of a trade war. And even if US manufacturing did expand, automation means factories need fewer workers.

Health care

Within the health-care industry, Trump is viewed with trepidation. Insurers, pharmaceutical firms and hospitals would stand to lose if a repeal of Obama’s health-care law, as Trump has vowed, increases the number of uninsured Americans. Even if, as critics like Trump say, the Obama’s health-care law is rife with complexity and complications for health-care companies, it does offer the long-term prospect of more paying customers. Insurance and hospital-industry groups reminded Trump on Wednesday of his pledge to replace Obama’s law with a system that provides affordable high-quality coverage for Americans. One of Trump’s main proposals—allowing insurers to sell policies across state lines—draws mixed reviews within the industry. Smaller insurers tend not to like it, a reflection of the fact that health insurance is still a regional business. Trump is a wild card for the pharmaceutical industry. At one point, he supported authorizing Medicare to negotiate prescription-drug prices. He also favors letting consumers buy lower-cost medications from overseas.

Financial reform

The fate of key piece of legislation passed after the financial crisis— the Dodd-Frank regulatory reform law—is now in question. House Republicans want to repeal all or parts of Dodd-Frank. The twist is that Wall Street, generally, has little interest in repealing Dodd-Frank. Banks have spent billions restructuring themselves to comply with the requirements of Dodd-Frank and generally believe the banking system is stronger with the law. But the fate of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was created by Dodd-Frank, now comes into question. Congress has wanted to restructure the bureau to make it a commission, not led by a single director, and to make it subject to the congressional appropriations process. That’s now likelier.

Technology

Trump’s election could have a sweeping effect on the technology industry, from foreign-worker visas to international trade agreements. Mark Moerdler, an analyst at Bernstein Research, foresees potential benefits for the industry, he wrote in a research note: “A procorporate administration should be positive for the software industry: streamlining red tape, lowering corporate taxes, returning overseas cash and further spurring start-ups.” Still, Trump’s antiglobalization stance could hurt such companies as Microsoft, Oracle and VMW that

do big business overseas. And if Trump manages to restrict immigration and restrict H-1B visas, it could make it harder and costlier for tech companies to hire foreign information-technology workers. His vows to withdraw from trade deals in favor of returning manufacturing jobs to the US could raise production costs for tech companies, from giants, like Apple, to tiny tech start-ups that do manufacturing in Asia.

Energy

The president-elect is sure to be friendly to the oil and coal industries and skeptical of the renewable-energy sector. He pledged to make the US a dominant player in energy, independent of Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries oil. It’s unclear whether Trump’s policies will have much effect on drilling, if oil prices remain relatively low, or on jobs in coal-producing states. Trump wants to unlock untapped US reserves of fossil fuels. He’s supported what he calls “safe” hydraulic fracturing, which has helped US oil-and-gas production boom. And he supports more leasing on federal lands and the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada. What’s more, Trump wants to reverse Obama’s environmental policy to “cancel all wasteful climate-change spending.” Trump’s victory means the end for Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which would have forced states to limit carbon emissions and likely hastened the decline of US coal production.

Auto industry

Trump’s election could shake up the auto industry, in part because he’s vowed to redo trade deals and slap tariffs on Mexican-made cars. Also uncertain is what will happen with auto safety regulations and government fuel-economy requirements. Trump favors cutting regulations that he says stifle businesses. Ford was Trump’s punching bag for having moved production to Mexico. But most major automakers and parts suppliers have built factories there because of lower labor costs. Trump railed about corporations moving jobs across the border to exploit what he called a lopsided North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta). He vowed to scrap the pact, impose tariffs on Mexican imports and punish US companies, including Ford.

Retail

Retailers might have to raise prices if Trump makes good on his promises to repeal trade agreements. He opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which would eliminate most tariffs on goods from countries in the alliance. The National Retail Federation says the TPP, which it backs, would increase US spending power by more than $1,000 per household. Trump also wants to impose big tariffs on imports from China and undo Nafta. “That will spook people because so much is imported,” said Ken Perkins, president of Retail Metrics Llc., a research firm.

Stocks

With his threats to slap tariffs on trading partners, punish US companies that move production overseas and rethink military backing for allies, Trump is widely viewed by investors as an unsettling risk. Still, a big stock rally on Wednesday in certain sectors suggested that investors think companies involved in repairing roads and bridges or in expanding transit systems could enjoy a boost under Trump’s plan to increase infrastructure spending. AP

Friday, November 11, 2016 • Editor: Lyn Resurreccion

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Civilian death toll rises in US air war against IS

A taxi driver (center) pleads in front of a gas station attendant to accept a 500 rupees currency note in New Delhi, India, on Wednesday. Indians awoke to confusion on Wednesday after the government withdrew the highest-denomination currency notes overnight to halt money laundering in a country where many in the poor and middle-class still make day-to-day transactions in cash. AP/Altaf Qadri

Modi hits targets in surprise move against corruption

n a bold move against corruption and unaccounted wealth, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has acted to arrest the drift in his popularity and place constraints on election funding, which will benefit him in crucial state elections next year. But Modi’s late-night announcement of a crack down on unaccounted wealth through the withdrawal of high-denomination bank notes left Indians with little time to prepare for the impact of the most extensive anti-graft operation in almost four decades. With 500 ($7.50) and 1,000 rupee notes banned as of midnight on Tuesday until the government begins circulating new notes, including a 2,000 rupee note, those who operate in India’s extensive cash economy were struggling with the simplest transactions. At a roadside shop in the state of Uttar Pradesh, a heated argument broke out over a small packet of chips and a 1,000 rupee note. Even the offer of extra money to accept the now banned note could not change the young shopkeeper’s mind. Mohamed Zafar said he has turned away many customers carrying the worthless bank notes, echoing the concerns of other small traders in the state, which goes to the polls early next year. “Because of the Uttar Pradesh elections, the government has done this,” Zafar said. “Maybe it will be tough for one year, then the black money will start again, and because of the new 2,000 rupee note there will be even more black money.” Zafar said even petrol pumps in his local area, which were meant to be accepting 500 and 1,000 rupee notes, were refusing to take the money.

2,000 The denomination of new rupee note India will circulate, among other denominations Sales downturn

Scenes like this played out across India, but even as small businesses, shopkeepers and restaurants experienced an immediate downturn in sales, many praised Modi’s push to battle corruption and said it could boost support for his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Coming just before state elections, the timing of the move is critical. So-called black money is often used to fund political campaigns, particularly by smaller, regional parties who entice voters with cash, said Milan Vaishnav, a senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. Larger parties distribute political favors to businesses who pay campaign expenses directly, avoiding the use of cash.

Political test

Having won the 2014 election in a landslide on the promise of tackling corruption and improving the ease of doing business, Modi’s star had started to fade as he faced criticism he mostly implemented incremental reforms.

That election was dubbed the most expensive in Indian history with the government, political parties and candidates spending 300 billion rupees, according to estimates from the New Delhi-based Centre for Media Studies. Until now, the prime minister’s biggest achievement was the introduction of a national sales tax, a widely praised move that will eliminate a raft of state taxes and substantially improve the ease of doing business in India. However, his plans to overhaul land and labor laws have failed, leaving him without a significant, popular reform as his legacy. Eliminating black money could be that reform. “Modi has succeeded in arresting the decline in his personal popularity and that of the BJP, which will serve well in coming elections in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa and Punjab,” said Satish Misra, an analyst at the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation. He’s also put serious constraints on election funding, positioning the BJP ahead of rivals who will face significant shortfalls, he said. Worst hit would be regional parties, like the Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party, Rashtriya Lok Dal in Uttar Pradesh and Shiromani Akali Dal in Punjab, Misra said, noting that the opposition Congress party would be less affected. Polls indicate the Uttar Pradesh elections may result in a hung assembly. The BJP may become the single largest party by securing as many as 183 seats in the 403-member house, while the Bahujan Samaj Party may win about 124 seats, an India Today-Axis opinion poll predicted in October. Winning elections in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab will give Modi momentum on difficult issues such as job creation and revamping labor laws and may provide him with a majority in the upper house of the national parliament to approve reforms.

‘Unaccounted wealth’

There is a strong a sense that successive gover nments have done little to tackle corruption, said Sandeep Shastri, an author and pro-vice chancellor at Jain University in Bengaluru. “This step needs to be part of a basket of measures to deal with unaccounted wealth and the parallel black money economy. In isolation, it would do precious little,” he said. “The BJP can now make it a major election plank. This measure will be billed as a crucial step in fighting corruption, a sentiment that is likely to strike a chord, especially with the lower and middle classes.” Yet, Congress was critical of the measure’s impact on regular Indians. “If you look at India’s cash economy, a substantial portion of Indians do not have bank accounts. And the small businesses, shopkeepers, housewives, hawkers, operate on cash.” said Sanjay Jha, a party spokesman. “The real culprits have stashed money abroad. They buy gold, property or they stash it away in foreign-tax havens.” Speaking to the state broadcaster Doordarshan News on Wednesday, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said he wanted the country to go cashless. Cashless or not, the government will have to deal with the potential deflationary impact on the economy, said Ajit Ranade, chief economist at the Aditya Birla Group. “For the success of this decision, the government will have to make sure that the execution is f lawless—the new notes are made available, bank branches and ATMs are stocked. If this is done, this decision will definitely improve the health of the Indian economy.” “I believe this was an audacious decision, it was Modi’s Pokharan moment,” he said, referring to the nuclear test that the Vajpayee government executed in 1998. Bloomberg News

ASHINGTON—US warplanes probably killed 59 civilians and injured five over seven months this year during the daily bombardment of Islamic State (IS) targets in Iraq and Syria, where fighters are often mixed among civilians. The Pentagon’s disclosure on Wednesday was the largest admission of responsibility for killing civilians since the Obama administration launched its air war against IS in 2014. The civilian death toll from US air strikes now stands at 119, according to the Pentagon. Independent monitors say many more have been killed by errant bombs or poor targeting. The military issued a two-page release that summarized its findings, not the actual investigations. Many of the air strikes, which took place between March 5 and September 10, were blamed on civilians “entering the target area” after a fighter jet or bomber had released a weapon. Nearly half of those killed were in or around Mosul, the densely populated Iraqi city that is now under siege by Iraqi and Kurdish forces backed by US air power. “We have teams who work full time to prevent unintended civilian casualties,” Col. John Thomas, a military spokesman, said in a statement. “We do not want to add to the tragedy of the situation by inflicting addition suffering.” Syrian opposition activists, human-rights groups and humanitar ian aid groups insist that the Pentagon has vastly

underestimated the number of civilians killed or wounded. The organizations, which rely on witnesses, estimate that more than 1,000 civilians have been killed or wounded in the 16,000 air strikes launched by the US and its allies since the air war began in September 2014. Amnesty International, for example, issued a detailed report last month that found coalition air attacks it had examined had killed about 300 civilians. “Even today’s ack nowledgment is a case of selective disclosure, with [the Department of Defense] holding back information necessary to assess its conclusion that the strikes were lawful and all necessary precautions were taken,” said Naureen Shah, an official at the group. Shah complained that Centra l Command, which oversees militar y operations in the Midd le East, isn’t transparent or proactive in its investigations. T he m i l it a r y comma nd de mands photographs and other verifiable evidence for claims to qualif y for full investigations, but that sort of proof is often impossible to obt a in on t he battlefield. Coalition air strikes target sites under IS control and are largely inaccessible to outsiders. Residents may risk torture or death by stepping forward to work with foreigners. The military said it has received 249 allegations of incidents where one or more civilians died in the air war against IS—179 of which were deemed not credible. TNS

Australia ratifies greenhouse gas targets agreed on in Paris

A NBER R A , Austra lia— Austra l ia on T hursd ay ratified its greenhouse-gas emission targets agreed upon last year at the UN climate meeting in Paris. Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull told Parliament that Australia had become the 140th country to ratify the agreement signed by 196 nations in New York in April, following the December meeting in Paris. The pact commits countries to work toward limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and set five-yearly targets for cutting emissions. The countries that have ratified the deal include the United States and represent 70 percent of the world ’s emissions and three-quarters of global GDP. “Almost a year from the Paris conference, it is clear the agreement was a watershed, a turning point and the adoption of a comprehensive strategy has galvanized the international community and spurred on global action,” Turnbull told reporters. He said Australia was on track to beat its 2020 targets.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg will next week join the UN climate-change talks under way in Morocco. The election of Donald Trump, who has called global warming a “hoax”, is alarming environmentalists and climate scientists and raising questions about whether America, once again, would pull out of an international climate deal. Austra lia became the only industrialized nation to follow the US in refusing to ratify the previous climate deal, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Turnbull ruled out Australian pulling out. “When Australia makes a commitment to a global agreement, we follow through and that is exactly what we are doing,” he said. Ratification confirms Australia’s target to reduce emissions by 26 percent to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. The government said its target was comparable with other advanced economies and on a percapita basis was one of the most ambitious targets in the Group of 20 group of countries. AP

Hand grenade thrown outside French Embassy in Greek capital

THENS, Greece—A hand-grenade attack outside the French Embassy in central Athens lightly wounded a policeman early on Thursday, the police said, days before US President Barack Obama is due to visit the Greek capital. Authorities said the policeman, who had been on guard outside the embassy, was wounded when unknown assailants threw a hand grenade outside the embassy building, located opposite Parliament on a major avenue. The police shut down the area to vehicles and pedestrians, while antiterrorism forensics experts combed the scene for evidence. The police said the attack was apparently carried out by two people on a motorbike, and a bike matching the description was later found in a central Athens neighborhood

popular with anarchists and was being examined to determine whether it was the one that had been used in the attack. Authorities said it appeared the policeman had only been lightly wounded because he had been inside an armored guard post outside the embassy entrance. The attack came days before Obama is to arrive in Athens next week for an expec ted overnight visit. Left-wing organizations have announced they will hold protests during the visit. Greece has a history of domestic militants who periodically carry out bomb or shooting attacks against authorities, diplomatic loc ations or businesses. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Thursday’s attack, and it was unclear why the French Embassy was targeted. AP

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Friday, November 11, 2016

Trump ‘not-my-president’ protests around US

HICAGO—The raw divisions exposed by the presidential race were on full display across America on Wednesday, as protesters flooded city streets to condemn Donald Trump’s election in demonstrations that police said were mostly peaceful. From New England to heartland cities, like Kansas City, and along the West Coast, many thousands of demonstrators carried flags and anti-Trump signs, disrupting traffic and declaring that they refused to accept Trump’s triumph. In Chicago, where thousands had recently poured into the streets to celebrate the Chicago Cubs’ first World Series victory in over a century, several thousand people marched through the Loop. They gathered outside Trump Tower, chanting “Not my president!” Chicago resident Michael Burke said he believes the president-elect will “divide the country and stir up hatred.” He added there was a constitutional duty not to accept that outcome. A similar protest in Manhattan drew about 1,000 people. Outside Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in midtown, the police installed barricades to keep the demonstrators at bay. Hundreds of protesters gathered near Philadelphia’s City Hall despite chilly, wet weather. Participants— who included both supporters of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who lost to Clinton in the primary—expressed anger at both Republicans and Democrats over the election’s outcome. In Boston thousands of anti-Trump protesters streamed through dow ntow n, chanting “Trump’s a racist” and carrying signs that said “Impeach Trump” and “Abolish Electoral College.” Clinton appears to be on pace to win the popular vote, despite losing the electoral count that decides the presidential race. The protesters gathered on Boston Common before marching toward the Massachusetts Statehouse, with beefed-up security, including extra police officers. A protest that began at the Minnesota State Capitol on Tuesday night with about 100 people swelled at is moved into downtown Saint

Paul, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported. Protesters blocked downtown streets and traveled west on University Avenue, where they shouted expletives about Trump in English and Spanish. There were other Midwest protest marches in Omaha, Nebraska, and Kansas City, Missouri. In Des Moines, Iowa, hundreds of students walked out of area high schools at 10:30 a.m. to protest Trump’s victory, the Des Moines Register reported. The protests, which were coordinated on social media, lasted 15 to 45 minutes. Marchers protesting Trump’s election chanted and carried signs in front of the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. Media outlets broadcast video on Wednesday night showing a peaceful crowd in front of the new downtown hotel. Many chanted “No racist USA, no Trump, no KKK.” Another group stood outside the White House. They held candles, listened to speeches and sang songs. Dallas activists gathered by the dozens outside the city’s sports arena, the American Airlines Center. In Oregon dozens of people blocked traf f ic in dow ntow n Portland, burned American flags and forced a delay for trains on two light-rail lines. Earlier, the protest in downtown drew several Trump supporters, who taunted the demonstrators with signs. A lone Trump supporter was chased across Pioneer Courthouse Square and hit in the back with a skateboard before others inter vened. Several thousand chanting, sign-waving people gathered in Frank Ogawa Plaza in Oakland, California. A night earlier, in the hours after Trump won the election, Oakland demonstrators broke windows and did other damage. In San Francisco hundreds are marching along Market Avenue, one of the city’s main avenues, to join a vigil in the Castro District, a predominantly gay neighborhood.

Protesters march north on State Street to express their disapproval of the election of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States on Wednesday in Chicago. Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune via AP

In Los Angeles protesters on the steps of City Hall burned a giant papiér maché Trump head in protest, later, in the streets they whacked a Trump piñata. Hundreds massed in downtown Seattle streets. Many held anti-Trump and Black Lives Matter signs and chanted slogans, including “Misogyny has to go,” and “The people united will never be defeated.” Five people were shot and injured in an area near the protest, but the police said the shootings and the demonstration were unrelated. Back in New York, several groups of protesters caused massive gridlock as the police mobilized to contain them under a light rain. They held signs that read “Trump Makes America Hate” and chanted “hey, hey, ho, ho Donald Trump has got to go.” and “Impeach Trump.” AP

Canada open to renegotiate free-trade deal with Trump National Geographic’s famed green-eyed “Afghan Girl” Sharbat Gulla poses for a photo during a meeting with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani at the Presidential palace in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Wednesday. AP/Rahmat Gul

Pakistan deports iconic ‘Afghan Girl’ of ‘National Geographic’

ABUL, Afghanistan—Afghanistan’s president on Wednesday welcomed home Sharbat Gulla, National Geographic’s famed green-eyed “Afghan Girl,” just hours after she was deported from Pakistan, the latest in the odyssey of the globally recognized refugee. Gulla’s depor tation came after a regional court in the Pakistani city of Peshawar convicted her on charges of carrying a forged Pakistani ID card and staying in the country illegally. The case has drawn international attention and criticism of Pakistani authorities over their perceived harsh treatment of Gulla—and other Afghans who Islamabad says will be expelled as illegal immigrants. AP

ORONTO—Canada’s ambassador to Washington said on Wednesday Canada is open to renegotiating the North American Free-Trade Agreement (Nafta), if that’s what President-elect Donald Trump wants. Ambassador David MacNaughton, on a conference call with journalists, said free trade on lumber, long an irritant, would be one of the first things he’d like to see if there’s a new agreement. He noted that the US is Canada’s largest trading partner and Canada is the largest trading partner for the US. “We’re ready to come to the table,” he said. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke to Trump on Wednesday night to congratulate him and to invite him to Canada at the earliest opportunity. Trump also invited Trudeau to visit him. “The Prime Minister and the presidentelect reiterated the importance of the Canada-United States bilateral relationship, and discussed various areas of mutual interest,” Trudeau’s office said. The Liberal prime minister has vowed to work “very closely” with Trump and said Canada has no closer ally and partner than the US. But Trudeau’s openness to trade, refugees and the environment stands in stark contrast to Trump. Of particular concern to Canada is Trump’s vow to renegotiate Nafta but MacNaughton said any agreement can be improved. Trump

has called Nafta the “worst deal in history.” MacNaughton said if Nafta was scrapped, the original Canada-US trade agreement that predated Nafta would come back into force and he said he doubted the Americans would want to end that. A positive for Canada could be the eventual approval of TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline, from Alberta to the US Gulf Coast. President Obama nixed it but Trump supports the pipeline, though he has said he wants a share of the profits. TransCanada said it remains committed to building the pipeline. Brad Wall, premier of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, noted Trump’s support for Keystone XL. “And with Republican majorities in both the House and Senate, I am hopeful that this important project will move ahead quickly,” Wall said in a statement. “On the other hand, I hope he reconsiders his plan to end the North American Free Trade Agreement.” Canada and the prospect of Americans moving there drew so much interest that the country’s immigration web site was knocked out Tuesday night. Immigration Spokesman Sonia Lesage said more than 200,000 users were accessing the site when it went down at 11 p.m. At that time, American IP addresses accounted for approximately 50 percent of the traffic, about five times higher than normal. The web site saw just over 17,000 users at the same time a week earlier. AP

A10 Friday, November 11, 2016 • Editor: Angel R. Calso

Opinion BusinessMirror

editorial

President Trump and the Philippines

he Bible says: “There shall be the weeping and gnashing of teeth” for people who look into heaven, but are not allowed beyond the “Pearly Gates.” Apparently, some have been able to look into the presidential term of newly elected US President Donald Trump, and are already weeping and gnashing. It might be well to note from a foreign-policy standpoint, under the previous US administration, China was able to appropriate and build military bases on wide areas of the Philippine’s Exclusive Economic Zone. The US encouraged, if not sponsored, the “Arab Spring” in North Africa, which cost the jobs—and, in some cases, individual lives—of thousands of Filipino workers, particularly in Libya. However, the real concern is what a Trump administration might mean for the Philippine economy. In his preelection “Contract with the American Voter”, Trump outlined six measures for the American political system, including a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress. His “7 Actions to Protect American Workers” starts with renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement and withdrawing the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, which would have had negative effects on both Philippine companies and Philippine legal sovereignty. But the greatest local concern is the “End the Offshoring Act,” which would establish tariffs to discourage companies from laying off their US workers in order to relocate in other countries and ship their products back to the US tax-free. While it is first designed to stop companies, such as Ford Motor, from closing a US factory to then build automobiles in Mexico for export to the US, fears are that this idea could hinder the Philippine outsourcing industry. We have heard this all before, back in 2010, when US Sen. Charles Schumer proposed legislation that would levy a 25-cent tax on every customer-service call originating in the US that is transferred to an agent offshore. An independent analysis of the bill found that “if the offshore call center is charging $18 per hour for each agent, this only knocks [its] costs up to $23 per agent/hour. A US domestic call center would likely charge clients $30 per agent/hour [or higher], so the cost differential still doesn’t warrant pulling the work back.” That same organization, however, says traditional outsourcing of information-technology (IT) services—now primarily to India—will experience a “death-knell” under the Trump administration. However, these companies have apparently been moving toward obsolescence for several years, as cheaper and more efficient in-house services and technologies have become available. Call-center outsourcing is not currently mentioned, primarily because call centers are a “brute-force” sort of operation—as was IT services in the past—that will not be subject to replacement technologies or function through social media on a wide scale for many years. It is difficult to get a computer or Facebook page to understand that the reason you can’t pay you credit-card bill is that you were overly generous buying beers at the local pub last night. There may come a time for “weeping and gnashing”, but Trump does not even take office for two months. And when he does, there may be one or two more important issues on his desk than the Philippine business-process outsourcing business. Likewise, there may be one or two more important and immediate concerns that need our attention here at home. Since 2005

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spox

ithout the slightest hint of irony, I say this: It’s the end of the world as we know it, only maybe not in the sense that you’re thinking. The world, of course, will go on; but the world, as we know it, has quite dramatically come to an end.

False polls For one thing, our faith in preelection polling must surely be shaken now. In the weeks leading up to the elections, nearly all polls had Donald Trump losing by varying margins, and yet, at no point during the vote count, was it in doubt that he would emerge the winner. The final tallies might not qualify as a landslide victory, but in its unwavering inevitability, the Trump win was certainly geological in character. After today, polls can no longer be held as reliable indicators of how the people will vote. I see this as a good development. Good, in the sense that, perhaps now, political players will begin to pay closer attention to real people, rather than the people who are predisposed to answering surveys. We’ve known this a long time. Real people can be surly, they can be fiercely protective of their privacy—even up to the point of lying to pollsters. The people who respond, on the other hand, are wired a certain way that makes them almost enjoy

being surveyed. That quirk makes it both fairly easy to predict their opinions and to design polls to show predetermined outcomes. The erosion of faith in polls can, therefore, result in more responsive politics and politicians; and it can make things more difficult for those who sell skewed polls to politicians desperate to attract donors. Overall, I would say those are very positive changes.

Tribes and ‘Tito’ Toms

ON a decidedly less positive note, the events of today clearly herald the resurgence of tribalism—the rejection of multiculturalism as a model of coexistence. How this will impact the massively multicultural America, I have no idea, but its global repercussions are not too difficult to predict. This is especially true for Filipinos. Since the end of the Second World War, many of us have regarded the US as a kind of spiritual home. Our Valinor, where we can retreat in our

The failures of a funeral

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

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A new world order

Tito Genova Valiente

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f the laws of the land will be followed, we will all participate in the burial of a hero. With the burial of his bones or of that “body” preserved in wax, we entombed memories of death, disappearances and persecution. Several generations with their memories of the dark years will be questioned. They will all be liars to other generations. Data embedded in their souls will not be validated.

The legalistic has won the war of remembrances once more. In this land, lawyers and justices have a way of settling the treachery of the past, and determining the destiny of a nation by a vote of majority. We can weep for years but tears are never appreciated as evidences. We can scream and we can shout in rage but, if we are to believe what the lawyers say, it is on the silence of the law that the dictator gets to be buried in this special grave site. Who says this is no time for blaming others. Well, this is the open season for blaming.

We can blame the nine justices who have declared the burial of Ferdinand E. Marcos legal. We can blame them for not listening to the loud sound of the histories of martial law. And yet, they are not the only ones to be blamed. We can blame writers and educators who, for some reasons, never saw the wisdom of teaching the facts about martial law. We blame them for participating in the silenced histories of those years. We blame the politicians whose nature is accommodation, negotiation and compromise—the

old age, after a life spent toiling in the Middle Earth we call the Philippines. Don’t laugh. There is a reason the whole world knows that Filipinos love America more than Americans do. There is a mythic quality to the place, and that has dictated the trajectories of more Filipino families I can name. Sadly, that faith requires an America that is some degree of hospitable to those with brown skins, and essentially blind to superficial distinctions of race, able to look into the hearts of the immigrants to see the American spirit there. In his victory address, Trump promised that the multiculturalism of America would continue. But his words during the campaign, I fear, have mixed a different kind of KoolAid for his supporters. This should come as no surprise. If only saying so, made it so, America wouldn’t be struggling with race anymore. So Trump ticking all the proper boxes cannot be realistically expected to directly translate to a more open America. Where does that leave Filipinos? It has been reported that the largest bloc of Trump’s Asian supporters is composed of Filipinos. Let’s be frank. These are Filipinos who consider themselves non-white Americans, but Americans nonetheless. These are Filipinos who cannot conceive of anyone not recognizing their American-ness. These are the Filipinos from whom may arise new Uncle Toms—or Tito Toms—and they might be in for a rude awakening into a very different world, very soon.

New world order

platforms upon which their survival solely rests. We can even blame the false histories we constructed. We begin with the so-called Edsa Revolution. It sent out the dictator but brought in politics that began in hope and ended, well, at least in hope. For nothing was really changed. We were naïve to accept that with the demise of the dictator came also the death of traditional politics. It was too late for us to realize, if we did realize at all, that patronage politics and the structured inequalities in our country are the bed of politics that honor the wealthy and systematically disenfranchise the masses. The People Power saw the birth of a new modifier but it never augured the verb of change. There is the institutional Church. It is quiet when we clamor for its voice. It remained quiet when the new dispensation came with the veneer of reforms. The Church and some of its officials were revealed, at some point, to be participants in the politics of give-and-take. T he books we produced in schools and other learning institutions reserved chapters for owners of mall and companies but did not include significantly the histories of martial law.

And yet, we also have to blame ourselves, the generations who suffered under the dictator. We lost kin and friends during those years but we stopped talking about them. We relied on the cheap tricks of the new politics, the series of administrations, until one regime brought up once more the fate of the dictator. We never taught our children the evils of martial rule and the dictatorship. We became complacent. Many of us turned to timidity as if such can represent civility. When the talk about the dictator came up, we felt the shadow. He remains a formidable memory out to scare the nation out of its wit. Today we are still scared of the dictator and we have—not the government, not the Supreme Court, for they can all go to the dogs—but ourselves to blame. There is one last resort. When the last drop of soil is leveled upon the grave, we can bury our shame and our selfishness with the dictator. We look up and we can start our fight to make this government and all its appointed justices be answerable to this injustice. The battle is just beginning.

SO yeah, today was the end of the world as we knew it, and we have stepped seamlessly into a new one. This new world order will probably bring some good changes, as it will certainly bring terrible new things. But isn’t that how it’s always been with history? We won’t be able to say with certainty whether these changes will, on balance, make our lives better or worse. We’ll just have to see. In the meantime, however, aren’t you tired? As the 2016 campaign here at home got really vicious and divisive, many of us expressed the wish that we could just fast forward to the end of the elections and return to talking about other things. Many American pundits and commentators have said much the same thing about their elections. And just like us at the end of our elections, they also want the opportunity to just kick back for awhile and forget politics. That hankering for a break from the viciousness of politics is not the first, nor even the smallest, parallel between our two election experiences. And because of that, I mournfully extend this word of caution to our American friends: You want a postelection environment where you can talk about simpler things and maybe push any thought of politics to the outer fringes of your awareness? Asa. James Arthur B. Jimenez is director of the Commission on Elections’s Education and Information Department.

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Taking stock of PHL-China economic relations

‘…for I am the Lord who heals you’–Exodus 15:26 Rev. Fr. Antonio Cecilio T. Pascual

Fernando T. Aldaba and Ser Percival K. Peña-Reyes

EAGLE WATCH

he recent visit and pronouncements of the President on a pivot to China raised concerns on its likely benefits or losses to the Philippine economy. Answering this question requires an assessment of the current state of Philippines-China economic relations, particularly in the areas of tourism, international trade, foreign direct investment (FDI) and official development assistance (ODA).

In the area of tourism, the Department of Tourism (DOT) web site reports that for August 2016, South Korea was still the top-spending market with an estimated expenditure of P102.88 million. Visitors from the US remained at second place, with receipts amounting to P42.84 million. Trailing behind the US was Japan, with a recorded spending of about P42.01 million. Taiwan settled at fourth place, with estimated receipts of P17.09 million, while Canada entered the top 5 spending markets with a reported figure of P14.29 million. Although its expenditure was not explicitly mentioned in the latest statistics article of the DOT, an accompanying chart showed that China actually came at sixth place, with a recorded level close to that of Canada. In terms of per-capita tourism expenditure, China was not even in the top 12 markets. It was Canada that registered the highest per-capita expenditure for August 2016 with about P66,015.34. Saudi Arabia came at second place with P54,236. Germany trailed behind with P50,409.68. Rounding up the top 6 were Spain’s P46,651.74, India’s P42,528.84 and Australia’s P40,072.32. In terms of tourist arrivals, monthly historical data from the DOT show that from January 2014 to August 2016, China was actually the third-largest source of visitors with an accumulated number of 1,370,359. The top source was South Korea, with 3,491,649, followed by the US, with 2,081,116. Trailing behind China were Japan and Australia, with 1,326,550 and 626,987 tourist arrivals, respectively. In the area of international trade, statistics show that in 2015, Japan was the largest trading partner of the Philippines, with $19.2 billion ($12.4 billion in exports, $6.8 billion in imports, $5.6 billion in trade surplus), followed by China’s $17.9 billion ($6.4 billion in exports, $11.5 billion in imports, $5.1 billion in trade deficit). The US came at third place, with $16.4 billion in total trade ($8.8 billion in exports, $7.6 billion in imports, $1.2 billion in trade surplus). Trailing behind the US were Singapore’s $8.5 billion ($3.6 billion in exports, $4.9 billion in imports, $1.3 billion in trade deficit) and Hong Kong’s $8.1 billion ($6.2 billion in exports, $1.9 billion in imports, $4.3 billion in trade surplus). In the area of FDI, data from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas show that

in 2015, China was not even in the top 10 sources; in fact, it was at 24th place with a net FDI inflow of $0.57 million. The US was actually the largest country source for the Philippines, with a net FDI inflow of about $732.52 million. Rounding up the top 10 were Japan, with $394.91 million; the United Kingdom, with $384.31 million; the Netherlands, with $361.20 million; Singapore, with $166.15 million; Hong Kong, with $82.63 million; Germany, with $68.39 million; British Virgin Island, with $57.55 million; Taiwan, with $35.61 million; and Spain, with $23.40 million. In the area of ODA, the World Bank had the largest share in the 2014 loans portfolio with $4,453.27 million. At second place was Japan, with $3,159.11 million, followed by the Asian Development Bank’s $2,231.70 million, South Korea’s $524.75 million and France’s $436.95 million. At sixth place was China, with $115.33 million. As for grant assistance, the top 5 providers to the Philippine government in 2014 were the US, with $1,148.56 million; the UN System, with $608.48 million; Australia, with $587.02 million; the European Union, with $174.55 million; and Japan, with $166.55 million. At 12th place was China, with $5.70 million. Clearly, the reviewed data suggest that there is plenty of room for the Philippines to improve its economic relations with China, particularly in the four areas mentioned. For quite some time now, the Philippines has largely been excluded from the financial resources that China has been pouring upon the rest of the region and the world. Even tourism has taken a blow since the Chinese government issued a negative travel advisory against the Philippines (this has been lifted during the recent visit of the President). Indeed, this pivot to China could likely bring huge rewards for the Philippine economy, although it would be naïve to assume that all other factors will simply stay the same, since strategies and payoffs could likely change altogether, as explained in last week’s game-theory analysis. Nevertheless, when risks are high, rewards are also high, so one should definitely hope that the country hits the jackpot. Dr. Fernando T. Aldaba is dean of the School of Social Sciences at Ateneo de Manila University. Ser Percival K. Peña-Reyes is a faculty member of the Economics Department under the same school.

Fear and change Siegfred Bueno Mison, Esq.

THE PATRIOT

hinkee Tan, an author of eight best-selling books and a gifted inspirational speaker about change management, among other topics, says our minds can form our habits as much as habits can form our lives. His equation is as simple as “Mind-set plus Action equals Result”. So a positive mind-set with positive action will always yield positive result. But can we really change our mind-set to positive if everything else seems to be negative? Amid the surprising exit of the UK from the European Union, the startling presidential election results in the US, the more than generous reception of the Chinese government given to President Duterte during his most recent visit to China, and the contro-

versial decision of our Supreme Court allowing a hero’s burial of former President Ferdinand Marcos, fear has become a catchphrase among my friends and colleagues both here and abroad. In numerous social-media posts, one can see the apprehensions of people

Friday, November 11, 2016 A11

SERVANT LEADER

he Philippines is known as the bastion of Christianity in Asia, with 84 million Catholics nationwide, and the third country with the most number of Catholics in the world. However, only 13 million, or 15 percent, are actively participating in this faith experience. We, as a Church, are challenged by secularism, materialism and relativism leading to the abandonment of faith. In the Apostolic Exhortion Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis said there are deficiencies in the popular cultures of Catholic people which need to be healed by the Gospel: machismo, alcoholism, domestic violence, low Mass attendance, fatalistic or superstitious notions that lead to sorcery and the like. He also said popular piety itself can be the starting point for healing and liberation from these deficiencies.

“An evangelized popular culture contains values of faith and solidarity capable of encouraging the development of a more just and believing society, and possesses a particular wisdom which ought to be gratefully acknowledged,” Pope Francis said. In the Philippines the spate of extrajudicial executions of suspected drug pushers and other people allegedly connected to illegal-drugs trafficking is alarming. In response to this situation, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines

Cruelty on the Marcoses

president, Archbishop Socrates Villegas, issued a prayer for healing, entitled “Lord, Heal Our Land,” in August. He said that the prayer would heal “wounds and divisions,” promote unity, seek resolution of crimes, including corruption, and extend compassion to victims of killings. We need to believe in the power of prayer. We should pray for our brethren that they may find in the Church a spirituality that can offer healing, and fill them with life and peace and maintain a personal and committed relationship with God. Devotees seeking healing and other petitions are invited to take part in Mary and the Saints: An Experience of Miracles and Healing Grace, an exhibit of Radio Veritas from November 14 to 30 to be held at SM Mall of Asia. The exhibit will feature canonically crowned and popular venerated images of Mary from various parts of the country, as well as images of the saints associated with miracles and healing, such as Saint Padre Pio and the life-size statue of sleeping Saint

Joseph, among others. The opening and blessing of the exhibit will be held on November 14, 2 p.m., with Philippine Ambassador to the Holy See Mercy Tuazon as special guest. The first 1,000 pilgrims will be given a rosary blessed by His Eminence Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle. The exhibit is free and open to the public during mall hours, from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. For inquiries, call Renee Jose or Rey Isabela, (02) 9257932 to 39, local 129. Let us pray for our brothers and sisters who need healing, especially the fast and successful recovery and rehabilitation of the drug surrenderees. Let us ask for the intersession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the saints to our prayers of healing from the grace of God.

found the Marcoses innocent. Only the best-selling book A Country Imperiled, authored by this writer and published in 2011 by Amazon, one of the world’s largest publishing houses, came out with the details of their acquittal. Before the trial began, the prosecution attempted to convince Mrs. Marcos to plead guilty to a lesser offense so that she could be convicted and jailed lightly. Perhaps, they reckoned that with President Marcos gone, she would feel forsaken, vulnerable and helpless. She stood her ground and told them: “No plea bargain. To plead even to a minor malfeasance is to admit guilt, and I know we did not steal. Sacred honor, good name, principles and belief are nonnegotiable. I shall defend myself and this man whose lips are now sealed by death.” On July 2, 1990, Mrs. Marcos’s 61st birthday, the 12-man jury unanimously acquitted her on all counts. In this era of “televoting”, “telesurvey” and “telepolling”, people are wondering why they did that to her and President Marcos? There is a litany of reasons. A prosecution witness, Timothy Khan, provided one, a reason that was fraught with political, social, economic and national security implications: Khan said: “Mrs. Aquino said, ‘No prosecution’; ‘No bases,’” referring, of course, to the American military bases in the Philippines. At that time, the retention of the American military bases in the Philippines was under negotiation. What happened was that President Aquino got the prosecution; America lost the bases; and the Marcoses were acquitted. It was not only ironic, but the incident also established the motive as to why the Marcoses continued to be prosecuted. Or was it not persecuted?

for evil gods to flourish every November 8 (Supertyphoon Yolanda hit on November 8, 2013), never fear, our God is here. For the Trump haters, here is a good link to find the goodness of a Trump presidency, http:// waitbutwhy.com/2016/11/its-goingto-be-okay.html. As my former colleague in public service, Atty. Eugene Kaw, put it, “At the end of the day, we realize that the world moves on no matter how we perceive it to be and notwithstanding the madness that has been happening. And that life is beautiful. And it is still full of so much hope and love.” You become what you think. Whenever you entertain positive thoughts, you attract positive energy. In times of trials and struggles, one great source of positive energy is hope. Our God will always send us an “Erica”, a true Pollyanna, to welcome any change in our lives. Change is good, no matter what.

Worse, their side of the whole story was never printed on how and why they subjected them to prejudgment of guilt, deprived them of their worldly possessions, restricted their movements and charged President Marcos and Mrs. Marcos with racketeering, obstruction of justice and mail fraud involving billions of dollars in that trial of the century in New York. The recent Supreme Court (SC) decision that finally allowed President Marcos to be buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani was actually the third case that reached the High Court involving him over three decades. Before President Marcos died on September 28, 1989, he pleaded in a petition with the SC to allow him to come home and confront his accusers, but the Court denied his plea. When Mrs. Marcos petitioned the same Court to allow his body to be brought home after his death in Hawaii, the Court also refused for security reason. The question is, who were the people behind the cruelty on the Marcoses? Records of the New York trial and other research materials showed that they were not only individuals; they were governments and superpowers who systematically destroyed the Marcoses using greedy politicians and elite

businessmen, backed by 16 foreign propagandists and hundreds of misguided local journalists. After they conspired to oust the Marcoses from power and accused them of stealing money from the people, the Aquino regime and US government prosecutors presented in court 95 witnesses and 350,000 documents, including those they claimed came from their private chambers in Malacañang purportedly showing that they embezzled billions of dollars or billions of pesos from the Filipino people. There were varied estimates of the so-called loot. One estimate says the wealth was within the vicinity of $356 million. Other estimates, although sourced from rumors and guesswork, had it that the Marcoses had Swiss accounts ranging from $7 billion, to $13.4 billion to $35 billion, and a gold horde worth more than $250 billion stashed in Swiss banks and other overseas banks. Whatever the figure or amount, however, it simply doesn’t make sense at all, for how could they have stolen such a huge amount when the total accumulated official budget of the Marcos regime in 20 years was only P486.2 billion? Besides, Victor Macalincag, the national treasurer and deputy minister of finance at that time, also admitted that there was P28 billion in

the National Treasury when President Marcos was forcibly exiled to Hawaii, debunking claims by President Corazon C. Aquino’s supporters that the Treasury was empty. By comparison, the presidents who succeeded President Marcos in 30 years spent more than P35 trillion in accumulated budgets, including President Aquino’s P1.6 trillion in six years and four months; President Ramos’s P2.237 trillion in six years; President Estrada’s more than P1 trillion in less than three years; President Arroyo’s more than P11 trillion in nine years; and President Benigno S. Aquino III’s more than P10 trillion in six years. The point here is this: None could compare, or all of them combined, President Marcos’s accomplishments in terms of social justice and economic development, despite their huge budgets, which were supposed to spur economic progress. Besides, in the post-Marcos years, the country saw a trail of plunders, corruptions, economic deprivation, gruesome human-rights violations, insurgencies, hundreds of killings involving journalists and serious problems of brownouts, flooding and horrendous traffic. A US senator and a congressman from New York claimed the Marcoses have also stolen foreign aids, including Japanese funds, prompting local and international media to call the Marcoses plunderers and thieves of the highest order. Because of the tremendous publicity, the Marcoses were also tried in court on the issue of foreign aids and investigated at the US Senate, at the US General Auditing Office, at the Japanese Diet and at the Japanese Internal Revenue Bureau. They found nothing to support their claims, and the Marcoses were cleared. The tragedy was that the media, the same biased media that prejudged them as thieves, just ignored the findings of the court and the investigative bodies that

from all walks of life, regardless of class, nationality and gender, as they witness the aforementioned extraordinary events that will ultimately affect how we see and do things moving forward. Change has, indeed, come to the Philippines, to America and to the world. With these seemingly negative events, can we remain optimistic about the future? Tan said the biggest resistance to change is fear. To him, FEAR stands for False Expectations Appearing Real. He added that, while it is normal for human beings to be fearful, we can and should always find a silver lining in all negative or seemingly negative things. The Brexit, the stunning Trump victory in the US, the Philippines-China relationship under President Duterte and the Supreme Court-sanctioned hero’s burial for Marcos all appear to be negative to many. But if we adopt Tan’s meaning of fear, then we should not be afraid. In fact, we should stay

positive. After all, our concerns may arguably appear real but, in truth, they are simply nonexistent. Expectations of a disappointing or disastrous Trump (and, for some, a Duterte) presidency might end up false. Hopefully. We just have to take things as they are. The Americans have spoken. The Filipinos have spoken. The Brits have spoken. And the not-so-surprising nine justices of the Supreme Court have spoken. I will never forget what Fr. Joaquin Bernas said in his Homily when I took the Bar exams 20 years ago. Since future Atenean lawyers will be taking the exams on the campus of a rival university La Salle, Father Bernas started reciting Psalms 23:4,6: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. Surely, goodness and loving kindness shall follow me all the days of my life.” Our faith will certainly help us assuage the fear

amid all these seemingly end-of-theworld situations. In my book, entitled 7 Attributes of Servant Leaders in Public Service, one attribute that I think is quite different from the usual list of leadership attributes is optimism. One person who I will never forget for her eternally optimistic perspective is Diana Erica Jogno. A graduate of UP Diliman with a Whitney Houstonlike voice, she entered government service as an immigration officer in an era where the battle between good vs. evil was at its peak. Jogno’s Facebook profile describes herself as a “sucker for good food, happy places and everything nice.” Every time things will not go her way, Jogno will always happily look for the positive and share her eternally smiling face to others. I think I never saw her frown in my 1,699 days in the bureau. So, for those who are anticipating a doomsday scenario, a mundus patet where “the pit is open”

Cecilio T. Arillo

database

T started with President Marcos and then his wife, former First Lady and now Ilocos Norte Second District Rep. Imelda Romualdez Marcos, calling her evil, greedy, extravagant, plunderer, murderer, racketeer, obstructionist and many other names.

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

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

BusinessMirror

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Friday, November 11, 2016 A12

Holidays are brighter in Makati and BGC with Mastercard

yala Land, premiere developer and commercial estates operator, signals the beginning of the Christmas season in two of its crown jewels in the metro, Makati and Bonifacio Global City (BGC), which are home to the country’s financial hub, corporate headquarters, upscale residential condominiums, major shopping malls, restaurants, hotels and tourist destinations. For the fourth year in a row, Mastercard joins Ayala Land in providing Mastercard carholders all the reasons to stay, dine and shop in Makati. The Makati Staycation promotion lets cardholders book a stay or dine in Ayala-owned hotels, Raffles Makati, Fairmont Hotel and Holiday Inn & Suites Makati, shop in Circuit Makati Bazaar and enjoy exclusive privileges, never having to leave the city. This year, Ayala Land and Mastercard extend these privileges to cardholders in BGC, destination of the young, creative and trendy set. Now, Mastercard cardholders can shop, stay and enjoy exclusive perks when they use their Mastercard at Bonifacio High Street, Seda Hotel, The Mind Museum and other BGC malls. Stay in the City. Start the celebrations with a relaxing staycation in Ayala’s finest hotels when you use your Mastercard. Holiday Inn & Suites Makati is offering an amazing treat to Mastercard cardholders who book a weekend stay from now to December 31 this year. They not only get the Best Available Rate, but an equal complimentary stay at a Holiday Inn Partner Hotel in either Bangkok or Singapore that they can redeem anytime from now to March 31, 2017. Fairmont Hotel indulges Mastercard cardholders with 50% off on best available rates package on weekends which includes a daily breakfast buffet for two and a 1+1 lunch buffet at Spectrum, 1 night prepaid, non-refundable deposit, plus 50% off on regular spa treatments at Willow Stream Spa. While the luxury hotel Raffles Makati is offering 30% off on best available rates package on weekends which includes a daily breakfast buffet at Spectrum for two (2) persons, complimentary high-speed access and local calls, classic Afternoon Tea and Evening Cocktails at Writers Bar for two (2) persons, and priority waitlist for room upgrade. To unwind, head over to Long Bar for a complimentary choice of tapas when availing of Happy Hour. Bring the family to celebrate the holidays at Spectrum and avail of their 3+1 buffet promo. If it’s relaxation you long for, Willow Stream Spa is offering 30% off on regular spa treatments from 10am to 3pm, Mondays to Thursdays. Premier lifestyle hotel Seda BGC invites Mastercard cardholders to enjoy the holidays with an amazing 50% discount on published room rates on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from Dec 15, 2016 to Feb 28, 2017. The package goes with buffet breakfast for two at Misto, complimentary WiFi, and use of the e-lounge, pool and gym. On Sundays to Thursdays, dine and spend time in the company of friends and family with a special 15% off a la carte food and drinks at the hotel’s Straight Up roofdeck bar. Shop in the City. Everything on your list is right here. Mastercard makes your shopping sprees even more rewarding. Mastercard joins Ayala Land to launch the biggest and hippest outdoor Christmas bazaar this season. From November 18 to 20, the Circuit Makati Christmas Bazaar will be the go-to for everything you need, from gift items, clothes,

accessories, knickknacks, electronics, toys, and food. With over 500 different merchants and six shopping villages to choose from, you’re sure to delight in these unique holiday finds. Shopping becomes even more exciting with raffle prizes, surprise gifts and more treats that await all Mastercard cardholders. You surely wont miss the Circuit Makati Christmas Tree, the biggest outdoor holiday tree display in the metro that’s the perfect backdrop for those Instagram moments! The Most Wonderful Time of the Year. This year, Rustan’s puts in the luxury in your Makati staycation with free delivery to your hotel when you shop at Rustan’s Makati. Take a breather from that long Christmas list at the Rustan’s Platinum Lounge and shop more with a Rustan’s voucher for a minimum spend of P5,000 using your Mastercard at Rustan’s Makati. All these luxury benefits are exclusive to Mastercard cardholders when they book a stay at Raffles Makati, Fairmont Hotel or Holiday Inn & Suites Makati for the holidays. Join the BGC Shopathon to complete your Christmas gift list, and get a chance to win another round of shopping! For a minimum spend of P3,000 with your Mastercard from any Bonifacio High Street, One Parkade, Two Parkade, Bonifacio Stopover, Park Triangle, Crossroads, and The Fort establishment, you’ll earn a raffle coupon and the opportunity to be 1 of 5 winners of a shopping spree at Bonifacio High Street worth P100,000, plus an overnight stay at Seda hotel, two (2) tickets to the Mind Museum, and two (2) tickets to Bonifacio High Street Cinemas. Adding to the holiday revelry, Seda BGC offers special rates for its banquet social celebration packages – 15% off on weekends and 10% off on weekdays to Mastercard holders. Choose from delectable buffet menus, with space for games, presentations, even dancing, plus complimentary overnight stays as add-on treats. Play in the City. The city is your playground. Awesome experiences will make your holiday merrier. On November 15, the famed Festival of Lights at Ayala Triangle will be lit up for the season. Named by Conde Nast Traveller and one of the Seven Most Spectacular Lights Shows in the World, this annual attraction is made possible with Mastercard as one of the partners. Give yourself or someone else the gift of fun for the family. The Mind Museum is giving Mastercard cardholders a 3+1 offer to any Museum admission ticket or its special exhbitions. Head to the museum’s ticket booth to avail the promotion, if the tickets are of varying prices, the lowest price will be free. Enjoy an elegant evening with the Filipinas Chamber Orchestra conducted by world-renowned Italian Maestro Ruggero Barbieri on December 13 at Seda BGC’s Straight Up roofdeck bar. Mastercardholders are entitled to 15% off the ticket rate, inclusive of cocktails and a 6-course dinner under the stars. This Christmas, enjoy the best of Makati and BGC with the only card that makes it priceless - your Mastercard.