BusinessMirror July 8, 2015

BusinessMirror

THREETIME ROTARY CLUB OF MANILA JOURNALISM AWARDEE 2006, 2010, 2012

U.N. MEDIA AWARD 2008

A broader look at today’s business Saturday 18, 2014 10 No. 40Vol. 10 No. 272 Wednesday, JulyVol. 8, 2015

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BSP REMAINS CAUTIOUS BECAUSE OF GREEK CRISIS, EL NIÑO

INSIDE

Rate tweaks unlikely despite low inflation

G IS FOR GREATNESS The Lord has done great things

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H, Lord, in our daily life, have we realized that You have done great things for us? When God set the captives of Zion free, we were more like children in a dream. Then we could hear our laughter and cheers. Then we could hear our shouts of joy. They said in amazement to the world, indeed, God has done great things for them. Truly we must treasure all His goodness and mercy. Amen.

BREAKING BREAD 2015, AND LOUIE M. LACSON Word&Life Publications • teacherlouie1965@yahoo.com

Editor: Gerard S. Ramos • lifestylebusinessmirror@gmail.com

Life

PEN’S PEN AND INK »D4

BusinessMirror

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

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Apple loses appeal on e-book antitrust suit B D B S Los Angeles Times A FEDERAL appeals court on Tuesday let stand a 2013 lower court ruling that concluded Apple conspired with several top book publishers to raise e-book prices. The Justice Department had accused Apple of unfairly taking control of a nascent market that had been dominated by Amazon.com.

Judges from the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York split on the decision 2-1.

In a 117-page decision, Judge Debra Ann Livingston wrote that Apple pressured publishers to band together to prevent price drops for books, both electronic and print. Apple had leveraged publisher frustration with Amazon’s $9.99-per-book pricing on its Kindle reader as a bargaining chip, she said.

The publishers then “combined forces to grab control over price,” she wrote, referring to five of the “Big Six” publishers— Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and Hachette. “A coordinated effort to raise prices across the relevant market was present in every chapter of this story,” she added.

The story began with Apple’s 2010 launch of the iPad, a tablet that marketed its selection of e-books as a prominent feature.

Until then, Amazon’s Kindle, released in 2007, had dominated the e-book market, accounting for 90 percent of all e-book sales within two years. Amazon sold many new releases and bestsellers at close to or lower than wholesale prices.

Publishers considered this practice a threat to their business model, Livingston said, and became determined to overcome it with the help of Apple, the newcomer eager for a foothold in the market. After negotiating attractive contracts with Apple, the publishers went to Amazon with demands for sweeter deals. Prices for iPad books could be set as high as $19.99. Apple now may be ordered to pay $400 million to consumers, complying with a 2014 settlement of a class-action lawsuit brought by 33 states and territories. Judge Raymond J. Lohier, in concurring with Livingston, said Apple and the publishers committed “corporate bullying” by teaming up against Amazon.

But Judge Dennis Jacobs disagreed, writing in a 38-page dissent that Apple joined with publishers as the only way to force a lower barrier to the e-book industry.

“No one publisher alone could counter Amazon,” he wrote.

“Apple’s conduct...was unambiguously and overwhelmingly procompetitive.”

Apple disagreed with the ruling and denied that it fixed e-book prices. “While we want to put this behind us, the case is about principles and values,” the company said in a statement on Tuesday. “We know we did nothing wrong back in 2010 and are assessing next steps.”

G IS FOR GREATNESS

LOVE THAT LEATHER The genuine leather-clad LG G4, which gives new meaning to luxury and personalization in the smartphone landscape.

B G R Lifestyle & Entertainment Editor

with its latest flagship, as the G4 is available not only with the de rigueur hard plastic back cover (textured of course), but also with a vegetable-tanned leather backside. The back cover, by the way, is removable.

Yes, leather—actual, real leather, not the faux variety, this one crafted from animal rawhide using the same cutting and tanning process employed on luxury bags. And, yes, that’s also real stitching flanking the faux seam that runs vertically through the mid-section of the leather-clad LG G4, which the company’s local office sent over for us to play with for a spell. The process that the leather undergoes before it is fused to the hard plastic shell reportedly takes 12 weeks at the minimum— and the moment your hand cradles the LG’s leather-clad flagship, you will readily say that it is time well spent. The material gives the LG G4 a warm, organic, luxurious feel that neither metal nor glass—the materials of choice for flagship smartphones these days, from Apple’s iPhone 6 Plus to the twin Samsung Galaxy S6s—can provide.

It would come as no surprise if the brown variant becomes the most popular among the G4’s leather back covers, as brown leather ages handsomely, but fashionistas will no doubt be pleased that there are five other color leather variants they can choose from to match or contrast their OOTD: red, beige, sky blue, yellow and, of course, black.

The back cover being removable not only allows the LG G4 user a level of handsome personalization that goes beyond what the similarly leather-clad 2014 Moto X allowed, but it also means that—unlike a number of current flagship smartphones which have nonremovable batteries—you can easily swap out power packs just in case you overdid all the social media and other Internet stuff on the 4G-powered G4 (the Li-Ion 3000 mAh battery can last you a full day with typical use; our experience thus far usually has the G4 with 16 percent of battery life left by the time we hit the sack after a day of intermittent data usage).

No need to have that humungous power bank or charger weighing down and crowding your bag or purse.

Compared to its predecessor, the LG G4 is just a hair taller, wider and thicker at 148.9x76.1x6.3-9.8 mm. But unlike the G3, the company’s newest flagship is a dual-SIM

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ACK in January LG Electronics Inc. reported that it scored a “net profit of 501.40 billion won ($474.81 million) for full-year 2014, an increase of 125 percent over its 2013 net profit. Operating profit increased significantly in 2014 to 1.83 trillion won ($1.73 billion) from 1.25 trillion won ($1.14 billion) in 2013, an increase of 46 percent. Full-year consolidated revenue of 59.04 trillion won ($55.91 billion) was mainly boosted by a 24-percent increase in smartphone shipments.”

Also back in January the tech media reported that the other consumer-electronics giant headquartered in South Korea, Samsung, saw “its first annual earnings decline in three years, in part due to a sharp drop in sales of mobile phones. Net profit fell to 23.4 trillion won ($21.3 billion; £14 billion) last year, a 27-percent fall from 30.5 trillon won in 2013. Mobile-phone sales for the year fell 21 percent to 107.41 trillon won.” (tinyurl. com/mkfburp) Of course it can be said that given the rapid shifts in the tech landscape, things may have turned around for Samsung since the release of its twin flagship smartphones, the Galaxy S6 and the attention-grabbing Galaxy S6 Edge.

That was back in April, and although the new releases—particularly the S6 Edge—have wowed media and consumers alike, it remains to be seen whether Samsung has arrived at a turnaround. (tinyurl.com/pghb22o) Meanwhile, the latest flagship smartphone from LG, the G4, has arrived at gadget shops globally, with the handset launched with befitting grandness in late May at The Theater at Solaire in Pasay City, and becoming available around these parts shortly thereafter.

Nope, the successor to the LG G3— reportedly the best-selling top-tier Androidpowered smartphone of 2014—doesn’t have the gimmicky curved-edge display of the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge, although it must be said that LG obviously took design cues from its South Korean rival, which began putting out phablets and smartphones with a fauxleather back with faux-stitching in 2013.

LG, however, pushed the idea even further

beast (the secondary SIM is limited to purely 2G performance); boasts of a 5.5-inch IPS Quantum Display that “offers 20 percent greater color reproduction, 25-percent improvement in brightness and 50 percent greater contrast,” and is also ever-so-slightly curved, which LG claims makes it more resistant to damage from face-down drops; and packs a 16-megapixel camera with a fast f/1.8 aperture lens, improved optical stabilization (OIS 2) and a color spectrum sensor that “improves color accuracy by precisely reading the RGB values of the ambient light in a scene.”

In plainspeak, that means vibrant pictures that don’t look overprocessed or overworked. And, yes, the camera can save still images in RAW format—the format preferred by professional photographers—and capture video in ultraHD, but be warned: choosing either of these capture modes will gobble up a huge chunk of memory from the 128 gigabytes microSD card you will slap into the LG G4. Out of the box, the smartphone offers 32GB for your media, apps, games and then some.

Under the hood, the LG G4 purrs along nicely and smoothly courtesy of Qualcomm’s 64-bit hexa-core Snapdragon 808 processor, with a clock speed of 1.8GHz, plus 3GB of RAM and the latest and greatest version of Android (that would be Lollipop, or V5.1). Your nerdy friend might be quick to point out that, unlike a number of flagships, the G4 doesn’t run on the latest premium chip from Qualcomm, and he would be right. The latest top-of-the-line processor from Qualcomm would be the Snapdragon 810—which, alas, is dogged by heat issues that have yet to be addressed. No such thermal issues arose in the weeks that we have been putting the G4 through its paces, which include trying our hand at “FarmVille 2” and watching a couple of episodes of Season 3 of the excellent The Fosters.

All things considered, including its UX 4.0 user interaface that still needs a bit of reiningin, the LG G4 may not be as flashy as some of the flagship smartphones out there, but—with that handsome leather back, its buttery responsiveness, its stunning display and that envelope-pushing camera—it is sublime and gorgeous where it matters.

LIFE

n To know more about LG’s latest and greatest smartphone, visit www.lg.com/ph/.

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CHOOSE BETTER D2

Personal Tech BusinessMirror

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

It’s best to ‘Choose Better’ SUN Postpaid Vice President Joel Lumanlan (from left), AVP for Sun Prepaid Regina Pineda, new Sun endorser Drew Arellano and AVP for Sun Broadband Pam Santiago at the launch of Sun’s new “Choose Better” campaign.

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B JT N

MID the plethora of promos and offerings from wireless communications providers, Sun recently launched its newest campaign that urges consumers to wisely sift through their options and ultimately “Choose Better.”

“You really have to choose the option that gives you the best value for your money, and that is what Sun is all about,” said Joel Lumanlan, vice president of Sun Postpaid, during the campaign’s launch. “What’s important to us is that we are able to provide our consumers the best value services in the market. We believe when you choose better, you spend wiser.”

Lumanlan added that Sun, which has dropped the word “Cellular” in its new “sunny, bright, bold, warm and practical” logo to appeal to a broader spectrum of the market, has a set of “hero products” to carry out its new slogan and present consumers with the best options in the market.

At the forefront of these offers is the Sun Postpaid Best Value Plan 450. Described by Lumanlan as a “good entry-level plan for new postpaid subscribers,” the Plan 450 offers unlimited calls and texts within the network, 250 texts to all networks, plus 20 hours of data consumption. As opposed to the existing Plan 450, this deal is made sweeter with the inclusion of a free Android smartphone.

There are also better options in the broadband department with Non-Stop Surf Plan 450 for Sun Broadband, which comes with nonstop surfing (30day access of light surfing), 1 gigabyte for streaming and downloading, 1GB for the music streaming service Spinnr, and a free pocket Wi-Fi. Another Sun Broadband promo goodie is the Non-Stop Surf 25 that is

valid for a day and offers 25 megabyte Open Access plus 300MB Spinnr.

Sun Prepaid subscribers can also choose better with Super Loaded CTU 100 (Call & Text Unlimited) with unlimited trinet calls, unlimited texts to all networks and 100MB of free data all valid for seven days.

Lamanlan clarified that aside from these promos, they have gone all-in with the Choose Better campaign with their other offerings. “When you visit a Sun shop now, all you will see are the revamped plans. We’re doing this across the board.”

“It’s not all about image. It’s not all about fluff. You really have to go through your options to be able to

determine what gives the better value for your money,” he added.

Along with the launch of the new campaign, Sun has also introduced its newest endorser, the multihyphenate Drew Arellano. He said that his personality jives perfectly with Sun’s core values as a company. “Being an adventurous type of person, I have this thinking that I want to maximize everything while using the most practical ways.”

According to Lamanlan, they have the best ambassador to personify Sun’s new campaign. “Drew embodies what we want the brand to personify in the market,” he said. “Like Sun, he’s very credible and, yet, very practical. He also has a very sunny personality.” n

Lazada helps bloggers earn through its affiliate program session on blog-content improvement by top lifestyle blogger and Lazada affiliate, Kryz Uy. The Lazada Affiliate Program (www.lazada.com.ph/affiliate) www.lazada.com.ph/affiliate) is an www.lazada.com.ph/affiliate automated marketing program that allows bloggers and web site owners to use various advertising tools such as banners, links, or a product feed in order to earn as much as 10 percent commission on sales generated.

Lazada also uses cookies that expire after 30 days, so purchases made 30

LAZADA ADA Philippines (www.lazada. com.ph), the country’s one-stop com.ph shopping and selling destination, recently held its first Shop ‘til You Blog workshop, where it introduced the Lazada Affiliate Program to lifestyle bloggers and online influencers.

Lazada recognizes bloggers and publishers as important participants in the e-commerce industry as the overall usage of social-media platforms continue to rise.

The highlight of the event was a

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Today’s Horoscope

By Eugenia Last

CELEBRITIES BORN ON THIS IS DA DAY: Toby Keith,

54; Kevin Bacon, 57; Anjelica Huston, 64; Jeffrey Tambor, 71.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY: DA Helping others will help you DAY:

advance. Don’t fight the inevitable. Going with the flow will help you avoid being left out. Use your ingenuity and be a participant. If you don’t make suggestions or offer assistance, you will have no right to complain. Discipline and hard work will be required, but will also pay off. Your numbers are 9, 13, 17, 20, 23, 35, 41.

days following a click from an ad still counts as a sale from the blogger or web site partner. Payouts are made via PayPal or bank deposit.

The program is similar to Amazon’s associate program which is more widely known in the US for its success stories on bloggers earning thousands of dollars each month through affiliate links. Many local bloggers are not yet monetizing their web sites and a good place to start is Lazada’s Affiliate Program,

touted as the largest direct affiliate marketing program in the Philippines.

The company’s huge inventory of over 200,000 reputable products gives publishers options to select and feature items relevant to their audience. Additionally, Lazada affiliates are informed in advance of Lazada’s big sale events and exclusive flash sales so they can share these promos with their readers.

Full technical support is also provided by the Lazada Affiliate Team.

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Leading buy-and-sell web site introduces changes OLX.PH, the leading buy-and-sell web site in the country, has introduced new changes that will benefit its growing number of users. These improvements include promoting better-quality ads, minimizing duplicate listings and providing a fairer selling environment to everyone.

All OLX sellers can still post ads at no charge.

Each member is entitled to a set of free ads or “rent” space, which can accommodate 36 listings of buy-and-sell items (phones, furniture, etc.), two real estate, two cars and nine car parts and accessories, two services, two jobs, and one business opportunity. The number of free ad slots per category is subject to change.

Sellers can use their free ad space anytime and they can post various items, as long as they don’t exceed the category limit.

They will also never run out of free ad space even after they have sold their items. Once an item has been sold, they just have to mark it as “sold” to make space for more items to sell.

Meanwhile, average C2C sellers, or those who sell personal secondhand items occasionally, will not need to pay for more space. They won’t even notice any difference in their selling experience.

The B2C sellers, or those who do buy-and-sell as their business or as a side job will be charged with a minimal fee, depending on the category that their items will fall under.

The optional fee is a security feature that drives away sellers with malicious intent. Scammers and spammers will have to think twice about posting duplicate and false ads that only distract or mislead buyers. It’s also a way of encouraging sellers to make the most of the free ad space and ensure the quality of their ads.

With the changes, OLX expects to provide more win-win arrangements to all users. Buyers will be more protected from scams.

They can also find what they’re looking for on the site faster and easier. And without the pesky duplicate ads, there’s more assurance that the items they’re buying are of good quality. Meanwhile, sellers can be easily searched; interested buyers will be able to find them quicker, which can translate into more chances of selling their items.

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ARIES (March 21-April 19): Use your intelligence to make your way to the top. Beef up and send out your resumé if you are bored or feel you are going nowhere fast. A physical change will boost your confidence and lift your spirits. Romance is encouraged.

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CANCER (June 21-July 22): Don’t take on too much, or emotions will escalate, causing disputes or minor mishaps. Take time out for yourself. Do something you enjoy or that stimulates you mentally and physically. Personal changes will make you feel good.

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TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Take a tour around your neighborhood and you’ll notice things you haven’t seen before. There is plenty to discover and with a little coaxing, you may want to participate in something that will improve your community.

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GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Your involvement in a worthy cause will lead to new friendships. Take a position of leadership and make suggestions, and you will become a valued contributor. Do your own research. Positive personal changes will improve a relationship.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Get motivated and make things happen.

Act on your instincts and don’t look back. You’ll attract attention and plenty of interest in what you have to offer personally and professionally. Promote your interests and you will get an offer you cannot refuse.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Stand firm if someone makes demands, but don’t get into a dispute. Be prepared to walk away. You will lose if you don’t negotiate with finesse. Believe in your ability to move forward on your own if necessary. Protect your interests.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): You’ll have trouble getting along with business partners. Compromise and keep the peace. Focus more on being helpful and taking care of personal needs that ease your stress and make you feel good about the way you look.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Take a close look at any contracts, investments or paperwork you are given. Someone will try to take advantage of you if you aren’t careful. Make changes to whatever proposition you are given.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Expand your interests and your friendships. Exploring new people and places will change your attitude and improve your goals. Set your standards high and you will rise to the occasion. Walk away from negativity or people looking for an argument.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Someone will play on your emotions by making a last-minute change. Before you jump to conclusions or believe what you hear, dig deep and look for alternatives that will help you continue along your set path.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Reconsider your direction and the partnerships you have formed.

Limitations and frustrations will occur if you let someone make decisions for you. A professional change based on something you enjoy doing will bring you higher returns and greater satisfaction.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Getting along with your peers will make the difference in how successful you can be. Don’t rule out the possibility that you are being judged not only on your skills and ability, but also on your presentation and appearance.

Leave nothing to chance.

BIRTHDAY DAY BABY: You are unpredictable, willful and courageous. You are progressive and responsive.

DA

‘gourmet sampler’ BY MASON LORRY The Universal Crossword/Edited by Timothy E. Parker

ACROSS 1 Gallery contents 4 Common construction girder 9 Some cobras 13 Any one will do in a storm 15 Exotic jelly flavor 16 Cashless deal 17 Grouches 19 Repeated word in a Doris Day song 20 Intensify 21 Essayers, essentially 23 Former Justice John Paul 24 Far from the most 25 Old cager’s org. with a colorful ball 26 Like some blinds 29 Beast of Borden 32 Harp and elephant 33 Tail-end of a countdown 34 100 dinars 35 Plant with yellow flower clusters 36 Fish hawk’s cousin 37 Clear toothpaste 38 “The evidence of things not seen” 39 Ancient Germanic letters

40 42 43 44 48 50 51 52 54 55 56 57 58 59

Survives Backstabber Adolescent Not a main route Foiled Create a division Didn’t swing at Difficult thing to swallow, figuratively Pond organism Confederacy’s counterpart And others, for short Party thrower Mends When this sound stops, you’ll be left flat

8 9 10 11 12 14 18 22 24 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 35 36 38 39 41 42 44 45

46 Book with legends 47 Is sure to be heard 48 2002 Winter Olympics state 49 Court plea, for short 50 Cookbook direction 53 “...baked ___ pie”

With great skill Birthplace of Saint Francis Succotash ingredient Henry VIII’s last wife Fitness centers Toil and trouble Newbie, of sorts Plural of 42-Across Chow line?

Air outlets Green Gables girl Wine sediments Descartes’ “therefore” In ___ of (replacing) Experienced sailors, slangily Speaks like the Lord?

Flavor sensor Colleague of Calliope Satyrlike creature Airspace monitoring device Consider Matures on the vine Cause to attack Long-line annoyances

PERSONAL TECH DOWN 1 Church recesses 2 Fowl place 3 A handshake begins it 4 Large lizard 5 Some museum pieces 6 Convenience 7 It might briefly cross a street?

Solution to yesterday’s puzzle:

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PEN’S PEN AND INK

Art

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www.businessmirror.com.ph

KOMUNIKASYON

ONGOING EXHIBIT AT CASA SAN MIGUEL CELEBRATES THE PAROCHIAL AND SIMPLE CHARMS OF RURAL LIFE “Growing up in the countryside, life is much simpler.

Back then, human activities were very limited: limited access in entertainment and latest technology, such as television, radio and comics. Due to such limitations, people were more focused on their farming activities as their primary resources for survival. These life experiences in the community are the beacon of these paintings: [a] homage to the past and present.”ÑZ ÑZANIEL MARIANO, 2014 ZANIEL MARIANO’S body of work is a glimpse of a place and time we once knew. We are now living at a time where everything is moving so fast; where things rapidly take its form from one shift to the other—almost unnoticed because of globalization and the rapid growth of technology.

Mariano’s body of work focuses on the act of remembering life experiences with the intent to portray his idea of “slowing things down”...of selfevaluation, of unlearning and relearning the meaning of “progress” through pictures of what seemed to be a simpler life—a life in the countryside, in Zambales.

His paintings aim to guide us to form the right questions that we eventually ask ourselves, about how we live our lives and make us reflect our own values and the things that truly make us feel alive.

Mariano’s Rural is an exhibit of his works on view until July 30 at The Anita Magsaysay-Ho Gallery and Museum in Casa San Miguel.

Mariano, who hails from San Antonio, Zambales, is a self -taught artist and began his career in painting at the age of 16. He was one of the top 10 finalists in the ArtPetron competition and a semifinalist in the Metrobank Art & Design Excellence painting competition. Mariano has since served as an art mentor to local children in San Miguel and San Antonio, teaching drawing every weekend, preparing young artists for entry into the Philippine High School for the Arts.

Pen’s pen and ink

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B T G V titovaliente@yahoo.com

TEPHEN PRESTADO is “Pen,” and he is slowly gaining a following with his works in pen and ink. He is an illustrator in a time when technology can be summoned to quickly produce works that are composite of many elements available in the Internet. Pen’s art harks back to a period when artists were needed to visualize on paper maps and monsters lurking at the edge of the world, writers and intellectuals in their most ponderous of poses, and animals and plants coming to life as anthropomorphic beings.

I first noticed the skills and ferocious imagination of Prestado when he was commissioned to make the poster for the indie film Angustia, made under a grant from Cinema One Originals. Directed by Kristian Sendon Cordero, the film is a meditation on the conflicted colonialists who came to conquer not only our souls, but also our vegetation and our bodies.

The studies for the film poster are a joy to behold, as Prestado jumps from one obsessive point to another— for the film is not only about the anguish of the priest,

who feasts not only on local flora and fauna, but also on the lush loveliness of an indigene.

One poster study shows a beaming indigene, half of her face covered by plants. Framing her are more plants, stems and leaves. In the film, the priest collects plants and draws them, a tender metaphor for the facet of colonization that took place where forests were summarily collected by the colonizers. Evangelization E also meant taking over the body of the “natives.” In the other studies, Prestado recovered the image of “ ngustia,” the old image that was hidden by early “A converts and later recovered to induce more mysteries in the Christianization of the land. Interestingly, the illustration of Mary bearing the Dead Christ on her lap recalls the crude and flat figures of drawings common during the 1st and 2nd centuries of Christianity.

The drawings of Prestado appear to reproduce the antiquarian feel of the so-called illuminated manuscripts, which were prevalent in the Middle Ages.

Marginalia in Prestado’s young universe do not remain as borders or frames done in solid colors. As with those manuscripts done by monks, the wide lines that frame text or images are also copiously filled with text in rambunctious designs. Only the feel of the ancient

spirituality are remembered by this illustrator who can be irreverent with forms, as well.

One gets this feeling that Prestado is indeed enamoured with the art of illuminated manuscripts where figures do not have supremacy over alphabets.

Prestado, however, can be whimsical, as well. In fact, it is his whimsy running as counterpoint to his antediluvian temper that brings about a luscious irony.

In a book titled Obras Maestras, written by Dr. Paz Verdades Santos and Marifa Borja Fajardo, both of the Ateneo de Naga University, a woman—a maestra—has green stems and leaves coming out of her orifices. The book is an exhaustive study of Bikol literary works with guides to discussion and lesson plans built around them. Thus, the leaves and stems—growths that are expected to happen when the book is used. The literal interpretation catches the eye and induces the readers to be engaged in the pedagogy of the book.

Daumier and George Cruikshank are two of the ancestors of Prestado insofar as the path of form and texture he has chosen to tread is concerned.

But otherwise, in terms of content, Pen is as postmodern as any good illustrators among the millenials in our midst. n

Hanna Pettyjohn exhibit opens on July 16 WITH By Land or By Air, Silverlens presents Thirteen Artists Award winner Hanna Pettyjohn’s first show for 2015.

The 36 paintings comprise a work about the passage of time, as well as all other passages; a migratory mentality known to all who live away from home.

As the perpetual traveler learns, lightness is not only more efficient, but also often essential. At 12”x16”, these paintings are distinctly smaller than any Pettyjohn has created since the concise and arid landscapes of 2011’s Few and Far Between. Here, any natural setting has melted away in the form of dripping earthen tones framed by thick, stippled white. Her subjects for this series of paintings, the self-same swaths of cloth seen in works from previous shows, such as 2013’s Bundle, The Glass Between Us and Witherland, have now been abstracted from any context of environment or collage, achieving an effect somewhere between singular focus and compartmentalization.

Like flotsam adrift, each painting refers to an absent whole.

Visual components of larger paintings similar to those in the upcoming show A Web of When and Where in Taipei have been plucked and arranged into isolated formations. The act of packing and unpacking is familiar to Pettyjohn, who produces her paintings primarily in America and has become adept at anticipating the logistical considerations that accompany shipping her paintings overseas for exhibition. Continuing the process of deconstruction and reconstruction that has informed so much of her past work,

Pettyjohn has fashioned a diaspora in oil on canvas—reflections dislocated by their own momentum remain connected, by land or by air.

Pettyjohn’s By Land or By Air at Silverlens will be on view from July 16 to August 15.

Bernardo Pacquing at Silverlens SILVERLENS presents Half Full, Bernardo Pacquing’s latest one-man exhibition of mixed-media paintings and sculptures that delves into the materiality of everyday media. The artist distills into aesthetic encounters the sensate experience of quiet observation and work: making and growing things from the simplest of elements.

Pacquing started working on this series after learning hydroponics— cultivating plants sans the presence of soil. The resulting works are abstractions of these found forms, fact products of quiet deliberation, waiting and exploration with various media.

S “G,” A

S “T ,” A

RAISING TOBACCO TAXES World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Director for the Western Pacific Dr. Shin Young-soo (from left), Health Secretary Dr. Janette L. Garin, Finance Undersecretary Jeremias N. Paul Jr. and WHO Prevention of Noncommunicable Diseases Director Douglas W. Bettcher show the signed report of the WHO on the Global Tobacco Epidemic 2015 during its launch in Manila on Monday. The report urged governments to raise tobacco taxes to discourage people from smoking. ALYSA SALEN

Greek PM Tsipras races to restart bailout talks

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His use of abstraction, however, eschews any semblance of fidelity to botanical forms; instead, one can perceive indirect references to flora through the wielding of form and composition. The exhibition is Pacquing’s first time to use raw, unprimed canvas as an essential component of his works: salvaging discarded and stained canvas and using them as both surface and sculptural space.

His visual fascination with the rawness of surfaces, and his experimentation with mixed media are especially evident in this series, which uses materials, such as elastomeric,

resins, house paints, rugby and wood glue to create new translucent or textured layers in the process.

The exhibition’s title—in a literary sense—also pertains to metaphorical ways of seeing the world: To seek dignity and merit in things, images or experiences easily dismissed and discarded, and to find contentment in these little, passing moments of being.

As an ongoing series, Pacquing’s explorations of botanical abstraction beguile and speak to both mind and spirit.

Half Full is on view at Silverlens (silverlensgalleries.com) until July 11.

ART

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REEK Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras heads on Tuesday to Brussels, where he will try to use a bailout referendum victory to obtain a rescue deal with European leaders. Tsipras faces intense pressure from creditors abroad and banks at home who all demand what Greece lacks: money.

As the Greek leader readied proposals to restart bailout talks, the situation was complicated by the European Central Bank’s (ECB) refusal late Monday to increase assistance for Greek banks desperately needing cash and facing imminent collapse, unless a rescue deal is reached.

A hastily called meeting of eurozone finance ministers is slated for Tuesday afternoon, and a full summit of the leaders of the 19 euro countries was to be held that evening.

With Greece’s future in the European Union and its euro currency at stake, a Monday meeting between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande in Paris set the tone for the Brussels talks.

“Time is of the essence,” Merkel said afterward. “[Greek] proposals have to be on the table this week.”

Tsipras scored a bigger-thanexpected win in Sunday’s bailout

referendum, with 61 percent of voters rejecting the economic measures creditors had proposed in exchange for loans Greece needs to remain afloat, including further cuts to pensions.

In a sign of compromise, Tsipras appointed a new finance minister to lead talks with creditors and replace Yanis Varoufakis, who clashed with his European counterparts.

Euclid Tsakalotos, a 55-yearold economist, has appeared more willing to engage with creditors. He will be tested as soon as Tuesday, in Brussels.

“I won’t hide from you that I am

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very nervous and very anxious. I am not taking over at the easiest moment in Greek history,” Tsakalotos said after being sworn in.

Greek banks are running out of cash, even after the government placed limits on how much depositors can withdraw. The ECB has been providing emergency credit to the banks, but on Monday said it could not increase the amount offered because the banks’ collateral was weaker now, after the “No” vote.

Nor ma l commerce is now impossible in Greece. Small businesses, lacking use of credit cards or

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HE Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) would not likely be stampeded into relaxing its grip over the policy rates just yet, no matter the confirmation of still lower inflation in June, when the rate of change in prices hit a 20-year low of 1.2 percent.

Tech firms bewail lack of enabling environment

HE government must increase investments in research and development (R&D) and put in place a tax regime that would be supportive of technology start-ups in the Philippines, local and foreign tech firms said on Tuesday.

During the SlingshotMNL 2015, the official tech start-up event of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec), tech firms said an “enabling environment” for early-stage tech firms is lacking in the Philippines.

“Tech start-ups are not on the list of the investment-priorities plans of the Philippines. But now we’re in talks to change the language [of government plans] to make it easier for young entrepreneurs to, for example, to manage tax issues,” said Earl Valencia, President and CEO of business accelerator IdeaSpace Foundation.

Valencia said the government can also consider making investments in shared services facilities and to boost the R&D capacity of the Department of Science and Technology.

Nicholas Shea, founder of StartUp Chile—a Chilean governmentbacked seed accelerator—said government cooperation is “crucial” in helping the local tech sector reach its full potential.

“The government is the partner of every Filipino company; it gets 32 percent of the taxes. If the government thinks of itself as the main partner of every company, it would want firms to prosper because a third of [company revenues] will go to government,” Shea said.

In a panel discussion, Shea said the Chilean government eased its visa restrictions for technology entrepreneurs from other countries to attract the best talent in the tech community.

Minette Navarrete, from Kickstart Ventures, added that, in terms of flexibilities, the tax environment should also be “conducive” not just to start-ups, but to investors or venture capitals that will infuse the muchneeded funding to these firms.

Navarrete also called on the government to make it easier for foreign

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PESO EXCHANGE RA TES n US 45.1240

n JAPAN 0.3683 n UK 70.4205 n HK 5.8200 n CHINA 7.2673 n SINGAPORE 33.4649 n AUSTRALIA 33.9202 n EU 49.8981 n SAUDI ARABIA 12.0331 Source: BSP (7 July 2015)

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Wednesday, July 8, 2015

News

BusinessMirror

Rate tweaks unlikely despite low inflation Continued from A1

BSP Governor Amando M. Tetangco Jr. hinted strongly against an interest-rate adjustment at this point on Tuesday, saying that the recordlow inflation for the month should be viewed with caution.

“While this outturn is at the low end of the target range, there remain upside risks of financialmarket volatility in reaction to developments in Greece and possibility of the El Niño later this year that necessitate care in next moves,” Tetangco said.

The financial and political turmoil generated

by Greek officials and their obstinate refusal to be cowed by the collective demands of their creditors, which include the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the 19-nation currency union under the European Commission, has unsettled markets.

But, in the Philippines, regulators have their interest set not just on the volatilities that the Greek slide into financial instability and the feared contagion these represent, but also on the more parochial issue of weather disruptions represented by the El Niño on food supply, for instance.

Bank of the Philippine Islands research officer Nicholas Antonio Mapa said what Tetangco meant by the shift in tone was not a reduction in interest rates due to low inflation, but retaining them for when inflation starts to rise due to the spillover impact of developments in the 19-nation European Union, the El Niño and even the so-called statistical base effects when this also starts to wane.

“Tetangco has been known to communicate effectively to markets, helping telegraph moves to guide market sentiment. He would be very wary to give away statements about upward pressure on inflation due to El Niño and financial-market volatility if he did not have a preference,” Mapa told the BusinessMirror in an e-mail.

“My assessment is that the governor remains biased for keeping rates steady, or even hiking the rates, as opposed to cutting rates. The easy-andquick response to weaker growth and below-target

inflation is to cut rates. But, given that inflation targeting is forward-looking, AMT [the BSP governor] thus indicated that care is needed at its next policy rate-setting meeting,” he added.

Economists believe that the government does not need to adjust policy rates at this time.

“Should the government adjust policy rates? Not yet. This could be an outlier, unless it persists for a longer period,”University of Asia and the Pacific School of Economics Vice Dean Cid Terosa said.

Terosa said the government must remain vigilant against the likelihood of deflation, when households and businesses refuse to spend in anticipation of still lower prices down the line. To counter its debilitating impact, he said the government must increase its spending program to boost demand and push commodity prices higher.

Suboptimal government spending has been faulted for the slowdown in the country’s low output growth, measured as the gross domestic product (GDP). In the first quarter, government spending, particularly for construction projects, contracted 24.6 percent in the first quarter from expansion, averaging 17.5 percent in the same period in 2014.

GDP in the first quarter only grew 5.2 percent, the slowest since the last quarter of 2011, when GDP grew 3.8 percent.

“If it [slowdown in commodity prices] persists for another month, deflation could set in. I believe the government should spend more and stimulate spending,” Terosa said.

However, Eagle Watch Senior Fellow Alvin P. Ang and former Budget Secretary Benjamin E. Diokno said the slowdown in inflation should not be a cause for concern at the moment. They said the slowdown was largely due to so-called base impact.

Diokno said he expects inflation to average around 2 percent this year. Terosa holds the same view, but pointed out that low oil prices in the international market and the country’s stable food supply also contributed to the slowdown in commodity prices.

“There should be no fear of a deflationary situation this year. The headline 1.2-percent inflation

rate in June was due to base effects. Inflation rate was high at 4.4 percent in June of last year,” Diokno said. The National Economic and Development Authority said that, despite the benign inflation environment, the government will continue to closely monitor prices given that the second half of this year is also typhoon season.

Agriculture is prone to suffer damages brought by typhoons. This, in turn, could cause commodity prices, particularly food prices, to increase.

Esguerra also said typhoons in the second half of the year could intensify as an effect of the prolonged dry spell.

“Efforts to monitor drought incidence in agricultural areas should be sustained to ensure that suitable policy actions are realized without delay.

Timely importation of rice to augment domestic supply should serve as a ready measure to prevent the repeat of the high rice prices witnessed in the third quarter of 2013 until 2014, as these occurrences adversely affect the well-being of the citizenry,” Esguerra explained.

The Philippine Statistical Authority (PSA) data showed that inflation was at 2 percent in the January-to-June period. It added that slow inflation is due to the annual decrease of housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels, and communication.

The decrease also encloses the nonalcoholic beverages, clothing, household equipment, and routine maintenance of the house, education and health.

“Aside from the steady and sufficient supply of food, inflation benefited from reduced electricity prices due to lower fuel costs. The double-digit year-on-year decline in the prices of unleaded gasoline, diesel, kerosene, liquefied petroleum gas and the decline in Meralco rates affected key oil and electricity-related commodities and services in the current month,” Esguerra added.

The PSA on Tuesday reported inflation in June slowing to 1.2 percent, the slowest since 1995. In the January-to-June period, inflation was at 2 percent, the low-end of the government’s 2-percent to 4-percent inflation target for the year.

With Elisse Leonne P. Perez

news@businessmirror.com.ph

Breast-milk industry. . . nonprofit banks are in development. Against this backdrop, lawmakers in New Jersey and Michigan are considering legislation to license banks, while legislators in California, Maryland, New York and Texas already have regulations.

Mothers have long had far from a monolithic view on the question of milk banking, but what’s changing is the availability of more options as the industry matures. For some, the work involved in cleaning bottle parts and in pumping and storing their milk warrants being paid. Others view donating their milk, considered superior to formula in nutrition and immunity-building qualities, as a charitable service.

“You just never know who it’s going to,” said Kelli Russell, of Washington, North Carolina, who donates her breast milk. “It could go to someone who could someday cure cancer or it could be someone that marries my son or takes care of me if I need help one day if I’m in the hospital.”

Greek. . .

Continued from A8

Rachel Palencik, of West Chester, Pennsylvania, said her breast milk was taking up space in her freezer, so she tried to donate it to a bank but didn’t have enough. So she tried to sell it—and wouldn’t try it again.

“A lot of it was either scammers or men wanting to consume it, which isn’t my cup of tea,” she said. So she ended up donating to an individual mother rather than through a bank.

There’s broad agreement in the milk-banking industry of a shortage of human milk available for hospitals and neonatal intensive-care units. The nonprofit Human Milk Banking Association of North America estimates that there are 4,000 moms using its banks across the country, and thatt it would take 60,000 to meet the demand for milk in hospitals nationwide.

There is also a largely shared view that it’s important for donor milk to be thoroughly screened for bacteria, drugs and adulteration by cow’s milk. But the agreement largely stops there. AP

Continued from A1

money from bank accounts, were left to rely on cash coming from diminishing purchases from customers.

But Greeks are holding tightly onto what cash they have. And suppliers are demanding that businesses pay cash up-front.

In Paris Merkel and Hollande both expressed respect for Greek voters, but urged swift action from Athens.

“I stress that there is not lots of time left. There is urgency for Greece. There is urgency for Eu-

rope,” Hollande said.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said that if Greece is to remain part of the euro zone, it needs to enact reforms that will spur economic growth and pay off its debt.

“We’re inclined to help Greece, but Greece must follow Europe’s rules,” he said in an interview on Spain’s Telecinco evening news program.

The ongoing Greek drama hurt stocks around the world, particularly in Europe. AP

The Nation BusinessMirror

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Legislator asks DOTC to speed up LTFRB probe

By Jovee Marie N. dela Cruz

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PARTY-LIST lawmaker on Tuesday urged the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) to fast-track the investigation on the reported anomalous practices and irregularities in the grant of franchises by the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB).

Party-list Rep. Jonathan de la Cruz of Abakada also urged Transportation Secretary Joseph Emilio A. Abaya to expand the cleanup effort in the entire land-transport system, especially those involving the LTFRB’s irregular franchise issuances and the Land Transportation Office’s (LTO) allegedly anomalous plate-making contract, which has reportedly generated billions of pesos in “grease money” for certain high-ranking government officials.

Earlier, de la Cruz filed House Resolution 2208, titled “A Resolution Directing the House Committees on Transportation and Good Government and Public Accountability, to Investigate, in Aid of Legislation, the Reported Anomalous Practices and Grave Abuse of Authority of the LTFRB in the Exercise of Its Functions and the Conduct of Its Rationalization Program.”

In addition, de la Cruz said that, as early as last year, he filed a number of resolutions to investigate these reported anomalies in both the LTFRB and the LTO. According to the lawmaker, he filed a complaint before the Office of the Ombudsman questioning the same.

It was the second complaint he had filed before the Ombudsman against the LTFRB officials for the same offense, the first one filed last year, with Party-list Rep. Terry Ridon of Kabataan as cocomplainant.

“The public has had enough of the heartaches and losses resulting from the messy and chaotic land-transport system in the country. That this is aggravated by the corrupt and wayward practices of the very officials mandated to rationalize and put order to the entire system makes things even worse. It is time Secretary Abaya cracks the whip and throw these people out,” de la Cruz said.

“During the recent hearing conducted by the Committees on Good Government and Public Accountability and Transportation,” the lawmaker added, “where the said anomalous conduct and malpractice were evidently proven and the officials of the said agency advised to show proof why they should not be held accountable for their unwarranted actions, the LTFRB officials, instead of rectifying their anomalous actions, embarked on another series of rush and haphazard actions, including giving provisional authorities to trucks with green plates and implementing its ‘No Apprehension Policy’ over the same, and suspending the implementation of colorum and out-of-line provisions policy, which ultimately resulted in traffic congestion all over Metro Manila.”

“In the hearings conducted, it was made abundantly clear that, indeed, these two agencies, particularly the LTFRB, have been remiss in their duties and were told to reform, otherwise they will be subjected to more severe sanctions,” de la Cruz said.

“The much-publicized DOTC-sanctioned LTFRB-LTO rationalization program, touted as the solution to the chaotic and utterly unresponsive provision of public land-transportation services, has been turned into one big irregular and moneymaking machine by the powers-that-be. It is high time Secretary Abaya put a stop to these malpractices, otherwise he may be accused of benefiting from the chaos himself and coddling these officials,” de la Cruz added.

In particular, de la Cruz cited the case of Pangasinan Solid North Corp. owned by a certain Jaime Chua, who is known to be exceptionally close to LTFRB Chairman Winston Ginez.

Documents in the de la Cruz’s possession show that Chua and his companies have been given almost carte blanche prerogatives by Ginez in utter disregard of the rules and the interests of the riding public.

Chua, who also operates Lucena Lines and for almost eight years the “bankrupt” Grandstar Lines, has violated every land-transport statute, but has hardly been sanctioned by LTFRB under Ginez, de la Cruz said.

De la Cruz also noted that no less than newly appointed LTFRB Board Member Ariel Inton has cried foul over the latest Chua-related infraction, which was papered over by Ginez himself.

In a letter dated June 16 addressed to Ginez, Inton protested the irregular issuance of the franchise of Pangasinan Solid North, claiming that Ginez tricked him and fellow Board Member Ronaldo Corpuz into affixing their signatures on a draft decision, which was supposed to be further deliberated upon. Instead of recalling the draft decision, Ginez ordered its release.

“Apparently, this latest irregular operation has become the new normal, the standard operating procedure at the LTFRB under Ginez,” de la Cruz said.

Editor: Dionisio L. Pelayo • Wednesday, July 8, 2015 A3

De Lima flip-flops on Binay’s immunity from suit

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By Joel R. San Juan

USTICE Secretary Leila M. de Lima has flip-flopped on her position on the issue of immunity of Vice President Jejomar C. Binay from criminal prosecution in connection with graft accusations being hurled against him.

De Lima earlier indicated that Binay does not enjoy the same immunity from criminal suits accorded to the President while in power, but this time the justice secretary admitted that the Vice President cannot be prosecuted in court.

She said criminal prosecution of Binay may be limited by his being an impeachable official.

De Lima stressed that, while the Constitution is silent on the issue of immunity of impeachable officials, “conventional wisdom” in law pratice that criminal cases against them do not prosper in court until after they are impeached or have served their term in office.

“The Constitution states that impeachable officials shall not be removed from office, except by impeachment. It does not say categorically to what extent they may be subject to prosecutorial ac-

DE LIMA: “The initiation of a criminal case entails the issuance of a warrant of arrest, and this implies restraint on the person of the impeachable official that highly compromises his status as such.”

tion without their impeachability being affected. Theoretically, they can be subject to criminal proceedings so long as they are not removed from office, such as what the Supreme Court [SC] has done with commissioners of the Comelec [Commission on Elections] in several cases when it cited said commissioners in criminal contempt,” she explained.

Blue Ribbon panel members dared to submit to audit

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By Recto Mercene

HE camp of Vice President Jejomar C. Binay on Tuesday dared Senate Blue Ribbon Committee members to submit themselves to an audit of their projects funded through the Priority Development Assistance Fund, or pork barrel, the outlawed Development Acceleration Program, and other congressional insertions.

Lawyer Rico Quicho, the Vice President’s spokesman for political affairs, said that since Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III has been bandying that the ongoing Blue Ribbon Subcommittee hearings on Binay are conducted under the constitutional principle, “Public Office is a Public Trust,” then the three senators leading the hearings should subject themselves to the same audit.

“Their infrastructure projects should also be audited using the Langdon and Seah Construction Cost Handbook, which they have invoked in the hearings and subsequent report,” Quicho added.

Quicho also slammed Pimentel’s decision to audit the key shelter agencies after Binay resigned from the Cabinet.

According to Quicho, it would have been reasonable had Pimentel called for an audit of all agencies handled by resigned officials.

“Kung nagpapatawag si Senator Pimentel ng performance at financial audit sa lahat ng sangay ng pamahalaan kapag may nag-resign na pinuno nito ay mai-intindihan namin ang liham niya para usisain ang mga shelter agencies noong panahon na chairman ng HUDCC [Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council] si Vice President Binay,” he said.

“Sa dinami-dami ng nagbibitiw na opisyal, si VP Binay lamang ang tanging sinabihan at sinulatan ng audit. Noong nag-resign ang pinuno ng Customs na si John Sevilla dahil umano sa mga nagpafund-raising na miyembro ng Liberal Party, tahimik siya at hindi kumikibo. Akala ba namin ‘Public Office is a Public Trust?’ Mukha yatang mga kalaban lamang ang target nila,” Quicho lamented.

Quicho noted that, under the Vice President’s leadership, Pag-IBIG Fund pursued the syndicated estafa case against Delfin Lee and other Globe Asiatique officials.

“Kinasuhan ni Vice President at ng Pag-IBIG ang mga maanomalyang developer na nangloko ng libu-libong kababayan natin. Ngunit ngayon ay pinagtatanggol siya ng iyong kasamahan diyan sa Senado. Kaya batid ko na ang iyong liham ay para ituloy lamang ang ginagawa mong paninira sa pamilya Binay para ikaw naman ay mapansin at mabiyayaan pagtakbo mo sa susunod na eleksyon,” he said.

Quicho said that, while Pimentel keeps insisting that the Vice President should attend the Blue Ribbon Subcommittee hearings, the senator has already prejudged that case and pronounced Binay guilty.

“Alam mo din na marami nang dokumento na isinumite sa iyong komite na magpapawalang saysay sa mga kasinungalingan ng iyong mga resource persons pero ang mga ito at iyong binalewala kaparehas ng affidavit na ipinadala ni Vice President Binay sa Senado [There are many documents that have been submitted by resource persons but these have been ignored like the affidavits sent by Vice President Binay in the Senate],” he said.

He added that Pimentel himself has admitted multiple times that he has found no concrete proof provided by former Makati City Vice Mayor Ernesto Mercado and his companions.

“Ang nakakagulat ay kahit ikaw na mismo ang nagsabi na maglabas ng ebidensiya ang mga nagbibintang, nagpasiya ka pa rin na payagan na magpatuloy ang imbestigasyon,” Quicho said.

“However, the conventional wisdom among lawyers is that any criminal action against an impeachable official can only go so as far as filing an information.

It is still up to the courts, especially the SC, to categorically decide on whether the filing of a criminal charge amounts to a violation of impeachability,” she pointed out.

De Lima added that the courts cannot even order the arrest of Binay should cases be filed against him.

“The initiation of a criminal case entails the issuance of a warrant of arrest, and this implies restraint on the person of the impeachable official that highly compromises his status as such,” she stressed.

De Lima believes that, if this issue reaches the SC, the ruling would most likely favor the Vice President.

“Most probably, the SC will treat the arrest of an impeachable official as a violation of his status of impeachability,” she explained.

De Lima’s statement seems to agree with the opinion of experts, including veteran election lawyer Romulo Macalintal, that the Vice President is an impeachable official—just like the President, justices of the SC, the Ombudsman and other constitutional officials—and, therefore, cannot be subject of trial in court without first having him impeached from office.

It can be recalled that de Lima earlier argued that Binay is not immune from criminal suit and could be investigated over charges of corruption allegedly committed when he was still mayor of Makati City. “ The principle of immunity from suit applies only to two entities, the State and the President. Among government officials, only the President is immune from suit. On the other hand, impeachability refers only to the mode of removal, not to immunity. Impeachability does not mean immunity. Thus, among the impeachable officials, only the President is immune from suit,” she earlier said.

Earlier, Maca linta l rebutted the opinion of Senate President Franklin M. Drilon that Binay is not immune from suit.

“If the President is immune from suit, then all constitutional officials, like the Vice President, SC justices, members of constitutional commissions and the Ombudsman, who could only be removed by impeachment, are, likewise, immune from suit,” he said.

Macalintal believes that such position being pushed by Drilon and administration allies “smacks of unjust or invidious discrimination, thus, violative of the equal protection clause of the Constitution.”

The veteran lawyer cited relevant decisions of the SC to back his position.

Economy

A4 Wednesday, July 8, 2015 • Editors: Vittorio V. Vitug and Max V. de Leon

BusinessMirror

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DENR to seek P10.14B for natl reforestation program next year

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he Aquino administration will be seeking a whopping P10.14-billion budget for the implementation next year of the National Greening Program (NGP), up by P2.94 billion compared to the program’s current-year budget of P7.2 billion.

The proposed budget of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, which include that of the NGP, the flagship reforestation program of the government, was submitted by Environment Secretary Ramon J.P. Paje and was approved by President Aquino during Monday’s Cabinet meeting at the Palace.

The NGP, which aims to plant 1.5 billion trees in 1.5 million hectares of open, degraded and denuded forests, will be on its fifth and final year of implementation next year.

Director Ricardo Calderon of the DENR’s Forest Management Bureau said that, with next year’s budget allocation, the government will be

able to exceed the program’s target covering 1.5 million hectares.

“With the budget, we expect to cover a total of 1.7 million hectares by the end of 2016,” Calderon, also the national coordinator of the NGP, told the BusinessMirror in an interview.

For 2016, he said, the target is to establish 416,617 hectares of new forest plantations. This is 116,617 hectares over and above the original government target for 2016 of 300,000 hectares.

According to Calderon, the government needs to maintain 73,000 NGP sites that were established in the past four years. These sites cover a

total of 1.08 million hectares. To do this, he said, the government would need to spend around P2 billion for maintenance and protection alone.

Of the P10.14-billion total NGP budget, P5.5 billion will be used to produce seedlings, while around P2 billion will be spent for site preparation.

He added that, with next year’s budget, the NGP will be able to double the green jobs generated by the government since the program started in 2011.

“As of December 2014, we have generated employment for 320,220 persons, and 2.2 million green jobs. Hopefully, we will double the number of green jobs next year,” Calderon added.

Under the NGP, the government aims to plant 1.5 billion trees in 1.5 million hectares by 2016. It originally aims to expand the country’s forest by 12 percent.

Calderon said they are still assessing the NGP’s accomplishment in terms of seedlings production and possible budgetary requirement to achieve the program's overall target of producing 1.5 billion seedlings by the end of next year.

briefs govt urged to prepare contingency for ofws in greece

The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) on Tuesday urged the government to prepare a contingency plan for Filipino migrant workers who stand to be affected by the weeklong bank holiday and the potential impact of a looming financial crisis in Greece.

The group said Filipino migrant workers may run out of cash, after the country voted to reject the other day the terms of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout.

“Greece has entered an economic twilight zone no country has ever experienced before. Their government is on the brink of bankruptcy and unless they ultimately agree to new IMF terms this week, their credit lines and access to the European banking system will be severely limited,” TUCP-Nagkaisa Executive Director Louie Corral said in a news statement released on Tuesday.

He said current developments already resulted in a major decline in the service and tourism industry—hotels, restaurants, cruise ships— where the majority of overseas Filipino workers are employed.

Worse, he said that wages and benefits of migrant Filipino workers will be affected because banks only allow €60 for Greek nationals to withdraw from banks to prevent a bank run.

bill seeks to resolve shortage of fire truck drivers at bfp TO resolve the shortage of 1,460 fire truck drivers, a party-list lawmaker has filed a bill creating the position of Fire Truck Driver-Mechanic at the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP).

House Bill 5809, or the proposed “Fire Truck Driver/Mechanic Act of 2015,” authored by Party-list Rep. Samuel D. Pagdilao of Anti-Crime and Terrorism through Community Involvement and Support, seeks to level the playing field for those belonging to poor families who could not afford to bring their children to college, by lowering the education requirements for the BFP applicants.

Under the bill among the minimum qualifications of the fire truck drivermechanic are: must be 21 to 35 years old at the time of his appointment; must be at least a high-school graduate from a recognized school of learning; must be a duly certified mechanic by the Technical Education Skills Development Authority (Tesda) or by any private institution accredited by Tesda; must be a driver (NC3) and must possess a valid professional driver’s license with restriction 1, 2 and 3; of good moral character; and must have passed the neuro-psychiatric/psychological, drug and physical tests for determining his/ her physical and mental health.

Goat meat for health

An old man waits for his order of fresh goat meat, also known as chevon or mutton (adult goat meat), at a stall near the Masinag Market on Marcos Highway in Antipolo City, Rizal, on Sunday. A kilo of goat meat costs P320. Goat meat contains B group vitamins (B₁, B₂, B₃, B₉, B₁₂), vitamins E and K, choline, protein, natural fats, betaine, cholesterol, amino acids, minerals (manganese, calcium, iron, zinc, copper, phosphorus, selenium), electrolytes (sodium, potassium), omega-3 fatty acids and omega-6 fatty acids. PNA

Senate sets scrutiny of P3.005-trillion national budget

By Recto Mercene

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he Senate will undertake a fine-toothed scrutiny on the details of the proposed P3.005-trillion national budget for 2016—the final spending program under the Aquino administration— and ensure that lawmakers pass a reasonable and responsible budget on time.

This was announced by Sen. Francis Escudero on Tuesday, saying that they will review the administration’s proposed spending package thoroughly to address the problem of underspending, which has been interfering with the economy’s ability to reach its full potential in recent years.

“This is the administration’s last hurrah against underspending. We’ll be asking them how they can win in the final round,” said Escudero, chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance.

He added: “Nagkukumahog ang Congress na ipasa ito ng madalian pero pagdating sa implementation bumabagal naman dahil sa dami ng spending humps. It is useless to appropriate huge sums on time when these are spent slowly.”

In explaining the budget process, Escudero likened Congress’s role to the kitchen that prepares the food and the Executive branch, the waiters. “The problem is that the food is being served slow. Ang dami tuloy putahe na napapanis. The customers are hungry. And we, the cooks, are frustrated.”

It is not good for the government to underspend, he added, because it deprives citizens of essential public goods and services they rightly deserve, such as improved education, better health care, and more roads and bridges.

Some economists criticized the Aquino administration for underspending, saying that it is disastrous for a country that is trying to reduce joblessness, poverty and hunger.

The budget, according to Escudero, “is the government’s contract with the people that the taxes they had paid promptly will be returned to them through the budget in a very prompt manner also.”

Because of this, he said, the review of next year’s spending proposal “will not just dwell on the future spending but on how current projects are being implemented.”

Escudero said the problem of underspending was largely due to the low absorptive capacity of state agencies. “ I s a ng ma a r ing it a nong s a mga agencies ay baka naman you’re asking more than you can chew. I think that’s one of the reasons for the budgetary indigestion. Ordering more or being given more than what it can process. Mahina ang absorptive capacity,” Escudero said.

Escudero issued the call placing underspending the focus of the upcoming budget review, after President Aquino approved a P3.005-trillion budget proposal for 2016, up 15 percent from this year’s P2.603 trillion.

Below-program-spending has hounded the administration’s budget execution in the past five years with this year, if first-quarter figures become the trend, portending to be no different.

The national government spent P504.05 billion during the period ending March, which was P78.1 billion, or 13 percent short of the P582.2-billion target.

Last year underspending was pegged at P303 billion, or 13 percent of the appropriations for 2104.

In 2011 the expenditure program was set at P1.711 trillion but actual spending was P1.557 billion, or an underspending of P154 billion.

Underspending also tapered down to P62 billion, based on actual disbursements of P1.778 trillion in 2012. The budget that year was P1.84 trillion.

Out of the P1.984-trillion budget in 2013, only P1.88 trillion was utilized, resulting in underspending of P104 billion.

In 2014 among the unreleased appropriations were the P2.2 billion intended for the Department of Education; P26.3 billion for the Department of Public Works and Highways; P2.6 billion for the Department of Agriculture; P5.8 billion for the Department of Agrarian Reform; and P 1.9 billion for the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

Escudero said he will be proposing schemes that will speed up disbursement.

“This should begin by itemizing lump sums. Doon kasi tumatagal sa pag-identify ng projects sa mga pondong binibigay in bulk. But if it’s detailed and broken down right from get-go, wala ng delays sa pag-flesh out ng mga ito,” he said.

“The proposal to limit the validity of appropriations to one year should, likewise, be revisited. The ‘if you don’t use it, you lose it’ rule will discourage slow implementation. Dapat may mas maikling expiry date kasi kung mahaba sasabihin ng ahensya ‘saka na, may bukas pa,” he said.

‘Roxas campaign budget’

Party-list Rep. Terry Ridon of Kabataan has vowed to subject the proposed P3.005-trillion national budget for 2016 to the most intense scrutiny to deny Liberal Party (LP) presumptive presidential candidate the use of people’s money for his campaign.

Approved by President Aquino in a Cabinet meeting on Monday, Ridon said the budget crafted by Secretary Florencio B. Abad naturally has more than enough room

for the use of Roxas, who has been using the bottom-up budgeting (BUB) appropriations of the current budget as an occasion to promote himself among local government units.

BUB was a system proposed by some non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that thought the budgeting system would redound to the benefit of the people and not be used to promote the political careers of Cabinet members.

In his criticism of the budget, Ridon explained that the 15.2-percent increase in the 2016 budget is ostensibly designed to help Roxas and his LP cohorts who are running for Executive and Legislative positions in the May 9, 2016 elections.

He blasted the Aquino declaration that his LP partymates and Cabinet members need not resign after filing their certificates of candidacy in October 2015, giving them more time to use up the 2015 budget to promote themselves and fiddle with the 2016 budget before the 90-day campaign period starts next year.

On the other hand, he warned that Abad, being the chief disbursing officer of the LP and the Aquino administration, is also expected to withhold the budgets of LGUs controlled by the opposition and officials identified with Vice President Jerjomar C. Binay.

The youth solon announced that the Makabayan Bloc will report all its findings on the anomalous budget proposal directly to the people, noting that under Aquino and Abad, some P302.8 billion of the share of LGUs in the internal revenue allotment (IRA) for 2013 had been frozen and placed under Fund 103 that is controlled by the LP. Under the Local Government Code, the money should be released by the Bureau of Internal Revenue to the LGUs directly.

Worse, P581 billion in people’s money had been sequestered by the Aquino administration and declared as savings that Malacañang can use at its discretion.

Ridon said the Makabayan Bloc at the House of Representatives will use a fine-toothed comb to seek the funds that will be used by the Executive department to finance the tottering bid of Roxas to win the presidency.

“If Malacañang thinks it can get away with a bloated budget proposal that is unabashedly designed to fill the ruling party’s campaign kitty to the brim, then it is wrong. We are prepared to scrutinize every centavo, every line item in the 2016 budget proposal. We will exhaust all means to expose each and every questionable item, and we will not tolerate any loophole that will enable the President to juggle billions of public funds in his last year in office,” Ridon promised. With Marvyn Benaning

Economy BusinessMirror

news@businessmirror.com.ph

Wednesday, July 8, 2015 A5

PHL’s cash dole-out program 5th largest globally–WB report

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By Cai U. Ordinario

he Philippine Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) is among the top 5 largest conditional cash-transfer (CCT) programs in the world in terms of scale, according to a report released by the World Bank.

The report titled “The State of Social Safety Nets 2015” cited that the 4Ps has around 19 million beneficiaries ranking it fourth worldwide in terms of scale. There are 63 countries with CCT programs globally.

Compared to last year’s “State of Social Safety Net,” the Philippines ranked third out of the 52 countries with CCT. Last year the World Bank said some 20 million Filipinos ben-

efited from the 4Ps. The largest CCT program worldwide is the Janani Suraksha Yojana in India with 78 million beneficiaries, followed by the Bolsa Familia in Brazil with 49 million, and Prospera with 26 million. Rounding up the top 5 CCT programs in terms of scale is Familias en Accion in Colombia with 12 million beneficiaries.

“Conditional cash transfers are the

best targeted safety-net programs, devoting as much as 50 percent of benefits to the poorest 20 percent of the population. This is evident in the case of large-scale conditional cashtransfer programs in Latin America [such as Bolsa Familia in Brazil and Prospera in Mexico] and more recently, established programs in Asia [such as the Pantawid in the Philippines],” the World Bank said in a news statement.

The World Bank said the 4Ps account for 67 percent of the country’s budget, significantly higher than the average of 16 percent in the East Asia region.

Further, the Philippines’s universal health-care program extended by Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) was also cited by the World Bank as the third-largest fee waivers, another social safety-net category.

The PhilHealth program covers as much as 39 million Filipinos.

The two countries that offer the

two largest fee waivers are Indonesia and China whose fee-waiver programs cover 86 million and 42 million, respectively.

The PhilHealth program was the world’s third-biggest fee-waiver program in terms of beneficiaries share of total population. The World Bank estimated that it covers as much as 40 percent of the country’s population.

However, the World Bank said that despite the scale of these programs, the Philippines’s spending on social safety-net programs are still below the average of 1.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).

“The combined spending on social safety nets in 120 developing countries amounted to about $329 billion between 2010 and 2014. Well-designed programs are cost-effective, costing countries only between 1.5 percent and 1.9 percent of GDP—far less than most government spending on fuel subsidies,” the World Bank said.

Palace upbeat over latest credit upgrade, improved survey ratings

By Butch Fernandez

M

alacañang was upbeat over the Philippines’s latest credit-rating upgrade

by Japan, from “BBB” to “BBB+,” saying this would result in much lower interest rates that would benefit the government, business sector, as well as Filipinos taking out bank loans for housing or setting up new enterprises.

Acknowledging the recent upgrade given by the Japan Credit Rating Agency (JCRA), Communications Secretary Herminio B. Coloma Jr. noted that this was the 22nd time the Philippines’s credit score was upgraded since President Aquino took office in 2010.

At a news briefing on Tuesday, Coloma explained that the “investment-grade rating” is expected to bring down prevailing interest rates on the government’s borrowing and lending activities and also lower bank lending rates to local borrowers.

“Dahil sa investment-grade rating higit na mababa ang interest rate sa mga hinihiram na pondo at pautang ng bansa,” Coloma noted.

He added: “Makikinabang din dito ang mga mamamayan bunga ng pagbaba ng interest rate sa kanilang paghiram ng pondo sa bangko para sa pabahay, pagtatayo ng negosyo, pakotse at iba pang personal na pangangailangan.”

The news on the credit-rating upgrade by Japan reached the Palace on the heels of a recent Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey also affirming the Aquino administration’s improved net satisfaction rating, among Filipinos surveyed by SWS. “Ikinagagalak ng pamahalaan ang tumaas na antas na pagtanggap or net satisfaction sa pamamalakad ng Pangulo, Gabinete at buong gobyerno batay sa pinakahuling public satisfaction with the national administration survey ng Social Weather Stations,” Coloma said.

The Palace official noted that the high satisfation rating it obtained in the SWS survey will all the more prod the Aquino administration to improve the delivery of government programs and other public services to the people.

Mannequin pose

A comely sales lady at a dry goods stall in Divisoria strikes an attractive pose with mannequins donned with lady’s jeans. The sales lady says the jeans are being sold at reasonable price ranging between P200 and P300. Nonie Reyes

“Kapansin-pansin ang pagtaas ng pagturing ng mga mamamayan sa paghahatid ng serbisyo publiko sakop ang kalidad ng edukasyon at pagkalinga sa maralita,” Coloma said. “Kaya nga’t higit pang masiglang isinusulong ng pamahalaan ang mga programang K to 12 at Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program, o 4Ps, at mga kahalintulad pang mga programang nakatuon sa kapakanan ng sambayanan.”

He noted that the same survey also indicated that the majority of Filipinos support the Aquino administration’s foreign policy, particularly its handling of the West Philippine Sea row, where the Philippine government remained firm in advocating a “rules-based conflict resolution” to settle the territorial rift with China.

“Kasabay nito, nagpahayag din ang ating mga boss ng pagsang-ayon sa mga isinasagawa ng pamahalaan sa larangan ng ugnayang panlabas, o foreign relations, na kung saan ang pinakatampok na usapin sa kasalukuyan ay hinggil sa West Philippine Sea,” Coloma said. “Ang matibay na

paninindigan ng Pilipinas sa pagsulong ng rules-based conflict resolution ay umani na ng suporta mula sa maraming bansang kasapi ng United Nations, Asean at Apec.”

In a separate statement, Palace Spokesman Edwin Lacierda said that the Palace was “pleased to announce that the Philippines has received a credit-rating upgrade from the JCRA: from ‘BBB-’ to ‘BBB+ stable.’”

He noted that under the Aquino administration, “we have received two previous credit-rating upgrades from JCRA, in April 2011 and May 2013,” adding that “this is the 22nd positive rating action our country has enjoyed under this administration.”

Lacierda reported that the JCRA had cited the Aquino administration’s commitment to prudent fiscal management policy as having improved the country’s position.

“The figures speak for themselves: our central government debt-to-GDP [gross domestic product] ratio fell from 49.2 percent in 2013 to 45.4

percent at the end of 2014. Driven by strong domestic demand, the Philippine economy is projected to sustain a positive trajectory in terms of economic growth.”

According to Lacierda, “the aim of building a truly progressive and inclusive nation has been at the center of the Aquino administration’s vision since 2010,” adding that “recent advances in health, education, job creation and infrastructure—as well as positive news such as this—serve to affirm the strength of this commitment.”

“As the President has repeatedly said, all these investments are meant to benefit the Filipino people, our nation’s greatest resource. Along with characteristic optimism and diligence, it is the public’s continuing confidence in the government, which has made our country’s economic resurgence possible. Moving forward, the Aquino administration aims to pursue even greater heights for our country and bring about increased opportunities for all,” Lacierda added.

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barriers. Also discussed was the slowdown of tourists from western markets and the importance of growth in regional travel, especially from China, Japan and South Korea.

“It is imperative that all Asean countries drop visa requirements for visitors from China, Japan and South Korea, before more of their nationals travel to other parts of the world and bypass Asean destinations altogether.

This is crucial in making the Asean Economic Community a reality toward the deadline on December 31. Also, the Asean Plus Three was initiated way back in 1997 to bring Asean closer to China, Japan and South Korea,” Aung said.

He added that Asean governments

should realize that tourist arrivals are not a given growth, but requires continuous promotion. “And it would be ineffective if little effort is made to facilitate entry of visitors,” he said.

HamzahRahmat, Fata secretary- general and the president of Malaysian Association of Tour and Travel Agents, added that “tourism is already a big business in many Asean countries and it also brings an inflow of other businesses and investments. A government that insists on imposing visas does not want to see the potential tourism can bring for the economy.”

Fata members include PTAA, the Association of Travel Agents, Brunei;

Cambodian Association of Travel Agents; Association of Ticketing Agents Indonesia; Laos Association of Travel Agents; Malaysian Association of Tour and Travel Agents; Philippines Tour Operators Association; National Travel Agents Association Singapore; Association of Thailand Travel Agents; Thailand Travel Agents Association; and Union of Myanmar Travel Association.

Fata’s objective vision is to facilitate and contribute to the growth and development of the travel and tourism industry in Asean members-countries, especially through the travel associations and private sector enterprises and businesses.

ty-net programs.

In Africa alone, the number of countries setting up social safetynet programs has doubled over the past three years, as evidenced by rigorous evaluations that prove these programs work.

But three quarters of the poorest people in low- and lower-middleincome countries, and more than one-third of the poorest people in middle-income countries, lack safety-net coverage and remain at risk.

The report follows the recent joint statement by the heads of the World Bank Group and the International Labor Organization, endorsing the goal of universal access to social protection—including safety nets—by 2030.

The Third Financing for Development Conference in Addis Ababa next week is an opportunity to ensure that the international community has the means to make this vision a reality. With Janine Marie D. Soliman

DOE circular spells out penalty for ‘underperforming’ gencos

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Fata, PTAA urge Asean to waive visa for China, Japan, South Korean nationals he Federation of Asean Travel Associations (Fata), of which the Philippines Travel Agents Association (PTAA) is a charter member, urged Asean member-governments to relax visa requirements and allow visa-free entry for Asean nationals to any member-country for a minimum stay of 14 days.

This was discussed during the recent Fata meeting held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Fata has about 7,700 member-travel agents through its member-associations.

Fata President Dr. Aung Myat Khaw said Asean governments that impose certain travel restrictions should immediately remove the

As of March 2015, government data showed there were 4.43 million households who were enrolled under the 4Ps. Around of which 558,609 are indigenous households and 223,344 have at least one person with disability, and 11.06 million schoolchildren aged 0 to 18.

Health grants are given at P500 every month per household, amounting to P6,000 annually, while education grants of P300 every month for 10 months are given per child, amounting to P3,000 every year.

Beneficiaries of the program were selected through the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction, came from all 17 regions in the Philippines that included 79 provinces, 143 cities and 1,484 municipalities.

According to The State of Social Safety Nets 2015, more than 1.9 billion people in 136 low- and middle-income countries are now on beneficiary rolls of social safe-

By Lenie Lectura

istribution utilities (DUs), such as Manila Electric Co., are being required to include in their power supply agreements (PSAs) entered into with power producers a provision that will penalize the latter when they fail to deliver power supply on time.

Department of Energy (DOE) Circular 201506-0009 states that all DUs shall ensure that the PSAs entered into with a generation company (genco) shall contain a provision for allowances and penalties to clearly define the responsibilities and obligations of the genco in case the delivery of electric supply is not fulfilled due to delays in the commercial operation and/or occurrence of any forced outages.

The penalties for delays must be consistent with those set by the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC).

The DOE said the penalty may be equivalent with the cost of replacement power and that the annual allowance for all outages shall not exceed the number of days to be determined under the PSA rules for issuance of the ERC. “This circular aims to ensure supply security through the incorporation of standard contractual terms to clearly delineate the responsibilities of the contracting parties in the event of any forced outages or events affecting the delivery of power or delays in the commercial operations of committed power projects,” the agency said.

A PSA is forged by way of bilateral negotiation between a DU and a power producer. The DUs are mandated to ensure that their power requirements within their franchise areas are adequately covered by supply contracts.

However, there are times when a genco fails to deliver the power supply to the DU due to several reasons, including a sudden technical glitch that leads to forced outage of the genco’s power facility.

“The DOE recognizes the need to mitigate the significant impact on the general public of delays in the commercial operations of ongoing and committed power projects and/or recommissioning and resumption of generation facilities from outages to the overall status of available power supply in the country,” the agency said.

As such, the DOE moved to craft a policy that provides for additional guidelines for DUs in complying with their mandate to ensure supply security. Further, to avoid stranded contract quantities, all DUs shall consider in their PSAs a provision on the automatic reduction of contracted quantities due to possible migration of its contestable customers within their franchise area.

The same circular states that the DOE, through the Electric Power Industry Management Bureau and ERC will monitor the compliance of DUs. The ERC, for its part, shall establish and impose fines for noncompliance of electric power industry participants to support the enforcement of this circular.

briefs groups rush to sc to stop comelec parallel bidding, realignment of budget

ELECTION stakeholders rushed to the Supreme Court (SC) on Tuesday to stop the Commission on Elections (Comelec) from proceeding with the conduct of parallel biddings for the refurbishment of the existing Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines and for the lease of new Optical Mark Reader units with a total approved budget of P14.57 billion In a 50-page petition, petitioners, led by the Center for People Empowerment in Governance (Cenpeg), asked the Court to immediately issue a temporary restraining order against the implementation of Comelec Resolutions 15-0355 and 15-0359.

Comelec Resolutions 15-0355 and 15-03559 approved the conduct of parallel biddings and the creation of two separate Special Bids and Awards Committee (SBAC) to supervise the process, respectively.

Cenpeg was joined by representatives from various sectors in seeking to declare null and void the two resolutions which, the petitioners said, are unconstitutional and have no legal basis under Republic Act 9184, or the Government Procurement Reform Act. Joel R. San Juan

poll body bares 2nd auction for election results transmission services

THE Commission on Elections-Bids and Awards Committe (Comelec-BAC) announced on Tuesday that it would be holding a second round of public bidding for the provision of election results transmission services for use in next year’s elections with an approved budget of P558 million.

In its invitation to bid, the Comelec-BAC said the second round of bidding is necessary after the first round was declared a failure since no companies offered their bid proposal for the project.

It can be recalled that Smartmatic-Total Information Management (TIM) Corp. had purchased the bidding documents during the first round but did not submit a bid. The Comelec-BAC has set the deadline for the submission of bids on July 24.

A prebid conference has been scheduled on July 9 at the Comelec main office in Intramuros, Manila.

“A complete set of bidding documents may be purchased by interested bidders who wish to participate in the bidding process until July 24 during weekdays only from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. upon payment of a nonrefundable fee for the bidding documents in the amount of P75,000,” the Comelec-BAC said in a notice. Joel R. San Juan

Opinion BusinessMirror

A6 Wednesday, July 8, 2015

editorial

Pushing for sisterhood pacts between Philippine and foreign LGUs

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n our criticism of our unitary system of government, that it concentrates governmental power in Imperial Manila, we forget that local government units (LGUs) retain just about everything they need to plan and implement programs of development for their communities. Among other things, the Local Government Code guarantees this.

Many LGU leaders ignore this freedom of decision-making, but some take advantage of it to push for, or secure, benefits for their constituents. Of the second type of LGU leaders, may their tribe increase.

Late last year some LGUs were awarded recognition by the Galing Pook Foundation for their innovativeness and excellence in initiating development and amelioration programs for their populations. The Galing Pook Foundation is a private entity dedicated to the “recognition of local government units that carry out innovative and trailblazing programs that can serve as benchmarks and inspiration to other LGUs.” At this time, another LGU is demonstrating great initiative and imagination in the performance of its duties to its population. From a piece of news buried in the inside pages of newspapers late last week, we learn that the local government of Lubao, Pampanga, is adopting some of the policies and practices of the progressive county of Jeongseon in South Korea in the delivery of public services to the people.

The officials of Lubao had apparently visited Jeongseon in 2012 and were impressed by the beauty and cleanliness of the county. They noted the commitment of the municipal officials to the attraction of better quality and bigger investments to the community for the creation of jobs for the municipality’s inhabitants. The visit, according to Lubao officials, was the prelude to the signing of a sisterhood pact between the two municipalities.

In a recent program launching the sisterhood pact, the town officials declared that “the improvement of the standard of living of the 150,000 residents of Lubao is the priority of the local government.”

The officials invited business entities to invest in the town, particularly in the sectors of tourism, real estate and retail services, to hasten the eradication of poverty in the community.

Officials of the Korean Community Association Pampanga Chapter, led by its president, Kim Kiyoung, were on hand to lend importance to the program.

We support any encouragement of Philippine LGU officials to make official visits to progressive communities in foreign countries to observe ways and methods of rendering service to the people, for the possible adoption of these ways and methods in our country. Conversely, we also would want to see foreign local government officials making reciprocal visits to our progressive LGUs to learn lessons from us. These intervisitations should enrich representatives of the two sides and contribute to the strengthening of local governance in the countries involved.

Congratulations to the leadership of the LGU of Lubao, Pampanga. May your coming sisterhood with the town of Jeongseon, South Korea, yield mutual benefits to you and the South Korean township. May it also serve as a beacon light for other Philippine LGUs to follow in their own quest for the betterment of the lives of their constituents.

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Are single women entitled to maternity benefits?

Susie G. Bugante

All About Social Security

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his is a question often asked by female members of the Social Security System (SSS) who had become pregnant outside of marriage. In reply, let me cite Section 14-A of the Social Security Law, which provides for the maternity-leave benefit as follows: “A female member who has paid at least three monthly contributions in the 12-month period immediately preceding the semester of her childbirth or miscarriage shall be paid a daily maternity benefit equivalent to 100 percent of her average daily salary credit for 60 days or 78 days, in case of caesarean delivery....”

The law is silent on the civil status of the female member. Instead, it requires that the member must have paid at least three monthly contributions within the 12-month

period before the semester of childbirth. Thus, a member’s right to the benefit is assured by her contributions, regardless of her civil status.

Single women, therefore, are entitled to maternity benefits for as long as they meet the qualification requirements under the law.

Aside from the required number of contributions, the entitlements to maternity benefits are subject to the following conditions: 1) the member has given the required notification of her pregnancy through her employer if employed, or to the

SSS if separated, self-employed or voluntary member; 2) the maternity benefit shall be paid only for the first four deliveries or miscarriages; 3) no sickness benefit may be claimed within the same period for which maternity benefits have been received.

For the employed member, the benefit is advanced in full by the employer to the qualified employee, within 30 days upon filing of the maternity-leave application. The SSS, in turn, shall immediately reimburse the employer, 100 percent of the amount of maternity benefit advanced to the female employee upon receipt of satisfactory proof of such payment and legality thereof.

If the member gives birth or suffers a miscarriage but the required contributions were not remitted by the employer, or the SSS was not notified of her pregnancy by the employer, the benefits that the member would have been entitled to shall be paid by the employer.

For the separated, self-employed or voluntary-paying members, the benefit shall be paid directly to

them by the SSS. To apply for maternity benefits, the member must submit a duly accomplished maternity benefit claim application (SS Form MAT-2), together with the maternity notification form (SS Form MAT-1) duly stamped and received by the SSS. The member must also present her SSS ID card or any two valid IDs, both of which must bear her signature and at least one, her photo and date of birth. Depending on whether the member is employed, separated from employment, self-employed or a voluntary-paying member, there might be other documents that will be required in claiming for maternity benefits.

For more information about the SSS and its programs, call our 24-hour call center at (632) 920-6446 to 55, Monday to Friday, or send an e-mail to member_relations@sss.gov.ph.

Susie G. Bugante is the vice president for public affairs and special events of the Social Security System. Send comments about this column to susiebugante.bmirror@gmail.com.

China’s bull market in conspiracy theories William Pesek

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BLOOMBERG VIEW

hina’s financial world has officially entered the paranoia zone. As the Shanghai stock market experiences its worst three-week rout since 1992—in defiance of government efforts to reverse the plunge—government officials are blaming shadowy conspiracies for the sell-off.

One narrative whipped up by state-run media has nefarious overseas forces driving down shares to embarrass President Xi Jinping and stymie China’s development.

Another conspiracy theory suggests that rumor-mongers are driving shares lower in order to profit from short selling. That’s prompted regulators to pledge a crackdown on “vicious” short sellers: Just ask Morgan Stanley, the recent subject of “hidden agenda” allegations by mainland media for voicing bearish views on the trajectory of Shanghai shares.

The problem is investors now recognize that China’s years-long rally was based more on hype than fundamentals, and they’re looking to reduce their exposure. But rather than deal with that reality, Xi’s team has been feverishly resisting it, including with interest rate cuts, a moratorium

on initial public officers, and a stockbuying fund.

Beijing has shown it’s willing to throw any possible solution at the problem of falling stocks—but its effort to blame foreigners and short sellers is a sign of true desperation.

Data show very clearly that foreign money managers control fewer than 3 percent of Chinese shares. Those overseas forces Beijing sees fit to demonize? They’ve actually been adding to holdings as prices tumble.

Short selling, meanwhile, is far from epidemic on Chinese markets. As of Thursday, the day before media attacks accelerated, short positions accounted for just $314 million of trades on the Shanghai exchange, less than 0.03 percent of China’s market capitalization.

Shanghai’s reckoning has pundits grasping for lessons from past financial crises. Much is being made,

for example, of China’s “House of Morgan” moment. As Wall Street crashed in October 1929, five top financiers met at the New York offices of JPMorgan and pooled resources to support prices; on Saturday, 21 Chinese brokerages did something similar, pledging more than $19 billion to a stock-buying fund. If Monday’s events are any guide, they may have to add a zero to that sum. While shares of the largest state-run companies rose, most Chinese stocks fell anew, and the ChiNext measure of smaller companies sank 4.3 percent.

China’s embrace of the blamegame has a more recent crisis written all over it: Asia’s 1997 meltdown.

The most vocal practitioner then was Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia’s prime minister, who blamed foreign speculators like George Soros for his country’s woes. Mohamad argued that Soros and his ilk, after breaking the Bank of England by shorting the British pound in 1992, had turned their sights on Malaysia, Indonesia, South Korea and Thailand. In the years that followed, officials in Manila, Taipei and Tokyo regularly took aim at foreign traders with supposedly sinister intentions of hurting their markets. The relentless search for scapegoats allowed these governments to avoid pursuing painful, but necessary economic reforms.

There’s a more salient lesson Xi’s team should learn from 1997. Just like Bangkok, Jakarta and Seoul

20 years ago, Beijing is supporting economic growth and asset prices by directing state-run banks awash in bad loans to lend more. Credit better marshalled into the private sector is instead being channeled to public works and industries plagued with overcapacity. The only things holding China’s stimulus machine together are the closed nature of its financial system and a currency essentially pegged to the dollar.

That was also true of other Asian countries in the 1990s—until those governments lost control of the narrative in markets. As more and more investors got wise to the depth of deflationary forces and preponderance of unproductive investments, they fled. It wasn’t the media fueling panic, nor villainous foreign investors; it was the sudden arrival of reality—an understanding that the fundamentals supporting asset prices were illusory.

This is where China finds itself today—not in the throes of some giant financial conspiracy, but an inevitable reckoning with the realization that stocks sustained by government propaganda have nowhere to go but down. The $3.2 trillion of losses so far will continue until Xi convinces investors he’s taking steps to strengthen China’s economic fundamentals. Unfortunately, the Chinese government still seems more interested in battling fictitious plotters than grasping the real plot.

Opinion BusinessMirror

opinion@businessmirror.com.ph

Religion and the SDGs: The ‘new normal’ and calls for action

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By Azza Karam | Inter Press Service

NITED NATIONS—In 2007 an op-ed in the International Herald Tribune argued that you “gotta have faith in the UN.” A play on words, the article posited that the shifting sands of geopolitics and concerns surrounding available developmental resources were demanding a rethink of multilateral institutions and traditional forms of developmental partnerships.

The fact is, there is no blueprint for multilateral engagement with religious actors, especially as we live in times in which we confront some of the most paralyzing human political, cultural and economic strife, at the hands of other “religious actors.”

As part of this reimagining of global relations, the article argued, religion and diverse faith-based actors, in particular, had to be reckoned with more seriously by policy-makers at the United Nations, in particular—given the timeliness of the “midterm” Millennium Development Goals review processes.

The article noted that, unless religion was systematically and consistently factored into developmental outreach, policy design, program implementation and monitoring efforts, something would continue to be missing in the equation of sustainability of humandevelopment processes.

In line with the gist of the article, a United Nations Inter-Agency Task Force on Engaging with Faith-based Organizations for Sustainable Development was officially formed under the aegis of the UN Development Group, in 2009, bringing together several UN entities (UNFPA, Unicef, UNDP, WHO, UNAIDS, as well as UN Alliance of Civilizations, Desa, Unesco, UNHabitat and Unep) with the World Bank as an observer, and headquartered in New York.

The mandate of this body, dubbed the “UN Task Force on Religion and Development” for short, was to seek to share knowledge and build UN staff and systems’ capacities on dealing with faith-based entities, and questions of religion, around the MDGs. At first, the aspiration of some members of this task force was to develop common guidelines for dealing with religious actors, to which the varied UN developmental agencies/offices, in particular, could sign on to. Very soon, it became clear that common guidelines would not be possible.

Why? Because to agree to common guidelines would entail some form of common acceptance that religion mattered. Even more challenging, common guidelines would imply some sort of legitimacy around a complex and hardto-define category of “religious actors.”

The task force members collaborated to serve as a hub for information and knowledge sharing between and among UN agencies and religious non-governmental organizations (or faith-based organizations or FBOs) accredited to Ecosoc or to DPI. In February 2015 World Bank President Jim Kim convened a roundtable with CEOs of major international development and humanitarian FBOs, and religious leaders. In it, he stated that [the World Bank] cannot effectively seek to eradicate poverty without partnering with FBOs and religious leaders.

“We are open for business,” he said, indicating that these very actors can hold the World Bank accountable, henceforth, for more systematic engagement. The exact modalities of which, it should be noted, are yet to be worked out.

The meeting between Kim and the leaders of major FBOs signals a tipping point in international development, which will be underlined on July 8 and 9, when the World Bank, together with bilateral cosponsors, international FBOs and aid agencies, will convene a global conference on “Religion and Sustainable Development.”

The conference will focus on eradicating extreme poverty—one of the World Bank’s key objectives and the No. 1 Sustainable Development Goal (SDG). The objectives of the meeting will be to look at the evidence of faithbased engagement in poverty eradication, specifically in health, humanitarian relief and violence against women; to seek actionable recommendations for scaling up successful work modalities, and to secure more targeted and strategic investment in “faith assets.”

Building a “global faith-based movement for sustainable development” has been mentioned by some of the organizers as one of the outcomes of this gathering. This conference may well mark a turning point in international development speak—from “whether/

why to engage with faith actors,” to “how to engage better.”

The question is whether the conference could signal a moment in the trajectory of international development when “engaging with religious actors” may well become the “new normal”?

Immediately following the World Bank meeting, on July 10 and 11, the UN’s Inter-Agency Task Force will convene a select number of donors, UN agencies and FBO partners, to host its second trilateral policy roundtable also on religion and the SDGs (the first took place in May of 2014).

The objective of this meeting is, put simply, to press the “pause” button, so as to reflect, together, on where this potentially “new normal” could lead us.

Focusing on the “governance,” “peace and security” and “gender equality” development goals, and with the relative “safe space” afforded by respecting Chatham House rules, the gathered participants will speak candidly to what each organization, and policy-maker, in each of these “sectors,” is facing when religion comes into the mix.

Needless to say, these three developmental goals are where the challenge of religious dogma, harmful practices and incitement to extremes of violence—to name but a few—are very much at play.

Those of us who have had to do battle inside our own organizations to bring attention to bear on the importance of learned appreciation of the roles of religion know full well how the difficulties posed by some religious ideologies, certain religious organizations, and specific “religious” leaders are not just “out there” in the communities we ostensibly serve, but also form part of the intergovernmental debates which define the organizational mandates we serve.

Part of the claim to success of some FBOs is their age-old capacity to provide social services directed to inequalities among the most hard to reach, and to develop innovative means of resourcing their work—including a capacity to rely on volunteer labor. At the same time, however, some of the experience of certain UN entities—especially around human rights (and women’s rights, in particular)—bespeaks serious challenges with certain religious leaders and faith entities. It is not insignificant that this moment of honest reflection is being sought as the Financing for Development (FfD) conference, with all its attendant disputes among different member-state groupings, is also being enacted.

One of the many critical questions to be debated is whether FfD should have its own follow-up and review process or be merged with the post-2015 process.

Also debated are issues of accountability and shared responsibility between and among governments, as well as dynamics relevant to public-private partnerships around human rights.

But where does follow-up, accountability and partnership modalities with faith-based actors fit into these debates?

The fact is, there is no blueprint for multilateral engagement with religious actors, especially as we live in times in which we confront some of the most paralyzing human political, cultural and economic strife, at the hands of other “religious actors.” So, as we undertake to normalize faith-based engagement with multilateralism, we have some serious questions to confront and find answers to together with our faithbased partners. These include: should we be cautious of seeking to normalize partnerships with faith-based development organizations, and with religious leaders, at a time when some faith-based entities, and certain “religious leaders,” are also significantly undermining the very basis of multilateralism based on universal human rights, human development, and peace and security?

How realistic is it to maintain that we are working with the “good [faith-based] guys” only? Or is it (finally) time to be very clear about the means of implementation and accountability of such partnerships, at a UN-system-wide level? Given the intergovernmental haggling over means of implementation and the UN’s fit for SDG purposes, what are the criteria which will be used to assess whether the UN, in its current guise, is indeed, fit for the purposes of religious partnerships?

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

The crisis every country must face

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here are now more refugees in the world than at any time in recorded history. Yet, this global crisis is mostly unrecognized as such; instead, it is seen as a collection of regional crises, from the Syrian border to the southern US to coastal Myanmar.

Every refugee crisis is distinct, of course, in cause and remedy. At the same time, the consequences of war and persecution are not merely local.

This is a manmade catastrophe that affects every nation on earth—and the world’s richest countries have a practical and moral obligation to do more about it.

The United Nations’s latest refugee report, released in mid-June, is bracing. Wars and other conflicts have displaced almost 60 million people. The number of forcibly displaced people rose by more than 8 million in 2014. More than 30 million are children.

Yet, too many in America and Europe see themselves as under siege from economic migrants (or worse, Islamist terrorists) posing as asylum seekers, fueling an antiimmigrant mood that makes it difficult for governments to address the problem. So the first order of business for the developed world

is to change perceptions.

Most of the world’s displaced—38 million people—are stuck inside their own countries. And of those who manage to escape, 86 percent go to the mostly poor and often fragile countries nearby. Images of refugees crossing the Mediterranean suggest a human wave crashing on Europe, but their numbers—about 100,000 so far this year—are small relative to the wider crisis, and to Europe’s population of 500 million.

Lebanon, meanwhile, hosts one Syrian for every four of its own citizens. Turkey, population 75 million, has at least 1.6 million. The poverty-stricken sub-Saharan neighbors of Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea have taken in 3.7 million people from nearby states.

Another misunderstanding concerns the meaning of the word “refugee” itself. The old definition, contained in the 1951 Geneva Convention, is based on the binary cer-

tainties of the Cold War: someone “forced to flee because of a threat of persecution and because they lack the protection of their own country.”

In the 1970s, for example, large numbers of Vietnamese and Cambodians fled their homes and the US willingly took them in, with no fear that some of these immigrants might go on to bomb US shopping malls. Today it’s harder to distinguish true refugees from economic migrants and wouldbe terrorists.

Resettling tens of millions of refugees in richer nations is not the answer. Yet, neither is closing off immigration altogether. Resettlement can play a role in regulating the flow, and rich countries could be more creative by developing categories of temporary visas. Refugees would be given shelter on the understanding that they would return home if and when they can do so safely.

Meanwhile, more needs to be done to make it possible for the displaced to remain in their own regions. That means providing the shelter, schools and medical care that refugees need.

It also means putting civilian boots on the ground to help countries such as Lebanon and Jordan—already

There is no tech bubble. Still, be worried

By Noah Smith Bloomberg View

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ndreessen Horowitz, the most innovative and outspoken of Silicon Valley’s big venturecapital firms, recently came out with a presentation intended to kill the idea that there’s a new tech bubble under way.

The 53-slide presentation, by Morgan Bender, Benedict Evans and Scott Kupor, takes on the idea that too much money is flowing into private technology companies, especially in the highly valued start-ups called “unicorns.”

First, a little background. Bubbles, by definition, pop, and if tech crashed it would hurt a lot of investors. People making the case for a bubble often focus on unicorn start-ups (those with a valuation of greater than $1 billion), such as Uber, which is now valued at $40 billion without having gone public. They claim that large private financing by late-stage venture capital, backed up by large asset managers, like Fidelity or Tiger Global Management, have replaced initial public offerings as the driver of overvaluation.

This is known as the “private IPO.” The probubble case is that these private financing rounds have inflated the value of the unicorns without spilling over into the public markets.

Andreessen Horowitz’s team attacks this idea from a number of directions.

First, they show that overall funding for tech start-ups —both private financing and IPOs—is still nowhere near the dizzying heights it reached in 1999 and 2000, especially when measured as a share of the economy. The same is true of venturecapital fundraising. They also present various arguments that long-term earning potential for tech startups is much stronger this time around. (Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, is an investor in Andreessen Horowitz.)

The Andreessen Horowitz presentation makes a very convincing case. We should not be drawing a parallel between the boom in private late-stage funding of unicorn start-ups and the late-1990s IPO boom. They just don’t look like the same phenomenon.

So there’s probably not a unicorn bubble. How about a tech bubble more generally? The Andreessen Horowitz team points out that the tech sector isn’t taking over the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index the way it did in the late1990s tech bubble: The share of tech in the index has been flat for about 12 years now. And, as Sam Altman pointed out on Twitter, stock valuations for technology companies don’t look any higher than other stock valuations; the price-to-earnings ratio of the tech component of the S&P is, in fact, lower than for the index as a whole. So we’re probably not in a tech bubble of any kind.

That said, there was one Andreessen

Horowitz slide that’s ominous. It shows that all the unicorns together are valued at slightly less than Facebook. That reminded me of an e-mail debate between financial economists Eugene Fama and Ivo Welch, on the question of whether the 1990s tech bubble was really an episode of market irrationality. In that debate, Fama said the following: “During 1999-2000 there [were] 803 IPOs, with an average market cap of $1.46 billion…576 of the IPOs are tech and Internet-related…[thus] their total market cap [was] about $840 billion, or about twice Microsoft’s valuation at that time. Given expectations at that time about high tech and the business revolution to be generated by the Internet, is it unreasonable that the equivalent of two Microsofts would eventually emerge from the tech and Internet-related IPOs?” In other words, Fama is saying that the tech bubble of 1999-2000 was caused by rational investor expectations, not by irrational exuberance. (Obviously, that view isn’t universally held.) Fama’s quote highlights two very important things about bubbles. First, even in the most dramatic cases, it’s not easy to know you’re in one. Second, true bubbles often involve overvaluation throughout the entire market, not just in one segment.

Fama is absolutely right about all those IPOs being worth only two Microsofts.

But Microsoft’s price in 1999-2000

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straining to create jobs for their own people—with infrastructure and development.

Yet, at a recent conference, donorcountries pledged less than half the $8.5 billion that the UN said was needed this year to give food and shelter to 12 million Syrians scattered across the Middle East. Some countries have been far more ungenerous than others: While the US and Britain have together delivered more than 40 percent of the UN-solicited aid for Syrian refugees this year, Saudi Arabia has pitched in only 0.5 percent of the total. Russia contributed 0.1 percent; China, zero.

There is no single or permanent solution to the world’s refugee crisis, which will endure as long as there are wars and persecution.

That’s no excuse, however, for failing to do what’s possible. This will require more help and attention from the more stable and prosperous parts of the world. It will also require more action at the source, as future editorials will explain— country by country, region by region, and, in many cases, refugee by refugee. In either case, progress can be made. Bloomberg News

was about 70 times its earnings. After the 2000 crash, that plummeted to about 30, briefly recovered, then drifted down again. Even if Fama is right that tech investors in 1999-2000 expected the tech IPO market to produce two new Microsofts, he glosses over the fact that, in hindsight, investors were drastically overvaluing Microsoft.

So what’s Facebook’s price-to-earnings ratio right now? Over 80.

The danger isn’t that we’re in a unicorn bubble. The danger isn’t even that we’re in a tech bubble. The danger is that we’re in an Everything Bubble—that valuations across the board are simply too high. The Shiller CAPE ratio, generally regarded as a good measure of the market’s over- or undervaluation, is, indeed, unusually high—though not nearly as high as in January 2000.

So what happens when China’s housing and stock bubbles finally crash, as both are probably in the process of doing? What happens when the Federal Reserve raises interest rates? It’s possible that not much will happen. Or it’s possible that there will be a big crash that it will take markets a few years to recover from. If it’s the latter, then unicorn start-ups will see their funding dry up along with everyone else.

In other words, the tech sector doesn’t seem to be creating a bubble like in the late 1990s, but valuations are looking slightly worrying at the overall market level.

2nd Front Page BusinessMirror

A8 Wednesday, July 8, 2015

July generation charge to go up by ₧0.25 to ₧0.30 per kWh

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By Lenie Lectura

eneration charge, the largest component of a Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) bill, will increase by P0.25 to P0.30 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) this month. The utility firm, however, is hoping that a reduction in distribution charge will offset this upward adjustment.

The hike in generation charge was blamed on the number of times some power plants went on unscheduled shutdowns in the past weeks. This led to a spike in Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) prices.

“July is likely to go up due to higher prices for the June supply month. Numerous instances of forced outages by other power

plants also triggered a number of yellow alerts, thereby putting more upward pressure on WESM prices,” Meralco said on Tuesday.

The Malampaya gas restrictions during said supply month also resulted in the use of more expensive alternative fuel by some power plants, including those of First Gas. Coinciding with the hike in

generation charge, the utility firm will implement a reduction in distribution charge, as soon as it receives the green light from the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC).

Meralco filed on June 10 an application to implement a lower distribution rate of P1.39 per kWh, which is 10.4 percent less than the current distribution, supply and metering charges.

The proposed 10.4-percent reduction, if approved, will be applied across all the customer classes of Meralco. This would translate to the following reductions in the total bill of residential customers at varying consumption levels: 200 kWh, P52; 300 kWh, P89; 400 kWh, P134; and 500 kWh, P201.

The ERC is expected to approve Meralco’s application on July 10.

As Meralco awaits the order of the ERC, the utility firm anticipates a slight delay in the delivery of July electricity bills for some of its more than 5 million customers.

Customers who will be included in the adjustment of the bill-delivery schedule are those who usually receive their bills from the sixth to the 12th days of the month.

For these customers, Meralco said they can expect their bills to arrive within a week from the time they are supposed to get their bills. For example, a customer whose bill usually arrives on the 10th of the month will most likely have his July bill arrive between the 14th and the 17th of this month.

Customers covered by the slide in the billing schedule will also move correspondingly, Meralco said.

For customers enrolled in autodebit and auto-charge payment agreements, Meralco said their July electricity bill may be deducted from their bank account or charged to their credit card in August. For these customers, they should ensure that their balance is sufficient to cover the total amount due.

The battle for control of the human breast-milk industry

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t could trade for 400 times more than the price of crude oil and 2,000 times more than iron ore.

If sold off the shelf, it could cost more than 150 times the price of a gallon of cow’s milk and 15 times more than coffee.

Going for as much as $4 per ounce, human breast milk is a hot

commodity that is emerging as a surprisingly cutthroat industry, one that states are now seeking to regulate amid a battle for control between nonprofit and forprofit banks that supply hospital neonatal units.

The debate among the for-profit and nonprofit organizations can be

sharp-elbowed. It centers on whose processes result in the safest milk for premature babies in neonatal intensive-care units, which need the milk if a mother has difficulty producing enough or the child has trouble latching. Each side claims the moral high ground, with nonprofits generally saying milk distri-

bution should be altruistic and forprofit companies arguing mothers deserve to be compensated.

In the United States there are two for-profit companies and soon to be three, and one nonprofit that oversees 15 milk banks in the US, in addition to three in Canada. Ten See “Breast-milk industry,” A2

www.businessmirror.com.ph

BSP reports hike in gross reserves to $80.76B in H1

By Bianca Cuaresma

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he country’s buffer against potential losses from the financial volatility caused by global developments improved further after foreigncurrency reserves increased in June this year on the back of larger inflows from the central bank’s foreign-exchange operations.

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported on Tuesday that the Philippines’s gross international reserves (GIR) increased to $80.76 billion at the end of the first half.

This is about $355 million higher than the $80.405-billion level seen in May this year.

It was also slightly higher than the $80.73 billion seen in June last year.

An ample level of reserves means that the country has the capacity to repay its obligations and has enough buffers against risks to global imbalances.

The BSP’s inflows from its foreignexchange operations hit $980 million

Tech firms. . .

in June, up from $495.8 million in the previous month.

The central bank said the increase in reserves was also augmented by the net foreign-currency deposits by the treasurer of the Philippines.

The BSP also said the country’s GIR for the month could have been higher if not for the payments for maturing foreign-exchange obligations of the national government, as well as the revaluation of adjustments on the BSP’s gold holdings.

Available data from the central bank showed that its gold holdings for the period hit $7.37 billion, down from the $7.48 billion seen in the previous month.

At this level of GIR, it can amply finance about 10.6 months’ worth of imported goods and payments of services and income of the country.

The BSP also noted that the GIR can fund 6.2 times the country’s short-term external debt based on original maturity, or 4.5 times based on residual maturity.

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investors willing to fund local startups to secure visas. “[The technology sector] could contribute in a huge way in the country’s gross domestic product in five to six years given an environment that is conducive to its growth,” Valencia said.

Conference speakers, however, said initial steps being taken by the government, such as the putting up of student-centered Innovation Hubs in Metro Manila, is “encouraging” and that all sectors must

contribute to the effort.

The Apec event wrapped up its two-day conference on Tuesday, gathering more than 1,000 Filipino start-ups from all over the country.

Representatives from wellknown firms in the global start-up community such as Airbnb, Uber and Grabtaxi, as well as venture capitalists such as Golden Gate Ventures and Infuse Ventures attended the event to discuss issues and trends in start-ups sector. Catherine N. Pillas