BusinessMirror October 31, 2018

PESO-RENMINBI TRADING TO CUT BUSINESS COSTS, SPUR FLOW OF CHINESE INVESTMENTS

By Bianca Cuaresma @BcuaresmaBM & Rea Cu @ReaCuBM

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AT the Peso-Renminbi Trading Community MOA signing on Tuesday were (from left) Manuel Gomez, president and CEO, Asia United Bank; Pedro Florescio, EVP and treasurer, Banco de Oro Unibank Inc.; Deng Jun, country head, Bank of China Ltd.-Manila Branch; Rinaldo Fernandez, VP, Bank of the Philippine Islands; Michelangelo Aguilar, president and CEO, Bank of Commerce; William Whang, president, China Banking Corp.; Antonio Moncupa, vice chairman and CEO, East West Banking Corp.; Fernand Antonio Tansingco, SEVP, treasurer, Metropolitan Bank and Trust Co.; Patricia May Siy, president and CEO, Philippine Bank of Communications; Alfredo Yao, chairman emeritus, Philippine Business Bank; Florencia Tarriela, chairman, Philippine National Bank; Alberto Pedrosa, SEVP, treasurer, Rizal Commercial Banking Corp.; Raul Martin Pedro, EVP, treasurer, Security Bank Corp.; and Dr. Justo Ortiz, chairman, Union Bank of the Philippines. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

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Wednesday, October 31, 2018 Vol. 14 No. 21

Extend tax perks for tourism ecozones, Tieza asks Congress

By Ma. Stella F. Arnaldo

@akosistellaBM Special to the BusinessMirror

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HE Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority (Tieza), the infrastructure arm of the Department of Tourism (DOT), has proposed amendments to the Tourism Act of 2009 in Congress to head off the expiry of tax incentives extended to locators in tourism economic zones (TEZs).

The number of jobs expected to be generated over 10 years by eight private TEZs with six tourism enterprises, at an investment of P80 billion, as estimated by Tieza

This developed as lawyer Joy Bulauitan, Tieza assistant chief operating officer for administration and finance, clarified that the Continued on A8

By Cai U. Ordinario @cuo_bm

ESPITE the series of rate increases implemented by the Central Bank, First Metro Investment Corp.-University of Asia and the Pacific (FMIC-UA&P) Capital Market Research remains confident the economy will post a growth of above 6 percent in the third quarter.

In its latest Market Call, FMICUA&P Capital Market Research said they expect that investments and government spending will boost economic growth, amid the weakness in consumer spending due to high inflation.

“While the BSP has raised policy rates by another 50 basis points [bps] in late September, we do not rule out the possibility of a further rate increase in the fourth quarter should inflation rise even faster.

We, however, think it has peaked in September, and so remain a bit sanguine about GDP growth in the third quarter, which should improve on the second-quarter growth,” the think tank said.

FMIC-UA&P Capital Market Research said capital goods imports increased by 39 percent in July while government spending on infrastructure grew 28.7 percent in August.

T hese, together w ith positive exports growth and a 5-percent growth in overseas Filipino workers’ (OFW) remittances, the

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‘Arcana imperii’ and the real responsibility to protect

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Despite rate hikes, GDP to grow above 6% in Q3–think tank

See “GDP,” A8

See “Peso-Renminbi,” A2

BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

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HE direct foreign-exchange trading of the Chinese renminbi (RMB) and the Philippine peso will allow the country to corner a bigger share of China’s $120-billion overseas investments, according to the Department of Finance (DOF).

On Tuesday Bank of China Manila and 13 other banks signed a memorandum of agreement (MOA) to create the Philippine Renminbi Trading Community (PRTC).

The MOA provides the provisional framework, scope and criteria for membership of the PRTC, which would be under the direct supervision of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP). The PRTC will serve as the precursor leading to the launching of the peso-renminbi foreign-exchange spot market next month. The PRTC will later open its doors to new members seeking to take part in the trading platform.

Teddy Locsin Jr.

FREE FIRE Statement delivered by Teodoro L. Locsin Jr., Permanent Representative, Permanent Mission of the Republic of the Philippines to the United Nations, during the Third Committee Discussion on Agenda Item 111: International Drug Control, 73rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly, UN Headquarters, New York, October 4, 2018.

Continued on A10

Today’s issue continues the anniversary folio marking BusinessMirror’s 13th year in the industry.

It features some of the most remarkable ‘Forward Lookers’ who help make sense of the past and present, and offer hope and a clear vision of the future. Story on A6-A7.

Palace insists BOC takeover part of AFP ‘lawless violence’ role

By Bernadette D. Nicolas @BNicolasBM

A ON TRACK This is how the newly deployed MRT 3 coaches, running along Edsa from Quezon City to Pasay City, look like. The Department of Transportation earlier announced it was finally fielding, after two years, the first batch of trains bought from a supplier in Dalian, China, by the previous administration. The coaches had to be retrofitted to cure technical problems. NONOY LACZA

SMIC, BDO on ‘Forbes’ companies list

By VG Cabuag

S

@villygc

M Investments Corp., the holding firm of tycoon Henry Sy, is among the top ranked on Forbes’s list of companies that are recognized for being trustworthy and fair.

The ranking of the Forbes 2018

PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 53.5990

Global 2000-Best Regarded Companies was based on the global polling of the magazine, in partnership with Statista, a provider of market and consumer data. It conducted a poll among 15,000 people from 60 countries that provided their opinions about the Forbes 2018 Global 2000 companies.

The respondents evaluated com-

panies based on their reputation, including topics on trustworthiness, honesty, social conduct, performance of the company’s products and the company as an employer.

The top 250 companies which received the highest total scores were named the Forbes 2018 Global 2000-Best Regarded Companies.

Continued on A8

S the President’s order for the military to take over the “graft-ridden” Bureau of Customs (BOC) drew flak for being unconstitutional, Malacañang insisted that there is still constitutional basis for the President to do so, citing the ground of “lawless violence,” which, under the Charter, can trigger the President’s “call out” power over the Armed Forces.

On Tuesday Malacañang also maintained that the President is not violating any consttitutional provision since he is not appointing or designating any particular member of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).

“But the President is not appointing or designating any particular member of the AFP. As we said earlier, these people will be there first to make their presence felt, to create the military presence and hopefully will intimidate those corrupt people there. Number two, to

assist them,” Presidential Spokesman and Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador S. Panelo said in a briefing with Palace reporters on Tuesday.

Moreover, Panelo justified the President’s move, saying that there is lawless violence in the BOC so the President needed to do something about it as it endangers the security of his countrymen.

“And let us not also forget that earlier on, the President has declared a state of lawlessness, and the provision of the Constitution says, when there is lawless violence, then the President can call out the AFP. Now the lawless violence would certainly refer to what is happening in the BOC,” he argued.

However, some senators had earlier questioned the legality of the President’s move.

Sen. Francis G. Escudero said the factors needed by a President as Commander in Chief to call out the AFP “are not attendant at the Bureau of Customs.”

n JAPAN 0.4770 n UK 68.5853 n HK 6.8341 n CHINA 7.6988 n SINGAPORE 38.7416 n AUSTRALIA 37.8141 n EU 60.9689 n SAUDI ARABIA 14.2897

See “BOC,” A2

Source: BSP (30 October 2018 )

News

BusinessMirror

A2 Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Bangsamoro Organic Law seen to hurdle SC challenge

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By Cai U. Ordinario

@cuo_bm

HE Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL) can withstand the constitutionality test amid the petition for certiorari filed against it at the Supreme Court, according to Deputy Speaker and Sulu Rep. Munir M. Arbison.

In a statement, Arbison said the petition to review the constitutionality of the BOL filed by Sulu Gov. Abdusakur Tan II in October 11 at the Supreme Court will likely be “dismissed for lack of merit.”

Arbison also said Tan’s claims were political in nature and that Congress did not commit a grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction when

BOC. . .

Continued from A1

He said that under Article VI, Section 18 of the 1987 Constitution, the President can only call out the AFP “to prevent or suppress lawless violence, invasion or rebellion.”

“Perhaps what PPRD meant was for the AFP to assist in the law-enforcement function of the Bureau of Customs which, to a certain degree can be done as with other law-enforcement activities where the AFP has been called upon to assist the PNP,” he said in a statement.

“Although we respect his right to question the passage of the law, the combined legal minds of the Senate and the House of Representatives have already painstakingly scrutinized the constitutionality of the BOL. If at all, this latest challenge on the new law is to affirm its constitutionality with finality.” —Arbison

it passed the BOL. “Although we respect his right to question the passage of the law, the combined legal minds of the Senate and the House of Representatives have already painstakingly scrutinized the constitutionality of the BOL. If at all, this latest challenge on the new law is to affirm its constitutionality with finality,” Arbison said.

“Such facts are evidence that the governor is merely using his position for the furtherance of his personal interest. His purpose is purely political and for his family’s vested interest, that is, the full control of the province of Sulu,” he added.

A rbison sa id loca l leaders and their constituents supported the BOL. They include local chief executives and residents of the municipalities of Parang, Omar, Luuk, Tapul, Talipao, Indanan, Tongkil, Panglima Estino,

Escudero also pointed out that the Article XVI, Section 5 (4) of the Constitution also states that: “No member of the Armed Forces in the active service shall, at any time, be appointed or designated in any capacity to a civilian position in the Government including GOCC’s or any of its subsidiaries.”

In separate text messages sent to the BusinessMirror, lawyers also labeled the move as “unconstitutional.”

Constitutional law expert Dan Gatmaytan still doesn’t think there is lawless violence in the BOC to justify the President’s move, which he said should be ideally questioned before the courts.

Asked what constitutes lawless violence, Gatmaytan said: “Literally—when you need to put order because people are becoming violent.

Not because there is corruption.”

He also noted that if the President continues with this order, this could also be a ground for impeachment.

“But let’s face it, the President has the numbers in the House of Representatives,” he said.

For lawyer MichaelYusingco, the constitutional provision, especially Article XVI Section 5 (4) is very clear and does not leave room for creative interpretation.

Yusingco agreed with the Gatmaytan that there is no lawless violence in the BOC. “There is a

Pangutaran and Jolo, Panamao.

He added that constituents in other municipalities are in support of the peace efforts of the administration and do not share the sentiments of Governor Tan. Arbison said all municipalities were represented and heard during the public hearing for the proposed measure.

When the BOL was passed, multilateral development banks such as the Asian Development B ank (ADB) and the World Bank welcomed the passage of the piece of legislation.

The ADB said the passage of the BOL will increase the country’s chances of meeting its poverty reduction goals, while the World Bank said it would ensure lasting peace in Mindanao.

Both multilateral development banks expressed increased support to the Philippines, particularly on efforts to boost economic growth, development and lasting peace in Mindanao. huge lawlessness problem in the BOC but not the same as the term‘lawless violence’contemplates,” he added.

Yusingco also noted that this latest move looks like “a bid to resurrect the Marcos-era military organization” and that the point of the whole provision was to “insulate the military from corruption.”

“This was aimed to prevent the recurrence of the Marcos-time AFP. Designed to restore the dignity and integrity of the Armed Forces. Which many believe they have attained now,” he said.

Panelo: Context is key

HOWEVER, Panelo said the provision has to be considered in relation to the other constitutional provisions. “You cannot let, or you cannot let this President [be] hostage to a particular provision without relating to previous provisions that grant him the authority as well as the obligation, and the duty to serve and to protect this nation,”he added.

Last Sunday the President announced in a speech that he will ask the AFP to take over the BOC. However, a written order has yet to be released.

This announcement came days after he “promoted” then-Customs Chief Isidro Lapeña to a Cabinet-rank position, particularly as chief of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority at the time that the House of Representatives is conducting a probe on the P11-billion shabu shipment controversy.

He also asked then-Maritime Industry Authority (Marina) Administrator and former AFP Chief of Staff Rey Leonardo B. Guerrero to replace Lapeña as BOC chief.

Party-list reps weigh in

PARTY-LIST representatives said on Tuesday that placing the BOC under the mandate of the AFP runs contrary to the Constitution.

In a statement, former Bayan Muna Partylist Rep. Neri J. Colmenares said appointing or designating a member of the Armed Forces who is in the active service to a civilian position in government or any government-owned and -controlled corporation is not permitted under Article XVI Section 5 (4) of the 1987 Constitution.

Colmenares also said Article IX Section 7 of the Constitution stated that no appointive official shall hold any other office or employment in the government or any subdivision, agency or instrumentality thereof, including GOCCs. “The AFP takeover of the BOC is a direct violation of these provisions and the agency should be given back to civilian authorities.

The military and the PNP [Philippine National Police] are also not known for being clean as we have launched many congressional investigation on pasalubong and pabaon, ghost returnees, helicopter deal and others,” Colmenares said.

Magdalo Party-list Rep. Gary C. Alejano agreed with Colmenares that the move was unconstitutional and cited Article XVI Section 5 (4) of the 1987 Constitution.

Alejano said this is not also part of the mandate of the AFP. He said the AFP should only be focused on territorial defense, where the country also lacks military forces.

“Our military has limited forces and it is being overstretched with additional burdens outside of its official functions such as taking over the BOC,” Alejano said.

Alejano recommended that instead of placing the BOC under the AFP, the government should simply create a commission to study long-term solutions to address BOC’s problems.

He said BOC’s problems were also brought about by the “the prevailing political and justice systems in the country” and that reforming these systems should come hand in hand with changes at the BOC. With a report by Cai U. Ordinario

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Senate panel to seek court order to bare bank records of mega-drug deal suspect

By Butch Fernandez

S

@butchfBM

ENATE Blue Ribbon Committee probers are poised to go to court to compel private bank Banco de Oro (BDO) to provide confidential records on bank accounts linked to multibillion drug deals.

“We asked BDO for the records [on accounts involving illegal drug transactions] but we were told to get a court order,” Sen. Richard Gordon, probe chairman, said on Tuesday.

He added: “We will do that.”

Interviewed after presiding over the 19th public hearing of the Blue Ribbon inquiry into the P6.8-billion shabu shipment from China, Gordon said the committee is also expanding their request as “we also want to obtain records on the magnetic filters brought into the country.”

If needed, Gordon told reporters he will “file a bill to compel” the BDO to provide bank records linked to the drug deals. “If a subpoena duces tecum [issued by the Senate] to compel submission of the requested documents is not enough, we will go to court.”

The senator told reporters he was pleased with the progress of the probe, saying “we are covering more ground in the investigation [into the shabu smuggling case].”

This, as Gordon noted probers’ findings that bank checks were also used to pay rent for the Cavite warehouse used to store the magnetic filters containing the

Peso-renminbi. . .

“We are now taking the first steps toward building the mechanism for the direct conversion of our currencies. The volume of business between our two economies justifies establishing this,” Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III said in his speech before the MOA signing.

“The banks par ticipating in this memorandum of agreement will set in motion the process of setting up a self-regulating organization that will oversee a transparent currency trading platform. We anticipate a significant reduction in the cost of doing business across our two economies as a result of this,” he added.

Dominguez said the creation of the currency trading platform will reduce the costs of doing business for Chinese and Filipino businessmen and avoid the“friction”generated by pricing the exchange rates of the peso and RMB in dollars, which slowed down trade and investments.

He said businessmen from the both the Philippines and China could save as much as 3 percent of transaction value once the direct currency trading platform is up and running.

“That will add up to a substantial sum given the exponential growth of our business partnerships.”

The finance chief said Chinese investments in 174 countries and jurisdictions last year amounted to $120 billion. Cornering just a little over 1 percent of this figure with the establishment of the currency trading platform would translate into $1.5 billion in foreign direct investments (FDI) from China alone.

Also, estimates show that the seamless movement of currencies under the trading platform could save Chinese investors up to P750 million in costs, which would make the Philippines an attractive destination for Chinese FDI. China is the Philippines’s top bilateral trading partner. Trade between the two countries amounted to $14.4 billion as of end-June.

Dominguez said the Philippines hopes to set up similar currency conversion arrangements with its other major trading partners, such as Japan, where a yen-peso direct conversion platform could be set up.

‘Pioneering’

THE PRTC vowed to establish, administer and promote the peso-renminbi market. This market is an end-to-end platform for the quick conversion of the peso to renminbi and vice versa, covering all stages of a trade cycle.

The initial members of this community are Asia United Bank, Bank of China Manila, Bank of Commerce, Bank of the Philippine Islands, BDO Unibank, China Banking Corp., East-West Banking Corp., Metropolitan Bank and Trust

illegal-drug shipment. “A certain Hsu Chung Chun issued a BDO check for P900,000.00 covering four months’ advance and two months’ deposit for the warehouse... that was used only for two days,” the Senate chief prober added.

Gordon, citing “loose ends,” indicated that Senate probers need to hold follow-up hearings of the Blue Ribbon inquiry into the P6.8billion shabu shipment from China that “managed to enter the country through the Manila International Container Port and slipped through the inspection of the Bureau of Customs.”

Gordon said, “We are still tying up loose ends,” and other key witnesses summoned to testify have yet to show up to help the Blue Ribbon panel unravel the big-time drug smuggling operation. For instance, Gordon indicated they have yet go deeper into the “Chinese connection” in big-time illegal drug operations in the country.

Gordon said they have yet to hear testimonies from other key witnesses “who have something to say,” but are apparently having second thoughts about showing up due to “concerns for their personal safety.”

For instance, the senator cited former Customs Commissioner now Technical Education and Skills Development Authority Chief Isidro S. Lapeña who was a “no show” at Tuesday’s hearing. “It only extends the probe; he [Lapeña] should shed light because people are doubtful,” Gordon added.

Continued from A1

Co., Philippine Business Bank, Philippine Bank of Communications, Philippine National Bank, Rizal Commercial Banking Corp., Security Bank Corp. and Union Bank of the Philippines.

In a statement, Bank of China Manila said they expect the renminbi transaction volume in 2018 between Filipino and Chinese traders to surpass 10 billion renminbi.

“The PRTC will likely lead to increased direct trade between Chinese and Philippine businesses because there will be no need to first exchange Philippine pesos to US dollars for conversion to Chinese RMB,” Bank of ChinaManila Country Head Deng Jun said.

The local RMB Transfer System (RTS), as the first phase of the three-stage development plan to develop the domestic RMB services in the country, was launched in 2014. The Philippine RMB/PHP Trading Market, to be operated by the PRTC, is the second stage of the development plan.

The RMB/PHP Trading Community is a pioneering structure and will be a self-regulated body, in which ideas will be shared among members and with financial regulators.

“We understand that it will take time for the local businessmen to change their habit to accept RMB as the first choice in global payments. Nevertheless, we must remember that the RMB/PHP Trading Community’s ultimate goal is to lower transaction cost and promote the use of RMB as it will definitely help Filipino businesses,” Jun added.

Central Bank support

THE Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) expressed support for the MOA signing, saying the set up of the PRTC will advance the foreign-exchange market in the Philippintes.

“Governor [Nestor A.] Espenilla and the BSP fully support the signing of the MOA. It signals the start of a non-discriminatory and well-functioning trading community. It diversifies currency options and strengthens the FX market governance framework. It builds trust and investor protection mechanisms, supports product innovation and market development,” BSP Deputy Governor Chuchi G. Fonacier said in her speech.

At present, the peso and renminbi are priced against the US dollar as an intermediate peg.

This subjects them to conversion and other friction costs.

“By establishing the PHP-RMB Trading Market, the Philippine peso can be directly priced against the RMB. Initial participating bank members can streamline their currency conversion costs via a fair, transparent and resilient domestic FX trading platform,” Fonacier said.

Economy BusinessMirror

A4 Wednesday, October 31, 2018 • Editor: Vittorio V. Vitug

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Jeepney, bus fare hikes to push through in Nov

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EEPNEY and bus fare hikes will take effect in November as the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) turned down on Tuesday an appeal filed by a commuters’ group seeking to halt the implementation.

In its decision, the LTFRB said the motion for reconsideration filed by Arlis Acao and Rodolfo Javellana of the United Filipino Con-

sumers and Commuters (UFCC) did not raise new issues that would lead to a review of its earlier decision to grant the fare hikes.

“On the merits of the motion for reconsideration, upon careful examination by the board, the instant motion failed to present new issues for the board to reconsider its earlier findings. It is apparent that the issues raised therein had already been passed upon by the board in resolving the instant petition for fare increase as the same issues were raised by oppositor Acao in his opposition filed on June 13, 2018,” the board said in its decision, which was signed by Chairman Martin B. Delgra III and board member Ronaldo Corpus, with board member Aileen Lizada dissenting.

“Wherefore, in view of the foregoing premises, the board resolves

to deny the motion for reconsideration filed by the oppositor on October 23, 2018 and the decision dated October 18, 2018 stands,” the decision further read.

On October 18 the LTFRB approved a P2 increase in the minimum jeepney fare from P8 to P10 in Metro Manila, Central Luzon and Southern Luzon; a provisional P1 fare hike from P10 to P11 for ordinary buses; and P12 to P13 for air-conditioned buses in Metro Manila.

In its appeal, the UFCC said the fare increases will burden commuters while jeepney and bus drivers are earning enough income.

Meanwhile, Lizada said the LT-

FRB must have provided an opportunity for the commuters’ group to air their views on the matter.

The board, she added, should also have taken into consideration the guidance of the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) on the fare increase.

According to Lizada, the Neda has proposed a P0.50 fare increase for jeepneys, to mitigate its inflationary impact on commuters.

“This office should be the refuge of those who have less in life. This Board owes them a judicious and thorough procedure where everyone is given an opportunity to be heard and not bar them by mere

technicalities,” the LTFRB official said in her dissenting opinion.

On the other hand, Delgra said the commuters were given an opportunity for their views to be heard on the issue.

He said the LTFRB has conducted eight hearings that were attended by Acao and the National Council for Commuters Safety and Protection.

“To say that ‘we owe our stakeholders more than just a 32-minute and 40-second discussion on a very important matter that affect public interests,’ is regrettably to trivialize the entire honorable and serious proceeding the boardhascollectivelyundertaken,”Delgra said in his concurring opinion. PNA

Wage board wraps up deliberations; pay raise order for NCR workers expected next week

By Samuel P. Medenilla

@sam_medenilla

A

NEW wage order for Metro Manila’s minimum-wage earners is expected to be issued next week after the regional wage board finally completed its deliberation on the wage petition of the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) on Tuesday.

In a phone interview, Associated Labor Union-TUCP Spokesman Alan Tanjusay said the Regional Tripartite Wages and Productivity Board-National Capital Region (RTWPB-NCR) completed the deliberation at around 1 p.m.

The wage order will be then submitted to the National Wages and Productivity Commission for affirmation be-

fore it is finalized. The order will take effect 15 days after publication.

Unlike last year, the RTWPB-NCR did not inform TUCP of the amount of the wage hike which was agreed upon by its members.

“The board already decided on the amount, but they said it will be announced by [Labor Secretary Silvestre

H.] Bello III,” Tanjusay said.

TUCP has been pushing for a P334 wage hike, but it said it ready for a lower hike as long it will not be below P100.

The Department of Labor and Employment said it will schedule a news conference next week, where Bello will announce the new wage order for NCR workers.

Paddy rice farm-gate price fell 3.16% to ₧21.17/kg in 2nd week of October

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HE average farm-gate price of paddy rice as of the second week of October fell by 3.16 percent to a four-month low of P21.17 per kilogram as palay harvest peaks, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).

The PSA said the average farmgate price of palay declined by P0.69 centavos from its previous week’s level of P21.86 per kilogram (kg).

This is now the lowest average farm-gate price of palay since June first week ’s P21.16 per kg, PSA data compiled by the Busi-

nessMirror showed.

“On the other hand, it increased by 13.03 percent from the level a year ago of P18.73 per kg,” the PSA said in its latest price monitoring report published recently.

From October 10 to 16, the PSA observed the highest farm-gate price in Davao region was at P22.98 per kg, while the lowest average quotation of P19.22 per kg was seen in the Western Visayas region.

At the wholesale level, the prices of both well-milled and regularmilled rice declined during the

reference period.

“At the wholesale trade, the average price of well-milled rice at P45.16 per kg recorded a 0.64-percent decrease from previous week’s level of P45.45 per kg. It, however, moved up at a slower rate of 15.38 percent compared from its previous week’s annual rate od 15.83 percent,” the PSA said in a report published recently.

“Quoted at P42.2 per kg this week, the average wholesale price of regularmilled rice went down by 1.03 percent from P42.64 per kg in the previous week. Compared to the same week

in the previous year, it was, however, higher by 18.74 percent, ” it added.

Likewise, average retail prices of well-milled rice and regular-milled rice declined during the second week of October.

“Similarly, the average retail price of well-milled rice at P48.83 per kg was lower than price level a week ago by 0.35 percent,” it said.

“The average retail price of regularmilled rice at P45.72 per kg was likewise, lower than its previous week’s level by 0.33 percent,” it added.

Jasper Emmmanuel Y. Arcalas

Philippines turns over Amem chairmanship to Singapore Auto industry projects 10% E growth in 2019 after 2018 slump NERGY Secretary and outgoing chairman of the Asean Ministers on Energy Meeting Alfonso G. Cusi turned over on Monday the Amem chairmanship to His Excellency Chan Chun Sing, Singaporean Minister for Trade and Industry, during the 36th Amem at the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore.

“While our backgrounds and nationalities in Asean may be different, our common denominator has always been a strong commitment to pursue bold ideas and innovative solutions to make our tomorrows better than today.

An ideal that can only be realized if it is built on the foundations of regional and public-private cooperation,” Cusi said in his opening remarks.

He added that these innovations led to the strides made in the past year which included, among others, the success of the heads of Asean power utilities/authorities in advancing

multilateral electricity trading under Phase 1 of the Lao PDR-ThailandMalaysia-Singapore Power Integration Project and the advancement of the Gas Advocacy White Paper by the Asean Council on Petroleum.

Amem is conducted annually and serves as a platform for Asean Energy Ministers to synergize energy cooperation endeavors given that energy is crucial to the realization of the Asean Economic Community.

To this end, the Asean Plan of Action for Energy Cooperation 20162025 was developed and is being implemented in two phases. Phase 1 covers short- to medium-term measures to enhance energy security cooperation over the period 2016-2020, while Phase 2 will cover the period 2021-2025 and will be dependent upon the implementation of Phase 1.

“Let us not to forget our aspirations for regional energy sustainability—to

achieve a 23-percent share of renewable energy in Asean’s primary energy mix by 2025, while aiming to reduce regional energy intensity by 20 percent in 2020 and a further 30 percent by 2025,” Cusi said.

The 36th Amem tackled the key outcomes of the 12th East Asia Summit and related high-level EAS meetings, the implementation of the Cooperation Programme under the EA Energy Cooperation Work Streams, energy policy research in EAS countries, and the new initiatives under the EAS energy cooperation mechanism.

Singapore will hold the AMEM chairmanship for one year with Thailand as vice chairman.

Amem is composed of the energy ministers of Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, as well as the Asean secretary-general.

Source: Nograles takes over Cabsec, Honasan to DICT

By Bernadette D. Nicolas @BNicolasBM

D

AVAO City Rep. Karlo Alexei B. Nograles and outgoing Sen. Gregorio B. Honasan II are set to assume their new posts as Cabinet secretary and head of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), respectively.

A Palace source said Nograles is set to take his oath next week, while Honasan will be assuming his post, probably by mid-November or December.

Early this month, Nograles decided to drop his reported bid for a Senate seat. He is also serving his last term at the House of Representatives.

Nograles will be replacing Leoncio B. Evasco Jr., who was deemed resigned when he filed his certificate of candidacy for Bohol governor.

In a briefing on Tuesday, Presidential Spokesman and Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador S. Panelo said that Nograles was one

of those being considered for the Cabinet secretary post.

“He’s one of those being considered.

The announcement will be made by the President himself, as to the other members of the Cabinet who will replace those who filed their certificate of candidacy,” Panelo said. “Let’s just wait for the President to announce.

It’s the President’s call.”

Meanwhile, the DICT is currently headed by Acting Secretary Eliseo M. Rio Jr. Prior to assuming the DICT post, Honasan needs to resign as senator. Honasan’s appointment comes as the department is sticking to its timeline to identify the third telco player by December.

Over the weekend, Rio assured that the government will name the third telco firm that submitted the highest committed level of service among all bidders on November 7.

In September President Duterte vowed that the country will have

it s t h i rd te le com mu n ic at ion s player by Christmas.

Duterte also said he will be taking over the selection of the telecommunications player himself if the third telco player will not be named by November.

Replacements have been named for most of the posts vacated by officials who are seeking electoral posts.

However, replacements have yet to be named for Tolentino as presidential adviser for Political Affairs and Presidential aide Christopher T. Go. Tolentino has already filed his certificate of candidacy for senator.

Former Technical Education and Skills Development Authority Head Guiling A. Mamondiong, who has sought a local post, was replaced by former Customs chief Isidro S. Lapeña, while former Presidential Spokesman Harry L. Roque Jr. was replaced by Panelo.

Agrarian Reform Secretary John R. Castriciones, likewise, dropped his bid for a Senate seat and opted to remain as agrarian reform chief.

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HE Chamber of Automotive Manufacturers of the Philippines Inc. (Campi) expects the local motor vehicle industry to recover in 2019 after the implementation of tax reforms at the start of this year, which reportedly caused a slump in vehicle sales.

In an interview, Campi President Rommel Gutierrez said that a 10-percent growth in volume of sales is possible for the entire automotive vehicle industry in 2019.

“We are positive about next year. Whatever is the figure for this year, we would project better figure next year,” he said.

From January to September this year, sales of both auto manufacturers and car importers posted double-digit decrements.

Industry sales in the first nine months of 2018 only reached more than 320,000 units from more than 375,000 units in the same period last year.

The optimism for the industry was also echoed by Campi Vice President Dante Santos, saying that the declines in vehicle sales “won’t be forever.”

Santos said the industry is expecting better market conditions next year after adjusting to some challenges this year, such as the excise tax on automobiles, higher inflation rate, increasing interest rates and rising oil prices, among others.

But he mentioned that the country still boasts of solid macroeconomic fundamentals.

Santos added that the industry likewise expects higher overall spending in 2019, given that it is an election year. PNA

The Nation BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Halloween horror craze attracts evil spirits, priest warns

By Ashley Manabat Correspondent

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LARK FREEPORT—The official exorcist of the Roman Catholic Church in the Archdiocese of the City of San Fernando in Pampanga warned that watching too many horror movies and reading horror reading materials could attract evil spirits.

Rev. Fr. Marius Roque, officially designated as exorcist by San Fernando Archbishop Florentino “Dong” Lavarias, said persons who like to watch horror films and read horror books could suffer disturbances from evil spirits.

Roque was guest of the media forum Balitaan in time for the observance of All Saints’ Day on Thursday. Balitaan is organized by the Capampangan in Media Inc., in cooperation with the Clark Development Corp., at the Bale Balita here every Friday.

Roque, who has been a priest for 29 years, has been exorcising evil spirits for seven years now, even if his appointment as exorcist was only done last year.

He recalled the story of a male nurse who suffered disturbances from evil spirits and got sick. There was no medical explanation on his condition, Roque said. “But when we checked his house, we found a lot of horror reading materials,” he added.

Do not attract evil spirits to yourself, he warned.

Roque narrated another case involving a girl who went to the abandoned hospital in Clark on November 1 for a ghost-hunting trip.

“After a few months, she was brought to me because she was convulsing, she was frothing in the mouth and then I could perceive she was possessed and the evil spirit wants to come out,” he said. “Then I told her mother to raise her shirt so that I can anoint her stomach and then I saw her navel was also frothing. How do you explain that medically?”

“I had 11 sessions, which means there were 11 evil spirits inside her,” the exorcist said. He said she vomited 11 times. Now, Roque said, the girl visits him every November 1 to thank him.

“Do not challenge evil spirits by ghost hunting,” he warned. “Never do that. This is not a game.”

He added: “It is very dangerous because you are also opening your place and heart to evil spirits.” Roque also said one case involved a lot of evil spirits in the house up to the point the owners could no longer sleep.

“We discovered that one of the children learned on YouTube how to play the Ouija board, which he did, so evil spirits invaded their house,” he narrated. “And for how many weeks, they could not sleep in their house because the whole family can feel an evil presence,” he continued.

Roque said he used holy salt, holy water, holy oil and the Benedictine cross in driving out the evil spirits. Among the worst was a girl who dressed up as a “black lady” during a Halloween party but was later possessed by the devil, he recalled.

“I had one case where a teenaged girl attracted evil spirits during the Halloween party after dressing up as a black lady,” he said.

“I cannot reveal the names and the places and parishes for confidentiality, only that she lives in the southern part of the province,” he added.

“She was violent. Her eyes were rolling and showed only the whites just like Linda Blair in the movie The Exorcist,” Roque narrated.

“Magwala ya pu [She was restless],” he said.

She was also convulsing, he added. That is why All Saints’ Day should not be associated with Halloween, he said, is terrifying. “Stop dressing up as ghosts, vampires or witches,” Roque warned.

“Let us change this tradition,” he enjoined.

“IfyoulookatHalloween,therootwordishallow whichmeansholy,”heclarified.“ThatiswhyNovember 1 is a day of all the saints,” he added. “We honor saints because they follow God and they are worthy of our imitations and devotions,” Roque said.

DILG chief: All hands on deck for All Saints’, All Souls’ Day

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WO days prior to the observance of All Saints’ Day, the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) on Tuesday urged local government units (LGUs) and attached agencies to place “all hands on deck” to ensure a peaceful and safe conduct of the annual tradition.

DILG Officer in Charge Secretary Eduardo M. Año said the exodus of people to the provinces and to the cemeteries to observe the yearly Undas tradition may entice criminals so LGUs and the DILG’s attached agencies must be proactive and vigilant.

“Undas[AllSaints’Day]bringseveryonetogether, even the criminals, which is why it is imperative that LGUs and the DILG’s attached agencies, such as the Philippine National Police [PNP] and the Bureau of Fire Protection [BFP], are activated and are put on heightened alert to secure the peaceful, orderly and safe observance of All Saints’ Day this year,” Año said in a news statement.

In a directive, Año enjoined LGUs to convene their local peace and order councils to formulate a contingency plan on peace and order and public safety; mobilize and deploy law enforc-

ers, barangay (village) tanod and medical personnel; maintain the cleanliness of cemeteries and public places before, during and after Undas; and implement necessary measures toward its meaningful and peaceful observance.

The deployment of barangay tanod and law enforcers in vicinities of public and private cemeteries and memorial parks; local and national roads for intensified visibility and for traffic management; and in critical areas to prevent the entrance and exit of lawless elements within their jurisdiction are also encouraged.

“Sa panahong tulad ng Undas kung kailan maraming tao [In times like Undas when there are lots of people], there is no such thing as being ‘too prepared’ because we would not know when criminals would strike. Mas mabuti na ang maging sobrang handa kaysa malapit ang ating mga

SC affirms indictment of Padaca, 2 others over P25-million rice procurement anomaly

By Joel R. San Juan

@jrsanjuan1573

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HE Supreme Court has given the Sandiganbayan the go-signal to prosecute former Isabela Gov. Grace Padaca and two others for graft and malversation of public funds for their alleged involvement in the anomalous award of a P25-million contract to a private firm for the implementation of the province’s rice program.

In a 12-page decision penned by Associate Justice Andres Reyes Jr., the Court’s Second Division junked the petitions filed by Padaca, municipal councilor Servando Soriano and Dionisio Pine, manager of the Economic Development for Western Isabela and Northern Luzon Foundation Inc. (EDWINLFI) seeking the reversal of the resolutions issued by the Office of the Ombudsman in January 2011 and September 2012, which found probable cause to indict them and deny their motion to recall the arrest warrants issued against them, respectively.

Based on the investigation conducted by the Ombudsman, Padaca engaged the services of EDWINLFI to manage Isabela’s provincial rice program without due regard to the rules on government procurement.

The Ombudsman also noted that EDWINLFI’s officers include Soriano and provincial government legal officer Johnas Lamonera, which raises a suspicion as to the regularity of the transaction.

Thus, the Ombudsman ruled that there is a probable cause to believe that Padaca gave unwarranted preference and benefits to EDWINLFI, which is penalized under Section 3 (e) of Republic Act 3019, or the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act. The Ombudsman also found probable cause to charge the petitioners for malversation of public funds based on Section 340 of the Local Government Code.

The said provision states: “Any officer of the local government unit whose duty permits or requires the possession or custody of local government funds shall be accountable and responsible for the safekeeping thereof in conformity with the provisions of this Title. Other local officers who, though not accountable by

the nature of their duties, may likewise be similarly held accountable and responsible for local government funds through their participation in the use or application thereof.”

By giving preference to EDWINLFI in the release of P25 million without stipulations in the memorandum of agreement, the cost estimates and terms of reference with respect to the scope of services for the implementation of the provincial rice program, the Ombudsman held that it was as good as permitting—through abandonment of negligence—the firm to take the government funds.

On the other hand, the charge against Soriano and Pine was due to their personal and deliberate participation in the transactions.

“With the foregoing, the Court concurs with the Sandiganbayan that no grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess in jurisdiction can be attributed to the Ombdusman, as the latter’s finding of probable cause rest on substantial basis,” the Court ruled.

Likewise, the Court said there was no grave abuse of discretion on the part of the Sandiganbayan in denying Soriano and Pine’s motion to recall the arrest warrants issued against them.

“The Sandiganbayan aptly limited its determination of probable cause to resolve whether arrest warrants should be issued against petitioners. There is no allegation, much less proof, how this judicial determination was exercised in a capricious, whimsical or arbitrary manner,” the Court explained.

“In sum, there is no cogent reason to disturb the Ombudsman’s finding of probable cause and the Sandiganbayan’s denial of Soriano and Pine’s omnibus motion. The Court cannot and will not nullify the Ombudsman’s factual findings on the sole ground that the complainant does not agree with such findings,” it added.

Concurring with the ruling were Acting Chief Justice Antonio T. Carpio and Associate Justice Diosdado M. Peralta and Estela Perlas-Bernabe.

The charges against Padaca, an ally of former President Benigno S. Aquino III, and the other Isabela officials were filed on the basis of a complaint made by former Isabela Rep. Santiago Respicio.

PSA Central Luzon ready for national ID distribution to 4Ps beneficiaries by March

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Editor: Vittorio V. Vitug • Wednesday, October 31, 2018 A5

ITY OF SAN FERNANDO—The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) Regional Office here will start issuing national identification (ID) cards by March next year.

On Monday PSA Central Luzon Regional director Edgardo G. Pare expressed confidence that the regional office can start distributing national ID cards to about 1 million beneficiaries of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps), otherwise known as the conditional cash transfer of the government under the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), which aims to eradicate extreme poverty in the Philippines.

Pare said the PSA has already finalized the implementing rules and regulations (IRR) for the national ID that will officially pave the

way for the implementation of the Philippine Identification System (PhilSys).

Pare added the bidding will start for the billions of peso contract for the PSA system which is already in place but will be further improved and handled by the winning bidder.

Meanwhile, PSA chief and National Statistician Lisa Grace Bersales has announced that the IRR was published in a broadsheet of national circulation on October 6, the day after its approval.

“We would like to report to everyone that we were able to craft and finalize the implementing rules and regulations of the Philippine Identification system and this was approved by the council on October 5,” Bersales said.

She added that the publication of the IRR “was really the stamp for the PSA and the council to already do the implementa-

tion of the PhilSys.” Republic Act 11055, which was signed by President Duterte in August, mandates the creation of a central identification platform for all citizens and resident foreigners in the Philippines. This will effectively do away with the need to claim and present various government-issued IDs for personal and financial transactions.

Bersales said before the year ends, the PSA will do a “proof of concept” to test the end-to-end system and processes for the national ID issuance.

She said the PSA will be enrolling 1 million unconditional cash transfer beneficiaries of the government for the proof of concept and will start with the procurement of the full PhilSys system next year.

Ashley Manabat

kababayan sa kapahamakan [It is better to have excessive preparation than putting our people’s lives in harm’s way],” he said.

DILG Spokesman and Assistant Secretary Jonathan Malaya said the DILG’s attached agencies are on full-alert status in support of the department’s call for a peaceful and safe observance of Undas 2018.

Malaya said the National Police is committed to deploy its 30,000 police force to secure areas frequented by civilians—such as malls, Light Rail Transit and Metro Rail Transit stations, churches and the cemeteries—especially since it will be a long weekend.

“This Undas is a little longer for it falls on a long weekend, so we expect that Filipinos will not just flock the cemeteries but will also use this time to bond with their families,” Malaya said.

Road-safety marshals will be deployed in areas along the routes to and from cemeteries and other areas of convergence, together with an intensified coordination with the LGUs, concerned government agencies and radio groups to address traffic congestion.

Malaya also reminded the public to ensure that their homes are secured before they go to the cemeteries to pay respect to their departed loved ones to avoid possible cases of burglary, “for despite active security patrols in residential areas to prevent akyat-bahay incidents, securing their homes before

leaving is always the first line of defense.”

Conduct of random mobile checkpoints in accordance with the PNP Operational Procedures will also be implemented.

Meanwhile, the BFP’s Oplan Kaluluwa will also be rolled out, placing all units of the fire bureau on heightened alert or code blue from October 27 to 29, and full alert or code red from October 30 to November 2, BFP Spokesman Fire Supt. Joanne Vallejo said.

She added this is to maximize the deployment of personnel and keep all stations ready to respond to any untoward incidents.

Vallejo said the BFP will conduct inspections in bus terminals ports and other places of assembly; intensified fire safety awareness campaign; and visibility of fire trucks and ambulances in strategic locations shall be readily available to the public.

Every station will also establish motorists’ assistance points on major roads to aid motorists before and after the holidays due to the influx of travelers, together with medical assistance posts in strategic locations near cemeteries and public thoroughfares.

Vallejo added that all BFP personnel’s application for leave are temporarily suspended to ensure that “all hands are on deck” for Undas, advocating its fire safety campaign, which will focus on candle usage and securing houses during vacation. PNA with Jonathan L. Mayuga

A6 Wednesday, October 31, 2018

BM@13: Forw

Business

THE BAMBOO A company of 20-somethings with a purpose marries the worthy goals of environmental stewardship and community enterprise with the businessman’s goal of profitability. Their creativity has opened a diverse range of ideas on ways to use the bamboo for sustainable lifestyles.

By Ma. Stella F. Arnaldo

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@akosistellaBM Special to the BusinessMirror

O the story goes, Jamico Jamlang visited an island off Misamis Occidental where dolphins used to race with pumpboats of fisherfolk going out to the island. But as time went by, the waters surrounding that island degraded into an environmental mess that the stories of the dolphins swimming with bancas became a thing of the past.

A frequent traveler, Jamico was disturbed that if people didn’t take care of their environment, and kept on throwing away their trash that wouldn’t degrade in the water, the same tragedy that befell that island would be replicated elsewhere. And there would no longer be tales of gorgeous sunsets on placid seawaters, of dolphins, dugong (seacow) and whalesharks swimming alongside humans, or taking plunges into clear, cool beach waters.

He became an advocate of sustainable tourism, and sought to reduce plastic waste and the use of products that helped people adopt an environment-friendly lifestyle.

His advocacy was further strengthened while working for a major food and beverage company in the country after graduating from the University of the Philippines, and realized it was producing a lot of single-use plastics. It would have been impossible for him to convince his superiors to use recyclable packaging instead.

Listening to one’s conscience

SO, along with fellow 20-somethings with a purpose, Kenneth Tabafunda, Elaine Caneban, and a little help from his parents, Jamico set up The Bamboo Company, with a capital of P100,000. “[Jamico’s] conscience bothered him,” narrates company sales manager Justin Richmond Domingo. “So he started to look for partners to [set up a company] wherein the focus would be on sustainability and lessening the dependence on plastic-based products.” Kenneth, who owns 30 percent of the company, is an architecture student who had earlier partnered with another sustainable products group before joining The Bamboo Company.

Their first product was the bamboo toothbrush, which was launched in December 2017. “We’re the first company here in the Philippines to introduce the bamboo toothbrushes. It has a bamboo handle, and at first, they were trying to look for nonplastic bristles, they couldn’t find anything,” says Justin. “The closest thing to natural bristles was boar’s hair, [but this idea was scrapped because] it wouldn’t be appealing to vegan

JUSTIN DOMINGO with bamboo tumblers and some of the Bamboo Group’s most popular product offerings.

More products—bamboo cases for wristwatches, sunglasses—are seen below. NONOY LACZA

customers. So we use nylon bristles, but it’s degradable, meaning it decomposes in less than 100 years.”

Last June the company sold its most successful product to date, the bamboo tumbler. It has a metal canister but the bamboo is flattened and rolled around it. Justin explains that the metal tumbler can be “vacuum sealed, so you can put hot or cold beverages, and the temperature will keep.” The company is looking for ways to use the actual bamboo as the canister, but there are issues with non-uniformity of the bamboo’s diameter.

Still, the water tumbler “was an instant hit,” he asserts, with one real-estate firm ordering 500 pieces from them. That huge sale helped the firm recoup the owners’ initial capital and hire more personnel like Justin, Eve Soledad (brand development manager) and Rio Padrones (community development manager).

Product expansion

TAKING advantage of the success they had with the tumblers, the company immediately proceeded to expand its product line. It now sells bamboo watches, bamboo dining utensils and straws, coffee tumblers, tin lunchboxes with bamboo covers and personal shavers with bamboo handles, with more to come.

Most of their buyers are millennials like the company’s owners (22-23 years old), students and “environment-conscious people” who are in their 30s, says Justin.

The products are sold retail primarily at Biblio, a crafts store; through bazaars; and online at the company’s web site, and BeautyMNL.

Unlike most start-ups, however, The Bamboo Company sells better in brick-and-mortar setups, instead of online. “We’re not so profitable selling online; we sell more through bazaars, and through Biblio. I think the problem with our online store is we have a shipping fee.” But he says they are considering pursuing online retail through other thirdparty shopping apps like Shoppee.

Justin, who is also product development manager with a chemical engineering background from UP, said by November, the company will be launching its charcoal toothpaste, and will soon enter the natural cosmetics market. They plan to produce hair sprays, facemasks, and other cosmetics using bamboo charcoal, as well as containers for the cosmetic products.

What consumers want

TO be able to conceptualize their products, The Bamboo Company constantly does market research and surveys to see what the consumers want. It joins bazaars, aside from selling their products online, and realized that there was a huge demand for eco-friendly cosmetics. “They always ask us, ‘do you have lipsticks, lipstick containers, bamboo powder…’ over time we realized, what they wanted were beauty products, and eco-friendly cosmetics. The cosmetics industry produces a lot of products that aren’t recycled,” Justin notes. “After you use it, you just throw it. With our products, you can just compost it, or reuse it. We will just provide refillables.”

It was also the consumers who dictated the creation of other products like the bamboo straw.

“Before, we didn’t want to produce straws because we focused more on sustainable tourism, which means products that we can reuse. You see,

ward-Looking

sMirror

Wednesday, October 31, 2018

O COMPANY bamboo straws aren’t really sustainable; it’s easily destroyed especially when left in a moist environment,” he explains. “But in every bazaar we joined, that was what the shoppers were looking for. They didn’t like metal straws. So I said, maybe we can create bamboo straws, but ‘cook’ them over flame, to carbonize it.

This will prevent it from absorbing moisture and it won’t grow molds.”

Among all the product lines, the bamboo straw has the most impact on the local economy as it benefits some 30 bamboo farmers in a village in Bantayan Island, Cebu.

For the other products, however, the company uses bamboo grown in Taiwan, simply because the variety grown there is thicker and more durable, according to Justin.

“As much as we want to use the bamboo here in the Philippines, our bamboo is thin. In the process of making most of our products, we have to flatten the bamboo first. If we try to use Philippine bamboo, it will crack. The ones in Taiwan can handle the stress. We only use local bamboo for the straws because we need the thin variety,” he says.

But the company isn’t giving up

on its goal of helping more local bamboo farmers. Justin says the reason the company hired a community development manager was to help identify the areas in the Philippines that have the right bamboo species they need, and tap the community to plan their production and supply to The Bamboo Company.

Wanted: More investors

THE company is also looking at purchasing a bamboo flattening machine specifically made for the thin-variety Philippine bamboo, which the Department of Science and Technology has. It costs some P500,000 so “we’re looking for investors to be able to set up our own production plant in the Philippines, and reduce the cost of our products,” he asserts. Justin notes that aside from the cost of paying import duties, the cost of shipping the products and materials from Taiwan raises the prices of their products.

“So we’re constantly looking for investors not only to expand our line, but increase our production.

Usually, if there are bulk orders, we aren’t able to customize them

A7

immediately; we need some lead time to produce them. But if we can have our own plant, with the bamboo flattening machine, we will be able to speed up our production,” Justin enthuses. For instance, at present, the company is able to produce about 1,000 toothbrushes in a month.

The company is also looking at pitching to hotels and resorts, which have also adopted a sustainable tourism advocacy. He narrates that a resort in Cebu recently bought 200 pieces of toothbrushes from the company, and now offer these as inhouse bathroom amenities.

In five years, Justin says the goal of The Bamboo Company is to become sustainable, and profitable enough for the owners, including himself, to quit their day jobs. “We need to keep making new products to be able to keep the market interested and buying,” he stresses, as well as continue to craft new designs for the company’s staple products.

(More information on The Bamboo Company may be found at www.thebamboocompany.ph.)

News

BusinessMirror

A8 Wednesday, October 31, 2018

www.businessmirror.com.ph

PHL, US to tackle free-trade pact at Apec gab $17.4B

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By Elijah Felice E. Rosales

@alyasjah

ANILA and Washington are headed to Papua New Guinea for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) Summit with a crucial concern in mind: the future of their possible bilateral free trade agreement (FTA).

Trade Undersecretary Ceferino S. Rodolfo Jr. said the two camps are penciled to meet in November at the Apec Summit, which will be hosted by Papua New Guinea. He added time constraints are making it difficult for the Philippines and United States trade officials to meet, and the annual summit could be the best time to raise the possible FTA. “Most likely, the next opportunity for them [Trade Secretary Ra-

mon M. Lopez and United States Trade Representative Robert E. Lighthizer] to meet is in Papua New Guinea for the Apec Summit. They will most probably talk there,” Rodolfo, in a mix of English and Filipino, told reporters on Tuesday.

The Philippines and the US are determined to elevate their trade ties into an FTA, following the bilateral meeting between President Duterte and US President Donald J. Trump in 2017. If forged, it will

The 2017 total trade between the economies of the Philippines and the US, according to data from the Philippine Statistics Authority. The Philippines exported $9.66 billion of goods to the US that year, as against imports valued at $7.78 billion

only be the second bilateral trade deal of the Philippines—the first being with Japan.

“The most important step is the release of the joint statement on Tifa [Trade and Investment Framework Agreement]. That was already issued, so what we are waiting for right now is the opportunity for Secretary Lopez and the USTR to meet,” Rodolfo explained.

In a joint statement last Monday, Manila and Washington said they agreed “that enhanced bilateral en-

gagement on trade under the Tifa should include work that yields benefits for agricultural producers, importers, exporters and consumers, and intend to work together in a number of areas.”

In particular, the two economies look to collaborate on the development of cold chain requirements and best practices in the Philippines, with international guidelines on food hygiene taken into account. The US has long been demanding the Philippines to do away with its two-tiered system in handling frozen and freshly slaughtered meat.

“This work will build on private sector and local efforts already under way in the Philippines to improve the existing cold chain. The United States agrees to make best efforts, subject to availability of US resources, to provide technical assistance to enhance cold chain development and management in the Philippines,” the joint statement read.

According to Rodolfo, Washing-

‘Sin’ tax collections down 44.1% in September–DOF

By Rea Cu

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@ReaCuBM

AXES collected from “sin” products in September contracted by 44.1 percent to P14.5 billion, from P25.94 billion last year, due to a steep decline in collections from tobacco products, according to the Department of Finance (DOF).

Finance Undersecretary Antonette C. Tionko told reporters in an interview that excise taxes collected by its attached agency, the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), from alcohol and tobacco products during the period reached P5.63 billion and P8.89 billion, respectively.

“In the month of September alone, the alcohol excise tax [reached] P5.6 billion. However, for tobacco, the collection of P8.89

billion is lower than last year’s P21 billion because of the one-time nonrecurring collection,” Tionko said.

Compared to last year, alcohol excise tax collections expanded by 13.8 percent from P4.94 billion, while tobacco excise tax collections fell by 57.7 percent.

The BIR exceeded its excise collection target of P4.56 billion for alcohol but fell short of its goal of collecting P21 billion from tobacco products.

In September last year, the government was able to collect excise tax totaling P4.575 billion from Japan Tobacco International Inc. (JTI), following its acquisition of Mighty Corp.

Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III expressed confidence that excise tax collections from JTI will continue to increase over time, since the company wants

to make a mark in the Philippines.

In September the Philippine Competition Commission approved the sale of Mighty Corp. to JTI. The settlement sum of some P21 billion was remitted to the BIR in the same month.

From January to September this year, the DOF said total excise tax collections reached P156.24 billion, expanding by 12.5 percent compared to the P138.81 billion recorded last year.

Collections from alcohol excise taxes for the period amounted to P49.35 billion, while collections from tobacco amounted to P106.89 billion. Alcohol excise tax collections rose by 15.21 percent from last year’s P42.83 billion, while excise tax from tobacco went up by 11.36 percent from last year’s P95.98 billion.

The government’s target col-

lection for the January-to-September period is P39.69 billion for alcohol and P96 billion for tobacco.

Sin products, such as alcohol and tobacco, are certain goods deemed harmful to society. The excise taxes imposed on these products are collected by the BIR and the Bureau of Customs.

Under the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) law, cigarette excise tax rates was raised from the current P30 per pack to P32.5 in the first half of 2018, and was increased further to P35 per pack starting July this year.

The TRAIN was signed into law

by President Duterte in December and was implemented starting January this year. The law slashed personal income tax rates and put in place offsetting measures such as higher excise tax rates on tobacco and fuel.

Extend tax perks for tourism ecozones, Tieza asks Congress Continued from A1

extension of the tax incentives privilege will expire in 2019, and not 2018, as previously announced by the Department of Finance (DOF).

In an interview with the BusinessMirror, Bulauitan said that, based on the clarification by the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) last year, the tax agency is willing to extend “full incentives for six years as long as their registration as TEZ was approved by Tieza before the expiration in August 2019.”

According to the implementing rules and regulations of Republic Act 9593 (Tourism Act of 2009), the incentive schemes “shall be in effect for a period of 10 years from the effectivity of this Act, which period is subject to review by the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee on Tourism.” However, the BIR issued Revenue Regulations 7-2016 on the incentives schemes only in November 2016, which took effect a month later. The Aquino administration failed to issue revenue regulations on concerns the tax perks would further erode government revenue.

“We are not the ones who made that law, it’s the legislature, and as far as I know, there’s no act or any interest of the legislature to continue that law,” said Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III in a speech last week at the general membership meeting of the Philippine Hotel Owners Association Inc. “The law is the law; it’s not my fault that it was not

implemented,” he stressed. (See, “Tieza locators may enjoy tax perks only until end-2018,” in the BusinessMirror, October 24, 2018.)

However, Bulauitan said there are already several pending bills in the House of Representatives and the Senate, which seek to amend the RA9593. These include Senate Bill 1616 of Senator Richard J. Gordon; House Bills 5882 and 6255 of Rep. Lucy T. Gomez, former chairman of the House Committee on Tourism; HB 7333 of Rep. Alfred D. Vargas; HB 7535 of Rep. Luis Raymund F. Villafuerte Jr.; HR 0390 of Rep. Rene Lopez Relampagos; and HB 4921 of Rep. Prospero Pichay.

“At present, Congress is reviewing the extension of the sunset clause in order to give life to the intent of the law that the incentive scheme is for 10 years,” she said. In particular, Gordon’s bill, which was filed last November, wants the incentive scheme to be “in effect for a period of SEVENTEEN [17] years” from the effectivity of the R A 9593, or the year 2026.

She added that Tieza is also supporting the DOF’s Trabaho bill or TRAIN 2 package, but proposes that it “expressly recognize the Tourism Enterprise Zone and explicitly cover it under the term Special Economic Zone; include tourism enterprises in the SIPP [Strategic Investments Priority Plan]; include DOT as member of FIRB [Fiscal Incentives Review Board]; and amend RA 9593 by removing the sunset provision

[on TEZ incentives].”

As of October 2018, Tieza has already designated five flagship TEZs, which she said “are projected to generate over 1 million jobs over 10 years, while eight private TEZs with six tourism enterprises will create some 52,000 jobs during the construction and operation stage, and an estimated of P80 billion worth of investments.”

Bulauitan underscored that Tieza granted incentives only to registered tourism enterprises in the private TEZs and flagship TEZs that will definitely create jobs, bring in investments and boost the local economy in the provinces where they are located.

“TEZ incentives are performancebased, targeted and transparent,” she stressed.

These incentives include a sixyear income tax holiday that may be extended for another six years; a 5-percent preferential tax on gross income as an alternative to the tax holiday; a net operating loss carryover scheme in lieu of the previous tax schemes; tax-free imports on capital goods and equipment; import tax exemptions for transport equipment and spare parts; exemption from value-added tax and excise tax for imported goods; tax credit equivalent to national taxes paid on local goods and services; and tax deduction of up to 50 percent of cost of environmental protection and cultural heritage preservation activities. (See, “Tax perks to yield P70-B tourism investments – Tieza,” in the BusinessMirror online, January 15, 2017.)

Speaking at the recent inauguration of the Tieza office in San Vicente, Palawan, a flagship TEZ, Bulauitan noted: “Here in San Vicente, we envision an ecotown where the tourism development is master-planned, with prescribed carrying capacities to host tourism enterprise facilities and services within the property.

We have recently registered two small- to medium-scale enterprises here who committed to get local employment and advocate sustainable tourism.”

She also said: “We fully support the administration’s policy that tax incentives should not be given to companies that do not anymore stimulate growth or create employment in the community.”

Tieza has estimated about P232.33 billion in foregone investments, as well as employment opportunity losses from 2013 to 2016 because of the delay in BIR’s issuance of revenue regulations on TEZ incentives.

Nonetheless, Bulauitan asserted that there is still a chance to do something to stimulate investment growth.

“Rationalization of incentives in low-performing industries may be necessary but not in a booming sector like the tourism industry. It should be noted that the Tourism Act of 2009 sought to provide full government assistance by way of competitive investment incentives, long-term development fund and other financing schemes extended to tourism related investments,” she underscored.

ton is now more permissive of Manila’s nontariff measures on farm goods, particularly on its meat handling regulations. “The good thing about the Tifa is that it gave them [US trade officials] the opportunity to understand our system better, why we need to keep that system,” he said.

“Of course, our system is different from theirs. We are a tropical country, that’s one, [and] we really have rules on how to handle fresh meat products,” the trade official added.

Now that they see eye to eye on disputed issues, Rodolfo argued the Philippines and the United States can move their economic relations a step higher—the finality of which must result into an FTA. “We cannot preempt what they [Lopez and Lighthizer] will talk about. Hopefully, since according to the joint statement you have already resolved all the bilateral trade issues, we can now move on to the next level: How do you strengthen the relationship further?” he said.

The US is a major political, economic and defense partner of the Philippines. It has always been one of the country’s top export destinations and largest import origins.

In 2017 total trade between the two economies amounted to $17.4 billion, according to data from the Philippine Statistics Authority.

The Philippines exported $9.66 billion of goods to the US that year, as against imports valued at $7.78 billion.

Top exports to the US were semiconductor devices ($743.97 million), digital monolithic integrated circuits ($691.77 million) and ignition wiring sets ($554.06 million). On the other hand, top agricultural exports were coconut oil ($553.33 million), pineapples ($132.7 million), raw cane sugar ($130.25 million) and desiccated coconut ($92.66 million).

Manila is also a beneficiary of the US Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), which allows it to export about 3,500 products to Washington at zero tariff.

CBCP: Be wary of fake priests offering blessings for the dead

By Samuel P. Medenilla

A

@sam_medenilla

N official the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) warned the faithful who will troop to cemeteries on November 1 and 2 to be wary of fake priests offering to bless their departed loved ones for a fee.

CBCP-Episcopal Commission for the Laity Chairman Bishop Broderick Pabillo said the practice is not sanctioned by the Church and should not be availed of by the public.

“Never give them money. If they want to pray for your departed loved ones, then thank them, or give them food,” Pabillo told reporters in an interview on Tuesday.

The Manila auxiliary bishop issued the reminder amid reports that in previous years, people who dressed as priests went around cemeteries during All Saints’ and All Souls’ Day asking for payment in exchange for blessing the dead.

Pabillo admitted it is very difficult to determine if a person offering blessings is not a poseur, as it can be performed not only by priests, but also by seminarians and lay ministers.

For those claiming to be a priest,

he said, people could ask for their celebret—a document signed by a bishop indicating its holder is allowed to perform Mass.

However, such document could also be forged.

As a rule, Pabillo noted that the Church does not allow legitimate priests to collect any fees in exchange for blessings. “In some places priests would just hold a Mass in a Catholic cemetery for the blessing of all the dead there.”

While the blessing of the dead is usually performed by a religious person, Pabillo said it could be performed by anyone.

“In some Churches, there are [pamphlets containing] prayers, which people could buy or get for free to be recited in cemeteries.

They could also bring their own holy water to bless the grave afterward,” Pabillo said.

All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day are Catholic holidays, which are celebrated every November 1 and November 2, respectively. The former is held to honor saints of the Catholic Church, while the latter commemorates those who have died.

Filipinos usually spend both days visiting the graves of their loved ones.

SMIC, BDO on ‘Forbes’ companies list Continued from A1

The list is global with 34 countries represented. Only two Philippine companies—SMIC and banking unit BDO Unibank Inc. —garnered spots in the list of wellregarded companies.

SMIC was ranked 235th on Best Regarded Companies and BDO at 140th.

SMIC a nd BDO were a l so ranked among the top 500 companies in the Forbes 2018 Global

GDP. . .

Continued from A1

think tank said, will boost economic growth in the third quarter.

Further, commodity prices may have already peaked in September given the entry of the country’s 1 million metric ton rice import toward the end of October.

The prices of other commodities, such as vegetable and fish, should normalize by the end of October while crude oil prices are expected to be elevated as Iran sanctions bear down on the market, the think tank said.

“The outlooks from the demand side—investments and exports—

2000-World’s Best Employers for 2018 and 2017. The holding firm was ranked 158th on the list and the bank at 24th.

“We are honored to receive this recognition which reflects the values of our founder, Henry Sy Sr. This validates our high regard for all our stakeholders and our commitment to good governance, excellence, transparency and stewardship,” SMIC President and CEO Frederic DyBuncio said in a statement. still look positive while slowing manufacturing and commodity prices rising at a faster pace cloud this view. Nonetheless, GDP should still handily grow by more than 6 percent in the third quarter,” the think tank said.

FMIC-UA&P Capital Market Research also projected inflation to average 6.4 percent in October; 6.1 percent in November; and 6.2 percent in December.

The think tank also estimated that the peso will average 53.89 to the dollar in October; 54.11 in November; and 54.22 in December.

The country’s October inflation report, as well as third-quarter economic and trade performance, will be released next week.

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

The World

US to expand China tariffs if meeting with Xi falls short

T

HE US is preparing to announce by early-December tariffs on all remaining Chinese imports if talks next month between presidents Donald J. Trump and Xi Jinping fail to ease the trade war, three people familiar with the matter said.

An early-December announcement of a new product list would mean the effective date—after a 60-day public comment period—may coincide with China’s Lunar New Year holiday in earlyFebruary. The list would apply to the imports from the Asian nation that aren’t already covered by previous rounds of tariffs—which may be $257 billion using last year’s import figures, according to two of the people.

US officials are preparing for such a scenario in case a planned Tr u mp -X i meet i ng y ield s no progress on the sidelines of a Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires in November, according to two of the people, who declined to be identified to discuss internal deliberations. They cautioned that final decisions had not been made.

Trump, in an interview with Fox News late Monday, said “I think we will make a great deal with China, and it has to be great because they’ve drained our country.”

Any further broadening of tariffs would show the Trump administration’s determination to escalate its trade war with China even as companies complain about the rising costs of tariffs and financial markets continue to be nervous

about the global economic fallout.

Stocks erased gains partly on concern about an escalating trade war between the world’s two largest economies. The S&P 500 Index fell as much as 2.1 percent before paring the drop and ending the day down 0.7 percent.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index fell 0.9 percent on Tuesday, while the Shanghai Composite Index rose 1 percent. During a daily briefing, Lu Kang, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told reporters the US should adopt a serious attitude and hold talks with China on the basis of equality and good faith instead of making other kinds of noises if it’s sincere about resolving trade frictions.

The US this year has already imposed tariffs on $250 billion in trade with China. Ten percent tariffs on $200 billion in imports that took effect in September are due to increase to 25 percent on January 1. Trump has also threatened to impose tariffs on the remaining goods imports from China, which last year were worth $505 billion.

As another option, the White House is also considering excluding trade from the meeting agenda but it is unlikely to cancel it altogether, according to two people familiar with the matter.

“We are in the middle of a pretty nasty dispute. We’re in a trade dispute—I want to use that word because it’s a nice, soft word—but we’re going to win,” Trump said on Saturday at an event in Indiana.

“You know why? ‘Cause we always win.” Bloomberg News

BusinessMirror

Wednesday, October 31, 2018

A9

Lion Air jet crash renews safety concerns about Indonesia airlines

T

HE deadly crash of a Lion Air jet in the Java Sea has renewed questions about the safety of Indonesian airlines soon after United States and European regulators removed prohibitions against them.

A growing middle class and affordable fares have led to a boom in air travel in Asia, putting pressure on airlines, government overseers and infrastructure to keep up.

The surge has been particularly keen at Asia’s budget airlines such as Lion Air, whose Flight 610 disappeared into the sea shortly after takeoff from Jakarta. The Boeing 737 Max 8 carried 189 people and was bound for Pangkal Pinang on a smaller island in the Indonesian archipelago.

Data pinged from the plane showed erratic speed, altitude and direction in the minutes after takeoff. Safety experts cautioned, however, that the data must be checked for accuracy against the plane’s so-called black boxes, if they are recovered.

Indonesia’s aviation industry has a checkered past. The United States and the European Union banned its aircraft from their skies in 2007 after a string of accidents.

The Federal Aviation Administration lifted that ban in August 2016. This past June, European regulators—who had already allowed Lion Air and a few other Indonesian carriers to resume flying to Europe—lifted theirs on remaining Indonesia airlines. A spokesman said on Monday that the European Commission has no immediate plans to renew the ban

on Lion Air, but Australia told government officials and contractors not to fly on the carrier pending findings from the crash investigation.

The bans directly affected few flights, but Europeans were discouraged from flying on Indonesian airlines while visiting the country, where planes are the only practical way to hop among tourist-destination islands including Bali, Java and Sumatra.

A mong notable Indonesian accidents: n In 2015 a turboprop operated by Indonesia’s Trigana Air crashed in Papua province, killing all 54 people on board. Indonesia’s safety agency blamed a number of mistakes by the crew and poor regulatory oversight of the airline. n In 2014 an Indonesia AirAsia jet flying to Singapore crashed into the Java Sea, killing all 162 passengers and crew members.

Investigators blamed a ruddercontrol system that had malfunctioned nearly two dozen times in the previous year, combined with the pilots’ response. n Miraculously no one was killed in 2013 when a Lion Air jet descended too low, missed the runway and crashed into the sea off Bali, forcing some passengers to swim for their lives. Investigators blamed the crash during poor

visibility largely on pilot errors.

In the only previous fatal accident of a Lion Air flight, a plane skidded off a rain-slicked runway and crashed into a cemetery in Surakarta in 2004, killing 25 passengers and crew. The airline has had other problems too, including the arrests of four pilots for drug possession in 2011 and 2012.

Harro Ranter, who runs the Aviation Safety Network, said Indonesian airlines must contend with difficult terrain in some provinces, frequent bad weather that leads to poor visibility, and shortcomings with air-traffic controllers, who have on occasion put two planes on the same active runway. There have also been fears that the country would be unable to train or attract enough qualified pilots and that airlines would struggle to manage rapid growth, he added.

“Indonesia does stand out... they did have some really bad accidents in the past,” Ranter said.

“It’s hard to judge if they have made sufficient progress with regard to safety.”

He said it is difficult to pin a specific accident on the safety culture, but that international regulators will be closely watching the investigation into Flight 610.

Boeing and rival Airbus have been stepping up production to meet the seemingly insatiable demand for new planes among global airlines, many of them in Asia.

Traffic on the world’s airlines— measured in the number of miles or kilometers flown by passengers—jumped 8.1 percent last year, the fastest rate of growth since 2005, according to the International Air Transport Association, a trade group for the industry. It marked the third straight year of traffic growth above the

long-term average of 5.5-percent growth in traffic.

China led the way in most new domestic passengers, by a wide margin. Indonesia ranked sixth.

Aircraft operators in the AsiaPacific region have had the highest number of accidents in the last five years, accounting for about onefourth of all accidents, according to the trade group. But the accident rate has declined—from 2.33 every million flights in 2016 to 1.54 every million flights last year.

Southeast Asia and the Pacific have a far lower accident rate than Africa and South America, according to figures from the trade group and the UN’s International Civil Aviation Organization.

The Lion Air crash appears to be the first involving the Boeing 737 Max 8, a more fuel-efficient update of Boeing’s popular 737, the best-selling airliner ever. Lion Air received the jet involved in the crash just two months ago.

In a statement, Chicago-based Boeing Co. said it was “deeply saddened” by the crash and was prepared to offer technical help to investigators. Boeing shares fell on news of the accident. They were down $12.47, or 3.5 percent, at $346.80 in early-afternoon trading.

Jim Corridore, an analyst for CFRA Research, said Boeing planes have a good safety record and the accident is unlikely to hurt orders for new planes.

Lion Air became the first airline to get a 737 Max, in May 2017, and has received 13 of the 201 Max planes that Boeing has delivered, according to the Boeing web site. Boeing has taken nearly 4,800 orders for the plane, including 201 from Lion Air. Southwest Airlines was the first US carrier to fly the plane and has taken 23 of them, according to Boeing. AP

Trump escalates anti-media rhetoric after wave of violence

W

PARKER Solar Probe sits in a clean room on July 6, 2018, at Astrotech Space Operations in Titusville, Florida, after the installation of its heat shield. Nasa’s Parker Solar Probe is now closer to the sun than any spacecraft has ever gotten. Early Monday afternoon Parker surpassed the record of 26.55 million miles set by Helios-2 back in 1976. ED WHITMAN/NASA VIA AP

Nasa spacecraft sets record for closest approach to sun

C

APE CANAVER AL, Florida—Nasa’s Parker Solar Probe is now c loser to the sun than any spacecraft has ever gotten.

Parker on Monday surpassed the record of 26.6 million miles (43 million kilometers) set by Helios-2 back in 1976. And it will keep getting closer to the sun until it flies through the corona, or outer atmosphere, for the first time next week, passing within 15

million miles (24 million kilometers) of the solar surface. Parker will make 24 close approaches to the sun over the next seven years, ultimately coming within just 3.8 million miles (6 million kilometers).

Launched in August, Parker is on track to set another record late Monday night. It will surpass Helios-2’s speed record of 153,454 miles per hour (247,000 kilometers per hour), relative to the sun. AP

ASHINGTON—Grappling with a wave of election-season violence, President Donald J. Trump escalated his rhetoric against the news media on Monday even as he made plans for a somber visit to Pennsylvania to mourn a synagogue massacre that left 11 dead.

Days after the shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue and a mail-bomb scare targeting prominent Democrats and CNN, Trump argued that “fraudulent” reporting was contributing to anger in the country and declared that the press was the “true Enemy of the People.”

He complained on Monday night that his comments had been misconstrued and that he had only been referring to the “Fake News [Media].” Trump has labeled a long list of media outlets“fake news”and often applies the moniker to stories he doesn’t like.

White House Spokesman Sarah Huckabee Sanders continued in the same vein at a press briefing, saying: “The very first action that the president did was condemn these heinous acts. The very first thing that the media did was condemn the president, go after him, try to place blame.”

While Trump has condemned the Pennsylvania shootings as an anti-Semitic act and has decried political violence, he also has continued his political schedule over the past week and largely kept up his criticism against Democrats and the media. The White House has rejected any suggestion that the president’s harsh rhetoric contributed to the toxic moment.

And Sanders made clear Trump was unlikely to change course, saying the president will “continue to fight back” against critics.

Trump will travel to Pennsylvania on Tuesday with first lady Melania Trump. Sanders said Trump would go “to express the support of the American people and to grieve with the Pittsburgh community.”

The White House did not immediately provide further details on Trump’s trip, which drew mixed reactions in Pittsburgh.

Leaders of a liberal Jewish group in Pittsburgh penned an open letter to Trump before the White House announced the plans, saying he was not welcome in the city until he denounced white nationalism. But Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, of the Tree of Life synagogue, made clear he would be welcome, telling CNN:

“The President of the United States is always welcome. I am a citizen. He is my president.

He is certainly welcome.”

Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto, a Democrat, told reporters ahead of the announcement that the White House should consult with the families of the victims about their preferences and asked that the president not come during a funeral.

“If the President is looking to come to Pittsburgh, I would ask that he not do so while we are burying the dead. Our attention and our focus is going to be on them, and we don’t have public safety that we can take away from what is needed in order to do both,” Peduto said.

The White House did not immediately respond to the mayor’s request. Asked if Trump has done enough to condemn white nationalism, Sanders said he “has denounced racism, hatred and bigotry in all forms on a number of occasions.”

She added: “Some individuals—they’re grieving, they’re hurting. The president wants to be there to show the support of this administration for the Jewish community. The rabbi said that he is welcome, as well.”

Throughout his Republican campaign and presidency, Trump has been an unrelenting critic of the media. Last week, the New York offices of CNN, the cable network frequently criticized by Trump and his supporters, was evacuated after receiving an explosive device and an envelope containing white powder.

CNN President Jeff Zucker said another suspicious package addressed to CNN was intercepted on Monday at an Atlanta post office.

With eight days to go before the midterm elections, Trump has continued to hold his political rallies, complete with harsh criticism of Democrats and the media. He is planning an aggressive campaign schedule during the final days leading up to the on November 6 elections.

Trump complained Monday night that “CNN and others in the Fake News Business” were “purposely and inaccurately reporting” that he’d called the media the “Enemy of the People.”

“Wrong! I said that Fake News [Media] is the Enemy of the People, a very big difference,” he said.

At a rally on Saturday night, Trump was

somewhat muted but still offered his standard campaign attack lines against critics including Democrat Hillary Clinton and Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters, both of whom were targeted in

the bomb plot. On Twitter on Sunday, he savaged billionaire businessman Tom Steyer, another target of the mail bombs, as a “crazed & stumbling lunatic.” AP

A10 Wednesday, October 31, 2018 • Editor: Angel R. Calso

Opinion BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

editorial

Unlimited rice

P

EOPLE eat more diverse food when they can afford them, when they understand the nutritional value of various food products, and when safe and healthy food is readily available. This is according to a 2014 policy note written by David Dawe, senior economist of the Food and Agriculture Organization, and Steven Jaffee, lead rural development specialist of the World Bank. The consumption pattern of Filipinos, however, does not reflect this.

Government data indicate that the diet of Filipinos is still “rice-centric.” According to the report, titled “Consumption of Selected Agricultural Commodities in the Philippines,” Filipinos continue to eat rice in huge quantities. Published by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) in 2017, the report noted that each Filipino consumed an average of 109.87 kilograms of rice a year. Among all agricultural products, only rice breached the 100-kg level; all other food items were apparently being consumed in much smaller quantities.

Annual per capita consumption of vegetables is dismal, based on data released by the PSA. The PSA report indicated that Filipinos ate only 2.37 kg of ampalaya; eggplant, 4.26 kg; squash, 2.9 kg; cabbage, 1.13 kg; pechay, 1.24 kg; stringbeans, 1.92 kg; and munggo, 0.81 kg. The same pattern was also observed in the consumption of fruits, despite the fact that the country is a major producer of bananas and pineapples.

Filipinos also ate protein sources, such as meat, in limited quantities.

The average per capita consumption of pork was only 8.9 kg; beef, 1.04 kg; and poultry, 9.32 kg. As for fish and other marine products, average consumption per year was less than 5 kg. These figures show that among the major agricultural products consumed by Filipinos, rice is the most accessible and most affordable. They simply could not buy other protein sources on a regular basis and follow the recommendation of the Food and Nutrition Research Institute. The FNRI prodded Filipinos to eat more fish, lean meat, poultry, egg, dried beans or nuts and fish to meet their daily energy requirement. But a survey conducted by the FNRI showed that more than half of Filipinos are not able to meet this.

The FNRI had urged Filipinos to consume fish, lean meat, poultry, egg, dried beans or nuts daily for growth and repair of body tissues. The institute attached to the Department of Science and Technology also recommended the daily consumption of milk, milk products and other calcium-rich food, such as small fish and shellfish. To prevent cardiovascular diseases, the FNRI encouraged Filipinos to limit their intake of salty, fried, fatty and sugar-rich foods.

Unfortunately, the continuous increase in the price of food items, which is exacerbated by policies that accelerate inflation, makes it more and more difficult for Filipinos to “eat healthy.” It also does not help that the government is not making any move to wean farmers and even consumers away from rice simply because it is easier to maintain the status quo. The planting of rice is promoted and even supported by the government, to the detriment of other farm subsectors.

Two years into the term of the President, Filipinos have yet to see significant strides in boosting food production. Food production is not just about increasing rice output, but also that of other commodities— such as vegetables, pork and poultry—so these can become more affordable. The Duterte administration would do well to remember that it is cheaper to invest in initiatives that would boost food production than take care of sick Filipinos.

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‘Arcana imperii’ and the real responsibility to protect Teddy Locsin Jr.

FREE FIRE Continued from A1

‘M

R. Chair, “In the 1800s, an imperial power embarked on the deep and massive addiction of China; infusing tens of millions of tons of Indian opium into the Chinese race. The effect was extraordinary: A continental country fell like a rotten fruit at the feet of a country the size of a Chinese county. Its stupefied and enervated men were turned into coolies; its women into prostitutes; and its children into the same. When the Chinese government halted the trade, China was raped and its vital organs were harvested: Coastal cities and island ports were carved into foreign concessions and outright territorial cessions. At the spectacle of China’s easy defeat, other empires rushed to the trough and also ate China. China has never forgotten the humiliation but neither has it forgotten the arcana imperii, to quote Tacitus: the secret of empire was out: drugs are better than navies.

“Today the UNODC reported that East and Southeast Asia is a primary subregion for methamphetamine trafficking worldwide. The substance has penetrated about 60 percent of our barangays—our smallest, most basic communities.

“The previous administration coddled it; maybe it seemed harmless; its victims did not complain but wore a smile on their face. And they didn’t die; they walked around aimlessly like living dead. Most certainly it paid well to ignore it.

“The current administration was elected by a landslide vote, precisely on a campaign promise to exterminate the drug trade. A war on drugs was carried out at the very same instant it was declared. Surprise! To date, 4,000 dealers have been killed in police operations. Human-rights groups unaccountably counted up to 22,000 but that only shows how widely drug abuse has reached. There have been tragic mistakes; I will not call them collateral damage, which in war means blasting through civilians to get at the enemy. No, they were the result of a reckless disregard by the police in going after drug dealers.

They were brutal cowardly acts such as police are prone to commit because it feels good to do it or they were erasing traces of their own complicity in the drug trade. These tragedies are inexcusable; but they are no excuse to stop the war on drugs—as friends of the drug trade recommend desperately as though they were lawyering for the accused.

“As of April this year, 99,000 antidrug operations have been conducted. We have seized more than 2,600 kilos of crystal meth, amounting to more than P14.3 billion [roughly $286 million]. We have dismantled 192 dens and clandestine laboratories. We have rescued almost 700 minors. More than 600,000 drug

users turned themselves in. More than 143,000 drug personalities have been arrested. We have a new chief of police. Smarter and cleaner than whistle but just as determined to wipe out the drug trade. I will skip the massive ongoing rehabilitation efforts in the works. Let me get to the heart of the matter.

“The international community has called the war on drugs genocide.

Genocide is defined definitively as the killing of people for their race, religion or political persuasion. The drug trade is not about race—indeed it is about one and the same race cleansing itself. It is not religious practice, though the experience, I am told, is mystical. And it is not a political ideal, though the drug trade started buying politicians in the previous government. What it is is a purely personal criminal career choice. You are not born a dealer or baptized as one nor do you embrace it as a principle for which you are prepared to die. No, it was not a political principle but a smart career choice when it paid well. But under this dispensation that career choice has fatal consequences. And this is not a crime against humanity.

“The UN Human Rights rapporteur has suggested that methamphetamine is at worst harmless; See “Locsin,” A10

Trump persuaded struggling people to invest in scams, lawsuit says

By Maggie Haberman & Benjamin Weiser New York Times News Service

N

EW YORK—A new lawsuit accuses President Donald J. Trump, his company and three of his children of using the Trump name to entice vulnerable people to invest in sham business opportunities.

Filed in federal court in Manhattan on Monday, the lawsuit comes just days before the midterm elections, raising questions about whether its timing is politically motivated. It is being underwritten by a nonprofit whose chairman has been a donor to Democratic candidates.

The allegations take aim at the heart of Trump’s personal narrative that he is a successful dealmaker who built a durable business, charging he and his family lent their name to a series of scams.

The 160-page complaint alleges that Trump and his family received secret payments from three business entities in exchange for promoting them as legitimate opportunities, when in reality they were get-richquick schemes that harmed investors, many of whom were unsophisticated and struggling financially.

Those business entities were ACN, a telecommunications marketing company that paid Trump millions of dollars to endorse its products; the Trump Network, a vitamin marketing enterprise; and the Trump Institute, which

the suit said offered “extravagantly priced multiday training seminars” on Trump’s real estate “secrets.”

The four plaintiffs, who were identified only with pseudonyms like Jane Doe, depict the Trump Organization as a racketeering enterprise that defrauded thousands of people for years as the president turned from construction to licensing his name for profit. The suit also names Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump as defendants.

A lawyer for the Trump Organization, Alan Garten, said the allegations were completely meritless and relate to events that happened a decade ago.

“This is clearly just another effort by opponents of the president to use the court system to advance a political agenda,” Garten said. He noted the plaintiffs’ lawyers have long-standing and deep ties to the Democratic Party and waited to file until just before the election. “Their motivations are as plain as day.”

A White House spokesman for Trump did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The suit is not the first to accuse

Trump of fraud. Shortly after his election in November 2016, he agreed to pay $25 million to settle a series of lawsuits, including one by New York state’s attorney general, that alleged unscrupulous practices by Trump University, another venture that claimed to sell access to his real-estate secrets.

Trump settled without acknowledging fault or liability, his lawyer said at the time.

And in June, the New York attorney general’s office filed a lawsuit seeking to dissolve the Donald J. Trump Foundation, claiming the charity had engaged in self-dealing and other violations. The foundation’s lawyers called the suit a political attack.

But the new suit alleges “a pattern of racketeering activity” involving three other organizations. Roberta A. Kaplan and Andrew G. Celli Jr., two lawyers for the plaintiffs, said in a statement that they were not aware of “any prior case against the Trumps alleging consumer fraud on this scale.”

“This case connects the dots at the Trump Organization and involves systematic fraud that spanned more than a decade, involved multiple Trump businesses and caused tremendous harm to thousands of hardworking Americans,” the statement said.

Asked about the suit’s timing, Kaplan and Celli said their firms — Kaplan, Hecker; Fink and Emery, Celli, Brinckerhoff; Abady—had conducted

a lengthy investigation and the plaintiffs were eager to file.

“The case is being brought now because it is ready now,” the lawyers said.

The lawyers said a nonprofit organization, the Tesseract Research Center, was funding the lawsuit by paying attorney’s fees and costs.

Morris Pearl, the Democratic donor who is the nonprofit’s chairman, said in a statement that his organization hoped to draw attention to the challenges faced by people who sustain losses but cannot seek redress through the courts “because of the extreme wealth and power on the other side.”

The lawyers said they were asking the court to allow the plaintiffs to proceed using pseudonyms because of “serious and legitimate security concerns given the heated political environment.” The lawyers also declined to make their clients available for interviews.

The four plaintiffs each invested in ACN after watching promotional videos featuring Trump.

According to the lawsuit, ACN required investors to pay $499 to sign up to sell its products, like a videophone and other services, with the promise of additional profits if they recruited others to join.

Trump described the phone in an ACN news release as “amazing” but failed to disclose he was being “paid lavishly for his endorsement,” the suit says.

Opinion BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

More teeth needed for cooperatives to wipe out poverty Michael Makabenta Alunan

ON THE CONTRARY

S

USTAINED high growth for years is welcome, but the poor remains left behind, unless more teeth are imposed for reforms on fast-tracking cooperative organizing for the poor, thus empowering them to compete in the dog-eat-dog marketplace and share fairly from the benefits of growth. n Cooperatives, key to poverty elimination. Increasing the economic pie solves half the problem, but distributing the pie fairly is the other half, which cannot be done the communist way through seizure of property or through dole-outs that only encourage dependence and demeaning mendicancy while distorting markets.

The only effective strategy is involving the poor themselves in increasing the pie through cooperativism, providing genuine empowerment and dignity. n Without cooperatives, poor can’t beat market. As we end October as Cooperative Month, it is fitting to highlight cooperatives as the only organizational structure appropriate for the poor that’s both a manifestation of the means and ends of development.

Without cooperatives, the poor as mere individuals can hardly fend for themselves in the ruthless free market, where they get clobbered by unscrupulous traders. Traders have no loyalty to producers, being margin players, whose interest is to maximize profits, at least cost and least effort, and they wont hesitate to import than buy locally to profit more.

As individuals, farmers can never be efficient and competitive. They cannot afford mechanization, and it’s impractical to operate tractors on small plots. As cooperatives, however, farmers can afford better technologies, postharvest equipment, trucks and cold-storage facilities to bolster production, achieve economies of scale, benefit from the full value chain and engage competitively in direct marketing. n Co-op entry barriers too stringent. While it takes a day or two to get registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), it takes six to 12 months to get registered with the Cooperative Development Authority (CDA) as experienced by jeepney groups.

Getting a seminar schedule alone takes two to three months, after CDA declared earlier that all seminars be handled by CDA itself, and no longer by the cooperative development offices of local government units.

Other barriers include the unrealistic “economic survey-business plan” requirement; uniform but required committees that are not functional, more so for start-ups and ironically also because there are 21 types of cooperatives demanding different types of committees. n Simplify the complex. The CDA can learn from SEC, which approves registration in one to three days, and requires pledges of undertakings for future accomplishment,

Locsin. . .

continued from A11

identical thinking devotees argue that at best methamphetamine is a vitamin. They are welcome to ingest the confiscated chemicals to demonstrate their beneficial effect—but in front of TV cameras because we don’t want them resold in the market.

“It is suggested that drugs should be legalized. The idea is of course idiotic unless you think they are vitamins. All that would do is turn the government into the biggest

As we end October as Cooperative Month, it is fitting to highlight cooperatives as the only organizational structure appropriate for the poor that’s both a manifestation of the means and ends of development. if there are remaining minor corrections or pending requirements.

Decades back, I met an American businessman, whose business in the United States only took him $11 and three minutes to get registered, but took him nine months in the Philippines, as he was required ridiculous unnecessary details.

We need not simplify too much, but just get rid of unnecessary redundancy. For transport groups, practical seminars on maintenance, running vehicle-service centers, supply parts business, etc., and how to access the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’s concessional noncollaterized financing called Credit Surety Fund are more important. Seminars can be programmed after registration. n PUJ modernization’s success rests on cooperatives? Success of the public-utility jeepney (PUJ) modernization rests much on cooperativism for many reasons, which I can’t all explain here. Cooperatives enjoy tax exemptions, thus a 12-percent value-added tax exemption on a P50/liter diesel alone means savings of P6/liter, or what Piston earlier demanded in fuel discounts.

Laudable are the initiatives of even less-known groups like Taguig Transport Cooperative, chaired by Fredie Hernandez, that embraced jeepney modernization, despite the expensive P2.4 million mini-bus. His cooperative was awarded 279 units with 30 so far delivered.

Interest is 6 percent and amortization is P1,300, which is manageable as, on top of the 23 seats, it can take as many as 17 standing passengers, thus maximizing revenues. With aircons, they charge a higher minimum fare of P10, similar to FX/AUV. The group also welcomes modern maintenance systems, which can generate 10 to 30 percent in fuel savings. n Molar support from Ubuntu lore? As more teeth are needed in policy reforms, I guess cooperatives need more molar support.

Perhaps, it is worth learning from Ubuntu, African lore, that “we can never be happy, if others are sad,” which was discovered by an anthropologist after Ubuntu African children refused to play a “winner-takeall game,” but instead cooperatively joined hands to take and share the reward together.

E-mail: mikealunan@yahoo.com

drug dealer. This was a prospect the USDEA warned our new democracy would happen unless it took extreme measures against two military officers in the trade. I was present.

“Advocates of legalizing a crime— and a major one at that—in order to end that crime are right in a way: legalize it and—Voila!—it is not criminal. Yet an activity that can only be described as criminal continues with consequences on the population that can only be called criminal, as well.

“These advocates point encouragingly to small countries facing a peaceful, well-policed ocean that

Wednesday, October 31, 2018 A11

Philippine Accounting Standards Dennis B. Funa

INSURANCE FORUM

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HERE are three standards-setting and interpretation organizations in the Philippines that recommend the standards, rules and interpretative pronouncements on accountancy and auditing. These three organizations are: a) the Financial Reporting Standards Council; b) the Auditing and Assurance Standards Council; and c) the Philippine Interpretations Committee. These three are mandated under the Accountancy Law and the implementing rules to recommend to the Board of Accountancy the standards and interpretations, for BOA approval. As of 2018, the Chairmen of the councils are Roberto G. Manabat for the AASC, David L. Balangue for the FRSC and Wilson P. Tan for the PIC. Accounting standards in the Philippines are adopted from the International Financial Reporting Standards issued by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB).

The IFRS is a set of accounting standards that are recognized by at least 120 countries (including the Philippines) and provides a guide on how particular types of transactions and other events should be reported in financial statements. The rationale for using the IFRS/Philippine Financial Reporting Standards (PFRS) is to ensure consistency in recording, recognizing and measuring financial transactions, which, if followed properly, will ensure stability and transparency throughout the financial reporting process of the company.

These standards are not enforceable as compliance is voluntary.

The PFRS, our version of the IFRS with some minor modifications, and the Philippine Accounting Standards are issued by the PFRS Council (formerly the Accounting Standards Council [ASC]), under the oversight of the BOA. Hence, the PFRS and the PAS are our current set of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.

GAAPs vary “from country to country due to differences in the legal system, levels of inflations, culture, degrees of sophistication and use of capital markets, and political and economic ties with other countries.”

Entities registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are required to apply PFRS as their financial reporting framework.

The PAS corresponds to the adopted International Accounting Standards (IAS), while the PFRS

corresponds to the adopted IFRS. Previously, standards issued by the ASC were designated as Statement of Financial Accounting Standards.

The PFRSC is a standard-setting body created by the Professional Regulation Commission upon the recommendation of the BOA under the implementing rules of Republic Act 9298 “Philippine Accountancy Act of 2004”. It has a chairman, and representatives from the BOA, the SEC, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the Bureau of Internal Revenue, the Commission on Audit, a major organization composed of preparers and users of financial statements (currently Finex), and two representatives each from an accredited national professional organization of certified public accountants in public practice, commerce and industry, academe, and the government. The chairman and members shall have a term of three years and is renewable for another term.

The FRSC formed the Philippine Interpretations Committee in August 2006 to assist the FRSC in establishing and improving financial reporting standards in the Philippines. It is a mere committee of the FRSC. The role of the PIC is principally to issue implementation guidance on PFRS. The PIC members are appointed by the FRSC and include accountants in public practice, academe and regulatory bodies, and users of financial statements. The PIC replaced the Interpretations Committee created by the ASC in 2000.

Development of the Philippine standards

THE first formal recognition of the

The PCC and the third telco

Simply getting to this point where the country can hope for better service brought about by the entry of a third player seemed like a pipe dream even just a couple of years ago, when the planned foray of San Miguel Corp. into the business was suddenly aborted by its sale of its subsidiaries holding valuable frequencies and telco assets to the two dominant incumbents in the sector—Philippine Long Distance Telephone (PLDT) and Globe Telecoms.

SMC was almost ready to roll out its telephone and Internet services then, and many believed if any entity can go toe-to-toe with the duopoly, it was San Miguel. If even SMC opted out of this venture, who would dare take on the challenge?

It is a credit to President Rodrigo Duterte and DICT Secretary Eliseo M. Rio Jr. that they have summoned the necessary political will to lay the groundwork for the entry of a

viable third player. This includes allocating whatever bandwidth is available, ensuring access to the “dark fiber” or unused optical fiber embedded in the governmentowned power transmission grid, and promulgating clear-cut and transparent rules for the selection of the new major player. Sec. Rio, together with NTC Commissioner Gamaliel Cordoba, have likewise tirelessly engaged in various consultative processes with other government agencies and stakeholders to make sure that the terms of reference for selection (TORS) are rational and inclusive of the different perspectives put forth.

For its part, the Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) sought to fine-tune and tighten the disciplines affecting competition under the TORS. For instance, the Commission expanded the scope of what would be covered as “related party”

to a dominant player, so that it would include those who are under the common control of the ultimate parent entity of a dominant player, or those who are not able to act or decide independently of other entities related to the ultimate parent entity. This revision made the TORS more consistent with the Philippine Competition Act (PCA). This modification is key because the third player to be selected is barred from merging, combining with or becoming a related party to a dominant player for period of five years from selection.

Notwithstanding this prohibition, however, a further tweak adopted in the TORS on suggestion of the Commission is that the third player is allowed to enter, for its own benefit, into co-use, interconnection, infrastructure and tower-sharing agreements with either PLDT or Globe, albeit subject to the PCC’s review and approval. From the PCC’s perspective, exempting these kinds of agreements from the prohibition could allow the third telco to unlock potential efficiencies in the assets held by the dominant telcos.

The scale of investment and technology needed to ensure that the third telco can compete effectively necessarily requires a domestic firm holding a congressional franchise— a legal requirement to operate a telecommunications facility—to combine or partner with a foreign telecoms company. Under the PCA, this business combination or partnership is generally required to be notified to the Commission as part of the latter’s mandate to review mergers of a certain size. However, it would seem akin to putting the cart

have legalized drugs. The Philippines would consider that option if it was, like these countries, small with small populations. But the Philippines is the 13th-largest nation on Earth with 110 million inhabitants and thousands of miles of coastline— anywhere along which methamphetamine is regularly dropped in sealed garbage bags to be picked up by complicit local government units.

“And the Philippines does not face an anodyne ocean but the bustling and bristling South China Sea; within spitting distance—note that phrase—spitting distance—of the

major meth-manufacturing centers in the Asian mainland. There are powers there that surely contemplate addicting an archipelago to prep it for the same fate dealt to China by opium. That will never happen while we have breath and bullets to stop it.

“There is a doctrine called the Responsibility to Protect. It obligates sovereign states to protect their populations from abuses committed by their security forces. That definition is limited and flawed. The first duty of a sovereign state is the protection of its law-abiding population against the lawless. But who will protect the

lawless? Advocates of the drug trade complain. Surely the drug trade does not lack for champions abroad.

“Sure, some states abuse their own people; but vastly most states do not. And it is only states that have the wherewithal, the power and primal and primary responsibility to protect their people; not multilateral institutions coopted by avowedly well-intentioned groups. If states do not; if they step back and let the drug trade thrive and other criminal organizations flourish—or terrorism to spread—you can bet your bottom narco-dollar the governments

Atty. Johannes Benjamin R. Bernabe

Competition Matters

F

ILIPINOS will have a taste of more competition in the telecoms market once the third major player begins operations in 2019. This will come on the heels of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) and the National Telecommunications Commission’s (NTC) widely anticipated selection of the new major telecoms player next month. With the new competitor in play, Filipinos are eagerly expecting faster and more widespread access to Internet service, less dropped calls and, perhaps, even lower telephone bills.

accounting profession was through the enactment of the Accountancy Law of 1923. Soon, in 1929, the Philippine Institute of Accountants was formed. The initial Philippine standards was patterned after the US GAAP. Our standards were essentially patterned after the standards of the United States Financial Accounting Standards Board. By 1997, there was a move to transition from the US GAAP to international accounting standards. This sentiment was brought about by the SEC’s membership in the International Organization of Securities Commissions, which resolved to adopt international accounting standards.

In November 2004, the Philippines’s Accounting Standards Council resolved to adopt the PAS, which was basically the revised version of the IAS, and the PFRS, which was basically the revised version of the IFRS. It was implemented effective January 2005. By 2006, the ASC became the FRSC, which was created under the implementing rules of the Philippine Accountancy Act of 2004. Today, the FRSC monitors the technical activities of the IASB and issues invitations to comment on exposure drafts of proposed IFRSs issued by the IASB. If adopted, they are issued as PFRSs. Similarly, the issuances of the International Financial Reporting Interpretations Committee, if adopted, are issued as Philippine Interpretations.

Dennis B. Funa is the current insurance commissioner. Funa was appointed by President Duterte as the new insurance commissioner in December 2016.

E-mail: dennisfuna@yahoo.com.

before the horse if, after complying with all the stringent requirements of the TORS and running the course of the selection process, a selected third telco would then have to submit its merger agreement involving its domestic and foreign partners for review by the PCC. What if the Commission then finds something, which will cause it to prohibit the merger agreement? Will the DICT and NTC have to go through the selection process again or at least provide for a mechanism to enable it to award to another telco applicant?

To rationalize the exercise of its mandate, the PCC has opted instead to ensure the TORS incorporate the requisite competition disciplines and for these to be reflected in a separate undertaking to be submitted by third telco applicants to the PCC. This undertaking is analogous to voluntary commitments to address competition concerns that parties to a merger offer the PCC, where needed, in the course of a merger review. In this way, PCC acts consistent with the law and its mandate while contributing to a streamlined selection process as part of one government forging a unified agenda.

(Next up: Regulatory reforms needed to ensure the third telco can compete effectively.)

of these states were paid off. And they have failed miserably in their responsibility to protect their people.

“And finally, in the pursuit of the primal and primary state obligation to protect its population, there is no power on Earth; no authority anywhere in the globe; no group or agency—however well-intentioned, naïve or criminally connected—that is superior to the state; that can stop it from doing its duty to protect the innocent; or substitute its judgment on how to fight crime and punish it as only a sovereign state sees fit to do it. Period. Thank you.”

Commissioner Bernabe served as adviser to the Senate and the House of Representatives in the drafting of, and deliberations on, the Philippine Competition Act. A lawyer by profession, he was a senior fellow at the Geneva-based International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development and served as the Philippines’s lead trade negotiator on select issues at the World Trade Organization, also in Geneva, Switzerland.

Companies BusinessMirror

Editor: Efleda P. Campos

Wednesday, October 31, 2018

SMFB allocating ₧41B for expansion till 2020

By VG Cabuag

S

@villygc

AN Miguel Food and Beverage Inc. (SMFB) said it is allocating P41 billion for the expansion of its food and beer businesses over the next three years.

Officials of the food and beverage businesses carved out of the conglomerate San Miguel Corp. said the company will invest up to P11 billion to add more breweries as their plants are already at 95-percent capacity of its 18.8 million hectoliters.

San Miguel Brewery Inc. is constructing two breweries—one in Northern Mindanao and another in Laguna—to produce an additional 2 million hectoliters of beverage products, mostly beer.

It should be on stream by late next year or early 2020.

For the firm’s various food businesses, the company’s chief operating officer Francisco Alejo III said SMFB is allotting about P10 billion a year, or a total of P30 billion up to 2020, also for capacity expansion.

Alejo said they are putting up five new feed mills with two expected to be operational this year while the other three will be completed in 2019.

He said capacity utilization has already reached about 95 percent while there continues to be a lot of opportunity for growth and for putting up more plants.

SMFB will also be putting up more poultry dressing facilities over the next two years.

“This will take care of increasing per capita consumption of chicken in the Philippines,” Alejo said.

The firm will also be expanding the capacities of Monterey’s slaughter houses and its flour milling capacity, especially in the Visayas and Mindanao.

Alejo said they also intend to increase the capacity of its processed meat plants by 50 percent next year after a recent increase—also by 50 percent—to allow SMFB to sell ready-to-eat items not only to airlines, but also to convenience stores.

San Miguel consolidated its food and beverage businesses by transferring all its equity in Ginebra San Miguel Inc. and San Miguel Brewery Inc. to San Miguel Pure Foods Co. in exchange for shares.

It then renamed Pure Foods into its current name.

DOE certifies 500-MW hydropower hub as ‘energy project of national significance’

By Lenie Lectura

@llectura

T

HE Department of Energy (DOE) has certified a 500-megawatt (MW) pumped storage hydropower project as “project of national significance” under Executive Order (EO) 30.

The agency issued a certificate of Energy Projects of National Significance (EPNS) to Coheco Badeo Corp. (Cohecobadeo) on October 26, according to the DOE web site.

The project, located in Kibungan, Benguet province, is still in its predevelopment stage.

With a cost amounting to P35 billion, the project will source power from the Amburayan River to sustain the project.

It will be housed on a 15.2-hectare land located on a higher elevation. It also provides the most mature and commercially available solution to bulk electricity and releasing it during peak hours with low operation and maintenance cost, and high reliability.

This is the seventh power project certified as EPNS by the DOE. Recently, the agency issued CEPNS to Philippine National Oil Co.-Exploration Corp.’s (PNOC-EC) two coal projects: Coal Operating Contracts (COCs) 185 and 186 in Zamboanga Sibugay. Both are undergoing predevelopment stage.

COCs 185 and 186 intend to conduct exploration activities, including geologic, mapping, block boundary survey and drilling to determine the extent, volume, behavior and quality of coal seams for possible coal-mining operations in line with the DOE’s directive to explore and develop indigenous energy resources of the country.

COC 185 covers an area of about 2,000 hectares.

Meanwhile, COC 186 is composed of five coal blocks and has a total area of more than 5,000 hectares.

The objective of the two coal projects is “to explore and develop the COC as part of PNOC-EC’s commitment to harness indigenous sources of energy.”

Atimonan One Energy Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Meralco PowerGen Corp. (MGen), the power-generation arm of Meralco, is putting up the country’s first ultra supercritical coal power plant in Atimonan, Quezon province. The facility’s capacity is 2 x 600 MW. This is the fourth power project certified as EPNS. The DOE also declared the 151.2-MW Talim wind- power project of Island Wind Energy Corp. as “a project of national significance.”

The project, in its predevelopment stage, was certified under EO 30 on August 30. It is

located in Talim Island, Binangonan, and Cardona, Rizal.

The target date of the commercial operations of the first 80-MW plant is in June 2020 and the 70-MW plant in June 2021.

The DOE earlier declared the Kalinga geothermal power project of Aragorn Power and Energy Corp. (Apec), the power unit of Sy-led APC Group Inc., as an energy project of national significance.

The DOE approved Aragorn’s application on August 14.

The said project is in its predevelopment stage, involving the development of steam fields that can generate anywhere between 100 MW and 200 MW. In May the DOE certified the Visayas-Mindanao Interconnection Project (VMIP) as the first power project under EO 30.

The VMIP involves the interconnection of the Visayas and Mindanao via Cebu and Zamboanga. The project is estimated to be completed in 46 months with an estimated cost of P52 billion.

The Visayas-Mindanao interconnection project is meant to interconnect the major grids into a single national grid expected to help improve the overall power supply security in the country as sharing of reserves will already become possible.

McDonald’s extends discounts to Pag-IBIG Fund members

By Roderick L. Abad @rodrik_28 Contributor

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OLLOWING the initial success of its partnership with Pag-IBIG Fund, McDonald’s Philippines said on Tuesday it plans to extend for another six months its promo specifically catered to members of the government’s shelterfinancing arm.

Until February 6, 2019, Pag-IBIG Loyalty Card holders are entitled to a 5-percent discount for a minimum food purchase of P200 and a maximum of P500, for dine-in and takeout only.

To avail themselves of the discount, such credential must be presented over the counter of existing and upcoming McDonald’s restaurants nationwide during the campaign period.

“We’re working on increased awareness with our customers so they can avail [themselves] of the discount, and then we’ll continue the partnership. I’m sure we can find a lot of other improvements,” McDonald’s Philippines Managing Director Margot Torres told reporters during their ceremonial signing of a memorandum of agreement in Makati City.

Torres said initial redemption reports from the beginning of this promo on August 6 up to October 15 this year showed more than 600 outlets had processed over 23,000 transactions, amounting to P300,000 plus in discount granted.

Elated by the positive results over two months, PagIBIG Fund CEO Acmad Rizaldy P. Moti said this is the most successful promo tie-up under their Loyalty Card project.

OFFICIALS of Golden Arches Development Corp. (Golden Arches), which owns the McDonald’s franchise in the Philippines, and the Pag-IBIG Fund sign a memorandum of agreement giving Pag-IBIG Loyalty member-cardholders a 5-percent discount on their favorite McDonald’s products. Present during the signing are (from left) Chona Torre, senior vice president of Human Capital Group, Golden Arches; Maria Margarita Torres, managing director, Golden Arches; Acmad Rizaldy Moti, CEO of Pag-IBIG Fund; and Alexander H.G. Aguilar, deputy chief executive officer, Member Services Cluster, Pag-IBIG Fund. The signing was held at the McDonald’s branch on Sen. Gil Puyat Avenue in Makati City. ROY DOMINGO

“It has been our desire to partner with a top fast-food company, and we are so lucky that finally this partnership [happened],” he said. “We’re so happy for this partnership.

We hope that it will go beyond [the agreed duration].”

The Pag-IBIG Loyalty Card was introduced in 2014, and since then, has benefited member-cardholders by way of discounts, peso points and other perks in partnerestablishments.

B1

Monster.com: Filipino employees do consider career change to get better pay

By Cai U. Ordinario @cuo_bm

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HANGING careers is an option that the majority of Filipinos are considering in order to earn better salaries and achieve financial stability, according to Monster.com.

Based on the results of Monster.com’s latest survey, around 88 percent of Filipinos said they are considering leaving their careers for a better job in another industry.

Monster.com said around 54 percent of Filipinos would like to switch careers to get better salaries and achieving financial stability, while 23 percent said they lacked growth opportunities in their current field.

“The prospect of a career change is worrying for a majority of the work force in the Philippines, but it’s also the most desirable option to earn more money and explore opportunities beyond what they have studied,” said Abhijeet Mukherjee, CEO of Monster.com for the Asia Pacific and Gulf regions.

Data showed 58 percent of mid-career professionals would change jobs for a better salary. Monster.com said this was expected considering 43 percent of these workers are breadwinners for their families.

Currently, around 48 percent of mid-career professionals said their current career path isn’t working for them because they feel underpaid, while 24 percent said their job did not meet their expectations.

For Filipino professionals with over 15 years of experience, Monster.com said around 89 percent said they plan to switch career paths immediately or in the near future.

The main reason for this, according to 38 percent, is the need to do something more purposeful and challenging.

The most desirable industry for young Filipinos to switch to is Travel and Tourism at 10 percent followed by Education at 9 percent and Banking, Financial Services,

insurance at 8 percent. The survey also found 46 percent of Filipinos believe those who make a career switch are “brave” for doing so.

“The notion that one might have jobs across two or even three completely different industries in a lifetime is not something so taboo anymore—in fact, it’s almost expected as employees practice lifelong learning, gain new skills, expand their networks and become more tech-savvy,” Mukherjee said.

Around 66 percent of new entrants to the labor force believe they need to widen their skill set and another career will give them that. However, the biggest concerns about doing this is inexperience in the field they wish to pursue at 33 percent and a lack of qualifications at 21 percent.

Mukherjee recommended that employees should provide their staff with opportunities to challenge themselves. This will help companies and their talents to adjust to changing work conditions, especially due to job displacements and automation.

“While financial stability is a main driver for career switching, you are likely to be able to retain talent for longer by providing learning opportunities. Filipinos are tech-hungry, confident and creative individuals—many with an entrepreneurial mindset—so it’s important to cater to this constant need to upskill and get rewarded for their efforts,” Mukherjee said.

These responses are part of a wider #IMadeTheSwitch campaign, in which Monster polled more than 2,400 respondents across the Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia to examine and raise awareness on issues around career transitioning across Southeast Asia.

It also aims to identify these issues for employers, who might want to understand why employees would consider changing careers, and how they can retain their work force.

B2

Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Companies BusinessMirror

Meralco may turn Atimonan coal plant into merchant facility

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By Lenie Lectura

@llectura

HE Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) has considered the option of converting the shovel-ready $3-billion Atimonan One Energy (A1E) coal-fired power plant into a merchant facility or power plants that do not have long-term power purchase agreements to cover their output.

The utility firm is optimistic the regulators would soon approve the power supply agreement (PSA) application it entered into with A1E. The PSA approval is necessary before the project proponent can financially close the project and commence construction. This is because lenders require projects to present an approved PSA before extending loans to energy developers.

However, the utility firm’s chairman is not discounting the possibility that the power project may be converted into a merchant plant.

“Yeah, why not? It’s only money,” replied Meralco Chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan when asked if the Atimonan power plant can be converted into a merchant plant.

“We have given the greenlight to management to proceed with Atimonan. At first, we gave the limited notice to proceed, but eventually when they start shoveling, we will give them a notice to proceed. We don’t want Atimonan to fall by the wayside like Redondo,” Pangilinan said.

More than two years since the PSA between A1E and Meralco for A1E’s 2x600 megawatt (MW)

plant was filed, A1E continues to await approval from the ERC. On August 30 A1E filed with the ERC its fourth “very urgent motion” to resolve its PSA, highlighting significant negative impacts to the overall project in terms of total project cost, timetable and eventual power prices, as well as the country’s power situation.

All the necessary agreements, particularly the EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) and loan agreements, are in place.

Financing has been arranged by the mandated lead arrangers and bookrunners with a mandate letter signed with a consortium of eight local banks. Transmission right-of-way acquisition is currently close to full completion.

Me r a l c o Po w e r G e n C o r p.

(MGen), the power generation arm of Meralco, said the option to convert it into a merchant plant is being considered as a last option.

“There are other options such as to go into competitive selection process first. We can go merchant also, but that’s the last resort,” MGen President Rogelio Singson said. “We will assess whether to go merchant or not.”

As delays hound the power project, Singson cited ballooning costs. Of the P150-billion project cost, Singson said P107 billion will be funded via bank loan.

“There’s a P3-billion interest per year. Since the time we negotiated until today, there is a 3-percent increase every year,” Singson said.

Meralco President Oscar Reyes also cited adjustments in the exchange rate, another major factor in determining the project cost.

“Project cost has significantly increased because of the exchange rate. At the time we filed, the rate was between 46 and 48. Now, it’s 53 to 54 to a dollar. Interest rate at the time we filed was low at below 4.4 percent. Now, it’s up by at least 3 percent. It’s P3 billion a year on the P107-billion loan and construction period of about 42 months. We still remain focused though,” Reyes said.

A1E is a 2x600 MW greenfield, ultra-supercritical pulverized coal-fired plant in Atimonan, Quezon, the first ultra-supercritical plant in the country.

Completion of the first 600 MW is targeted by the third quarter of 2023, and the second unit by the first quarter of 2024.

MUTUAL FUNDS

Editor: Efleda P. Campos

Jollibee opens 1st store in Manhattan, NY

By VG Cabuag @villygc

J

OLLIBEE Foods Corp. on Tuesday said it opened its first Jollibee store in Manhattan, New York City, last week. Located near the iconic Times Square, Madison Square Garden, and Broadway Theater District, Jollibee’s fast-food store is the 41st store in North America and 223rd store outside of the Philippines.

The opening follows the continued expansion drive of the company, with the most recent store openings happening in London this month, and Macau in September.

In the pipeline are store openings in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, before year-end, as well as Rome and Guam in the coming year.

“We are excited to open our first branch in Manhattan, which is a major cultural and entertainment hub that receives millions of visitors from around the world each year. The diversity of Manhattan’s food culture is perfect for us to capture not only the Filipino community living in the area, but also locals and tourists.

This hub allows us to reach more and more people with our delicious food and warm service,” the company said.

October 30, 2018

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

PER SHARE RETURN* RETURN STOCK FUNDS ALFM GROWTH FUND, INC * 242.28 -15.18% -1.76% 0.06% -17.37% ATRAM ALPHA OPPORTUNITY FUND, INC.* 1.3731 -13.45% 2.17% 1.45% -14.01% ATRAM PHILIPPINE EQUITY OPPORTUNITY FUND, INC.* 3.7642 -15.53% -1.27% -0.87% -18.04% CLIMBS SHARE CAPITAL EQUITY INVESTMENT FUND CORP.* 0.8604 -14.64% N.A. N.A. -15.4% FIRST METRO CONSUMER FUND ON MSCI PHILS. IMI, INC. * ********* 0.7973 N.A. N.A. N.A. N.A. FIRST METRO SAVE AND LEARN EQUITY FUND,INC.* 4.9877 -14.09% -3.51% -0.78% -17.05% MBG EQUITY INVESTMENT FUND, INC. * ****** 109.36 N.A. N.A. N.A. N.A. ONE WEALTHY NATION FUND, INC.* 0.7985 -17.6% N.A. N.A. -19.56% PAMI EQUITY INDEX FUND, INC.* 47.0005 -14.17% -0.99% N.A. -16.65% PHILAM STRATEGIC GROWTH FUND, INC.* 489.15 -14.9% -2.33% -1.02% -16.88% PHILEQUITY DIVIDEND YIELD FUND, INC.* 1.2104 -11.78% -0.09% N.A. -13.81% PHILEQUITY FUND, INC.* 35.2557 -11.61% 0.24% 2.01% -14.21% PHILEQUITY PSE INDEX FUND INC.* 4.7266 -14.15% -0.3% 1.9% -16.7% PHILIPPINE STOCK INDEX FUND CORP.* 789.14 -14.06% -0.56% 1.6% -16.56% SOLDIVO STRATEGIC GROWTH FUND, INC. * 0.8204 -13.24% -2.73% N.A. -15.17% SUN LIFE PROSPERITY PHILIPPINE EQUITY FUND, INC.* 3.8953 -12.56% -0.65% 0.28% -14.95% SUN LIFE PROSPERITY PHILIPPINE STOCK INDEX FUND, INC.* 0.9099 -14.31% -0.47% N.A. -16.77% UNITED FUND, INC.* 3.3463 -10.84% 0.58% 0.13% -14.07% EXCHANGE TRADED FUND FIRST METRO PHIL. EQUITY EXCHANGE TRADED FUND, INC.* ***105.5222 -13.61% 0.6% N.A. -16.22% ATRAM ASIAPLUS EQUITY FUND, INC.** $0.9087 -15.45% -0.33% -1.49% -18.01% SUN LIFE PROSPERITY WORLD VOYAGER FUND, INC.* $1.1751 -3.5% N.A. N.A. -7.12% BALANCED FUNDS PRIMARILY INVESTED IN PESO SECURITIES ATRAM DYNAMIC ALLOCATION FUND, INC.* 1.6105 -11.95% -3.56% -2.42% -13.58% ATRAM PHILIPPINE BALANCED FUND, INC.* 2.149 -11.07% -1.36% -0.34% -12.54% FIRST METRO SAVE AND LEARN BALANCED FUND INC.* 2.4475 -9.89% -4.34% -3.1% -11.64% GREPALIFE BALANCED FUND CORPORATION* **** 1.2751 -11.46% N.A. N.A. -12.36% NCM MUTUAL FUND OF THE PHILS., INC* 1.7951 -8.16% -0.59% -0.33% -9.91% PAMI HORIZON FUND, INC.* 3.3908 -12.36% -2.67% -1.49% -13.46% PHILAM FUND, INC.* 15.2798 -12.05% -2.5% -1.49% -12.97% SOLIDARITAS FUND, INC.* ******** 2.0069 -9.55% -0.66% 1.18% -10.49% SUN LIFE OF CANADA PROSPERITY BALANCED FUND, INC.* 3.5501 -9.53% -1.35% -0.54% -11.17% SUN LIFE PROSPERITY DYNAMIC FUND, INC.* 0.8987 -9.85% -1.79% N.A. -11.92% PRIMARILY INVESTED IN FOREIGN CURRENCY SECURITIES COCOLIFE DOLLAR FUND BUILDER, INC.* $0.03459 -4% -0.76% 1.33% -4.18% PAMI ASIA BALANCED FUND, INC.* $0.9133 -10.99% -0.17% -2.37% -12.77% SUN LIFE PROSPERITY DOLLAR ADVANTAGE FUND, INC.* $3.4494 -2.76% 2.95% 1.83% -5.56% SUN LIFE PROSPERITY DOLLAR WELLSPRING FUND, INC.* $1.0335 -5.6% N.A. N.A. -7.08% BOND FUNDS PRIMARILY INVESTED IN PESO SECURITIES ALFM PESO BOND FUND, INC.* 341.4 1.42% 1.76% 1.55% 1.27% ATRAM CORPORATE BOND FUND, INC.* ******* 1.8497 -2.06% -1.36% -0.72% -2.25% COCOLIFE FIXED INCOME FUND, INC.* 2.9474 5.49% 5.33% 5.24% 4.44% EKKLESIA MUTUAL FUND INC.* 2.1175 -0.08% 0.95% 0.65% 0.73% FIRST METRO SAVE AND LEARN FIXED INCOME FUND,INC.* 2.2125 -0.23% -0.13% 0.36% -0.17% GREPALIFE FIXED INCOME FUND CORP.* P 1.5709 -2.66% -1.56% -1.42% -2.4% PHILAM BOND FUND, INC.* 3.8017 -7.05% -2.18% -1.29% -6.13% PHILEQUITY PESO BOND FUND, INC.* 3.4644 -0.97% -0.61% -0.34% -1.15% SOLDIVO BOND FUND, INC. * 0.8741 -6.09% -2.39% N.A. -5.32% SUN LIFE OF CANADA PROSPERITY BOND FUND, INC.* 2.7523 -0.96% -0.2% 0.08% -0.89% SUN LIFE PROSPERITY GS FUND, INC.* 1.5293 -1.46% -0.64% -0.27% -1.32% PRIMARILY INVESTED IN FOREIGN CURRENCY SECURITIES ALFM DOLLAR BOND FUND, INC. * $446.11 0.42% 2.14% 2.89% 0.04% ALFM EURO BOND FUND, INC. * Є213.26 0.2% 1.22% 1.62% -0.22% ATRAM TOTAL RETURN DOLLAR BOND FUND, INC.** $1.1207 -1.17% 0.66% 1.46% -1.18% FIRST METRO SAVE AND LEARN DOLLAR BOND FUND, INC.* $0.0248 - 0.8% 0.54% N.A. -0.8% GREPALIFE DOLLAR BOND FUND CORP.* $1.69 -4.4% -0.68% 0.89% -4.6% 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* $1.025 -4.95% -1.5% -2.99% -4.52% PHILAM DOLLAR BOND FUND, INC.* $2.1304 -4.65% -0.08% 2% -5.36% PHILEQUITY DOLLAR INCOME FUND INC.* $0.0568951 -1.01% 0.81% 1.74% -0.53% SUN LIFE PROSPERITY DOLLAR ABUNDANCE FUND, INC.* $2.8786 -4.09% 0.34% 1.41% -4.45% MONEY MARKET FUNDS PRIMARILY INVESTED IN PESO SECURITIES ALFM MONEY MARKET FUND, INC.* 120.05 2.35% 1.7% 1.46% 2.07% PHILAM MANAGED INCOME FUND, INC.* 1.1737 1.67% 0.34% 0.36% 1.41% SUN LIFE PROSPERITY MONEY MARKET FUND, INC.* 1.2117 2.48% 2.17% 1.44% 2.21% PRIMARILY INVESTED IN FOREIGN CURRENCY SECURITIES SUN LIFE PROSPERITY DOLLAR STARTER FUND, INC.* ***** $1.0127 N.A. N.A. N.A. 1.4%

* - 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

Long lines welcomed the opening day, with people waiting up to 20 hours in the rain to finally get their hands on the company’s Chickenjoy and other favorites.

In North A mer ica Jollibee openings in new states in the US and in the Greater Toronto area in Canada are poised to build on last year’s double-digit sales growth, the highest in history, outpacing the US restaurant industry’s growth rate.

In the past year, the company opened five stores in North America, with three in Canada and two in the US. It is planning to further increase its store network in North America in the next five years.

The brand has also seen success in other markets such as Brunei Darussalam and Vietnam where it is the fastest-growing restaurant with over 100 stores now.

The company also owns 85 percent of Smashburger and 47 percent of Tortas Frontera, a Mexican food concept by chef Rick Bayless.

“Through organic growth and strategic acquisitions, JFC is set to reach its goal of balancing the split between foreign and domestic sales—thus making its portfolio more diverse and resilient,” the company said.

DTI mobilizes Mindanao offices to check on substandard steel

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HE Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has orde re d it s Con s u me r Protection Group (CPG) units in Regions 11 and 12 in Mindanao to investigate reports of substandard steel rebars used in housing construction being sold in Davao del Sur and Sarangani provinces.

In a response letter to the Philippine Iron and Steel Institute (Pisi), DTI Undersecretary Ruth Castelo informed the industry group that the complaint filed

by Pisi based on its “test buys” of rebars in nine hardware stores in the two provinces had already been endorsed to the CPG local units.

Based on the market test buy, PISI found gross violations by Davao Might y Steel in three hardware stores with three of its products found to be underweight. Another steel producer, DTS, also sold underweight rebars in two stores while one hardware store sold its 7 mm rebar as 9 mm.

Two rebar samples without logo and marking (uncertified) were bought from one hardware store.

Castelo earlier said it’s very important for consumers to look at the marking on the rebars so they would know the name of the manufacturer of the steel products they’re buying.

“Rest assured that the Consumer Protection Group will continue to keep our commitments and strengthen our efforts in ensuring the quality of the products and safety of consumers nationwide,” she said in her letter to Pisi.

Pisi earlier said most of the substandard steel being sold in the market rolled out from steel mills using induction furnace which is already banned in China.

According to Chinese authorities, about 90 percent of the steel produced using the induction furnace method is substandard.

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Banking&Finance BusinessMirror

Choosing your next car

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S you may have heard, the automotive industry is down 14 percent this year compared to the double-digit growth it had been experiencing over the previous years. So this is pretty much a buyer’s market, which you may want to take advantage of. However, choosing the right car for you may not be as easy, since there are so many choices around, plus your friends and relative sometimes suggest a car that may be ideal for them, but is it really for you?

I have some suggestions you may want to consider, which can be summarized as Piso—after all, you are the one paying for it. Purpose, investment, service and options. The first thing you really need to think about is, what is the purpose of this vehicle?

Is it to take your kids to school, you and your wife to work, your family on road trips? Did you need a status symbol to keep up with the other top executives in your firm? Will you drive it, do you have a driver, or sometimes you drive and sometimes you have a driver? Your purpose will determine the type of vehicle you get, the seating and cargo capacity, and if you need a luxury brand or not.

Buying a vehicle is a major investment. A reality check is needed to determine if your acquisition is within your means.

Typically, if you get a new auto loan with a maximum term of five years, your monthly amortization should not be more than 30 to 40 percent of your monthly take-home pay with a 20-percent downpayment, which is your equity. Purchasing a vehicle is not really an investment like buying a house, which has a capital appreciation potential; it is an expense that erodes the value of your asset over time.

As such, you would want to reduce your initial investment or cost to as little as possible to meet your purpose.

The cost of ownership does not end with buying the vehicle; another major component is the service and operating expenses. In buying a new vehicle, make sure you get it from a reputable distributor or dealer who can back up the warranty on the vehicle, as well as provide service and spare parts long after the warranty has expired.

I have, for the moment, given up on owning luxury European brands, since I felt that the stress I had to endure whenever I had these cars serviced was not worth the joy of

FINEX FREE ENTERPRISE George S. Chua ownership. Considering the traffic conditions in our country plus the highway speed limit of only 100 kilometers per hour, you don’t need to have a large engine.

Get the smallest engine possible that will give you enough power to overtake safely, carry a full load and be able to climb steep inclines. Turbo-charged engines would typically increase power by 30 percent or so, and unless you drive more than 2,000 kilometers a month, fuel savings on diesel will not allow you to recover the higher initial cost.

As icing on the cake, it is good to know what options are available in the car you want and better if it comes as standard for the variant level of your choice. Typically, the options that come with a higher variant is worth more than buying it aftermarket if at all possible. There are so many modern features that have come out in the last few years that go way beyond ABS and push button start, such as ESP, BAS, TCS, HHC, SVA and so on. There are some options that have become a necessity, such as air-conditioning and automatic transmission in whatever form or type, and the nice status-symbol options such as the panoramic sunroof.

It is not a bad idea to know what features come with your choice. Of course, your option on the styling, interior layout and color is also an important factor in choosing your next car.

In the 1950s, Japanese cars were considered inferior, much like Korean cars in the 1990s. Now they are considered mainstream. Currently, many mainstream brands have their vehicles manufactured in China and sold all over the world, including the Philippines. China has the most modern highway infrastructure globally, and is it any wonder they are also able to make vehicles suitable for that?

It would be in your best interest to consider all your options. After all, you are using your hard-earned peso.

Comments may be sent to georgechuaph@yahoo.com

Geniusto brings blockchain-powered ‘social-emotional’ banking to PHL

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USTRALIAN emerging financial technology firm Geniusto International Ltd. is set to launch its “social-emotional” banking service called ePERA (electronic money) to the Philippines to bring a unique and successful banking experience.

Geniusto International founder, CEO and mManaging Director Shane Hermans said that “the social banking platform ePERA will leverage blockchain for KYC/AML [Know Your Customer/ Anti-Money Laundering policy, thereby] de-risking new customers for banks.”

Hermans said he also intends to see the platform embrace cryptocurrency as part of their loyalty program enhancing the peer-to-peer social banking experience while providing social banking to the community and family-oriented groups.

“The logic of payment is the same in all banking system,” Hermans said. “But what makes ePERA unique is it allows users to transfer and send money and at the same time set up group payments. This means, a group of individuals can pool in their money to buy goods or services using their online accounts.”

“The other parts of the platform is importing new contacts or credit cards like Visa or Mastercard and even to leverage the market for special deals and get rewards,” Hermans added.

In addition, when enrolled in ePERA, payment of overdue bills is made easy because the system will send a customer an alert whenever a payment is due, including electricity, water, cable service

and others. The way ePera is interfaced also sets it apart from traditional banking system, according to Hermans.

“Social banking is designed to manage community, family and friends’ finances more effectively,” he said, adding this includes household budgeting that are “so crucial for young couples in the wealthaccumulation phase of their working lives and raising a family.”

The move by Geniusto supports the Philippine commercial banking industry’s initiative to capitalize on blockchain technology to promote financial inclusion and improve the domestic money-transfer services. The firm said the support of the banking sector augurs well for the application possibilities of blockchain for distributed ledger technology for wire transfers and other traditional banking services.

According to Hermans, the new social banking platform ePERA will give firstmover advantage to selected banking partners who wish to leverage on social buying trends as part of their digital banking ecosystem. The social banking platform is designed for digital traditional and nontraditional banks, and brings a wide range of features and opportunities for banking clients and business partners.

Social banking service enables banks to bring their users online, encouraging and incentivizing them to interact with financial institution’s products and services. This will be mutually beneficial for both the business and the consumer in helping grow the social banking ecosystems.

Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Pagcor’s Sept income rises 762.8% to ₧37.59B

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By Rea Cu

@ReaCuBM

HE Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp.

(Pagcor) reported a net income of P37.59 billion as of end-September, increasing by 762.8 percent compared to the P4.356 billion the agency said it secured in the same month last year.

Based on the latest data from Pagcor, the state-run gaming regulator’s reported net income for the third quar ter is 1,702 percent higher than its target for the period of just P2.085 billion.

Broken dow n, i ncome

from gaming operations as of end-September amounted to P50.310 billion, posting an increase of 18.7 percent compared to last year’s reported P42.379 billion. This also showed an expansion of 9.2 percent compared

Security Bank closes branches for ‘Undas’

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ECURITY Bank Corp. announced through a statement that all its branches will be closed on November 1, a special nonworking day in the Philippines.

The bank said this is in “observance of All Saints’ Day as per Proclamation 269, series of 2017.

The universal bank said that on November 2, Friday, an additional special nonworking day, its branches at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport and Naia Terminal 3 will be open to serve clients.

The bank added it could be reached during these days via its customer contact center at 88-791-88 and e-mail: customercare@securitybank.com.ph.

to its target for the quarter of P46.035 billion.

Its total income net of gaming taxes and contributions reached P58.957 billion, which grew 165.6 percent compared to the P22.197 billion reported as of end-September 2017. This also showed a 162.8-percent rise compared to the target set at P22.428 billion.

Pagcor’s gaming taxes and contributions include a 5-percent franchise tax and 50 percent of its gaming share, as well as dividends to the Dangerous Drugs Board of P45 million as mandated under the Republic Act 9165, or the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act. For the third quarter, it posted total gaming taxes and contributions amounting to P26.412 billion, which expanded by 18.7 percent compared to the P22.249 billion reported in 2017. This also showed a 9.2-percent growth compared to its target of P24.168 billion.

Furthermore, its total taxes for the quarter reached P21.263 billion, increasing by 20 percent compared to last year’s P17.714 billion. This amount also reflects Pagcor exceeded by 4.5 percent its target for end-September of P20.332 billion.

Earlier in the month, Pagcor reported that it is conducting a crackdow n on online gaming f ir ms operat ing w it hout a license in the countr y and

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t hose fou nd to be v iol at i ng the agency’s Offshore Gaming Regulatory Manual.

Pagcor Chairman and CEO Andrea D. Domingo said in a statement that the agency is cooperating with various law-enforcement offices to identify illegal online gaming operators. Domingo added that investigations and raids are regularly undertaken by the agency in line with this.

Through its Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement Department, Pagcor ensures that Philippine Offshore Gaming Operator (Pogo) licensees operate within the bounds and limits of their offshore gaming licenses and mandates the department to monitor and report possible violations on labor, immigration and other pertinent laws, such as poor working conditions, exploitation of employees and employment of minors or undocumented foreign nationals.

In March Pagcor reported that revenues from Pogo will likely reach P6 billion after the rollout of its third-party audit system.

Domingo said a third-party audit system, which monitors the operations of 53 Pogos, will enable Pagcor to track the revenues generated in real time by these Pogos.

Revenues from Pogos last year reached P3.9 billion and Pagcor expects to double the revenues this year.

B4 Wednesday, October 31, 2018

FORMER ASCOTT ASSISTANT RESIDENCE MANAGER TO TAKE CHARGE ON COMPANY’S NEWEST PROJECT SUN LIFE GREPA RENEWS PARTNERSHIP WITH HOME CREDIT PHILIPPINES

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U N Life Grepa Fina nc i a l Inc. (Su n Life Grepa), one of t he top l ife-insurance companies in t he cou nt r y ; a nd Home Cred it Ph i l ippi nes (HCPH), pa r t of t he g lob a l con s u me r - f i n a nce e x p e r t Home Cred it Group, renewed t heir pa r t nersh ip by way of l au nc h ing a cred it insu ra nce prog ra m for t he u nderser ved Fi l ipino m a rket.

T he prog ra m benef it foc uses on t he pay ment of t he a mor t i zat ion of e x ist ing loa ns (mobi le - phone, electronic and home-appliance loan) in case t he debtor gets ho s pit a l i z e d due to s ic k ne s s or accident, and is unable to work and ea r n a l iv ing.

“ T his is about empower ing Fi l ipinos who a re u nderser ved in ter ms of f ina nc i a l-ser v ice access.

T he prog ra m a l lows t hem to have bet ter cont rol of t he i r f i n a nces g iven life’s uncer tainties,” Sun Life Gre pa P resident R ic h a rd S. L i m says. “Ou r pa r t nersh ip w it h HCPH cont inues to reac h more Fi l ipinos who d rea m of bu i ld i ng br ig hter l ives by prov id i ng benef it s t h at a re t r u ly usef u l to t hem at t heir t ime of need.”

T he pa r t nersh ip bet ween Su n Life Grepa and HCPH began in 2015, when the insurer star ted prov iding cred it life-insurance coverage to HCPH ’s t hen-10 0,0 0 0 c l ients.

To d a y S u n L i f e G r e p a p r o v i d e s insu ra nce coverage to more t ha n 1. 5 m i l l ion c l ients of HCPH. “ W hat ma kes ou r pa r t nersh ip w it h Su n Life Grepa st rong is t hat b o t h c o m p a n i e s a r e c o m m it t e d toward understanding and p ro v i d i n g me a n i n g f u l f i n a nc i a l solutions in addressing the needs of our c lients,” HCPH Chief Executive Of f icer A nn ic a Witsc ha rd says. “It is t his shared core belief in putting t h e n e e d s o f o u r c l i e nt s a b o v e e ver y t h i ng e l se t h at h a s he lped m a ke t h is sy nerg y successf u l.”

For more infor m at ion, cont act Su n L i fe G re p a at 8 4 9 - 9 6 3 3 or HCPH at 753 - 5711.

FIRST-EVER SMART ROBOT DEBUTS AT SM

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AY hello to SM’s newest interactive mall attendant! Taking your mallgoing experience to a whole new level, the country’s first-ever in-mall smart customer-service robot debuts at SM Supermalls in the first quarter of 2019, in partnership with New Kinpo Group (NKG), a Taiwan-based technolog y company. Your newest in-mall go-to guide will provide mall directions, deals, promos and other

new happenings to watch out for.

“In pursuit of bringing family fun experiences for all, SM is excited to bring to customers another fun innovation that aims to transform shopping and retail experiences in the country,” said Steven Tan, SM Supermalls chief operating officer.

T he N KG i s a Ta iw a n - b a s e d technology company that specializes in global electronic and original design-

manufacturing services. This technology giant is known for its developments in robotics, smart-home appliances and electronic beauty products, among others.

Be the first to experience the initial run of SM’s newest smart robot at SM Megamall. Truly, shopping has never been this fun and interactive at SM Supermalls! For more information, visit www.smsupermalls.com.

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ANIEL Wee, The Ascott Ltd. Philippines country general manager, recently hailed Rennan John Reyes as the residence manager of Citadines Bay City Manila, the company’s newest premier development. Reyes will oversee overall operations when the 212-room hotel opens on November 28.

Reyes, who has been with The Ascott Ltd. since 2014, specializes in operations, financial management and property management, and has particularly extensive experience in project management and preopening properties.

Reyes was the assistant residence manager of Ascott

Makati and Somerset Millennium Makati, and works closely with the general manager and heads of departments to oversee smooth flow of operations. He is also the cluster head for housekeeping operations, and coordinates with the executive housekeepers in the cluster to implement strategies and ensure that key performance indicators for housekeeping department are closely monitored and team goals are achieved.

With almost two decades of experience in the hotel and hospitality industry, it is with much excitement that Reyes takes on his new role, as Citadines Bay City Manila gears up for its opening on November 28.

HOTEL CELESTE CELEBRATES 10TH YEAR WITH DISCOUNTS, PROMO Be enthralled with posh and cozy rooms for only P7,900-net deluxe and P9,000-net suite. Book and spoil your loved ones with these amazing perks: An overnight accommodation; a welcome drink, and foot and leg massage (from 3 to 10 p.m.); priority for early checkin at 10 a.m.; one round of soda/iced tea/local beer or cocktail at Hemingway’s Bar; three course meals (lunch or dinner) at Edward and Wallis; complimentary local-landline calls; discount spree with 10-percent at food-and-beverage outlets of Edward and Wallis, Hemingway’s Bar and Alice-Elizabeth; 40-percent discount for in-room body massage; Hotel Céleste anniversary gift; and a complimentary Wi-Fi Access. For reservations, e-mail at info@hotelceleste.ph and visit www. hotelceleste.ph for online booking.

THE MUCH-AWAITED LEADERSHIP SEMINAR KICKS OFF IN MANILA

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HE People At Work recently launched “Leading Change in a Fractured World” in Manila. Held at New World Hotel Makati, the seminar was conducted by Harvard professor Dr. Dean Williams, a sought-after leadership expert and successful author of two best-selling books, Real Leadership: Helping People and Organizations Face Their Toughest Challenges and Leadership for a Fractured World: How to Cross Boundaries, Build Bridges, and Lead Change.

Delegates comprised of presidents, chief executive officers (CEO) and senior business leaders from various organizations, such as Science Park of the Philippines Corp., Manila Exposition Complex, Saint Luke’s, PhilamLife, Unilab, Manila Water, Technologies and PruLife.

Dean presented the kinds of leadership needed to navigate today’s crazy world. Setting aside traditional leadership concepts, he challenged leaders to apply creative problem solving and adaptive change by building

networks of people and crossing boundaries. The delegates were asked to think differently about managing self as an instrument of power, and keeping the self from fracturing.

Said Cesar Ginete, CEO of The People at Work in Philippines, “We’re privileged to have Dean headline this seminar, as [his] vast and rich knowledge in leadership gained across so many cultures and environments, both [in] private and public. The seminar was an excellent occasion for business leaders to hear ideas [that will] challenge current concepts of leadership and how they can better respond to today’s challenges.”

Today Dean directs The Global Change Agent executive education program at Harvard University and runs his own leadership development firm. He conducted extensive research with Aetna Life and Casualty in the US, the Matsushita School in Japan and the government of Brunei in Southeast Asia. While living in Borneo, Dean studied adaptation and change with indigenous tribes.

COOKING WITH CHEF PROGRAM IN NASUGBU Residents from Barangays Bulihan, Calayo, Looc and Papaya in Nasugbu, Batangas, were given cooking lessons in their respective barangays by chefs from Pico de Loro Beach and Country Club and Pico Sands Hotel, under the Cooking With Chef program. The program aims to teach participants on how to cook pastries and doughnuts for them to earn extra income during Christmas. Cooking With Chef attracted 33 participants from Barangay Bulihan; 25 from Calayo; 36 from Looc; and 27 from Papaya. The program was sponsored by SM Foundation with partners Pico De Loro Beach and Country Club, Pico Sands Hotel, Manila South Coast Development Corp. and Costa Del Hamilo Inc.

THOMPSON SETS C 3-POINT RECORD Sports C1

BusinessMirror

MANAGEMENT thinks Coach Tyronn Lue is not the right fit for the current Cavaliers. AP

Cavs’ coaching situation unclear after Lue’s firing

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NDEPENDENCE, Ohio—After an emotional day and restless night, Larry Drew went back to work.

He organized practice, met with stunned players still reeling from Tyronn Lue’s firing and put the Cleveland Cavaliers through drills as they prepared for Tuesday’s game.

But after walking off the floor, Drew, the team’s top assistant coach under Lue for the past two years, wanted to make something clear.

“I’m not the interim coach,” he said emphatically. “I’m the voice right now.”

So much for Cleveland’s transition game.

Drew added a surprising wrinkle to Lue’s dismissal on Monday by saying he’s not ready to commit to the Cavaliers in the long term until he gets a new contract. Drew said his agent, Andy Miller, has been with talks with the team about restructuring his deal. Drew is under contract through this season.

“I’m sure you guys are aware that there are some talks that are going on,” Drew told reporters. “I don’t know if any type of agreement or settlement will be made. I am prepared either way. I’ll continue to do my job, but right now there’s not been any type of agreement.”

Drew said he plans to coach the team on Tuesday night against Atlanta, but after that, nothing is definitive.

He was asked if “acting” coach was a more fitting title.

“I guess that would be more accurate, more consistent,” he said.

General manager Koby Altman fired Lue, who in 2016 became the only coach to win a pro sports championship in Cleveland since 1964, on Sunday because he felt the team was underachieving. The Cavaliers are 0-6 in their first season since three-time champion LeBron James left them for the second time as a free agent.

They had hoped to remain competitive while developing young players like rookie guard Collin Sexton. But the plan wasn’t working with Lue, forcing Altman to make a difficult decision.

“The challenge of this year was we had a mix of veterans and young guys and that’s a complex situation that’s difficult,” Altman said. “It didn’t come together the way we envisioned and we just didn’t think coach Lue was the right fit for this group. We wanted to go in a different direction, a different coach and a different voice.”

Enter Drew, who went 8-1 while filling in last season when Lue was dealing with health issues.

Drew understands what the Cavs are up against and he’s prepared to take it on. AP

THE Boston Red Sox will climb aboard duck boats for a parade to celebrate the team’s fourth World Series title in 15 years. AP

CHAMPS BACK HOME! B

OSTON—In what has become a championship tradition in the city, the Boston Red Sox will climb aboard duck boats for a parade to celebrate the team’s fourth World Series title in 15 years, city officials announced on Monday.

The parade on Wednesday will begin at 11 a.m. at Fenway Park. The team returned to Boston later Monday with the World Series trophy.

Mayor Marty Walsh said that he expected large crowds for the parade and that traffic and parking restrictions would be in place, along with tight security. Police said alcohol would be prohibited along the parade route and no one would be allowed to carry weapons of any kind.

“We’ve been here before, let’s act like it,” Police Commissioner William Gross said.

The tradition of players climbing aboard the amphibious duck boats, one of the city’s most popular tourist attractions, to celebrate championships dates back to 2004, the year the Red Sox won the World Series for the first time since 1918.

In all, the city has had 11 sports championships since 2002, with the New England Patriots winning five and the Boston Celtics and Boston Bruins each winning once during that period.

“Boston has certainly set a new tone around celebrations,” Walsh said. “Maybe it’s because we have a lot of them or maybe it’s because of the way we conduct ourselves.”

Jubilant fans, many of them college students, spilled out in the streets late Sunday and early Monday morning after the Red Sox’s clinching 5-1 win over the Dodgers in Los Angeles.

Boston police said the crowd was largely wellbehaved, and only one arrest was reported. A 22-yearold Connecticut man was charged with malicious destruction of property after climbing a light pole and punching the plastic light fixture, causing the lens to break, officials said.

Police closed off several streets around Fenway Park. A World Series championship banner was unfurled outside it just before dawn.

Two students at Bridgewater State University were arrested early Monday after being accused of vandalizing two life-sized bear sculptures on the campus during a celebration of the Red Sox win, the Enterprise of Brockton reported.

A crowd of about 2,000 students also gathered to celebrate following the game at the University of Massachusetts’s flagship campus in Amherst, MassLive. com reported. A spokeswoman for the university said there were no arrests and no injuries reported.

Boston has experienced incidents in the past during spontaneous celebrations, some leading to deaths.

In 2004 an Emerson College student was struck in the eye with a pepper-pellet gun fired by police trying

to disperse a crowd celebrating the Red Sox’s American League Championship Series win over the New York Yankees. The city later paid a $5.1-million settlement to Victoria Snelgrove’s family and agreed never to use that type of weapon again.

A settlement was also reached with police and the parents of David Woodman, a 22-year-old Celtics fan who stopped breathing and later died after being taken into custody on a public drinking charge during street celebrations after the team’s 2008 championship.

The Red Sox have returned to Fenway Park, carrying the championship trophy they won a night earlier.

A caravan of buses arrived at Fenway on Monday night, less than 24 hours after the Red Sox beat the Los Angeles Dodgers.

A couple hundred fans and about a half-dozen TV cameras were waiting for the team.

Fans started cheering when the buses arrived and roared when catcher Christian Vazquez got off the second bus holding the trophy.

Manager Alex Cora got off the first bus and held his index finger aloft to acknowledge the crowd. The players grabbed their luggage and left in their vehicles—with Brock Holt tooting his horn as he drove off. Many waved to the crowd, but none spoke.

Cora left the park wearing a gray sweat shirt with a hood over his head, walking down the street briefly unnoticed before he was followed and surrounded by about a dozen fans. He stopped a couple of times to sign autographs.

He was asked, “How does it feel to be a world champion?”

“Different,” Cora said before he strolled away.

The city of Boston has planned a parade of Duck Boats for Wednesday.

Steve Pearce hit two homers and drove in three runs in the clincher, earning World Series MVP honors. AP

NBA RESULTS Philadelphia 113, Atlanta 92 Portland 103, Indiana 93 New York 115, Brooklyn 96 Sacramento 123, Miami 113

| Wednesday, October 31, 2018

mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph Editor: Jun Lomibao

By Andrew Seligman The Associated Press

HICAGO—Klay Thompson popped to the wing off a screen from Stephen Curry, caught the pass from Kevin Durant and dribbled to his left before launching the record three-pointer.

The ball swished through the net. He raised both arms, pumped his fist and got mobbed.

Thompson broke Curry’s National Basketball Association (NBA) record with 14 three-pointers and finished with 52 points to lead the Golden State Warriors to a 149-124 victory over the Chicago Bulls on Monday night.

Thompson set the mark when he nailed a three with just under five minutes remaining in the third quarter. He celebrated with teammates as they headed to the sideline for a timeout, with the Warriors leading, 113-69.

Curry hit 13 three-pointers in a win over New Orleans on November 7, 2016.

“That’s what I do this for is those moments that you share with your teammates,” Thompson said. “That’s why we play basketball. It’s a collective effort. And I don’t know if I would be able to break these records I have gotten in my past like tonight without the system I play in or the team I play with, the guys I play with.”

Thompson hadn’t scored more than 19 this season and made just 5 of 36 three-pointers in the Warriors’ first seven games. But he broke out in a huge way, making 14 of 24 from beyond the arc. And he did it in just 26 minutes before sitting out the fourth quarter.

About the only thing that slowed down Thompson on Monday night was when he suffered a cut above his right eye that needed two stitches in the third quarter. He returned a few minutes later sporting a yellow headband.

The four-time All-Star guard hit 10 three and scored 36 as Golden State built a 9250 halftime lead. It was the second-highest scoring half ever by an NBA team. Phoenix had 107 in the first half of a 173-143 victory over Denver in 1990.

The Warriors also set an NBA record for three-pointers in a half with 17 through the first two quarters.

“This is what it’s been like,” coach Steve Kerr said. “I can’t even tell you how lucky I am and how I feel every night watching these guys, how unselfish they are.”

Curry scored 23. Kevin Durant had 14 points and eight assists. And Chicago product Alfonzo McKinnie added 19 points and 10 rebounds as the two-time defending NBA champions improved to 7-1.

Zach LaVine and Antonio Blakeney led the Bulls with 21 points, and Wendell Carter Jr. scored 18.

Chicago probably would have been overmatched even at full strength. But with Lauri Markkanen, Kris Dunn, Bobby Portis and Denzel Valentine all out with injuries, this one got ugly in a hurry because of Thompson.

“He was due for a game like this,” LaVine said. “He saw one go in, and his eyes got as big as the basketball. It’s tough after that, because they’re looking for him. He’s running off of screens, and you can’t touch him anyway. It’s tough.”

Thompson nailed his first three three-pointers and made six while scoring 22 in the first quarter.

By the time the second half rolled around, the Warriors were determined to see him set the mark. And it seemed teammates were doing all they could to assist on the record shot.

Durant was glad it was him.

“The most important thing was I passed it to him on his 14th,” he said. “And I also passed it to Steph on his 13th.... They wouldn’t have made those shots without me.”

Actually, Draymond Green had the assist on Curry’s record 13th three against New Orleans two years ago. Either way, this was quite a night.

“It’s the best feeling in basketball or one of the best feelings in basketball when you touch the ball and feel like it’s going in every time,” Thompson said.

Golden State 149, Chicago 124 Milwaukee 124, Toronto 109 Minnesota 124, LA Lakers 120 San Antonio 113, Dallas 108, OT Denver 116, New Orleans 111

KLAY THOMPSON sets the mark when he nails a three with just under five minutes remaining in the third quarter. AP

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MAKE MINE MAM CANDY!

PVL’s Bersola, Tiamzon grace camp for kids

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REMIER Volleyball League (PVL) stars Nicole Tiamzon and Kathy Bersola teamed up to help around 40 kids take their first step toward their volleyball dream in the first leg of ABSCBN S+A’s “Heroes Camp Year 3” recently.

The duo from BanKo Perlas Spikers guided participants in drills and gave motivational talks in the clinic, which was held at the San Andres Gymnasium in Cainta, Rizal.

The event was extra special for Tiamzon, who grew up in the area before she was discovered as a high schooler and suited up for the University of the Philippines Lady Maroons in the University Athletic Association of the Philippines.

She told her young kababayan to put in the hard work to reach their goal, like she continues to do as an athlete.

ABS-CBN Integrated Sports head Dino Laurena, who was also present during the clinic, believes that the success stories of athletes like Tiamzon and Bersola could inspire the kids in the clinic not only to aim higher in their chosen sport but also to be responsible and disciplined people.

A partnership with ABS-CBN Lingkod Kapamilya Foundation, Inc., the “Heroes Camp” started in 2016 with a series of basketball clinics under Coach Koy Banal aimed at teaching the fundamentals of the sport at the grassroots level and imparting to children positive values they can apply both in basketball and in life.

Last year ABS-CBN S+A partnered with Heroes Volleyball Program for a series of clinics, where more than 200 children were given an opportunity to learn from the experts.

MAM Candy pulls off a three-length triumph that netted a whopping P1.2 million.

SMART IN HOT START S

MART flirted with disaster before eluding Sta. Lucia, 25-20, 25-19, 25-23, to kick off its campaign in the Philippine Superliga All-Filipino Conference on Tuesday at the Filoil Flying V Centre in San Juan City.

After a long hiatus, Gretchel Soltones announced her arrival in style as she provided the spark for the Giga Hitters in the tournament bankrolled by Isuzu, Sogo, Senoh, Asics, Mikasa, Mueller, UCPB Gen and Bizooku.

Reigning champion Petron also had a roaring start with the Blaze Spikers crushing a young Cocolife squad, 25-18, 25-15, 25-18, in the other match.

Aiza Maizo-Pontillas finished with 14 points while Ces Molina, who recovered from a stress fracture injury to contribute 10 points and 14 digs for the Blaze Spikers.

Soltones, a former San Sebastian College star, delivered a game-high 17 points to dominate the spike department in the opening salvo of the conference also backed by ESPN5, Hyper HD and Aksyon TV. “I’m very happy to be back after one year,” said Soltones, who was part of the national team that saw action in the Asian Volleyball Confederation Asian Women’s Cup early this month.

“We’re very happy to play in a high-level tournament,” she added.

Smart broke loose from a 19-all contest in the third set with five straight points to reach match point, 24-19.

Sta. Lucia threatened, 23-24, but Soltones launched a powerful attack for the game-winner.

Smart Coach Roger Gorayeb, also back in the league after five years, played down

their rousing start.

“I’m happy with the win. We’ve prepared for this and I want all of my players to gain confidence as early as today,” he said.

Team Captain Pam Lastimosa finished with eight points for Sta. Lucia, whose key players Chin Basas and Filipino-American star MJ Philips are in sick bay.

Also seeing action in the All-Filipino Conference are F2 Logistics, Cignal, GenerikaAyala and Foton.

The Collegiate Grand Slam will also be held simultaneously with the All-Filipino duel with University of the Philippines, University of the East, Far Eastern University, University of Santo Tomas, De La Salle University-Dasmariñas and Colegio San Agustin seeing action.

The collegiate tournament goes full blast on November 3 at the Ynares Sports Center.

P.B.A. WEEK BELONGS F TO STANDHARDINGER

ILIPINO-GERMAN Christian Standhardinger captured his second Cignal-Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) Press Corps Player of the Week award for the Governors’ Cup following another monster effort that helped San Miguel Beer clinch a playoff berth.

The 6-foot-8 Standhardinger has been a picture of consistency for the Beermen, who won back-to-back games this past week to stretch their winning run to four and seal a playoff spot.

The Beermen currently occupy sixth spot with a 6-4 won-lost card behind Barangay Ginebra (8-2), Magnolia (8-3), Alaska (8-3), Phoenix (7-3) and Blackwater (7-3).

Standhardinger, last year’s top overall rookie pick, averaged 21.5 points, 20 rebounds and 2.5 assists in San Miguel Beer’s victories over NorthPort and Rain or Shine, respectively, the past week.

The standout from Nebraska and Hawaii registered 21 points and 22 boards in a scintillating effort to help San Miguel Beer subdue NorthPort, 114-107, last Wednesday at the Cuneta Astrodome.

The 29-year-old Gilas Pilipinas mainstay continued his explosive form after finishing with 22 points, 18 rebounds and four assists in leading San Miguel Beer to a 109-97 spanking of Rain or

CHRISTIAN STANDHARDINGER grabs his second Player of the Week award.

AL MENDOZA alsol47@yahoo.com

THAT’S ALL

Draft talk resurrects Standhardinger case IS it true that in the next drafting of new players in the 2019 Philippine Basketball Association (PBA), the No. 1 Draft player can no longer be traded to another team?

It was earlier reported that the idea was adopted in the yearly PBA Board meeting held in the United States only a while back.

Then, a friend of mine with strong PBA connections but who was unauthorized to issue an official information on the matter, said it was downgraded to just a plan “for further study.”

Meaning, nothing is final. Everything is still up in the air.

I heard Phoenix Coach Louie Alas tell Noli Eala that he favored the move to disallow the trading of a No. 1 Draft pick to another team beginning 2019.

“I welcome the idea,” said Alas to Eala, the former PBA commissioner who now hosts a popular morning radio program every Saturday over TV5’s 92.30 FM. “It will favor a team that has no sister-teams in the league.”

Or words to that effect.

Was that a dig at San Miguel Beer (SMB), the sister team of both Magnolia and Ginebra?

It was SMB that collared Christian Standhardinger in a high-profile controversyladen trade last year.

Standhardinger’s switch of allegiance to SMB so unnerved TNT-Katropa that TNT management demanded the resignation of then PBA Commissioner Chito Narvasa, who approved the trade.

It was an open secret that TNT, a sister team of NLEX and Meralco, had first initiated the move to snare Standhardinger, the 6-foot-8 Fil-German dynamo, via also a trade.

When SMB beat TNT to the draw, TNT vented its ire on Narvasa. It argued that SMB, being a powerhouse team already, need not hire Standhardinger anymore to give others a chance.

A rather crooked, if not downright weak, logic.

First, the league has no such rule on that.

Second, it is innate in a team to always look for ways to strengthen its lineup at all times.

And third, this is a free country, and every

ETERAN jockey Jordan Cordova stuck to his team’s plan and was adequately rewarded with Mam Candy recording their first victory together at the 2018 Philippine Racing Commission’s (Philracom) Sampaguita Stakes Race on Sunday at the San Lazaro Leisure Park in Carmona, Cavite.

The Christian Daniel Velasco-owned filly played catch-up for more than three quarters before turning the jets on in the last 300 meters, leaving her rivals—including top-billed speedster Brilliance of SC Stockfarm and eventual second-placer Secret Affair behind—for a three-length victory with a time of one minute and 53.40 seconds in the P2-million stakes race sponsored by Philracom.

Mam Candy earned P1,200,000 for the win, while trainer Jose Mario Jacob pocketed P70,000 for the breeder’s prize.

“I just followed the game plan of our trainer [Jacob]. We thought of getting a feel of her condition first before going for it in the stretch,” Cordova said.

Antonio Tan’s Secret Affair, ridden by CS Pare Jr., finished second for P450,000, while Benhur Abalos’s Heiress of Hope, with jockey FM Raquel on board, wound up third for P250,000.

Real Flames (owner George Raquidan, jockey RG Fernandez) finished fourth and pocketed P100,000.

The other winners in the event hosted by the Manila Jockey Club and featured a total of 11 charity races were Electric Dreams (Fourth PPP Trophy Race), Hidden Light (Dalampasigang Manila Bay Trophy Race), Lucky Saver (Buhay Isang Awit Foundation Charity Race), Silver Glow (Senate Spouses Foundation Trophy Race) and Watermania (Dalampasigang Manila Bay Charity Race).

Also joining the weekend honor roll were Ifyourhonorplease (Senate Spouses Foundation Charity Race), Garantisado ( Dalampasigang Manila Bay Charity Race), Chinita ( Senate Spouses Foundation Charity Race), Tango Eco Kieth (Dalampasigang Manila Bay Charity Race), Extravagant Woman ( Senate Spouses Foundation Charity Race) and OASIS (Mowelfun Charity Race).

Shine last Saturday.

Standhardinger’s blue-collar attitude bodes well for San Miguel Beer, which overcame a slow start to make the playoffs.

Standhardinger beat teammate Alex Cabagnot, Phoenix forward Calvin Abueva, NLEX’s JR Quinahan, Blackwater’s Mark Belo, along with Ginebra’s Greg Slaughter and Sol Mercado for the weekly citation for the period of October 22 to 28.

Seven Filipino-foreigners, including the year’s potential top pick, meanwhile, already applied for the Rookie Draft set on December 16.

Lyceum star CJ Perez leads the rookie prospects with foreign blood who signified their intention to join the league’s first official function ushering its 44th season. He is the National Collegiate Athletic Association Season 93 Most Valuable Player.

Also on the list were Matthew Salem, Carlos Isit, Paul Varilla, Robbie Manalang, Trevis Jackson and John Ragasa. player has the inalienable right to choose, under the rules, which team he wants to play for.

Standhardinger chose SMB and that’s it. End of story.

Poor Narvasa, he became the fall guy.

Although Narvasa managed to dodge the bullet as TNT failed to muster the required eight votes to oust a commissioner, Narvasa would resign “as a personal sacrifice to save the institution from division.”

Narvasa’s move triggered a massive leadership overhaul that saw Ricky Vargas replace TNT’s Ramon Fernandez as PBA chairman.

But the revamp’s biggest beneficiary was Willie Marcial, who rose to become PBA commissioner from a mere statistician.

Talk about destiny.

THAT’S IT Watch Jay Valencia Glorioso, the super-talented wife of my glass mate Senen Glorioso, as she stars in a star-studded cast in The Medium playing on November 2, 3, 4, 23, 24 and 25. Directed by the celebrated Leo Rialp, the music-drama by Gian Carlo Menotti will be presented at Zobel de Ayala Recital Hall, Maybank Performing Arts Theater in BGC Arts Center, Taguig City. The opera thriller about deception, truth and God also features veteran actors Ronnie Abarquez, Joseph Nabong, Lara Maigue, Anna Migallos, Margarita Roco and noted pianist Dingdong Fiel.

For ticket reservations, call 8958098, 09189085088 and 8919999.... Happy birthday today, October 31, to my bosom bilas, Jun Magturo, the handsome husband of my beauteous sister-in-law, Ofelia Magturo. As usual, sana’y malasing mo kami ni Dante (T. Fernandez), ang mahal nating bilas. Tsirs at isang manipis!

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Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Ramirez advocates peace in kids’ games

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HILIPPINE Sports Commission (PSC) Chairman William Ramirez put emphasis on propagating peace as he addressed the agency’s Children’s Games at the Cor Jesu College (CJC) Gym on Tuesday in Digos City.

“In playing games with each other, you get acquainted and gain new friends. Peacemaking can start early with children playing since one becomes an adult it would be more challenging having his or her own beliefs and opinions,” Ramirez told some 300 young participants and more than a hundred spectators.

The Unesco-cited Children’s Games, Ramirez said, is a primary component of the PSC’s Sports for Peace Program that encourages kids from different tribes, religion and culture to embrace their right to play as stated by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

“Sports can lift the spirit of the community even in despair when kids are actively playing,” he said. This was evident when the PSC held a sports therapy program among children who were displaced by the Marawi City seige last year.

The PSC, through the Philippine Sports Institute, also intends to hold a Children’s Games in Marawi City as part of the government’s rehabilitation program of the war-torn local government unit.

Ramirez reminded the children to become models for cleanliness, urging them to dispose their garbage properly.

CJC President Brother Ellakim Sosmeña, SC, declared open the games which featured Larong Pinoy events like sack race, ball-to-cheek relay, patintero, hula-hoop relay, halu-halo relay, kadang-kadang and tug of peace.

POWER DUEL UP P

REMIUM will be on shotmaking as the Philippine Golf Tour (PGT) Asia’s long hitters gear up for four days of power duel in the $100,000 Summit Point World 18 Challenge, which gets going on Wednesday in Lipa City.

It could also be a test of mental toughness as the men of the tour battle it out in wet and windy conditions spawned by Typhoon Rosita, making the Robert Trent Jones Jr.-designed layout, which features some of the best holes one can find anywhere in the world, softer and longer than its 7017 yardage.

It could also boil down to putting in the

final day with the course’s last line of defense tipped to challenge even the steadiest players in the stellar cast.

Clyde Mondilla strung up a 17-under 271 card at Summit Point Club to dominate the closing event of last year’s PGT that also served as his coronation as Order of Merit champion. But given the current playing conditions, the same kind of scoring is unlikely to be matched despite the field all coming into the event in top form following a series of tournaments—in the just concluded PGT and the ongoing PGT Asia.

James Ryan Lam, for one, is brimming

CLYDE MONDILLA is one of the players to watch at the $100,000 Summit Point World 18 Challenge.

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World’s elite bring act to Subic

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RIATHLETES gearing up for bigger endurance races or those who simply want to adopt a healthy lifestyle and get into multisport training now have one venue to test their skills—at least in the next three years through the Black Arrow Express 5150.

It kicks off this Sunday in Subic and features some of the world’s elite triathletes clashing in the pro division (men and women) while a slew of competitors will slug it out for top honors in the Asian elite and various age categories.

The event, set over the Olympic distance of 1.5-km swim/40-km bike/10-km run, will be held in Subic.

The organizing Sunrise Events Inc. (SEI) and the AAI Group of Cos., through AAI Worldwide Logistics and Black Arrow Express, have recently inked an agreement, making Black Arrow Express the “last-mile,” and consumer company of the AAI Group, the title sponsor of the 5150 series for the next three years.

As the official licensee of the Ironman triathlon in the country, SEI has gained the rights to stage the 5150 series

from the World Triathlon Corp.

Triathletes from 21 countries are competing in the event, backed by venue hosts Subic Bay and ACEA Subic Bay and major sponsors David’s Salon, Pioneer Insurance and Wicked Active Gear. They include seven bets from Australia, six from Great Britain, five from the US and four from Japan along with those from France, Hong Kong, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Guam, Guatemala, India, Italy, New Zealand, Malaysia, Norway, Russia, Portugal and Vietnam.

Aussie Sam Betten, a three-time 5150 champion in Subic, looms as the man to beat in the men’s Elite category that also drew the likes of Czech Jakub Langhammer, ninth placer in this year’s Ironman 70.3 Asia-Pacific, brand-new pro Tim Linn of the US, recent winner of the Hongseong Double Olympic Race, and Dan Brown and Mitch Robins, both from Down Under.

Disputing the women’s tiara are Dimity Lee Duke, also from Australia, Hong Kong’s Leanne Szeto and Guam’s Manami Iijima.

with confidence coming into the event, having snapped a near-decadelong search for a breakthrough with a victory in last week’s PGTA CAT Open, where he outclassed the elite field at the tight, hazard-laden Luisita layout with superb short game and exceptional putting.

But at Summit Point, emphasis will be on power although its sloping fairways, big bunkers and deceptive greens are expected to challenge the best players in the fold.

They include American Josh Salah, who rallied to finish second to Lam last week, along with the rest of the top 10 finishers, led by Jobim Carlos, Ira Alido, Jhonnel Ababa, Elmer Salvador, Seung Jae Maeng of the US, Charles Hong, Justin Quiban and Tarik Can, also of the US. Young Koreans Micah Shin and Kim Joohyung are also in the elite roster, ready to slug it out with the best and the brightest in pursuit of the top $17,500 purse in

the seventh leg of the second season of the region’s newest circuit put up by the International Container Terminal Services Inc. (ICTSI) and organized by Pilipinas Golf Tournaments Inc. Other foreign aces expected to step up are Americans Nicolas Paez, a recent PGT winner, Lexus Keoninh, and John Michael O’Toole, Thais Pasavee Lertvilai, V. Rattanaphiboonkij and Sutijet Kooratanapisan, Lee Sang of Canada, Issei Mori of Japan, Aussie Jack Sullivan and Peter Stojanovski of Macedonia.

Mondilla is also tipped to contend after regaining his winning form with a victory at ICTSI Luisitia Invitational, along with Michael Bibat, Keanu Jahns, Jay Bayron, Jerson Balasabas, Zanieboy Gialon, Dino Villanueva and Joenard Rates in the event backed by Custom Clubmakers, Meralco, K&G Golf Apparel, BDO, Sharp, KZG, PLDT and MY Shokai Technology Inc.

Sports

Sisters file lawsuits in sex-abuse scandal

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| Wednesday, October 31, 2018 mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph Editor: Jun Lomibao

CHINESE RULE

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OHA, Qatar—Nikita Nagornyy stuck his high bar dismount, flexed just a bit and let out a sigh. Exhausted but exhilarated, the Russian gymnast thought his country’s long wait to return to the top of the sport was finally over.

Then Nagornyy’s score flashed and a whoop went out at the Aspire Dome. Only it didn’t come from the Russians but the Chinese, who took gold at the world championships in a tense if sloppy men’s team final by less than five hundredths of a point to claim their first major international title in four years.

China’s total of 256.634 was just ahead of Russia’s 256.585. Nagornyy—who stalled midway through his final routine and was scored 13.733, not quite enough for Russia to slip past the Chinese—couldn’t seem to figure out how gold turned to silver.

“Of course I don’t feel positive about it because I

think that we were very close and they didn’t let us win,” Nagornyy said through an interpreter.

When asked if he was talking about the judging, Nagornyy shrugged.

“I don’t really blame judges as such but.... I don’t think it’s right,” he said.

Not that it mattered to the Chinese. The longtime superpower watched rival Japan claim the top spot at the 2015 world championships and 2016 Olympics but surged back into its usual perch thanks to a sublime performance on parallel bars by Zou Jingyuan, whose score of 16.2 marked the highest of the meet, even better than anything put up in the women’s competition by American star Simone Biles.

China needed just about every hundredth.

Paired together with Russia during the final, the Chinese headed to the final rotation leading by 1.2 points only to see Xiao Ruoteng come off early in his

BRAZIL’S Flavia Saraiva performs on the balance beam during qualifying sessions for the Gymnastics World Championships at the Aspire Dome in Doha, Qatar. AP

high bar routine. Xiao clasped his hands over his head in shock before re-chalking and going back to work.

His score of 12.6 opened the door for the Russians, but Nagornyy couldn’t quite take advantage, leaving Xiao with a mixture of joy and relief. “[My mistake was] really regretful but you know, I was totally ready for this competition but maybe for some reason I missed routines,” Xiao said through an interpreter. “Our whole team, everyone just encouraged me.”

China won its 11th world title since 1994 and earned an automatic spot in the 2020 Summer Olympics, as did Russia and third-place Japan.

The Japanese saw their shot at chasing down China end when Yusuke Tanaka sailed off the parallel bars.

Tanaka’s score of 11.566 was too much to overcome in the finals, when three gymnasts compete in each event and score counts.

Briefly faced with the prospect of finishing off the podium entirely, the Japanese rallied to hold off the United States for third, in large part because of twotime Olympic champion Kohei Uchimura, who served as the anchor on four of the six events.

Uchimura said it was 50-50 when asked if he was disappointed in his team’s finish but relieved it assured the Japanese a spot in the Olympics, which will be held in Tokyo.

“After Yusuke’s fall, we had to stop the bad mood,” said Uchimura, who is dealing with an ankle injury that kept him out of the all-around competition. “We had to start battle mode.”

So did the Americans. Five-time national champion Sam Mikulak slipped during an easy portion of his routine on pommel horse, the US’s first event.

The miscue put the Americans in a deep hole early, but it was their only real mistake, a significant step

OS ANGELES—A former Olympic gymnast and her sister, who also competed on the national team, filed lawsuits on Monday that claim USA Gymnastics enabled and failed to prevent sexual abuse by the team’s former doctor, Larry Nassar.

The US Olympic Committee and Nassar are also named as defendants in the civil suits filed in Los Angeles

by Tasha and Jordan Schwikert.

The organizations knew “or should have known of Nassar’s sexual abuse and could have prevented it by taking sexual-abuse allegations seriously and maintaining a culture of accountability and transparency,” the two complaints said.

USA Gymnastics said in a statement that it doesn’t comment on pending litigation.

“The organization has undergone significant reforms in the wake of his horrific acts that have impacted our athletes and community forever,” the statement said.

The USOC didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment. Nassar is serving decades in prison after hundreds of girls and women said he sexually abused them under the guise of medical treatment when he worked for Michigan State University and Indianabased USA Gymnastics, which trains Olympians.

The sisters both claim Nassar assaulted them during their time on the national team.

Officials at USA Gymnastics were “out of touch,” leading to a toxic culture that “allowed this child molester to get away with abusing children for decades,” Tasha Schwikert, 33, said at a news conference.

Tasha Schwikert, who earned bronze at the 2000 Summer Games in Australia, works as a lawyer. Jordan Schwikert, 32, was an elite college gymnast and is now a gymnastics coach. They both live in Las Vegas. AP

forward for a group that features just one gymnast over 23.

“We didn’t have too much pressure, we knew we were really outside the medal podium contention,” Mikulak said. “But we were able to put pressure on [late] and hit sets when other people weren’t.”

Mikulak added: “It’s not too devastating because we’ve got a bright future to build on.”

So, however, do the Chinese. Four of the five athletes that stepped onto the red-laden floor at the Aspire Dome are 23 or younger. On a day when they weren’t quite at their best, they found a way anyway. With two years to prepare for Tokyo, there are worse things to have on your resume than “world champion.”

“We are a young team, but we are a strong team,” Xiao said. “We can do even better at the competition. We have to teach ourselves how to relieve the pressure and how to come back.” AP

I

In the company of the angels

N the company of the angels, we sing Your praise, Oh God, and we pray: Holy God, come to our aid. Stay near the brokenhearted and heal those who suffer relationship wounds. Lead all nations to cease the production of nuclear and chemical weapons. Thwart the plots of terrorists and all who seek destruction. Stop the production of contraceptives that kill unborn babies. May God bless us with courage, wisdom and strength under the watchful care of the angels. Amen.

GIVE US THIS DAY SHARED BY LUISA LACSON, HFL Word&Life Publications • teacherlouie1965@yahoo.com

Editor: Gerard S. Ramos • lifestylebusinessmirror@gmail.com

Life

AWARDS BUZZ IS ICING FOR JOHN KRASINSKI AND ‘A QUIET PLACE’ D1

BusinessMirror

Why you can’t stop looking at other people’s screens

By John herrman New York Times News Service

O

THER people’s screens are everywhere, once you start to notice them. They’re collectively most obvious at night, as they bob through the city, creating a new, hand-height layer to the ambient lights, or when held up at concerts, like lighters. During the day, other people’s screens hover around us as we wait in line for coffee, or as we sit and drink our coffee, or as we take our coffee on the bus or train.

Other people’s screens are windows into their lives, and brains, and relationships and work—into their politics, anxieties, failures and addictions. They tend to appear between one and three feet away from other people’s faces, depending.

Other people’s screens are also a lot smaller than they used to be, when they were perched almost exclusively on desks

Continued on d2

Wednesday, October 31, 2018

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Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Personal Tech BusinessMirror

Why you can’t stop looking at other people’s screens Continued from D1 and tables at offices and in homes, where the presence of strangers is rare or worrying by default.

In 2010, 27 percent of American people carried portable screens; by the end of 2016, it was more than 80 percent. Over the same period, the largest iPhone screen grew from 3.5 inches, from one corner to the other, to 5.5. Other people’s screens got clearer and brighter, from a wider range of angles: flat on a desk; held low, for a glance during dinner; held out for a group to see; and of course, spied over a shoulder, on the way to work.

Other people’s screens have changed the phenomenon of “shoulder surfing”—peeking over shoulders, often with malicious intent—or so a team of researchers at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich surmised.

Shoulder surfing is why your passwords show up as dots or asterisks when you type them out on your computer or your phone. But most of the literature on it is security-focused, a response, perhaps, to questions of how best to safeguard one’s information, during a time before portable screens. (See: “Phoning Is an Art in the Age of Shoulder Surfers,” a 1993 story in The New York Times, which described a dystopian Penn Station full of loitering thieves, all waiting for pay phone users to punch in or recite calling card numbers, which could be spied upon, stolen and burned up in long-distance dialing sprees.)

In a world in which other people’s screens are virtually impossible to ignore, there were “no detailed investigations of shoulder surfing incidents and their real-world implications,” wrote the researchers in Munich. So they distributed a survey, asking a range of questions about a hypothetical scenario in which a fictional character named “Vic” is looking at the mobile device of another fictional character named “Cas,” and Cas remains “not aware” of it.

Vic and Cas, who, disarmingly, “could both be

you or anyone else” are shown as stick figures to help participants respond to prompts like: “Do you know of a **real** situation in which this happened?” and “What exactly could Vic see on the screen (e.g., text, pictures, passwords/PINs, maps, videos, apps, games, etc.)?”

The responses to the survey did not reveal a world of thieves and victims, exactly. In their analysis, the researchers suggested that “shoulder surfing was mostly casual and opportunistic.” It was “most common among strangers, in public transport, during commuting times, and involved a smartphone in almost all cases,” they said. Few participants indicated malicious intent when they admitted to acting like Vic and spying on Cas. “However,” the researchers wrote, “both users and observers expressed negative feelings in the respective situation, such as embarrassment and anger or guilt and unease.”

What did subjects see, on other people’s screens?

Nearly half the time the answer was text. Then pictures, then games, then—in the shoulder surfing tradition—“credentials,” or passwords, more specifically. More specifically, in order of frequency, other people’s phones revealed: instant messaging, Facebook, e-mail and news.

What did subjects “observe,” on other people’s screens? “Relationships/third persons,” most of all, but then interests and hobbies and “plans.”

Why did they look at other people’s screens?

“Curiosity” and “boredom” tied for first, with nothing else coming close.

Nobody really likes the idea that other people are looking at their screens. When they imagined being observed, survey participants reported negative feelings—that they felt they had been spied on, harassed, or that they were angry—in 37 cases, with just one respondent reporting “positive feelings.” (And “amused” that someone was watching.)

Other people’s screens are works in progress: they are tense and short texts with no context, typed and

retyped, and then, for those underground, sent at the next stop; they are extraordinarily long messages, exchanges of lengths I was not aware were possible on a phone, from which one instantly turns away in shame after spotting the word “divorce;” they are selfies getting touched up, and then discarded; they are seemingly infinite group message chains full of religious affirmations; they are work e-mails with a lot of talk about clients, and the client, and our client, because the train is a place of work now, just like the office, just like the home.

Other people’s screens have cameras on the back, and so sometimes other people’s screens go viral.

Better yet, last year, a series of photos taken of a man who was persistently and obviously looking at other people’s screens—some who turned away, and some who didn’t—was retweeted more than 51,000 times.

Screens, captured and posted on purpose, are one of the sources of the raw content that fuels the modern commercial Internet, and so looking at other people’s screens may be understood not just as an invasion of privacy, but maybe also a form of theft.

Better not to look at other people’s screens, anyway, lest you miss a chance to witness all the other people doing it. (On a half-hour ride, in a single crowded car: no fewer than six.)

Other people’s screens may also be a brief historical aberration. Phones now unlock by scanning their owners’ faces, and, separately, can tell if you’re smiling in a photo; it is not much of a jump that they could tell when other people are watching, too, on a train or elsewhere. More broadly, it may just seem strange, someday, according to a few conceivable futures, that other people’s screens were in their hands for a while, out in the world, instead of in front of their eyes, or attached to their brains.

For this moment, though, other people’s screens will be to us as ours are to them, which is to say everywhere, and showing us just enough to remind us that, really, we should just mind our own. n

Honor’s latest player in the midrange game is a game-changer THESE days, smartphones are treated as an extension of the self. As individuals brave their day-to-day lives, everyone is looking for a powerful smartphone that can keep up with the demands of their fast-paced lifestyle. Standards for smartphones have gone even higher as people look for a more functional smartphone without compromising on affordability and style.

Honor’s latest game changer in the midrange smartphone battle, the Honor 8X, checks all of those boxes.

A quick glance at the Honor 8X shows an impressive 6.5-inch almost bezel-less FullView display housed in an aurora glass body that comes in two stunning colors to choose from—black and blue.

The Honor 8X’s camera shooter doesn’t fall short either; the dual-lens rear camera system features 20MP + 2MP shooters to help users achieve depth with photos, while the 16MP front camera with AI features make possible the perfect selfie shot.

Moreover, the 8X has industry-leading AIS intelligent anti-shaking technology: in nightshooting mode, you can take the perfect night shots under a maximum six-second exposure, even with a shaky hand.

The best thing about it? The Honor 8X comes with all these features for non-wallet burning P12,990.

George Zhao, president of Honor,

said: “With the newly unveiled Honor 8X, Honor is setting new benchmarks in hitting the balance between value, design and performance. Honor 8X isn’t just a beautiful embodiment of minimalism; it’s a trailblazer which demonstrates that flagship features do not demand flagship prices. Honor 8X exceeds the demands of consumers who don’t want to comprise on price, on performance, or on eye-catching appearance.”

Honor adds the 8X to its notable roster of midrange smartphones with full view,

almost bezel-less displays. The 8X comes at its widest display with a 6.5-inch screen makes it perfect for viewing movies or playing games. The resolution is crisp with 1080 x 2340 pixel and lets users enjoy vivid color display and crisp image details when viewing photos or videos. For a midranger, the Honor 8X also boasts a 21:9 screen ratio, the standard size followed by cinemas, making the phone perfect for viewing fulllength films while on-the-go.

YouTube content creator and Honor fan Wil Dasovich shared his personal experience

with the Honor 8X phone, and how he’s surprised to find out that for a midrange smartphone, it is able to keep up with his hectic lifestyle.

“My days are usually packed with back-to-back meetings, events and shoots here and there, and I’m surprised to find out that the Honor 8X is able to keep up with the lifestyle that I have. It’s definitely reliable on long days because of its long battery life. Even when I’m on calls, checking my e-mails on the go, or keeping myself entertained watching movies of playing games in between traveling or commercial shoots, the Honor 8X just keeps up with me,” shared Dasovich.

To add to its current impressive current roster of smartphones, Honor expands its smartphone lineup to include wearable accessories through the Honor Band 4. The band helps users stay on top of their day with functions such as checking messaging and call notifications and accessing event reminders and alarm clocks through the wearable accessory.

Apart from these, the Honor Band 4 is also the perfect fitness tracker as its also able to monitor the users heart rate, step count, and sleeping patterns, too.

The Honor Band 4 will be available in the Philippines starting November for only P1,299.

www.businessmirror.com.ph

z

Today’s Horoscope

By Eugenia Last

CELEBRITIES BORN ON THIS DAY: Justin Chatwin, 36; Mike O’Malley, 52; Dermot Mulroney, 55; Brian Doyle-Murray, 73.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Be cautious when dealing with others. If you are insensitive or you overreact, it will cause a ruckus in your relationships with others. Aim for consistency, offering helpful suggestions and steering clear of any sort of meddling. You’ll be walking a fine line if you get involved in the affairs of others. Focus more on self-improvement, not changing others. Your lucky numbers are 7, 12, 15, 22, 31, 38, 43.

a

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Don’t limit what you can do. Check your personal finances and talk to an expert about a purchase or investment. Reconnect with someone you enjoyed working with in the past and see what transpires. Don’t let a personal relationship ruin an opportunity. HHHHH

b

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Don’t obsess over something. Once in a while you have to take a step back and enjoy what life has to offer. Look for the positives, not the negatives. A personal relationship should not be allowed to interfere with professional goals. HH

c

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Use common sense when dealing with others. Whether at home or work, listen to what others have to contribute. Working with the popular consensus will give you more leverage to persuade others to see things your way. HHHH

d

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Making unnecessary purchases, trying to impress someone with your possessions or buying love will lead to a lack of cash. Be smart with your money and you’ll come out ahead. Take better care of your health through proper diet and exercise. HHH

e

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Practice moderation. Use common sense. If you make promises, you’ll end up backtracking when you realize how much it will cost you emotionally, financially or physically. Take a step back and reconsider what’s possible. HHH

f

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Take on whatever role is necessary to get what you want. Make a change that will improve your life. Consider a move, picking up more skills or making sure you are current on the latest technology. HHH

g

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Keep your emotions out of the workplace. Becoming too chummy with someone who can affect your income will backfire. Situations will escalate quickly if you are misleading or flirtatious. HHHH

h

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Pay closer attention to the way you look and how you do things. If you are in sync with how you feel and what brings you joy, you will know exactly what to do to inspire yourself to press forward. HH

i

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Times are changing, and opportunities are heading your way. Put a strategy together and pick up the pace. An aggressive approach to raising your income will lead to new opportunities. HHHHH

j

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Redesign your future. Look at what it is that makes you happy and head in that direction. Personal change should bring you closer to someone you love. A serious conversation will lead to a better lifestyle. HHH

k

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Don’t be fooled by someone’s actions. Emotional manipulation can lead you down a dark road. Stay away from pushy people, excess and overspending, and keep busy to avoid boredom.

Common sense will help you when faced with temptation. HHH

l

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Don’t compare yourself to others. Be happy for what you have and who you are. Use your skills to help get ahead by doing what’s right. A physical or emotional change you want to make should not be excessive or costly. HHH BIRTHDAY BABY: You are sensitive, caring and observant.

You are charismatic and energetic.

‘gentler, caring hollowee’ BY TIMOTHY E. PARKER The Universal Crossword/Edited by Timothy E. Parker

ACROSS 1 Sign of an old bumper 5 Hunts and gathers 10 Turkish big wheel 14 Cosmetics ingredient 15 Active, as “the game” 16 Walk heavily 17 Oz lover’s Halloween outfit?

20 Foe 21 Gilbert of TV 22 Word separating business hours 23 Dress for many 26 One with will power?

28 Bawl but good 31 Santa Claus’s shaving mishap?

33 Test 5-Down 34 Spirited horse 36 “So long” in Italy 38 Red Sea peninsula 41 Lovingly potty train a boy?

44 Slow-moving tree beast 45 Romantic flower 46 Do Huntington Beach 47 A polite address

9 Field goal attempt 4 51 Type of sauce 52 Mexican parties 55 Mark on a road 57 Hymenopteran critter 58 Muse of history 60 Any starting MLB team 64 Lovingly provide horrible nursing?

68 Author Blyton 69 Office fetcher 70 Nicholas II’s title 71 Late ‘20s architecture style 72 Valuable possession 73 Angel costume part DOWN 1 Election contest 2 Mongolia’s ___ Bator 3 Unlike a gracious loser 4 Pours rain 5 It must be tired to go 6 Alien mover 7 Highs? No, U-turn 8 Not foreign 9 On a hard drive

0 Bright, as a student 1 11 Very greedy with grub 12 Dude? Close 13 Big name in pop music 18 Blue-green 19 With the most wisdom 24 Calorie-stuffed 25 More frost-covered 27 Not quite right 28 Pouchlike body parts 29 Spoken exam 30 Pressure in a forecast 32 Mattress stuffing 35 Testing versions 37 Desert watering spot 39 Picked hairstyle 40 Not sure 42 Roof type for many 43 What the risky stick out 48 Spanish dessert wine 50 Category 52 Went against, as a pitcher 53 Too dumb to consider 54 Grain storage buildings

6 Perform, if you’re 575 5 59 Some machine settings 61 Opportunity maker?

62 List-ending Abbr.

63 “Comin’ ___ the Rye” 65 Old Tokyo 66 Golfer’s necessity 67 House pooch’s scrap Solution to yesterday’s puzzle:

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Show BusinessMirror

Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Awards buzz is icing for John Krasinski and ‘A Quiet Place’ L

By Lindsey Bahr | The Associated Press

OS ANGELES—John Krasinski is still pinching himself over the critical and financial success of his experimental thriller A Quiet Place but the Cinderella year is not over yet. With awards season heating up, A Quiet Place, has found its own spot in the conversation. Krasinski who cowrote, directed and starred in the film opposite his wife, Emily Blunt, is only humbled.

“It’s nothing short of overwhelming,” Krasinski said by phone recently. “Emily and I really are still digesting the fact that we made this small little special movie that some people really connected to. This was literally a meditation on parenting!”

A Quiet Place is a mostly silent horror film about a family (Krasinski, Blunt, Noah Jupe and Millicent Simmonds) trying to live among creatures that attack and kill at the smallest sound. It became a surprise box-office phenomenon when it was released in April, grossing $338.6 million in worldwide ticket sales off a production budget of only $17 million. It is now available on home video and streaming, and a sequel is already in the works.

Critics loved its high concept thrills, too, and while many have offered their praise, a certain phone call stands out for Krasinski—the one he got from his favorite director, and friend, Paul Thomas Anderson.

“It was probably 30 minutes long about how much he loved the movie and how much it meant to him and how much he wished movies like this happened every Friday. I genuinely blacked out on that phone call,” Krasinski said. “He said, ‘I’ll tell you the best compliment I can give you: As I was walking back to my car I thought, OK, I need to get back to work.’”

Anderson actually provided some inspiration for A Quiet Place. Krasinski said he studied the opening of

There Will Be Blood and other modern films that employ silence to figure out how he would approach it in his film. He also looked at Jaws, Rosemary’s Baby the films of Alfred Hitchcock for ideas in tension-building.

Jaws was one of Krasinski’s biggest touchstones, and, oddly enough, the first movie he and Blunt watched together when they had just started dating.

“It’s a perfect film,” he said. “It’s not about a shark, it’s about these characters trying to overcome fears that they’re running away from and at some point those fears are going to manifest themselves in the most bizarre ways.”

In that same way, A Quiet Place, to him, is about parenting. He had been sent a script to look at and had an idea to rewrite and refocus around those anxieties.

“I was actually holding my three-week-old daughter. We had just had our second daughter,” he said. “Reading a story about parents doing whatever it took to protect their kids was exactly what I was living through.”

Krasinski wasn’t even supposed to direct the film at the outset. The actor and writer, probably best known as Jim on the American version of The Office, had previously directed two films—a David Foster Wallace adaptation (Brief Interviews with Hideous Men) and an indie family drama (The Hollars). Not exactly the kind of calling cards that would prove he could handle a VFX-heavy, big studio genre film. It was Blunt who encouraged him to put his name in for it.

“She said, ‘I’ve never seen you so lit up like this, I’ve never seen you so passionate about something,’” Krasinski recalled. “And it’s true, she knew that it was a very personal story. I was basically writing a love letter to my kids.”

And to his shock, executives at Paramount and Platinum Dunes were behind him.

Blunt also was the driving force behind her own

involvement. Krasinski was too scared to even let her read the script while he was working on it, let alone ask her to be in it. She went so far as to suggest a friend for the role of Evelyn. But then on one cross country flight, she finally read it, and decided to speak up.

“She legitimately looked sick at the end of it. I thought she was plane sick, so I reached for a barf bag at the same time she said, ‘You can’t let anyone do this movie.’ And I said, ‘What?’ And it was like a romantic comedy where she was proposing to me,” Krasinski recalled. “She said, ‘You have to let me do this part, you have to let me do it.’ I think I screamed ‘yes’ on a flight from New York to LA.” The film has been in the Oscar conversation since it came out and has continued to pop up on

prognosticator lists in Hollywood trades like Variety and awards columns in Vulture and Gold Derby, with special mentions of Blunt’s performance, the effects and the screenplay.

Krasinski is currently writing the sequel, which he teased only with his wife’s response to his pitch.

“She said, ‘Oh that’s really cool, but it’s not a sequel, it’s like another book in the same world, it feels like another part in the same story,’” he said.

As for whether Krasinski is ready for the marathon that is awards season?

“Everything is better when Emily is there and the fact that she’s in the conversation for this and for Mary Poppins Returns? There’s no better person to have by my side for this,” he said. “I’ll be just fine.” n

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THIS image released by Paramount Pictures shows Noah Jupe (from left) Millicent Simmonds and John Krasinski in a scene from A Quiet Place. AP

D4

Image BusinessMirror

Wednesday, October 31, 2018

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Making more passions possible FIGRPMPTSC President and CEO Ruby Pacis gave seminar at the Department of Labor and Employment on The Significance of Professional Branding.

Leading the way in legitimate job subcontracting THE issue of job subcontracting is a hot-button topic these days and mired in a lot of confusion and misunderstanding. Ruby Pacis, president and CEO of Faith in God Professional and Technical Services Corp. (FIGRPMPTSC, www.figrpmptsc.com), one of the top job contracting and subcontracting companies, wants to clarify a lot of those misconceptions.

While the word “agency” has gotten a bad rap, not all subcontracting companies are run skirting legalities and ethics. “We are one of the first few subcontractors who were given a DO17417 Certification from Department of Labor and Employment Office,” said Pacis, which is no small feat because the recent purge of job subcontractors in the Philippines has seen 4,580 companies downsized to 2,669 when the DO 18-A Rules and Regulations on Contracting was enacted. Out of those, only 1,911 have as of June successfully acquired the DO (Department Order) 174-17 license. Pacis’s FIGRPMTSC is among in the first batch given the DO under the new rules.

“I don’t like to be identified as an agency because there’s a wrong connotation with that word,” said Pacis, who went into the business 15 years ago because as a human resources professional she didn’t like seeing employees shortchanged. “We were one of the first job subcontractors which implemented the regularization scheme. Since the start of our operations, we have include payments for service incentive leaves and separation pay in our billing to all our clients. We provide security of employment and security of tenure to all our employees,” specified Pacis. “From day one, they work for us. They are already considered on probation.” When a project ends, the employees are either transferred or are given separation pay. “That’s the difference between FIG and other companies. It’s why we’re still here,” added Pacis. “We give our employees more than what the law mandates.”

They subsidize HMO (health maintenance organization) 70/30 and personal accident insurance also at 70/30, wherein FIGRPMPTSC subsidizes the 30 percent of the premiums. The company also provides for Christmas packages aside from the 13th-month pay given every December.

Employees are also involved in corporate social responsibility programs, where they are given the opportunity to find joy in giving, through sharing their talents and skills. FIGRPMPTSC gives focus on the highest Attendance Rate and Lowest Attrition Rate by having a dedicated Employee/Client Hotline, Talent Online Community, Work-Buddy System and other specialized Employee Engagement Programs. Pacis wants to ensure that her company always contributes to the highest productivity and profitability of her clients by closely supervising her employees to deliver greater work performance.

Singapore Tourism Board launches the second wave of “Passion Made Possible,” a global campaign that taps on psychographics.

For the Philippine market, that means strategies centered on the people’s penchant to socialize and, of course, sing.

JUST THAT JT NISAY

jtnisay@gmail.com

A

FEW seconds couldn’t pass without anyone entering the red karaoke booth.

After a singer, or at least a person who thinks of himself as such, goes in and belts his lungs out, another is already choosing which song to sing—since what a mic is to Filipinos is what light is to moths.

One 50-something woman, in particular, takes the open stage at Alabang Town Center (ATC) where the solitary KTV booth is set up. Laidback in shirt and jeans, she could pass as anyone’s favorite tita who hands out the fattest ampao on Christmas. But at that moment, she’s taking on Mariah Carey. She bobs her head to the intro, clears the first line, and each one that followed. She may very well be Mariah Carey. The crowd goes wild. The song ends. The woman emerges from the booth like nothing happened.

The next singer was a young woman who chose to go with Ariana Grande. Again, just like the tita before her, she exceeded expectations and dazzled the crowd, so much so that people were wondering if they had seen her before in singing competitions on TV, and if not, then why?

“You guys are so musical that it’s annoying,” Singapore Tourism Board (STB) Assistant Chief Executive Lynette Pang told me, no doubt only half-jestingly.

Minutes before dropping our jaws over the random talents at the recent “SINGapore Karaoke Booth” event in Cortes De Las Palmas at ATC, Pang and I were in a nearby restaurant talking about STB’s unique global tourism campaign, one that is based not just on vapid description of places, but on stories of locals; one that is not just based on faceless statistics, but on passions of people.

“Passion Made Possible” is STB’s tourism campaign launched in Singapore last year that does not depend on a particular market’s demographic. Instead, the project is based on psychographics, or market research that classifies population groups according to psychological variables, including passions.

“For two people to have a true connection, they are not going to talk about their age, or what school they went to. They will talk about their interests, their passions,” Pang said during the exclusive interview.

“Passions bring people together.”

The campaign was launched with four “Passion

Tribes,” namely, Foodie, Explorer, Collector and Progressor. These are classification groups from which potential visitors to Singapore can design an itinerary based on their lifestyle and interests. For example, STB helps Foodies focus on experiencing the best dishes The Lion City has to offer, while Progressors, or business travelers, are guided where to connect, collaborate and innovate.

Pang said the intent for the maiden year of the program was to introduce the concept of passion tribes to all of their 16 regional and international markets. On its second run, they are looking to build on familiarity and affinity while presenting three new tribes: Socializer, Action Seeker and Culture Shaper.

The SINGapore Karaoke Booth in ATC was actually the first leg of the program’s second wave, as well as the global activation of the new Socializer tribe.

STB chose the Philippines as the venue for the twin launches because of two things: first, the country’s important role to Singapore tourism, being the thirdlargest market in terms of visitor arrivals within Southeast Asia and seventh worldwide. Second, because Filipinos simply love to have fun.

According to Lael Loh, STB Philippines area director, tapping into the Filipino’s passion for singing was a focal point in conceptualizing the event. “With the SINGapore Karaoke, the idea is to give people a

chance to have their own stage, follow their passion for music, and then hopefully delight them to a trip to Singapore to experience firsthand the different offerings that we have there.”

Pang said Singapore has a diverse and vibrant music and entertainment scene that includes the coolest indie bands and the biggest international headliners, plus eclectic music fests, jazz nights and raves—a broad selection that caters to every music lover.

The STB assistant chief executive added that this kind of diversity extends to the different fronts of Singapore, as well. In terms of the city’s appeal, there’s a healthy mix between greens and concrete.

In terms of food, there’s no shortage of options from the more budget-friendly Chicken Rice for $2.50 and Singapore-style coffee for $1.50, to posh Michelinstarred dinners.

Pang hopes that by raising awareness on this rich selection of choices through the program, people can see Singapore beyond the iconic Merlion Park, Orchard Lane and Universal Studios.

“Spend at least four days in Singapore,” she said.

“Go explore the back alley ways of Little India and China Town, visit the wet market, take the train, go to any of the nature reserve, visit the 12 bars that made it to Asia’s 50 Best Bars. Experience a different slice of life.” n

Slim’s exhibit turns to playfulness for inspiration

By PauLine Joy m. GutierreZ REMNANTS of childhood memories adorned the recent Slim’s Fashion and Arts School’s student exhibit at the Fashion Hall of SM Megamall. The annual event’s theme for this year was laro, which took form in pieces of clothing inspired by that past time of youth.

On view was a showcase of fashion all designed, cut and sewn by students, each ensemble with a distinct playfulness gleaned from the psychedelic patterns, whimsical silhouettes and exuberant colors. Accessorizing the garments were oversized watch heads by Swatch’s “Think Fun” collection.

“These are some of the best works of our graduate students, and we’ve been doing this for seven or eight years. It began in the school, then it migrated to Greenbelt 5 until SM Megamall generously gave us free space every year,” said fashion educator Mark Higgins. More than 50 alumni from the school’s advanced classes were able to present their works, which, according to Mark, took complex construction techniques and long hours of labor to create.

A 1963 Crying Girl comic illustration by pop-art icon Roy Lichtenstein turned into custom-printed fabric by Vanessa Pinlac fronted one of the exhibit’s section. Claire Francisco’s retro take on the outfit inspired by the 1980s arcade game “Pacman,” on the

other hand, was Swatch endorser Anne Curtis’s personal favorite. Two hundred and 20 strands of hand-made jersey piping were draped to create a terno by Dinnes Obusan that echoed the childhood game Chinese Garter. Meanwhile, a dress by Megan Lev featured an explosion of

embroidered and appliquéd elements inspired by the Pinball machine.

A Paloma Picart organza gown, on the other hand, used repurposed denim jeans to capture Cinderella’s transformation from rags to riches.

A hand-painted and embellished gown by Angelique Co emulated the board game Snakes & Ladders, while Banjo Cordero’s color-blocked shift dress features spirals that resemble the paper pinwheel. An evening gown by Isobel Juan was inspired by jigsaw puzzles.

The students’ take on the barong Tagalog was a mix of patterns and colors. Nicole Pineda merged traditional bespoke techniques with edgy street style for a Pacman-inspired piece. Miel Avena used material manipulation techniques to create a 3D interpretation of a kaleidoscope’s prism. The staple piece of clothing in Filipino culture also took an interesting interpretation in the hand-dyed barong by Yvonne Tabanao, which was based from the Japanese board game Tsuro.

There was also a barong with a Dragon Boat race motif, featuring embroidered appliqué and carved wooden paddles by Marilen Maniulit.

“Slim’s isn’t exactly known as an easy

school. We always tell students: ‘If you’re comfortable, you’re not growing,’” related Sandy Higgins, co-director of the fashion institute, in an interview.

Sandy and brother Mark are heirs to the House of Slim, which was founded in Manila by iconic Philippine designer and their mother, Salvacion Lim Higgins (“Slim”) with her sister Purificacion. “My mother’s fashion house was built in 1947. By the time it reached the late 1950s, she was already very well-known and a lot of her clients were telling her, “Sana you open a school naman to share your knowledge with other people. In 1960 they opened the school and it’s now the oldest fashion institution in the country,” recounted Mark.

Together, sisters Salvacion and Purificacion wrote the highly technical lessons that continue to serve as a solid foundation for the school’s curriculum today—a procedure that has become widely known as “the Slim’s Method.”

The school has produced some of the country’s most notable designers and industry heavyweights, including Joe Salazar, Oskar Peralta, Cesar Gaupo, Oliver Tolentino, Michael Cinco and Joey Samson.

POP-ART terno with Roy Lichtenstein print by Vanessa Pinlac fronts the other playful garments in the section.

BusinessMirror

Editor: Tet Andolong

Wednesday, October 31, 2018 E1

PHIRST PARK HOMES TO BUILD IN TOP INFRASTRUCTURE AREAS

THE 23-Kilometer Manila Metro Rail Transit System Line 7, slated for completion in 2020

THE Calista Model House at PHirst Park Homes Lipa

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HIRST Park Homes Inc., the new joint-venture firm of Century Properties Group and Mitsubishi Corp. for first-home buyers, is focusing its land banking in areas where flagship infrastructure projects are being rolled out.

“This is a top criterion in our area-selection process as it ensures ease of access for our future residents. It also opens more employment and livelihood opportunities

for them as major infrastructure sites spur economic growth,” said Ricky Celis, president of PHirst Park Homes.

Within the next five years,

the company will launch 15 masterplanned communities in Calabarzon and Central Luzon with approximately 33,000 homes.

Near-term launches will be concentrated in the booming provinces of Laguna, Bulacan and Cavite, where several major infrastructure projects of the government are in various stages of construction and development.

The booming province of Bulacan will soon benefit from the ongoing Skyway Stage 3 that connects North Luzon Expressway to South Luzon Expressway. The 23-kilometer (km) Manila Metro Rail Transit System Line 7, also under construction and slated for completion in

2020, will connect Bulacan to the Unified Grand Central Station in North Avenue, Quezon City.

“Such projects are a boon to families who wish to enjoy the lower cost of living in the provinces while maintaining their jobs or businesses in the city centers of Metro Manila,” said Loren Sales, customer management group vice president of PHirst Park Homes.

Bulacan is also gearing up for the Bulacan International Airport and the Bulacan Bulk Water Project, which will open another gateway to Central Luzon and provide households with adequate supply of treated water, respectively.

The government has also start-

ed working on the Philippine National Railway North 2—the 69.5km extension of the PNR North 1 from Malolos, Bulacan to Clark International Airport. The project is targeted for completion in 2021.

The Cavite and Laguna Expressway is another much-awaited project.

The four-lane, 45-km tolled expressway will connect Cavitex from Kawit, Cavite, to Slex up until the Slex-Mamplasan Interchange in Biñan, Laguna.

Once completed in 2020, this will reduce travel time from Cavitex to Slex by about 45 minutes.

Down south in Batangas, the provincial government is pushing Fernando Air Base in Lipa City to become a subsidiary aviation to

the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, and for the construction of a Batangas-Calamba, Laguna, railways system as part of the 639km PNR South Long-Haul project.

PHirst Park Homes debuted in the market in 2017 with the successful PHirst Park Homes Tanza in Cavite. In June 2018, it also launched PHirst Park Homes Lipa, a 20-hectare development in Lipa City, Batangas, with 1,867 homes.

The PHirst Park Homes brand is known for its 4Cs: complete and well-provisioned homes, conceptive amenities, connected living through Wi-fi zones and a convenient and simplified experience for home buyers.

the information better.

“We can also say training became faster.

First-call resolution, which is one of our success indicators, is higher as well as customerexperience rating,” she said.

In a recent press briefing held in Makati City, Santos Knight Frank senior director, occupier and commercial agency, Morgan McGilvray, pointed out that AI will generate more jobs in the BPO industry.

McGilvray said cognitive and routine tasks, such as office assistants, clerks and drivers will be vulnerable to technology and AI. Moreover, engineers, management, health care, lawyers, research, information technology and designers classified as nonroutine cognitive will also face challenges from the emergence of new technologies.

Routine manual covers factories, construction and mechanical sections, while nonroutine manual includes nurses, security and services.

He said it is expected there is going to be apprehension and fear of displacement for cog-

nitive and routine jobs.

To offset the fear and threat of displacement for low and middle jobs, McGilvray said implementation of skills training for the labor force is needed to ensure continuity of work for the laborers. At present, he said AI is still in its nascent stages and being for noncomplex tasks that is seldom used by companies as still prefer humans over AI due to lower costs.

In the future, McGilvray pointed out that AI will be able to replicate human skills, support humans in the workplace; increase workplace efficiency; and will soon do the “heavy lifting.”

McGilvray said the emergence of AI and other technologies has made humans more mobile and resulted in reduction of office spaces sizes as humans utilize technology. “AI, which forces human interaction, leads to the prominence of coworking spaces. Coworking spaces pursues mobility and productivity in the workplace,” he said.

McGilvray said the coming of AI should not be feared because it improves human capital.

The rise of the machines

SKF Senior Director Morgan McGilvray

By Rizal Raoul S. Reyes @brownindio

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UST like the movie Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, automation and other technologies are now emerging. In the property sector, they are made possible through the convergence of property and technology—otherwise known as proptech. It is the latest disruptor in real estate and is likely to pick up steam in 2018.

Moreover, Asia-Pacific proptech start-ups have already received $4.8 billion of the $7.8 billion raised by global proptech start-ups from 2013 to 2017. However, these machines do not deliver Skynet-type scenarios but instead enable humans to perform their tasks better and more efficiently.

Jeremy Sheldon, managing director, markets and integrated portfolio services, JLL Asia Pacific, said new technologies are expected to play a major role in the Fourth Industrial Revolution and will create a big impact in the property sector.

“In the long term digitization of services, Internet of Things adoption and automation

TELEPERFORMANCE Philippines Managing Director Travis Coates

will have a significant impact on corporate realestate strategy, team structures and processes.

The introduction of IoT—smart systems and devices operating over a network, will drive greater transparency of real-estate portfolio utilization and performance. Smart buildings will help both building owners, and occupiers improve performance and save costs,” Sheldon said in a press statement.

Realizing the importance of role of technology in the property sector, JLL Spark, a division of JLL, recently established JLL Spark Global Venture Fund, which plans to invest up to $100 million in companies focused on leveraging technology to improve everything from real-estate development and management to leasing and investing, while enhancing the experience of those who occupy it. The fund will also help entrepreneurs and their companies by connecting them with JLL’s business lines and clients for insightful feedback and distribution of their products.

In the local scene, Teleperformance Philippines Managing Director Travis Coates said the

biggest business-process outsourcing (BPO) company is aware of the emergence of new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and it is crafting programs to meet the demands in the expected transformation.

“We’ve got leadership developments programs that are constantly pushing our teams through. He says the company is also looking for opportunities in its frontline ring for people to take on more complex transactions and ultimately take more on difficult customer type situations,” Coates said.

Coates agreed that AI will have an impact in the BPO industry. He pointed out that it is just a matter of time of when and how AI and other technologies will enter the scene.

“We certainly as a company has invested in partnering with different AI companies.

That means we’re in the forefront of thought leadership with our clients to talk about the things that they could be doing differently with their clients,” Coates said.

For global customer experience specialist Transcom Philippines, the path toward digitalization depends upon the demand from their clients.

“The volume of those we train really depends on clients’ requests, but as we want to ensure that all employees are upskilled and included in digitalization, we train all employees. This allows more staffing flexibility and contributes to our knowledge depth,” Transcom Vice President Kim de Guzman said in an interview at the sidelines of the recent press briefing held in Mandaluyong City.

She said Transcom conducts regular assessments on their teams’ skill sets and strength.

Moreover, she said the members go through official assessments that will help them determine as to which channel the staff will fit into

TELEPERFORMANCE Philippines (Vertis North)

the organization and at the same time enjoy what they do.

De Guzman said, “Transcom is also implementing a program to ensure a smooth transition and develop good synergy between man and machine through ‘creating smarter people experiences’ to deliver excellent service.” By developing a good partnership between man and machine, Transcom combines the passion and talent of the people with cutting edge technology, which helps to evolve the services the company provides. “Thus, we don’t just rely on voice as the channel for servicing customers, but our skill set expands and allows us to be more resourceful on how we can be effective in providing the right services given the right customer profile,” she explained.

De Guzman said using virtual reality technology, in training employees has been beneficial because it enhances immersive experience with less pressure and worry about real-life consequences. She added new hires and all those who took the VR training were able to absorb

Business

E2 Wednesday, October 31, 2018

REAL-ESTATE LEADERSHIP

ON THE YEAR THAT WAS AND 2019

Amor Maclang

FIRST DIBS IN REAL ESTATE

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Conclusion

RESENTING a recap of the year that was and prospects for 2019:

Charmaine Uy, senior vice president, Daiichi Properties

“DEVELOPERS are increasingly planning and designing their buildings to help their tenants achieve their business objectives especially on talent retention. As a commercial office developer, we have designed green office buildings that can help employees be healthier and more productive, and incorporated retail choices and coworking spaces to enrich their time in the office. We ensure that the office is accessible, close to major infrastructure, as well as located in a community where employees can have a work-life balance.

“We believe this trend will continue to the succeeding years as developers cater more to the well-being of their tenants. We also find this as an opportunity for businesses to expand outside the established business districts and closer to upcoming infrastructure projects that can bring about greater connectivity.”

Sheila Lobien, chairman of European Chamber of Commerce in the Philippines, Women in Business Commercial Real Estate Professional

THERE were three defining trends in real estate in 2017 to 2018: 1) Online gaming has helped prop up the commercial space market as office demand of business-process outsourcing (BPO) companies somehow weakened; 2) MOA and BGC land acquisition became even hotter, bumping up prices to unimaginable heights; and 3) Macroecomic trends of higher interest rates, the impact of TRAIN

HOME

CHARMAINE UY

SHEILA LOBIEN

HANNAH YULO

[Tax Reform for Accelaration and Inclusion] 1 and forthcoming TRAIN 2 law and, to some extent, higher inflation made investors became wary of additional investments.

What to expect in 2019?

1) Continued online gaming as takers of commercial space, although BPO office demand might recover a bit; 2) “Build, Build, Build” projects should already start as these will help the economy. Filipinos are starting to question if the administration can really deliver on the very ambitious infrastructure plans (I personally hope it will really happen); and 3) Institutional investors will continue with their landbanking and there will be more commercial spaces outside of Metro Manila.

Hannah Yulo, chief investment officer, DoubleDragon Properties Corp.

IN 2018 our provincial retail malls, CityMalls, continued to remain 95-percent leased out with yields rising due to higher rates on new contracts and introduction of sales-linked upside. The take up of our four office towers in the Bay Area was robust, now 100-percent leased with rental rates beyond original expectations.

Strong continued growth in hotels occupancy rates as well as significant demand for tourism-linked investments such as Hotel101 Fort, which we launched only in March 2018 but has already generated over P1 billion in sales in the first six months. CentralHub industrial warehouses continued to see a lot of excitement as demand requirements for new ware-

RICARDO FLOIRENDO LAGDAMEO

BUDS WENCESLAO

houses continue to rise with little available and suitable alternatives in the market. Overall, 2018 was an exceptional year for us as we had fully secured the last bit of our fund-raising requirements and have fixed our cost of funding for the seven-10 year tenors ahead of rising interest rates. We are now a big step closer to achieving our 2020 vision to secure 1.2 million square meter of leasable space and are expected to have at least 600,000 sq m of leasable space completed by the end of the year which should contribute on a full-year basis by 2019.

Buds Wenceslao, CEO-D.M. Wenceslao & Assoc. Inc., and chairman, Urban Land Institute Philippines

Ricardo Floirendo Lagdameo, vice president, Damosa Land and Anflo Industrial Estate

“FROM our perspective in Mindanao, we have seen various types of real estate, from residential, commercial, tourism, to industrial estates as becoming an emerging asset class. The market in our part of the country has become so discerning that we have seen top-caliber types of developments being offered. We believe that this trend will continue as we are only in the cusp of this trend.”

IN 2018, considering the hundreds of billions in infrastructure slated to be invested in rails, roads, bridges, transit orientation has been the clear defining trend in 2018. Real estate is all about the people that use, live and work in them. Currently, the amount of time and money that is wasted in the travel travails has consumed all Filipinos, regardless of economic stature. Airports, subways, monorails, connector roads, rail extensions are all buzz words and spurs which have sparked real estate to mushroom around these projects. In real-estate, the three main rules of location, location, location holds true. Now more than ever, any real estate location with some transit connection or link will have an inherent competitive advantage and premium, by extension, over those which don’t. I don’t see this stopping anytime soon.

In 2019 with AirBnB, WeWork and WeLive, traditional models of home renting and ownership have

CHRISTOPHE VICIC

been disrupted. The overall theme has been the decentralization of systems and further removing middlemen in these real-estate commercial transactions. Blockchain will further this cause considering the inherent and easily seen applications to the real-estate industry. From verifying titles, to raising equity through initial coin offerings to smart contracts, blockchain will have the potential to totally change how business and dealings are executed. The advice, expertise and consulting functions of real-estate professionals and will still be an integral part of the process.

But, the process of the actual transfer of money, contracts execution and verification of ownership will change. Imagine buying a home by choosing one in a web site and putting it on your shopping cart without a lawyer to execute the contract and process and safe keep an actual physical title? Blockchain will make this possible sooner than later.

Christophe Vicic, country head, JLL Philippines

2018: RE sector in general still saw

New FLOS lights now available at Steltz

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TELTZ The Gallery is home to the best, the original and the most luxurious lighting solutions sourced from different countries. Recently, it welcomed the arrival of three prolific collections created by some of the world’s top designers: Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby (Bellhop), Formafantasma (WireRing) and Michael Anastassiades (arrangements) in collaboration with FLOS, the global leader in quality decorative and iconic lights.

These new arrivals enriched the expansive catalogue available at Steltz, adding fashionable functionality, form and elegance to every space.

A cordless, spun aluminum lamp, Bellhop portable lamp pays homage to every hotel porter, from which it gets its name and its reminiscent, bell-like shape. It was originally conceptualized by designers Edward Barber and

Jay Osgerby (the same design duo who made the 2012 London Olympic Torch) to create a lamp for the newly opened Design Museum’s Parabola restaurant.

Bellhop boasts of a mixture of neutral and bold finishes, such as white, gray, burnt orange (brick) and dark brown (Choko) base and dome to accentuate warmth to any interior space.

Friends Barber and Osgerby believe that lighting is the most important consideration in a space, sculpting and defining its mood, feel and purpose.

The WireRing by Formafantasma was first unveiled last year in Euroluce, during the annual Milan Design Week. Described by light artists and designers as a “tense sign of orthographic light,” it is midway between a wall lamp and floor lamp, and is reminiscent of the light-ring concept in portrait photography as it frames faces, using its ring of indirect light. This striking

light fixture is composed of two elements: a custom-made, belt-like electric cable and a ring that contains LED strip—both in perfect balance.

Currently, the WireRing is part the permanent collections of five museums (The Art Institute of Chicago, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York and the Philadelphia Museum of Art). Cyprus-born designer Michael Anastassiades, whose handiwork is a beautiful dichotomy between decorative and pragmatic, has long been working in partnership with FLOS. His new creation, Arrangement, is a flexible system of geometric light components that could be conjoined in different ways, creating seamless artistic compositions as individual chandeliers. Each unit simply attaches onto the previous piece as if relaxing, and balancing perfectly like

RICK SANTOS

growth with office leasing leading the way coupled with some big transactions in logistics/warehousing.

2019: should see the rise of Flexispaces, hotels and hospitality, halfway homes/dormitels and continued investments interests from China.

Rick Santos, chairman and CEO, Santos Knight Frank

LAST year we saw the influx of Chinese online gaming companies that drove demand in both commercial and residential real estate in Metro Manila.

Next year is election. We expect a land banking year for developers aligned with new infrastructure projects. We expect large transactions to be made for election spending, as well.

Catch all of these real-estate thoughtleaders and more in Business Mirror’s “First Dibs in Real Estate 2019,” on 20 November, in Spaces, BGC. We’ll focus on resilience of areas at risk; emergence of new growth areas; the nascent technologies that would shake and change us; and the shared economy that will shape demand.

a shimmering lit chain.

These sculptural pieces could be carefully twisted and warped to give one’s home a glimpse into the unique melding of two diverse disciplines: lighting and jewelry design. Inspired by the concept of “pendants,” Anastassiades has always been fascinated by the connection between lighting and jewelry as he imagines the latter being worn to embellish the body, while the former prettifies any space that it occupies.

Steltz The Gallery takes pride in its carefully curated products that come with a beautiful story woven into each piece.

Steltz and FLOS have forged an exclusive partnership since 1994 and together, they continue to offer unique lighting concepts that will inspire people to create their own stories inside their homes.

Visit Steltz The Gallery at the East Wing of Edsa Shangri-La Plaza Mall.

sMirror

Wednesday, October 31, 2018 E3

Construction activities strong in Q2

By Roderick L. Abad

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@rodrik_28

VEN with the inflation rate reaching a year high of 6.4 percent, the total number of approved construction permits still registered an increase year-on-year (YoY) for the second quarter (Q2) of 2018, with most of the growth coming from the housing sector.

Citing the Philippine Statistic Authority’s (PSA) latest report on this, Pronove Tai International Property Consultants CEO Monique Pronove said that the number of permits in constructing residential buildings reached 29,060 or 72 percent of the overall 40,182 approved construction projects in Q2 of this year.

Except for duplex/quadruplex and other types of dwellings, the following grew in terms of share: apartment/accessoria (53.5 percent), residential condominiums (40 percent) and single-type houses (4.1 percent).

Housing constructions, valued at P57 billion, increased by 59.7 percent, from the P35.7 billion YoY. They accounted for over half of the total value of constructions estimated at P101.2 billion in Q2 2018.

“Filipinos already planned and started buying construction materials during the first quarter upon implementation of TRAIN [Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion] law package,” she said.

This led to 8-percent hike YoY in the number of construction for residential buildings amid the 12-percent increase in construction cost per square meter, which, based on

the report, is the direct impact of rising inflation from April to June 2018. Comparatively, the present average construction cost is at P11,314 per sq m.

“Infrastructure developments spearheaded by the government plan to build more roads, bridges, railways and airports. This also led to the interest to improve residential dwellings,” she added.

According to her, developers are beginning to position housing projects not only in the National Capital Region but also in other developing areas, such as Region 4A (Calabarzon), accounting for 24 percent; Region 3, 13 percent; and Region 7 (Central Visayas), 11 percent.

The provinces of Pampanga (Clark), Bulacan (San Jose del Monte), Laguna (Biñan) and Cebu are seeing the rise of construction activities, she pointed out.

Meanwhile, residential units for sale or lease in Metro Manila are highly in-demand for foreign retirees, as well as buyers who want to settle in condominium developments, the top executive said.

Nonresidential constructions, on the other hand, rose to 5,644 projects, up 16.1 percent from 4,861

PHOTO BY FEF.ORG.PH

projects posted between April and June of 2017.

This resulted from the doubledigit increase in number of constructions of agricultural buildings, with 349 (57.2 percent); institutional buildings, with 1,221 (35.1 percent); industrial buildings, with 624 (10.6 percent); and commercial buildings, with 3,329 (10 percent).

New or upcoming structures surged to 1,511 projects from 1,208

YoY, or an increase of 25.1 percent.

Meanwhile, combined number of alterations and repairs of existing structures grew by 28.5 percent to 3,967, from 3,087 recorded in the two periods in review.

Despite the continued rise in prices of goods in the country, Pronove expects the volume of approved construction permits to slow down in the second half (H2) of this year, not primarily because of high inflation

but due to the normal trend.

“Since 2014, the H2 performance normally decreases in the number of approved permits by an average of 4 percent,” she cited, while attributing the decline to the typhoon season, start of school year and the “ghost month” of August.

“However, it is expected to bounce back during the last quarter of the year with more applications coming in due to the planned construction

normally scheduled at the start of the following year,” the CEO said.

The construction industry, in the long run, is seen to continue to expand due to public infra-projects that are currently starting to kick off.

“Moreover, the rehabilitation programs in Marawi City, as well as increasing township developments in Central Luzon and the Davao area, will enhance the construction activity for H2 2018,” Pronove stressed.

Filinvest Prestige unveils Timberland Heights and The Prominence showroom Pambasa in Quezon City.

Timberland Heights offers a myriad of extraordinary experiences to cater to different interests of its residents and guests. Bask in extraordinary and adventurous discoveries with Timberland Heights Sports and Nature Club and enjoy a host of activities like basketball, wall climbing, swimming, work out at the gym or stay in style at the inhouse salon. Timberland Heights is also home to a world-class bike trails that is fast gaining popularity among mountain biking enthusiasts participants of other athletic events of international caliber. The trails are also compliant with the International Mountain Bike Association (IMBA) trail specifications for both safety and technical standards.

To complement all the leisure, commercial and residential amenities and facilities of Timberland Heights, Filinvest is also planning to build an eco-inspired church as homage to the well-loved pope, Saint John Paul II, which will be the townscape’s center of faith and pilgrimage site.

THE prominence showroom

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OTIANUN-LED Filinvest Land Inc., proudly unveiled the showroom featuring projects under the Prestige brand The Glades at Timberland Heights townscape, and The Prominence.

Clients can now experience and view these residential masterpieces that offer luxurious living spaces of enduring value at the showroom designed specifically to highlight the features and advantages of these upscale residential enclaves.

Located at Vinia Residences along North Avenue, Edsa, Quezon City, the showroom features interactive architectural landscapes, visual dioramas, and virtual reality tour facilities to ensure that prospective clients get an immersive experience of the lifestyle that awaits in Timberland Heights and The Prominence.

“This showroom allows you to get a glimpse of your desired lifestyle in an exclusive and secured enclave. We have integrated modern technology

such as the clubhouse, a multipurpose hall, basketball court, fitness gym, adult and kiddie swimming pool, and playground. It also features landscaped areas, jogging trail, pocket parks and a picnic area.

“We invite you to come visit our

showroom to explore and experience the upscale lifestyle that awaits you in these Prestige developments,” Ceballos added.

Know more about The Prominence and Timberland Heights by visiting http://www.filinvest.com.

A TRILL-ing launch of Mattress in a Box

The Prominence RONCEL NEBRE (From left), Filinvest AVP project development head, Northeast Cluster; Bernadette M. Ramos, Filinvest VP, real estate corporate marketing; Francis V. Ceballos, Filinvest SVP, Northeast Cluster; Pinky C. Peralta, principal, Pinky Cruz Peralta Designs Inc.; and Jimmy S. Roque, Filinvest VP for Planning

with classy interiors for an interactive yet sophisticated experience, true to the lifestyle that we have envisioned for our projects under the Prestige brand,” said Francis V. Ceballos, Filinvest senior vice president for the Northeast Cluster.

Timberland Heights

TIMBERLAND Heights offers its residents their own piece of bliss through the exclusive villages and

upscale residential enclaves, such as Mandala 1and 2, The Ridge, Banyan Crest, Banyan Ridge and the newest development, The Glades. All these are surrounded by nature, with vast open spaces, breathtaking panoramic views, lush greens, as well as cool, mountain breeze. Located in San Mateo, Rizal, Timberland Heights is a massive 677-hectare masterplanned development and is only a 9-kilometer. drive from Batasang

THE Prominence is an urban retreat that’s just a stone’s throw away from the heart of a bustling metropolis.

This 7.9-hectare master-planned community brings together elements of modern architecture and the timeless elegance of country design.

Pleasantly tucked in the quiet portion of Batasan Hills, Quezon City, urban life is merged seamlessly with green suburban charm. This upscale residential enclave features coveted exclusivity and security and makes for a prime investment as it offers the city's last few single private dwellings The Prominence is envisioned to satisfy the need for rest and relaxation with its well-crafted amenities,

MATTRESS in a Box celebrity couple Megan Young and Mikael Daez; actors Patrick Sugui and Josef Elizalde are joined by top Uratex executives (standing, from left) Managing Director Peachy Medina, Assistant Executive Vice President John Rosagas, Sales Director Dindo Medina, Sales Director for Automotive Edwin Galor and Finance Director Pinky Rosagas; (seated, from left) CEO and cofounder Natividad “Naty” Cheng and Marketing Director Cherry Wong-Tan.

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ONVENIENCE, wellne s s a n d c o m f o r t are now delivered in a box with the launch of TRILL: Mattress in a Box. Packed compactly in a creative box using the latest technology, the highquality and versatile premium mattress is conveniently delivered right at the customer’s

doorstep with just a few simple clicks online.

TRILL is also the first-ever mattress in the Philippines to have a plush side and firm side that can be switched in one easy flip to suit different desired levels of comfort. It is exclusively available at https://www. trillbyuratex.com/.

Entrepreneur BusinessMirror

E4 Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Beepbeep.ph delivers hassle-free online vehicle repair and maintenance services

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By Rizal Raoul S. Reyes

@brownindio

Contributor

ONE are the days when car owners count solely on relatives, friends and, yes, the friendly neighborhood mechanic for car-related services like body repairs, engine, electrical or even underchassis repair, detailing and spare parts, thanks to the entrepreneurial mind of Anton Ojeda, former Zomato country manager, and founder and chief executive officer of beepbeep.ph.

“We were sitting around thinking of what industry we could be of help by modernizing and introducing innovative technology. As fate would have it, the founders and I all had relevant experience that ended up getting us to where we are now,” Ojeda told the BusinessMirror in a recent interview in Makati City.

He noted that the car industry does not use technology for maintenance and service and relies solely on traditional methods such as referral, affinity and whatever is cheaper.

And that paved the way for the birth of the online platform, gateway and destination for all car requirements, the beepbeep.ph, a digital solutions company that was specifically created to make all car-related needs hassle-free.

With the entry of beepbeep.ph, Ojeda believes motorists will now have bigger and better options in the maintenance of their vehicles. Good thing the founder of beepbeep.ph, the first-of-its-kind locally made app and the world’s most comprehensive auto service directory listing, came up with a way to make things a lot easier for today’s motorists.

Ojeda’s cofounder, former Advertising Executive and beepbeep.ph

Chief Operating Officer Paolo Acosta, has an intimate knowledge of the car servicing industry, as his family’s business was a car shop. “I grew up exposed to mechanics, to old cars, grease, paint... I pretty much know how car shops are ran,” said Acosta. This love for cars coupled with a desire to change how things are being done helped form the company into what it is now.

For the team, it’s all about making it easy for motorists to maintain their single most expensive possession: their cars. “Metro Manila has more than 3 million motorists. And those motorists don’t have enough information on the different types of repair shops, location of car wash providers, and prices of towing and other services they can avail of, ” the beepbeep.ph CEO shared.

Beepbeep.ph taps advertisements in its directory listing. Acosta said the platform can offer premium advertising exposure to new clients.

Moreover, he said, car companies also place advertisements about their services.

Mainly a directory listing

THE platform links car owners to over 8,000 curated and vetted car

BEEPBEEP.PH Founder and Chief Executive Officer Anton Ojeda poses for a snapshot with Chief Operating Officer Gian Paolo Acosta.

shops that can help address all car needs in the most efficient and timesaving way.

“Our vision is to be an innovator in this industry and, hopefully, for people to witness and experience how things have greatly improved so much that they can look back to a time before beepbeep.ph and to a time after,” Ojeda said.

The platform also provides a trio of handy features that modernize the local car service industry. Search and canvass lets users get a detailed look at establishments and what to expect from their service—a menu of services, features, operating hours, addresses and google map locator, payment methods and estimated cost per visit. The directory also includes insurance providers and Land Transportation Office outlets.

With beepbeep.ph’s maintenance valet, Ojeda said, car owners do not have to interrupt their daily routines to have preventive maintenance services or even annual auto-detailing jobs done on their vehicles, as they can now just simply search for their preferred car shop on the web site or the app, book an appointment, and have their cars picked up by company drivers to take their car to the shop and delivered back safely once the service is done.

“One of the things we’re trying to do is provide convenience, wherever

you are, home or work, and bring a certain quality and reliance to it,” explained Ojeda. As for security measures, drivers are fully equipped with body cameras and are continuously monitored via GPS for constant monitoring.

“Aside from that, there is also our roadside assistance, which is a 24/7 full service for car emergencies. This not only covers batteries and wheels.

We are talking about flat beds, conveyance, mechanics on-demand, locksmith or something as simple as getting your tire change—and introducing credit-card payments to that,” he said.

In their effort to make their list as comprehensible as it could be, Acosta said their team found out that out of the 8,000 car shops in Metro Manila, only 10 percent to 12 percent offer roadside assistance, making it harder for motorists on distress to find assistance, not to mention the fact that nobody is

sure if assistance is available on a 24/7 basis.

“For that, we made sure that ours makes it easy for people to get assistance especially in emergency situations,” he added. “What’s more, the service can be availed of with just a call of our number and with no membership required,” Acosta said.

With 50,000 users, a dedicated call center, reliable valet drivers, and the trust of over 8,000 car service establishments in Metro Manila, beepbeep.ph is in the forefront of modernizing the car service industry.

Their mission, plainly put, is to cover anything in the car space. They even want to help users look at information on car sales, find quality car accessories, and discover the best car deals and promotions all in one place. Ojeda said his group offers its partner shops reliable source of data to base well-informed business decisions, “We also happen to welcome them into a platform where the size of their business doesn’t matter. It’s the quality of their goods that becomes important.”

In the end it’s all about empowering both the shops and the owners.

“The more businesses that use us, the more modern their businesses become, the more power consumers we get. It’s that and the means for motorists to be informed and become responsible car owners,” he said.

In the succeeding years, beepbeep.ph intends to expand to provinces nationwide, and bring the same model to Southeast Asia and to the world.

To avail yourselves of the services, download beepbeep.ph app on the Apple Store or Google Play.

The more businesses that use us, the more modern their businesses become, the more power consumers we get. It’s that and the means for motorists to be informed and become responsible car owners.”—Ojeda

China’s king of Internet fluff wants to conquer the world

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EIJING—A Chinese Internet company that serves up homemade break-dancing videos, dishy news bites and goofy hashtag challenges has become one of the planet’s most richly valued start-ups, with a roughly $75-billion price tag. And it has big plans for storming phone screens across the rest of the globe, too.

You may not have heard of the company, Bytedance. You may never have used any of its breezy, colorful apps. But your nearest teenager is probably already obsessed with Musical.ly, the videosharing platform that Bytedance bought for around $1 billion last year and folded into its own video service, TikTok. “Frankly, it’s meaningless stuff,”

said Dong Yaxin, 20, a college student in Beijing who says he is active every day on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok. Bytedance says that more than half a billion people worldwide use Douyin or TikTok at least once a month.

Cute pet videos. Lip-syncing to pop ear worms. Glossy digital effects.

“There isn’t such a strong sense of purpose on Douyin,” Dong said.

“That’s actually what’s so good about it.” But even for a purveyor of fluff, crossing the tech world’s most treacherous divide will not be carefree. There are two major Internets right now: China’s and the rest of the world’s. Beijing’s tough rules on content and operations have long made China difficult, even impossible, terrain for US Internet companies.

YAXIN

Those rules have also largely penned in homegrown titans like Tencent, whose overseas expansion plans have been hamstrung by the unique demands of catering to China’s online population.

So far, Bytedance—which recently secured $3 billion in new funding from SoftBank and other heavyweight investors—has found a rare measure of success in both Internets by doing things a little differently.

For one, it is making no pretense to be bridging the two digital realms.

Users of Douyin are entirely walled off from users of TikTok and vice versa; the better to manage the material that people in China can see.

Beijing’s tightening controls have made these decidedly un-fun times to be in the business of fun.

Video game companies, celebrity gossip bloggers and livestreaming stars have all been through the wringer recently as the government works harder to stamp out cultural content that it deems unhealthy or

unwholesome. The crackdown has not spared Bytedance—authorities ordered the company’s joke-sharing app offline in April this year.

The company has also crossed borders with relative ease by focusing on light, affirming fare and on attracting young—very young—users. But the Chinese Communist Party is not alone in having discovered a sordid side to Bytedance’s platforms.

Both before the company bought Musical.ly and since, horrified parents and others have reported finding adolescent users showing off suggestive dance moves on the app, mouthing lyrics about rough sex and worse. Police in Britain have investigated reports of adults propositioning children through Musically.

New York Times News Service

www.businessmirror.com.ph

At 34, she’s gone from Goldman to failed artist to start-up queen

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Y the age of 34, Akiko Naka has already experienced more career-wise than most people do in a lifetime.

She started by getting hired by Goldman Sachs Group Inc., where she worked as an equity saleswoman. When she left that job, she tried to make it as a professional manga comic artist. When that didn’t work out, she landed a job at Facebook Inc. And not content to leave it at that, she quit to establish her own company, a recruiting social network called Wantedly Inc. She took it public on the Tokyo Stock Exchange last year, and is one of the youngest women to head a Japanese listed company.

Naka is an example of a young Japanese person who’s shunning what was long a standard career path in Japan— graduating from a top university and staking out a career at a major company.

Instead, she’s going it alone, seeking to harness the power of social media— and her own past experiences—to try to reinvent how recruitment functions.

“All my failures were a chance to learn,”Naka said in an interview in Tokyo.

Wantedly, which is seen as a LinkedIn for millennials in Japan, is an online portal linking job seekers directly to companies. The platform, which also offers other services, is built around matching users and companies that have the same motivations, and it doesn’t allow job postings to mention salary or benefits. The focus is on what companies do, how they do it, and perhaps most important why.

Different era

“LINKEDIN is from about two decades ago,” Naka said. The US company was established in 2002. “It was born in the era of paper résumés, and matching salaries and skills,” she said. “What we’re aiming to do is to match a company’s direction, what they are doing something for, with the user’s direction, and having them work together so that everybody benefits.”

According to Naka, that focus on motivation, and the company’s service of giving prospective employees a chance to visit companies on more casual terms, will ultimately lead to better matches than the traditional model of rounds of formal job interviews.

“If both companies and job seekers put on makeup when they are seeking to match, both of them will be unhappy in the end,” Naka said.

Shrinking work force

FINDING talented people is getting difficult in Japan, where a shrinking work force is causing the tightest labor market in decades, giving job search companies an opportunity to expand their businesses. The market for recruitment information services grew to about $7.1 billion in fiscal 2016, up 7.5 percent from a year earlier, according to the Association of Job Information of Japan. Wantedly had 2.4 million monthly active users, with 29,000 registered companies using the service, as of October, according to the company.

Wantedly aims to increase monthly active users to about 10 million in Japan within about 10 years, Naka said.

It’s still a drop in the ocean compared to LinkedIn, which has more than 575 million members in 200 countries and territories worldwide, according to the company’s web site.

Naka graduated from Kyoto University in 2008. During her time at the prestigious school, she helped establish a free campus newspaper that sold ad space to local shops and restaurants.

She also worked on creating a beauty pageant, which never came to pass. As a child, her parents, who were academics, encouraged her to make things rather than play video games. Bloomberg News