BusinessMirror October 16, 2018

NOW, PIÑOL WARNS OF RICE GLUT AS IMPORTS TO ARRIVE AT HARVEST

By Bernadette D. Nicolas @BNicolasBM & Jasper Emmanuel Y. Arcalas @jearcalas

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GRICULTURE Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol said on Monday that the country may have to grapple with an oversupply of rice, as the schedule of arrival of additional rice imports coincided with the harvest season, which started in late September.

NEWLY harvested rice grains are unloaded to be sold to traders in Pampanga province in this file photo. Reports said Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol assured the public that the depletion of the National Food Authority stockpile would not happen again in 2019, as he is optimistic that the agency would be able to hit its palay procurement target. NONIE REYES

DEPT. OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

PHILIPPINE STATISTICS AUTHORITY

2018 BANTOG DATA MEDIA AWARDS CHAMPION

In compliance with the President’s directive to “flood the market with rice,” the National Food Authority Council had approved the importation of 750,000 metric tons [MT] of rice to beef up its stockpile.

“By the end of this year, we will have a buffer stock good for 134 days. So, there is a danger actually that we may have an oversupply of rice,” Piñol, who is also NFAC chairman, told reporters in a news briefing in Malacañang on Monday.

“That [danger of oversupply] is precisely the reason why the National Food Authority [NFA] last Tuesday launched a buffer stocking program in Mindoro and we will start buying farmers’ produce to protect them from plummeting palay prices,” he added.

Continued on A4

BusinessMirror A broader look at today’s business

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Tuesday, October 16, 2018 Vol. 14 No. 6

Remittances shrink anew, 8-month total just $19.1B

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By Bianca Cuaresma

@BcuaresmaBM

ONEY sent by Filipino migrant workers contracted anew in August this year, reversing the growth gains seen in the previous month.

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported on Monday that overseas Filipino workers (OFW) remittances declined by 0.9 percent in August this year to hit $2.48 billion during the month, from the $2.5-billion inflow seen in the same

month in 2017.

This brought the total OFW cash remittance inflows in the first eight months of the year to $19.06 billion, only 2.5 percent higher than 2017’s $ 18.6 billion.

The government projects a

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@sam_medenilla

EFECTS in the provisions and enforcement of the tax reform of the government have left people vulnerable to the rising cost of living, according to three incumbent senators who filed their certificate of candidacy (COC) on Monday.

The lawmakers are now reviewing their support for the second part of the tax-reform package, which the House of Representatives has called the “Trabaho” bill, for Tax Reform for Attracting Better and High-quality Opportunities.

Sen. Cynthia A. Villar was the first to submit her COC on Monday at the Commission on Elections main office in Intramuros, Manila, to seek reelection in the May 2019 polls.

In a brief speech after filing, Villar said the lax enforcement of the anti-cartel laws and wrong economic projections caused the surge in inflation in previous months.

In September inf lation rate reached 6.7 percent, triggering a spate of nonmonetary administrative measures and another rate hike by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP).

She called the attention of the Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) for failing to break the rice and onion cartel, which took advantage of the implementation of the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) law, which

‘Let us avoid rocking the boat’

4-percent rise in remittances on average for 2018. August is the third month for 2018 where remittance inflows declined. In March remittances went down by 9.8 percent, while a 4.5-percent decline was seen in June.

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas traced the contraction in August largely to the decline of remittances from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

The BSP had earlier said the repatriation program of the government—thousands of workers

E have a fairly strong economy, and our growth at more than 6 percent remains one of the fastest in the world. However, soaring crude-oil prices, the general strength of the US dollar, rising interest rates and the currency crisis in several countries now serve as external threats to emerging markets like the Philippines.

See “Remittances,” A2

Continued on A6

Manny B. Villar

THE ENTREPRENEUR

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Oil firms back excise tax hike’s suspension

By Lenie Lectura

“I don’t regret supporting it, but we were not able to consider that some people will take advantage of the TRAIN law. It is a lesson learned.”—Villar

took effect on January 1, 2018, as the first part of the Comprehensive Tax Reform Program (CTRP).

“We passed a law for large-scale agriculture smuggling as economic sabotage making it nonbailable, yet they were not able to send to prison smugglers or the cartel, so there is negligence [on] their part,” Villar said.

Villar filed her COC under the Nacionalista Party (NP) and was accompanied by her husband, former Senate President and real-estate mogul Manuel “Manny” Villar Jr. If she wins in the 2019 polls, Villar said she will focus on legislation to boost the competitiveness of the agriculture industry and environmental protection.

She said among her priority legislation is climate-based crop insurance; livestock, poultry and dairy development law; and repeal of the Agri-Agra Reform Credit Act of 2009. Despite contributing to the rising cost of living, the TRAIN law, Villar said, is necessary to help the government fund its mass infrastructure programs.

See “Kid-glove handling,” A2

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‘Kid-glove handling of smugglers, cartels impaired tax reform’

By Samuel P. Medenilla

2017 EJAP JOURNALISM AWARDS

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to major disasters from 2011 to present: As you can see, the top 3 occurrences of highest damage to our economy were in 2013 due to Typhoon Yolanda [0.905 percent of GDP, or a negative 0.209-percentage-point contribution to GDP growth]; in 2012 due to Typhoon Pablo [0.456 percent of GDP, or a negative 0.325-ppt contribution to GDP growth], and in 2014 due to Typhoon Glenda [0.37 percent of GDP, or a negative 0.248-ppt contribution to GDP growth],” Navarro said.

In terms of impact on GDP growth, disasters all cause declines in economic growth. The largest decline in economic growth caused by a single disaster between 2011 and 2018 was a contraction of 0.325 percentage points recorded in

IL firms gave a thumbs-up to a looming oil tax hike suspension, saying this will help soothe the plight of consumers who continue to feel the sting of inflation.

Independent Philippine Petroleum Companies Association (Ippca) President Bong Suntay said this is “a welcome treat for the consumers, particularly motorists.”

“Petro products have become a necessity for most Filipinos. A possible suspension of the fuel excise tax will be a big help to cushion rising prices of oil in the world market. Sadly, we can’t help prevent the spike because we are a net importer,” said Suntay in a phone interview.

The Philippines is a net impor ter of oi l produc t s. T h i s means that the country’s fuel supply is generally sourced from abroad, making it v ulnerable to changes in international oil price markets.

Latest data from the Department of Energy (DOE) showed that the country has been importing 94 percent of its oil requirements, with the total import bill jumping to $9.89 billion in 2017, a 31.2-percent increase from the $7.54-billion import bill in 2016.

See “Disasters,” A2

See “Oil firms,” A2

IN the aftermath of Typhoon Ompong, this neighborhood in Bulacan province remains flooded. The typhoon struck Northern and Central Luzon hardest, denting production in the so-called vegetable and cereal bowls. The farm damage from Ompong reached P27 billion. NONIE REYES

Disasters cost PHL P389B; recovery at P560B

By Cai U. Ordinario

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@cuo_bm

HE Philippines incurred damage of at least P388.74 billion from disasters between 2011 and 2018, according to data presented by the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda), but the cost of recovery and rebuilding was nearly one and a half times that amount.

In a recent forum, Neda Regional Development Office Undersecretary Adoracion M. Navarro said the largest damage cost was P125.56 billion, incurred in 2013. This was the year when Supertyphoon Yolanda (international code name Haiyan) struck and caused P101.79 billion worth of damage and losses.

Navarro said the government

6,727

The number of fatalities from disasters in 2013, the biggest toll between the years 2011 and 2018.

Supertyphoon Yolanda (Haiyan), which stunned the world with its killer winds and storm surges, struck in November 2013 had to spend some P559.86 billion for rehabilitation and recovery between 2011 and 2018. The rehabilitation cost in 2013 was also the highest at P378.17 billion, due mainly to Yolanda.

“To illustrate the result of our tracking of economic losses due

@llectura

n JAPAN 0.4822 n UK 70.7758 n HK 6.9022 n CHINA 7.8213 n SINGAPORE 39.2545 n AUSTRALIA 38.4570 n EU 62.4365 n SAUDI ARABIA 14.4189

Source: BSP (15 October 2018 )

News

BusinessMirror

A2 Tuesday, October 16, 2018

In DFA transition, ‘friends to all, enemy to none’ stays

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By Recto Mercene

@rectomercene

OREIGN Affairs Secretary Alan Peter S. Cayetano said he will relinquish his post to his incoming replacement, the country’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York Teodoro L. Locsin Jr., on Wednesday.

For the remaining two days at the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), Cayetano said he would brief him about the foreign-policy thrust of the Duterte administration.

“One of the things I’ll be briefing Secretary [Teodoro] Locsin about is the ‘friends to all, enemy to none’ policy and about our new friends compared to old allies and friends,” Cayetano said.

Cayetano’s reference to “new fr iends” apparently refers to China, with which the Philippine government, particularly the DFA, had chilly relations

from 2013 until 2016, after China occupied Scarborough Shoal, the traditional fishing grounds of Filipinos.

The Philippines subsequently haled China before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which ruled in 2016 that China’s nine-dash line—the main basis of its sweeping claims of possession, by historical right, across nearly the entire South China Sea, is illegal.

The “old allies and friends” Cayetano was referring to is primarily the United States, the former colo-

Kid-glove handling. . .

“I don’t regret supporting it, but we were not able to consider that some people will take advantage of the TRAIN law. It is a lesson learned,” Villar said.

Poe hits slow response REELEC TIONIST Sen. Grace PoeLlamanzares also maintained her support for the TRAIN law, but she added the government failed to enforce its corresponding “social mitigating measures,” which would have minimized the adverse impact on the public.

She criticized the Department of Social Welfare and Develop ment (DSWD) and the Department of Transportation (DOTr) for failing to promptly distribute cash aid for poor families and drivers of publicutility jeeps, respectively.

“The problem is they collected the money, but they were not able to immediately provide the necessary aid so the [economic] situation worsened,” Poe said.

Poe said members of the Senate are now pushing for the immediate suspension of the excise tax and the passage of the rice tarification bill to tame the surging inflation rate.

Poe was accompanied by her mother, Susan Roces, when she filed her COC as an independent candidate on Monday. She noted, though, that the Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC) adopted her in their 2019 senatorial slate.

Last-minute change FOR his part, Joseph “JV” G. Ejercito de-

Continued from A1

cried the removal of a provision in the TRAIN law, particularly for inflation. He explained that many senators, including himself, supported the Senate version of the TRAIN law since it contained two “safeguards” to minimize its inflationary impact.

The safeguards include the suspension of the excise tax for the fuel if its global price reaches $80 per barrel; and the suspension of the excise tax if the inflation reaches 4 percent.

Ejercito, however, lamented that the second provision was scrapped in the final version of TRAIN. If it had been retained, the steady gallop of inflation to as much as 6.7 percent in September would have been enough to kick in a suspension of the excise tax.

Poe and Ejercito said they will only support the passage of the Trabaho bill once they are firmly convinced the defects in the enforcement of TRAIN will not happen again.

“At this point, not yet [support it] because we feel, as I mentioned, there [were] some dishonesty in the provision of TRAIN,” Ejercito said.

“Economic managers have to be honest first before we can trust what they want,” he added.

Ejercito, who is running under the NPC, said he will lobby for legislation providing emergency powers to President Duterte for the government’s mass infrastructure program.

“We cannot afford any more delays.

I think we are 30 years behind in construction development so it has been hampering our economic growth,” Ejercito said.

Remittances. . .

Continued from A1

were sent home owing to conflict in their host country, or serial abuses, or to take advantage of amnesties for undocumented workers—partly dented the remittance flows in previous months.

During the first two months of 2018, a total of 4,149 OFWs were repatriated from the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

The BSP also quoted Philippine Overseas Employment Administration data, showing that the number of deployed land-based workers dropped by 3.28 percent year-on-year, while that of the seabased workers fell by 14.62 percent.

ING Bank Manila economist Nicholas Mapa said the contraction in year-on-year terms shows that the seasonality in remittances continues to shift, mainly due to

school-year changes, as well as to possible late payments to workers.

“Nuances in exchange rates may have also caused the discrepancy, given yearly growth rates,” he added.

Filipino migrant workers are usually seen to adjust their transfers based on the strength or weakness of the peso, with a weaker peso allowing them to send fewer dollars due to the increased peso purchasing power.

Data from the BSP showed the peso averaged trade at 53.27 to a dollar in August 2018, weaker by about P3 from the 50.87 to a dollar in the same month last year.

ING Bank, however, expects remittances to grow by about 3 percent on average for the year. This is lower than the government’s projection.

nizer and its partner in the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty.

When President Duterte declared his pivot to China following his election in 2016, the icy relations between Manila and Beijing immediately thawed.

Dutrete’s first foreign foray was to Beijing, instead of to Washington, D.C., as was the usual gesture of previous presidents.

Duter te a nd P resident X i Jinping had an immediate liking for each other and the former Davao mayor was rewarded with pledges of multimillion-peso soft loans to finance his “Build, Build, Build” infrastructure program.

Cayetano, meanwhile, said he will also apprise Locsin of the pending agreements between the Philippines and China regarding the possible joint exploration of hydrocarbon deposits in the West Philippine Sea/South China Sea. “There are many agreements that we’ve been working on and one of this is the joint exploration but it shouldn’t be taken by itself,” said the DFA chief.

“We are also discussing the coast guard-to-coast guard agreement,

Oil firms. . .

the marine environment protection agreement, so we’re finding ways to make the SCS and WPS as an area of cooperation of peace rather than an area of confrontation and conflict,” he added.

Cayetano said he will discuss these issues with Locsin over lunch on Tuesday.

“I can say it’s looking good from [the] legal, moral, standpoint of protecting territorial rights and economic rights,” he said of the potential joint exploration agreement with China.

Chinese Ambassador Zhao Jianhua, interviewed recently by BusinessMirror, said that both sides have realized that “first and foremost is the stability in the South China Sea.” “In the meantime, it is in our common interests to explore the possibility of joint exploration which will be mutually acceptable,” he said at the 69th Founding Anniversary of The People’s Republic of China in Makati Zhao said both sides haven’t come to a conclusion yet, “but both sides are serious in the possibility [of] joint exploration.”

Continued from A1

I p p c a h a s at l e a s t 1 6 m e m bers, mostly the country’s leading independent oil players, such as Eastern Petroleum, Unioil Petroleum Philippines Inc., Seaoil Philippines, Flying V, City Oil, Pryce Gases and LPGMA, among others.

Meanwhile, the Philippine Institute of Petroleum (PIP), composed of Petron Corp., Pilipinas Shell, Chevron, PTT Philippines and Isla LPG, shared the view of government officials.

“PIP welcomes this proactive stance by both the Executive and the Legislative as immediate mitigating measures to arrest inflation rise. While government authorities, such as the BSP, Neda, DOF and renowned economists recognize the minimal impact of petroleum product prices relative to other major commodities in the basket of goods and services, the psychological impact of petroleum price rise come into play,” said PIP Executive Director Teddy Reyes in an interview.

As mandated by the TRAIN law, fuel excise taxes increased by P2.5 per liter this year, and the levy is scheduled to rise by P2 and P1.5 per liter in 2019 and 2020, respectively, for a total P6-excise tax hike over three years.

The TRAIN law states, however, that “for the period covering 2018 to 2020, the scheduled increase in the excise tax on fuel as imposed in this section shall be suspended when the average Dubai crude oil price based on Mean of Platts Singapore [MOPS] for three months prior to the scheduled increase of the month reaches, or exceeds $80 per barrel.”

Price of Dubai crude rose 43 percent to $77.02 per barrel in September from $53.86/bbl a year ago and by 6.78 percent from August’s $72.23 per barrel.

Prices averaged $82.278 per barrel in the 10 trading days to Oct. 12, or 50.69 percent more than the $54.602 per barrel in last year’s comparable period.

Reyes said that by January 2019

Disasters. . .

Continued from A1

D e ce mb e r 201 2 b e c au se of Typhoon Pablo. This was followed

by Typhoons Glenda and Yolanda with a contraction of 0.248 percentage points and 0.209 percentage points, respectively. Glenda occurred in July 2014 and Yolanda in, November 2013.

Meanwhile, Neda data showed the number of fatalities was also the highest in 2013 at 6,727 people. This was also mainly caused

by Yolanda, which left in its wake 6,201 Filipinos dead.

the proposed additional increases of P2 per liter for gasoline, P2 per liter for diesel, P1 per kg of LPG, P2 per liter for kerosene shall not be implemented if the suspension is indeed carried out.

Oil firms recently implemented a price rollback after nine consecutive weeks of oil-price increases. Diesel prices went up by a cumulative P5.85 per liter, gasoline by P5.05 per liter and kerosene by P4.65 per liter from August 14 to October 9.

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Jimenez quits source code review panel after laptop incident

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OMMI S SION on E lections (Comelec) Spokesman James B. Jimenez announced on Monday his resignation as the Focal Person of the Local Source Code Review committee of the poll body following an “inappropriate” incident at an official event at the De La Salle University in Manila during the weekend.

Last Saturday, a photo of a bikini-clad celebrity flashed in front of the screen during the launch of the local source code review, while Comelec Commissioner Luie Tito Guia was making a presentation.

Jimenez claimed responsibility for the incident since it was his computer, which was used for the presentation. “The image is in my computer. It is a desktop image and then, unfortunately, when we were switching programs from presentation to presentation apparently it appeared,” Jimenez told reporters in a press conference.

Jimenez said he already tendered his resignation for the source code panel because of the incident to disprove rumors circulating about the incident.

“I resigned...I can’t abide by what people were saying that I was hacked or it was not my fault. It is my fault.

I am responsible for that particular event. That sort of thing should have been handled better,” stressed Jimenez. However, he will continue to act as Comelec’s spokesman and the head of its planning department.

He also said his departure from the source code committee aims to maintain the credibility of the Comelec. “It will be better for the transparency of the process and the overall credibility of the institution that I serve to take responsibility for it now,” Jimenez said.

The Comelec has yet to announce Jimenez’s replacement in the Local Source Code Review committee.

Samuel P. Medenilla

1st day of Boracay dry run went very well–DOT chief

By Ma. Stella F. Arnaldo

@akosistellaBM Special to the BusinessMirror

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CONSUMER advocacy group Laban Konsyumer Inc. (LKI) also welcomed the good news.

“LKI had been advocating against fuel excise taxes and had filed a Supreme Court case in January vs the TRAIN law,” the group said.

“May we add that the President consider replacing Cabinet secretaries whose behavior in the past months contributed to the high inflation. Lastly, all cash assistance to beneficiaries under the TRAIN law be given, considering the windfall valueadded tax collected by the government derived from the high oil prices,” said LKI President and former Trade Undersecretary Victor Dimagiba.

The call for suspending the oil excise tax had mounted after inflation accelerated in recent months. More expensive fuel was tagged as a major factor behind the rise in consumer prices.

Various groups have been calling for the suspension of oil excise taxes, amid rising inflation, which surged to a nineyear high of 6.7 percent in September.

Over the weekend, Special Assistant to the President Christopher Lawrence T. Go said that the government was “seriously considering” suspending the next round of increase in oil excise taxes.

Economic managers reportedly support that move, and the President considered the idea after getting a letter from 17 proadministration senators.

ORACAY Island partially reopened on Monday to receive some guests for its 10-day dry run conducted by the interagency Task Force Boracay.

Sixty-eight resorts with 3,519 rooms are participating in the dry-run. Only 19 tourists, mostly from Aklan, arrived on Monday.

In an interview with the BusinessMirror, Tourism Secretary Bernadette Fatima Romulo Puyat said the first day “went very well”despite the rains that pelted the island, with the coming of the amihan season.

“The main beach is very clean and peaceful now,” she added, “and I spoke with some of the original stakeholders who said this was how Boracay was before.”She noted many of them “welcomed the stricter environmental guidelines,”but added that they appealed for the task force to lift the ban on tables and chairs by the beach for certain times of the day.

“But [Environment] Secretary [Roy A.] Cimatu said the law is to enforce the 25+5 easement along the main beach, so the prohibition has to remain.”

Among the events on Monday were a salubungan of mainland Aklanons and Boracaynons at the main white beach, and unveiling of designs for the rehabilitation of Wetlands No. 4, to be undertaken by the Aboitiz Group, and Wetland No. 3, to be implemented by San Miguel Corp.

Also, the Department of Public Works and Highways inaugurated the road that connects Bulabog Beach to the main road.

Ride-hailing app, Grab, unveiled a sample of its waiting sheds, and is offering rides on its e-vehicles for free until December, according to the DOT chief. DENR officials earlier said HirNa, a Davao-based ride-hailing app, will manage some 200 e-trikes that will ply the roads and alleys of Boracay.

Romulo Puyat assured the public that the pontoons now located along Stations 1 and 2 are “temporary,” just to welcome the tourists participating in the dry run.

“But those will be removed by October 26, and arrivals and departures will once more resume at Cagban port,” she stressed, in response to comments from local stakeholders and netizens about boat fuel being discharged in the waters

Other natural and man-made disasters in 2013 that claimed hundreds of lives were the Zamboanga siege in September and the Central Visayas earthquake in October, with 203 and 221 Filipinos killed, respectively.

However, since November 2013, after Typhoon Yolanda, the number of fatalities have been below 200.

The disasters that brought the highest number of fatalities between July 2014 and September 2018 were Typhoon Vinta with 173 dead in December 2017, and the Marawi siege with 168 dead in May 2017. “[However], our detailed postdisaster needs assessment is not yet finished and we do not have es-

timates of GDP impacts yet, so we really cannot say [if we have become more resilient] in terms of GDP impact figures. [But] with respect to reducing loss of human lives, it is clear that we have learned our lessons well in managing disasters,” Navarro said.

Navarro said it is important for the Philippines to build resilience to disasters. This “is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress.”

She said there are many efforts now being undertaken by the government. These efforts include providing universal health insur-

Consumers pleased

”I can’t abide by what people were saying that I was hacked or it was not my fault. It is my fault. I am responsible for that particular event.

That sort of thing should have been handled better.”—Jimenez

off the main white beach.

Cebu Pacific Airways launched its sustainable tourism campaign, “Juan Effect,” on Monday at the White House resort, and turned over an initial 12 sets of three garbage bins to Romulo Puyat, Cimatu, Interior Officer-in-Charge Eduardo M. Año, DPWH Secretary Mark A. Villar, and Transportation Secretary Arthur P. Tugade. The garbage bins have been labeled Food Waste, Non-Recyclable Waste and Recyclables.

Charo Logarta-Lagamon, CEB director for communications, said the airline is still “working with the Department of Tourism and Department of Environment and Natural Resources to find out how many trash bins are exactly needed” on the 1,000-hectare island.

“The production of the trash bins integrate the use of waste plastic materials, such as laminated packaging of Chippy and other snack foods produced by our sister-firm URC [Universal Robina Corp.],” she added.

The trash bins will first be put along the main white beach, every 200 meters, DOT officials said.

Noncompliant outlets warned

ROMULO PUYAT, meanwhile, announced in a public advisory published on social media over the weekend, that “all Boracay Island accommodation establishments that are not yet compliant with DILG and DENR requirements and are not yet accredited with the [DOT] are hereby strongly advised to cease and desist from making room bookings or sale for occupancy starting Oct. 26, 2018 onward until such time that all requirements for opening their establishments are in order and complete.”

She added, “all online promotions and other related collaterals should be deleted or put on hold until complete compliance with government regulations shall have been accomplished. Those found violating the terms of this advisory shall be dealt with the full force of the law.”

The DOT issued the advisory after Romulo Puyat personally received complaints on her social media accounts about certain noncompliant Boracay hotels and resorts already demanding for partial payment or full payment for guests’ reservations.

ance; enhancing social protection for the informal sector; addressing the concerns of children caught in situations of armed conflict; and improving socioeconomic interventions, among others. “So that we may build a more resilient nation, we will continue to refine the use of appropriate indicators to measure the implementation and effectiveness of climate change and DRRM [disaster risk reduction and management] initiatives vis-à-vis the Sendai Framework for DRR [disaster risk reduction], SDGs [Sustainable Development Goals] and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Commitments,” she said.

www.businessmirror.com.ph

The Nation BusinessMirror

Editor: Vittorio V. Vitug • Tuesday, October 16, 2018 A3

Promotion, new post await controversial police officer O

zamiz City Police head Chief Insp. Jovie Espenido is set to get a promotion and will be reassigned to the Bicol region, Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Director General Oscar D. Albayalde confirmed on Monday.

“May order na siya [There is an order for him]. He is reassigned to Region 5, in Catanduanes. Meron siyang [He has a] pending promotion.

He should be promoted, that is part of his career. Ang pwesto na pupuntahan niya [The rank that he will be getting] is superintendent, so [from] chief inspector siya, that is part of his promotion,” Albayalde told reporters at a news briefing when asked

on the status of the controversial police officer.

Espenido led operations against suspected narcopoliticians, such as Albuera Mayor Rolando Espinosa and Ozamiz City Mayor Reynaldo Parojinog.

In July 2017 the Ozamiz police chief also led the anti-drug operations in the city, which resulted in the death of Parojinog and 14 others.

The slain mayor’s children, Vice Mayor Nova Princess ParojinogEchavez and Reynaldo Jr., were arrested during the raid and later charged with drug possession and illegal possession of firearms.

In a July 30, 2018 resolution,

PNP campaign vs PAGs gains headway ahead of 2019 polls

By Rene Acosta @reneacostaBM

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he Philippine National Police (PNP) has already neutralized 47 members of private armed groups (PAGs) since August as part of its preparations for the 2019 midterm elections, and as an agency deputized by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) for poll duties.

At least 82 members of gun-forhire syndicates have also been killed or arrested and 35 firearms were recovered for the same period, as the PNP intensified its campaign against hired criminals.

“Focused intelligence operations are now being directed against more or less 77 active PAGs with 2,071 members believed armed with an estimated 1,582 firearms,” PNP chief Director General Oscar D. Albayalde said during a news briefing on Monday.

“A large majority of these active PAGs operate in the ARMM [Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao].

We are also monitoring the activities of 217 other groups that have the potential of being utilized as PAGs by some politicians,” he added.

Albayalde also reported that the PNP has gained significant headway in the investigation of 18 separate incidents of politically motivated attacks on incumbent elective officials with arrests made against suspects in 11 incidents and criminal charges filed against suspects in two other cases.

The PNP chief said the measures were being undertaken in order to ensure the peaceful conduct of the scheduled midterm elections next year as ordered by President Duterte.

“Aggressive police operations will continue without letup against loose firearms and gun-for-hire groups, some of which are known to double as PAGs during election season,” he said.

“As a deputized agency of the Commission on Elections, the PNP assures the safety and security of the entire election process, including that of all political aspirants, election officials, personnel, equipment and materials,” Albayalde added.

The PNP chief said the leadership is taking administrative actions in order to insulate the PNP from partisan politics, by limited reorganization and reassignment of personnel, particularly those related to candidates who are vying for national and local elective posts.

“I admire those who took the magnanimous initiative and voluntarily offered to be reassigned during the election period to preclude any suspicion of partisan politics in their present positions,” he said.

Meanwhile, Albayalde was elated with the country’s election as member of the United Nations Human Rights Commission for another term, which he view as “a clear manifestation of the international community’s recognition of our steady progress in fulfilling international human-rights obligations.”

He also welcomed the larger acknowledgement by the UN of the global problem on illegal drugs as expressed in the World Drug Report 2018 of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

“Based on our own experience, the PNP supports the validity of the UN report that these threats posed by illegal drugs to health and well-being, as well as to security, safety and sustainable development demand an urgent response,” Albayalde said.

“We join the UN along with our counterpart national police agencies in urging the international community to take this opportunity to reinforce cooperation and agree upon effective and sustainable solutions to this global problem,” he added.

the Department of Justice (DOJ) indicted Espenido, SPO4 Renato Martir Jr. and PO1 Sandra Nadayag for six counts of homicide under Article 249 of the Revised Penal Code based on the complaint of Carmelita Manzano.

The three policemen are being accused of killing the complainant’s husband Fancracio, her son Jerry, her daughter’s common-law spouse, Victorino Mira Jr.; her nephew Lito Manisan; her niece’s common-law husband Romeo Libaton; and one Alvin Lapeña in the afternoon raid during a birthday celebration in her house.

The six were killed during a series

A

her deportation would be to state that decisions should be based on the public pronouncement of the President regardless of the merits of the case and the arguments presented by the parties.

“Even while the BI argues in its comment that it based the assailed decision on the intelligence report… and not on the pronouncement of the President, again the report… failed to provide the proper context of the activities participated by the petitioner,” the nun said.

“The report is also based on hearsay information [and] sloppy intelligence report by mere social-media stalking. Hence, there is no substantial evidence to support the decision in this case because hearsay information is not evidence,” she added.

Fox urged the DOJ to exercise “prudence and careful evaluation” of the evidence presented against her during the deportation proceedings as an adverse ruling would have “farreaching and destructive effects” on the foreigners in the country.

proven in court as a “ justifying circumstance.”

In junking the arbitrary detention charge, the DOJ explained that an element of the crime—that the detention was without legal grounds—was lacking in the case of Manzano, who claimed to have been taken by the policemen following the operation and detained at the Ozamiz City Police Station from June 1 to 7.

The DOJ said Manzano admitted that she was furnished a copy of an affidavit of arrest/complaint/ search, dated June 9, for alleged violation of the Comprehensive Firearms and Ammunition Regula-

tion Act. “Clearly, therefore, a case against her was filed; and there was indeed legal ground for [her] detention,” the DOJ added.

A nother respondent, Chief Insp. Gly ndo P uja nes, wa s cleared of charges as the DOJ noted that he had no hand in the killing of the fatalities and only arrived at the scene after the raids took place in barangays Cabinti and Balintawak.

Justice Secretary Menardo I. Guevarra said after a motion for reconsideration is resolved by the prosecution panel, Espenido can still file a petition for review before his office. PNA

Ex-VP leaves fate of feuding Binays to voters

By Claudeth Mocon-Ciriaco Correspondent

will let the people of Makati decide.”

This was the statement of former Vice President Jejomar C. Binay after two of his children decided to run head-to-head for the mayoralty post in the May 2019 elections.

The former vice president said he respects the decision of both Makati City Mayor Abigail “Abby” Binay and former Makati City Mayor Jejomar Erwin “Junjun” Binay and will just leave it up to the people of Makati to choose who best deserves their mandate.

The lady mayor has declared her decision to seek reelection as the official candidate of the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA), the former vice president’s party, while his elder brother Junjun has also decided to join the mayoral race as the candidate of his local party, Una ang Makati (UAM).

“I am not the one who is responsible to decide for both of them but

‘I

the people of Makati,” the older Binay said in a news statement.

He said both of his children have proven themselves to be highly competent and experienced in government service, pointing out that they share a genuine compassion for the people of Makati as manifested in their numerous initiatives for their constituents’ benefit.

The former vice president added he does not intend to impose his opinion on his children because both are already of age and capable of making decisions for themselves.

But as a parent, all he could do is to give them advice, he said.

Binay, who served as Makati mayor before he won as vice president in 2010, revealed that both camps have come to an agreement to maintain civility and sobriety while campaigning by solely focusing on their respective platforms and plans for the city and its people.

Campaign leaders and supporters will be asked to refrain from engaging in mudslinging and destructive propaganda, and instead

keep the campaign positive and peaceful, he said.

Binay also expressed their collective commitment to making Makati a model of clean and honest elections.

He said that whatever the outcome of the elections in May 2019 will be, the people of Makati can be rest assured that they will continue to enjoy the Binay “brand of service.”

He added that their family will remain strong and intact, and will not be divided by politics.

‘Official candidate’

Meanwhile, Abby said ,“I am deeply humbled by the trust given to me by my father. As his official candidate, I will continue to pursue his vision of a competent, compassionate and transparent leadership.”

She recalled that two years ago, they found the city government in a state of neglect and disorder.

“Worse, dirty politics and shameless political patronage had taken their toll on basic social services, depriving our beloved Makatizens of the service they deserve,” she added.

However, she noted that with her trusted team…of professionals, “I got down to the task of rebuilding our city by taking drastic but necessary measures to promptly restore efficiency, competence, professionalism and compassion in governance.”

She cited that for the first time in 12 years, Makati posted a doubledigit growth in its revenue collections for the year 2017.

Likewise, Makati obtained the highest audit rating from the Commission on Audit which rendered its “unqualified opinion” on our 2017 financial statements.

These recent achievements, she said, augur well for Makati and its people because stronger investor confidence translates to continued financial stability, which has underpinned the trailblazing programs and services of the city government started by her father which she continue to pursue and expand.

“With my father by my side, I will continue to work tirelessly for our city and our people,” she concluded.

DOJ chief reminds Trillanes’s camp to observe sub judice rule

By Joel R. San Juan @jrsanjuan1573

S

ay it with flowers, as an adage goes. But in this instance, the justice secretary himself may not totally agree.

Justice Secretary Menardo I. Guevarra on Monday warned that those who sent or placed flowers outside the courtroom of a Makati regional trial court (RTC) judge who is handling the plea of the government to order the rearrest and detention of opposition Sen. Antonio F. Trillanes IV in connection with his coup d’ etat case, may be held liable for contempt.

Guevarra issued the statement in reaction to reports that several bou-

Fox to DOJ: Reverse BI ruling on my deportation

USTRALIAN nun Patricia Fox on Monday pleaded to the Department of Justice (DOJ) anew to reverse the decision issued by the Bureau of Immigration (BI) ordering her deportation for her alleged involvement in “partisan political activities” in the country.

In a five-page reply to the comment with manifestation submitted by the BI before the DOJ in connection with her petition for review of the deportation order issued in July, Fox maintained that agency had long “prejudged” and “never been objective” in resolving the deportation case.

Fox said the BI’s bias against her was proven when the BI stated in its resolution ordering her deportation that President Duterte has already spoken on the issue, thus, the BI board of commissioners, under the doctrine of qualified political agency or alter ego principle, has to abide by the statement of the President.

The nun told the DOJ that to uphold the BI’s reasoning in ordering

of raids in Cabinti and Balintawak villages in Ozamiz on June 1 where six other suspects were arrested.

Police recovered firearms, pieces of jewelry and sachets of suspected shabu from the suspects during the raids.

Meanwhile, the DOJ dismissed charges of murder and arbitrary detention against the three policemen for “lack of probable cause.”

Espenido and company may post bail for each count of homicide following the filing of the criminal information in court.

The DOJ said the respondents’ claim that the first gunfire came from Manzano’s camp needs to be

She maintained that her alleged participation in so-called political activities in the country were done in the exercise of “constitutionally and universally recognized and protected rights to freedom of expression and assembly, and free exercise of religious freedom,” Fox pointed out.

The 71-year-old missionary is being accused of violating the terms and conditions of her visa when she participated in rallies, news conferences and fact-finding missions.

Fox’s camp has insisted that the nun’s participation in dialogues with the farmers, indigenous people and the poor is part of her religious work.

In its July resolution, the BI found that Fox violated “the limitations and conditions of Commonwealth Act 613, Section 9 [g] missionary visa and undesirable under Article 2711, Section 69 and order her deportation to Australia, subject to her submission of all appropriate clearance and the inclusion of her name in the BI’s blacklist, thus barring her reentry into the country.” Joel R. San Juan

quet of flowers with tags bearing the words like “rule of law, hope and legacy and truth and fairness” were placed outside the sala of Makati RTC Branch 148 Judge Andres Soriano.

Soriano is expected to resolve the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) plea within the week.

The DOJ is seeking to revive the coup d’ etat case against Trillanes in connection with the 2003 Oakwood mutiny after President Duterte revoked the amnesty given to him by thepreviousadministrationafterlearning that he failed to comply with the requirements to qualify for the grant.

“That’s exactly the kind of pressure that has been exerted upon Judge Soriano. Some people have made it ap-

pear that any ruling against Senator Trillanes will be a deathblow to democracy and the rule of law but even a first year law student will tell you that such acts tending to influence the decision of the judge are a clear and punishable case of contempt of court,” Guevarra said.

It can be recalled that Guevarra lashed out at Magdalo Rep. Gary C. Alejano for alleging that Soriano is under “intense” pressure to grant the DOJ’s petition and rule against Trillanes.

“Rep. Alejano’s allegations tend to impede the orderly administration of justice, unfairly cast aspersion on the integrity and professionalism of the Department of Justice and

its state prosecutors, and contumaciously influence Judge Soriano’s decision-making process,” he said.

Guevarra pointed out that from the DOJ has communicated with the judge, except through the pleadings and motions, raised in open court by the DOJ prosecutors handling the case.

T he DOJ c h ief rem i nded Trillanes’s camp to observe the sub judice rule, which prohibits parties from the case from discussing the merits of the case in public.

After holding a hearing last Friday and deciding to admit most of Trillanes’s evidence, Soriano said he considered the DOJ’s motion submitted for resolution.

Gordon says more govt officials could be involved in P8.7-B ROW scam

By Butch Fernandez @butchfBM

T

he chief prober in the Senate inquiry into the P8.7-billion road right-of-way (ROW) scam moved to expand the list of liable officials facing charges before the anti-graft court.

Sen. Richard J. Gordon, chairman of the Senate Blue Ribbon investigation, prodded the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to amend the original charge sheet after uncovering the modus operandi of an alleged syndicate behind the anomaly.

Gordon sees potential liabilities after getting information linking officials of the Department of Public Works and Highways, Land Registration Authority (LR A), Register of Deeds to the anomaly that had “tarnished the integrity of the country’s Torrens title.”

In a news statement, the senator suggested that the NBI include officials of government agencies involved in the payment of ROW

compensation who were not in the original charge sheet. He also asked for a list of those already in the charge sheets and the charges filed.

Gordon, likewise, prodded the Office of the Ombudsman, the Department of Justice and the NBI to also conduct a lifestyle check on officials of the government agencies involved in ROW payments, after uncovering the modus operandi of the syndicate in perpetrating the scam by claiming “just compensation” for road ROW intended for rightful owners affected by national highway using fake titles certified by the LRA. He wondered how many liable officials linked to the multibillionpeso anomaly have been charged already, insisting that all those other erring officials found to be involved during the Senate inquiry should also be indicted.

“How many cases have you filed?

Is there anyone or anybody who has not been included in the cases? In the course of these hearings, who are the rest of the respondents? I expect

more names on the list,” he said in mix of Filipino and English.

Gordon lamented that based of Blue Ribbon findings, it was shown that “some officials have not exerted sufficient due diligence which would have prevented the government from being defrauded, indicating potential liabilities for possible charges including negligence or collusion with the perpetrators of the anomaly.”

The senator said that “the whole system collapsed because some officials of the Department of Public Works and Highways, Land Registration Authority, Register of Deeds, and other agencies, who put their selfish gain above integrity and love for country, gave in to the syndicates’ machinations in exchange for money.”

Gordon voiced concern that “the road to progress will be difficult if these government officials put selfish gain above integrity and love for country,” noting that the “cost of governance becomes very expensive.”

A4 Tuesday, October 16, 2018 • Editor: Vittorio V. Vitug

Economy BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Economist urges govt to hike cash transfers to the poor after TRAIN law

T

By Elijah Felice E. Rosales

@alyasjah

he Duterte administration should increase its cash transfer program under the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) law to P421 monthly for the poor to be able cope with the new tax bracket, a state university economist said on Monday.

University of the Philippines School of Statistics Dean Dennis S. Mapa said the P200 unconditional cash transfer (UCT) under the TRAIN law is insufficient for the poor to survive rising inflation, which is partly caused by additional taxes of the law. For him, the economic team underestimated

the amount of subsidy the poorest 30 percent need.

He argued government economists made the assumption that most of the poor are comprised of five members—the average household in the Philippines. “The cash transfer of P200 is really a wrong assumption on the family size of

₧421/month The amount that the government should give to the poor under the UCT program, according to UP School of Statistics Dean Dennis S. Mapa

households,” Mapa told the BusinessMirror on the sidelines of a forum at the Ateneo de Manila University.

“The value of that is computed using the family size of five. Again, if we are targeting the poor households, they are not just five, but more,” he added.

Mapa understands the government has population control programs aimed at managing the country’s head count. However, he said what the poor needs now is additional

subsidy at a time inflation is accelerating to unprecedented levels.

“My piece there is why don’t we just revisit these numbers and check it out,” Mapa said.

Taking into account inflation, particularly on food items, such as rice and fish, the statistics expert moved the government increase UCT to P301 monthly for a family of five; P361 for a family of six; and P421 for a family of seven.

This way, he concluded, the impact of the TRAIN will be more manageable for the poor. “[In the] nine months of 2019, the poorest 30 percent of the population suffered the most from increasing prices of goods, particularly food items, such as rice and fish. Higher inflation among the poor is a threat to poverty reduction efforts, [and] current cash transfers as provided by the TRAIN law is not enough to compensate the poor,” Mapa added.

Inflation, or the general in-

crea se in commod it y pr ices, peaked 6.7 percent in September, putting average inflation at 5 percent. This was way beyond the Central Bank’s target range of 2 percent to 4 percent this year.

September inflation on the poor, on the other hand, was about 8.2 percent, according to Mapa. Average inflation on the poor is now at 5.8 percent, he added, and is expected to range from 6 percent to 6.4 percent by the end of the year from 3.1 percent in 2017.

Citing 2012 government data on consumer price index basket, Mapa said the poor spends 60.89 percent of their budget on food and nonalcoholic beverages, way beyond the household average of 38.34 percent.

Housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels eat up 18 percent of the poor’s budget, he added, as compared to the average 22.04 percent. Transport was third top expenditure at 4.21 percent, while alcoholic beverages and tobacco

were fourth at 2.5 percent.

Mapa also called on the government to reimburse poor households P294 monthly for the delay in the distribution of National Food Authority rice. Under the TRAIN, discounted purchase of NFA rice equivalent to 10 percent of the net retail prices will be made available to the poor.

With this, poor families should be able to purchase NFA rice at P24.30 per kilo from P27 per kilo.

However, the statistics expert claimed poor households have been buying P39 per kilo commercial rice from January to June due to the unavailability of NFA rice.

“To me, it seems that government economists were so high on government revenues, but slow in delivering mitigating measures needed for the poor to cope. One of the promises of the TRAIN law is to deliver social welfare and benefits program, and the government should deliver those immediately,” Mapa said.

Adequate water supply for Metro Manila until 2037–MWSS chief

By Jonathan L. Mayuga @jonlmayuga

M

etro Manila and neighboring provinces under the coverage of the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) are assured of adequate water supply until the end of the concession agreement in 2037.

Administrator Reynaldo V. Velasco made the assurance at a recent news forum in Quezon City, where he laid out the details of the Duterte administration’s water security program.

Aside from Velasco, those who graced the Real News Forum were MWSS Regulatory Office Chief Regulator lawyer Patrick Ty, Maynilad’s Assistant Vice President for Corporate Communications head Jennifer C. Rufo and Manila Water’s Corporate Communications Head Jeric Sevilla Jr. The MWSS is looking at solving the problem of water at least initially up to 2037, Velasco said.

MWSS has already identified projects that could be undertaken within the duration of President Duterte’s term. Potential medium-

term water sources are the Laguna Lake, 900 millions of liters per day (mld); Sumag River, 188 mld; Tayabasan River, 175 mld and Wawa River, 500 mld.

The Wawa Dam project has been proposed by Oscar Violago and involves the construction of an 82-meter dam in Montalban in the province of Rizal and could produce 500 mld to augment water coming from Angat Dam. International Container Terminal Services Inc. owner Enrique Razon has partnered with Violago and expressed interest in the project. The project would be undertaken

DA chief open to adoption of chicken meat, pork support price

By Jasper Emmanuel Y. Arcalas @jearcalas

T

he Department of Agriculture (DA) is considering to adapt an industry proposal of implementing a support price for pork and chicken meat to ensure raisers’ income during times of oversupply and falling meat prices in the market.

Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol said the idea was floated by broiler industry stakeholders following the implementation of a suggested retail price (SRP) on chicken meat recently.

“They are now suggesting if there is [an] SRP in the selling of chicken [meat], [then] there should be a farm support price for chicken. There should also be a suggested buying

price,” Piñol told reporters in an interview on Monday.

“The increase in prices is not because of the lack of supply but because of artificial manipulation of prices,” Piñol added.

Piñol said the proposal is also being extended to locally produced hogs. Pinol added that he would conduct a dialogue with the concerned stakeholders to discuss the support price proposal.

“For chicken and pork, the [buying price] should not be below P80 a kilo,” he said.

Pork Producers Federation of the Philippines (ProPork) President Edwin G. Chen threw his support behind the proposed support price for locally produced meat products.

“That would be a big help for us if the government would be able to

come up with a farm support price.

Because during times of oversupply, the farm-gate price really goes down and we cannot do anything but to follow the law of supply and demand,” Chen said in an interview with reporters on Monday.

“The backyard raisers and producers would be losing profit. As of now, [with] the state of our industry, all of our inputs have increased,” Chen added.

Chen said the average farm-gate price of live hogs is now ranging from P120 per kilogram to P130 per kilogram, depending on the area.

“This price level of P120 per kilogram to P130 per kilogram could be the [government’s] support price.

But if it goes below that level, the backyard farmers would be hurt,” he said.

Now, Piñol warns of rice glut as imports to arrive at harvest continued from a1 Piñol added that he received complaints from Nueva Ecija farmers that the average farm-gate prices of rice have gone down to as low as P16 per kilogram (kg), from as high as P25 per kg.

“We will focus on local procurement now since we have sufficient imports. The locally procured palay will form part of our buffer stocks for 2019,” he said.

The 750,000 MT that the government will purchase will be shipped in tranches, with the first 250,000 MT arriving in November. This was earlier purchased via open tender by the government.

The remaining 500,000 MT would also most likely be procured via open tender. The government will also hold an auction for 250,000 MT of rice imports on October 18.

“The traders bought palay at a high price to be able to exploit the situation to the point that the only way we could stabilize the rice situation was to bring in imported rice,” he said.

Apart from the increase in imports, the NFAC chief said he expects rice prices to stabilize in the last week of

October as the government will institute reforms in the local grains industry and set suggested retail prices (SRPs) for rice varieties.

Piñol said he will meet with rice farmers and other stakeholders on October 18 to determine the SRPs for regular-milled rice, well-milled rice, long grain head rice and special rice.

“Starting next week, [consumers] will immediately see in wet markets that a variety is local or imported.

We will do away with deception in the marketing of rice,” he said.

“We will simplify the identification of rice according to their broken percentage: regular-milled rice, wellmilled rice, premium rice and special rice,” Piñol added.

Assurance

The agriculture chief also made an assurance that rice sold by the NFA will no longer go missing next year as he is confident that the NFA would have ample buffer stock.

Piñol is banking on the grant of additional incentives to shore up the palay procurement program of the

state-run food agency.

“The government is determined to buy more. We expect to procure a huge volume,” he said.

In a separate statement on Monday, NFA OIC Administrator Tomas Escarez said the food agency may even be able to exceed its 2018 procurement target of 2.6 million bags this year due to the additional incentives.

“With the approval of the guidelines, NFA’s 279 buying stations nationwide will now start accepting palay deliveries from farmers with the new price incentive,” the NFA said.

The NFA is now buying palay at P17 per kilogram support price, with a P0.70 incentive for delivery and cooperative fee plus P3 per kilogram as “buffer stocking incentive.” Piñol also disclosed that the DA is now formulating guidelines to provide more incentives to farmers selling palay to the government.

“During the next harvest season, the government will provide seed incentives. If a farmer will deliver palay to the NFA, he will be given goodquality seeds, either inbred or hybrid, which will cover 1 hectare,” he said.

under a joint venture agreement or public-private partnership but would still be subject to Swiss challenge.

A feasibility study on the project is being undertaken and is expected to be done in six months.

Velasco said all inputs such as financial costing of those involved, including the concessionaire, should be considered.

The MWSS Board would do an audit review of the study and it is up to the board to approve it. Under the plan, Manila Water will buy raw water coming from the dam and treat the water to maintain its quality and

standard. The quality of water would impact on how the water will cost.

Pursuing the Wawa Dam project is more cost efficient and faster to implement. According to Velasco, MWSS is guided by two things in undertaking new water source projects: “mabilis gawin at mura ang tubig [fast completion and cheaper product cost].”

Aside from these potential medium-term sources, MWSS is also proposing the development of the AB-C projects as alternative sources of water with a combined capacity to 1,950 mld. The projects include

maximizing the untapped water and water wastage from Angat; the Bayabas Dam Project in Doña Remedios Trinidad, Bulacan; and the Candaba Multi-Purpose Impounding Dam in Pampanga. All these projects can be completed within the term of President Duterte.

The MWSS leadership under Velasco was commended by Sevilla and Rufo for MWSS’s vision is not only of having enough but having buffer supply of water, as well as to prepare for the burgeoning population and rapid industrialization.

What to keep in mind when buying compliance technology—what to look for

By Henry J. Schumacher

larger system of case management.

Compliance officers should be able to see all allegations and investigations, coming from any source across the whole enterprise, in one place.

C

ompliance and Ethics Management are entering our organizations more and more, whether we like it or not. Consequently, many companies have appointed compliance officers, in addition to the Data Protection Officer (DPO) that the Philippine Data Privacy Act through the Philippine Privacy Commission (NPC) requires companies to appoint.

At some point in their career, every compliance officer/DPOs will have to scout for new compliance technology. A modern compliance program has many different moving parts, meaning that it is crucial that you find technological solutions that can adapt to the complexity of your program. However, this is more easily said than done.

The six components of buying compliance technology The guide addresses six critical components of a compliance program and explains what to look for in order to automate aspects of these functions: 1. Code of Conduct and Policy Management; 2. Risk Assessment; 3. Training Program; 4. Case Management; 5. Gifts and Entertainment; and 6. Third Party Due Diligence.

Code of Conduct and Policy Management

Many companies already have a Code of Conduct in place, but a policy management tool can help to ensure the Code of Conduct isn’t misconstrued and that policies don’t contradict each other. Learn

Gifts and entertainment

how the right tool can facilitate collecting employee signatures and automate notifications, relieving compliance officers of the annoying task of having to chase employees.

Risk assessment

A corporate compliance program must typically address a wide range of risks, including anticorruption, data privacy protection, cyber security, fair competition and money-laundering risks, among others. A good technological solution can greatly streamline risk management, allowing for customized questionnaires and presenting the results in an easyto-understand dashboard.

Training

Training is a crucial part of any compliance program, as evidenced by the NPC’s emphasis on the topic when it evaluates programs. As such, it is important that the technological solution you choose is able to facilitate a strong training program, capable of offering relevant training to each employee based on their risk exposure.

Case management

Many laws and regulations now require companies to allow anonymous reporting of suspicious activity. A solid compliance program integrates whistle-blowing reporting into a

Improper spending on gifts and entertainment (G&E) is a huge compliance risk. An effective program needs to monitor and detect G&E activity outside permitted norms. A good tool should track the money, or capture data from reimbursement forms filed afterward, and alert compliance officers of questionable payments.

Third-party due diligence

Due diligence is a core feature of any modern compliance program. Many of the tasks, such as screening companies and persons against watchlists and negative media reports, are repetitive and tedious, making them excellent targets for automation. A good solution will be able to show you a “full picture profile” overview of each third party.

What to look for in compliance technology

Today, many compliance departments rely on multiple different vendors that do not integrate with each other, leaving compliance officers without a good overview of their efforts and losing track of critical data. Bearing this in mind, a wellintegrated compliance software solution should empower compliance professionals and, ultimately, take your compliance program to the next level.

Given the fact that I have been active in Compliance Management for quite some time and having been exposed to compliance technology offered by quite a few companies around the world, I am glad to inform you that we can provide guidance in the selection process of effective and not too expensive automation software.

You can contact me at Schumacher@ eitsc.com.

www.businessmirror.com.ph

The World BusinessMirror

Editor: Angel R. Calso • Tuesday, October 16, 2018 A5

Japan raises concerns over Pacific nations’ debt to China

W

ELLINGTON, New Zealand—Japan’s foreign minister raised concerns on Monday about the high levels of debt accrued by some Pacific Island nations and said his country wants to help resolve the problem.

Foreign Minister Taro Kono made the comments while visiting New Zealand, where he met with his counterpart Winston Peters.

Some observers have become alarmed at the growth in Chinese lending in the Pacific and worry that small countries such as Tonga and Vanuatu are becoming beholden to China because of their high debt levels.

Kono didn’t mention China specifically in his comments. But he said the Pacific region was important in a strategic sense to both Japan and New Zealand.

Peters said New Zealand was also concerned about the loans and the ability of small island nations to repay them.

“We’re looking very seriously at that, saying ‘What does it mean for

us when those nations may forfeit the very asset value that they’ve sought to develop, and have it owned by some other country?’” he said.

Peters said neither Japan nor New Zealand had gone so far as to offer to repay the loans directly.

“We understand the problem,” Peters added. “We’ve got our eyes wide open.”

Kono’s visit to New Zealand was the first by a Japanese foreign minister in five years. It marks a warming relationship between the two nations over the past year since Jacinda Ardern became New Zealand’s prime minister.

Kono thanked New Zealand for deciding last month to deploy a maritime patrol plane to Japan as part of an effort to enforce UN sanctions against North Korea.

Austra lia, Canada and the

JAPAN’S Foreign Minister Taro Kono (left) shakes hands with his counterpart Winston Peters in Wellington on Monday. Kono raised concerns about the high levels of debt accrued by some Pacific Island nations and said his country wants to help resolve the problem. KYODO NEWS VIA AP

North and South Korea to break ground on inter-Korean railroad S

EOUL, South Korea—North and South Korea continued their push for peace on Monday with high-level talks that saw a host of agreements, including a plan by the rivals for a groundbreaking ceremony this year on an ambitious project to connect their railways and roads.

The agreements come amid unease in Washington over the speed of inter-Korean engagement. Many outsiders believe that US-led efforts to rid the North of its nuclear-tipped missiles are lagging significantly behind the Koreas’ efforts to move past decades of bitter rivalry.

A series of weapons tests by the North last year, and an exchange of insults and threats between President Donald J. Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, had many on the Korean Peninsula fearing war. But there has since been a surprising peace initiative, with three inter-Korean summits and a June meeting in Singapore between Trump and Kim. Washington and Pyongyang are working on plans for a second such summit.

Still, there is widespread skepticism that the North will disarm.

And, despite the proposed fanfare for the railway and road projects, the Koreas cannot move much further along without the lifting of international sanctions against North Korea, which isn’t likely to come before Pyongyang takes firmer steps toward relinquishing its nuclear weapons and missiles.

South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which handles affairs with the North, said in a statement that the government will share details from on Monday’s meeting with the United States and other nations and that Seoul will closely coordinate with them to avoid any friction over sanctions.

The ministry said the rivals agreed on Monday to hold general-

SOUTH Korean Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon (left) shakes hands with his North Korean counterpart Ri Son Gwon during their meeting at the southern side of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone, South Korea, on Monday. The rival Koreas are holding high-level talks to discuss further engagement, amid a global diplomatic push to resolve the nuclear standoff with North Korea. KOREA POOL/YONHAP VIA AP

level military talks soon to discuss reducing border tensions and setting up a joint military committee that’s meant to maintain communication and avoid crises and accidental clashes.

The Koreas also agreed to hold talks between sports officials in late-October to discuss plans to send combined teams to the 2020 Summer Olympics and to make a push to cohost the 2032 Summer Games.

And the two countries will hold Red Cross talks in November to set up video-conference meetings between aging relatives separated by the 1950-1953 Korean War and potentially expand face-to-face reunions between them.

Monday’s talks at the border village of Panmunjom were aimed at finding ways to carry out peace agreements announced after a summit last month between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and

Kim in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang.

Earlier during the meeting, South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon said that the Koreas will aim to agree on “detailed and practical ways to swiftly implement” the agreements of the summit. His North Korean counterpart, Ri Son Gwon, who heads an agency dealing with inter-Korean affairs, said “no group and no force will be able to prevent the path toward peace, prosperity and our nation’s unification.”

At the most recent summit between Moon and Kim, the two leaders committed to reviving economic cooperation when possible, voicing optimism that international sanctions could end and allow such activity.

They also announced measures to reduce conventional military threats, such as creating buffer

zones along their land and sea boundaries and a no-fly zone above the border, removing 11 front-line guard posts by December, and demining sections of the Demilitarized Zone.

Moon has described inter-Korean engagement as crucial to resolving the nuclear standoff and is eager to restart joint economic projects held back by sanctions if the larger nuclear negotiations between the United States and North Korea begin yielding results.

However, South Korea’s enthusiasm for engagement with its rival appears to have created discomfort with the United States, a key ally.

Moon’s government last week walked back a proposal to lift some of its unilateral sanctions against North Korea following Trump’s blunt retort that Seoul could “do nothing” without Washington’s approval. AP

Round of talks ends sans Brexit pact ahead of summit

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RUSSELS—A flurry of talks between Britain and the European Union ended on Sunday without a Brexit agreement, leaving the two sides three days to close a gap in their positions before a make-orbreak summit.

An unscheduled, face-to-face meeting between EU negotiator Michel Barnier and British Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab, and a hastily scheduled meeting of 27 EU ambassadors in Brussels, had sparked speculation that the long-awaited deal was imminent.

Barnier dashed those hopes on

Sunday evening, writing on Twitter: “Despite intense efforts, some key issues are still open” in the divorce talks. The key stumbling block remains the need “to avoid a hard border” between Ireland and the UK’s Northern Ireland after Brexit, he said.

British Prime Minister Theresa May is under intense pressure from her Conservative Party and its parliamentary allies not to give any more ground in negotiations, especially on the border issue.

The British government said in a statement issued on Sunday night

there were still “unresolved issues” but insisted negotiators had made “real progress” toward a divorce agreement.

The lack of a breakthrough on the border increased the chances that the Brexit negotiations will fail to produce an agreement spelling out how the EU will interact with its former member and vice versa. EU officials have warned that real progress is needed at the summit starting Wednesday.

The British government said it remained committed to making progress at the summit. An EU official said no further negotiations

were planned before the leaders of EU countries convene in Brussels.

Both sides previously agreed that a special November meeting—to be called only if there is enough progress this week —would be the deadline for reaching an agreement since Britain is set to leave the EU on March 29.

The EU and the UK are seeking an elusive compromise position on the difficult Irish border question ahead of the summit. The “Irish backstop” is the main hurdle to a deal that spells out the terms of Britain’s departure from the EU and future relationship with the bloc. AP

United States are also helping Japan monitor offshore ship-to-ship transfers of oil allegedly involving North Korean ships, which would violate UN sanctions imposed over the North’s nuclear and missile programs.

“Regarding the situation in North Korea, we reaffirm our cooperation to achieve a complete, verifiable and irreversible disposal of all the weapons of mass destruction and the ballistic missiles of all ranges,” Kono said through an interpreter.

Kono said he was concerned about the developing trade war between the US and China, and hoped the issues could be resolved through the World Trade Organization.

Kono met w ith Austra lian Foreign Minister Marise Payne last week before traveling to New Zealand. AP

Veiled Saudi threat boosts oil prices already moving toward $100 a barrel

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HE global oil market that’s already being squeezed by US sanctions on Iran is now being rattled by the risk of potential American action against another Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries member.

Speculation is rising over whether Saudi Arabia will break with decades-old policy by using oil as a political weapon as it vowed to hit back against any punitive measures imposed on the kingdom after the disappearance of government critic Jamal Khashoggi. That followed US President Donald J. Trump’s comments that he may take action against the world’s largest oil exporter.

While crude prices rose almost 2 percent after Saudi Arabia pledged to retaliate and said it had an “influential and vital role in the global economy,” it’s far from certain that it will use energy as a weapon. The kingdom’s warning on Sunday didn’t make an explicit reference to petroleum. And during a recent diplomatic spat with Canada, it continued to supply a refinery in the North American country even though Riyadh severed most other economic links.

If it does resort to wielding crude as ammunition—as it did in 19731974 when the kingdom led an oil embargo during a war between Israel and a coalition of Arab states— the move may spark far-reaching consequences for global financial markets and economies. While US crude production rivals Saudi Arabia’s, America’s exports are much smaller. The kingdom is also a major supplier to Gulf Coast refineries as well as top buyers in Asia.

If the Saudis retaliate using oil, it would lead to “a calamity in Asia,” said Stephen Innes, Singaporebased head of Asia Pacific trading at Oanda Corp. “This would be so destabilizing for global markets that it would make the current trade tensions between the US and China look like a game of Axis & Allies.”

Still, he cautioned that the countries may be exchanging idle threats and it would not be a politically prudent move for the Saudis to escalate tensions via oil supplies because it would inflict self-damage.

Brent crude, the benchmark for more than half the world’s oil, rose as much as 1.9 percent to $81.92 a barrel, before paring gains to trade at $81.24 by 6:58 a.m. in London.

West Texas Intermediate, the US marker, jumped to $72.70 a barrel before trading at $71.90.

While the kingdom has denied any involvement in Khashoggi, US administration officials are said

to increasingly regard the kingdom’s position as untenable. Trump and his aides are said to be more and more convinced that the Washington Post writer died after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 to pick up a document for his wedding.

A range of punishments is under discussion within the US administration, from downgrading diplomatic relations or sanctioning Saudi officials to following major US companies in withdrawing officials from an investment conference in Riyadh later this month.

$100 oil

WHILE average Saudi oil production this year of about 10.2 million barrels a day has slightly trailed US output at 10.6 million barrels daily, the Middle East nation’s exports have averaged 7 million barrels a day, outpacing America’s 1.8 million barrels a day of shipments. The kingdom accounted for almost 40 percent of total Persian Gulf Opec exports last month, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Global benchmark Brent crude is already over $80 a barrel as impending US sanctions on Iran take barrels out of the market, spurring economic turmoil in developing economies such as India. In America, Trump wants to tame prices before key midterm elections in November.

Some traders have forecast prices will return to $100 a barrel soon as the Opec struggles to fill a supply gap.

Roger Diwan, a veteran Opec watcher at consultant IHS Markit Ltd., said the Saudi comments broke “an essential oil market taboo” and could be self-defeating. “Saudi Arabia threatening oil flows at a time when the US is implementing sanctions on Iran exports in coordination with Saudi Arabia shows the tenuous position oil markets are in,” he said.

Turki Al Dakhil, who heads the Saudi state-owned Arabiya news network, wrote in an article that US sanctions against Saudi Arabia could wreak havoc on the global economy by taking oil prices to $200 a barrel and more. Faisal bin Farhan, a senior adviser to the Saudi embassy in Washington, said on Twitter that these comments don’t represent the Saudi leadership. Bloomberg News

A6 Tuesday, October 16, 2018 • Editor: Angel R. Calso

Opinion BusinessMirror

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editorial

A saint for our times

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RCHBISHOP Oscar Romero in his Christmas Eve homily in 1978 said, “No one can celebrate a genuine Christmas without being truly poor. The self-sufficient, the proud, those who, because they have everything, look down on others, those who have no need of God—for them there will be no Christmas. Only the poor, the hungry, those who need someone to come on their behalf, will have that someone. That someone is God, Emmanuel, God-with-us. Without poverty of spirit, there can be no abundance of God.” It is not yet Christmas but it might as well be for the people of El Salvador and all those suffering from poverty, violence and repression, to whom Romero dedicated his life in the priesthood.

Last Sunday, Romero, whom many in Latin America, especially in the country of his birth, El Salvador, long considered a saint, was finally canonized by Pope Francis.

Romero was murdered in the middle of celebrating Mass in a hospital chapel in San Salvador, El Salvador, on March 24, 1980, after he denounced the death squads who were killing thousands of Salvadorans upon the government’s orders.

“He was shot in the heart, and fell to the floor at the foot of a giant crucifix. The gunman fled the scene in a red van, while hundreds of churchgoers crowded around the stricken Romero,” read one report.

No one was ever prosecuted.

According to the Associated Press, Romero’s canonization had been held up for years in the Vatican, “primarily due to opposition from conservative Latin American churchmen who feared Romero’s perceived association with liberation theology would embolden the movement that holds that Jesus’ teachings require followers to fight for social and economic justice.”

Pope Francis cleared the way for Romero to be made a saint, confirming a miracle attributed to Romero’s intercession last March. The pope declared that the El Salvador archbishop who was murdered for standing up for the poor and oppressed should be a model for today’s church.

The Vatican official who spearheaded Romero’s sainthood cause, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, said Romero’s example of literally paying with his life for the poorest of the poor was particularly needed today, “in a world full of individualism and oppression, where inequality grows rather than diminishes.”

Julian Filochowski, chairman of the Romero Trust, wrote in the Catholic Herald that Romero was once asked to explain that strange phrase, “option for the poor,” one of the basic principles of the Catholic social teaching.

Romero replied: “I offer you this by way of example. A building is on fire and you’re watching it burn, standing and wondering if everyone is safe.

Then someone tells you that your mother and your sister are inside that building. Your attitude changes completely. You’re frantic; your mother and sister are burning and you’d do anything to rescue them even at the cost of getting charred. That’s what it means to be truly committed. If we look at poverty from the outside, as if we’re looking at a fire, that’s not to opt for the poor, no matter how concerned we may be. We should get inside as if our own mother and sister were burning. Indeed it’s Christ who is there, hungry and suffering.”

Romero’s words resonate to the kind of Christianity we practice. Clearly, through his example, he says it cannot be a faith wherein one can do what one wants for as long as he or she goes to Mass on Sundays, says the rosary, or performs the rituals during Holy Week.

In a country wracked with human-rights abuses, poverty and oppression, Saint Oscar Romero showed that faith without action is nothing, that for faith to make a difference it has to be lived and fulfilled in our lives and the lives of others, for if it isn’t, it would be nothing more than false enthusiasm and empty rhetoric.

When those around him begged the saint to have protection or a bodyguard, because of the death threats he was receiving, he said: “Why should the shepherd have protection when his sheep are still prey to wolves?”

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THE ENTREPRENEUR Continued from A1

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HE World Bank noted considerable risks to its above 6.5-percent growth forecast for the Philippines this year, amid rising global uncertainty due to trade tensions between the US and China, as well as the rising interest rates in the US. “This could raise external financing cost and further weaken the peso,” it said.

The Philippine economy, however, is quite strong to be affected by a currency crisis, given its ample foreignexchange reserves of over $75 billion. World Bank economist Birgit Hansl said “the Philippines is fairly resilient against capital outflows compared to many of its neighbors in the East Asia region” because “it has large foreign reserves, flexible exchange rate, low public debt and robust remittance inflows.”

While I believe that we have robust fundamentals to shield us from another global economic crunch, we need a coordinated approach, like rowing the boat together toward the same direction, so as not to rock the same boat.

Inflation likely peaked to 6.7 percent in September, mainly because

of higher commodity prices, which could have been better managed if all agencies of the government were working in line with the President’s direction.

The last thing we need, while sailing in rough waters caused by these external challenges, is to be unsettled. Government agencies would do well to heed the President’s direction and avoid drastic changes that may cause two things: increase prices and put people out of work.

I suggest that the Cabinet convene a meeting among all government agencies, so that everybody is in tune with the goals of keeping prices manageable and generating more jobs. The National Food Authority, for example, should make sure that the country has adequate

Oil price prediction

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‘Let us avoid rocking the boat’

John Mangun

OUTSIDE THE BOX

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HEN asked about the future direction of oil prices, as I am frequently, I take the safe approach of “no one really knows.” That is not true. What is true is that the only person that genuinely knows the price of crude oil is the guy that just bought 120,000 tons sitting in a tanker outside of Singapore, Rotterdam, or Galveston harbors.

The price that is quoted in newspapers and from the “experts” is the price of the Futures Contract for either West Texas Intermediate or Brent Oil quoted and traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange and Intercontinental Exchange, respectively.

You can find aggregate quotes for spot (Cash) prices but these are gained by talking to buyers in Singapore, Rotterdam and Galveston. The reality is that the buying and selling of crude oil comes down to one seller and one buyer negotiating the price.

Large users of almost any

commodity from wheat to make bread and corn for feed are more concerned about fixing a price than the actual price itself. But during times when prices are trending either up or down like now, then the actual price becomes more important and buying and selling is done shorter term.

Understand that the speculators in the futures markets are more concerned about the newspaper headlines about nonsense geopolitics (that change from day to day) and short-term supply-demand conditions that change at most from week to week.

rice supply all the time.

In the pursuit of the mandate given to them, government managers should carefully weigh their action and determine if a decision will contribute to the goals. Will this help create employment? Will this make prices of commodities more affordable? If not, we should delay such action at this point, or at least until the situation stabilizes.

Our bureaucrats and government managers should avoid taking any drastic action that will cause unemployment or increase prices.

Let our ship run steadily until the storm passes. Unless urgent, decisions could be put off until the global financial turmoil is over.

This is not to say we are in trouble.

Right now, our ship is steady, but too many oars paddling in different directions could rock the vessel.

I believe that the government’s economic team has a good sense of the situation. On the day the Philippine Statistics Authority reported that inflation rate hit 6.7 percent in September, the economic team assured everyone that “we are working swiftly to temper the rise in the prices of goods and offer relief to those most affected.”

“We remain committed to our goal of ensuring price stability, along with our overarching aim of translating sustained broad-based economic growth to comfortable lives for everyone,” the economic managers said in a joint statement.

A welcome news is that inflation is predicted to taper off by year-end and return to the target range of 2 percent to 4 percent early next year.

The passage of the Agricultural Tariffication Act is also expected to stabilize the price of rice and improve the competitiveness of Filipino farmers in the long term.

“Despite risks and uncertainties in the global economy, the Philippines’s macroeconomic fundamentals remain robust and resilient enough to weather external shocks.

And our work for the people never ends: We continue to stay on course in realizing our medium- and long-term development goals for the country,” the economic team said.

Several multilateral lenders share such optimism. In its latest Philippines Economic Update, the World Bank said it expects the Philippines to grow 6.5 percent in 2018, 6.7 percent in 2019 and 6.6 percent in 2020, despite the rising global uncertainty and inflationary pressures.

That, I believe, is a vote of confidence in the Philippine economy.

While these figures are lower than the government’s target range of 7 percent to 8 percent, I would welcome a 6-percent growth given the current global uncertainties. We just need to relax and calm our nerves until the storm is over.

If you are an oil trader, what you secretly wish for is that a “supertanker” will explode rounding the Cape of Good Hope and that ISIS will take credit for it while promising more attacks are coming.

Back in the good old days there was basically one crude oil seller (Opec or Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) and one buyer—the US. Currently the US is importing the same nominal amount of crude as in 1967 when the US economy was worth $861 billion instead of $19 trillion. The US was importing 40 percent of its requirements and that is down to 19 percent and much of it from Canada.

The two largest oil-exporting countries are Saudi Arabia and Russia. China is Russia’s biggest customer for oil at 15 percent of its needs (up 23 percent from a year ago) with Saudi Arabia at 13 percent (down 15 percent from last year).

With oil prices up 25 percent this year, you might think that demand is soaring or supply is dwindling. Not true. If you look at global oil demand against supply for the past 20 years of wars, disasters, and “experts” saying oil supply has peaked, it is almost a Divine miracle that both sides of the

equation have stayed in near-perfect balance. It is like the SM department store merchandise manager who knows exactly how many small, medium and large t-shirts to keep in stock has been running things.

Or maybe much of the oil business is built on lies. The current forecast is that oil demand growth will decrease both in 2019 and 2020. Want to bet that supply growth will also fall along with demand?

The forecast is that oil prices will go higher because of new economic sanctions that the US will put on Iran next month. My gut feeling is that Iran will offer last minute concessions to avoid the worst of sanctions, just like North Korea did.

My fearless forecast for what it is worth is that the top in Brent crude will be $95 at most. But break that and it is “game over” all the way to $110/$120. Since I did not win P1 billion in the Lotto, I am betting Brent will stay between $75 and $85 and go down after the first of the year.

For comments, e-mail mbv.secretariat@gmail. com or visit www.mannyvillar.com.ph.

E-mail me at mangun@gmail.com. Visit my web site at www.mangunonmarkets.com. Follow me on Twitter @mangunonmarkets. PSE stockmarket information and technical analysis tools provided by the COL Financial Group Inc.

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Sears, the original everything store, files for bankruptcy

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Martial law, human rights and other stark issues Cecilio T. Arillo

DATABASE

By Michael Corkery | New York Times News Service

EARS, which more than a century ago pioneered the strategy of selling everything to everyone, filed for bankruptcy protection early on Monday.

The company had long ago given up its mantle as a retail innovator. It was overtaken first by big-box retailers like Wal-mart and Home Depot and then, by Amazon as the go-to shopping destinations for clothing, tools and appliances.

In the last decade, Sears had been run by a hedge fund manager, Edward S. Lampert, who sold off many of the company’s valuable properties and brands, but failed to develop a winning strategy to entice consumers who increasingly shop online.

The result has been a long painful decline. A decade ago, the company employed 302,000. Today, there are about 68,000 people still working at Sears and Kmart, which Lampert also runs.

Now, the retailer aims to use Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing to cut its debts and keep operating at least through the holidays, according to two people briefed on the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the company’s plans.

As part of the reorganization plan Sears will receive a loan of more than $500 million to help keep its shelves stocked and employees paid, these people said. The company is also planning to close as many as 150 additional stores as it tries to reduce costs and find some way forward.

“It’s a sad day for American retail,” said Craig Johnson, president of Customer Growth Partners, a retail research and consulting firm.

“There are generations of people who grew up on Sears and now it’s not relevant. When you are in the retail business, it’s all about newness. But Sears stopped innovating.”

Founded shortly after the Civil War, the original Sears, Roebuck & Co. built a catalog business that sold Americans the latest dresses, toys, build-it-yourself houses and even tombstones. In their heyday, the company’s stores, which began to spread across the country in the early-20th century, were showcases for must-have washing machines, snow tires and furniture.

More recently, Sears became known for another distinction— Lampert’s audacious feats of financial engineering. He has spun off numerous assets from the retailer into separate companies that his hedge fund invests in.

While many of these spinoffs have flourished, Sears has slid toward insolvency.

During the last five years, the company lost about $5.8 billion, and over the last decade, it shut more than 1,000 stores. Many of the 700 stores that remain have frequent clearance sales, empty shelves and handwritten signs.

Sears stores remain the centerpiece of hundreds of shopping centers across the United States and their decline has reduced traffic to many of those malls.

Running low on cash, the company had a $134-million debt payment due on Monday. Its total debt stood at about $5.6 billion in late-September.

Over the weekend, a group of lenders was negotiating with Sears over the terms of a new loan, totaling more than $500 million, the people briefed on the matter said.

No other large retailer has endured as long or played as important a role in American life as Sears.

The company started out selling watches to railroad agents in 1886 and soon expanded into a vast mailorder business that sold clothing, tools, shoes and, at one point, even cocaine and opium, through catalogs that ran as long as 1,000 pages.

Sears Roebuck was, in many ways, an early version of Amazon. It used the Postal Service to reach the most

remote parts of a growing nation and stored and shipped products from a 3 million-square-foot warehouse in Chicago.

After World War II, Sears stores served the needs of the country’s expanding middle class. Families came to have their children’s portraits taken, to get their tires rotated and oil changed, and to buy Kenmore refrigerators.

“Sears is where you went to shop,” said Barbara E. Kahn, a retail expert and marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. “They sold fundamental products that consumers needed.”

Through the 1960s and 1970s, Sears shared its success with employees at all levels of its corporate hierarchy. Cashiers, janitors and executives alike took part in profitsharing and received options in the company’s soaring stock.

As many as 100,000 retired Sears employees receive pensions, which are expected to emerge largely unscathed in the bankruptcy. As the company was bleeding cash and selling off assets in recent years, federal regulators required Lampert to inject cash into the pension plan. Other benefits for retirees like life insurance, however, could be in danger.

“It is sad to see the company you really loved go down the tubes,” said Ron Olbrysh, 77, who worked in Sears’ legal department for 24 years and now heads an association of retired workers.

By the 1990s, Sears was struggling to find its place. Wal-mart was plopping its super centers across the United States. Home Depot was taking away market share on appliances and power tools, but Sears had valuable brands like Kenmore, DieHard and Lands’ End, and stores in prime locations.

Things changed dramatically when Lampert arrived on the scene.

A hedge fund manager who got his start at Goldman Sachs and had little experience running a large retail chain, Lampert took control of Kmart after it came out of bankruptcy in 2003 and then acquired Sears a year later. The company’s board came to be dominated by other wealthy investors, including Steven Mnuchin, the current Treasury secretary who had been Lampert’s roommate at Yale University.

Lampert says his strategy was to move the company away from its brick-and-mortar legacy into the digital era. His plan was to use the money saved from closing stores and selling off assets to reinvest in the business. But the company never gained traction online.

The company’s decline has also exacted a toll on its workers. Peggy Mitchell, 55, who works full time unloading delivery trucks at the Sears in Chicago Ridge, Illinois, said she barely makes enough to make ends meet.

Mitchell, who has four children, earns $10.75 an hour and cannot afford the company’s health plan.

“Wal-mart pays more than that,” she said.

Sears remains a publicly traded company, but Lampert exerts an enormous amount of control. Lampert is the chairman and chief executive, and his hedge fund ESL Investments is the largest shareholder and a major lender.

He orchestrated a series of deals that generated cash for Sears in the near term, but stripped out many of the company’s most valuable assets—often selling them to companies that he also has a stake in.

Sears’s shares, which topped $120 as recently as 2007, closed on Friday at 40.7 cents.

Tuesday, October 16, 2018 A7

Part Seven

Martial-law period poorly misunderstood

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O this day, the martial-law period remains poorly understood, to put it mildly. There are still many who feel strongly that it was a period of unjustified cruelty, the main purpose of which, supposedly, was to keep Marcos in power,” said noted historians Karla Sohmer, Salvador Escalante and J. Augustus Y. de la Paz, of the Truth and Justice Foundation (TJF).

“Had it truly been such,” they argued, “then Marcos would not have brooked any opposition nor tolerated any criticism. Thousands would have perished in February 1986 at Edsa, Ninoy’s funeral in 1983 would have been much more modest, Ninoy would probably have died earlier and more quietly, of heart failure, in his cell as a death convict. History would have proceeded differently.”

In their Hubris, the comprehensive historical book on the persecution of the Marcoses published in 2000 by the TJF, they said: “Record showed that Marcos imposed martial law not to exterminate his critics, but to save the majority—critics included—from the triple menace of the communists, the rightist oligarchs and warlords and the Muslim-led separatists. Marcos had no delusion

that martial law was going to make him politically fragrant; he knew that the political cost would be high, that he would be risking his place in history. But it had to be done, and he alone had the power under the 1935 Constitution to do it.”

The martial-law regime, despite the increase in detention centers, the setting up of checkpoints and the increased visibility of the military, did not result in the “garrison state” that Ninoy had warned about, except in the hotbeds of insurgency. But it was undeniable—inasmuch as it was necessary—that the regime assumed the trappings of a police state.

Marcos recalled that the application of the state’s police power was calibrated: “Every step taken in the martial-law situation was measured according to the recognized desires

and wishes of the greater number of the Filipino people. Dismantling the leftist rebellion and the rightist conspiracy, for example, took the “classical” form of surveillance, apprehension, detention, and public trial, although I immediately granted amnesty to those accepting it…

“We had to restore civil order as the bedrock of any constitutional survival. Civil order is merely the rationale of all societies: enforcement of and obedience to the law.

When I placed the entire country under martial law, my first concern was to secure the Republic against any uprising, politically motivated or otherwise, and to secure the entire citizenry from the criminal elements, the private armies bred by local politics, and the outlaw bands in the countryside, who might either take advantage of the temporary panic or undermine our efforts to assert the authority of our police forces. It was imperative that we dismantle the apparatus of the insurgency movement and the whole system of violence and criminality that had virtually imprisoned out society in fear and anarchy.”

Critics have accused the martiallaw regime of incarcerating up to 70,000 people, making it sound that all of those persons became prisoners of conscience, or “political detainees.”

In fact, most of them were detainees either for crimes against the state, such as rebellion and subversion, and a great many others were jailed for common crimes, including 12,000 suspected involvement in crimes

ranging from theft to murder. Also, thousands of those detained, mainly for subversion, were released when they availed themselves of amnesty, which required pledging of loyalty to the Constitution or on purely humanitarian grounds.

“Are surveillance, apprehension, detention and public trial incompatible with democracy? Did they make martial law the antithesis of democracy? Hardly. The US and Philippine governments jointly detained the Marcoses in America, and neither regime was denounced for being undemocratic.

Martial law forms part of the survival mechanisms of democratic governments; provision for it in the 1935 Constitution was proof of that,” they said.

They added: “Much as Cory Aquino and other anti-Marcos figures denounced these tactics as dictatorial, they would be adopted by the Aquino regime on an even bigger scale, albeit without declaring martial law. And the Aquino-appointed Supreme Court, mostly composed of self-styled civil libertarians, would uphold the regime’s recourse to these tactics. If the same practices were held to be legitimate during the “democratic” Aquino regime, why should the Marcos administration be denounced for applying them?

For applying them less?”

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

Deficiency and delinquency interest, clarified Atty. Rodel C. Unciano

TAX LAW FOR BUSINESS

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EFORE the amendment introduced by the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) law, the imposition of deficiency and delinquency interest on late payment of tax under the Tax Code had become too burdensome to taxpayers. In interpreting of the Tax Code on interest prior to its amendment, the Court of Tax Appeals issued a number of decisions where the imposition of the deficiency interest at a rate of 20 percent per annum is imposed simultaneously with the imposition of a delinquency interest, also at a rate of 20 percent per annum. So, following previous CTA decisions, the imposition of the 20-percent delinquency interest on top of the 20-percent deficiency interest created a situation where a 40-percent interest per annum was imposed.

The imposition of deficiency interest at a rate of 20 percent per annum, and simultaneous with the imposition of delinquency interest, also at 20 percent per annum, is seemingly oppressive, confiscatory and unconscionable, especially in tax investigation cases being contested in courts considering that court cases usually take years to resolve.

This would create a scenario where upon final resolution of a case, a losing taxpayer litigant would end up paying interest on the taxes due much more than the total amount of taxes due at the time the assessment was issued by the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR).

Thus, the amendment introduced by the TRAIN law lowering the rate

of interest imposed on late payment of taxes from a rate of 20 percent per annum to a rate of double the legal interest rate, is truly a relief to delinquent taxpayers willing to settle their unpaid tax liabilities.

As provided in the Revenue Regulations 21-2018, the Department of Finance clarified that effective January 1, 2018, the effectivity date of the TRAIN law, the rate of interest imposable for late payment of taxes shall now be 12 percent, which is twice the 6-percent interest rate imposed on loans or forbearance of any money per BSP Circular 799 Series of 2013. The deficiency interest shall be imposed on the basic tax due from the date prescribed for its payment until its full payment, or upon issuance of a notice and demand by the Commissioner or his authorized representative, whichever comes first.

The delinquency interest shall be imposed on the basic deficiency tax plus surcharge and interest, to be computed from the due date appearing in the notice and demand by the Commissioner until full payment.

The regulations clarified that upon effectivity of the TRAIN law, the deficiency and delinquency interest

shall not be imposed simultaneously.

The BIR, however, clarified that in cases where the tax liabilities became due before the effectivity of the TRAIN law and where the full payment will only be made after the effectivity of the TRAIN law, the deficiency and delinquency interest imposed shall be at a rate of 20 percent per annum for the period up to December 31, 2017 and 12 percent per annum, for the period from January 1, 2018 until full payment of the tax liabilities. The double imposition of deficiency and delinquency interest prior to the effectivity of the TRAIN law shall still apply for the period between the date prescribed for payment until December 31, 2017.

The author is a senior associate of Du-Baladad and Associates Law Offices (BDB Law), a memberfirm of WTS Global.

The article is for general information only and is not intended, nor should be construed as a substitute for tax, legal or financial advice on any specific matter. Applicability of this article to any actual or particular tax or legal issue should be supported therefore by a professional study or advice. If you have any comments or questions concerning the article, you may e-mail the author at rodel.unciano@ bdblaw.com.ph or call 403-2001 local 140.

Economic leaders point to mounting risks

By Mohamed A. El-Erian Bloomberg Opinion

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HE finance ministers and central bankers from almost 190 countries who gathered in Bali for the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank drove, I suspect, the final nail into the coffin of the notion of a synchronized pickup in global growth. In a tone that contrasted with the optimism of their spring meetings in April, members of the International Monetary and Financial Committee, or IMFC, listed much fragility, and cited a set of risks that “are increasingly skewed to the downside.”

Even though the IMFC contains members with opposing views on free trade and responsible economic and currency management, it managed to arrive at compromise language for its common communiqué at the conclusion of the meetings over the weekend. But the committee failed to go beyond boilerplate phrases when it came

to policies, including an agreement on meaningful and coordinated measures to deal with the increasing divergence among advanced economies, as well as steps to ensure that the eventual convergence translates into higher global growth and durable financial stability, as opposed to meaningful risks of recession and unsettling financial volatility.

In the run-up to the meetings, the IMF published updated macroeconomic projections that pointed to somewhat less buoyant growth, despite what I see as excessive optimism in many individual country forecasts —with the notable exception of the US—and more divergence among systemically important countries. This theme is reflected in the IMFC communiqué. Officials said “the global expansion remains strong,” though they recognized that “the recovery is increasingly uneven, and some of the previously identified risks have partially materialized.”

The less optimistic outlook for the global economy comes with a long list

of gathering clouds that were listed not only in the communiqué but also in virtually every one of the public statements by officials from the most influential countries. I suspect the worries were even more pointed in private. They include heightened trade tensions, ongoing geopolitical concerns, tighter financial conditions that affect many emerging economies, policy uncertainty, historically high debt levels, rising financial vulnerabilities and limited policy space, which could further undermine confidence and growth prospects.

When it came to offering measures to contain these risks, the communiqué’s drafters found all-encompassing language, such as “we will act promptly to advance policies and reforms to protect the expansion, mitigate risks, rebuild policy space, enhance resilience and raise medium-term growth prospects for the benefit of all.”

Even more skillfully, they struck a delicate balance between opposing national policy views that have resulted in loud and open conflict elsewhere.

This was the case most notably on trade (“We acknowledge that free, fair, and mutually beneficial goods and services trade and investment are key engines for growth and job creation”), and on currency policy (“We will refrain from competitive devaluations and will not target our exchange rates for competitive purposes”).

For the most part, the communiqué is likely to be a nonevent for policy making, and for markets when they reopen for trading on Monday morning.

The outcome of the meeting might have been seen as more positive if markets weren’t undergoing a gradual transition from an overwhelmingly liquidity-driven paradigm to one that is more reflective of the underlying fundamentals. This shift is made more complicated by, in particular, divergence and trade. As such, the IMFC’s public communication will do little to counter the risk that this transition could be accompanied by one that involves greater and periodically more unsettling volatility for financial markets.

Editor: Efleda P. Campos

Companies BusinessMirror

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

B1

Now Corp. to sue DICT chief for fall of company’s stock prices S

16 foreign firms want to partner with local electric co-ops to form clean-energy mini grids

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By Lorenz S. Marasigan

@lorenzmarasigan

OW Corp. plans to sue a Cabinet official for “causing the free fall of the company’s shares” due to his “reckless statements,” but for the government official being blamed, it was actually the company’s actions that caused its stock prices to plunge.

Juan Miguel M. Lopez, who heads the investor relations division of Now Corp., said his group is studying legal recourses against Information and Communications Technology Secretary Eliseo M. Rio Jr. for his statements, which Lopez said caused the weeklong drop of Now Corp.’s stock prices.

“Now Corp. has assigned its lawyers to study the damages of the reckless statements and the immediate filing of cases,” Lopez said on Monday. “The reckless statements of Rio damaged the value of Now Corp. shares in the market, and caused the loss of about P7 billion in market capitalization.”

Specifically, Lopez said, Rio’s statements pertaining to the relationship of Now Telecom Co. Inc. to Now Corp. and his alleged accusation

against Now’s financial capacity was the culprit behind the dwindling stock prices of Now Corp.

“He short of accused Now Corp.— which he claimed as the mother company of Now Telecom—has no capacity to provide financial assistance. He also insinuated the so-called lack of funding was the reason Now Telecom filed a case in the Manila Regional Trial Court. These are outright lies,” Lopez said.

He added that Rio “made Now Corp. owners P7-billion poorer because of his reckless and unethical utterances which triggered the sudden decline in the company’s stock prices last October 10 and 11.”

“It wiped out a significant part of Now Corp.’s market capitalization in a matter of days,” Lopez said.

He explained the share prices of Now Corp. dropped sharply by 52 percent on October 10, and again fell by 25.1 percent to P5.61 on October 12.

At the heart of this issue is Now Telecom’s case against the National Telecommunications Commission for its alleged “money-making scheme” using the third-telco initiative as a platform.

Specifically, Now Telecom raised questions before a Manila local court on supposed “insertions” of financial provisions, namely, the P700-million participation security, the P14billion to P24-billion performance security and the P10-million nonrefundable appeal fee.

The request for a stay order has since been denied by the court, but the case stands, and court proceedings are scheduled for October 23.

Rio belied the accusations, saying Now’s actions against the government’s third-telco initiative actually caused its shares to dwindle.

“They bought bidding documents on October 8, the same day they applied for a temporary restraining order. We did not react to it immediately, but it was widely publicized in social media,” he said via phone.

The following day, he said, the stock prices of Now Corp. already went down.

“There was still no comment

BIR approves tax-free merger of San Miguel’s F&B biz

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ONGLOMER ATE San Mig uel Cor p. (SMC) on Monday said the Bureau of Internal Revenue has allowed a tax-free transaction that involves the merger of its food and beverage business into one larger company.

In its disclosure, the company said the agency confirmed in its decision on October 12 that it will not slap taxes when the conglomerate transfers its common shares to San Miguel Food and Beverage Inc. San Miguel will transfer to SMFB its 7.85 billion shares in San Miguel Brewery (SMB) and also its 4.24 billion shares ownership in liquor firm Ginebra San Miguel Inc. “Accordingly, SMC will apply with the BIR for a certificate authorizing registration to effect the registration of SMFB’s ownership over the ex-

Meralco posts 5% electricity sales in first 9 months

By Lenie Lectura

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@llectura

HE Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) recorded a 5-percent increase in electricity sales from January to September this year as against the same period a year ago.

Meralco Senior Vice President Alfredo Panlilio said on Monday the utility firm sold 32,530 gigawatthours at end-September this year, up 5 percent from last year.

He attributed the growth in electricity sales to the company’s “strong first-half” results, which posed a 14-percent increase in earnings to P11.97 billion at end-June this year.

From January to June this year, electricity sales went up by 6.5 percent to 21,665 GW. Meralco Chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan said 2018 is going to be “a better year than 2017.”

“So far, apart from economic conditions, there’s no reason Meralco should not perform better,” Pangilinan had said.

Pangilinan noted that during the second half of the year, the economy continues to expand, boosted by strong consumer spending and the growth in the service industry, and even the industrial sectors. Also, the ramping up of government infrastructure projects is expected to further lift the country’s growth prospects.

change shares in the stock and transfer books of SMB and GSMI,” the company said. Earlier this month, the Securities and Exchange Commission approved the follow-on offering of SMFB, creating the country’s largest food and beverage company.

The company is offering up to 1.02 billion worth of secondary shares at P140 apiece. Total net proceeds from the offer, which include the overallotment option, is at P139.86 billion.

The company needed the said offering as it already fell below the minimum public ownership rule of at least 10 percent. The conglomerate consolidated its food and beverage businesses by transferring all its equity in Ginebra and SMB to San Miguel Pure Foods Co. in exchange for shares. It then renamed Pure Foods into its current name.

As part of the share swap, Pure Foods increased its authorized capital so it will have more shares to issue to San Miguel in exchange for shares of Ginebra and SMB. The amount of shares it is selling is equivalent to 20 percent of outstanding shares of SMFB. Some 887 million common shares were its primary offering and 133.05 million shares as its overallotment option.

BDO Capital and Investment Corp. and BPI Capital Corp. were picked as the local lead underwriters and Deutsche Bank AG Hong Kong Branch and Goldman Sachs (Singapore) Pte. were picked as joint book runners.

Pricing for the offer is scheduled on October 19 and public offer will start on October 23. The shares will be crossed at the Philippine Stock Exchange on November 6. VG Cabuag

about that from anybody from our end. It was only on October 10, when our statement came out,” Rio explained.

The BusinessMirror, despite incessant requests for interview via phone or even text throughout the afternoon of October 9, only received Rio’s statement at 7:21 p.m.

“Our reaction was actually known October 10, as published in the news,” he said. “So how can my statement, which is an answer to their publicity, affect their stock prices?”

A quick check on the Philippine Stock Exchange showed that stocks of Now Corp. erased 10 centavos to close at P7.27 apiece on October 8, the day it bought selection documents for the third telco spot. It is also the very same day it sued the regulator before the Manila court.

The following day, its stocks went up a little bit to end at P7.49 per share. This was when Now Telecom announced to the media it filed a case against the regulator.

By October 10, its stocks dropped steeply to P5.15 apiece, and continued falling until it recovered on October 12 to end the day’s trading at P5.61 apiece.

“The drop of their stocks was based on their actions,” Rio said.

On Monday shares of Now Corp. went up by 4.81 percent to close at P5.88 apiece.

IXTEEN foreign firms have expressed interest to partner with electric cooperatives to put up clean-energy mini grids.

According to the post-event survey conducted by the Alliance for Rural Electrification (A R E) t hat co -organized t he first-ever Philippines Mini-grid Business-to-Business (B2B) Forum in Manila, “16 foreign participants said they would or were very likely to invest in mini grids in the Philippines.”

More than 280 technolog y providers, project developers and investors from Asia, Europe and North America took part in the Philippines Mini-grid B2B forum.

The forum was staged to provide participants a platform to partner with electric cooperatives in bringing electricity to rural communities by building clean renewable-energy mini grids.

The B2B forum was primarily organized by the Department of Energy (DOE) with the support of the European Union (EU), ARE and National Electrification Administration (NEA).

Among the forum participants were 60 representatives of the government and public sector, such as NEA, National Power Corp. and the Energy Regulatory Commission, 50 from electric cooperatives in the Philippines and 25 investors.

Speaking on behalf of Energy Secretary Alfonso G. Cusi, DOE Se-

nior Undersecretary Jesus Cristino P. Posadas said the forum, which was facilitated by the DOE-EU Access to Sustainable Energy Program (ASEP), was a good opportunity to link investors, electric cooperatives and other stakeholders to scale up electrification using sustainable and clean energy to foster economic development.

“The B2B forum is timely as the government of the Philippines is targeting 100-percent electrification by 2020 using the least costly and reliable energy technologies for the many unserved and underserved island grids in the country,” Posadas said.

The recent DOE department circular released in August 2018 establishes the guidelines and rules on the Renewable Portfolio Standards for Off-Grid Areas in the Philippines.

“The department circular mandates power suppliers to source a percentage of the energy supply from sustainable and renewableenergy resources and technologies.” Posadas said.

With 1,702 potential off-grid sites in the Philippines, Ernesto Silvano Jr., director of the Office for Renewable Energy Development of the NEA, affirmed the value of the B2B forum for the 121 electric cooperatives in the country which have to face up to the challenge of electrifying the Philippines by 2020. Lenie Lectura

B2

Companies BusinessMirror

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

PSE STOCK QUOTATIONS

October 15, 2018

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

ASIA UNITED 58.5 59 57 59 56.3 59 23810 1384446 BDO UNIBANK 109.9 110.7 111 113.4 109.9 109.9 2186960 246311641 BANK PH ISLANDS 80.9 80.95 82.3 82.65 80.7 80.95 763970 62192949.5 CHINABANK 28.55 28.7 29.1 29.2 28.55 28.55 52200 1507675 EAST WEST BANK 11.62 11.7 11.56 11.84 11.52 11.7 2394600 27806884 METROBANK 65.5 66.05 66.5 67.15 65.5 65.5 1227430 81417823.5 PB BANK 10.86 11.5 10.8 11.5 10.8 11.5 11300 129880 PBCOM 19.98 20 19.7 20 19 19.98 63300 1220412 PHIL NATL BANK 40.65 41.2 42.1 42.1 40.65 40.65 41100 1688385 PSBANK 73.6 76.75 74.9 76.75 72.05 76.75 1740 130412 PHILTRUST 102.4 108.9 102.4 102.4 102.4 102.4 70 7168 RCBC 27 28.4 28 28.2 26.5 27 86000 2388445 SECURITY BANK 143 143.1 143 144.1 141.1 143.1 1819450 260410665 UNION BANK 65.9 66 66 66 65.9 65.9 1800 118732 BDO LEASING 2.34 2.41 2.4 2.49 2.27 2.27 51000 118080 COL FINANCIAL 15 15.5 15.7 15.8 15.4 15.5 24700 384490 FERRONOUX HLDG 3.79 4.1 4 4.1 4 4.1 53000 212200 IREMIT 1.53 1.72 1.62 1.62 1.6 1.6 23000 36840 MEDCO HLDG 0.455 0.49 0.49 0.49 0.49 0.49 30000 14700 MANULIFE 795 800 820 820 800 800 280 226500 NTL REINSURANCE 0.85 0.87 0.85 0.87 0.85 0.85 118000 100690 VANTAGE 1.17 1.21 1.17 1.17 1.17 1.17 11000 12870

INDUSTRIAL ALSONS CONS 1.27 1.29 1.27 1.3 1.24 1.27 177000 225000 ABOITIZ POWER 33.6 34.1 34 34.4 33.6 33.6 1772400 59851790 BASIC ENERGY 0.208 0.213 0.203 0.214 0.203 0.213 310000 64710 ENERGY DEVT 7.09 7.1 7.09 7.11 7.09 7.1 5293400 37582274 FIRST GEN 15.76 15.78 15.6 15.76 15.6 15.76 294000 4617264 FIRST PHIL HLDG 64 64.45 63.85 64.5 63.75 64 100960 6461463.5 PHIL H2O 4.24 4.44 4.45 4.45 4.21 4.44 17000 72670 MERALCO 348 350.6 352 352.4 348 348 101560 35437998 MANILA WATER 25.4 25.75 25.3 25.8 25.3 25.4 601600 15266225 PETRON 8.33 8.37 8.56 8.56 8.33 8.33 347900 2914728 PETROENERGY 4.01 4.1 4.1 4.1 4.01 4.01 5000 20320 PHINMA ENERGY 0.96 0.97 0.95 0.97 0.94 0.97 411000 394410 PHX PETROLEUM 10.4 10.6 10.84 10.84 10.4 10.6 43100 455436 PILIPINAS SHELL 52.8 53 53.9 53.95 53 53 323440 17216176.5 SPC POWER 5.2 5.21 5.2 5.22 5.18 5.21 95000 494857 AGRINURTURE 17.94 18.08 18.16 18.22 17.92 18.1 438300 7928606 CNTRL AZUCARERA 16.12 17.58 17.6 17.6 16.1 17.58 8700 140584 CENTURY FOOD 13.44 13.5 13.38 13.6 13.38 13.5 3260500 44010736 DEL MONTE 6.76 7.07 7.08 7.08 7.08 7.08 2600 18408 DNL INDUS 10.6 10.64 10.38 10.82 10.38 10.6 6124900 64833788 EMPERADOR 6.99 7 7.01 7.02 6.98 7 1143000 8000163 SMC FOODANDBEV 89.2 90.5 89.5 90.5 87.5 90.5 703350 63114210.5 ALLIANCE SELECT 0.92 0.93 0.9 0.94 0.89 0.93 3997000 3676840 GINEBRA 25.5 25.85 25.95 25.95 25.95 25.95 1800 46710 JOLLIBEE 250 251 262 264 250 250 480350 123042096 LIBERTY FLOUR 44.95 60.95 44.95 45 44.95 45 400 17990 MAXS GROUP 10.84 11 10.88 11.2 10.8 11 155000 1692412 MG HLDG 0.173 0.179 0.183 0.183 0.167 0.179 240000 40860 PEPSI COLA 1.68 1.74 1.75 1.75 1.63 1.73 51000 88990 SHAKEYS PIZZA 11.2 11.3 11.48 11.48 11.04 11.3 25400 285790 ROXAS AND CO 2.29 2.35 2.19 2.36 2.12 2.29 1207000 2756330 RFM CORP 4.8 4.87 4.8 4.8 4.8 4.8 17000 81600 ROXAS HLDG 2.85 3.06 2.9 2.9 2.9 2.9 2000 5800 UNIV ROBINA 132.3 134 137 137 132.3 132.3 333140 44502506 VITARICH 1.76 1.77 1.73 1.77 1.7 1.76 1321000 2291850 VICTORIAS 2.4 2.41 2.41 2.41 2.41 2.41 100000 241000 CEMEX HLDG 2.17 2.18 2.15 2.2 2.06 2.18 17952000 38278510 EAGLE CEMENT 14.7 15 14.64 15.2 14.64 14.7 2400 35370 EEI CORP 7.81 8.05 8 8.05 7.8 7.81 23000 180871 HOLCIM 5.8 5.83 5.85 5.85 5.78 5.8 134800 782730 MEGAWIDE 16.58 16.6 15.62 16.78 15.62 16.6 11559700 187346172 PHINMA 8.8 9 8.6 8.99 8.6 8.99 27000 239510 TKC METALS 0.88 0.9 0.92 0.92 0.88 0.9 23000 20320 VULCAN INDL 2.33 2.34 2.17 2.33 2.17 2.33 29511000 66861010 CROWN ASIA 1.67 1.68 1.69 1.69 1.68 1.68 150000 252200 EUROMED 1.53 1.7 1.53 1.53 1.53 1.53 3000 4590 LMG CHEMICALS 4.8 4.95 4.8 4.8 4.8 4.8 17000 81600 PRYCE CORP 5.62 6 5.61 5.61 5.61 5.61 700 3927 CONCEPCION 35.2 39.95 37.3 37.3 35.2 37.2 19300 714770 INTEGRATED MICR 11.64 11.7 11.7 11.9 11.62 11.64 304000 3559266 IONICS 1.72 1.73 1.7 1.75 1.68 1.73 933000 1600660 PANASONIC 6 6.4 6.42 6.42 6.4 6.4 3000 19204 SFA SEMICON 1.52 1.54 1.5 1.59 1.5 1.54 18000 27700 CIRTEK HLDG 33.85 36 33.65 36 33.65 36 682100 24281360

HOLDING & FRIMS ABACORE CAPITAL 0.43 0.435 0.41 0.435 0.405 0.435 10700000 4552150 ASIABEST GROUP 25.5 25.7 25.85 26.2 25.4 25.7 4700 121425 AYALA CORP 894.5 909.5 901 913 894.5 894.5 63000 56627140 ABOITIZ EQUITY 45.6 46.55 46.15 47 45.6 45.6 1821300 83136865 ALLIANCE GLOBAL 11.62 11.7 11.72 11.9 11.62 11.62 3890400 45703096 ANSCOR 6.12 6.14 6.12 6.13 6.12 6.13 13900 85118 ANGLO PHIL HLDG 0.81 0.89 0.8 0.8 0.8 0.8 1000 800 ATN HLDG A 1.16 1.17 1.17 1.19 1.16 1.17 4877000 5705970 ATN HLDG B 1.17 1.18 1.17 1.2 1.17 1.18 2213000 2601500 COSCO CAPITAL 6.02 6.06 6.01 6.1 6 6.02 1223800 7,369,980( DMCI HLDG 11.84 11.94 12.06 12.06 11.84 11.84 4576300 54303626 FILINVEST DEV 7.15 7.18 7.18 7.18 7.15 7.18 3546900 25406244 FORUM PACIFIC 0.193 0.213 0.202 0.205 0.202 0.205 1700000 347060 GT CAPITAL 709 710 700.5 724 700 710 229010 163603910 JG SUMMIT 46.75 46.95 45.85 46.95 45.8 46.95 1539000 71400780 LODESTAR 0.52 0.55 0.56 0.56 0.52 0.54 124000 65350 LOPEZ HLDG 4.31 4.48 4.55 4.55 4.3 4.48 62000 269960 LT GROUP 13.34 13.4 13.92 13.92 13.1 13.34 3836000 51533746 MABUHAY HLDG 0.53 0.54 0.51 0.54 0.51 0.53 888000 469770 METRO PAC INV 4.82 4.89 4.95 5.05 4.82 4.82 16029000 78817800 PACIFICA 0.037 0.038 0.037 0.037 0.037 0.037 2100000 77700 PRIME ORION 2.3 2.33 2.25 2.3 2.25 2.3 355000 808690 SOLID GROUP 1.36 1.38 1.36 1.36 1.36 1.36 50000 68000 SM INVESTMENTS 850 864 871.5 874 850 850 183750 158151195 SAN MIGUEL CORP 166 166.9 167.1 167.9 165 166 109980 18296136 TOP FRONTIER 271 277 278 278 269 277 470 129080 WELLEX INDUS 0.238 0.24 0.222 0.255 0.222 0.24 14300000 3415310

PROPERTY ARTHALAND CORP 0.6 0.61 0.6 0.64 0.59 0.61 1128000 679880 AYALA LAND 39.2 39.8 40 40.35 39.2 39.2 10730800 429933710 ARANETA PROP 1.92 1.99 2 2 1.91 1.92 369000 724630 BELLE CORP 2.3 2.33 2.33 2.33 2.3 2.3 2470000 5,693,210( A BROWN 0.75 0.76 0.74 0.78 0.74 0.75 1607000 1211060 CITYLAND DEVT 0.9 0.92 0.89 0.92 0.88 0.92 56000 49540 CROWN EQUITIES 0.212 0.223 0.208 0.225 0.208 0.222 2990000 637980 CEBU HLDG 5.34 5.4 5.3 5.4 5.3 5.4 207400 1111424 CEB LANDMASTERS 4.28 4.37 4.36 4.37 4.26 4.37 280000 1210660 CENTURY PROP 0.415 0.42 0.41 0.425 0.41 0.42 2570000 1081600 DOUBLEDRAGON 18.02 18.2 18.2 18.4 18.02 18.02 349400 6358132 DM WENCESLAO 7.8 7.82 7.65 7.95 7.65 7.8 279200 2177747 EMPIRE EAST 0.53 0.54 0.54 0.55 0.53 0.53 411000 218050 FILINVEST LAND 1.41 1.44 1.44 1.45 1.41 1.41 2758000 3960030 GLOBAL ESTATE 1.03 1.06 1.03 1.06 1 1.06 326000 333610 8990 HLDG 7.1 7.11 7.2 7.2 6.92 7.11 386500 2721103 IRC PROP 2.35 2.36 2.39 2.45 2.34 2.36 9357000 22420510 MEGAWORLD 4.17 4.2 4.13 4.2 4.13 4.2 10884000 45571230 MRC ALLIED 0.59 0.6 0.62 0.62 0.59 0.6 36911000 22308850 PHIL ESTATES 0.415 0.43 0.41 0.43 0.41 0.43 860000 354950 PRIMEX CORP 3.65 3.68 3.56 3.68 3.53 3.68 480000 1737770 ROBINSONS LAND 19.96 20.1 19.7 20.25 19.64 19.96 573700 11455414 PHIL REALTY 0.405 0.41 0.405 0.405 0.4 0.405 70000 28200 ROCKWELL 1.93 1.94 1.93 1.94 1.93 1.94 22000 42660 SHANG PROP 3.09 3.16 3.13 3.17 3.04 3.17 317000 970880 STA LUCIA LAND 1.09 1.13 1.14 1.14 1.14 1.14 6000 6840 SM PRIME HLDG 33.65 33.7 34.25 34.6 33.7 33.7 5574300 189948480 STARMALLS 5.98 5.99 5.72 6.2 5.72 5.99 303400 1821829 SUNTRUST HOME 0.72 0.77 0.77 0.77 0.77 0.77 1000 770 PTFC REDEV CORP 29.05 38.95 40 40.7 38 38.95 800 31360 VISTA LAND 5.66 5.7 5.7 5.75 5.64 5.7 2720500 15486112

SERVICES ABS CBN 20.55 20.8 20.25 20.9 20.25 20.8 13000 267955 GMA NETWORK 5.05 5.15 5.19 5.19 5.05 5.05 225400 1151994 MANILA BULLETIN 0.41 0.43 0.41 0.41 0.41 0.41 10000 4100 MLA BRDCASTING 15.02 16.98 15.02 15.02 15.02 15.02 200 3004 GLOBE TELECOM 2010 2020 2140 2140 1994 2010 84340 170264870 PLDT 1368 1372 1400 1400 1368 1368 25505 35128865 APOLLO GLOBAL 0.037 0.039 0.037 0.039 0.037 0.039 11200000 415200 DFNN INC 7.72 8.89 7.5 8.93 7.5 8.93 1400 12214 ISLAND INFO 0.11 0.113 0.114 0.114 0.109 0.11 730000 80380 ISM COMM 2.88 2.89 2.92 3.04 2.86 2.89 4133000 12202570 JACKSTONES 2.9 3.13 3.1 3.13 3.1 3.13 2000 6230 NOW CORP 5.87 5.88 5.94 6.44 5.76 5.88 25339500 154185642 TRANSPACIFIC BR 0.51 0.52 0.52 0.53 0.51 0.51 17779000 9163090 PHILWEB 3.59 3.69 3.75 3.75 3.5 3.69 327000 1179510 2GO GROUP 9.62 9.66 9.5 9.67 9.5 9.62 10700 102388 ASIAN TERMINALS 11.54 13.48 13.48 13.48 13.48 13.48 700 9436 CEBU AIR 67.8 68.45 67.55 69.8 67.4 67.8 333710 22675213.5 CHELSEA 4.87 4.9 4.85 5.13 4.85 4.9 1802000 8947740 INTL CONTAINER 93 93.5 92 93.5 92 93 721370 66897017.5 LBC EXPRESS 14.22 14.8 14.82 14.82 14.82 14.82 100 1482 LORENZO SHIPPNG 0.86 0.88 0.86 0.89 0.84 0.88 191000 163920 MACROASIA 17.02 17.04 17.1 17.1 16.98 17.02 1022900 17391856 METROALLIANCE A 1.39 1.44 1.37 1.44 1.37 1.44 27000 37440 HARBOR STAR 2.55 2.56 2.6 2.61 2.56 2.56 757000 1948420 ACESITE HOTEL 1.37 1.46 1.36 1.43 1.36 1.43 15000 20750 BOULEVARD HLDG 0.055 0.058 0.057 0.057 0.055 0.056 4920000 276220 WATERFRONT 0.61 0.62 0.6 0.62 0.58 0.62 1639000 985690 STI HLDG 0.8 0.81 0.75 0.82 0.73 0.81 7014000 5501890 BERJAYA 1.68 1.7 1.61 1.71 1.57 1.7 4036000 6726210 BLOOMBERRY 8.65 8.69 8.42 8.82 8.42 8.69 5773000 50120699 PACIFIC ONLINE 10.6 10.9 10.98 10.98 10.98 10.98 10000 109800 LEISURE AND RES 3.44 3.5 3.55 3.58 3.42 3.44 228000 792110 MANILA JOCKEY 5.2 5.4 5.7 5.7 5.18 5.4 22000 114406 MELCO RESORTS 6.98 6.99 7.01 7.06 6.99 6.99 3492800 24434536 PREMIUM LEISURE 0.83 0.84 0.83 0.85 0.81 0.84 3394000 2808630 TRAVELLERS 5.37 5.39 5.2 5.42 5.17 5.37 3507200 18396664 METRO RETAIL 2.14 2.15 2.18 2.18 2.12 2.13 678000 1459180 PUREGOLD 41.5 42 43 43 42 42 520600 21918190 ROBINSONS RTL 77 78.3 80 80 77 77 919560 71806517.5 PHIL SEVEN CORP 100 110.8 100 110 100 110 1670 180300 SSI GROUP 2.55 2.57 2.66 2.73 2.55 2.55 28353000 74501230 WILCON DEPOT 10.92 10.94 11.1 11.1 10.92 10.94 6174400 67595644 APC GROUP 0.43 0.44 0.44 0.44 0.425 0.43 550000 237500 EASYCALL 15.1 15.6 14.38 17 14.38 15.1 261800 4128370 GOLDEN BRIA 298 310 297 310 297 310 2320 717974 IPM HLDG 7.65 7.8 7.75 7.75 7.75 7.75 12000 93000 PAXYS 3.05 3.15 3.05 3.05 3.05 3.05 1000 3050 PRMIERE HORIZON 0.34 0.35 0.35 0.35 0.34 0.35 340000 116300 SBS PHIL CORP 7.01 7.43 7.48 7.48 7.44 7.45 1900 14155

MINING & OIL ATOK 15.02 16 16 16 16 16 1100 17600 APEX MINING 1.46 1.47 1.45 1.47 1.44 1.47 1680000 2447490 ABRA MINING 0.0023 0.0024 0.0023 0.0025 0.0023 0.0024 27000000 64500 ATLAS MINING 2.67 2.8 2.69 2.69 2.67 2.67 26000 69520 BENGUET A 1.01 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.18 1.2 39000 46620 CENTURY PEAK 1.92 1.94 1.98 1.98 1.92 1.94 193000 372530 DIZON MINES 7.05 7.06 7.05 7.12 7.04 7.05 31300 220711 FERRONICKEL 1.8 1.83 1.83 1.83 1.8 1.83 409000 740970 GEOGRACE 0.203 0.207 0.206 0.206 0.203 0.203 60000 12210 LEPANTO A 0.109 0.113 0.107 0.114 0.107 0.114 1680000 184200 LEPANTO B 0.108 0.113 0.114 0.114 0.114 0.114 10000 1140 MANILA MINING A 0.0071 0.0076 0.007 0.007 0.007 0.007 3000000 21000 MARCVENTURES 1.19 1.28 1.29 1.29 1.29 1.29 9000 11610 NIHAO 1 1.06 1.08 1.08 1 1.06 47000 47520 NICKEL ASIA 4.41 4.42 4.29 4.43 4.29 4.41 734000 3206440 OMICO CORP 0.6 0.61 0.62 0.62 0.6 0.61 411000 251260 ORNTL PENINSULA 0.99 1.01 0.97 1.02 0.95 1 738000 724080 PX MINING 3.21 3.22 3.24 3.31 3.2 3.22 1083000 3497130 SEMIRARA MINING 25.9 26 26.15 26.85 25.9 26 2895300 76049445 ORNTL PETROL A 0.012 0.013 0.013 0.013 0.012 0.013 43100000 559900 PHILODRILL 0.012 0.013 0.011 0.013 0.011 0.013 44800000 536300 PHINMA PETRO 3.5 3.6 3.6 3.6 3.5 3.6 96000 338780 PXP ENERGY 15.2 15.28 15.2 15.6 15.16 15.2 937000 14339384

PREFFERED AC PREF B1 AC PREF B2 ALCO PREF B DD PREF SMC FB PREF 2 FGEN PREF G GLO PREF P GTCAP PREF A GTCAP PREF B MWIDE PREF PNX PREF 3A SMC PREF 2B SMC PREF 2C SMC PREF 2D SMC PREF 2F SMC PREF 2G SMC PREF 2H SMC PREF 2I

467 489 100.5 97.7 982 100.6 482 910.5 910.5 100 100 75.5 76.35 72.7 74.75 74.2 73.5 73.6

PHIL. DEPOSITARY RECEIPTS ABS HLDG PDR GMA HLDG PDR

20.3 4.93 2.35

SMALL & MEDIUM ENTERPRISES ITALPINAS 4.73 MAKATI FINANCE 1.75 XURPAS 2

105.2

3800 15460 -21540320 -29308245 -35141904 85118 1,230,199.0003) 5132140 3122605 14862225 -150110 -4832498 -46411640 -45639.9998 -27396000 -1456376 77630 48100 70781375 -119040 5,305,689.9998) 152000 559760 42000 -1127072 795 716430 -11180 59155 -107700 4461160 -123410 3590 -3846085 34920 -118259775 42480 -10154580 -73123160 -11579430 23840 9861857 -262990 32100 -8703 213947.5 25100 4199191 -15300500 2570 74100 -53540 1021750 22680 28563815 -27750 -17743850 202760 -5328883 -113490 -6545775 -8444578 152500 7010840 -50376574 -3050 17000 -145000 -5340 77830 18920 -275870 -1699080 -15963780 931768

510 498 100.4 98 1000 101 482 963.5 945 101 100 75.5 77.9 74.8 75 75 74.9 74.7

510 498 100.4 98 1000 101 482 963.5 984 101 100 75.5 77.9 74.8 75 75 74.95 74.7

465 498 100.4 98 1000 101 482 963.5 945 100 100 75.5 76.35 74.8 74.75 75 74.9 74.7

465 498 100.4 98 1000 101 482 963.5 984 100 100 75.5 77 74.8 75 75 74.95 74.7

4720 10 2000 42930 100 5000 100 170 40 2010 40 1000 12080 9000 12940 1300 19550 100

2223700 4980 200800 4207140 100000 505000 48200 163795 38190 201020 4000 75500 937035 673200 968800 97500 1465270 7470

-1860500 -28350 -335720 -

20.6 5.06

20.3 5.05

21 5.15

20.2 4.93

20.6 4.93

41000 106000

835315 533560

-390985 210880

2.4

2.35

2.43

2.34

2.4

150000

360050

-

4.76 2.89 2.01

4.68 1.56 1.97

4.83 1.56 2.03

4.68 1.56 1.96

4.73 1.56 2

915000 1000 1307000

4352900 1560 2618180

128360 -339580

EXHANGE TRADE FUNDS FIRST METRO ETF

8166220 -18719923 227612 272157.5 443004 3394910 -1881739 -136620 -3196968.5 582246 35870764 9367256 -5680681 -41589312 19900 -40659054 -846062 1710 -8600 81600 -11343592 241000 -8091900 -47200 58500 593754 -17600 -1048200 -24969.9997 1182434 -1183240 1700915

499.8 498 104.2 98.8 1000 102 489 963.5 960 102.9 103 76 77 74.8 75 75 74.95 74.7

WARRANTS LR WARRANT

1076019 -34977041 -33254279 -449820 7722976 -34266255 -1197725 7300 -128748367 -92337 14700 -

105.3

105.8

106.5

105.1

105.1

12020

1274218

10580

Editor: Efleda P. Campos

Udenna gets original proponent status for Davao monorail project

U

By Lorenz S. Marasigan

@lorenzmarasigan

DENNA Corp., the holding company of businessman Dennis A. Uy, has received from the Department of Transportation (DOTr) the original proponent status for its unsolicited proposal for the development of a monorail in Davao City.

The proposal is now with the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) for review.

Transportation Undersecretary Ruben S. Reinoso Jr. said the Neda Investment Coordination Committee (ICC) is now reviewing the P30-billion proposal, which was submitted in March 2018.

“The original proponent status was granted on July 17,” he said in a text message. “The proposal’s project cost is P30 billion.”

Under its proposal, Udenna will develop , finance, operate, main-

tain and manage an urban railway transport system in Davao city “to address the worsening road-traffic congestion, especially in the city’s central business district [CBD].”

The monorail, called the Davao People Mover, will run for 13 kilometers long starting from MacArthur Highway to JP Laurel Avenue passing through the city’s central business district with 16 stations.

Udenna aims to start construc-

tion of the project by 2019, and should be fully operational after four years. The unsolicited offer carries a 35-year concession period.

A project brief said the proposed monorail “is intended to reduce traffic congestion in the urban areas of Davao City; provide a modern, reliable, high-quality transit system interconnecting major focus points; and ensure an adequate, long term, and sustainable transport system while supporting the current shift to cleaner sources of energy.”

The monorail technology is the “preferred solution for urban railway transit best suited for a rapidly growing population in Davao City,” as modular vehicles allow for simpler capacity expansions.

“Since the alignment will go through heavily built-up areas, the monorail allows for quick installation of the guideways, minimal disruption during construction and can handle sharp curves. The system is also environment-friendly with its low-noise emission and low pollution systems,” the project brief read.

It added that the proposal is aligned with the results of the re-

cently completed Davao City Infrastructure Development Plan and Capacity Building Project funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica), which recommended the construction of a Davao City Mass Transit Line in the immediate term up to 2022.

Jica’s recommendation involves the construction of a 15-kilometer mass-transit line that traverses “almost the same alignment as that of the proposed monorail.”

Udenna is studying extending the line toward Buhangin and all the way to the Davao International Airport.

Once approved, the proposal will undergo a Swiss Challenge, which essentially allows other groups to outbid the original proponent. In turn, the original proponent will have the right to match or to give a counteroffer to ultimately win the deal.

Aside from the monorail, Uy, a native of Davao and a close associate of President Duterte, also offered several other unsolicited infrastructure proposals to the government. These include the development of Davao’s airport and seaport.

Megaworld sees ₧10-B sales from 4th residential condominium in Taguig

By VG Cabuag

@villygc

M

EGAWORLD Corp., the property development arm of businessman Andrew Tan, on Monday said it is building its fourth residential condominium project in its 15.4-hectare Uptown Bonifacio township in the northern part of the former military fort in Taguig.

The 45-story Uptown Arts Residence will offer an additional 452 residential units in its township located near Bonifacio Global City.

Residential units range from studio of up to 41.5 square meters (sq m); one-bedroom of up to 66 sq m; one-bedroom loft of up to 117 sq m; two-bedroom of up to 98.5 sq m; three-bedroom of up to 125 sq.m.; and three-bedroom loft of up to 168 sq m.

All units have balconies, while those in the amenity deck have their own spacious lanai.

“Aside from the range of unit choices and amenities, Uptown Arts Residence boasts of its strategic location in the entire Fort Bonifacio.

It has the fastest access to the new transport infrastructure projects, and it stands right next to Uptown’s

own array of dining, shopping and entertainment establishments,” said Noli D. Hernandez, the company’s senior vice president for sales and marketing.

Executive and loft-type onebedroom, two-bedroom and threebedroom units will all have maid’s rooms with their own toilets. All three-bedroom units will have bath tubs in their master bedrooms.

Rising along 9th Avenue near Uptown Mall, the development will be strategically located beside the proposed Skytrain Uptown Station, a monorail project of Infracorp to connect to Tan’s property to MRT Guadalupe Station in Makati City.

It will also be just a few blocks away from the Kalayaan Station of the proposed Mega Manila Subway project.

Uptown Arts Residence’s amenities include an infinity pool with its own pool deck, outdoor lounge, daycare and children’s play area, fitness center and function room.

The residential project also offers nine levels of parking, in multiple basement and podium floors.

The tower is expected to be completed in 2024. The company expects to generate P10 billion in sales from this new residential project.

Honor opens pioneering brand shop at SM North Edsa in QC

H

ONOR Philippines, an affiliate of Huawei Consumer Business Group, has opened its first-ever authorized brand shop in Quezon City to further position its mobile-device offerings in the local market.

“This store represents our growing commitment to provide innovative and technologically advanced products in the Philippines and marks an important step toward our goal of expanding our footprint here,” said Wang Yang, country director of Honor Philippines.

In the first two days of its official opening last October 13, the company treated customers who availed of the all-new Honor 8X with freebies, including gift box, travel kit and backpack. Other products were put on sale, such as the Honor 7S, Honor 7A and Honor 7X smartphones.

“This just goes to show how grateful we are

for the support of the Filipino people,” the top executive said.

Apart from the newly launched store located at the Third Level of The Annex in SM City North Edsa, Honor smartphones are now available in 260 multi brand shops nationwide.

The company bared its target to have its products present in about 600 stores across the country by the end of 2018.

Honor was incepted in 2013, and since then, has grown at an incredible pace in different markets, including the Philippines.

For this year alone, it introduced the Honor 9 Lite, Honor 7A, Honor 7S, Honor Play and flagship phone Honor 10 to local consumers.

Just recently, it launched the Honor 8X, its latest smartphone with premium features at an unmatched price of P12,990. Roderick L. Abad

MUTUAL FUNDS

October 15, 2018

NAV ONE YEAR THREE YEAR FIVE YEAR Y-T-D

PER SHARE RETURN* RETURN STOCK FUNDS ALFM GROWTH FUND, INC * 238.82 -17.49% -1.2% -0.07% -18.55% ATRAM ALPHA OPPORTUNITY FUND, INC. * 1.3579 -16.84% 3.13% 1.24% -14.96% ATRAM PHILIPPINE EQUITY OPPORTUNITY FUND, INC.* 3.713 -17.69% 0.13% -0.94% -19.15% CLIMBS SHARE CAPITAL EQUITY INVESTMENT FUND CORP.* 0.8567 -14.98% N.A. N.A. -15.76% FIRST METRO CONSUMER FUND ON MSCI PHILS. IMI, INC. * ********* 0.7854 N.A. N.A. N.A. N.A. FIRST METRO SAVE AND LEARN EQUITY FUND,INC.* 4.9048 -16.3% -2.73% -0.95% -18.43% MBG EQUITY INVESTMENT FUND, INC. * ****** 111.47 N.A. N.A. N.A. N.A. ONE WEALTHY NATION FUND, INC.* 0.7862 -18.95% N.A. N.A. -20.8% PAMI EQUITY INDEX FUND, INC.* 46.3757 -16.51% -0.33% N.A. -17.76% PHILAM STRATEGIC GROWTH FUND, INC.* 482.53 -17.28% -1.76% -1.22% -18% PHILEQUITY DIVIDEND YIELD FUND, INC.* 1.1973 -13.81% 0.55% N.A. -14.74% PHILEQUITY FUND, INC.* 34.8287 -13.59% 0.93% 1.87% -15.25% PHILEQUITY PSE INDEX FUND INC.* 4.6604 -16.47% 0.39% 1.73% -17.87% PHILIPPINE STOCK INDEX FUND CORP.* 777.96 -16.42% 0.18% 1.4% -17.74% SOLDIVO STRATEGIC GROWTH FUND, INC. * 0.8073 -15.75% -2.21% N.A. -16.52% SUN LIFE PROSPERITY PHILIPPINE EQUITY FUND, INC.* 3.8552 -14.5% 0.17% 0.13% -15.83% SUN LIFE PROSPERITY PHILIPPINE STOCK INDEX FUND, INC.* 0.8973 -16.62% 0.22% N.A. -17.93% UNITED FUND, INC.* 3.3206 -12.47% 1.09% 0.08% -14.73% EXCHANGE TRADED FUND FIRST METRO PHIL. EQUITY EXCHANGE TRADED FUND, INC.* *** 104.0804 -15.91% 1.38% N.A. -17.37% ATRAM ASIAPLUS EQUITY FUND, INC.** $0.9279 -14.2% 0.81% -0.84% -16.28% SUN LIFE PROSPERITY WORLD VOYAGER FUND, INC.* $1.2139 -0.41% N.A. N.A. -4.05% BALANCED FUNDS PRIMARILY INVESTED IN PESO SECURITIES ATRAM DYNAMIC ALLOCATION FUND, INC.* 1.5952 -13.49% -3.39% -2.4% -14.4% ATRAM PHILIPPINE BALANCED FUND, INC.* 2.1326 -12.4% -0.52% -0.3% -13.2% FIRST METRO SAVE AND LEARN BALANCED FUND INC.* 2.4255 -11.46% -4% -3.26% -12.43% GREPALIFE BALANCED FUND CORPORATION* **** 1.2685 -12.64% N.A. N.A. -12.81% NCM MUTUAL FUND OF THE PHILS., INC* 1.7805 -9.54% -0.31% -0.42% -10.64% PAMI HORIZON FUND, INC.* 3.3591 -14.07% -2.32% -1.56% -14.27% PHILAM FUND, INC.* 15.1098 -13.9% -2.22% -1.63% -13.94% SOLIDARITAS FUND, INC.* ******** 1.9981 -10.58% -0.21% 1.21% -10.88% SUN LIFE OF CANADA PROSPERITY BALANCED FUND, INC.* 3.5267 -10.79% -0.89% -0.52% -11.75% SUN LIFE PROSPERITY DYNAMIC FUND, INC.* 0.8981 -10.69% -1.18% N.A. -11.98% PRIMARILY INVESTED IN FOREIGN CURRENCY SECURITIES COCOLIFE DOLLAR FUND BUILDER, INC.* $0.0346 -4.23% -0.67% 1.73% -4.16% PAMI ASIA BALANCED FUND, INC.* $0.9264 -10.36% 0.6% -1.75% -11.52% SUN LIFE PROSPERITY DOLLAR ADVANTAGE FUND, INC.* $3.5228 -0.7% 4.24% 2.86% -3.55% SUN LIFE PROSPERITY DOLLAR WELLSPRING FUND, INC.* $1.0669 -2.82% N.A. N.A. -4.07% BOND FUNDS PRIMARILY INVESTED IN PESO SECURITIES ALFM PESO BOND FUND, INC.* 341.44 1.44% 1.76% 1.68% 1.28% ATRAM CORPORATE BOND FUND, INC.* ******* 1.8568 -2.64% -1.23% -0.39% -1.88% COCOLIFE FIXED INCOME FUND, INC.* 2.9408 5.5% 5.34% 5.32% 4.21% EKKLESIA MUTUAL FUND INC.* 2.1171 -0.22% 0.94% 1.05% 0.71% FIRST METRO SAVE AND LEARN FIXED INCOME FUND,INC.* 2.2138 -0.14% -0.1% 0.49% -0.11% GREPALIFE FIXED INCOME FUND CORP.* P 1.5738 -2.36% -1.54% -1.08% -2.22% PHILAM BOND FUND, INC.* 3.7683 -7.96% -2.45% -1.12% -6.96% PHILEQUITY PESO BOND FUND, INC.* 3.4545 -1.12% -0.75% 0.06% -1.44% SOLDIVO BOND FUND, INC. * 0.8707 -6.72% -2.56% N.A. -5.69% SUN LIFE OF CANADA PROSPERITY BOND FUND, INC.* 2.7527 -0.84% -0.14% 0.41% -0.88% SUN LIFE PROSPERITY GS FUND, INC.* 1.5307 -1.28% -0.59% -0.01% -1.23% PRIMARILY INVESTED IN FOREIGN CURRENCY SECURITIES ALFM DOLLAR BOND FUND, INC. * $445.7 0.2% 2.12% 3.09% -0.05% ALFM EURO BOND FUND, INC. * Є213.06 0.22% 1.29% 1.66% -0.31% ATRAM TOTAL RETURN DOLLAR BOND FUND, INC.** $1.1204 -1.09% 0.74% 1.78% -1.21% FIRST METRO SAVE AND LEARN DOLLAR BOND FUND, INC.* $0.0248 - 0.8% 0.54% N.A. -0.8% GREPALIFE DOLLAR BOND FUND CORP.* $1.6889 -5.04% -0.58% 1.24% -4.66% MAA PRIVILEGE DOLLAR FIXED INCOME FUND, INC. N.S. N.S. N.S. N.S. N.S. MAA PRIVILEGE EURO FIXED INCOME FUND, INC. ЄN.S. N.S. N.S. N.S. N.S. PAMI GLOBAL BOND FUND, INC* $1.0244 -5.17% -1.74% -2.66% -4.57% PHILAM DOLLAR BOND FUND, INC.* $2.137 -4.77% 0.18% 2.41% -5.06% PHILEQUITY DOLLAR INCOME FUND INC.* $0.0568584 -1.01% 0.83% 1.92% -0.6% SUN LIFE PROSPERITY DOLLAR ABUNDANCE FUND, INC.* $2.8763 -4.72% 0.47% 1.73% -4.53% MONEY MARKET FUNDS PRIMARILY INVESTED IN PESO SECURITIES ALFM MONEY MARKET FUND, INC.* 119.89 2.3% 1.67% 1.44% 1.94% PHILAM MANAGED INCOME FUND, INC.* 1.1719 1.49% 0.3% 0.34% 1.25% SUN LIFE PROSPERITY MONEY MARKET FUND, INC.* 1.2097 2.41% 2.14% 1.4% 2.04% PRIMARILY INVESTED IN FOREIGN CURRENCY SECURITIES SUN LIFE PROSPERITY DOLLAR STARTER FUND, INC.* ***** $1.0115 N.A. N.A. N.A. 1.28%

* - NAVPS AS OF THE PREVIOUS BANKING DAY ** - NAVPS AS OF TWO BANKING DAYS AGO *** - LISTED IN THE PSE.

**** - RE-CLASSIFIED INTO A BALANCED FUND STARTING JANUARY 1, 2017 (FORMERLY GREPALIFE BOND FUND CORP.).

***** - LAUNCH DATE IS NOVEMBER 6, 2017 ****** - LAUNCH DATE IS JANUARY 08, 2018 ******** - RENAMING OF THE FUND WAS APPROVED BY THE SEC LAST APRIL 13, 2018. ********* - BECAME A MEMBER SINCE APRIL 20, 2018. ******* - ADJUSTED DUE TO CASH DIVIDEND ISSUANCE LAST JANUARY 29, 2018

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Govt to cut down infra spending if fuel excise tax hike suspended

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By Rea Cu @ReaCuBM

HE Department of Finance (DOF) said the government may have to cancel some infrastructure expenditures if the increase in fuel excise tax is suspended to compensate for the estimated forgone revenues of P40 billion.

According to Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III, one of the topics that will be discussed during the Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC) meeting on Tuesday would be to identify which non-infrastructure expenditures should be cut with the suspension of the tax hike.

“Our net revenues are expected to rise as the price of oil went up, therefore the VAT [value-added tax]

is going to go up,” Dominguez said. “[However], the value of the peso has dropped so our expenditures will go up.”

At the sidelines of the commissioning ceremony at the Philippine Coast Guard headquarters on Monday, Dominguez said the economic managers have recommended that President Duterte suspend the increase in oil excise tax in 2019 to help tame inflation.

But the finance chief said it is still the President’s call.

“The total estimated foregone revenue is around P41 billion but we are still calculating how much the net revenue will be,” he added.

“But we [still] cannot calculate that because we don’t know what the future prices [of oil] will be.”

Under the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) law, excise tax on oil products will be gradually increased starting 2018 to 2020. The law, however, contains a provision for temporarily suspending the increase scheduled on January 1, 2019, if the average price of Dubai crude based on Mean of Platts Singapore exceeds $80 per barrel within a three-month period.

Finance Undersecretary Karl Kendrick T. Chua said earlier the government may lose around P40 billion in potential gross revenues should a suspension of the excise tax on fuel be implemented, but quickly added that VAT collections from fuel products may help offset the losses.

Under the TRAIN, incremental

excise tax increases were imposed on liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), diesel and gasoline products.

Tax on LPG, coming from a noexcise tax regime, would increase by P1 per liter this year, P2 next year and P3 in 2020. Diesel fuel would increase by P2.50 this year, P4.50 in 2019 and P6 in 2020. Regular and unleaded premium gasoline would have a tax increase of P7 this year, P9 in 2019 and P10 per liter in 2020. These increases come from an excise tax of P4.35 per liter in 2017.

Chua explained that suspension of the excise tax increases “will not be forever” and that suspensions “only take effect for a certain period of time.”

A government multiagency is currently forming the implementing rules and regulations to clarify how the excise tax on oil will go about if ever it will be suspended.

This group is composed of people from the DOF, the Bureau of Internal Revenue, Bureau of Customs and the Department of Energy, among others.

PBCOM raises ₧2.9 billion from LTNCD issuance

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HILIPPINE Bank of Communications (PBCOM) said it raised a little over P2.9 billion in its issuance of long-term negotiable certificates of time deposits (LTNCD).

Nearly the entire amount was sourced from its own branch network, a fact that President Patricia May Siy recognized in her speech at the listing ceremony at

the Philippine Dealing Exchange (PDEx), where she described it as a vote of confidence in the bank’s growth story from its strong customer base.

Siy acknowledged the support from the PBCOM’s customers in spite of numerous alternatives in the capital markets, the bank said in a statement.

The amount was more than

Three kittens: A business fable

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N a pet orphanage, three kitten friends are talking to each other.

Fitz Gerard Villafuerte “I heard there’s someone coming over today PERSONAL FINANCE who’s interested in adopting one of us,” Cathy said.

“Really? Now that’s exciting,” Catlin replied. “I can’t wait to get out of here and finally have a home.”

“Me too,” Catrina answered. “So I guess we better prepare.

I’ll practice my dance moves now so when the humans come, they’ll see how talented I am and choose me.”

“Yes, that’s why I’ve been practicing since last night,” Cathy remarked. “I prepared a lovely song for the humans when they come. I hope they’ll like my singing.”

“That’s great Cathy. How about you Catlin? What are you doing to do to impress the humans?” Catrina asked.

“I’m not as talented as the two of you, so I guess I’ll just sit here in my cage and try to look my best,” Catlin answered.

“Oh, too bad but good luck anyway,” wished Cathy.

After a while, a girl and her mother came inside the pet orphanage. The three kitten friends got excited and prepared.

The girl walked toward Catrina, who was doing some tumbles and turns. “Look Ma, a dancing cat!” the girl exclaimed. Then Cathy began singing and the girl said to her mother, “This cat is also talented! She’s singing some lovely kitten song.”

Then the mother and daughter saw Catlin, who was gazing at them with those kitten eyes and just sitting quietly inside her cage. The daughter’s heart skipped and said, “Awwww, how cute this one is. Mom, can we adopt her?”

“Sure,” the mother replied. “Let me just talk to the manager.”

the initial planned volume of P2 billion. The debt instrument will be due in 2024 and will fetch an interest rate of 5.625 percent per annum, payable quarterly.

This was the maiden issuance for the bank, which has been in the banking industry for almost 80 years. In 2014 business tycoon Lucio Co entered into a strategic partnership with the bank that

has proven beneficia l to both sides. This relationship has led to numerous synergies between the bank and the Lucio Co group of companies, including retail giant Puregold and membership shopping pioneer S&R. The funds raised through the exercise will be used to leverage these synergies further and to fund the bank’s long-term lending programs.

Fitz Villafuerte is a registered financial planner of RFP Philippines. To learn more about personal-financial planning, attend the 72nd RFP program this October 2018.

For inquiries, e-mail <info@rfp.ph> or text <name> <e-mail> <RFP> to 0917-9689774.

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T-bills auction mixed as bids higher than expected–BTr T HE Bureau of the Treasury (BTr) received mixed results in its latest Treasury bills (T-bills) auction on Monday awarding P7 billion from the P15 billion on offer, on the back of high bids for the government security.

Deputy Treasurer Erwin D. Sta. Ana said that bids for the Tbills came in at a high level, which is why the auction committee decided to reject the 91-day tenor while partially awarding the 182day and 364-day tenor bucket.

“Generally, the bids came in higher than expected, hence, the decision to fully reject the 91 day and partially award for the two other tenors,” Sta. Ana said.

The 182 day was partially awarded P3.652 billion from the P5 billion on offer with tenders reaching P6.752 billion. The average annual rate for the government security was capped at 5.894 percent, which was 21 basis points higher than the 5.684 percent set in the previous auction for the security.

Tenders for the 364-day tenor bucket amounted to P5.949 billion, with the auction committee partially awarding P3.349 billion from the P6 billion on offer.

The average annual rate was capped at 6.256 percent, which expanded by 37.3 basis points from the previous rate of 5.883 percent.

If the BTr awarded the P4 billion on offer for the 91-day tenor, the average annual rate would have settled at 5.375 percent,

which will post an increase of 66.3 basis points compared to the previous rate of 4.404 percent.

Sta. Ana said inflation jitters remained a major factor for the high bids in Monday’s auction.

“Based on feedback from the surveys that we did and the BSP [Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas] did to our GSEDs [Government Securities Eligible Dealers], they are still factoring in inflation,” he explained. “There’s also some consideration on the rate hike trajectory of the Fed [Federal Reserve System], [it’s] expected to hike again once this year and three times next year, to some extent that is still being factored in; so, basically, the inflation effect.”

Meanwhile, the BTr is already conducting its nondeal roadshow for its issuance of global bonds, with Asia being its first leg and the United States within this week. Hong Kong is the first stop for the Asia leg of the nondeal road show, while the BTr will be visiting multiple cities in the US including Los Angeles, Boston and New York.

“Our team is moving to the US within the week to have those nondeal road shows to US investors,” Sta. Ana said.

During the February nondeal road show (a series of meetings with regular institutional investors’ meetings that are not associated with an upcoming share offering), government officials met with several investors in China. Rea Cu

Top economic execs update investors on PHL’s strengths

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HILIPPINE economic managers recently wooed investors at the sidelines of an International Monetary Fund (IMF)-World Bank (WB) event in Indonesia, in an effort to bring more foreign direct investments (FDI) into the country.

The country’s Investor Relations Office (IRO) said two of the country’s top economic officials— Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Deputy Governor Diwa C. Guinigundo and Budget Secretary Benjamin E. Diokno—strengthened ties with international investors in a series of roundtable meetings on the sidelines of the 2018 IMF-WB Annual Meetings in Bali Nusa Dua, Indonesia.

T he IRO said closed-door presentations were held during the week to convince potential investors that the Philippines remains to be one of the best-performing economies in the region.

Salient points discussed included the Philippines’s sound economic management and its advantageous young population in an increasingly aging world, the IRO said.

“The briefing sessions provided an opportunity to update international investors on the progress of the Philippines’s $180-billion ‘Build, Build, Build’ initiative. The once-in-a-lifetime

nation-building program has gained considerable momentum over the last year, with 44 of the 75 largest projects already at the implementation phase, while 24 are at the development stage,” the IRO said in a statement.

The economic managers also assured that monetary and nonmonetary measures being taken to temper inflation. Guinigundo also reiterated that the BSP will “continue to sustain its vigilance with a strong tightening bias while maintaining a data-dependent approach.”

“The September data showed that core inflation had declined slightly, demonstrating that the BSP’s decisive monetary policy decisions combined with a range of nonmonetary actions were starting to have their desired effect,” Guinigundo was quoted to have said.

“Inf lationary pressures in the Philippines will temper over the coming year and return within the target band of 2 percent to 4 percent by 2019,” Diokno said.

Foreign investors were seen to be eager to put their money

The lesson

CATS are not famous for dancing and singing, except maybe in Broadway.

But in reality, people get them as pets primarily because they’re cute. This is the reason Catlin got chosen in the end.

Fancy gimmicks and promotions may catch your market’s attention, but what sells is the real value of your products.

Show that to your audience and they’ll buy.

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

INNOVATORS DARE

Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines (Finex) President Ma. Victoria C. Españo (left) and H.E. Kok Li Peng, ambassador, Embassy of the Republic of Singapore in the Philippines, speak during the 50th Finex Conference in Taguig. Españo said the conference aims to help business in addressing the challenges faced during the fourth industrial revolution, which is composed of artificial intelligence and robotics, among others. Peng, on the other hand, urged readiness for the future.

(See story “Finex head tells local firms, enterprises: Be future-ready, adapt to changes, innovations,” October 13, 2018 page A3) NONOY LACZA

in the Philippine economy in hopes for long-term economic gains at the start of 2018’s second half, latest data from the BSP showed.

Just last week, the Central Bank reported a “significant rise” in the country’s FDI inflows, from $344 million in July last year to an almost threefold rise to $914 million this year.

FDI is the type of investment that is often more coveted, as it stays longer in the economy and creates job opportunities for locals. It is also not easily pulled out of the market unlike its shorter-term counterpart, the foreign portfolio investments. Bianca Cuaresma

B4 Tuesday, October 16, 2018

FOX+ TEAMS WITH GCASH TO OFFER 20% OFF ITS VIDEO-STREAMING SERVICE MISS WORLD PHILIPPINES CANDIDATES CONFIDENTLY FACE SOCIAL MEDIA WITH BYS COSMETICS All 40 Miss World Philippines candidates flooded social media with their makeover posts after undergoing a makeup tutorial from the pageant’s cosmetics sponsor BYS. The ladies expressed not just their appreciation for the generosity of their sponsor, which gave each of them starter makeup kits, but also for sharing with them quick and easy makeover techniques using BYS’s wide variety of makeup products. The ladies’ BYS stint was capped by a fashion show at the Resorts World Manila’s Newport Mall Plaza, which was graced by iFace Inc. President and Chief Executive Officer Tony Chua and iFace general manager Angie Goyena. iFace is the exclusive local distributor of BYS in the Philippines. At the pageant’s coronation night, Candidate No. 33 Alyssa Muhlach-Alvarez (right) was chosen as Miss BYS Cosmetics.

TAIWAN EXCELLENCE AT PHILCONSTRUCT MANILA 2018

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AIWAN Excellence is all set to take part in this year’s Philconstruct Manila, the country’s biggest expo of its kind. Visitors will witness Taiwan Excellence as one of its exhibitors, an organization that reviews and recognizes all Taiwanese products and grants awards to products that are found to be exceptionally superior.

In this year’s expo, Taiwan Excellence will not only be proudly exhibiting their most elite brands on site, but also hosting a seminar discussing the strengths and benefits of their featured brands. Carrying the theme “Smart Constructions for Smart Cities”, this noonlong seminar will

be held on November 8 at meeting rooms 5 and 6 of the SMX Convention Center.

Twenty-one forward-thinking Taiwanese construction-brand innovators will represent Taiwan Excellence, and these companies will be sending representatives to hold prospective business meetings with potential clients and other interested parties. Each company will headline a different product; all awarded the Taiwan Excellence Award for outstanding performance in research and development, design, quality and marketing.

Touted as the biggest expo of its kind in the Philippines, the Philconstruct Manila 2018 has been defining the landscape of building and construction in the country for over two decades. It now serves as the annual meeting place for the industry’s movers and shakers, gathering hundreds of the leading suppliers and thousands of trade buyers in one venue.

Philconstruct will be staging its final leg for 2018 in Manila to be held at the SMX Convention Center and World Trade Center from Novermber 8 to 11.

For more information, e-mail at info@globallinkmp.com.

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OX+, FOX Networks Group’s videostreaming service, and GCash has announced a collaboration that will provide their users with more service incentives. Starting today, October 16, until January 31, 2019, GCash users subscribing to FOX+ can get a P50 cashback on their monthly FOX+ subscription.

The collaboration between FOX+ and GCash, one of the largest mobilepayment platforms in the Philippines, is a stride toward making its service more convenient and financially inclusive, especially to the majority of Filipinos who don’t possess a credit card.

“Great content and easy accessibility are integral in driving success for FOX+.

This collaboration with GCash puts the heart of our customers first, and we will continue to listen to improve our service.

We encourage our users to benefit from the offer and explore the wide content library of FOX+ from exclusive TV series, movies, National Geographic documentaries to live sports,” said Jude Turcuato, senior vice president and general manager of FOX Networks Group Philippines.

The move follows the trend seen in recent years where there has been a steady increase in the usage of these digital-payment platforms. From online shopping to airline tickets and fastfood chains, more service providers are accommodating these payment gateways, as Filipinos are increasingly relying on

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and joy as a world dance-festival competition with huge prizes for many categories attended by numerous participating dance companies from all over the world, and visited by many local and foreign tourists alike. “I remember how in 2010, I had an interesting chat with then Vice Mayor Park. I asked what they envision Cheonan to be in the next few years. He said they plan to build more schools [better choices for future work force], more investors in IT and a huge cultural center where they can sit as many people for world-class performances from around the world. They intend to sell tickets, earn and make it a profit center,” Benitez said.

Cheonan City now has large national corporations in technology operating, hotels, restaurants, tourists parks, modern mall complexes and high-rise buildings giving the city its look of success and competitive edge. Current Mayor Go Bun-yeong, just like his predecessor Song Moo-yong, was on top leading and present in all the activities during the duration of the festival.

“Then city show oneness in seeking peace and unity in the community bringing the people to work well together while having fun, and showing the world their best during these international dance festivals,” Benitez said.

combination of more than 11,000 hours of content across multiple genres.

Subscribers can stream the latest TV series exclusively, such as The Discovery of Witches, The Resident and Fresh off the Boat, and on the same day as in the US, including The Walking Dead, The Good Doctor and The Voice; and catch first-run Hollywood blockbusters, including Patti Cakes and the upcoming Murder on the Orient Express. Documentary seekers can indulge in amazing production from the National Geographic Channel in Undercover History and Science of Stupid.

To top it off, sports fanatics will never miss a single sporting moment with the exclusive live stream of WWE Raw, as well as live NBA games, Formula One races and more. Visit www.FOXPlus.com to start your free 30-day trial and enjoy a P50 cashback when you use your GCash Credit Card. Terms and conditions apply.

BE YOUR OWN ‘MONITO-MONITA’ WITH HOME CREDIT’S TRADE TO UPGRADE

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NE beloved tradition that most of us love come the holiday season is exchanging of gifts. Nothing says Christmas more than receiving one in exchange of a present you’ve given, but what if youactuallygettochoosethegiftyougetback?

This is exactly what Home Credit Philippines’s (HCPH) Trade to Upgrade is currently offering—being your very own monito or monita! This latest treat from the in-store loan provider lets you swap your old phone to any Home Credit store and use it as a downpayment for a new gadget. It’s perfect for those who want to treat themselves this Christmas without spending too much. This trade-in elevates HCPH’s services, which cater to Filipinos who are looking for friendly and fast instore financing options. To avail himself or herself of the Trade to Upgrade, a customer simply has to visit a Home Credit store offering this treat, present two IDs and

INSPIRING SOCIAL CHANGE THROUGH DANCE R. Suzie Moya Benitez, trustee/executive director of the Bayanihan Folk Arts Foundation, first covered the Heungtaryong Festival in Cheonan City in South Korea in 2008 as one of the four international jury-member headed by Cho Nam-gyu, dance expert and educator. Since then, Benitez have been serving as juror each year. One of the biggest festival in Korea, the Heungtaryong denotes pleasure

their digital wallets.

“We are excited to be a partner of FOX+ and are proud of the fact that GCash, through GCash MasterCard and GCash American Express (Amex) Virtual Pay, are enabling Filipinos to experience worldclass entertainment via digital streaming.

You can use these wherever Mastercard and American Express are accepted,” said Anthony Thomas, president and chief executive officer of Mynt. Mynt is the holding company of GCash.

New FOX+ subscribers can now sign up through www.foxplus.com with their GCash Amex and MasterCard to be eligible for the cashback. The discounts will be applied by GCash in five working days after the free 30-day trial. Existing FOX+ subscribers using other payment methods will need to update their payment details through the web site.

FOX+ promises a n unr iva led

wait for 10 minutes for the result of their application. If approved, HCPH’s friendly sales associates will evaluate the value of your mobile phone and use it as your downpayment for a new model.

Trade to Upgrade can cover a financed amount of from P3,000 to P60,000 for nine to twelve months, and you can also opt to add cash to the value of the mobile phone you want to swap. Other details of this great offering include: You can swap all brands and models of mobile phones; swap your phone even if it is damaged, given that it is working and is an original model; can only use one unit per transaction; can add cash if the assessed value of your mobile phone is lower than the minimum downpayment amount; and phone accessories are not included in the assessment of your unit’s value.

If you want to know more about the offering, don’t hesitate to visit any HCPH store and ask our friendly sales associates.

DBP PARTNERS WITH METROBANK CARD FOR E-PAYMENT OF REAL-PROPERTY TAX

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TATE-OWNEDDevelopmentBankof the Philippines (DBP) has partnered with the Metrobank Card Corp.

(MCC) for an electronic-payment scheme that is expected to boost collection of realproperty tax in the cities of Taguig and Valenzuela, a top official said.

DBP President and Chief Executive Officer Cecilia C. Borromeo said the DBP-MCC real property tax (RPT)

payment program aims to encourage responsible citizenship while providing local government units with a more efficient way of collecting real-property taxes.

“Residents of Taguig City and Valenzuela City may opt to pay either in cash or using their Metrobank cards to settle their realproperty taxes on installment basis via the DBP point-of-sale terminals deployed in the said LGUs,” Borromeo said.

The cities of Taguig and Valenzuela have an estimated population of around 805,000 and 620,000, respectively. Taguig has more than 7,000 registered commercial and industrial establishments, while Valenzuela has over 15,000 based on latest data from the Philippine Statistics Authority.

MCCisajointventureoftheMetropolitan BankandTrustCo.andAustraliaNewZealand Banking Group Ltd. It is one of the top creditcard companies in the country today.

Borromeo said MCC has also offered its cardholderswithabalance-conversionfacility that will convert real-property tax payments into light monthly installments, which would provide a more affordable, convenient and desirable option for the taxpaying public.

Borromeo (center) poses with representatives from the bank’s partners for the DBP-MCC RPT payment program at ceremonies held at the SM Aura Tower. The facility, which will be initially available to constituents of Taguig City and Valenzuela City, is seen to boost tax collection while offering a convenient and desirable payment option for the public. Also in photo are (from left) lawyer Alvin Esmenda, Taguig City councilors Rodil Marcelino and Ferdinand Santos, MCC President Pradeep Pant, and lawyers Clarence Santos and Maria del Carmen, and Beatriz Sarmiento.

Sports BusinessMirror

RECORD IN SHANGHAI C1

| Tuesday, October 16, 2018 mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph Editor: Jun Lomibao

The secondseeded Novak Djokovic has won all four Shanghai finals he’s contested in his career (2012, 2013, 2015 and 2018).

He previously shared the record of winning three Shanghai titles with Andy Murray.

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By Sandra Harwitt The Associated Press

HANGHAI—Novak Djokovic won a record fourth Shanghai Masters title with a 6-3, 6-4 win over 13th-seeded Borna Coric on Sunday.

The second-seeded Djokovic has won all four Shanghai finals he’s contested in his career (2012, 2013, 2015 and 2018). He previously shared the record of winning three Shanghai titles with Andy Murray.

Djokovic holds an 11-0 overall record in finals played in China, where he also won the Beijing tournament six times and the 2008 year-end Tennis Masters Cup held in Shanghai.

“Maybe I was Chinese in the past life,” said Djokovic, smiling, in explaining impressive record in the country.

“I wouldn’t be surprised, to be honest, with the way I feel here and the way I communicate and have relationship with the people.

“It’s all very, very positive, for more than10 years that I have been coming to China. There is something special about this place that makes me feel like at home.”

Djokovic dominated opponents behind his powerful serve, winning all 47 of his service games during the tournament.

“Well, to be honest, I’m not sure whether it has happened ever, you know, that I go through a tournament without dropping one service game,” Djokovic said. “I’m sure that it hasn’t happened too many times if it did. So this was definitely one of the best service weeks that I had in my career.

“But for me serve was always, so to say, a hidden weapon, the shot in the game that is obviously very important, ‘the’ most important. But I always try to use it with an accuracy and efficiency rather than speed and power.”

The Serb offered 13th-seeded Coric one break point in the match, in the sixth game of the second set. Coric, who has yet to win a set against Djokovic in three matches played, sailed a forehand wide to miss out on the rare opportunity.

“It was really tough,” Coric said. “I didn’t know what to do exactly. I thought I was playing actually really well, which is in that moment not good because if I play bad, okay, I know I need to start playing better, need to change something.

“I’m just happy with the whole week. I think it was a really good week for me.”

NOVAK DJOKOVIC holds an 11-0 overall record in finals played in China, where he also won the Beijing tournament six times and the 2008 year-end Tennis Masters Cup held in Shanghai. AP

Djokovic, who has now won four titles this season, will move up one ranking spot to No. 2, pushing Roger Federer back to No. 3.

The victory extended his winning streak to 18 matches, the longest of the season by any male player. Federer and Nadal both had 17-match winning streaks during the year.

Coric, who had his right thigh wrapped throughout the match, saved three match points on his own serve in the ninth game of the second set.

But the Croatian couldn’t prevent Djokovic from snatching the title on a fourth match point in the next game. Djokovic won the final game to love when Coric sailed a backhand long.

Juan Martin del Potro, meanwhile, has fractured his right patella bone in what the Argentine called “a hard blow that leaves me without strength.”

Del Potro retired on Thursday against Borna Coric at the Shanghai Masters after injuring his knee. Third-seeded del Potro fell near the end of the first set. The US Open finalist had the knee wrapped but called it quits after losing the first set, 7-5.

Tests on Saturday showed the fracture, Del Potro’s spokesman Jorge Viale tweeted on Sunday.

“In the coming days, the doctors will evaluate the recovery process needed to return,” Viale said.

In Tianjin, China, second-seeded Caroline Garcia won her first tournament of the year with a 7-6 (7), 6-3 win over topseeded Karolina Pliskova in the Tianjin Open on Sunday.

It was the 16th-ranked Garcia’s first title since she won back-to-back trophies at the Wuhan and Beijing tournaments in Asia just over a year ago.

The Frenchwoman’s two titles at the end of last season earned her a spot into the year-end Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) Finals in Singapore. This year, the victory in Tianjin is not enough to put Garcia into a second consecutive final appearance.

Pliskova’s failure to take the title also kept her from confirming a berth in the WTA Finals.

Currently in eighth place in the race to Singapore, the Czech will have to wait out the results from next week’s tournaments in Luxembourg and Moscow to see if she qualifies for one of the two remaining spots. Pliskova is scheduled to play in Moscow.

Ukrainian Elena Svitolina and Dutchwoman Kiki Bertens are the other remaining contenders for Singapore after American Sloane Stephens was confirmed as the sixth player to qualify on Sunday. She joins Simona Halep, Angelique Kerber, Naomi Osaka, Petra Kvitova and Caroline Wozniacki as players who have secured places for Singapore.

Garcia was down, 1-5, in the first set tiebreaker before she rebounded. She saved a set point for Pliskova at 5-6 to go on to win the hourlong first set.

In the second set, Garcia raced to a 5-0 lead, and first served for the match at 5-1, but had to wait for her victory to come three games later. She secured the title with her sixth ace of the match.

BASKETBALL LOSES A LEADER B

UENOS AIRES, Argentina—Patrick Baumann, the secretary-general of basketball’s world governing body who was seen as a potential International Olympic Committee (IOC) president, has died at the Youth Olympics. He was 51.

Baumann “unexpectedly succumbed to a heart attack” in Buenos Aires despite getting immediate medical help, the International Basketball Federation (Fiba) said on Sunday in a statement.

“Basketball has lost a leader, an advocate and a friend and our thoughts are with Patrick’s wife and two children at this tragic time,” the Switzerland-based Fiba said.

Baumann was Fiba’s top administrator for 15 years, and an International Olympic Committee member since 2007.

“We can hardly believe this terrible news,” IOC President Thomas Bach said in a statement. “We lose a young and sympathetic leader full of hope who was standing for the future of sport. Our thoughts are with his wife, his children and his family.”

National Basketball Association Commissioner Adam Silver also praised Baumann’s dedication to the game.

“Nobody was more dedicated to the growth of basketball than Patrick,” said Silver in a statement. “He loved the game and recognized its power to transform people’s lives. He was also a dear friend and colleague who I attended countless games and events with over the past 20 years.”

Flags will be flown at half-staff at IOC offices in Buenos Aires and its home city of Lausanne, Switzerland. The IOC said a memorial will be held in the athlete village in Buenos Aires.

A lawyer from Switzerland, Baumann had taken an increasingly important role in Olympic circles.

He led an IOC panel evaluating the Paris and Los Angeles bids for the 2024 Olympics, and then took charge of overseeing preparations for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

“Patrick was a partner and a friend,” LA 2028 Chairman Casey Wasserman said in a statement. “He is gone too soon and will be greatly missed.”

The IOC also appointed Baumann to the World AntiDoping Agency executive board, and he was elected president of the global group of sports federations, known as GAISF. At meetings last week on the sidelines of the Youth Olympics, Baumann updated IOC members on the Los Angeles Games and the 2020 Lausanne Youth Olympics.

He was president of its organizing committee.

Baumann was key to developing the 3-on-3 urban version of basketball and pushing for its inclusion as an Olympic medal event.

He earned masters degrees from the Business School of the University of Chicago, and in sports administration from the University of Lyon in France. AP

PATRICK BAUMANN, rising star in Olympic circles, dies at 51. AP

Kenyan track great Keino facing corruption charges

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ENYAN distance-running great Kip Keino is one of seven suspects in a corruption investigation and has been ordered to report to police by the end of Monday to face charges of embezzlement and the misappropriation of more than $545,000.

The two-time Olympic champion and honorary member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is accused of playing a role in the misuse of money meant for Kenyan athletes at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, when he was chairman of the Kenyan Olympic committee.

The money was part of more than $5 million given to Keino’s Olympic committee by the Kenyan government to fund Team Kenya in Rio. But prosecutors allege Keino was at the head of an Olympic committee rife with corruption.

The 78-year-old Keino was one of seven former Olympic and government officials named as suspects in the investigation. Two other high-ranking former Kenyan Olympic committee officials were named, as was the former Kenyan minister of sport, Hassan Wario, and three ministry officials who worked under him.

The seven are all accused of embezzling more than $200,000, wasting more than $150,000 on unused air tickets to Rio, overpaying allowances amounting to nearly $150,000 and incurring tens of thousands of dollars of other expenditure on “unauthorized persons.”

Director of public prosecutions Noordin Haji said the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), a special crimes unit, had been investigating since late-2016. After nearly two years, Haji said he was “satisfied that there is sufficient evidence” to now charge the seven with multiple counts of corruption and abuse of office.

Saturday’s announcement implicated one of Kenya’s most revered runners.

Keino’s gold in the 1,500 meters at the 1968 Mexico Olympics—50 years ago now— paved the way for decades of dominance by Kenyan distance runners. He was named in track and field’s international hall of fame in its inaugural year in 2012 alongside the likes of Jesse Owens, Carl Lewis and Sebastian Coe, the current president of the International Alliance of Athletics Federations (IAAF).

Keino was also honored at the opening ceremony at the 2016 Rio Games, the first recipient of the Olympic Laurel award for service to the Olympic movement.

Now, he and the others have until the end of Monday to report to the headquarters of the DCI or warrants will be issued for their arrests.

Keino has not responded to the accusations.

In August Kenyan athletics federation secretary-general and IAAF Council member David Okeyo was banned for life by world track and field body the IAAF for embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars of sponsorship money paid to his federation by Nike.

Public prosecutor Haji said he had also ordered further investigations into the Olympic committee’s use of its Nike sponsorship money. AP KEINO

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C2 Tuesday, October 16, 2018

KITEBOARDER SAVES DAY FILIPINO-NORWEGIAN Christian Tio bags a silver medal in men’s kiteboarding.

DESPITE Jimmy Butler’s preference to play elsewhere, signs have begun to point to him staying with the Timberwolves at least to start the season. AP

Butler practices again with Wolves

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ILIPINO-NORWEGIAN Christian Tio saved the Philippine campaign with a kiteboarding silver medal in the 2018 Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The 17-year-old Tio finished second in the final race of men’s kiteboarding on Sunday to move from fourth the day before to the silver performance after almost a week of racing at the Club Nautico San Isidro.

Tio actually shared second-place honors with Toni Vodisek of Slovenia, while Deury

Corniel of Dominican Republic sealed the gold medal after winning three of the six races prior to Sunday’s final.

The competition was supposed to have ended on Friday but the lack of strong winds forced the organizers to cancel several races.

“My mindset was just to go for it and enjoy,’’ Tio said. “Thank you for everyone who supported me, giving all the love.’’

Tio prepared for more than two months— four weeks in Dominican Republic and four weeks in Buenos Aires—to get his body and

mind in great condition.

“I didn’t suffer from jetlag. I was fully rested after arriving here early,’’ said Tio, whose next objective is to go home to the Philippines.

Archer Nicole Marie Tagle’s partnership with Hendrik Oun of Estonia has allowed them to advance to the quarterfinals of the mixed international event, where they got beaten by New Zealand’s Rebecca Jones and Chihchun Tang of Chinese Taipei, 5-1, at the Parque Sarmiento archery range.

“It was windy and that affected my

performance,’’ said Tagle, a Southeast Asian Games silver medalist last year in Kuala Lumpur.

The 17-year-old from Dumaguete City has another chance to medal when Tagle meets Great Britain’s Alyssia Tromans-Ansell in the round of 16 women’s individual recurve come Tuesday.

Yuka Saso and Carl Janno Corpus scored a five-over 75 for 18th place in the mixed team event as the tandem try to chase leaders Atthaya Thitikul and Vanchai Luangnitikul of Thailand in Monday’s final round.

ATENEO-MOTOLITE PREVAILS I

N a duel of top schools bracing for the University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP), Ateneo-Motolite kept its poise in the clutch and subdued Adamson University-Akari, 17-25, 25-23, 25-20, 21-25, 15-12, to firm up its bid in the Premier Volleyball League Season 2 Open Conference at the Filoil Flying V Centre in San

INNEAPOLIS—Jimmy Butler is still suiting up for the Minnesota Timberwolves, with the opener three days away.

Despite his preference to play elsewhere, signs have begun to point to him staying with the Timberwolves at least to start the season. Butler took part in practice on Sunday, the second time he has done so since training camp began with his trade request as the focal point of the team.

“They want me to go out here and hoop to the best of my abilities,” Butler said. “Make sure I’m healthy, compete, because that’s what I love to do, and do it for the guys in the same jerseys as me.”

Butler made a surprising, and reportedly disruptive, appearance with the Wolves during their workout on Wednesday. They canceled practice on Thursday, after Butler went on ESPN to try to explain his motivations and frustrations in a wide-ranging interview that included criticism of the consistency of the effort by teammates Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins. When the Wolves played a preseason game in Milwaukee on Friday, Butler stayed back. The team was off on Saturday.

“I can go out there and I can play,” Butler said.

“It’s all about playing hard. I think I can do that.

When I’m gassed and I’m tired, I’ll look down at Thibs and say, ‘Thibs, I need a break.’”

Though Butler stopped short of assuring his

Juan late Sunday night.

Kat Tolentino put in a 28-hit game, including key hits in the early going of the fifth where the Lady Eagles took control, 4-0 and 9-4, and a late kill that helped cushion the impact of the Lady Falcons’ spirited comeback and put them at match point, 14-12.

Rookie Vanessa Gandler finished

presence on the court on Wednesday when the Wolves visit San Antonio, coach Tom Thibodeau said he expected Butler to play against the Spurs as long as he remains on the roster. The official stance of Thibodeau, who serves as the president of basketball operations, and general manager Scott Layden over the last three weeks has been that the Wolves will deal Butler if it makes sense for the direction of the team.

“Everything’s fluid,” Thibodeau said. “We’ll continue to work through things.”

Asked whether his relationship with Wolves management has changed, Butler said no. As for whether he’s still seeking a trade?

“Maybe,” he said. “I’m going to be passiveaggressive like everybody else.”

The Wolves face Cleveland in their first home game on Friday, and the crowd at Target Center that cheered so loudly for Butler in his standout debut season in Minnesota is more than likely to produce the opposite reaction if he plays against the Cavaliers, considering the dysfunction his demand has caused.

“Sure, boo me,” Butler said. “Ain’t going to change the way I play. Probably going to make me smile more. Please, come with it.”

Despite the distraction he has caused, Butler has continually said he harbors no bad feelings about his teammates. AP

off the Lady Falcons with a hit which top Adamson University hitter Berndette Flora had failed to control, enabling the Lady Eagles to escape with the win, their fourth victory against a loss, just behind the BanKoPerlas Spikers, who are unbeaten in five starts.

Adamson University fell to 0-6 as it failed to sustain a stirring fightback from 4-9 down in the fifth with four straight hits. The Lady Falcons pulled within one again, 12-13, on a Krich Macaslang spike, but Tolentino hammered in a kill and Gandler stepped up to fire the clincher after a brief but frenzied rally to the finish.

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Tuesday, October 16, 2018

Eliminated squads seek graceful exits

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OUR teams eliminated from Final Four contention take the floor on Tuesday with nothing in mind but to close out their campaigns in respectable fashion in the National Collegiate Athletic Association Season 94 seniors basketball tournament at the Filoil Flying V Centre in San Juan City.

With the Final Four cast sealed by San Beda (15-1 won-lost), Lyceum (15-2), Letran (13-4) and University of Perpetual Help (11-6), it’s time for the lower-ranked teams to make graceful exits from the two-round elimination phase.

Cellar-dweller Jose Rizal University (3-14) plays College of Saint Benilde (8-8) for its last assignment at 2 p.m., while Mapùa (5-12) waves goodbye to the season when it clashes with Arellano University (5-11) at 4 p.m.

The Blazers were contenders for the playoffs

midway the second round, but a shock loss to the Emilio Aguinaldo College Generals late last month and the impressive string of wins by the Knights and Altas push them out of the semifinals race.

The Bombers, meanwhile, couldn’t find their groove as they listed only three wins—the last an 81-78 victory over the Generals last Friday.

Jed Mendoza scored a career high of 26 points to lead JRU, and a win by the Bombers would tie them at the last spot with the Generals on a 4-14 card.

The Cardinals absorbed a 64-86 beating at the hands of the San Sebastian College Stags to further pile frustrations on their side.

They could regain their morale if they beat the Chiefs, who got mauled by the semifinalsbound Red Lions, 52-90, last week.

CARLOS AIMS HIGH J

OBIM CARLOS tries to cap a sterling Philippine Golf Tour (PGT) season with a victory in the rich International Container Terminal Services Inc. (ICTSI) Luisita Invitational against an elite international field also going all out to grab the spotlight at the Luisita Golf and Country Club in Tarlac.

That makes the P4-million PGT final leg an event to watch starting on Tuesday with Carlos facing an early test of will against veteran Jay Bayron and title-hungry Michael Bibat at 11:10 a.m. on No. 1.

With two victories and a couple of runner-up efforts in the PGT season about to end, Carlos has secured the Order of Merit (OOM) crown as early as last month when he piled up earnings of P2,411,083 in nine legs against young Korean Kim Joo-hyung’s P1.36-million winnings.

At 25, Carlos is one of the youngest winners of the coveted individual crown, clinching it on this third year on the tour.

But the next four days will be pretty

Ramon Rafael Bonilla

CJ’S WEEK IN UAAP SEASON 81

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N the off-season, whenever University of Santo Tomas (UST) head coach Aldin Ayo was asked about his recruits, he always had a short and sweet answer: “We have CJ Cansino.”

And just after the first round of eliminations in the UAAP Season 81 men’s basketball tournament, Cansino has already proven his coach right for having that much faith in him.

The do-it-all swingman has come to play right out the gates in his rookie season and, in fact, finds himself already among the contenders for Rookie of the Year honors, and even more, for the MVP trophy.

Cansino delivered two of his best games thus far in two of the Growling Tigers’ highoctane matches thus far, averaging 11 points, 11 rebounds, 4.5 assists and one steal in their backto-back wins in a span of four days en route to his first recognition as the Collegiate Sports Press Corps UAAP Player of the Week.

First, he posted a 17-point, 10-rebound double-double to go along with six assists and two steals in their blowout win over University of the Philippines last Wednesday.

Four days later, he didn’t score that much

with just five points, but made his presence felt elsewhere with 12 rebounds and three assists as they took down FEU. For the 19-year-old, all of what he does is for the school that has believed in him ever since he was in high school.

“I always want to give my best for UST,” he said.

What matters more than the individual numbers for Cansino, though, are the victories that also saw many UST players stepping up.

“All our efforts are paying off,” said the former Juniors MVP who vowed to keep working hard.

Cansino beat another breakout Growling Tiger in Zachy Huang, as well as the Ateneo duo of Thirdy Ravena and Ange Kouame, De La Salle main man Aljun Melecio and John Lloyd Clemente, another of NU’s promising firstyear players, for the weekly award.

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Boys’ titleholder University of Santo Tomas, meanwhile, split its first two matches.

After bowing to last season’s runner-up NU, 21-25, 20-25, 25-23, 37-39, on Saturday, UST rebounded with a 25-14, 25-20, 25-22 victory over De La Salle-Zobel on Sunday.

Rey Miguel de Vega led the Tiger Cubs’ conquest of the Junior Green Spikers with 16 points, seven digs and seven receptions, while Jhun Lorenz Senoron added 13 points.

Adamson University took the early lead in the girls division after sweeping its opening weekend.

Now under the tutelege of Lady Falcons assistant coach Onyok Getigan, the Baby Falcons opened the season with a 25-16, 23-25, 22-25,

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the metropolis, and more stores are set to come throughout the country over the next few years.

Gruppo Innovare Corp. is the authorized distributor of Specialized Bicycle Components in the country.

Since 1974, the brand has strived to make the best bikes for riders. The store is set to offer a comprehensive range of technically advanced products, such as the Stumpjumper, the brand’s most versatile trail bike; Turbo Levo and Kenevo, a pair of e-mountain bikes built to give riders the power to ride more trails, the Venge, the fastest road bike; and the Tarmac, the lightest race bike ever made by the brand.

The 2019 Shiv Disc is also set to take center stage during opening day. The all-new

Paez, chasing a follow-up breakthrough triumph at Del Monte, drew Mondilla and Macedonia’s Peter Stojanovski at 7:40 a.m. on No. 1, while Quiban is priming up for his defense of the CAT Open crown against Richard Sinfuego and Joenard Rates at 11:15 a.m. on No. 10.

The event also serves as tune-up for next week’s Central Azucarera de Tarlac Open, the sixth leg of the PGT Asia second season that the young Quiban ruled to nail his maiden victory.

Still, focus will be on Carlos, who actually nailed his first win on the PGT Asia in Riviera last June then reigned at PGT Apo three weeks later before winning against in Iloilo last August. He finished second twice, including a playoff setback to Juvic Pagunsan in Negros, also last August.

Meanwhile, other foreign bets expected to contend in the event, backed by Custom Clubmakers, Meralco, Champion, Summit Mineral Water, K&G Golf Apparel, BDO, Sharp, KZG, PLDT and M.Y. Shokai Technology, Inc., are Aussies Tim Stewart and Nathan Park, Americans Andy Kang, Lexus Leoninh and Pete Vilairatana, Koreans Park Jun-sung and Kang Chon-koo, Japanese Taisei Mochita, Rio Mori and Hiroyuki Ono and Spain’s Salvador Paya Vila.

Members of the Forest Hills ladies team whoop it up after they were crowned as the 2018 Women’s Golf Association of the Philippines Circuit champions recently. Fifth in the overall standing, Forest Hills turned up a notch and won three divisions in the final leg at home to complete the come-from-behind victory and snatch the crown over fancied rivals.

JOBIM CARLOS eyes a big finish in the rich International Container Terminal Services Inc. Luisita Invitational.

MY BALL! NLEX’S Juan Miguel

Tiongson (3) and Meralco’s Raymon Jamito (81) scramble for the loose ball during the Philippine Basketball Association Governor’s Cup game the Bolts won, 108-105, on Sunday night at the Smart Araneta Coliseum.

NONOY LACZA

25-19, 15-9 win over Far Eastern UniversityDiliman followed by a 25-22, 25-17, 25-13 conquest of University of the East.

UST ushered its post-Eya Laure era with a 25-18, 25-14, 25-16 victory over UP Integrated School.

Team captain Imee Hernandez and Renee Lou Penafiel combined for 14 points for the Junior Tigresses.

NU and FEU-Diliman took the solo lead in the boys division with identical 2-0 cards.

After winning over the Tiger Cubs in the opener, the Bullpups prevailed over Adamson University, 25-14, 25-20, 25-22.

The Baby Tamaraws outlasted UE, 23-25, 25-21, 25-19, 22-25, 15-5; and Ateneo, 25-13, 25-12, 25-18, for the weekend sweep.

‘Bike brand made for riders, by riders’ opens shop

PECIALIZED—a bicycle brand made for riders, by riders—gears up for its store’s grand opening on Wednesday at the SM by the Bay at the Mall of Asia Complex in Pasay City.

Considered to be a biker’s haven, SM by the Bay is the perfect location for the first of three Specialized concept stores to open, with Pasig City and Maginhawa Street in Quezon City completing the new stores for 2018.

“We want to serve the riders where they are, and at the same time make it convenient for them to get that one-stop bike shop experience,” said Ritchie Santayana, customer development director of Gruppo Innovare Corp., referring to the choice of locations for the three stores. All three are known to be bike-friendly areas in

tough for the former amateur hotshot with a slew of aces out to foil his drive for a third championship, including Jhonnel Ababa, winner of the last PGT leg in Cebu, and fellow leg winners Dutch Guido Van der Valk (Eagle Ridge), Jerson Balasabas (Philippine Masters), American Nicolas Paez (Del Monte) and Justin Quiban (Bacolod).

Multititled and PGT Order of Merit winner Tony Lascuña and reigning OOM champion Clyde Mondilla are also out to make a bid in the 72-hole championship put up by ICTSI and organized by Pilipinas Golf Tournaments Inc. in an attempt to avert a winless season.

Ababa hopes to come out strong in the group of Erwin Arcillas and Rufino Bayron at 7:30 a.m. on the first hole, Van der Valk also expects to be in the mix early against Aussie Simon Vitakangas and amateur Jolo Magcalayo at 7:35 a.m. on No. 10, while Balasabas faces an early challenge against Lascuña and Ferdie Aunzo at 7:20 a.m., also on No. 1 of the tight, hazard-laden layout that puts premium on iron play and accuracy.

CONGRATULATIONS!

Bullpups open ‘5-peat’ bid with win vs Zobel boys ATIONAL University (NU) set in motion its “five-peat” bid in the girls’ division with a 22-25, 25-23, 25-15, 25-22 win over De La SalleZobel in UAAP Season 81 high-school volleyball action on Sunday at the Blue Eagle Gym. Camille Lamina, filling a huge void left by setter Joyme Cagande, was solid as the Bullpups’ new starting playmaker finished with 20 excellent sets to go with two service aces.

Reigning MVP Mhicaela Belen and Erin Pangilinan each scored 13 points, while skipper Faith Nisperos added 10 points for NU.

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triathlon-specific bike promises unprecedented aero design, storage for fuel and hydration to last the whole race, and the most flexible fit. It is the most complete triathlon bike ever made.

Riders could expect easy and worry-free purchases, and a complete “Specialized experience” through the store’s full scope of services: providing expert advice in choosing the best bike, experiencing the bikes firsthand through their bike test program, bike servicing by trained staff, and the Retül Match and Vantage system, the most technically advanced bike fitting and product matching technology available in the market.

Prizes will also be raffled off while Specialized will give a 10-percent discount on all items on its launch day.

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Sports

| Tuesday, October 16, 2018 mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph Editor: Jun Lomibao

BusinessMirror

POLAND’S Robert Lewandowski (right) jumps for the ball with Italy’s Leonardo Bonucci during the UEFA Nations League soccer match between Poland and Italy at the Silesian Stadium Chorzow, Poland, on October 14. AP

RISING FROM CRISIS

By Andrew Dampf

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The Associated Press

OME—Italy is finally showing signs of emerging from its crisis, nearly a year after failing to qualify for the World Cup. Cristiano Biraghi’s goal in stoppage time earned the Azzurri a much-needed 1-0 win in Poland on Sunday in the UEFA Nations League.

Playing in Group 3 of League A, Poland became the first team to be relegated in the new European competition.

Italy also hit the crossbar twice in the first half, first with Jorginho then with Lorenzo Insigne.

Still, the match appeared headed for a scoreless

draw until Biraghi slid in to redirect a corner inside the far post two minutes into injury time.

“We dominated the game completely and should have scored earlier,” Italy coach Roberto Mancini said. “A 0-0 would have been an unfair result. We played very well but we can still improve a lot. In football you only need time and hard work; magicians do not exist.”

It was the first national team goal for Biraghi, a full back at Fiorentina.

Biraghi celebrated by making a No. 13 with his fingers, a dedication to former Fiorentina captain and Italy defender Davide Astori, who died from cardiac arrest in March.

Astori wore the No. 13 shirt.

“Astori is a part of me,” Biraghi said. “I

dedicate my goal to him because if I’m here it is only thanks to him and all the things he taught me when we played together.”

It was Italy’s first competitive victory in more than a year, since beating Albania 1-0 in World Cup qualifying last October.

It also ended a five-match winless streak in all competitions and gave Italy a slim chance to catch group leader Portugal.

Portugal leads with six points, two ahead of Italy, while Poland is last with one.

Italy hosts Portugal in its next and final match but then Portugal has another game at home against Poland.

World Cup quarterfinalist Russia, meanwhile, needs only one more point to be

promoted into League A following a 2-0 win over visiting Turkey in Sochi with goals in the Group 2 game from Roman Neustadter and substitute Denis Cheryshev.

Turkey will be relegated from League B if it loses to Sweden on November 17, while Russia can move up with a draw in Sweden three days later.

A long pass from goalkeeper Ariel Harush set up Israel’s first goal by Tomer Hemed in a 2-0 win over visiting Albania in League C. Harush also made a series of saves before Israel got its second from Dia Seba.

Israel is three points ahead of Scotland and Albania atop Group 1.

Also in League C, Romania played the

Price, Red Sox bounce back

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OSTON—David Price went home a winner in a postseason start for the first time in his career.

That, he insisted, is all he ever cared about.

“This is bigger than David Price,” he said on Sunday night. “This isn’t about me. This is about the Boston Red Sox.” Price was good enough, the Red Sox relievers were even better, and Jackie Bradley Jr. delivered a go-ahead, three-run double off the Green Monster to lead Boston to a 7-5 victory over the Houston Astros and tie the American League (AL) Championship Series at one game apiece.

Price fell one out short of qualifying for the win, which would have been his first in 11 postseason starts. But it was the first time his team had won a playoff game he started, snapping a record run of October futility.

“It’s baby steps,” said Price, who entered the night 0-9 in 10 career playoff starts. “I expect myself to be great in big moments, and I haven’t done that thus far in my career. But I came here to win, period. I came here to win a World Series, and to do it multiple times. And that’s what I’m about.”

Game Three is on Tuesday in Houston, followed by two more at Minute Maid Park and a chance for the defending World Series champions to clinch a second straight AL pennant at home. Marwin Gonzalez homered for the Astros, who had won five straight postseason games dating to Game Seven of the 2017 Series.

“We came here and won a game, and they played well tonight,” Houston third baseman Alex Bregman said. “It’s going to be a fun series, so we’re looking forward to going back home.”

Price was spotted a two-run lead in

entire second half with 10 men and still drew 0-0 with Serbia.

Serbia, which had captain Dusan Tadic miss a penalty, stayed atop Group 4, one point ahead of Montenegro, which won 4-1 in Lithuania.

Romania is two points back.

Kosovo held on for a 1-1 draw in the Faeroe Islands to remain unbeaten atop Group 3 in League D. After Milot Rashica’s early opener, Rene Joensen equalized after the break for the Faeroes.

In the same group, Azerbaijan and Malta also played to a 1-1 draw, with Araz Abdullayev’s second-half equalizer canceling out Rowen Muscat’s opener for Malta.

the first inning and then fell behind 4-2 before Bradley clanged one off the left-field wall that Gonzalez chased helplessly as it bounced back toward the infield.

Price left leading 5-4 with two on with two out in the fifth before Matt Barnes struck out Gonzalez to end the inning and then pitched a perfect sixth to earn the victory. Ryan Brasier pitched a scoreless inning and erstwhile starter Rick Porcello set the Astros down 1-2-3 in the eighth.

Closer Craig Kimbrel gave up Jose Altuve’s RBI single with two outs in the ninth before Bregman launched a high fly to left that Andrew Benintendi caught a step in front of the Monster.

“I knew I missed it,” Bregman said. “If I got it, it would have been on the street behind Fenway Park.”

Gerrit Cole, who was so dominant in his Division Series start against Cleveland, gave up a double to Mookie Betts—the first batter of the game—as Boston sent eight batters to the plate in the first and scored twice.

The AL West champs tied it in the second on George Springer’s two-run double down the right-field line. And when Gonzalez cleared the Monster—and the seats above them—with a two-run homer in the third, it looked like Price was headed for another loss (he has won two postseason games in relief.) AP PRICE

Sacred buildings

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EAR God, let us remember that sacred buildings are the houses of God. Above all, they are places of prayer in which the Church celebrates the Eucharist and worships Christ, who is truly present in the tabernacle. May we always be guided and inspired to go to sacred buildings. Amen.

GIVE US THIS DAY SHARED BY LUISA LACSON, HFL Word&Life Publications • teacherlouie1965@yahoo.com

Editor: Gerard S. Ramos • lifestylebusinessmirror@gmail.com

THE kitchen of a Pasadena, California, home designed by Betsy Burnham. One key to planning a great kitchen island, Burnham says, is leaving plenty of legroom for barstool seating along one side.

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BOX OFFICE: ‘FIRST MAN’ BLASTS OFF BEHIND ‘VENOM,’ ‘A STAR IS BORN’ D3

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AN urban farmhouse-style kitchen in a Manhattan Beach, California, home also designed by Burnham, where the kitchen island offers ample storage and an extra prep sink for use while cooking.

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

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A KITCHEN in a Santa Monica, California, home likewise designed

by Burnham. Although tiny pendant lights were once popular, designers now tend to choose more substantial overhead lighting above kitchen islands and select fixtures that can express the homeowners’ personal style.

Creating the perfect kitchen island

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By Melissa rayWorth The Associated Press

NTERIOR designer Abbe Fenimore knew that adding a kitchen island was one of the most important decisions she’d make in remodeling her 1940s-era home in Dallas. A well-designed kitchen island can offer storage space, a work surface, comfortable seating—even a cooktop or spare sink.

But like so many aspects of kitchen design, it needs to be planned with extra care. An item this large and central isn’t something you’ll want to replace within just a few years.

So Fenimore and her husband created a cardboard island in their kitchen with precise dimensions to live with it before committing. They tinkered with the details on its size and location. They debated which features were necessary, and which were too much of a splurge or took up too much space.

In the end, that island “has become the literal hub in our home for socializing,” Fenimore says.

We’ve asked Fenimore, founder of the design firm Studio Ten25, and two other interior designers—Los Angeles-based Betsy Burnham and New York-based Jenny Kirschner—for their thoughts on great kitchenisland design and trends.

MAP OUT THE DETAILS BECAUSE careful planning is so important, Burnham

suggests working with a designer on kitchen-island design or finding resources online for drawing up a floorplan.

“You’re going to need about 3 feet of space around it—at least 3,” she says. Homeowners sometimes end up with too crowded a kitchen if they choose an island that’s too large.

“It shouldn’t literally be an island off by itself,” Burnham says, “but it shouldn’t be too close to perimeter countertops either.”

Other important questions: How many people do you want to seat? Leave plenty of depth for people’s legs when they sit on bar stools or seats at your island.

And do you want one level or two? Burnham loves the clean lines of one level surface. But Kirschner sometimes designs an island with two levels—one at counter height for cooking prep and a lower level at table height, so you can sit in chairs rather than bar stools. Families with young kids who worry about little ones falling off bar stools often love this option, Kirschner says.

SPECIALTY STORAGE SOME of Fenimore’s favorite elements are deep, pull-out drawers for pots and pans, and drawers with mechanisms that lift a mixer or other small appliance up and out for easy use. Also: drawers designed to hold containers of spices, and deep drawers holding metal containers for serving utensils, as you might see in a

restaurant kitchen.

“A lot of people underestimate storage needs,” Fenimore says, so really think about how you cook and what you use.

Kirschner also suggests considering what you might want to store that isn’t technically a “kitchen” item. Her island includes drawers for her children’s art supplies, because the island is where they do arts and crafts projects.

Islands often have closed storage, but some people prefer some open shelving.

Fenimore has a trash can built into her island, with a stainless steel opening in the island’s surface where unwanted items can easily be swept during cooking.

It’s a detail that didn’t add much to the cost but makes life exponentially easier.

THE COOKTOP QUESTION IT sounds lovely—having your stovetop in the island, so you can chat with someone seated there while you’re cooking.

But things splatter, Kirschner points out. And tearing up the floor to add power and gas lines can be expensive if your kitchen doesn’t already have these utilities in the middle of the floor. The same goes for adding a sink to your island: These designers say an island sink is a great feature and popular with clients, but you have to consider the expense if you’ll need plumbing work done in the floor.

Last, your cooktop needs ventilation. Do you want a range hood mounted in the ceiling and looming over your kitchen island?

“There are downdraft vents,” Kirschner says, “but they tend to not work nearly, as well” at ventilating your cooking space as overhead ranges do.

MATCH OR COORDINATE? SOME people love an island that seamlessly matches the rest of the kitchen, with countertops and cabinetry identical to what runs along the room’s perimeter.

But our three designers say you can also think of your island like a piece of gorgeous furniture that is coordinated with the rest of the room but a little different. If you want the island to be the kitchen’s focal point, Kirschner says, get creative.

Kirschner loves natural stone surfaces for kitchen islands, especially quartzite, which she says has beautiful veins of color but is more durable than marble. Burnham agrees that a kitchen island can be a dramatic statement, and there is a wide variety of styles. Do you want a European farm-table look, or modern and sleek marble?

“We’ve seen a lot of the dark blues and grays and greens, in reaction to all the white kitchens we were seeing for a while,” Burnham says. “Maybe mix things up. Keep all the countertops the same, but maybe the perimeter cabinetry is one color and the island cabinetry is a different color.” n

Amaia Land offers investment opportunities in Visayas FOR many Filipino families and professionals, acquiring property entails considerable financial responsibility. But future homeowners know that in the long term, it is wiser and more practical to buy a home than to lease one, where you shell out rent money month after month without owning anything.

Investing in your own house or condominium unit, likewise, gives you a priceless feeling of security and fulfillment, knowing that it attests to your hard work and perseverance. However, does the prospect of mortgage payments deter you from purchasing your dream home? Worry no more as topof-mind and affordable real-estate developer Amaia Land Corp. (www.amaialand.com) offers convenient payment options: cash, deferred cash and bank financing.

Investing in Amaia Land homes also means acquiring a lifestyle of leisure and convenience.

For instance, Amaia Steps Capitol Central, the first mid-rise residential development of Amaia Land in Bacolod, offers retail shops for the convenience of its future homeowners.

Residents of Amaia Steps Capitol Central

have access to an invigorating lifestyle amenity courtyard, which will feature swimming pools for adults and kids, a children’s play area, a landscaped garden and a multipurpose hall.

Some units have balconies that look out to soothing views of vast open spaces and Bacolod’s cityscape.

Located 13 kilometers from Bacolod-Silay International Airport, Amaia Steps Capitol Central is near transport hubs such as jeepneys, tricycles and ferry stations. A number of commercial establishments, one of which is Seda Hotel, and hospitals are also accessible.

Another property development worth looking into is Amaia Steps Mandaue, the first mid-rise residential condo development of Amaia Land in Cebu. It is Ayala Land’s residential project in Mandaue, one of the three highly urbanized cities of greater Metropolitan Cebu. Within a 10-kilometer radius from Amaia Steps Mandaue are mixed-use developments such as industrial estates and institutional establishments. It is close to various retail establishments, such as Pacific Mall, Gaisano Grand Mall and S&R. The development is

just 5 kilometers away from Mactan-Cebu International Airport and 7 kilometers away from Ayala Center Cebu.

Still another worthy investment would be acquiring a home in Amaia Scapes Iloilo, the first project of Amaia Land in this bustling province in the South. Amaia offers this affordable housing development to Filipinos who want to upgrade their quality of living through affordable, thoughtfully designed homes in a secure environment.

Last but not the least is Amaia Scapes North Point in Talisay, a fully integrated community that thrives in a relaxed and tranquil setting.

This development has been master-planned with office spaces and commercial areas, such as The District North Point, schools and other residential projects. Amaia Scapes North Point is 7.9 kilometers away from Bacolod City Proper.

With its mission to serve aspiring Filipino homeowners with affordable yet quality homes, Amaia commits in building sustainable communities that support comfortable lives today and in many years to come.

AMAIA Land offers various investment opportunities in the Visayas, including Amaia Steps Mandaue, its first mid-rise condominium development in Cebu.

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Tuesday, October 16, 2018

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Tana French is at her suspenseful best in ‘The Witch Elm’

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By Janet Maslin New York Times News Service

HE title tree in The Witch Elm (Viking), Irish writer Tana French’s best and most intricately nuanced novel yet, is a mysterious character in its own right.

Stately, 200 years old and burned into the collective memory of the Hennessys, this tree embodies the family’s idea of stability. It anchors a garden so lush that as you sink into this book, you can practically feel tendrils twisting around you.

The tree is technically a wych elm, but don’t look that up. The wych elm has a notoriety that must have given French a kernel of plot inspiration. Big deal.

She is in a class by herself as a superb psychological novelist for whom plot is secondary. She is not a crime writer per se; her books just happen to involve deaths and detectives, whose talk and jockeying and gamesmanship she captures perfectly.

The men’s barroom banter in the opening scene of The Witch Elm echoes similar talk in French’s heretofore finest novel, Faithful Place, though this group of conversationalists is more upscale. This book’s first line, from the narrator, Toby Hennessy, might as well be written in neon: “I’ve always considered myself to be, basically, a lucky person.”

So we know bad luck lurks in Toby’s future. We also quickly get a sense of his confidence, obtuseness and whiff of arrogance. The Ivy House, home of that elm tree, was at the heart of his cosseted upbringing.

French begins the novel on what will come to be called “that night.” (There is room for two “that night”s in this luxuriantly long book.) Toby is unwinding with his pals Declan and Sean. All three are in their 20s but only one of them—Toby—is seriously on the rise.

He has lately had his photo in the social pages. He’s also stepped into a messy situation at the art gallery where he works as a publicist, but his entitlement buffers him, to an astonishing degree, from any real consequences at work. The more one of Toby’s old friends drinks, the more he vents about privilege to Toby’s face.

Toby staggers out, refuses the company of his saintly girlfriend, Melissa, and insists on going home alone. And then comes the thunderbolt that splits his life in two: He is beaten so badly by two home invaders that he incurs severe brain damage and memory loss.

He will never have his old confidence or clarity again.

The book whisks him back to the Ivy House through a handy character: old Uncle Hugo, who has medical problems of his own. Hugo is dying of brain cancer, and could badly use some company at the family retreat. Toby is too ashamed of his new frailty to return to his old life. Melissa is too magnificent to abandon him. And soon a new, improvised family of three has taken root at the estate, with many members of the extended family dropping in and out to confuse Toby and jar his memory.

This is where The Witch Elm truly begins. At its core is the impaired Toby’s struggle to make sense of his own memory and identity, especially when he begins to suspect—as we have from that first line about luck—that nothing around him can be taken at face value. We don’t know why the assailants broke into Toby’s place and attacked him so brutally. Death and mystery hover over the book, and French has some serious fun with twisting such conventions of the mystery genre as the locked-room puzzle. The Ivy House’s garden is gated and locked, so the book has a subplot about the disappearance of a key. In the Agatha Christie version of this scenario, there might be a twist or three about when and how the wrong person used the key to gain access to the estate. In The Witch Elm, that key unlocks dozens of other questions, each of them revealing about people’s deepest secrets

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Today’s Horoscope

By Eugenia Last

CELEBRITIES BORN ON THIS DAY: John Mayer, 41; Kellie Martin, 43; Tim Robbins, 60; Angela Lansbury, 93.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Look beyond what’s changing around you or any past regrets you have hovering over you. Look forward with a positive attitude. You’ll develop a plan that will help you swing from negative to positive.

Trust and believe in yourself, not what others say or do.

Walk away from unrealistic ultimatums; you’ll discover a rewarding alternative. Your lucky numbers are 8, 12, 22, 29, 34, 37, 41.

a

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Stay on course.

Completion should be your target. There will be plenty of time after you take care of your responsibilities to revisit something you need more time to mull over. Don’t make a snap decision if you aren’t ready. HH

b

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Get out and about. Visit old friends or sign up for a course that will ensure your qualifications are updated. Make a statement that will leave no doubt in anyone’s mind how you feel or what you expect.

HHHHH

c

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): How well you get along with your peers will count. Be willing to compromise as well as offer sound solutions. If a higher-up makes a last-minute change, do your best to work with the powers that be. HHH

d

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Your ideas will transcend into something you enjoy doing. Associate with people who share your opinions and are also interested in maintaining a similar lifestyle. A partnership will bolster your confidence and courage to forge into new territory. HHH

e

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): You may not like the changes going on around you, but once you analyze the alternatives, you will realize that, if handled properly, you stand to gain. Compromise and self-control will pay off. HHH

f

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Implement change that will make your life better.

Whether it has to do with learning something new that will help you get ahead or making a physical change that will encourage better health, the plans you put in place look promising. HHHHH

g

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Keep your emotions in check or you’ll end up in a vulnerable position. Stay on top of your responsibilities, and avoid interference and meddlers who are looking for someone to blame for shortcomings that have nothing to do with you. HH

h

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Put more time and effort into the way you look and how you treat others. The connections you make will offer information that will give you something to think about regarding how to move forward and in which direction. HHHH

i

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Work diligently to make things better. What you do will far exceed talking about your point of view and what you would like to see happen. Take it upon yourself to get the ball rolling. HHH

and none with an easy answer.

Toby’s new life reconnects him with Susanna and Leon, two cousins with whom he grew up. They are all the same age and uncomfortably close, having shared a lot of things Toby suddenly isn’t so clear on.

But the summer when they were 18-year-old confidants is as vivid in the book as the present day, in which Susanna is a mumsy housewife and Leon a brittle gay man. One of the best scenes has the three cousins engaging in late-night confessions about the worst things each has ever done.

If you believe their revelations, French has a nice bridge she’d like to sell you. Nothing in this book can be trusted, not even Toby’s claims that his brain is untrustworthy. And the stakes are high: This might be the only novel in which a character has ever used “now that I hadn’t killed anyone” as a subordinate clause. That’s no spoiler. There’s a long list of those

who could have said it, and it may or may not be true.

French’s intense interest in identity and selfdeception might make this a slow-building book for some. But if you read her as carefully as you should, it’s a seductively detailed start in which every bit of dailiness is made to matter.

Even Uncle Hugo’s work as a genealogist has its purpose. Toby values the sensory clarity prompted by being in Hugo’s study, where he spent time as a boy.

And for reasons that will become obvious, it’s easier to deal with family trees not his own.

French’s pacing goes pedal-to-the-metal for the book’s last section. Get ready for the whiplash brought on by its final twists and turns. Despite the speed, none of the final revelations feel rushed or artificial.

And French never loses sight of the idea she voiced in her very first sentence. Luck haunts this story every step of the way. n

j

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Don’t shy away from change. What you have to offer is good enough to complete your plans and to reap the rewards you deserve. Don’t sit on the sidelines when you should be in the forefront. HHH

k

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Matters will get blown out of proportion easily if you are too quick to judge or point the finger at someone. Take a step back and let things unfold naturally. Time is on your side, and patience is encouraged. HHH

l

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Get moving.

You have lots to gain by speaking up and putting your plans in motion. Calling on others to pitch in and help will make things move along quickly and help you expand your interests further than you anticipate. HHHH BIRTHDAY BABY: You are tenacious, exuberant and intense.

You are competitive and unpredictable.

‘mary is pun-ferful’ BY TIMOTHY E. PARKER The Universal Crossword/Edited by Timothy E. Parker

ACROSS 1 Lucida Grande, for one 5 Land-based weapon (abbr.)

9 Disney dog 14 Three-tiered cookie 15 Fanciful story 16 100 paisa 17 PC maker 18 Ocean Spray prefix 19 Like confused sailors?

20 Magdalene’s truce?

23 “___ making a list...”

24 Bee ___ (singers) 25 Prepared copy 29 Restroom option 30 Chum 33 16-Across kin 34 Poker kin 35 Flute type 36 J. Blige’s marriage advice?

39 Innovator’s necessity 40 After-bath wear 41 U-turn from 27-Down 42 Always, in verse

3 Hereditary unit 4 44 Truculent 45 Patty, to Bart Simpson 46 It makes connections 47 Coffee add-in not for Tyler Moore?

54 Jeans stuff 55 Hanauma Bay locale 56 Get smaller gradually 57 Chaotic sound 58 All-in-vein stuff 59 Tote board figures 60 Bought a poker hand 61 Interlock 62 In case DOWN 1 Head of a bar?

2 Whale variety 3 “... and ___ the twain ...”

4 Whig’s rival 5 Was irritating 6 Is concerned 7 Listless feeling 8 Zoo relative 9 Barely perceived quantities

0 Bader Ginsburg and Pointer 1 11 Stained-glass window locale 12 Converge 13 Harmless shooter insert 21 100,000 BTUs 22 Mortise joiner 25 “Frasier” pooch 26 LED’s D 27 Type of tube 28 Parting twins?

29 Perhaps 30 Ski trail with tight snow 31 Half of a diet ad caption 32 Somewhat suspicious 34 Parlor, often 35 Satyr’s companion 37 Staples Center, for one 38 Vast multitude 43 Like some flaps 44 Headlong assault 45 Licorice-y flavor 46 Lasting pains 47 Bright gas 48 Words with “step”

9 Maneuverable, as a yacht 4 50 MP’s target 51 Produced 52 Brings to a close 53 Obey the Sabbath 54 Strands in the body

Solution to yesterday’s puzzle:

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PRINCE HARRY AND MEGHAN ARRIVE IN SYDNEY FOR OFFICIAL VISIT

SYDNEY—Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle arrived in Sydney on Monday, a day before they officially start a 16day tour of Australia and the South Pacific.

The trip is their only international tour since the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were married in May, apart from a twoday visit to Ireland.

The prince and the former American actress landed on an overcast morning after a commercial flight from London with a brief stopover in Singapore.

They have 76 engagements scheduled over 16 days in Australia, Fiji, Tonga and New Zealand. In Australia, they will pet a koala in a Sydney zoo, visit in the drought-stricken Outback town of Dubbo and meet indigenous leaders on Fraser Island, the world’s largest sand island, in northeastern Queensland state.

Harry and Meghan were driven from the airport to Admiralty House, the official Sydney residence of Governor General Peter Cosgrove, who represents Australia’s head of state, Queen Elizabeth II, Harry’s grandmother. The couple had no official functions on Monday following a 22-hour flight. Hundreds of well-wishers gathered with umbrellas outside the airport and Admiralty House in the hope of catching a glimpse of the couple. The crowd cheered as the waving couple was driven through the gates of the harborside mansion.

The tour coincides with the Invictus Games in Sydney which start on Saturday. The sporting event founded by Harry in 2014 gives sick and injured military personnel and veterans the opportunity to compete in sports such as wheelchair basketball. The couple will attend the games’ launch and closing ceremonies.

Harry and Meghan said during a television interview last November that they wanted to promote humanitarian causes close to their hearts across Commonwealth-member countries including Australia. The visit comes six months after Harry’s father Prince Charles made his 16th official visit to Australia, primarily to open the 21st Commonwealth Games at Gold Coast city in Queensland. AP

NETFLIX’S ‘THE CHRISTMAS CHRONICLES’ LAUNCHES GLOBALLY

A CHRISTMAS adventure from producer Chris Columbus (Home Alone, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone) and director Clay Kaytis (The Angry Birds Movie), The Christmas Chronicles tells the story of sister and brother Kate (Darby Camp) and Teddy Pierce (Judah Lewis), whose Christmas Eve plan to catch Santa Claus (Kurt Russell) on camera turns into an unexpected journey that most kids could only dream about. After staking out Santa’s arrival, they sneak into his sleigh, cause it to crash and nearly derail Christmas. As their wild night unfolds, Kate and Teddy work together with Santa—as you’ve never seen him before—and his loyal Elves to save Christmas before it’s too late.

“No one is better suited than Kurt Russell to bring our version of a rugged, charismatic and hilarious Santa Claus to life. From our first meeting, he completely threw himself into this iconic role—and grew an impressive beard in the process. It has been a dream come true to work with Kurt in creating what I believe will be the new definition of Santa Claus for generations to come,” said Kaytis.

“Kurt is the definitive Santa Claus—charismatic, tough when needed, with a wicked sense of humor. We’re really excited for audiences to see his performance onscreen and hope The Christmas Chronicles becomes a timeless classic,” said Columbus.

The Christmas Chronicles will launch globally on Netflix on November 22.

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

‘First Man’ blasts off behind ‘Venom,’ ‘A Star Is Born’

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By Lindsey Bahr The Associated Press

OS ANGELES—The Neil Armstrong film First Man settled for a third-place landing at the North American box office in its opening weekend in theaters. The Ryan Goslingstarrer and a host of newcomers, like the familyfriendly Goosebumps sequel and the neo-noir mystery Bad Times at the El Royale, couldn’t unseat last week’s top two films, Venom and A Star Is Born, which again took first and second place.

As the month of October careens toward a box-office record, the crowded marketplace can be a blessing or a curse for some films in their first weekends, although the hope is that they will play for weeks to come.

Such is the idea for Universal Pictures’s First Man, which took flight over the weekend with everything to its advantage—prestige, good reviews (88 percent on Rotten Tomatoes), a movie star (Gosling) and an Oscar-winning director (Damien Chazelle).

Studios estimated on Sunday that First Man earned $16.5 million in ticket sales from 3,640 North American theaters, and $25 million worldwide. That was on par with expectations, but not exactly an eyepopping number for a space epic that cost nearly $60 million to produce.

For Universal Pictures’s President of Domestic Distribution Jim Orr, the box-office intake for a film like First Man, which primarily appeals to older audiences not inclined to rush out to a movie theater on the first weekend, is going to be “a marathon not a sprint.”

“What we know is for these types of adult, fall films for discerning audiences, it’s not about the opening weekend,” Orr said. “We’re very comfortable that it’s going to have a long life at the domestic box office.” Audiences for the PG-13 rated First Man were primarily older (52 percent over 35), male (56 percent) and Caucasian (67 percent) and gave the film a “B+” CinemaScore.

“I never expected First Man to have an opening weekend trajectory that was off the charts,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for boxoffice tracker comScore. “This is a film that has a lot of awards season buzz. It will attract a lot of older viewers and it’s going to keep rolling along and getting more and more accolades. First Man will be standing many weeks down the road.”

The comic-book film Venom, meanwhile, continues to belie poor reviews in its second weekend in theaters. Sony Pictures estimated the film added $35.7 million in ticket sales, down 56 percent from its first weekend, to repeat at No. 1. The film has earned $142.8 million to date from North American theaters.

On the other end of the critical spectrum, Bradley

Cooper’s A Star Is Born continued to ride a wave of goodwill and awards buzz into its second weekend adding $28 million. With total domestic grosses at $94.2 million, the Warner Bros. pic starring Cooper and Lady Gaga will sail past $100 million in no time.

Fourth place went to Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween, which took in $16.2 million (down from the first film’s $23.6-million launch in 2015), while Bad Times at the El Royale debuted in seventh place with only $7.2 million.

The well-reviewed young adult film The Hate U Give, meanwhile, performed well in its expansion.

The drama about a police shooting of a black teenager managed to crack the top 10 playing in only 248 locations, placing ninth with $1.8 million. It expands wide next weekend. And Amazon Studios’s Timothee Chalamet and Steve Carell addiction drama Beautiful Boy opened on four screens to $221,437.

With so many new films at the multiplex, from big-budget blockbusters to awards-friendly dramas, audiences are helping propel October to record boxoffice earnings. It also means some movies are getting lost in the shuffle.

“There is a relentless onslaught of hits that keep on coming from every genre,” Dergarabedian said.

“People are a little overwhelmed right now. There’s a bevy of riches at the marketplace and some films are going to struggle on opening weekend.”

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at US and Canadian theaters, according to comScore.

Where available, the latest international numbers for Friday through Sunday are also included.

1. Venom, $35.7 million ($69.7 million international) 2. A Star Is Born, $28 million ($20.2 million international) 3. First Man, $16.5 million ($8.6 million international) 4. Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween, $16.2 million ($3.7 million international) 5. Smallfoot, $9.3 million ($14.5 million international) 6. Night School, $8 million ($2.2 million international) 7. Bad Times at the El Royale, $7.2 million ($4 million international) 8. The House with a Clock in its Walls, $4 million ($5.6 million international) 9. The Hate U Give, $1.8 million 10. A Simple Favor, $1.4 million ($1.9 million international).

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at international theaters (excluding the US and Canada), according to comScore: 1. Venom, $69.7 million 2. Project Gutenberg, $22.3 million 3. A Star Is Born, $20.2 million 4. Smallfoot, $14.5 million 5. Johnny English Strikes Again, $11.5 million 6. First Man, $8.6 million 7. Shadow, $8.2 million 8. Lost, Found, $8.1 million 9. The House with a Clock in its Walls, $5.6 million 10. Dark Figure of Crime, $5 million. n

SM Cinema holds 1st Sine-Sindak Horror Film Festival THIS coming Halloween, SM Cinema (www.smcinema. com), the largest film exhibitor in the country, together with CrystalSky Multimedia, a key distributor of internationally renowned films, brings the scariest film festival of the year: the first-ever Sine-Sindak Horror Film Festival.

Sine-Sindak features eight international horror movies to send shivers down the spine. n “THE HOARDER” (USA). Ella (Mischa Barton) discovers her boyfriend is renting a secret storage unit, which she initially thought her partner is using as a hideout for his affair. Unfortunately, she together with her best friend Molly (Emily Atack) discover something more terrifying instead. She will also meet a group of strangers to help her face a deranged killer lurking in the darkness. n “THE DEAD ROOM” (USA). Witness the terrifying ordeal of two cynical scientists (Jed Brophy and Jeffrey Thomas) and a young psychic (Laura Petersen) as they encounter a powerful spirit protecting the secrets of an old farm house. n “URBAN EVIL” (SOUTH KOREA). An award-winning movie from South Korea, it follows the story of a mutant boy who must face the uncanny exorcisms in his home town. n “THE EVIL IN US” (USA). Brie Armstrong (Debs Howard) finds her way to survival after her

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friends became infected by a virus from a drug disguised as cocaine that causes psychotic rage.

Brie must endure the deadly game of cat and mouse as she and a detective unravel the mystery behind the drug. n “DARKNESS RISING” (USA). Madison (Tara Holt) with her friends Jake (Bryce Johnson) and Izzy (Katrina Law) visit an old house where her family was massacred. And as the lone survivor, she looks for her mysterious past but, unfortunately, she also awakens the evil residing there. n “HOLLOW ONE” (USA). Rachel Wade (Kate Alden) and her younger sister go to an isolated community and find their missing father after the tragic death of their mother. Instead of getting answers, Rachel must face her family’s dark history and a mysterious figure to fight for their survival. n “THE LOST CASE” (THAILAND). This Thai movie follows the story of two newbies in a production company producing a popular television show called “Ghost Doctor TV.” They’re assigned into a suicide case and as they continue investigating, the two are about to deal with the most horrifying and terrifying encounters of their lives. n “GRACE” (THAILAND). Another movie from Thailand, Grace features the titular girl, as she and her brother plan to kidnap Care, a famous Internet

idol. Grace, also a former Internet idol, will show the world how crazy and pathetic she is as she tortures the Internet personality.

As a treat to the brave moviegoers, a Sine-Sindak

Horror Film Festival ticket is priced at P99. And for those who want to finish the scary ride and enjoy all the horror flicks, an unlimited all-day pass is also offered at P199 each.

UNIVERSAL Pictures’s First Man, which took flight over the weekend with everything to its advantage— prestige, good reviews, a movie star (Ryan Gosling) and an Oscar-winning director (Damien Chazelle)—may have opened in third place at the North American box office, but is predicted to show strong legs throughout the fall/winter season.

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Art

BusinessMirror

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

CITIZEN of World III

CRI de Coeur

www.businessmirror.com.ph

THE Blaze of the Moment

Tennessee Williams made paintings.

They were about love and loss, too.

‘PASTURES’ BY ODDIN SENA AT KAIDA

KAIDA Contemporary presents Pastures by Oddin Sena. In his latest solo exhibit, Sena’s interest in his own personal vulnerabilities continues. He uses various images of landscapes and pastures to signify and represent situations and experiences that affect him and which he strives to reflect on, such as self-doubt and personal growth, making the exhibit itself the artist’s own visual diary.

Pastures is on view until November 5. Kaida Contemporary is at 45 Scout Madriñan Street, South Triangle, Quezon City.

HENRIELLE PAGKALIWANGAN AT BENCAB MUSEUM’S GALLERY INDIGO

HENRIELLE BALTAZAR PAGKALIWANGAN employs pen and ink drawings to present narratives via categorization of objects. Borrowing from the visual vocabulary of natural history illustrations, her practice subverts the neutrality and objectivity of scientific representation, presenting it instead as ideologically laden and subjective. As such, her visual inventories prove to be powerful vehicles for storytelling.

Her exhibition Fragmentary Conversations takes off from the collection of the BenCab Museum, specifically its notable array of bulul artifacts. The bulul has been used to singularly represent the rich fabric of Cordillera life and its diverse material culture. Brought to an almost iconic stature, it continues to be an object-image fraught with paradoxes, reinterpretations and misinterpretations. Its contemporary form is that of a shape-shifter, a postmodern apparition.

Instead, the show aims at a reversal of the trend, a deviation from the current trajectory of the object-image’s cultural representation despite the futility of such an endeavor or the seeming paradox of undertaking such via another artistic depiction. Origins must continue to hold sway after all.

And the stories of the mumbaki, carvers and farmers from the Cordillera must figure in the continued accrual of meaning of the bulul in popular and artistic expressions.

Museum visitors can also visit Philippine Views, an exhibition of 18th- to 19th-century prints at the BenCab Museum’s Sepia Gallery.

Both exhibitions are on view until December 2. The BenCab Museum (www.bencabmuseum.org) is on Km. 6 Asin Road, Tuba, Metro Baguio. It is open from Tuesday to Sunday, 9 am to 6 pm. The museum is closed on Mondays, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.

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By Michael Adno New York Times News Service

EY WEST, Florida—In 1941 Tennessee Williams arrived here to dry out in a little cottage on Duval Street. Over the next four decades, living off and on in Key West, Williams became one of the United States’s foremost playwrights, amassing a body of work that included poems and stories, as well.

He also made hundreds of paintings that give us an intimate, unfiltered look at how he struggled with his sexuality and loneliness and reconciled himself to his place in the world. Nine of Williams’s paintings were on display recently at Florida International University (FIU) at the Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU in Miami.

Like his plays, these works mapped social taboos that still haunt the United States.

After arriving in Key West, Williams settled into an antebellum boardinghouse and rewrote his 1940 play, Battle of Angels, which had run for only two weeks in Boston. Despite this flop, he continued to work tenaciously, eventually remaking the play into Orpheus Descending.

“Perhaps I have really burned my daemon out,” he wrote in his notebook, before adding: “I don’t think so. I think he is still a phoenix and not a cooked goose.” Then Williams moved to the La Concha Hotel, where he wrote the final draft of A Streetcar Named Desire, which garnered his first Pulitzer Prize in 1948. Following his ascension, he hemmed himself into a house several blocks off Duval, finally buying it in 1950. He remained there until his death in 1983. “I work everywhere,” he would say, “but I work best here.”

In Key West, friends would find Williams in front of his typewriter, encircled by manuscripts, paintbrushes and unopened mail. Throughout the 1970s, tourists walked past the house, where he sold paintings—sometimes not yet dry—over his fence.

More than once, he arrived at a dinner with a fresh canvas under his arm as a gift.

Because of his paintings’ haphazard distribution, no one can say how many exist. In the nine works in the Jewish Museum show, Tennessee Williams— Playwright and Painter, references to Jean Genet, Arthur Rimbaud and Wallace Stevens mingle with religious iconography and his own characters. There’s even a portrait of actor Michael York, who starred in Williams’s Out Cry in 1973.

Williams’s preoccupation with the eternal questions of love and death hang over his work. The novelist Edmund White, whose name has become synonymous with gay literature, believed that Williams’s plays Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and A Streetcar Named Desire were—in a veiled way—expressions of gay desire. Though these Broadway-bound works couldn’t risk dealing with these themes head-on, short stories like Desire and the Black Masseur certainly did. “I think he was the first to write about that explicitly,” White said in a telephone interview, adding that this work made gay life more visible to him—and to America—when he was growing up in the 1950s.

“Certainly, as a young gay kid, I turned on to that work tremendously.”

Beyond his plays, Williams’s paintings were a means to delve into subjects like what it meant to be a gay man in the United States. In Le Solitaire, for instance, you can see how lonely his path was. And in Citizen of World III, a young man sits in a chair that resembles the rattan piece Williams owned, its back

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS flexing his creative muscles beyond writing.

forming a halo around the subject, while numbers float in front of him like points on a dart board. At the bottom, the painting’s title is followed by the phrase “SET FOR TARGET PRACTISE,” [sic] possibly alluding to Williams’s frustration with his work’s reception and to the violence directed at him in the 1970s.

At that time, after a Baptist preacher’s advertisement urging readers to “root out sodomites” appeared in the local Key West newspaper, a number of anti-gay crimes followed. Twice, “punks,” as Williams described them, jumped him, which he reported one time to the police, stirring a firestorm of publicity and backlash.

In 1981 author Dotson Rader, Williams’s friend, wrote of one incident in which he and Williams were singing to a group on the street when a man flashed a knife. Rader desperately tried to pry Williams away.

Instead, Williams shouted: “My name is Tennessee Williams! And I am not in the habit of retreating.”

After the group pummeled Williams and Rader, one of the men was identified as a local police officer’s son.

No one was ever charged.

Most chilling was the 1979 murder of Williams’s landscaper, Frank Fontis, a fellow gay man who was shot in the head in the Railroad Museum’s living quarters. That same night, Williams’s house was torn apart. Then his dog vanished. When local men urinated on the lawn, Williams told Rader, “Baby, it’s probably good for the plants.” Teenagers sometimes threw cans onto Williams’s porch, shouting epithets.

Nevertheless, he stayed, writing and painting. These

were ways he coped with volatility.

His paintings are testament to his indomitable character. As Jacqueline Goldstein, the Jewish Museum’s curator, said in an interview, “They’re a window into his consciousness,” revealing a more fluid, layered sense of him.

Susan Gladstone, the museum’s executive director, said the show spoke to how Williams carved out space for gay culture. “Life has changed in America,” she said, “some of it as a result of things he wrote.”

Through his work, Williams revealed the viscera of his own life and a cross-section of the United States. For this, the United States celebrated him—he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980— but his fears of never writing a hit again or descending into madness, like his sister, haunted him.

After The Chicago Tribune dismissed Williams’s play A House Not Meant to Stand in 1982, he wrote to a friend that he was working on a new play called The Lingering Hour. A month later, he wrote to another friend: “I don’t understand my life, past or present, nor do I understand life itself. Death seems more comprehensible to me.”

Less than a year later, Williams was found dead in his room at the Hotel Elysée in New York, after choking on an eyedropper’s plastic cap. Not long before, he had written in his notebook, “I am observing life and the approaching conclusion of my life and I see a long, long desolation about me, now at the end.” Williams continued, “The best I can say for myself is that I worked like hell.” n

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FORTY-FYING THE FUTURE A FTER forty years of staying dynamic and strong in the automobile industry, there is no stopping Isuzu Gencars in soaring through higher level of competency and breaking new grounds in providing excellent service to the consumers.

As it celebrates four decades of car dealership, Isuzu Gencars stays firmly on track in its expansion course. It has grown into a network of seven branches around Luzon consistently proving to be a reliable partner of Isuzu Philippines Corporation (IPC) in providing vehicles of high dependability and quality after-sales service to the public.

No less than the President of Isuzu Philippines Corporation (IPC), Mr. Hajime Koso, lauded the relentless effort of Isuzu Gencars saying that it truly stands out from all the other dealers as far as its comprehensive expansion program is concerned.

The past two years saw it opening up two new branches: Isuzu Gencars Santa Rosa kicked off in late 2017 as the dealership’s seventh branch, and Isuzu Gencars Batangas City opened in 2016 as the sixth branch.

Isuzu Gencars Santa Rosa had a very promising beginning. No less than the president of Isuzu Motors Ltd., Masanori Katayama, was on hand to witness its soft opening on September 27, 2017 along with Mr. Kozo.

Isuzu Gencars Santa Rosa is located along the Santa Rosa-Tagaytay Road in Barangay Pulong Santa Cruz, City of Santa Rosa.

Isuzu Gencars Batangas City, on the other hand, opened in August 2016 at the Grand Terminal Complex on Diversion Road, Barangay Alangilan, Batangas City. The place is known as Automotive Row in Batangas City for being the home of several major automotive vehicle manufacturers.

These two latest branches carry forward the company’s expansion in the fast developing and progressive Cities of Batangas and Santa Rosa as well as other growth centers in the dynamic Southern Tagalog region.

Isuzu Gencars was founded by the late Ambassador Antonio L. Cabangon Chua on October 16, 1978, with the first dealership, Isuzu Gencars Makati, located on a one-hectare property housing a spacious Isuzu vehicle showroom, and a Five (5)-Star service shop at the corner of Chino Roces Avenue (formerly Pasong Tamo) and De La Rosa Street in Makati City.

Following the opening of its maiden branch in Makati, Isuzu Gencars opened up its second dealership in 1996, Isuzu Gencars Batangas, in barangay San Roque, Sto. Tomas, Batangas.

Isuzu Gencars San Pablo,

the company’s third outlet, started its operations on November 17, 2000. It is located along Colago Avenue, San Pablo City, Laguna. This third dealership caters to the brandnew vehicle requirements as well as the vehicle service needs of Isuzu vehicle owners in Laguna, Quezon Province and the Bicol Region.

ISUZU GENCARS MAKATI

Its fourth outlet, Isuzu Gencars Legazpi, opened on July 17, 2006 at J. P. Rizal Street, Legazpi City, Albay, and its fifth outlet, Gencars Naga, on August 8, 2008 at Maharlika Highway, Pili, Camarines Sur.

Both Legazpi City and Naga City outlets serve the motoring needs of major establishments in Bicolandia that require an improved mode of transport with modern facilities for after-sales service and parts.

Besides opening up new outlets, Isuzu Gencars has been expanding existing ones. From 1,100 square meters, Isuzu Gencars San Pablo now occupies a 2,100-sqm lot, while Isuzu Gencars Naga has expanded from 1,900 sqm to 3,600 sqm In Metro Manila, Gencars has acquired a 700 sqm lot in Bangkal, Makati City, where it now operates a stockyard that can accommodate more than 50 new vehicles.

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ISUZU GENCARS LAUNCHES MODERN JEEPNEY AS IT CELEBRATES 40TH ANNIVERSARY

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SUZU Gencars celebrates its 40th anniversary with another achievement to be proud of. Last June 18, 2018, it made motoring history by launching the modern jeepney in a program held at the Philippine Senate.

At the Senate launch, an initial batch of 15 units from Isuzu Gencars were presented to the Senate employees coop by IPC,Isuzu Gencars and Almazora Motors Corp.

The event formally set into motion the government’s Public Utility Vehicle Modernization Plan (PUVMP) that seeks to replace the old-style jeepneys by 2020.

Involvement in the jeepney modernization program makes the celebration of Isuzu Gencars’ 40th anniversary truly special. It firms up the company’s image as

a reliable partner of government in development efforts.

The said modernized jeepney provides both comfort and safety to the public as it deviates from the old design of jeepney. The entry door would always be to the right side of the driver. There would no longer be rear entrance by the estribo or footboard.

There would be no need to stoop while finding a seat because the PUVMP calls for a raised roof with bars and handles that passengers may hold on to. The seats are still side facing, but will allow 22 seated passengers and a few more standing up.

A handful of the units launched at the Senate are now plying some routes and passengers find the bells and whistles impressive. The modern jeepneys have dashboard cameras, speed limiters, CCTV cameras and an automatic fare collection system.

Best of all, those inefficient and air-polluting second-hand engines are replaced with Euro4 emissions-compliant engines (or electric battery-run) that are brand new and reportedly 43 percent more fuel efficient.

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GENCARS

A RELIABLE PARTNER OF ISUZU THROUGH THE YEARS

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HE establishment of Gencars Inc. came about in the late 1970s. It was one of the three companies that Ambassador Cabangon Chua was proudest of at that time. The other two were Eternal Gardens and Fortune Life Insurance and Surety Company, the original insurer that became Fortune General Insurance Corporation and Fortune Life Insurance Company.

ISUZU GENCARS BATANGAS (STO. TOMAS)

Before Gencars, however, he was briefly involved in Supercars, the No. 1 dealer of Ford automobiles in the Philippines. The Supercars plant and showroom were

ISUZU GENCARS STA. ROSA

located along Quezon Boulevard in Quezon City.

Unloading Supercars, he organized Gencars on October 16, 1978. As Nick Joaquin writes in A

Saga of Success, the Ambassador’s biography, “Gencars has General in its name because it has generals in its roster. It came into being when several of Tony’s military col-

leagues asked to organize a company they could invest in.”

“Those friends of mine from the military – some of them Continued on E8

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PIONEERS RECALL HOW IT WAS IN THE EARLY D A COMPANY’S stability relies on the quality of people it keeps. On its 40th year, Isuzu Gencars is proud to have in its roster of employees a number of loyal and dedicated people who have been with the company for decades.

As it celebrates 40 years in the industry, Isuzu Gencars, Inc.’s pioneering staff members recall its humble beginnings, and their personal experiences serving and growing with the company.

Linda Gonzales, executive assistant to D. Edgard A. Cabangon, president and chief executive officer, has been with Isuzu Gencars since it was founded in 1978. “I started my employment with Gencars, Inc. on November 2, 1978 as legal secretary at the Legal Department,” she said, remembering the very first position

that she held in the company. Later on, she was transferred to the Accounting Department, then to the Finance Department, before finally getting assigned to the office of D. Edgard A. Cabangon, company president and CEO, back in 1997.

“Gencars was selling Gemini and Opel cars before, and we were always number one in dealership. We sold more than 500 units monthly, and it was always a happy day at the Sales Department then. More sales, more food for merienda. Maraming benta, eh, kaya masaya,” Gonzales shared, recalling her early days at Gencars. “I

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DAYS OF GENCARS consider all days memorable to me. I just worked and worked and didn’t notice how time flew so fast, and now I realize I have dedicated 40 years of my life to my work here in Gencars,” she added.

Lope M. Caguimbal, a mechanic, also started with Gencars, Inc. in 1978.

In his 40 years of service, he says he will never forget how the late founder of Gencars, Inc., Ambassador Antonio L. Cabangon Chua, inspired him and his colleagues to work hard. “Si Amba ang naging inspirasyon ko sa trabaho at sa buhay mula noon hanggang ngayon. Dahil sa kaniyang pagsisikap ay nagtagumpay at umunlad ang kaniyang buhay. Sa pagharap ko sa buhay ay natuto ako na maging masipag at nagkaroon ng determinasyon sa aking trabaho dahil sinusunod ko ang kaniyang halimbawa,” said Caguimbal as he remembers the late founder with fondness and gratitude.

Elenita Go also draws inspiration from the founder as she performs her daily tasks as a sales executive. “I love Amba so much, as well as Boss Edgard.

Mabuti silang tao, madami silang natutulungan. Inspirasyon ko sila dahil sa kanilang sipag, tiyaga, at kabutihan,” she shared. According to her, the most important lessons that she learned from the Cabangons in her 21 years of service to Gencars, Inc. are “maging masipag at tapat sa tungkulin.”

Lerma O. Nacnac joined Gencars 36 years ago as accounts receivable

clerk and rose steadily through the years to become executive vice president. For her, the company has been “my second family and home... I have seen its growth from a simple organization to a formidable company.” This impressive growth happened under the watchful eyes of the founder, Amba, and now his son D. Edgard, whose management style, she says, “has been patriarchal and fraternal rather than formal and impersonal.”

The three lessons that she values most from Amba are honesty, making things happen instead of waiting for them to happen, and always aspiring for excellence no matter how humble one’s task is.

These four Gencars pioneers stand out as fine examples of the dedicated workers who have helped raise the company to be a leading distributor of Isuzu’s excellent automotive products and services. They are an inspiration to the rest of the work force to aim for excellence always.

Armed with forty years of experience in the automotive dealership and after-sales service, Isuzu Gencars envisions a radiant future ahead. With its leaders and officers that guide the whole company and highly-skilled and dedicated employees, Isuzu Gencars is truly well-equipped to face the challenges in the automotive industry and surely on it’s way to more decades of greater achievements.

Messages

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ONGRATULATIONS to Gencars, Inc. on the celebration of its 40th Foundation Anniversary! Gencars, Inc. has been one of Isuzu’s most reliable partners in the Philippines since it was founded by Ambassador Antonio L. Cabangon Chua in 1978. Proof of this are the multiple Dealer of the Year Awards (DOYA) that it has received through the years, and the outstanding performance of its branches around the country.

Because of its consistent notable performance, it is also not surprising that Gencars, Inc. was able to expand quickly through the years, bringing Isuzu’s line of dependable sports utility vehicles and trucks, along with excellent after-sales services, to many different locations in the country. We are proud to recognize that it has indeed become a reliable partner of Filipinos residing in the Cities of Makati, Batangas, Legazpi, Naga, San Pablo, Santa Rosa, and Sto. Tomas, Batangas, where its dealerships are located, for all their motoring needs.

On behalf of the team members of Isuzu Philippines Corporation, I wish Gencars Inc. more successful years ahead.

Mabuhay!

HAJIME KOSO President of Isuzu Philippines Corp.

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ITH great pride and joy, I am sending my warmest congratulations to the whole family of Isuzu Gencars, Inc. on our 40th anniversary.

I am humbled by the milestone that we have achieved. Staying in the automobile industry for four decades is such a blessing.

Longevity in any business industry is a dream that every company wishes to realize. But today, that dream becomes a reality for us.

Not all enterprises survive this long in business, only the most stable ones. It is worth noting that we owe our stability to the good foundation that my late father and the founder of Gencars, Amb. Antonio Cabangon Chua, laid out for the company. Though we terribly miss him especially during these celebratory moments, his memories and the wisdom he imparted will always make him a huge part of our achievement.

Since its establishment on October 16, 1978, we persevered to be true to his vision of excellence for Gencars when he established the company: “To be one of the best dealers in the motor vehicle industry, committed to market only the best products, and to provide quality service to achieve total customer satisfaction.”

I also believe there is no better time to express my gratefulness for the hardwork and perseverance of the officers and staff, sales people and service personnel of Isuzu Gencars who played a great part in establishing our good reputation of providing high quality vehicles and efficient service to our customers who patronized us through the years.

Inspired by the theme of our celebration – Forty-fying the Future – let us continue working in a strong spirit of teamwork, diligence and perseverance. And let us always be faithful to our founder’s dream of bringing to our people only the best vehicles to meet their needs, and only the best automotive products and services to give them total satisfaction.

Again, happy anniversary and mabuhay tayong lahat.

D. EDGARD A. CABANGON President and Chief Executive Officer

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5-Star Service Division upgrades skills

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SUZU Gencars Service Division promises to hold on to its name as a 5-Star Service Center and one of the best providers of automotive service in the country.

With its pool of client-friendly service crew who are equipped with the latest technical expertise in car maintenance and repair, Isuzu Gencars Service Division is quite capable of delivering total customer satisfaction. In most cases, employees and technicians are holders of certificates from the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA),

The continuous training and skills upgrading of its personnel received a boost recently as Isuzu Philippines Corporation (IPC) held a review and appraisal of the Isuzu Gencars Service and Parts operations for several days in September.

Three IPC executives came to conduct the review and appraisal and give pointers during briefing sessions with employees. They were Masato Nagahashi and Daisuke Imaizumi, who reviewed and spoke about Parts operations; and Akihide Ito, on Service operations.

In a letter, D. Edgard A. Cabangon, company president and CEO, thanked Hajime Koso, IPC president, for providing a “very rewarding learning experience” on Parts and Service operations.

Service Division personnel who attended the sessions highly noted that they gained valuable insights and knowledge on how to improve their work.

The emphasis placed by Isuzu Gencars on manpower training has earned for the Service Division numerous awards for quality operations from IPC. Isuzu Gencars, like IPC, believes that its responsibility to its customers extends to the upkeep and maintenance of its vehicles.

IPC executives Akihide Ito, Masato Nagahashi and Daisuke Imaizumi (seated foreground) with D. Edgard A. Cabangon, Isuzu Gencars president, and IPC president Hajime Koso (third and fourth from right, respectively) along with other executives of the two companies.

including National Certificates 1 to 4.

Mechanics and other car care workers receive regular update training to ensure that their skills continuously improve. They are trained to repair all kinds of Isuzu vehicles, especially trucks.

The Isuzu Gencars Service Shop is classified as a 5-Star automotive service shop after passing the stan-

dards set by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).

For years, it has been among the industry’s best service provider for vehicles.

Gencars Service Shop’s top-of-the-line equipment also ensure more efficient car maintenance services. Among these are Tech II Diagnostic Tool and Global Isuzu Diagnostic Service System.

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ISUZU GENCARS HOLDS UNIQUE DISTINCTION AS

PROVIDER OF POPEMOBILE I N January 2015, Isuzu Gencars became part of the historic visit of His Holiness Pope Francis to the Philippines by being the provider of the Popemobile that transported the Pontiff to various places in the country during his visit. This was made possible through the initiative of the late Ambassador Antonio L. Cabangon Chua, founder of Isuzu Gencars, Inc.

But the company’s special connection to the Pope did not end there. Later that same year, Isuzu Gencars donated a second Popemobile to the Vatican, which the Pope now uses in going around and meeting people, and during his visits to other countries.

A “beautiful car” was how Pope Francis described the Filipino-made Popemobile, for which Gencars used an Isuzu D-Max. It was customized with the help of Almazora Motors to adhere to the strict Vatican standards. The two-cab vehicle was converted into a single cab one, making

room for the pope’s chair and additional seats for his companions.

A plexiglass shield was secured in front to protect the pope from the elements. Sturdy railings were attached to the sides of the vehicle for the pope and his security personnel to hold on to while in transit.

To give the Popemobile a Filipino touch, the pope’s emblem was emblazoned with a banig design.

The chair is made from Italian leather with red carpet imported from Italy.

Impressed by the Isuzu Popemobile, Pope Francis requested a similar unit to be brought to the Vatican, which Gencars has graciously granted. The second Isuzu Popemobile, also customized with the help of Almazora Motors, was presented to Pope Francis in Rome

by Isuzu Gencars president and chief executive officer D. Edgard A. Cabangon in October 2015.

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A RELIABLE PARTNER OF ISUZU THROUGH THE YEARS Continued from E3

retired, others still active – raised the capital among themselves while I organized our project into a corporation. Among my partners were General Espina, General Teruel, and General Mangonon.

Because of them I decided to call

our agency General Cars, or Gencars. There were other officers who invested, like Colonel Brazil and Colonel Manlongat,” the Ambassador told Joaquin.

Gencars began its journey to success as one of the most trusted and reliable distributors of Isuzu’s powerful vehicles with

the very first dealership at the corner of Dela Rosa Street and Chino Roces Avenue (formerly Pasong Tamo) in Makati City.

Back then, Gencars was a franchised dealer of General Motors Philippines, Inc. (GMPI) for Isuzu Gemini and Opel cars.

Isuzu’s operation in the Phil-

ISUZU GENCARS BATANGAS CITY

ISUZU GENCARS SAN PABLO

ISUZU GENCARS NAGA

ISUZU GENCARS LEGAZPI

ippines was briefly interrupted.

But upon its resumption in 1989 as Isuzu Motors Pilipinas, Inc., Gencars once again became its franchised dealer.

Right on cue and with renewed vigor and dynamism, Amb. Cabangon Chua passed the baton to his son and now Isuzu Gencars’ CEO and President, D. Edgard A. Cabangon. From then on, the founder’s son continued his father’s commitment to provide the

consumers a wide variety of quality vehicles. He was able to maintain the status of Gencars as one of the highly-competitive automotive dealers in the country up to the present.

Isuzu Philippines Corporation (IPC) took over the business operation from Isuzu Motors Pilipinas in July 1996, and, due to its outstanding track record, Gencars was awarded a franchise as one of its dealers.

In November of the same

year, Gencars opened its second dealership in Barangay San Roque, Sto. Tomas, Batangas.

The very first expansion of the company provides for the vehicle requirements and the motoring service needs of motor vehicle owners living in the Southern Tagalog Region.

The company adopted the trade name Isuzu Makati, with Gencars, Inc. as its corporate name, in 1997.