IN BRIEF

Emperador expanding Scotland whisky distillery

EMPERADOR Inc., a liquor manufacturer led by billionaire Andrew Tan, said Wednesday it is expanding its Scotland distillery to meet the growing demand for whisky worldwide.

ture spending, and enhanced business and consumer confidence,” he said.

UA&P economist Victor Abola, who also presented his macroeconomic outlook, said the Philippines would likely be “insulated by the negative developments overseas primarily due to easing inflation rate, strong consumer spending aggressive infrastructure spending and strengthening of the peso against the dollar.”

“There is a lot of room for optimism. The clouds are less dark in Philippines. We tend to be a bit more unplugged to the movements in US and global economy,” Abola said.

ADB also maintained its growth outlook for developing economies in Asia and the Pacific at 4.8 percent this year, as robust domestic demand continues to support the region’s recovery. However, it downgraded Southeast Asia’s growth prospects from 4.7 percent to 4.6 percent in 2023 and from 5.0 percent to 4.9 percent in 2024, reflecting weaker global demand for manufactured exports.

Emperador said in a disclosure to the stock exchange subsidiary Whyte and Mackay would double the size of its whisky maturation complex in its Invergordon distillery from 45.4 hectares to 92 hectares.

This will create space for an additional 1.5 million casks of maturing whisky in the coming decades, it said.

“This expansion is part of Emperador’s continuing efforts to strengthen our production in response to growing demands for single malt whisky in various markets worldwide. We want to address the scarcity of aged liquids globally, and this will allow us to strengthen and support a core segment of our business,” Emperador president Winston Co said.

Whyte and Mackay is the world’s fifth largest Scotch Whisky producer that owns four leading single malt whisky brands.

Jenniffer B. Austria

Visitor arrivals reached 3m as of July 19—DOT

INTERNATIONAL visitor arrivals in the Philippines reached 3 million as of July 19, 2023, the Department of Tourism said Wednesday.

“We are glad to report that in roughly seven months, we have already achieved the 3 million international visitor arrivals mark, reflecting continued robust recovery and the gains of the Marcos administration towards the resurgence of Philippine tourism, ” said Tourism Secretary Christina Garcia Frasco.

Data showed that of the total, 91.36 percent or 2,740,802 were foreign tourists and 8.64 percent or 259,277 were overseas Filipinos.

South Korea delivered almost a quarter of the total number of international visitors for the Philippines with 741,658 or about 24.72 percent. It was followed by the US with 550,569 tourists or 18.35 percent; Australia with 146,062 or 4.87 percent; Japan with 143,227 or 4.77 percent; and Canada with 132,018 or 4.4 percent. Other top sources of foreign visitors were mainland China, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, Singapore and Malaysia.

SUPPLY AGREEMENT. Aboitiz Power Corp.’s retail electricity entities Adventenergy Inc. and AP

Renewables Inc. sign a power supply agreement with Nexif Ratch Energy Investments Pte. Ltd. for the supply of clean solar energy. The electricity supply will be sourced from the 74-megawatt-peak solar project of Nexif Ratch in Calabanga, Camarines Sur once it is completed by the second quarter of 2024. Signing the agreement are (from left) AboitizPower senior vice president Sandro Aboitiz, Calabanga Renewable Energy president Nicolo Subido and AboitizPower first vice president James Yu.

PAL unfazed by United Airlines’ transpacific route

By Darwin G. Amojelar

PHILIPPINE Airlines is unfazed by the planned entry of United Airlines in the Manila to San Francisco market.

“Philippine Airlines welcomes additional competition on transpacific routes, a sign of the strength and vitality of the air travel market between the Philippines and the United States,” the airline unit of tycoon Lucio Tan said in a statement.

“PAL has always embraced healthy competition among different players across our network,” it said.

PAL operates 37 weekly flights on US routes, including double daily flights to Los Angeles, daily flights each to San Francisco and Guam and several weekly flights to New York and Honolulu.

“Our efforts have helped boost tourism, facilitate stronger PH-US economic ties and serve Balikbayan families, business travelers and trade flows in recent decades. We remain committed to those efforts to serve North America,” PAL said.

United Airlines announced Wednesday that it would start new daily nonstop service from Manila to San Francisco in October this year.

The first westbound flight from SFO to Manila will depart on Oct. 29, 2023.

The new flight, still subject to government approval, will be the airline’s first trans-Pacific service from Manila since it started its operations in the country in 1982.

“We are excited to launch the new nonstop service from Manila to San Francisco to meet strong requests from our customers on both sides of the Pacific,” United Airlines’ regional director of sales for Greater China, Korea and Southeast Asia Wally Dias said.

The DOT said inbound tourism receipts surged 502 percent in the first half to P212.46 billion from P35.29 billion a year ago. Othel V. Campos

Cebu Pacific ranks third among strongest PH brands CEBU Pacific ranked third among the strongest brands in the Philippines for 2023, according to a study by a London-based brand valuation consultancy firm.

CEB received a Brand Strength Index score of 81.0, corresponding to a rating of AAA-, based on the Brand Finance’s 2023 report on the most valuable and strongest Filipino brands.

CEB also placed 20th among the Philippines’ most valuable brands this year—the first time the airline made it in the list—with a brand value worth $194 million.

“We are humbled and honored to be named among the strongest and most valuable brands in the Philippines. This affirms our commitment to making air travel more affordable and accessible for every kind of Juan,” said CEB chief marketing and customer experience officer Candice Iyog.

Brand Finance, the world’s leading brand valuation consultancy firm, published the annual list of the most valuable and strongest brands following a survey of over 100,000 respondents worldwide to assess their perception of more than 4,000 brands.

Gov’t looks at initial 2,400 MW of nuclear capacity in 12 years

THE Department of Energy is looking at an initial 2,400 megawatts of nuclear capacity to support the growth of the sector by 2035.

The proposal is part of the agency’s Philippine Energy Plan 2023 to 2050 which is expected to be completed this year.

Under the plan, eight units of 150-MW small modular reactors are expected to be put in place by 2032 and an additional 1,200 MW of nuclear capacity by 2035.

DOE director for energy policy and planning bureau Michael Sinocruz said they could not say yet the exact nuclear capacity that would be included in the plan.

“We are running our numbers in terms of reliability and cost. Right now, we don’t have a fixed number in terms of capacity. We will have a firm capacity to be included in the mix in the succeeding PH energy plan once we have a law establishing an independent atomic energy regulatory commission which is still pending in the Congress now,” Sinocruz said in a recent forum organized by the German-Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Sinocruz said the government remained open to rehabilitating the mothballed 620-megawatt Bataan Nuclear Power Plant.

“We are not yet abandoning the possible rehabilitation of the BNPP, but we need to do a feasibility study whether we can rehab the BNPP at a reasonable cost, whether rehabilitation of BNPP is cost effective to us,” he said.

“We need to commission, so there are several proposals that we received for the conduct of the feasibility study for the BNPP,” he said.

Energy Secretary Raphael Lotilla earlier said the Philippines might have a nuclear facility up and running “within the decade.”

“Within the decade, I am sure that we can be on, or we can place ourselves on track for that,” Lotilla said. Alena Mae S. Flores