BusinessMirror April 20, 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 TfridayNovember 18,2015 2014Vol. Vol.1010No. No.193 40 Monday, April 20,

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Luzon brownouts still possible

UPSET BY POLITICAL GRIDLOCK? BLAME THE BABY BOOMERS Perspective

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BusinessMirror

Upset by political gridlock?

Blame the baby boomers

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or five become as deeply divided as analysts say boomers are today.

The “transcendental” generation, for example, rose to political dominance before the Civil War, debating slavery.

Still, scholars quibble on exactly which birth years a generation begins and ends.

The Pew Research Center in January reported that boomers soon will become the second largest among America’s living generations, their crown passed to millennials. The Gen Xers—those late-30- and 40-somethings in between—just lacked the numbers, though their presence in Washington is growing.

Pew identified millennials as ages 18 to 34, numbering about 75 million, and boomers from 51 to 69, numbering just a hair more and including President Barack Obama, 53.

Age brackets vary depending on the research you read. And for boomers the latest research has not been kind.

Some argue that baby boomers as a whole have been society’s pincushion since the oldest became teens around 1960.

Half a century later, the Great Recession ate their 401(k)s and put many out of work. Now they’re taking a beating in blogs for not having saved enough and being a bit too eager to gobble up Social Security, potentially shrinking the safety nets of future retirees.

Cast as hippies who evolved into power-dressing yuppies, they are now labeled in at least one poll analysis as “grumpy.”

When asked in a 2014 Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll whether their children’s generation would enjoy a better life than what they’ve had, 82 percent of Americans ages 50 to 64 said no.

Th at was the most pessimism that any living generation expressed and a 14-percent jump for the boomers since they were asked the same question two years earlier.

Anne L. Holmes, herself a boomer at 63, doesn’t get all the negativity.

“I guess I’m a little more optimistic,” said Holmes, chief executive of the 7,000-member National Association of Baby Boomer Women.

Her generation, after all, saw women and minorities rise to top ranks in business and politics.

Boomers passed on to their children a widening social tolerance that past generations would never imagine.

“Altruism is part of the babyboomer psyche,” she said. As more transition from jobs to retirement, “there’s a contingent of us who’ll say, ‘Now is the time. I’m going to do good for the world.’”

But first they’ll have to think beyond themselves, which some say the boomers haven’t demonstrated enough.

Thornhill of Generations Matter goes so far as to blame Benjamin Spock, the best-selling author of child-care books. His advice early in the baby boom spurred parents to start treating their kids

The boom in the senate

Long the domain of the World War II generation, both halls of the U.S. Congress today are mostly occupied by baby boomers. Here's how their ranks have grown in the Senate since 2001.

70%

Boomers (born 1946-’64)

60% 50% 40% Silent (born 1925-’45)

30% 20%

Gen X (born 1965-’81)

10% 0%

GI(born 1901-’24) ’01

’03

’05

’07

’09

’11

’13

’15

Source: Brookings Institution Graphic: Kansas City Star, Tribune News Service

as individuals, each with specific needs separate from their siblings’ wants and wishes.

“That was different,” Thornhill said. “You had each child vying for Mom and Dad’s attention. They developed a mentality of ‘What’s in it for me?’”

They grew into the most individualistic generation ever, his thinking goes: “When you put them into politics, of course they’re going to be thinking of what’s in their own interests.”

Boom. Gridlock.

Demographers William Strauss and Neil Howe predicted it in a thick book titled Generations: The History of America’s Future, published in 1991.

Just five years later, on cue, a budget showdown pitted the first boomer president, Bill

Clinton, against then-US House speaker Newt Gingrich, three years Clinton’s elder. The federal government twice shut down before the two leaders reached a compromise.

“The generation that invented McMansions and the exurbs have never been big on group cooperation,” Howe, 63, blogged more recently, “and that isn’t going to change now.”

In presidential elections since 2000, when boomers for the first time took the majority of House seats, the generation’s voters have split close to 50/50 in party preference.

Older age groups have tracked mostly Republican; the millennials, heavily Democratic.

On specific issues, too, the boomers are evenly divided.

By Pew’s numbers, just under half of US boomers supported same-sex marriage in 2014. Just over half supported legal pot. On abortion, the narrow divide hasn’t changed much in 30 years.

Fast forward to 2015.

In a University of Kansas journalism class called Info-mania, all of the students have laptops.

But these millennials have varied opinions, too.

On the 9/11 terrorist attacks—perhaps the one event that most shaped their generation’s world-views—junior Nathan Law, 21, observed among his peers “a rebirth of patriotism” and heightened sense of America’s vulnerability. He plans to serve in the US Army after getting a degree in atmospheric science.

Classmate Shaleah Volkman, 32, saw the war on terror in another way.

“Politics, oil and money,” she said. “It’s complicated.... I think that there’s never going to be an end to war.”

Forty miles east, millennials in a political

science class at the University of Missouri-Kansas City weren’t entirely on the same page either.

“We’ve gone too far away from our traditional American principles, and I think young people will bring those back,” said student Lucy Brill, 27.

Not if Cameron Briggs, 30, has his way.

Throughout the 20th century, he said, big commerce tucked in bed with big government created “a domino effect of war, banking and debt.”

The millennials are not monolithic. But Briggs’s distrust of powerful institutions—a status quo that helped many boomers maintain decent lives—is one sentiment that polls show runs strong.

As such, many scholars believe real change could come when the leadership batons are passed to younger Americans.

The résumé on millennials reads fairly clear: They’re wired together, mostly optimistic, exposed to a mix of cultures and highly supportive of gay rights.

They seem to value collectivism—solving problems through information sharing and crowdfunding.

“They’re not as polarized on issues, not as evenly split, as the boomers,” said generational analyst Eric B. Schnurer, 56, who heads a public policy consulting firm that advises state and local governments.

He predicts that when boomers do relinquish power, one of the top items on the public agenda will be to splinter large institutions and try to undo the two-party approach to governing, which only divides the electorate.

At UMKC, student Briggs tossed back his head in delight: “I pray for it!” TNS

PERSPECTIVE

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BUILD AN ORGANIZATION THAT’S LESS BUSY AND MORE STRATEGIC BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Monday, April 20, 2015 E 1

BUILD AN ORGANIZATI ORGANIZATIO ON THAT’S ON T LESS L ESS BUSY AND M MO ORE STRATEGIC ORE

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ORKING with the top executives at a company I’ll call Titan, which designs and makes transit concrete mixers, I noticed that they were flat-out busy doing everything except thinking about strategy.

The executives set the pace for everyone else in the organization. Many of Titan’s employees worked 12-hour days.

All this effort hasn’t improved performance, however. Titan isn’t doing very well. When I looked at Titan’s 13-page strategic plan, I could see why. The company lacks focus.

It has 15 “strategies,” none of which really relates to how it achieves a competitive advantage. Executives knew something was wrong with their planning, but they were too busy to reflect—which has effectively taken the company’s destiny out of their hands.

Even if your organization is successful, being too busy isn’t a good thing, because you can’t sustain a frenzy of activity. But it’s much worse if the activity doesn’t cohere strategically and, as a result, your company’s performance suffers. So, what does it take to build an organization that’s less busy and more coherent?

As insiders at a company, when we look at what we do, we see only activity. This leads to an operational mind-set. By contrast, a strategic mindset is outside-in. Position yourself across the street, so to speak, and focus your attention on your firm’s competitiveness.

Ask yourself: “Why would I want to buy from them?” and “Why would I want to work for them?” Looking at your company this way, you can establish a few key performance criteria much more easily. Then you can set priorities.

When’s the best time to think about all this? Well, not at work, when you’re surrounded by the hubbub that you’ve yet to control.

To become more strategic, you have to escape. Try using a simple device that leaders have relied on for eons: walking. The rhythmic effect of putting one foot after another frees up the brain, allowing you to take a helicopter view. From this vantage point, you can better see how to reengineer your activities and save time and effort.

Had Titan’s CEO taken a walk and reflected, he might have identified his company’s real source of strength. Unlike its competitors, Titan customized its products and offered not only an initial mixer sale but also a suite of follow-up services.

Titan’s customer service was superior—steeped in years of industry, product and technical experience.

Sometimes these advantages can be right in front of us. But they remain underdeveloped, or we fail to capitalize on them, because everyone is consumed by tasks that don’t su Focusing a company requires thought. It won’t happen if you don’t make the time.

Graham Kenny is the managing director of Strategic Factors, in Sydney, Australia. His most recent book is Strategic Performance Measurement.

BUSINESS CAN HELP END CHILD LA L BOR B V G

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OOKING at child labor laws through a business lens opens up a range of solutions. When governmental regulations don’t go far enough to keep kids safe, corporations and consumers can single-handedly or cooperatively refuse to do business with suppliers that employ children. Last year some of the world’s biggest tobacco companies agreed to follow international labor law, which prohibits hazardous work by children under 18 and sets a minimum age of 15 for employment. The pledge came from the Eliminating Child Labor in Tobacco Growing Foundation, an initiative that includes Phillip Morris, Altria and British American Tobacco, among many others.

In another example, the rug industry, through the GoodWeave Child-Free-Labor Certification, has made enormous progress in eradicating child labor from its supply chain.

Goodweave, a nonprofit organization founded by Kailash Satyarthi, cowinner of the

2014 Nobel Peace Prize, grants licenses to rug importers and exporters who agree to abide by a specific no-child-labor standard and a l low GoodWeave to randomly inspect their manufacturing sites.

When GoodWeave began its advocacy, 1 million children in South Asia were working in the rug industry. Since then, GoodWeave has certified more than 11 million rugs, and the number of child workers in the industry has dropped to 250,000. Now, GoodWeave is expanding its model to other economic sectors.

Make no mistake, governments must continue their work to pass and enforce effective laws that send a clear message that child labor is wrong. But corporations and consumers must develop a culture of social responsibility—and they can take heart in knowing that it makes a difference

B J P  V S

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By making deals that Steve Jobs negotiated with recording labels, iTunes was able to slowly but relentlessly disrupt the entire music distribution industry, and today it enjoys a whopping 63-percent market share. Before Apple entered the scene, musicians wrote and performed songs that were collected into albums and published by recording labels. These, in turn, were sold through retailers, like Musicland, which needed to go through the music labels to gain access to the musicians’ work.

In the payments industry, people put money into retail banks, which distr ibute their credit ser v ices t hrough c red it- c a rd companies, like Visa, American Express and MasterCard, which, likewise, go through the banks to get access to their customers.

To launch Apple Pay, Apple could have negotiated with retail banks,

just as it did with recording labels.

If it had, Apple Pay would have been a substitute for credit cards and would truly have disrupted the credit-card industry. Instead, Apple negotiated with the creditcard companies. That merely positions Apple Pay at the end of the existing credit distribution value chain, as a reseller for the creditcard companies.

If Apple succeeds at developing a standard for mobile payments, the credit-card companies will retain all the bargaining power they currently have with banks and can circumvent Apple at any moment.

In the meantime, credit-card companies are free-riding on Apple’s efforts to convince us that Apple Pay’s key advantage is ease of use.

Why does this matter? Apple is helping to perpetuate an obsolete, overly expensive credit-card payment system. Banks already have

a money-transfer system, which they use to transfer funds from one bank’s customers to another. The credit-card companies have created a second, expensive system just to process credit transactions. They fund that system through charges to merchants. But there are millions of small to midsized businesses that cannot afford those charges.

If Apple had offered a different pricing model to retailers (or had chosen not to charge vendors at all), it would have transformed the payments industry, extending credit dramatically. Unfortunately, launching Apple Pay as a reseller makes it just a free experiment for credit-card companies, which benefit from Apple’s efforts with nothing to lose and everything to win.

Juan Pablo Vazquez Sampere is a professor of business administration at IE Business School in Madrid.

It’s the weekend! Why are you working?

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F you are like us, you often f ind yourself work ing on weekends and are criticized for it by somebody—your spouse, a friend, a colleague. Do they have a point? Since we are scientists, we’ve looked for empirical data that would help us understand this phenomenon (and ourselves).

What we’ve found is that many of us work on weekends for a very simple reason: We enjoy it. Think of it as a productivity high. But research shows that we often overdo it, which may be more costly than we realize.

Turning to research, we find that our cognitive resources, which allow us to control our behaviors, desires and emotions, are a scarce resource that gets depleted and has to be refilled over time.

A study examined the potential drawbacks of draining our cognitive resources by working too much.

Using three years of data from 4,157 caregivers in 35 US hospitals, researchers found that hand-washing compliance rates dropped by an average of 8.7 percent from the beginning to the end of a typical 12-hour shift. The decline in compliance was magnified on days when a caregiver’s work was more intense.

Repeated use of cognitive resources produces a decline in an individual’s self-regulatory capacity. More time off between shifts appeared to restore workers’ executive resources: They followed handwashing protocol more carefully after longer breaks.

Demanding jobs have the potential to energize and motivate employees, but the pressure may make them focus more on maintaining performance on their primary tasks (e.g., patient assessment, medication distribution) and less on other tasks, particularly when they are fatigued. In fact, in another series of studies, when participants’ cognitive resources

had been depleted, they were more likely to cheat on a variety of tasks as compared to those in a control condition. Our passion for our work and the pleasure we gain from feeling productive may explain why we so often work on the weekend, but we still need to be sure to make time to recharge. When you’re working, make sure you’re really working; and when you’re renewing, make sure you’re really renewing.

MONDAY MORNING

Vijay Govindarajan is the Coxe Distinguished professor at Tuck School at Dartmouth and Marvin Bower Fellow at Harvard Business School. He is coauthor of Reverse Innovation.

Francesca Gino is a professor at Harvard Business School, a faculty affiliate of the Behavioral Insights Group, and the author of Sidetracked: W hy Our Decisions Get Derailed, and How We Can Stick to the Plan.

© 2013 Harvard Business School Publishing Corp. (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)

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NEW KING OF CLAY Sports BusinessMirror

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| MONDAY, APRIL 20, 2015 mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph sports@businessmirror.com.ph

NEW KING OF CLAY B S P

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The Associated Press

ONACO—Monte Carlo is not Rafael Nadal’s playground anymore, and Novak Djokovic is claiming the throne left vacant by the King of Clay.

For the second time in three years, the top-ranked Serb ended Nadal’s run at the clay-court Masters tournament, overcoming a strong challenge from the Spaniard to reach the final with a 6-3, 6-3 win.

Djokovic, who extended his current winning streak to 16 matches, will face sixth-seeded Tomas Berdych, as he bids for a second title in the principality after ending Nadal’s eight-year reign in 2013.

Djokovic has lost only two matches this year as he reigns over the men’s game, raising his hopes that he can knock Nadal off his perch at the French Open, where Djokovic hopes to achieve a career Grand Slam.

“It’s hard to say right now. One victory does not change everything that he has achieved on this surface, which is much more than me,” Djokovic said. “I still don’t think that I am a better player than he is on clay. But I’m obviously trying my best to win all the matches that I play, not just against him but against anybody on any surface. That’s the kind of mind-set that I have.”

With Prince Albert of Monaco among the onlookers, both players produced some stunning tennis, as Nadal showed glimpses of his old self, mixing aggression and superb defensive shots.

But the nine-time French Open champion, who is struggling to get back to his best, after a wrist injury and an appendectomy, was not consistent enough to deny Djokovic a shot at his fourth Masters title in a row.

“I think I played well for moments,” Nadal said. “But I get a little bit tired a little bit too early. Then when you get little bit tired, you play a little bit shorter. Then it is impossible against him. He’s phenomenal in the way that he can move the ball to everywhere. If he takes advantage from inside the court, you are dead. “ Nadal rued his missed chances in the seventh game of the opening set, when he was unable to seize the momentum after a stunning forehand down the line that wrong-footed the Serb. Even Djokovic clapped his racket in appreciation.

After Nadal earned a break opportunity, another superb rally followed but this time Djokovic prevailed, smashing a winner following an exchange of lobs.

“That game was very important. I had a breakpoint that he played unbelievable,” Nadal said. “It was 6-3, 6-3, but it can be much closer. I know that. I think he knows that, too.

Everybody knows that.”

Nadal went through a bad patch in the next game as he missed an easy backhand to hand Djokovic two break points.

He saved the first one but shanked a forehand into the net on the second.

The second set was a tight affair, with Nadal fighting hard to stay in the match, but Djokovic’s aggression was finally rewarded after a tense seventh game. Nadal cracked on his forehand to drop his serve and Djokovic broke again in the ninth game to seal his 20th win in 43 matches with Nadal.

“Winning in straight sets against Nadal on this surface, his favorite surface, is a great success,” Djokovic said.

It was their first meeting since the Spaniard won his last big title with a win over Djokovic in last year’s French Open final.

Djokovic will now try to become the first player to win the first three Masters of the season after back-to-back victories at Indian Wells and Miami. He has an 18-2 record against Berdych, who overwhelmed Gael Monfis 6-1, 6-4 to make it to the final.

But the Czech prevailed the last time they played on clay at the Rome Masters two years ago.

“I think there’s always chance,” Berdych said. “You just need to try to make yourself as best as you can, try as hard as you can.”

MERCEDES driver Lewis Hamilton (left) of Britain shakes hands with his teammate Nico Rosberg after the qualifying session ahead the Bahrain Formula One Grand Prix. AP

Hamilton takes pole position

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AKHIR, Bahrain—Defending champion Lewis Hamilton will start the Bahrain Grand Prix (GP) from pole position for the first time after clinching his fourth-straight pole of the season on Saturday, well ahead of Sebastian Vettel.

Hamilton, who leads Formula One after winning two of three races, so far, finished 0.411 seconds ahead of Vettel, and 0.558 clear of Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg, who began the previous two Bahrain GPs from pole.

“I feel very happy, coming into the weekend that was the target-to try and really master the track,” Hamilton said after securing his 42nd career pole.

Hamilton is odds-on to win his ninth race in the past 11 in Sunday’s grand prix under floodlights, where the cooler evening temperatures are better suited to his Mercedes car.

But having lost to Vettel’s Ferrari in Kuala Lumpur, Hamilton remains cautious.

“Ferrari are very quick and they will be very hard to beat tomorrow with a great race pace,” he said. “We’ll be taking all the

measures we can to make the tires [last] as long as they can.”

Hamilton won last year’s Bahrain GP after starting second on the grid, and Rosberg will have his work cut out on Sunday to win his first race of a frustrating campaign.

“Strategy-wise I got it wrong. I was thinking too much about the race and I underestimated Sebastian’s speed,” said Rosberg, who has won only one of his past 14 races, and is struggling to keep his composure. “I lacked the rhythm for Q3. That’s where I went wrong today.”

The German driver, who accused Hamilton of deliberately driving too slowly in order to impede him at last weekend’s Chinese GP, berated himself for poor tire management in Q2 and Q3.

“I didn’t expect the used tire to be so slow, the used tire was so poor,” said Rosberg, who also took a little swipe at his team. “That was really poor [tire] management...on my side. We always do it together but I’m largely responsible.”

Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen qualified in fourth place, confirming the two teams have the dominant cars of the season so far.

Vettel is shaping up as Hamilton’s main rival, which must rile Rosberg. Vettel drove brilliantly to win the Malaysian GP, outwitting Hamilton to send a clear signal that Ferrari is back with a bang after a miserable season last year where it failed to win a race. AP

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NOVAK DJOKOVIC of Serbia celebrates after defeating Rafael Nadal of Spain. AP

SPORTS

“May is another critical month.

It’s something we should look out for,” Energy Secretary Carlos Jericho L. Petilla said at a recent BM discussion.

Peak-power demand in Luzon hit 7,000 to 8,000 megawatts (MW) during the maintenance shutdown of the gas facility that fuels three power plants with a total capacity of 2,700 MW, providing about half of Luzon’s power needs. These power plants are the 1,000-MW Santa

Rita, the 500-MW San Lorenzo and the 1,200-MW Ilijan.

Petilla said peak demand in Luzon next month is likely to reach 9,000 MW. “In May we expect demand to hit 9,000 MW. We are talking about probabilities. We do not discount any brownout. We are dealing with machines here, and they [may] break down,” he said of the power plants that could conk out any time.

The scheduled maintenance C  A

FINANCE CHIEFS SEE RISING RISKS TO ECONOMIC UPTURN

Apple Pay is just a big giveaway to credit-card companies T’S easy to assume Apple Pay is one in a long line of disruptive innovations from the master of serial disruption. But this time, Apple isn’t a disruptor; it’s a reseller.

Like disruptors, resellers can enter an industry with a different business model and target customers unattractive to established firms. But they extend an industry’s distribution structure rather than disrupt it.

To illustrate this distinction, let’s compare how Apple launched Apple Pay and iTunes.

In classic fashion, iTunes targeted the industry’s least attractive customers—people who downloaded music online for free. What’s more, iTunes had a different revenue model, selling music per song, instead of per album, and positioned itself as a substitute product.

B L L

HE Malampaya natural-gas facility is back online after a 30-day shutdown, and Luzon did not experience any power outage since summer started. But, the energy chief said, the worst is not over yet.

B R M | The Kansas City Star

ANSAS CITY, Missouri— At some moment this year a US baby boomer will die and, if census forecasts are right, the generation born between 1946 and 1964 will no longer be the nation’s largest.

Won’t matter. Years after their millennial descendants overtake them in numbers, aging boomers probably will be setting America’s course and, many contend, building a legacy as the generation too divided to move government forward.

Sorry, Beatles: We can’t work it out.

In poll research and punditry, boomers who chose politics are taking heat for being in charge during an era of incivility and Washington gridlock. In Congress, where the last World War II veteran retired in January, nearly two-thirds of lawmakers hail from the postwar population boom and came of age in the unrest of the 1960s and ’70s.

A recent report out of the Brookings Institution notes: “The primary political output of the divided boomers has been frustrating gridlock and historically low evaluations of congressional performance.”

What happened to the peace symbols and smiley faces? Today, demographers and survey takers are drafting a not-so-communal narrative of a generation that they say has been split on key issues for decades, leading now to policy standoffs that may continue for several years.

“Any generation that’s in charge will always get the blame, or the credit, for the state of affairs,” said boomer Matt Thornhill, founder of a for-profit market research initiative called Generations Matter.

“But the evidence is stacked up high against the boomers, at least when it comes to the world of divisive politics.”

Experts tie the divisions to seminal political and cultural clashes during the boomers’ early adulthood, when people tend to form a lifelong set of beliefs.

To name a few: the civil-rights movement, the Vietnam War protests, the 1970 shootings at Kent State University, Watergate, changes in gender roles and, for younger boomers, the Reagan Revolution.

Past characterizations of the boomers—painted with a broad and overly psychedelic brush, researchers say—tended to pit them against older Americans, not so much against each other.

“Remember, baby boomers were on both sides of the guns at Kent State,” where four students died when National Guardsmen opened fire during a protest, said generation tracker Mike Hais. He co-wrote the report for Brookings with University of Southern California communications professor Morley Winograd.

“Idealist generations” and the dysfunction they can wreak occur in cycles, said Hais, 72.

To thinkers such as him and Winograd, all of US history has pitched and bobbed on generational waves that direct the nation’s destiny.

A cottage industry of generational tracking counts no fewer than 19 distinct age groups dating back to the 16th century. Each has its own name and every four

P.  |     | 7 DAYS A WEEK

PETILLA SAYS EVEN WITH MALAMPAYA BACK ONLINE,‘DELAYED SUMMER’STILL A CAUSE FOR CONCERN

INSIDE

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ORLD finance officials said on Saturday they see a number of threats on the horizon for a global economy still clawing back from the deepest recession in seven decades; and a potential Greek debt default presents the most immediate risk.

After finance officials wrapped up three days of talks, the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) policy committee set a goal of working toward a“more robust, balanced and job-rich global economy,” while acknowledging growing risks to achieving that objective.

The Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, held a series of talks with finance officials on the sidelines of the spring meetings of the 188-nation IMF and World Bank, trying to settle his country’s latest crisis.

PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 44.4120

Mario Draghi, head of the European Central Bank, said it was “urgent” to resolve the dispute between Greece and its creditors.

A default, he said, would send the global economy into “uncharted waters” and the extent of the possible damage would be hard to estimate. He told reporters that he did not want to even contemplate the chance of a default.

Earlier in the week, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde rejected suggestions that her agency might postpone repayment deadlines for Greece. On Saturday she cited constructive talks with Varoufakis and said the goal was to stabilize Greece’s finances and assure an economic recovery, and“make sure the whole partnership hangs together” between Greece and its creditors.

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PRIX D’EXCELLENCE Megaworld Chairman and CEO Dr. Andrew L. Tan delivers a few words at the 2015 Property & Real Estate Awards, where he was cited by the International Real Estate Federation as outstanding developer, for which he received the Prix d’Excellence award, on Friday night at a hotel in Pasay City. Tan was also named Property Man of the Year for his outstanding contribution to the Philippine real-estate industry. Aside from the two major awards, Megaworld also bagged the Outstanding Developer for Office and the Outstanding Developer for Townships Mixed-use Communities.

Domingo to alter safeguard duty on imported newsprint B C N. P

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HE Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) will likely adjust the additional levy recommended by the Tariff Commission (TC) on imported newsprint, in view of the impact of the measure on the downstream industries.

Trade Undersecretary for Industry Development and Trade Policy Adrian S. Cristobal told reporters that the recommendation of the TC

CRISTOBAL: “The secretary is now reviewing the findings and recommendations of the commission; he’s bound to follow the finding that there has been serious injury; but the recommendation of the rate of duty can be modified or tweaked.”

for a P2,470-per-metric-ton (MT) safeguard measure on newsprint imports will be adjusted by the DTI head, taking into consideration the effect on downstream industries.

“The secretary is now reviewing the findings and recommendations of the commission; he’s bound to follow the finding that there has been serious injury, but the recommendation of the rate of duty can be modified or tweaked,” explained S “N,” A

n JAPAN 0.3729 n UK 66.3071 n HK 5.7296 n CHINA 7.1670 n SINGAPORE 32.9002 n AUSTRALIA 34.6157 n EU 47.7962 n SAUDI ARABIA 11.8429 Source: BSP (17 April 2015)

A2

Monday, April 20, 2015

News

BusinessMirror

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Luzon brownouts still possible. . . shutdowns of power plants had been moved to June and July from an earlier schedule that coincided with the Malampaya maintenance shutoff from March 15 to April 14. Petilla said good weather—cooler climates at the onset of summer—and manageable demand helped prevent brownouts from happening in Luzon.

“This is the only summer I can remember when it still rains in March and there’s a typhoon in April. It’s unusual. This is good because our hydropower plants

are not getting dried up. The temperature is also not that high so demand is not yet at its very peak,” Petilla said, adding that this indicates that summer is either going to be short or delayed.

If the season is delayed then this is something Petilla said consumers should be worried about because a delayed summer could coincide with the June-to-July period when many power plants are scheduled to go offline to undergo maintenance work.

Pushing for emergency powers

Preparations to avert or at least minimize power outages have been under way since the third quarter of 2014.

The preparations include granting President Aquino special powers to address the potential power-supply shortage through an enactment of a joint resolution.

But Congress already went on a six-week vacation

Continued from A1

without passing the proposed resolution.

Petilla could not stress enough the importance of the authority to address a possible power shortage, given that May is a historically critical month due to an anticipated peak demand in power consumption in Luzon and that most of the maintenance shutdowns are scheduled in June and July. The probability that summer could be delayed by a month or so is another factor to be considered.

“It is better to have it when needed rather than need it but not have it. There is a sense of urgency. In the future, we just have to approve or disapprove it instead of debating about it,” he said.

House Energy Committee Chairman Reynaldo Umali, in a phone interview, is hoping that the joint resolution could still be passed in May. “I am not losing hope. We will resume on May 4,” Umali said.

One of the unresolved issues that pends before the bicameral conference committees at the Senate and the House of Representatives is the cost involved in the interruptible load program (ILP). Under the ILP, big consumers will run their power generator sets instead of drawing from the national grid, in exchange for compensation.

While the House advocates for the use of the Malampaya Fund as payment for the participants of the program, the Senate panel wants a status quo, which means pass-through costs for consumers.

“If it’s not approved, then automatically it’s going to be passed on to the consumers.

So, if there’s an increase in power rates because of the ILP then the consumers will pay for it. This could trigger an adverse reaction from the consumers,” Umali said.

No need yet for ILP

As power demand in Luzon still remains manageable to date, the DOE and the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) agree there is no need to implement the program just yet.

“I don’t feel that there is a need to call the ILP yet as we have lots of reserves on a daily basis even during the shutdown of the Malampaya,” Meralco Senior Vice President Alfredo Panlilio said in a text message when sought for comment.

Philippine Independent Power Producers Association President Luis Miguel Aboitiz earlier tagged the April 5 to 15 timespan a critical period.

“As I recall, the need for ILP was anticipated the week after the Holy Week but we were okay,” Panlilio said.

For now, the ILP is the best solution to address a possible power shortage. Petilla is hoping there would be no need to call in the ILP participants. “I want them to be ready but I am hoping that I will not have to call them,” he said.

As of latest, Meralco signed up more participants to the ILP, bringing to 667.29 MW the aggregate committed interruptible load (CIL) for the summer.

The power distributor registered 80 customers from the private sector that will contribute 393.36 MW of capacity. It, likewise, signed up 1.7 MW of CIL from the government sector.

Contestable customer participants, or those with a monthly average peak demand of at least 1 MW, have signed up a total 264.73MW of interruptible load. Of the number, 110.44 MW will come from the different retail electricity suppliers (RES) and 154.29 MW from MPower, the retail electricity supplier unit of Meralco.

Newsprint. . .

Continued from A1

Cristobal. While the trade official kept mum on whether the adjustment will be beyond or below the recommended rate of the TC, Cristobal underlined that the public interest will be the foremost consideration of the DTI. To recall, the TC released its findings and recommendations last February on the petition of the Trust International Paper Corp. (Tipco) to impose a safeguard measure on imports of newsprint. Safeguard measure is one of the trade remedies that may be exercised by a country to support local manufacturers if it finds that imported counterparts are causing damage to the domestic industry.

The safeguard measure affects all trading partners supplying the imported good, except developing countries whose exports are less than 3 percent of total import volume.

Tipco, which accounts for 87 percent of the country’s domestic production, alleged that rising imports of the commodity had caused them serious injury in terms of market share, profitability and domestic sales, among others.

The TC, finding a link between the firm’s declining operations and the surge of imports in 2012 and the years following, recommended a P2,470 per MT specific duty on the imports of the commodity, which will be applied from 2015 to 2018.

The equivalent ad valorem rate will vary depending on the value of the shipment per country. But on average, the P2,470 will mean an additional duty of 9.4 percent on imports.

The decision is bound to impact trade with South Korea and the United Kingdom, the top 2 suppliers of imports of newsprint.

South Korea, from January to September of 2014, took up 88 percent of the total volume of newsprint imported by the Philippines, while the UK’s share was at 5 percent.

According to the TC report, China and Indonesia’s exports of newsprint are exempted from the additional duty as they were classified as developing nations whose imports of newsprint accounted for less than 3 percent of the Philippines’s total imports.

The findings of the TC have already irked the domestic printmedia industry, as imports of newsprint have been surpassing domestic production since 2012, and most print media stakeholders depend on imports.

In an open letter to trade chief Gregory L. Domingo in March, the United Print Media Group sought the dismissal of the petition for safeguard duty, warning that the prices of educational materials will increase and operational costs of newspapers will spike as well. Domingo has so far declined to expound on his review of the commission’s findings.

news@businessmirror.com.ph

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Court junks Ampatuan plea against ex-ally as state witness

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HE Court of Appeals (CA) has denied the petition filed by Maguindanao massacre alleged mastermind Andal Ampatuan Jr., seeking to nullify the order of the Regional Trial Court (RTC) in Quezon City discharging a former mayor and ally as state witness in the 57 counts of murder filed against him and 196 others.

In a 16-page decision penned by Associate Justice Myra Garcia-Fernandez, the CA’s Fifth Division held that respondent, QC RTC Branch 221 Presiding Judge Jocelyn Solis-Reyes, did not commit grave abuse of discretion when she allowed the exclusion, as an accused, of Sukarno Badal in the Maguindanao massacre case on the basis of the latter’s admission to the Witness Protection Program, even without conducting a hearing on his qualifications to be a state witness.

“Even if Badal has not been arraigned but he was provisionally admitted to the WPP as shown by the certificate issued by the respondent DOJ [Department of Justice], Badal may be excluded as an accused upon motion of the public prosecutor as provided under Section 14, Rule 110 of the Rules of Court, as amended,” the CA ruled.

Under the said provision: “A complaint or information may be amended, in form or in substance, without leave of court, at any time before the accused enters his plea.

After the plea and during the trial, a formal amendment may only be made with leave of

court and when it can be done without causing prejudice to the rights of the accused.”

It added that “any amendment before the plea, which downgrades the nature of the offense charged in or excludes any accused from the complaint or information, can be made only upon motion by the prosecutor with notice to the offended party and with leave of court.

“Petitioner’s argument that respondent judge relinquished her judicial function to the caprices of the prosecution has no leg to stand on,” the CA added.

Based on the records, Badal was included as one of the accused in the Maguindanao massacre case; however, he was not arraigned because he was provisionally admitted to the WPP pursuant to Section 12 of Republic Act 6981 or The Witness Protection, Security and Benefit Act. Thus, the DOJ filed a motion to defer his arraignment of Badal and to allow amendment of the information excluding him as accused in the case. The DOJ claimed that there is necessity for Badal’s testimony, because there are matters, which according to the prosecution, only he has personal knowledge of.

Badal testified he was at the massacre site and he saw Andal Jr. firing at the victims.

He added that it was Andal Sr. who ordered his son over a two-way radio to kill everyone in the convoy. Joel R. San Juan

Editor: Dionisio L. Pelayo • Monday, April 20, 2015 A3

Palace insists PHL-US war games fortuitous, but not aimed vs China

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ALACAÑANG maintained on Sunday the 10-day “war games” between the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the US is a regular military exercise under the RP-US Mutual Defense Treaty, but that it coincides at a time of rising tensions with China in the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea) is fortuitous.

This is an annual exercise and the 31st Balikatan since we had a Mutual Defense Treaty, Communications Secretary Herminio B. Coloma Jr. pointed out when asked about the significance of conducting the military exercise amid brewing conflicts between China and its neighbors over territories in the Spratlys, especially its reclamation spree in the Philippine-claimed islands, reefs and atolls in the West Philippine Sea. Coloma added the war exer-

cises between the two allies are being carried out by their Armed Forces regularly.

“Kaya’t sa daloy ng panahon, ito naman ay isinasagawa ng sandatahang lakas ng Estados Unidos at ng Pilipinas.”

If it so happens that there are current “issues and challenges” in the region, Coloma asserted the joint military exercises are nonetheless being held as part of the goal to boost the state of readiness of their respective armed forces to

meet new challenges.

“Kung nagkataon na sa kasalukuyan ay mayroong mga partikular na usapin o hamon, ito ay ginagampanan pa rin bilang bahagi ng layunin na maging mataas ang kahandaan ng dalawang bansa at ganap ’yung paghahanda para makatugon sa ano mang umiiral na hamon,” Coloma said.

The state of readiness being sought for upgrading pertains not just to boosting the interoperability of the allies’ armed forces in military operations, but, more important, in humanitarian assistance and disaster response, he added.

The Philippines and US Armed Forces will formally start today the 10-day Balikatan military exercises in five key locations, including Zambales, Cavite, Tarlac, Nueva Ecija and Pampanga, involving 5,000 Filipino and 6,500 American soldiers.

It comes less than a week since the foreign ministers of the Group of 7 industrialized powers issued a strong statement expressing concern over “unilateral actions, such as large-scale land reclamation, which change the status quo and increase

tensions in the region.”

Though the G-7 did not name China, it was widely viewed as a reference to the Asian giant’s relentless reclamation in Fiery Cross (Panganiban) Reef, in the Mischief (Panatag) Reef, among others. Analysts had warned such was obviously meant to cement both China’s presence in the territories it claims under its sweeping nine-dash-line claim that Manila had termed “excessive” in its complaint before a UN arbitral tribunal.

Before the G-7 statement, US President Obama also warned China against “elbow ing” its neighbors, naming the Philippines and Vietnam, which is another claimant.

China’s foreign ministry said, however, its activities in the disputed areas are “beyond reproach” and earlier dismissed President Aquino’s warning to the world— made in an exclusive interview with Agence France Presse—that China’s acts threaten not just regional but also global stability.

Butch Fernandez

Economy

A4 Monday, April 20, 2015 • Editors: Vittorio V. Vitug and Max V. de Leon

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China’s ‘great wall of sand’ to harm PHL’s fish supply

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By Cai U. Ordinario

he “earth-moving activities” now being undertaken by the Chinese government in the disputed West Philippine Sea (South China Sea) may undermine the Philippines’s fish supply.

BY THE BAY People frolic by the bay, not minding the dangers that the dirty waters of the Manila Bay can cause to their health just to beat the summer heat in Pasay City. ROY DOMINGO

Foreign banks’ entry to boost FDI inflows

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By Bianca Cuaresma

he entry of foreign banks into the country will likely be beneficial to the country’s external position, as it is seen to improve the inflow of investments, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said.

Central bank Deputy Governor for the Monetary Stability Sector Diwa Guinigundo said the flow of foreign direct investments (FDI) toward the country—particularly in the financial services industry—is set to rise with the entry of foreign players in the banking system.

“So far, we have received applications from three foreign banks. We expect FDI to continue to improve as the presence of foreign banks will help facilitate the inflow of various investments from their home

countries, including in manufacturing industry,” Guinigundo said.

The three banks include Japan’s Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp., South Korea’s Shinhan Bank and Taiwan’s Cathay United Bank. The three banks’ application to operate in the Philippines follow the recent legislation which further liberalized the banking sector.

“Furthermore, the foreign banks could help boost financingopportunitiestofundmoreproductiveactivities in the local economy,” he added. These developments, according to Guinigundo, will help support the financial account of the country’s Balance of Payments (BOP).

In 2014 the country’s BOP position plunged into a multibillion-dollar deficit amid the record-high surplus seen in the country’s current-account component due to the heavy capital outflows seen in country’s financial

account in the BOP. Guinigundo said the expected rise in FDI due to the entry of foreign banks in the country will complement the surplus in the current account—which is also seen to rise from the steady inflows from overseas Filipino workers’ remittances, as well as from tourism and business- process outsourcing receipts.

“All of these point to a robust external position for the country over the medium term,” Guinigundo said.

The country’s BOP position as of end-February this year is at $1.21 billion, reversing the $4.135-billion deficit seen in the same two month period last year. it also exceeds the government’s target of $1 billion in surplus for the year.

The BSP will be releasing the first quarter BOP figures today.

T h i s i s b e c au s e t he a re a , w he re t he rec l a m at ion i s now ongoi ng , i s a breed i ng g rou nd for f i sh , De pa r t ment of Nat ion a l Defen se Spokesm a n Peter Pau l Ga lve z told t he Busi n e ssM i r ror .

“Since that is a breeding ground, it will eventually affect fish catch in the whole Western area,” Galvez said. “Them being there is really a major concern; it’s a critical issue; it’s a grave concern.”

Galvez said the breeding ground is also the location where major commercial fishermen are known to fish. Due to the activities in the area, commercial fishermen have gone elsewhere to obtain the country's fish supply.

Apart from the threat to the country’s fish supply, Galvez noted that the destruction of the habitat of marine life will render the entire contested area destroyed at least for another decade.

This, he said, could prevent activities such as research and development on possible raw materials for high-value exports and cures for still incurable diseases.

“Sira ’yan for the next decade or so, sira ’yang buong area na ’yan dahil ginulo na nila ’yung habitat. [This is a problem because] malay mo merong specie dun na hindi natin nakita na pwede palang may medicinal value, wala na ’yun ngayon, we will

never know,” Galvez said.

While some sectors believe it would be more advantageous to codevelop the area with Beijing, Manila thinks otherwise.

Galvez said codeveloping the area will only mean that the Philippines has surrendered to what the Chinese government want, and that is a share in the country’s rich natural resources.

Even if the Philippines has asked China to “stop and dismantle” its operations and structures in the area, the activities continue and the still-unknown economic loss of the country increases.

“Ang importante sa atin we continuously draw the attention of the international community; it’s the only peaceful way. We are a peaceful people, we are a peaceful country,” Galvez said.

Reports of constructions on the islands in the West Philippine Sea surfaced last year and were later confirmed by recent satellite images showing China building a “great wall of sand” with various heavy equipment. The activities are being undertaken in the Spratly Islands on Mischief Reef, which is also being claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan.

Recent satellite images show that the reclamation project includes over 500 meters of runway and paved sections of apron.

Corruption already a system–AIM

By Manuel T. Cayon Mindanao Bureau Chief

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avao City—Prof. Ronald Mendoza, executive director of the Policy Center of the Asian Institute of Management (AIM), told an anti-corruption forum here over the weekend that the “abuse of entrusted power” has become wideranging as to become “already a system in the country.”

“It is in confusing laws; it is in policies that don’t get implemented; it is in long lines for you to get your businesses registered and get your business permits; it is in the inefficiency of the public sector; it is in the jeepney drivers, taxi drivers and even private operators that don’t follow the rules anymore,” he said.

“This is what perpetuates corruption. This is the impunity that is happening now,” the AIM professor said in Saturday’s breakfast forum on “Confronting Corruption, Changing our Business, Changing our Lives” held at the Royal Mandaya Hotel here.

He said “many of us have this mistaken notion that all we need is some kind of an incorruptible person who takes over the presidency and stop all of the corruption. I have very bad news for you—corruption is so systemic that even if you put a preacher in

the presidency, even Archbishop Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle, really, the corruption is in the system,” he said.

Mendoza cited cases of tolerance and inaction among government regulatory and enforcement agencies to defy existing laws.

He said government’s fight against corruption has not made significant strides, although he acknowledged that there had been improvement in the delivery of services and offering of options.

Former Sen. Joey Lina, who talked on government reform to fight corruption, said, however, that “while we have seen growths in the gross national product, the sad point in this one is that reports have indicated that they only benefited 40 families.”

“We could have grown much bigger and faster if we remove these hindrances and opportunities for corruption,” he said.

Mendoza said corruption in the Philippines “is commonly influenced by three factors: monopoly, discretion and accountability.”

“Every time there is monopolistic condition, there is high risk of abuse. And abuse is further enhanced by the extent and degree of discretion that we give to persons we assigned for certain duties,” he added.

The worse part of the three factors, he said, “is when we take out, or forget the third one: accountability.”

Group: Smartmatic case needs quick SC action

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ivil-society group Democracy Watch has warned the Supreme Court that failure to act quickly on the pending cases of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) might jeopardize the integrity of the 2016 polls.

In an open letter to the High Court, the group said a timely and prudent response is the only way to allay fears about returning to the manual system of voting, which had widely been considered as prone to manipulation.

“With just over a year shy of the 2016 polls, the stakes cannot be higher,” according to the statement.

The Supreme Court last week filed a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) against Comelec’s deal with Smartmatic about the repairs of PCOS machines, a development which could potentially impact the conduct of upcoming elections and, with it, Filipinos’ belief in their leaders.

According to the letter, which was sent to the Supreme Court, currently in session in Baguio: “For a countr y that was used

to weeklong wait and discredited results, it [Automated Election System] restored popular value to the much-maligned political process. The whole nation then stands to lose all these gains, which were decades in the making.”

Popular support for President Aquino can be attributed to the clear mandate that he was given in 2010, according to the letter.

Democracy Watch also called on the Supreme Court to see through the strategy of election operators, who, after failing to win their cases via merit, are now allegedly resorting to legal means to delay and effectively stop the automated system.

“The Supreme Court TRO has become a legal weapon aimed to pressure Comelec to reverting back to manual elections,” the letter said.

The group also cautioned against the proposed Transparent and Credible Election System, which, it said, may turn out to be just as cumbersome as manual polls and therefore not worth the effort in the end.

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Pimentel wants Palace to make his bill increasing LGU share in taxes a priority

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en.Aquilino“Koko”PimentelIIIonSundaysaid the right of local government units (LGUs) to receive their bigger share in “national taxes” is justified owing to the additional responsibilities that they bear under the Constitution and the laws.

In the just-concluded General Assembly of Mayors at the Manila Hotel, Pimentel said their annual allocation from the national taxes “does not flow from and should not rely on the generosity of the national government.”

“Hindi dapat isipin na dole-outs ang anumang salapi na inilalaan sa local governments,” Pimentel said of his “Bigger Pie, Bigger Slice” bill that seeks to expand the tax base and increase LGUs’ share from 40 percent to 50 percent of national taxes.

He said the proposed formula includes the national internal revenue taxes collected by the Bureau of Internal Revenue, plus tariffs, duties and charges, and national internal revenue taxes, if any, collected by the Bureau of Customs.

“I have also made it unmistakably clear that the national internal revenue tax shall include the value-added tax.”

Pimentel’s bill essentially expands the size of the pie to be divided between the national and local governments. The Bigger Slice component refers to the equalization of the division of the pie

between the national and local governments.

He said equal sharing of revenues would promote real devolution, fiscal autonomy and financial planning and management.

He said if the bill becomes law this year, LGUs would get P487 billion next year, with the barangays getting P147 billion; municipalities, P251 billion; and cities and provinces, P170 billion.

“The passage of Senate Bill 2045 means the realization of your plans and programs for your municipalities. Progressive municipalities will mean progress for the rest of the Philippines,” he said. He asked municipal mayors to be honest, saying corruption remains one of the biggest obstacles to national progress and development.

“Kalaban ng Bigger Pie, Bigger Slice ang korapsyon na siyang sumisira sa tiwala ng tao sa ating pamahalaan.” This is why he is seeking a Senate investigation into the Ombudsman report that, for four consecutive years, LGUs topped the list of having the most number of corruption cases filed against their officials.

“If we are to empower our LGUs financially, we also must make sure that there are sufficient safeguards against fiscal abuses,” Pimentel said. “LGUs cannot just keep accepting funds and fail to account for every peso and centavo spent.” Recto Mercene

Monday, April 20, 2015 A5

Reforms in procurement system crucial to inclusive-growth tack

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eforms in the governmentprocurement system are crucial to eradicate poverty and improve governance, an official of the World Bank said.

World Bank Procurement Practice Manager Enzo de Laurentiis said private-sector confidence has already increased since the national government implemented the online registration for bidders.

“The Philippine government has been implementing a comprehensive reform to make governance work for inclusive growth. The procurement system has also made significant contributions to enhance public service delivery through more

efficient and effective processes,” said De Laurentiis in a statement issued by the Department of Budget and Management.

He said private-sector confidence in the government is shown in the 74-percent rise in privatefirm registration with the Philippine Government Electronic Procurement System compared with 2011 levels.

The national average number of bidders also increased by more than

100 percent, from an average of two in 2010 to an average of four in 2013.

The Philippines is hosting the Global Procurement Conference on April 20 and 21 that seeks to sustain procurement reforms in the Philippines and other governments that face challenges in governance.

Procurement ex per ts from countries like Peru, New Zealand, United Kingdom and Chile will share knowledge on their strategies and actual experiences in making their countries’ reforms sustainable and irreversible.

Dennis Santiago, executive director of the Government Procurement Policy Board (GPPB)-Technical Support Office, said the passage of Republic Act 9184, or the Government Procurement Reform Act, in January 2003 transformed the government-procurement regime into a

Employers told to settle SSS arrears

Probe into SC’s ‘pork’ seen to resume in May

By Jovee Marie N. dela Cruz

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T

he House of Representatives is eyeing to resume its hearings on the bills repealing and amending the Judiciary Development Fund (JDF) next month, a lawmaker said on Sunday.

Liberal Party Rep. Neil Tupas of Iloilo, chairman of the House Committee on Justice, said his panel is planning to resume its hearings next month, or before Congress’s sine die adjournment on June 11, to promote the transparency of the so-called judiciary pork barrel, or the JDF. “We’re currently discussing that [resumption of the hearing] and we are hoping we can resume before our sine die adjournment...and we are urging the Supreme Court [SC] to cooperate with us,” Tupas said in a radio interview. He added that the panel will again invite Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno or her representatives to attend the congressional hearing on JDF. Earlier, Sereno, who snubbed the committee’s first hearing last August 5, has branded as “premature” and “inappropriate” the House inquiry on JDF. Sereno stressed in a three-page letter to Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. that the investigation does not promote good relationship between Congress and Judiciary, citing separation of powers.

Tupas and Nacionalista Party Rep. Rodolfo Fariñas of Ilocos Norte have filed House Bill (HB) 4738 and HB 4690, respectively, to repeal, replace and reform the JDF by compelling the SC justices to open their pork barrel, stressing the constitutional grant of fiscal autonomy cannot and should not be used to frustrate the overriding constitutional principles of transparency, accountability and good governance.

Under Presidential Decree 1949— the law that creates the JDF—the exclusive power and duty to approve and authorize disbursements and expenditures of the JDF is vested upon the chief justice of the SC. In that sense alone, the JDF is considered discretionary funds as it is administered by a particular public official and disbursed for public purpose.

Meanwhile, House independent bloc leader and Lakas Rep. Ferdinand Martin Romualdez of Leyte has said Sereno has the prerogative to skip the hearing if she feels this would turn into a venue to get back at them following SC rulings declaring unconstitutional the Priority Development Assistance Fund of the Legislative and key provisions of Disbursement Acceleration Program of the Executive.

competitive, transparent, efficient, accountable and functional public acquisition system.

“It [referring to procurement law] established standardized procurement procedures, modernization via technology, sustainable organizational structures, a system for monitoring and evaluation, and capacity development for its procurement practitioners,” Santiago said.

The country’s procurement system uses performance measurement standards based on actual data analysis prescribed by the GPPB. Multilateral agencies—Asian Development Bank, the Japan Bank for International Cooperation and the World Bank along with GPPB hold periodic performance reviews via the past five Country Procurement Assessment Reports. Estrella Torres

KIDS START PLANNING GREEN TOWNSHIPS Students of Singapore School of Manila bagged the top prize in the Junior Category of the Clean and Green Manila Awards with

the theme “Planning a Clean & Green Township.” The International Town Planning Competition is sponsored by SM Mall of Asia (MOA) and SM Supermalls, the city of Manila and Activistar. The awarding was held at the SM MOA. ROY DOMINGO

he Social Security System (SSS) has warned delinquent employers to settle their delinquencies or face criminal prosecution, noting that 14 employers had already been convicted for violations of the Social Security Act since 2012.

SSS Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Counsel Voltaire Agas said the 14 convicitons involved nonremittance of premium contributions with incurred penalties amounting to P20.2 million.

“We would like to inform the public, especially the employers, that we are seriously and aggressively pursuing cases against erring employers to protect our SSS members from such violations that prevent them from enjoying the full SSS benefits due them,” Agas said.

Under Section 28 (e) of Republic Act (RA) 8282, or the Social Security Act of 1997, the failure or refusal of an employer to register their employees, or to deduct contributions from the employee’s compensation and remit the same to the SSS, constitutes criminal offenses.

The penalties prescribed by the RA 8282 ranges from a fine of P5,000 to P20,000 and imprisonment from six years to 12 years. David Cagahastian

Motion for inhibition filed vs ponente in Harbour Centre case

By Joel R. San Juan

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HE operator of the Harbour Centre Port Terminal Inc. (HCPTI) in Manila has asked an associate justice of the Court of Appeals (CA) to inhibit himself from handling the ownership dispute over the terminal involving businessman Reghis Romero II and his son Michael Romero.

In a 26-page motion for inhibition and/or voluntary disqualification of the ponente of the case, One Source Port Services raised “suspicion of bias and lost of trust and confidence” as reasons in asking Associate Justice Danton Bueser to recuse himself as ponente of the case.

One Sou rce’s l aw yer Rya n Macapagal pointed out that the preliminary injunction order issued on March 11 by the Former Special Second Division violated existing laws and jurisprudence as it expanded the scope of the amended petition to include other matters without giving One Source an opportunity to be heard.

It added that despite the issue on the ownership of HCPTI, Bueser allowed HCPTI to intervene in the case, thus, giving an undue advantage to the camp of Reghis Romero.

Macapagal also noted that only the faction of the elder Romero was recognized and given a copy of the preliminary injunction order, thereby, giving undue advantage to it over the other faction.

The preliminary injunction indefinitely enjoined the Regional Trial Court (RTC) in Pasig City from implementing its order ceding control of the terminal to service provider One Source.

Romero and his son have been engaged in legal suits over the control of HCPTI, as the elder Romero has accused former HCPTI officials of systematically stealing the corporation’s funds following an audit to determine why the company was consistently losing money, despite the millions of pesos in gross revenues received each month.

An intracorporate dispute is pending before a Manila court.

The younger Romero had already sought for an injunctive relief before the Manila court to wrest control of HCPTI from his father but was denied.

In its amended petition, Reghis’s camp told the CA that for the past 18 years, the operation and management of HCPTI has been led by Romero II and “has never ceded the management of the port to third parties, much less to a mere manpower service provider like private respondent [One Source].”

Thus, it said, the RTC in Pasig City abused its discretion in issuing the injunction on an issue that has been pending before a coequal court in Manila.

The temporary restraining order (TRO) against HCPTI was issued by the RTC on December 1, 2014.

On December 19, 2014, the last day of work in the judiciary before the Yuletide recess, an injunction was issued in favor of One Source, HCPTI’s manpower-service provider for truck scale and weighbridge operations in MHC.

One Source claimed that HCPTI led by Romero II violated its Port Ancillary Services Contract and Port Services Management Contract.

One Source noted that the scope of the amended petition was expanded because though it only questioned the December 1, 2014 expired TRO of the Pasig RTC in Pasig the manifestation assailed all subsequent orders after the December 1, 2014 order.

“In expanding the scope of the amended petition by issuing the assailed resolution, the ponente gave new breath and lease of life to an otherwise moot and academic petition,” Macapagal said.

Macapagal noted that it had moved to file its comment to the manifestation until March 13, 2015, but Bueser failed to act on its request.

Instead, two days before the deadline requested, Bueser issued the assailed preliminary injunction.

“Certainly, the honorable ponente Justice Danton Q. Bueser, in issuing the assailed resolution, together with the occurence of the

other events mentioned herein, cannot blame private respondent if it feels that it can no longer obtain a just and fair treatment in this case as long as he is the ponente,” Macapagal explained.

“His acts above can easily be construed or misconstrued to be full of bias in favor of petitioner Reghis Romero II,” he added.

Furthermore, Macapagal said Bueser displayed partiality toward the camp of Reghis when it allowed HCPTI represented by the latter to be a petitioner in the case despite the fact that his son, who represents the other faction, withdrew as petitioner.

It also noted that only Reghis’s camp was furnished with a copy of the March 11, 2015 resolution, while the other faction was kept in the dark.

“Therefore, it implies that the ponente recognize only one faction and disregards the dispute within HCPTI. The ponente is, therefore, perceived to be susceptible to bias and partiality,” Macapagal added.

Tourism MORE MEM A6 Monday, April 20, 2015 • Editor: Gerard Ramos

S    M S

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MUSTDO lis before I travel Often done m as a reminder of thin that fun-packed vaca Aside from the usual see, interesting peopl ing activities to do, ex 45,785 selfies to take avoid (hopefully), add buy and my list is com

THE Hop-On, Hop-Off bus

THE author in front of the Petronas Twin Towers.

I was in Malaysia recently to participate (more like indulge) in Tourism Malaysia’s Mega Familiarization Program. It was a four-day trip that highlighted Malaysia’s vibrant and bustling capital city, Kuala Lumpur.

Being my first time in the country, I was looking forward to completing my list as I went on from one place to another.

For someone like me who doesn’t have any idea of things to do in the city, allow me to give you an idea.

First, wander the streets of the city.

Word of advice before starting on your adventure: Make sure you’re wearing your comfiest shoes and clothes because Kuala Lampur, just like Manila, can be really hot.

With its three major races—Malays, Chinese and Indians—Malaysia’s unique blend of multilingual locals and varied cultures and traditions is an at-

ATMOSPHERE 360°, a revolving restaurant at the top of the Kuala Lampur Tower.

A PANORAMIC view outside the Kuala Lampur City Gallery

THE mini “airport” at Kidzania

THE entrance of the Kuala Lumpur City Gallery

GUAM VISITO L

UXURY accommodation awaits Filipino visiting Guam as the Guam Visitors Burea (www.facebook.com/visitguamusa) we comes world-renowned five-star hotel bran Dusit Thani to Guam, as it is scheduled to ope its doors to tourists this year.

Internationally known for its lineup of lux ury hotels and resorts, world-class spas an duty-free shopping, Guam is slowly becom ing a favorite destination for Filipinos lookin for a weekend escape from the stresses of fast-paced lifestyle. Located only three-and a-half hours from Manila, via United Airline and Philippine Airlines, Guam is the prefec US destination, as it offers the excellent mi of a tropical island feel and urban living ame nities, best defined by its neo-island lifestyle Visitors traveling to Guam can expec nothing less than a breathtaking exper ence with its array of in-island activitie remarkable tourist spots, scenic beache rich culture and flavorful cuisine. With th Dusit Thani Resort Guam opening soon, Fi ipinos can all the more look forward to a

m&Entertainment MORIES OF MALAYSIA BusinessMirror

tourism@businessmirror.com.ph • Monday, April 20, 2015 A7

 | Special to the BM

st is what I make l to a new place. mentally, this serves ngs to do to achieve ation experience. l iconic sights to le to meet, excitxotic food to eat, and 15 hassles to d 241 keychains to mplete.

traction in itself. Just walk around and you’ll be amazed at how diverse the population is. Talk to them in English, and you wouldn’t have a problem; maybe you’ll even be surprised when they answer in Filipino, because, apparently, the city is full of them. I myself cannot identify a Malay from a Filipino. A newfound friend, Fafa, even swore that I could easily pass as a local.

There are so many places to see in Kuala Lampur. Lucky for me, I was able to visit some of its most famous landmarks.

On top of the list is the tall and proud Petronas Twin Towers. One can’t miss this engineering wonder, as it stands 451.9 meters above ground. The Skybridge on the 41st floor that connects the two buildings is an excellent viewing platform of the city’s skyline. It holds the record as the tallest twin tow-

TOURISM Malaysia Senior Deputy Director of Communications and Publicity Division Azizah Aziz (third from left) and Tourism Malaysia Director of Communications and Publicity Division Mohmed Razip Hasan (second from right) awarded certificates to the Filipino participants (from left) Marianne Sarmiento, Jo & Jam Travel & Tours General Manager Josefina de la Cuesta, Amity Travel Managing Director Anne Marie Gordon and Emabassy of Malaysia Marketing Manager Anthony Ballesteros Rivera.

ers in the world. It’s so big that it took me close to 20 tries to finally capture the whole of it into a selfie.

Next stop was the Kuala Lumpur City Gallery, which offers a background of the country’s rich history.

Located inside a 115-year-old former government printing office, the gallery is owned and developed by Arch, a Malaysian company that makes and sells 3D wooden pictures and models of famous landmarks for gifts and collectibles. These intricately designed products are handcrafted, which makes every piece unique.

For tourists who have little time and want a faster view of the whole city, try the KL Hop-On Hop-Off bus tour. A colorful bus with English commentary onboard, the tour will let you see more than 40 attractions in the city.

Another must-visit that is just short drive from Kuala Lampur is the Putrajaya. This federal administrative capital is nicknamed as the country’s “Intelligent Capital City.” It is a combination of nature and eye-catching architectures, like the Putra Mosque, a striking landmark characterized by its pink domes; and the Seri Perdana, the official residence of the country’s prime minister. I tried the Cruise Tasik Putrajaya (Putrajaya Lake Cruise), a tour around the man-made lake, which is considered as the best way to see the whole of Putrajaya.

If you are feeling hungry and tired from all the walking and picture-taking, and decide to look for something to eat, you’ll learn soon enough that Malaysian food reflects its multieth-

nic population—and there’s too many to choose from. Highly recommended are the Asam Laksa, a Chinese-Malay spicy rice noodle dish with fish gravy, shredded pineapple and cucumber with prawn paste; Teh Tarik, a milk-tea beverage which can be served hot or cold; Rojak, a popular fruit dish with a combination of sweet-and-sour sauce; and Cendol, a refreshing sweet treat made of shaved ice, green rice jelly and beans.

If you are on a budget, you can try eating in a mamak, an Indian, Muslimmanaged restaurant that gives an authentic Indian dining experience. Or you could opt for a more expensive dining fare at the Atmosphere 360. This revolving restaurant atop the Kuala Lumpur Tower, the seventh-tallest tower in the world at 335 meters, not only offers deliciously prepared international and local cuisine, but also gives diners a majestic view of Kuala Lumpur and its surrounding regions.

Apart from the daytime attractions, Kuala Lampur’s nightlife is also something to look forward to. Bukit Bintang is crawling with pubs and bars that tourists and local partygoers frequent.

If you are into a more intimate ambiance, try the Sky Bar of Trader’s Hotel, a rooftop bar with the twin towers as your backdrop.

Finally, any trip offshore wouldn’t be complete without shopping. And that isn’t a problem in Kuala Lampur, as it is fast-becoming the next top shopping destination in Asia. Kuala Lumpur was ranked No. 4 on CNN’s World’s Best Shopping Cities in 2012 and 2013, next

THE Perdana Putra that houses the Malaysia Prime Minister Office at the main hill in Putrajaya.

to New York, Tokyo and London; and also the Second Best Shopping Destination in Asia Pacific by Globe Shopper Index. Three of the top 10 largest malls in the world are in Malaysia: 1 Utama Shopping Centre, Mid Valley Megamall and Sunway Pyramid, all in Klang Valley, considered as the place to experience the best shopping in Malaysia.

A popular destination among tourists, Suria KLCC is a shopping complex nestled at the foot of the twin towers. It houses vast options of fancy brands, like Channel, Tiffany Co., Prada and so on.

You could either indulge or torture yourself by just window shopping, and I had no choice but to opt for the latter.

One of the unique things about the country’s shopping landscape is that these commercial complexes now cater to not only shopping but other varied interests, as well. An example is Kidzania, a theme park within The Curve complex. It is a product of a unique concept wherein children aged 4 to 12 can “role play” different adult jobs (doctor, dentist, firefighter, photographer, journalist, photographer and so on).

Indeed, one can never run out of things to do in Malaysia as it celebrates this year the Malaysia Year of Festivals (MyFest), with the theme “Endless Celebrations.” Continuing the success of last year’s campaign, Visit Malaysia Year 2014, MyFest showcases a yearlong schedule of more than 200 activities/events featuring the country’s multiracial cultures and traditions.

Perhaps, another must-do list is in order.

A VIEW of the Twin Towers from the SkyBar of Trader’s Hotel

ORS BUREAU WELCOMES DUSIT THANI GUAM RESORT

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exceptional experience during their vacation.

Once fully operational, the newest resort property in Guam will offer its visitors a panoramic view of Tumon Bay. The five-star resort boasts of 419 hotel rooms, consisting of Ocean and Mountain View rooms—and suites—an ambassador suite, a presidential suite and villa suites. Visitors can also indulge in the resort’s culinary offerings in its many restaurants, namely, Alfredo’s Tuscan Steakhouse, Tasi Grill, Soi, the Lobby Lounge and the Dusit Gourmet.

Also showcasing Guam’s scenic beauty is the Dusit Thani Guam Resort’s spa facility. An addition to Guam’s growing number of luxury spa establishments that accentuate the island’s natural beauty, Deverana Spa allows visitors to experience luxury pampering and healing treatments within a tranquil oasis.

With the opening of the Dusit Thani Guam Resort, GVB aims to further attract Filipinos to visit Guam to indulge themselves in the island’s breathtaking beauty and urbanliving amenities.

NASI Kandar Pelita, a popular mamak where local and foreign diners eat.

TO stop the fire at a hotel is one of the many ”adult” activities that kids can do at Kidzania, a theme park within the curve complex

TheElderly

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Monday, April 20, 2015 • Editor: Efleda P. Campos

BusinessMirror

news@businessmirror.com.ph

Horrors of WWII toughened up septuagenarian writer

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By Oliver Samson | Correspondent

bomb blew up a public market in Nueva Ecija, killing the Japanese soldiers who took over the area. A young Filipino father who was selling ice cream and one of his sons died.

The year was 1945. The Japanese and Americans were at war in the Philippines.

Prudencio Magpayo, a former teacher who later became information officer at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), was only 3 years old when his 11-year-old brother was killed.

His father, a cadre of the Japanese resistance guerrilla conducting covert works in the mainstream for the underground movement, was 27.

His mother was forced to wash the clothes of American soldiers to feed all seven of them. His brothers and sisters helped her eke out a living by cooking and selling boiled corn.

When Prudencio was in primary school, he sold newspapers to help the family, hitting the streets while most of the kids his age were still asleep.

He earns a peso a day and gives this to his mother, who rewards him with puto (rice cake) before he goes to his afternoon class.

It was during his years in elemen-

tary school when another tragedy shook their lives. Their house was destroyed by fire. The blaze originated from an open gasera (kerosene lamp) that was not extinguished as everyone fell asleep.

They were spared on that horrible night but they escaped with only the clothes they wore that evening. But this did not stop him from dreaming.

Seeking help, his mother, who originally hailed from Quezon Province, turned to her relatives in Gumaca. She took two of her children, including Prudencio. Her mother’s eldest sibling took care of him. The other child was brought to another sibling’s house in exchange for the P30 his mother brought back to Nueva Ecija.

Prudencio attended Grade 5 and 6 at Roosevelt Elementary School and graduated valedictorian.

After his graduation, his mother took them back to Nueva Ecija. He was sent to the Philippine Statesman

Prudencio Magpayo, 72, at their house in Barangay Bahay Toro, Project 8, Quezon City. Oliver Samson

College in Cabanatuan where he resumed selling newspapers. He also shined shoes for 10 cents a pair and sold sweepstake tickets. Prudencio eventually graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in English.

Seeking to pursue engineering, a discipline he was interested in, he went to Manila with the late Julius Caesar Gallego, a politician and brother-in-law of TV and events host and newspaper columnist Johnny Litton.

Serving in the house of the

Gallegos as the family’s errand boy, he became neighbors with prominent Philippine movie stars at the time, like Juancho Gutierrez and Gloria Romero.

But instead of taking up an engineering course, he went to the University of Santo Tomas (UST) to study Secondary Education.

By the time, his father had already received the recognition due to a citizen who fought for his country.

Back in Cabanatuan, his mother was already receiving pension.

After a semester, he transferred from the UST to Wesleyan University in Nueva Ecija where he finished Secondary Education.

He assumed his first teaching post at the Nueva Ecija High School as a substitute English teacher in 1965.

He also taught at a school in Gapan.

It was in General Tinio where he met her future wife, Remedios, who is a retired teacher.

Looking for greener pastures, they moved to Manila in the late 1960s. They taught for some years at Judge Juan Luna High School in San Francisco del Monte, Quezon City.

He was hired to a post at the BSP in the early 1970s. He recalled being caught jaywalking near Manila City Hall on his way to apply for the job.

Without any knowledge on finance and banking, Prudencio began to educate himself.

He wrote the first article for the Security Plant Complex (SPC), which was formally established along East Avenue in 1978. The piece was about the security printing plant’s creation.

Before the establishment of the SPC, De La Rue, which is the world’s largest commercial banknote printer, prints the Philippine money, Prudencio said.

He wrote technical articles for the Central Banker, an internal monthly publication of the BSP and for the CB Review, an external publication.

Prudencio traveled across the country covering rural banking stories and was privileged to see major

cities where a BSP branch was rising. He also wrote the speech of the BSP governor for the opening of the central bank’s branches.

He wrote in a room at the 18th floor, away from the clutter of the different offices of the BSP along Roxas Boulevard. To him, writing was “just a matter of necessity,” he said.

After writing for the BSP for 15 years, Prudencio availed of the special incentive benefit, a program for employees who wish to retire early, in 1993. He retired as corporate affairs office Information Officer IV, a post equivalent to assistant division chief, during the time of former Governor Gabriel Singson.

Prudencio and his wife are successful parents. Their eldest, an accountant, is now a successful food-cart franchiser. The second, a physical therapist, has put up his own clinic in Chicago, Illinois.

The third one, an Electronic and Computer Engineering and Nursing graduate, is employed as a manager at a telephone company in the Philippines. Their youngest and the only girl is about to finish college.

Today, Prudencio works as a consultant of a mayor in Nueva Ecija.

As an “occasional journalist,” his writings appear in leading national broadsheets, like the BusinessMirror.

Prudencio, who doesn’t look his age at 72, is still productive. He and his wife are concerned and active members of Barangay Bahay Toro in Project 8.

Osca-Parañaque eyeing to require firms to hire seniors

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he Office for Senior Citizens Affairs (Osca) of the local government of Parañaque will ask the city council to pass a resolution seeking to require companies in the city to hire seniors.

Under the resolution, all companies based in the city that end the year with a minimum annual sale of P10 million should hire at least two seniors, Osca-Parañaque chief Dante Pacheco said.

A study is being conducted whether to set the annual sale requirement at P15 or P20 million, Pacheco added.

“But it should be above P10 million,” he said The companies will hire the seniors as contractual employees, replacing ones with others every six months.

In this way, Pacheco noted, all able seniors in the city who are interested in working will have the chance to get employed.

Under the proposed measure, seniors will be hired only for jobs that do not require strenuous physical exertion, and will be required to work for only four hours a day, he said.

A physician will issue a senior applying for a job with a certification that he or she is physically fit to work. “They can be employed by companies as greeters at information [desks] and who can escort the clients,” Pacheco said. The seniors will be paid at least P60 per hour, he added.

The hiring of seniors by companies can be viewed as corporate social responsibility, he said. The job may not be financially rewarding, but it may provide the seniors a sense of fulfillment.

It may also help them avoid “physical and emotional rot” at home that may shorten their lives, he added.

At least 250 companies operating in the two districts of Parañaque will be covered when the resolution is signed into ordinance and takes effect, Pacheco said.

This means at least 500 able seniors employed at a time, and replaced by at least the same number after six months, he said.

Currently, Parañaque has 22,500 senior citizens residing in its two districts according to the office’s updated database, Pacheco said. This figure is expected to grow by about 7, 000 next year.

Osca-Parañaque is currently finalizing the draft of the resolution for the first reading of the city council. In 2014 the office received the Dakilang Adhikain ng Ating Lahi (Dangal) Award from the B usinessM irror, in partnership with the United Bayanihan Foundation, RiteMed, and CDO-Foodsphere for its outstanding contributions to uplift the lives and improve the welfare of senior citizens. Oliver Samson

EYE CHECKUP Senior citizens line up to have their eyes checked by doctors at the Manila Eye and Surgical Center in Taft Avenue, Manila. ROY DOMINGO

Families make videos to reassure patients with dementia N EW YORK—For 94-year-old Louise Irving, who suffers from dementia, waking up every day to a video with a familiar face and a familiar voice seems to spark a flicker of recognition.

“Good morning, merry sunshine, how did you wake so soon?” Irving’s daughter, Tamara Rusoff-Hoen, sings in a video playing from a laptop wheeled to her mother’s bedside at a New York nursing home.

As the five-minute video plays, with stories of happy memories and get-togethers, Irving beams a bright smile before repeating the traditional family send-off.

“Kiss, kiss...I love you.”

Such prerecorded messages from family members are part of an apparently unique pilot program at the Hebrew Home at Riverdale aimed at helping victims of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia break through the morning fog of forgetfulness that can often

Patient Louise Irving watches a laptop computer with her daughter’s morning wake-up video playing, at The Hebrew Home of Riverdale, in New York, on March 25. The nursing home in the Bronx has started a pilot program in which relatives record video messages for patients of Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. The videos are played for them each morning to calm their agitation and reassure them about their surroundings and their routines. AP

cause them agitation and fear.

It’s an idea borrowed from an unlikely place, the 2004 Adam Sandler movie 50 First Dates, in which a brain-injured woman played by Drew Barrymore loses her memory every day and a suitor played by Sandler uses videos to remind her about him.

“It was fluff, but it made me think, ‘How could that translate to our residents with memory loss?’” said Charlotte Dell, director of social services at the home.

“We’re looking to see if we can set a positive tone for the day” without using drugs, she said. “What better way to start the day than to see the face and hear the voice of someone you love wishing you a wonderful morning?”

As in the movie, every day is a new day, and the video becomes part of the morning routine. Relatives who take part are urged to say good morning, use memory-triggering personal anecdotes and remind the residents that

attendants will be helping them get dressed and ready for the day.

Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias afflict a growing number of Americans as baby boomers age and people live longer. The Alzheimer’s Association says more than 5 million Americans have Alzheimer’s.

The first-thing-in-the morning video visits appear to be a new wrinkle in dementia caretaking.

“Memory tools like videos and photos get a lot of use, but to have a couple of minutes with a loved one as a way to start out the day, I haven’t heard of anything quite like that,” says Ruth Drew, director of family and information services for the association.

Robert Abrams, a geriatric psychiatrist at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, called the program “both innovative and thoughtful.”

“You’ve got a group of people with dementia who don’t really grasp the nature and purpose of their surroundings, or the circumstances

that compelled them to be there,” Abrams says.

“Consequently they’re alone and at sea, and feel frightened and even abandoned by family.”

Experts cautioned, however, that Alzheimer’s patients vary widely, and that techniques that may work beautifully for one may not work for another.

The program at the Hebrew Home is limited to residents in the early and moderate stages of dementia who are likely to recognize the people in the video and understand what they say.

“Do we know for sure that they know, this is my daughter, this is my son? No,” Dell said.

“But they recognize them as somebody they care about and love.”

The program is starting with residents who are known to the staff as difficult in the morning and refuse care, a description that Rusoff-Hoen acknowledged fits her mother. “Some of her agitation comes from, ‘Who the heck are these people? Why am I here?’” she said. AP

news@businessmirror.com.ph

The Regions BusinessMirror

Cebu City officials ask DENR to probe bridge construction

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EBU CITY—The Cebu City Council has requested the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) 7 to look into an alleged illegal construction of a private bridge in Barangay Tejero in this city.

In a resolution authored by Cebu City Councilor Nida Cabrera, the council asked the DENR 7 to take the necessary action to stop the construction.

Cebu City engineer Jose Poblete earlier ordered Kakeng Development Corp. to temporarily stop

the work pending compliance with all the necessary requirements, such as barangay permit, construction permit, locational permit and Environmental Compliance Certificate.

It cited a possible violation of Article 51 of Presidential Decree

1067, otherwise known as The Water Code of the Philippines.

The law prohibits the construction of any structure along “the banks and rivers, streams, shores of the seas and lakes throughout their entire length within a zone of 3 meters in urban areas, 20 meters in agricultural areas and 40 meters in forest areas, along their margins are subject to the easement of public use in the interest of recreation, navigation, fishing and salvage.”

However, the private bridge is being constructed across the Tejero Creek which, measures 10 meters wide and 12 meters long. The city government has also asked the DENR to examine whether the bridge will not have a negative impact on the environment. PNA

Bulacan execs urge Comelec to put decent closure on ‘recall’

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By Emil G. Gamos

ALOLOS CITY, Bulacan—Local officials on Sunday called on the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to put a decent closure on the recall issue that has nearly tore the province apart due to massive forgeries, deceits and alleged utter disrespect to poll officials in the province who have already issued their rulings.

“It is time to move on, to move forward because the truth has already surfaced.

Anything that will contradict the results of the recall proceedings will no longer hold water and will be detrimental to the unity of the people of Bulacan and to the booming growth and progress now being experienced in Bulacan,” Pandi Mayor Enrico Roque, president of the League of Municipalities of the Philippines (LMP)Bulacan Chapter, said.

Roque said the recall proceedings has already opened a “hurt locker” and should now be closed permanently in order not to sow more confusion and divisiveness.

“It should be closed so that the Bulakenyos will unite again in pushing for the progress and development of the province and support the good programs

of the provincial government, which is continuously gaining recognition and bringing honor to the noble province of Bulacan and to the residents,” Roque said.

Comelec Regional Director Temie Lambino said the Comelec en banc will meet on Tuesday to tackle the appeal of the recall petitioner following the consolidated ruling of the election officers in Bulacan that 72.7 percent of the signatures in the petition against incumbent Gov. Wilhelmino M. SyAlvarado were forged or falsified.

He also earlier said that the commission will also investigate the distribution of USBs allegedly containing pre-encoded or prepared ruling to every election officers in the province’s 21 towns and three cities.

Aside from Mayor Roque, the City Vice Mayor’s League in Bulacan headed by Meycauayan City Vice Mayor Jojo Manzano said the recall issue in the province has only prove one thing.

“They cannot put a good man down,” Manzano said, referring to the sterling leadership being shown by Alvarado and his partner Vice Gov. Daniel Fernando, in spurring more growth and development in the province.

Manzano said people should now unite

and rally behind the good programs being implemented under the administration of Alvarado.

Bulakenyos appealed on Friday to Comelec officials to “stop prolonging the agony and confusion of the province by putting a decent total closure to the already doomed and controversial recall initiative perpetrated by political rivals of the incumbent governor.

Magnolito Julian Cruz, a political science student in this capital city, said the election officers of Bulacan have already spoken about the controversial poll proceedings and have already issued their consolidated ruling on the verification of signatures.

“This recall move is a despicable exercise that could be compared to a Pandora’s box that unleashed the dirty side of politics and waste of government money in an exercise that is tainted with lies, deceit, fraud and dirty political tactics,” Cruz said. Various organizations also commended the election officers for their integrity by coming up with honest rulings despite clear attempts by the petitioner to rig the outcome of the verification by providing them with USBs containing pre-encoded ruling. PNA

Public employees get serious on environment protection

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AGAY TAY CIT Y—Representatives from various national government agencies, along with some local government units, get serious on environmental law-enforcement drive and vowed to pursue plans of action that would make a difference for the environment during a national environmental law-enforcement summit held here last Wednesday and Thursday.

Participants to the third National Environmental Law Enforcement (Nele) Summit, which focused on the theme “Sustaining Collaboration on Environmental Law Enforcement,” tackled various problems in their respective areas of responsibilities and mandates, shared their best practices and disclosed challenges in environmental law enforcement and environmental protection.

The two-day summit drew participants from the nine government agencies and Isabela province who engaged in a lively debate, especially on the matter of interagency coordination and cooperation in case buildups and prosecuting environmental law violators.

The summit aims to update the members of the National Law

Enforcement Coordinating Committee-Subcommittee on Environment and Natural Resources on the implementation of the action plan on environmental law enforcement for 2011 to 2014 and to facilitate the formulation of an action plan for the next five years, according to lawyer Maria Ronely Bisquera-Sheen, who acted as the moderator and facilitator in the workshop mechanics and planning workshop, along with lawyers Marina Rabe-Manuel, Wilman Pollisco and Raymond Velicaria.

Department of Environment and Natural Resources Assistant Secretary for Field Operations Marcial Amaro Jr. has outlined the objectives of the Nele, such as development of standard regular training program for Philippine National Police and other law-enforcement agencies; uniform, comprehensive and systematic procedure; national database, sustained enforcement operation, and system of protection and incentives for “whistleblowers,” among others. Undersecretary for fisheries Asis Perez of the Department of Agriculture disclosed the measly fine across-the-board of P10,000 in the old law for fishery violations compared to the P2 million to P9 million for small-scale

commercial fishing violation in the amended Republic Act 10654. This law also subjects to confiscation, ejectment and impoundment of the illegal fishing vessel. Perez said the increased steep penalty acts as a disincentive for anyone engaged in illegal-fishing activity which basically is an economic offense.

Stressing that the bottom line of fishery law enforcement is for people to be able to eat and not merely for tourism purposes. Perez said: “Nothing would come out even if we meet here yearly or daily without the need to enforce the law and implement plan of action.”

He recalled the that when he assumed office at Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, there were only four fishery law enforcers in the agency but now they are recruiting up to 700 fishery law enforcers to be trained in all aspects of implementing the law, including investigation, forensic and assisting in the prosecution of the violators.

Representatives from various government bureaus have discussed recent developments and enforcements in fishery, forestry, mining, environmental and protected area and wildlife laws, and various government agencies. John Bello

Monday, April 20, 2015

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DSWD to provide technical-skills training to Bicol 4Ps beneficiaries

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EGAZPI City—The regional office here of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) has partnered with the Bicol University (BU) in providing beneficiaries of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) training toward sustainable livelihood skills.

The training, which will initially involve around 300 beneficiaries, will start in June under the DSWD’s Sustainable Livelihood Multi-Skills Training Project, which aims to improve the socioeconomic capacities of the 4Ps beneficiaries by facilitating their access to microenterprise development and employment opportunities.

The 4Ps is a poverty-reduction and social-development strategy of the national government that provides conditional-cash grants to “poorest of the poor” households to improve their health, nutrition and education, particularly of children aged zero to 14 years.

The training project, on the other hand, is a multistakeholder initiative that aims to improve the socioeconomic status of 4Ps beneficiaries to generate greater impact on the government’s poverty-reduction efforts.

Each of the selected participant has been allotted by the DSWD an amount of P20,000 for the six-month training to be handled by the BU-College of Industrial Technology, according to DSWD Regional Director Arnel Garcia.

The short-term training courses will be on trouble-shooting and repair of household appliances, basic welding

and home mechanics, defensive auto driving, gas engine servicing and overhauling, motorcycle servicing, basic and advance bread and pastry production, food processing, rough masonry, beauty care, silk screen printing, vinyl sticker cutting and practical electricity.

To ensure sustainability, Garcia said, each trainee will be provided by the DSWD with a livelihood kit after the training to start up his/her own business or self-employment venture.

Post-training assistance will also be provided by the university to help trainees in further honing their skills.

“We want to provide a sustainable intervention to improve the well-being of 4Ps beneficiaries by empowering the disadvantaged individuals through skills-training assistance and entrepreneurial activities toward gainful employment,” Garcia told the Philippines News Agency over the weekend.

Since the 4Ps program does not only provide financial assistance but also interventions to improve the welfare of the poor such us empowerment, participation and economic opportunities toward social protection, these beneficiaries are being nurtured into the culture of self-help, leading to a productive life on their own feet, he said.

BU, he said, is one of the agencies that have been participating in these interventions that seek to guarantee the sustainable development of 4Ps beneficiaries even after the conclusion of the program. The training is part of the transition plan in order to assure that

the current socioeconomic conditions of the beneficiaries of the program will be sustained and continue to improve.

Indicated in the plan are socioeconomic interventions, which ensure that there is continuity in terms of support coming from local government and partner-agencies so that the 4Ps beneficiaries will no longer go back to their conditions prior to the program. Garcia said the 4Ps is one of the most important accomplishments of President Aquino in reducing hunger incidence by 6 percent only months after he assumed office in 2010 and expanded its coverage.

“The funding for 4Ps that enables families to have decent shelter, put food on their tables, access to health care and send their children to school has proven to be an inspired move, while prompting positive and significant consequences in the lives of ordinary families, particularly food-poor rural families,” he said.

The program also helps the government to fulfill the country’s commitment to meet the Millennium Development Goals, such as to Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger, Achieve Universal Primary Education, Promote Gender Equality, Reduce Child Mortality and Improve Maternal Health. Being implemented by the DSWD, the program has already enlisted a total of 361,245 beneficiaries in Bicol—a region whose poverty incidence, according to the latest statistics released by the National Statistical Coordination Board, is at 36 percent. PNA

A10 Monday, April 20, 2015

Opinion BusinessMirror

editorial A journey of a thousand miles

V

ERY often we think that in a vast multitude the action of one man does not matter. It will be absorbed by the majority or the minority. It will count for nothing. Here is a piece of news that seems to suggest that that kind of thinking is wrong. We cannot let it pass without giving it notice.

Dan Price, 30, the CEO of a small firm in Seattle, had been bothered by the complaint of many of his friends about the cost of living and the bare adequacy of their salaries to make ends meet. He decided to do something about it.

He cut his salary by almost 94 percent to give a raise to his lowestpaid employees. Now he will be receiving $75,000 a year, instead of $1 million, the difference augmented by profits earned the previous year he distributed out as increases to the pay of his employees. Out of his 120 workers, 70 benefited, with 40 of them doubling their salaries.

The average salary went up to $70,000, from $48,000.

In the United States a typical CEO receives 350 times more than the average employee.

Dan is a picture of contentment. He said his reduced salary will still be enough for him to pick up the bar tab with his friends at least once a month. Besides, he has savings from his previous salary. His salary will be restored once a desired profit level is reached by his firm.

“It’s a capitalist solution to a social problem,” Dan is quoted as saying.

The capitalist system is so vast and so powerful, it has withstood revolutions waged by millions against it. Call it the generator of repulsive inequalities, it remains the powerful creator of unimaginable riches. Today its predominance in the world is unchallenged.

The inequality between the rich and the poor in capitalist societies has become so repugnant that not just people-oriented governments but religion, as well, has ranged itself against its perpetuation. This is how it has been in history. Social, political and religious leaders have demanded the system’s reform, to no avail.

The call for minimum wages for workers has resounded everywhere there is hardly a soul that describes itself as humanist that is against it. Even leaders of giant corporations are in favor of living wages for workers. Yet, the call has remained largely unheeded. Minimum wages may give solace to bleeding hearts, but they increase production costs, and that is hardly acceptable to profit-maximizing enterprises.

What can we do? The action of Dan is much too small to matter in the universal capitalist scheme of things. Dan himself surely did not think of himself as modifying the capitalist ethic. But, surely, there has to be something that a person can do to help his neighbor achieve a level of human dignity.

After all, as the chairman has said, “a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.”

PCSO Mindanao anniversary this week Atty. Jose Ferdinand M. Rojas II

RISING SUN

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IRECTORS and managers of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) Manila head office will be visiting Davao City this week for a gathering to mark the agency’s 80th anniversary.

To attend the celebration are managers and personnel of the eight PCSO branches in Mindanao.

PCSO Mindanao Department is headed by Mario Pelisco, and under his supervision are eight managers and their branches: lawyer Ravena Joy Rama-Patalinghug in Davao City; Raul Regondola in Misamis Oriental; lawyer Elvie Uy in South Cotabato, Gloria Ybañez in Zamboanga del Sur; Divina Salvacion in Bukidnon, Misael Hamak in Agusan del Norte; Michele Ryan Mendoza in Surigao del Norte; and Analisa Narciso in Zamboanga del Norte.

From an initial 25 branches, when the present board of directors assumed office in 2010, the PCSO now has 44 branch offices nationwide with the opening of the Northern Samar branch on April 7, headed by Financial Management Officer Lester Trongcoso. nnn

WHILE in Davao, we will also visit the branch office there and turn over ambulances to certain municipalities under the PCSO Ambulance Donation Program, which gives ambulances to cities and municipalities

under either a cost-sharing scheme or outright donation.

The ambulance-donation program is one of many initiatives of the PCSO to benefit fellow Filipinos and augment their resources during their time of need.

The agency’s flagship program is the Individual Medical Assistance Program (Imap), which provides subsidies for medical- and healthcare-related concerns, including hospitalization and surgery; treatments, such as chemotherapy, hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis; medicines; wheelchairs, implants, hearing aids and prostheses; and others.

In the fourth quarter of last year, the PCSO allocated over P1.5 billion to benefit 57,827 Imap beneficiaries.

The Endowment Fund (EF) Program provides annual grants to public hospitals to care for indigent patients. The funds are to be directly used for patient care, may not be used for administrative expenses, and need to be liquidated in line with the Commission on Audit and other appropriate rules and regulations.

An example of a typical EF recipient is the J.R. Borja General Hospital in Misamis Oriental, which, on March 23 this year, received P1 million. Last year the PCSO provided a total of P66.2 million to 63 hospitals, 53 of which are run by local government units and 10 run by the Department of Health (DOH).

The Institutional Partner Program, in line with the agency’s mandate, last year provided P10.14 million to 17 charities of national character, among them orphanages and homes for the aged.

The agency also conducts medical and dental missions. In the first quarter of this year, the agency conducted eight missions in various areas. The most recent one was held on April 15 in San Vicente, San Pedro, Laguna, providing 226 patients with basic medical care.

Other PCSO programs provide free out-patient medical- and dentalconsultation services. The charity agency also provides financial aid for the purchase of medicines, medical supplies, medical equipment and calamity assistance, which, in the last quarter of 2014, reached a total of P112.35 million.

Also in the same period, the PCSO launched two more programs.

One is the Capability Enhancement Assistance Program that will distribute P6.32 million worth of basic medical supplies and medicines to qualified barangays, health centers and patients.

The other new PCSO program will provide military and police hospitals with DOH-standard medical equipment. nnn

THE PCSO is able to raise funds

for all these programs through its operation of its Lotto games.

While the PCSO, in its various incarnations over the past decades, has run lotteries and sweepstakes of various types, the computerized Lotto version we know today was launched in 1995 and has proven to be very popular.

The latest Lotto variant is the Ultra Lotto 6/58 launched on February 7.

Sales from the PCSO’s gaming activities in 2014 reached P32.32 billion. Republic Act 1169, the agency’s charter, strictly sets the allocation of revenues: 55 percent to the Prize Fund; 30 percent to the Charity Fund (which funds the PCSO programs mentioned above); and the remaining 15 percent, to the Operating Fund.

The Operating Fund is for office expenses, personnel salaries and other administrative costs to run two offices in Manila and 44 branches across the country, with more to be added until 2016, in line with the long-term goal of establishing a PCSO branch in every province.

Because the PCSO generates its own revenues, it does not receive any budget from the national government. Public support of PCSO games not only benefits the jackpot winners but also all those who are touched, in one way or another, by the various forms of help that the PCSO extends to Filipinos.

Atty. Jose Ferdinand M. Rojas II is the vice chairman and general manager of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office.

Will the Obama administration agree to ban ‘killer robots’?

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By Steven Groves | The Heritage Foundation/TNS

HEY’RE known as “lethal autonomous weapons systems,” or Laws, although some people prefer the catchier term “killer robots.” Either way, representatives from around the world recently gathered in Geneva to debate an important question: Should they be banned from the battlefield?

What are Laws? No one can seem to agree on a definition, but basically they are weapons that, once activated by a human operator, can acquire, select and engage targets on their own. Although Laws elude a consensus definition, that has not stopped human rights, non-governmental organizations (NGO), such as Human Rights Watch and others from wanting them banned.

In their view, Laws are incapable of complying with international humanitarian law, the body of law that regulates the conduct of war. Specifically, NGOs contend that Laws cannot distinguish combatants from civilians. In their dystopian future, Cyberdyne Systems Skynet killer robots will roam the battlefield, indiscriminately

gunning down innocent civilians.

The truth is much less graphic.

In the real world, the United States and its allies already field such weapons in a defensive capacity.

For example, the Phalanx Close-In Weapon System is a rapid-fire, computer-controlled, radar-guided gun system deployed on US warships to destroy incoming antiship missiles.

Israel has one, too. Its Harpy unmanned combat air vehicle is a “fire and forget” autonomous weapon designed to destroy enemy radar stations. The Harpy autonomously loiters over the battlefield, automatically searches for and detects mobile or static antiaircraft missile radar systems, and attacks by colliding with them and detonating.

According to human-rights

NGOs, only human beings should have the ability to make “life and death decisions” on the battlefield.

But no robot built makes a “decision” on anything. Not really. A robot only executes the program that has been installed in it, basing its actions on the algorithms designed by its software engineer. While Laws may have the ability to find and destroy a target, it is the soldier that deploys the weapon who is making a life-ordeath decision, not the robot.

Let’s hope the US delegation makes these distinctions and doesn’t buy in to the NGO paradigm.

So far, the US has expressed no support for a ban on Laws. Rather the Department of Defense has issued a directive outlining US policy on the development and possible use of Laws, requiring they “be designed to allow commanders and operators to exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force.”

The US is a leader in the development of Laws, and should continue to be so. That’s the only way US armed forces can retain a tactical and stra-

tegic advantage over its enemies in future conflicts. The US delegation should block any effort to ban Laws or regulate them out of existence.

Of course, if these NGOs don’t get their way, they may well spin off and hold their own private ban conference in some foreign capital city, as they have done before. These NGOs, along with, such nations as Canada and Sweden, have in the past hosted meetings to draft and approve treaties outside the United Nations process. The results have included treaties banning antipersonnel landmines and cluster munitions. While the US has signed neither of these “treaties,” the Obama administration recently acquiesced to the ban on landmines.

Hopefully the administration will hold the line in Geneva when it comes to Laws and not cave to the NGOs again. We should continue to develop Laws in a responsible manner—and help ensure our security by keeping our armed forces at the leading edge of military technology.

Opinion BusinessMirror

opinion@businessmirror.com.ph

Monday, April 20, 2015 A11

Asia’s tough-love agenda for the IMF William Pesek

BLOOMBERG VIEW

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AGHURAM Rajan, the head of the Reserve Bank of India, has a theory for why wealthy economies have recently been underperforming: It’s because they’re hypocritical. When poor economies falter, he says, their wealthy neighbors demand structural reforms in service of making the global economy more vibrant. But they have spared themselves the same tough love.

“They have tried everything new, continuing easy monetary policy, but they still don’t have sustainable growth that they would be happy with,” Rajan said in Pune recently. The bottom line, he declared, is that “we have been too quiet in the emerging markets, saying what the developed markets do is best for the global economy.”

Rajan isn’t alone in calling for developing economies to have a bigger say in the global economy.

But as officials gather in Washington for the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, it’s fair to wonder what countries like India, China and Indonesia would do if they had the influence in those institutions that they desire. Here are three areas where emerging economies, drawing on their own experiences, would probably handle things differently.

First, they would likely insist that the global economy rely less on monetary policy. After the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis, the IMF and World Bank gave governments in the region a lengthy to-do list: reduce debt; push through painful structural reforms; maintain responsible monetary policies.

Since its own meltdown in 2008, the West has broken all these commandments—none more so than its edict against loose monetary policies.

The US Federal Reserve is Exhibit A. Its quantitative easing programs have allowed the West to put off addressing the root causes of its economic problems and caused smaller economies to be flooded with unstable investments.

Rajan rightly points out that if developing countries in Asia were to mimic Washington’s monetary policies—or those of the Bank of Japan and European Central Bank—they would be labeled currency manipulators and shamed accordingly in IMF and World Bank discussions.

Second, developing countries would want global economic institutions to be more responsive to regional needs.

More specifically, they would want institutions like the IMF and

World Bank to accelerate reforms that reduce global inequality.

As Yukon Huang, a former World Bank director, recently w rote in the Financial Times, China’s push for an Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is an expression of its desire for international institutions that are more efficient and more responsive to Asian perspectives.

“The objective,” Huang wrote, “is not simply to duplicate the supposedly ‘highest standards’ of existing institutions such as the World Bank, the IMF and the Asian Development Bank, but to use this unique opportunity to establish the ‘right standards.’”

Those include less bloat and bureaucracy; a greater focus on local governments’ evaluations of the utility and costs of projects; and a nimbler, more ad-hoc decisionmaking process.

Third, developing countries would want to grab a greater share of the spotlight in managing the institutions—and in calling out the specific deficiencies of the West.

The developed world, they believe, should show more humility on the global stage. By some measures, China’s economy is already bigger than America’s. Indian growth, for its part, may outpace China’s this year for the first time since 1999.

Meanwhile, the US and Europe have been demanding that China and other Asian countries pay more to finance the IMF and World Bank, while reserving the right to run those institutions themselves.

With IMF chief Christine Lagarde now warning of stagnation and a “new mediocre,” it’s clear the West is struggling to manage the global economy.

A dose of humility for richer economies seems only justified. If they open themselves up to a bit of criticism, it might even help them grow faster.

There’s no reason for emerging economies to delay asking for more say. “There is a concern that the rules of the game are not clearly set in the international world,” Rajan said. Starting in Washington this weekend, developing nations should demand a new rulebook.

Curse of the IMF chiefs

By Leonid Bershidsky

H

Bloomberg

AS the International Monetary Fund (IMF) been hexed? First, the former IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn was embroiled in sex scandals and charged with aggravated pimping.

Then his successor, Christine Lagarde, was placed under investigation, while still in office, for alleged negligence at her previous job as economy minister in France. And now Rodrigo Rato, who ran the IMF before StraussKahn, has been briefly detained in Madrid, in connection with one of four fraud and money-laundering accusations against him.

I don’t, of course, think the IMF is suffering the effects of some witch’s curse, but the question is more than rhetorical. As the institution itself says, it has a reputational problem that’s interfering with its ability to do its job. The continued scandals surrounding its past leaders aren’t helping.

Rato, the descendant of a wealthy,

aristocratic Spanish family, is involved in at least four controversies. One concerns the claim of a former treasurer to Spain’s ruling People’s Party that maintained a slush fund for use by Rato and other party leaders. Another centers on the use of corporate credit cards by the management of Bankia, a lender Rato headed after leaving the IMF: Rato allegedly used his unauthorized corporate card to pay €54,800 ($59,400 at today’s exchange rate) for travel, clothes and entertainment.

In a separate Bankia-related issue, Spanish authorities are investigating whether the lender’s management intentionally misled regulators about its earnings, helping to bring about the bank’s collapse and subse-

Leave ’em alone

Mindanao daw lost years of growth; and because it was lost, it can be found—by surrendering part of Mindanao to terrorists. You know, Lost & Found department. Such talk is meaningless. It is dismissed by logic as counterfactual; meaning it is a “if only blah, then blah happens.” Or “if only this, then that.”

Now, that is true of billiard balls.

If you hit a ball in one spot from a certain angle it will go this way or that and because you did not, it didn’t go one way or the other but somewhere else farther from the pocket. That is true of billiards. But that is not true of life and history.

To say that conflict stunted Mindanaoan growth begs two questions.

One, what growth? Two, what conflict? It goes against the facts that Mindanao did not grow. It did. It produced some of the largest personal fortunes in the country—and it was a growth based on real economic activity and not just on real estate. Think Dole and Del Monte, the Florendos and the Tuasons and my Tito Chito Ayala.

Mindanao has given more liveli-

hoods to more people than the rest of the country. To say that Mindanao could have grown still more can only be true in the fanciful sense that anything can be other than what it is—but only in the imagination and not in fact. You can never know what a thing might have become because something didn’t happen to it.

Another question is begged: What conflict? In the 1970s, and 1980s, the Moro National Liberal Front— led by Nur Misuari, arguably the ablest Muslim general since Saladin—fought a war of independence.

But Marcos destroyed it. Cory resurrected Misuari by letting him back in from Arabian exile. But Ramos buried him for good.

Christian settlers did not start the conflict. They never settled where there were Muslims already. Christians were attacked first; they responded in kind and a little more badly, but such is life.

You piss in my soup and I’ll crap on your grave. In the 1980s the peace and order problem was the National People’s Army. Local death

squads took care of it. Ask Duterte.

When you come down to it, there has been no real growth to speak of in the rest of the country. The Philippines made the conscious decision not to industrialize and for two good reasons.

One, we were chicken. No other Third World country, not even one as comparatively rich as ours, had tried it, let alone succeeded. Two, capital was lacking. What capital was borrowed from state banks was lost.

Democratic governments are no good at guiding economies; but without guidance, economies go wayward rather than grow.

But then even oligarchic Japan, whose economy was minutely controlled by MITI, and authoritarian Korea, which threatened businessmen to invest in mostly failed enterprises, turned out crap that passed for cars and appliances.

It was one shoddy product after another, until they begged, borrowed and stole European and American designs. Then they spent another 20 years getting the hang of them. Read Studwell’s How Asia Works.

We wouldn’t do that to our own people. If they were going to spend, they deserved the best that their hard-earned money could buy; which is to say Made in the USA. We let them import Chevys and Fords, General Electric and Westinghouse. This was not wrong. The current Japanese and Korean supremacy in carmaking and marketing do not justify four generations of exploited Japanese and Korean consumers. Read Ha-Joon Chang

quent $22.4-billion bailout. Last night Rato was detained for seven hours as part of yet another investigation, into whether the funds he repatriated from offshore accounts under a capital amnesty were of legal origin.

Rato denies all the accusations except the credit card-related ones, and has reimbursed Bankia for those expenses. Even so, a substantial cloud hangs over him. Between them, Rato and Strauss-Kahn ran the IMF for seven years until 2011. Previous IMF bosses hadn’t been so scandal-prone, and after resigning would go on to have respectable careers as senior statesmen.

Now Lagarde is fighting allegations of negligence in the case of businessman Bernard Tapie, who received a €403-million payout from the French state for damages caused to him by the nationalized bank, Credit Lyonnais, in 2008. As economy minister at the time, Lagarde allowed the arbitration that made the award. She has denied any wrongdoing, and the case appears less damaging

than those embroiling her predecessors.

None of this enhances the IMF’s prestige at a time when the austerity policies it imposes on countries such as Greece as their last-ditch lender are making it increasingly unpopular. Last year the IMF admitted that its image problem was making governments reluctant to turn to it for aid: “Policy-makers’ reluctance to come to the fund appears to stem largely from the persistently negative image that the Fund has among many civil-society opinion leaders, non-governmental organizations, and the general public, particularly in countries affected by past crises.”

The character issues facing the most recent IMF bosses contribute to the “stigma” described in the IMF policy paper. Never mind if the fund’s standard policies are correct: Are the intentions behind IMF funding decisions purely technical, or can the fund’s top officials be swayed by political interests that have little to do with the prospects of economic reform in client countries, or indeed their ability to

repay debt? By mutual agreement, the top post at the IMF always goes to a European, and the World Bank to an American. The US, with the biggest share of the IMF’s total capital and voting rights, has a de-facto veto power over appointments. It also continues to block a five-year-old proposal to reform the quota and voting system. If the change went through, emerging economies would get a stronger say and the US and Europe would lose their lock on managerial appointments.

Neither Rato, Strauss-Kahn, nor Lagarde could have been appointed as IMF director without US consent. So questions about the flexibility of their principles inevitably raise further questions about whether they might have been susceptible to political pressure.

Quota reform is coming up for discussion again at the annual World Bank and IMF meetings in Washington, which begin today. Germany’s Bundesbank said in a recent statement that the meeting would discuss what “interim steps” can be taken toward the

Teddy Locsin Jr.

T

Free fire

HESE days you will hear talk that conflict stunted the growth of Mindanao. Stunted? Why? How tall is Mindanao supposed to be? Taller, I hope, than the rest of this country.

on The Myth of Free Trade/The Secret History of Capitalism.

If we had tried to industrialize, it would have been as likely that we screwed up as that we succeeded.

Read Governing the Market by Robert Wade, together with Ha-Joon Chang, on how Taiwan’s car manufacturing never got off the ground; how its other manufacturers tanked, leaving only just recently Lenovo; and how it first took off with tomatoes and continues to prosper through other high-end, population-dense, intensive agricultural products.

Mindanao had more promise than older parts of the country. That is why poor Ilonggos moved there and armed themselves as Ilaga for self-protection.

Mindanao fulfilled its promise as best it could. Christians had a thriving agriculture, Muslims a bustling trade. The Americans called that trade smuggling and piracy. We called it cheaper soap than Proctor & Gamble sold; we called them cheaper DVDs that even embassy personnel could afford.

But when iTunes perpetrated more piracy the Americans called it progress and when China dumped on the American market through Walmart, it was free trade.

The best thing really for us up north is to leave the south alone: to live and work and die—Muslims and Christians together—like they’ve done before. Let’s not start a pretend war for a crack at the Nobel Peace Prize when we cannot even make it to Time 100.

reform objectives, so long as there’s no need for approval for the US Congress.

Last year the BRICS countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—announced the creation of their own $100-billion currency reserve and a New Development Bank as alternatives to the IMF and the World Bank. The continuing embarrassments of former IMF bosses and intractable US resistance to reform make the venture attractive to the big developing nations. The five founding governments are promising to name representatives to the $50-billion development bank by the end of this month, and to launch it early next year.

Although the dominance and financial power of the IMF, with $350 billion in available capital, have appeared unshakable, the BRICS project may start with a reputational advantage: Because it’s new, the bank won’t be weighed down by past scandals, policy failures or a legacy of outsized US and European influence. The field is open to competition.

2nd Front Page BusinessMirror

A12 Monday, April 20, 2015

San Miguel, Lopez Group eye 200-MW Mindanao coal plant

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By Lenie Lectura

HE power firms of the Lopez Group and conglomerate San Miguel Corp. are among the 12 prospective bidders for the supply contracts for the output of the 200-megawatt (MW) Mindanao Coal-fired Thermal Power plant.

The Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. (PSALM) on Friday disclosed the 12 investor groups that have paid the participation fee and executed confidentiality agreement and undertaking.

They are Conal Holdings Corp., FDC Davao Del Norte Power Corp., FirstGen Northern Power Corp., GDF Suez Energy Philippines Inc., Masinloc Power Partners Co. Ltd., Meralco Powergen Corp., Nexif Pte. Ltd., SMC Global Power Holdings Corp., SPC Power Corp., Team (Philippines) Energy Corp., Therma Southern Mindanao Inc. and Vivant Energy Corp.

These 12 interested bidders are eyeing the selection and appointment of the independent power producer administrator (IPPA) for the Mindanao Coal-fired Thermal Power Plant.

“We are delighted with the number of prospective bidders, which is more than our first IPPA bidding for the Mindanao region—that of

the Mindanao I and II (Mount Apo 1 and 2) Geothermal Power Plants.

We hope that this one will, likewise, be a successful undertaking,” PSALM President and CEO Emmanuel R. Ledesma Jr. said.

PSALM will conduct the prebid conference for the prospective bidders on May 6, in preparation for the bidding scheduled on September 23.

Located in Misamis Oriental, the Mindanao Coal plant was constructed in 2006 under a 25-year Build-OperateTransfer Power Purchase Agreement scheme, which ends in 2031.

PSALM will also auction the selection and appointment of an IPPA for the Unified Leyte Geothermal Power Plants (ULGPP).

Ledesma, in a text message sent last week, said six companies expressed their interest to participate in the bidding process. “However, out of the said figure, only four prospective bidders paid for participation fee and executed confidentiality agreement and undertaking,” he said.

ULGPP consists of the 125-MW Upper Mahiao, the 232.5-MW Malitbog, the 180-MW Mahanagdong and the 51-MW Optimization plants.

A prebid conference, which primarily discusses PSALM’s bidding procedures, will be held on May 6 for the Mindanao Coal privatization.

www.businessmirror.com.ph

PCG to beef up fleet through ₧8.8-B deal T

By Lorenz S. Marasigan

he transportation department has awarded the P8.8-billion deal that aims to enhance the Philippine Coast Guard’s (PCG) ability to protect the country’s seas, a Cabinet member announced on Sunday.

Specifically, Transportation Secretary Joseph Emilio A. Abaya said, the project involves the construction of 10-meter multirole response vessels (MRRVs) and their staggered delivery from the third quarter of 2016 to the third quarter of 2018. It was awarded to Japan Marine United

Finance chiefs see rising risks to economic upturn

Corp. (JMU) last week.

“This project is part of the government’s program to equip our forces with necessary assets to protect the national marine interest. These 10 new vessels will help the Coast Guard in its functions of maritime-law enforcement, search-and-rescue opContinued from A1

In its closing communiqué, the policysetting panel for the World Bank expressed concerns about the unevenness of global growth and pledged to work with the IMF to provide economic support for poor

erations and upholding maritime security within Philippines seas,” he said.

The project will be funded by loan from Japan under the official development assistance program.

The loan facility from the Japan International Cooperation Agency covers P7.37 billion, out of the total project cost of P8.81 billion.

Under the project terms, the MRRVs will be used by the PCG to rescue vessels within the agency’s districts’ areas of responsibility (AOR), when the extent of the disaster is beyond the capability of floating assets deployed within the area.

The vehicles will also be used to assist in the control of oil pollution and protection of

the marine environment, the enforcement of applicable maritime laws within the designated AOR, particularly relating to illegal fishing and sea patrol.

These sea-patrol vessels will also be used as platform for rapid response during relief operations in the area, and the transport of personnel and logistical support.

The MRRVs will be deployed to various PCG Districts across the country, including Manila, La Union and Puerto Prinsesa.

JMU’s winning bid also includes the supply of standard spare parts and tools, crew training, ocean transportation and marine insurance. The vessels will have a standard cruising speed of 16 knots and a range of 1,500 nautical miles.

nations that have been hit hard by falling commodity prices.

But the international aid group Oxfam expressed disappointment that the IMF and the World Bank did not devote more time to exploring ways to lessen widening income gaps.

“Given that rising inequality continues to make the headlines everywhere in the world, it is surprising how the issue remained almost totally absent from these spring meetings,” said Nicolas Mombrial, head of the Washington office of Oxfam International. AP