BusinessMirror January 21, 2015

Pope: Catholics don’t have to breed ‘like rabbits’ A

By Nicole Winfield | The Associated Press

BOARD THE PAPAL PLANE—Pope Francis is firmly upholding Church teaching banning contraception, but said on Monday that Catholics don’t have to breed “like rabbits,” and should instead practice “responsible parenting.”

Speaking with reporters en route home from the Philippines, Francis said there are plenty of Church-approved ways to regulate births. But, he said, most important, no outside institution should impose its views on regulating family size, blasting what he called the “ideological colonization” of the developing world. See “Pope,” A8

BusinessMirror

three-time rotary club of manila journalism awardee 2006, 2010, 2012

U.N. Media Award 2008

A broader look at today’s business

www.businessmirror.com.ph INSIDE

Perfect globalization

D

WORD AND LIFE, FR. SAL PUTZU, SDB AND LOUIE M. LACSON Word&Life Publications • teacherlouie1965@yahoo.com

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

Life

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

P

Globe accelerates expansion of mobile data business with new freebie offers

Get some of these new gadgets for better views of you

‘S

B J T Philadelphia Daily News

ELFIE, selfie, selfie, selfie!”

You gotta laugh at Bruce Springsteen’s comic exasperation—slapping his head and yelling—captured in a YouTubeposted video of a recent concert.

The moment comes late in the show, after a slew of ladies invited onto the stage for “Dancing in the Dark” insist on cuddling up with the Boss and taking cameraphone photos, one after another after another, before exiting the stage.

As if the thousands in attendance at the outdoor show wouldn’t notice or mind the delay.

Hopefully, you’ll be laughing, too, as ABC launches a new sitcom called Selfie. The subject is a self-absorbed social-media “superstar” whose “instafamous” life goes haywire, leading her to seek “rebranding” through a marketing guru. (The freshman series was canceled shortly after its fall 2014 debut.—Ed.) But not every newsmaking selfie of late has been amusing. It’s been reported that a doctor present at Joan Rivers’s last, tragic medical procedure snapped a selfie while Rivers was under anesthesia, moments before she went into cardiac arrest. The doctor has denied it.

■ Down with the count: More than a million selfies are taken every day, by one recent estimation. The

phenomenon is so common that the term has wiggled into the Oxford Dictionary.

And helped turn photo-sharing apps like Instagram into billion-dollar bonanzas. (Could the just-launched, short-video-sharing service selfies.com be next?)

Top smartphones are getting selfie-wise, with better front-facing cameras (and high-resolution screens) that clearly place you in the photo.

Accessory makers, too, have become selfie-centered with products that ease the arm’s-length portrait process. Consider: ■ Shutter Halo: This cordless remote shutter for smartphone cameras makes it a “snap” to capture the moment—or several in a video.

Your thumb stays off the phone and out of the picture for blur-free results. And since the tiny trigger button is easily palmed or pocketed, Shutter Halo ($24.99 at amazon.com) lets you capture images on the QT. The Halo uses a special app, running on all Apple (iOS 7.0 or later) and Android (OS 4.3 or later) devices, and pairs with the smartphone via Bluetooth 4.0.

Multiple smartphones may be triggered simultaneously by one Halo, which can dangle from your phone’s earphone jack via an attachable plug and string. And you can’t overdo a good photo-op. Shutter Halo is rated to get 100 shots a day for five years before the button needs a new battery.

■ Selfy iPad Air Case: How smart were the iLuv

guys to trademark “Selfy” and prep a whole family of Selfy products. Even though their spelling was a little off. Most essential is the Selfy iPad Air Case ($79.99 at iLuv.com), which wraps protectively around an Apple tablet, holds it up (in landscape mode) with a pop-out stand and gets the photo session started with its casestored but removable Bluetooth wireless camera remote.

My favorite four-year-old photo subject, my granddaughter, loved taking charge, posing in front of an iPad Air’s big, 9.7-inch screen (and 1.2-megapixel FaceTime camera) and tapping the trigger button.

Also in the Selfy line are a mini tripod, a car mount and a handlebar mount for bicycles and motorcycles, more suited for use with smaller tablets, phablets and phones, methinks.

■ Selfie sticks: Metal “monopod” arm extenders were originally pitched to pocket-camera users, enabling image grabs a few feet over your head or out in front.

Now, more sophisticated models like the Satechi Smart Selfie Extension Arm Monopod ($39.99 at Satechi.net or Amazon.com) are fitted with an adjustable clamp that securely locks a smartphone in place, and a 360-degree rotating head to move it “just so.” The handle has trigger buttons that communicate wirelessly with the paired smartphone via Bluetooth (3.0). A Satechi Arm shrinks down to 9.6 inches for storage, weighs a mere 5.6 ounces and can dangle off wrist, belt or backpack with the supplied strap. ■

slim dimensions, it’s packing plenty of power (Intel Atom 2.3GHz Quad Core Processor, Intel HD Graphics, 8.4-inch OLED Display with FHD resolution) inside its anodized aluminium body. Powered by Android 4.4, it won the prestigious 2015 CES “Best of Innovation” award.

A STYLUS-PACKING iPAD PRO IS COMING SOON—OR NOT IT seems that Apple’s late co-founder Steve Jobs was iffy not only about big-screened smartphones but also about any gadget that had a stylus. That said, not only has the company put out the iPhone 6 Plus with a 5.5-inch display but the buzz now going around tech circles is that Apple will also unveil an iPad with a 12.9-inch display and—you guessed it!—a stylus. The reported tablet may or may not be called the “iPad Pro” and it may or may not hit

SO YOU WANT IT THINNER? IF the excellent Android-powered Sony Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact isn’t thin enough for you even at an already insane 6.4 millimeter, Dell unveiled at the recently concluded Consumer Electronic Show (CES) 2015 its latest tablet offering, the all-new Venue 8 7000, which is downright anorexic at just 6 mm. Despite the uber-

the market on or before June.

HTC’S NEW FLAGSHIP TO BE UNVEILED AT MWC TAIWANESE smartphone maker HTC closed 2014 with encouraging numbers, and apparently it is hoping to keep the momentum going by introducing its new flagship smartphone—ostensibly to be called One (M9), ostensibly to be unveiled in its big Mobile World Congress event this March. Presumably, the M9 won’t be a such big leap in design from the current M8, but supposedly it’ll be packing more power under the hood—including a 20-megapixel rear camera while the front-facing shooter gets the company’s UltraPixel treatment to ensure better selfies; an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, Dolby 5.1 technology and Sense 7 UI.

HTC’S current flagship, the One (M8), could be in for some sibling rivalry in March.

GLOBE Telecom seeks to boost its mobile-data business with the return of its free Facebook service, this time offered with free access to top messaging app Viber, another game-changing offer to encourage adoption of mobile data and expand user base with a whole new experience.

Globe prepaid, TM postpaid and Tattoo customers can enjoy the telco’s world-renowned free Facebook offer alongside free Viber with no purchase or daily registration required and without need for Wi-Fi. The freebies were launched on January 13.

“At Globe, we like surprising customers by giving something special from time to time. We like being the brand that introduces you to new experiences, especially at little or no cost. Thanks to you, our customers, our passion for digital experiences and your digital life makes Globe the fastest-growing telco in the Philippines today. And increasingly, our approach is being adopted by others in the Philippines and across the world. We are humbled by all the local and global companies who have decided to follow in our footsteps,” says Peter Bithos, chief operating advisor at Globe.

“In that spirit, we don’t want to let 2015 to start without a bang. For an entire month beginning January 13, all Globe customers can share and chat for free with our free Facebook with free Viber offer. As always with Globe, we make it easy for you: no purchase required, no promo required, no daily registration required, and available to all Globe and Tattoo customers,” Bithos shares.

Globe customers only need to register once by texting FREEFB to 8888 for free. Free Facebook on feature phones and smartphones can be accessed via the Facebook app or Facebook’s mobile site (m.facebook.com). Moreover, there is no need for customers to purchase any data plan to avail themselves of the promo, and will only be required to register once to enjoy all the Free Facebook they want. Those who subscribed to Free Facebook previously and did not opt-out do not need to register to the offer. Meanwhile, free Viber can be accessed by simply downloading the app on their smartphones to be able to chat away for free.

Globe forged exclusive partnerships with Facebook and Viber in 2013 to offer its customers free access to the world’s leading social-networking site and messaging app enabled by service innovations for a seamless browsing experience.

Since then, Globe has seen double-digit growth in its mobile data users on the back of the increasing penetration of smartphones, rise in mobile Internet adoption, and usage of applications and over-the-top services for a richer mobile experience.

Aside from this innovative offer that strengthens the telco’s commitment to serving customers’ digital lifestyles, Globe also began offering GoChat10 on January 13. With GoChat10, Globe prepaid customers get unlimited texts to Globe/TM plus unlimited access to popular apps, such as Facebook Messenger, Viber, Line, WeChat and WhatsApp all for P10 good for one day. Customers just need to text GoChat10 to 8888 for free to register to the promo.

For more information on free Facebook+free Viber, visit Globe’s official Facebook page (www. facebook.com/globeph).

life

D1

megaworld eyes double-digit growth in 2015 BusinessMirror

E1 Wednesday, January 21, 2015

By Lorenz S. Marasigan

RIVATE railway-maintenance contractors snubbed anew the auction for the P2.38-billion Metro Rail Transit (MRT) Line 3 upkeep deal, prompting the government to look for new schemes to make it palatable to investors.

D1

FACEBOOK’S Mark Zuckerberg (left) with Globe President and CEO Ernest Cu (top); Globe Chief Operating Advisor Peter Bithos (left) with Viber’s Talmon Marco (above)

Note to selfie:

P25.00 nationwide | 7 sections 32 pages | 7 days a week

Investors shun MRT 3 deal anew

ART IN THE AGE OF LATE CAPITALISM »D4

BusinessMirror

Tuesday, November

Wednesday, January18, 21,2014 2015Vol. Vol.10 10No. No.40 104

P2.38-B MRT UPKEEP CONTRACT FAILS TO ATTRACT BIDDERS AS GROUPS ASK P-NOY TO STOP RAIL-FARE HIKE

note to selfie: get new gadgets for better views of you EAR Father, we thank You for sending Your Son in this digital age, where everything seems in great speed.

Even nature seems not in good waves because they are damaging Your beautiful creation by the calamities that come and go. We thank You for other peoples in the world who extend help and comfort at a time we need most—when human beings come together to help and collaborate, it is actualizing the divine plan of “perfect globalization.” One earth, one family of God. Amen.

nn

Editor: Tet Andolong

Megaworld eyes double-digit growth in 2015

Transportation Spokesman Michael Arthur C. Sagcal said no group bought bid documents for the maintenance deal, hence a failed auction was declared on Tuesday.

“The Bids and Awards Committee will have to declare a failure of bid, and conduct a mandatory review in accordance with rules to determine what further adjustments should be made in order to make the project acceptable to interested

groups,” he said in a text message.

This was the second round of auction for the project, after the first tender was snubbed by the following parties: Busan Transport Corp., Mosan-Inekon Phils. Ltd. Co., SMRT International Pte. Ltd., Miescorrail Inc. and D.M. Consunji Inc. The multibillion-peso upkeep deal involves a three-year concession period and sweetened terms.

Continued on A2

MCKINLEY Hill

M

B R R R

EGAWORLD Corp., a leading property developer founded by billionaire Dr. Andrew Tan, expressed optimism that it can grow in all market segments and post double-digit growth in all segments in 2015.

MACTAN Newtown

ONE Uptown Residence and Mall

“We expect townships to lead the way in our growth drive in 2015,” Jericho Go, senior vice president of Megaworld, said in a phone interview with the BusinessMirror.

“As far as Megaworld is concerned, we don’t foresee a property bubble. We don’t have speculative buyers. Just look at our condominiums—all are occupied,” Go added.

Megaworld has introduced 15 successful large-scale, master-planned, mixed-use townships across the country. These are the 18-hectare Eastwood City in Quezon City, the first cyberpark in the Philippines; Newport City in Pasay City, 25 hectares; McKinley West, 34.5 hectares; McKinley Hill, 50 hectares; Uptown Bonifacio, 15.4 hectares, and Forbes Town Center in Fort Bonifacio, 5 hectares; Mactan Newtown in Lapu-Lapu City, Cebu, 28.8 hectares; Iloilo Business Park in Mandurriao, Iloilo, 72 hectares; Woodside City in Pasig, 12.3 hectares and

Davao Park District in Davao, 11 hectares.

Further, the company’s subsidiary Suntrust Properties is developing the 350-hectare Suntrust Ecotown and GlobalEstate Resorts Inc. (Geri). Geri manages the 62-hectare Alabang West; the 561-hectare Southwoods City in the boundaries of Cavite and Laguna; the 150-hectare Boracay Newcoast in Boracay; and the 1,300-hectare Twin Lakes in Tagaytay.

Being the pioneer of the “live-workplay-learn lifestyle concept for mixed-use concept in the Philippines, known as townships, Go said the concept generated a lot of interest among foreign investors to invest in the Philippines. “Megaworld had the right business model in developing livable communities,” he said.

“A lot of people realized that they are reducing their carbon footprint and pursue green living,” Go added.

ILOILO Business Park

Geri is bullish on Alabang West because of its brisk sales and strong demand that prompted the company to launch another phase of the upscale village last year.

Of the total 788 available lots of the entire village, Geri reported almost 50 percent of the units have been sold out from October to December last year. The 62-hectare fully integrated posh township is on Daang Hari in Las Piñas City.

After the successful launch of Southwoods City and its residential village Pahara,

Geri launched the Danish-inspired Holland Park, its fi rst residential condominium development in the 561-hectare Southwoods City.

“The office rental and lease are also expected to expand, as companies, particularly multinational companies, are expected to expand their operations this year. The business-process outsourcing (BPO) industry will be one of the main growth drivers for office,” Go said.

In line with its commitment to provide

I.M.F. CUTS GROWTH FORECASTS ON‘SLUGGISH’ E.U., JAPAN, BRICS

environmental sustainability, Megaworld’s 8 Campus Place Building A in McKinley Hill was recognized as the country’s first Leadership in Energy and Environment Design (LEED) gold-certified building for BPO companies. American bank Wells Fargo is the major client of 8 Campus Place.

“Megaworld remains committed to underpin the company’s vision of creating communities that promote sustainability for the environment and maximizing the use of land. We develop a master plan where residential, commercial and office towers will be in one secured location while we are building environment-friendly structures.

Expect more green office towers in the years to come in the company,” Go said.

The 8 Campus Place Building A is comprised of three five-story buildings with a total leasable floor area of 30,000 square meters. Aside from Wells Fargo, other Megaworlds clients from the BPO sector are Accenture, International Business Machines, Hewlett-Packard and Citibank.

As far as provincial expansion is concerned, Go said the 72-hectare Iloilo Business Park township is getting a lot of interest from locators.

Megaworld is investing P35 billion for its development in the next 10 years, its biggest and most exciting venture in Western Visayas.

The Davao Park District is attracting a lot of interest to investors, as Davao is recognized as a key growth center in Mindanao. Located in an 11-hectare property along the S.P. Dakudao Loop, Davao Park District is envisioned to be Davao City’s central business district (CBD) and a major center for information technology and BPO (IT-BPO) in Mindanao.

Megaworld is allocating P15 billion in the next five to seven years to build and develop the township that will be suited for BPO companies and other corporate offices.

The 28.8-hectare Mactan Newtown is the first major township development with its own beach outside Metro Manila. Aside from high-end office towers, luxury condominiums, leisure amenities, retail shops, a school supervised by Lasso, and upscale hotels in one secured and enclosed area, township also features a cyberpark.

The IT park houses One World Center with international BPO companies, such as Results Manila and EnfraUSA Solutions Inc. Other BPO offices in the township are Two World Center, Eight Newtown Boulevard and Pacific Garden Tower.

“The company will have at least five to 10 more office towers in the township by 2021, which will have a capacity of 150,000 sq m of office spaces and will accommodate an estimated 45,000 workers in the IT-BPO sector,” Go said.

property

E1

easy Targets C1

Sports

| WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21, 2015 mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph sports@businessmirror.com.ph Editor: Jun Lomibao

NOVAK DJOKOVIC makes a forehand return to Slovenia’s Aljaz Bedene during their first-round match at the Australian Open. (Below) Petra Kvitova of the Czech Republic prepared to serve against Richel Hogenkamp of the Netherlands. AP

BusinessMirror

EASY TARGETS

DJOKOVIC, WAWRINKA ADVANCE TO 2ND ROUND AT AUSTRALIAN OPEN

B J P

The Associated Press

M Nadal’s new racket comes with a power switch

M

ELBOURNE, Australia—Rafael Nadal’s new hightech tennis racket looks and feels like his old one. Except for the on-off switch.

Call it a “smart racket,” the latest advance in tennis technology tells you where you hit the ball—with the help of an app.

Sensors embedded in the handle of the racket, made by Babolat, record technical data on every ball struck. At the end of a match or training session the data can be downloaded to a smartphone or computer and used to help analyze a player’s strengths and mistakes.

Aside from the sensors, the racket is just a racket. It’s the same size and weight as Nadal’s old-fashioned former racket.

“I know to play well I need to play 70 percent of forehands, 30 percent of backhands,” Nadal said after racing through his first-round Australian Open match over Mikhail Youzhny, 6-3, 6-2, 6-2, on Monday.

“If I’m not doing that, I know I’m not doing the right thing on court.”

“This [racket] is a way you can check these kinds of things,” added the 14-time Grand Slam winner, who was sidelined for much of last season from a wrist injury and an appendix operation.

The International Tennis Federation (ITF) had previously outlawed what it calls “player analysis technology” during competition but adopted a new rule last January that allows players to wear or use “smart” equipment, like Nadal’s new racket and devices like heart-rate monitors that record data about player performance in real time.

Babolat initially fitted the technology into its “Pure Drive” rackets, which are used by Karolina Pliskova, Julia Goerges and Yanina Wickmayer and then incorporated the sensors into a newly released version of the “AeroPro Drive” racket used by Nadal, Caroline Wozniacki and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.

Don’t expect to see players on their iPhones analyzing their game mid-match. An ITF ban on coaching during matches prevents players from consulting the data on court.

The way it works is simple, says company spokesman Thomas Otton.

There are two buttons on the bottom of the racket’s handle.

“You press the ‘on’ button. A blue LED light appears. And, you play,” Otton said. When finished, a second button is pressed, activating Bluetooth which synchs the information with a smartphone or other device.

Otton called up Nadal’s data from his practice session on Friday that lasted one hour and 31 minutes. In that time, he hit 572 shots, or 22 per minute, which broke down to 156 backhands, 222 forehands, 118 serves and 76 smashes.

The data also gets more detailed and analyzes, for example, how Nadal hit his forehands—133 had topspin, 49 had slice and 40 were flat.

Swipe to the next screen and an image of a tennis racket appears that shows where the ball is making impact. For Nadal’s practice, he hit 42 percent of shots in the center and 20 percent on top of the racket— the rest on the bottom and sides.

At a demonstration of the racket before the tournament started, Wozniacki and Nadal joked about the pros and cons of knowing too much.

“Sometimes it’s not a good thing,” said Wozniacki. “Because you think you’re hitting it in the middle of the racket, but really it shows you you’re not. And there’s no going around that.”

Nadal’s uncle and coach, Toni, joked that the racket would give him an edge.

“Sometimes when I correct Rafa on how he’s hitting the ball, he doesn’t agree.” said Toni. “Now I have the data.”

Nadal retorted, without missing a beat, “Now he has the data to know that he was wrong.” AP

ELBOURNE, Australia— Four-time Australian Open champion Novak Djokovic returned to Rod Laver Arena for the first time as a husband and father, shrugging off the effects of a cold to beat No. 16-ranked Aljaz Bedene, 6-3, 6-2, 6-4, in his first-round match on Tuesday.

Djokovic won the first of his seven major titles at the 2008 Australian Open, then won here in three consecutive years from 2011 to 2013. His 25-match winning streak at Melbourne Park ended in a quarterfinal loss to Stan Wawrinka, who went on to win the title.

Wawrinka began the defense of a major crown for the first time with a 6-1, 6-4, 6-2 win over No. 100-ranked Marsel Ilhan, taking less than one-and-a-half hours to breeze through the first round.

In a breakthrough 2014 season, Wawrinka claimed his first Grand Slam title, reached a careerhigh ranking of No. 3 and helped Roger Federer win the Davis Cup for Switzerland for the first time.

He warmed up for the season-opening major by successfully defending his title at the Chennai Open.

“It’s great, bringing me a lot of memories from last year,” Wawrinka said of his return. “It was great to come back here feeling happy,

happy with my game.”

Top-ranked Djokovic had the next match on center court and appeared to be tired and still recovering from illness after his match, saying he’d had a “rough two weeks healthwise but I’m getting up there.”

His mood changed suddenly when a court-side interview turned to reflections of 2014, when he won Wimbledon for the second time, married his longtime partner, Jelena, and the couple had a son, Stefan.

“Well those two events are the two most beautiful events I experienced in my life,” he said. “Stefan, he’s a blessing we received...now I have even more motivation.”

Two other men widely considered to be in the next generation of major winners advanced in straight sets, with No. 5 Kei Nishikori beating Nicolas Almagro, 6-4, 7-6 (1), 6-2; and No. 8 Milos Raonic firing 30 aces in a 7-6 (3), 7-6 (3), 6-3 win against qualifier Illya Marchenko.

No. 12 Feliciano Lopez struggled past American wild-card entry Denis Kudla, 3-6, 6-2, 4-6, 6-2, 10-8; No. 18 Gilles Simon beat Robin Haase, 6-1, 6-3, 6-4; and No. 19 John Isner beat Taiwanese qualifier Jimmy Wang, 7-6 (5), 6-4, 6-4.

No. 16 Fabio Fognini lost in four sets to Alejando Gonzalez.

Nishikori, returning to Grand Slam action for the first time since his run to the US Open final, dropped his opening service game but

recovered the break quickly and weathered a difficult opening match against Almagro.

Nishikori is coming off a big year in 2014, when he became the first Asian man to reach a Grand Slam singles final. He’s determined to go one better and win a major.

“Yeah, for sure, that was one of my best results in my career that gave me a lot of confidence,” the Japanese star said. “I beat a lot of top-10 players.”

Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova needed only 63 minutes for her 6-1, 6-4 win over Richel Hogenkamp.

Two-time champion Victoria Azarenka continued her comeback from a foot injury with a convincing 6-3, 6-2 win over Sloane Stephens and will next have to play US Open finalist Caroline Wozniacki, who beat 18-yearold American Taylor Townsend, 7-6 (1), 6-2.

No. 11 Dominika Cibulkova, a finalist here last year, opened with a 3-6, 6-3, 6-1 comeback win against Kirsten Flipkens.

Limited to just nine tournaments last year, Azarenka’s ranking has fallen to No. 44 and she is unseeded at a Grand Slam for the first time since the 2007 US Open.

2011 US Open champion Sam Stosur had a 6-4, 6-1 victory against Monica Niculescu, and No. 19 Alize Cornet beat Zhang Shuai 6-3, 6-2. No. 24 Garbine Muguruza and No. 25 Barbora Zahlavoa Strycova advanced with straight-sets wins.

Two-time champ Li Na is pregnant

M

RAFAEL NADAL is using a high-tech new tennis racket called “smart racket” in the Australian Open. AP

ELBOURNE, Australia—Retired two-time Grand Slam champion Li Na was always known for her timing on court at the Australian Open, whether it was a cleanly struck passing shot or a deadpanned wisecrack at the expense of her husband, Jiang Shan.

Returning to Melbourne Park for the first time since hoisting the championship trophy last year, the Chinese star made yet another popular delivery at Rod Laver Arena on Monday, announcing to the crowd that she and her husband—who also goes by the name Dennis—are expecting their first child.

“I’m not sure I can trust everyone or not,” she playfully told the crowd before letting everyone in on her secret. “Me and Dennis, we are so excited our first child will be out in the summer. Dennis is doing good job—he just makes one ace.”

Li later posted a message on Facebook saying she chose to make the big announcement at Rod Laver Arena because of the special connection she felt with the Australian crowd during her two runner-up finishes at Melbourne Park in 2011 and 2013, and her title run last year.

“I was no longer alone out there fighting my opponent [and sometimes myself]; today it felt like I was in the company of my 15,000

friends,” she wrote. “And it really feels like this baby is going to enter the world already having about 15,000 friends.”

After becoming the first Asian player to win a major at the 2011 French Open and then capturing her second Grand Slam last year, Li decided to walk away from the game in September due to recurring knee injuries.

Li has kept busy since her retirement—she has been traveling with her husband and making plans to open her own tennis academy in China.

And now she has a big arrival on the way.

“We can’t wait to become parents and start this new chapter together,” she wrote. AP

sports

c1

T

he International Monetary Fund (IMF) lowered its forecasts for global growth over the next two years, warning on Tuesday that weakness in most major economies will trump gains from lower oil prices. The IMF’s report was released as China reported its slowest growth in 24 years.

The IMF downgraded projections it issued in October by 0.3 percentage point each, predicting global growth at 3.5 percent this year and 3.7 percent in 2016.

But, even with those reductions, the world economy will be growing faster than in 2014, when the IMF estimates it expanded 3.3 percent.

Much of the momentum is coming from an accelerating recovery in the US, the world’s largest economy.

China reported on Tuesday that its economic growth slowed to 7.4

PESO exchange rates n US 44.6810

percent last year, the weakest expansion since 1990, compounding the challenges for the country’s com-munist leaders as they try to overhaul the economy.

Europe, Japan and Russia are also logging slower growth, while the US is a rare bright spot.

“The recovery in the US is quite strong and, therefore, it will continue, despite the appreciation of the dollar,”Olivier Blanchard, the IMF director of research, told reporters in Beijing in a briefing broadcast online.

The advanced economies are forecast to expand by 2.4 percent in 2015, a smidgen higher than earlier thought, and at the same rate in 2016.

Growth in developing economies is forecast to slip to 4.3 percent from an estimated 4.4 percent in 2014, but then recover to 4.7 percent in 2016.

See “Growth,” A2

Student-Council leaders from different colleges and universities, as well as several sectoral leaders representing people’s organizations, urged President Aquino to exercise his “power of control” by revoking Department Order 2014-14 issued by the Department of Transportation and Communications, which provided for the Metro Rail Transit and Light Rail Transit fare hike. KEVIN DELA CRUZ

Beltran: PHL to save IT’S A SCARY $6B if oil stays at $50 WORLD–

F

ilipino consumers stand to save around $6 billion in expenses on gasoline, if oil prices in the world market continue to hover around the $50-per-barrel level for the whole year, according to the government’s chief economist.

Finance Undersecretary Gil Beltran said on Tuesday the $6 billion in savings could translate to more purchasing power for Filipino consumers, which could eventually drive economic growth faster.

Beltran based the $6-billion estimated savings on the assumption that oil prices in the world market will hover $50 per barrel.

He said the Philippines imports around $12 billion worth of oil each year, previously at an average price of around $100 per barrel. The drastic cut in the price of oil could bring about the $6 billion in savings.

“The government may not benefit so much from the lower oil prices; but lower oil prices translates to more purchasing power for Filipino consumers. That’s $6 billion that will eventually go to the economy,” he said.

Beltran said the negative effect that lower oil prices could have on the government is the lower collection of duties by the Bureau of Customs.

David Cagahastian

KRUGMAN

By VG Cabuag

H

ong Kong—Economics professor Paul Krugman believes there will not be another financial crisis that would put the world economy into a great depression, but said it is still a “scary world” with China’s growth slowing, while Europe’s version of the quantitative easing (QE) scheme may not work.

Krugman, a professor at Princeton University, told delegates of the Asian Financial Forum on Tuesday that Continued on A8

n japan 0.3799 n UK 67.5353 n HK 5.7632 n CHINA 7.1831 n singapore 33.5166 n australia 36.6208 n EU 51.8657 n SAUDI arabia 11.9010 Source: BSP (20 January 2015)

News BusinessMirror

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

A2

Investors shun MRT 3 deal anew

Growth. . . Continued from A1

“New factors supporting growth—lower oil prices, but also depreciation of the euro and yen—are more than offset by persistent negative forces, including the lingering legacies of the crisis and lower potential growth in many countries,” Blanchard said.

Diminished expectations for many economies are discouraging investment, which, in turn, is undermining potential future growth, the report said. Blanchard described Russia’s outlook as “quite bleak,” and said the slower growth in China would hurt nations it imports from, especially in Asia.

“The most obvious risks involve stagnation in the euro zone, or Japan, or both,” Blanchard said.

Massive monetary and fiscal stimulus have yet to trigger strong corporate spending in Japan, where companies are pessimistic about a rebound in consumer demand because of the country’s shrinking and aging population.

Still, the 55-percent plunge in oil prices in US dollar terms since September is raising the purchasing power of consumers and businesses in Japan and many countries, while also raising demand among oil importers. It also reduces pressure on central banks to raise interest rates to cool inflation.

That presents a “complicated mosaic” of implications, Blanchard said, with some countries reaping windfalls in energy savings, while others face smaller tax and export revenue.

Overall, weaker prices for oil and other commodities are sapping growth prospects for countries in the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa—especially Nigeria and South Africa—and Latin America. China’s slowdown will stunt growth throughout developing Asia.

Among the key trends and possibilities it outlines: ■ World trade will accelerate in advanced economies, growing 3.7 percent in 2015 and 4.8 percent in 2016, up from 3.0 percent last year. But growth in trade volume will fall this year in emerging markets, such as China, before rebounding to expand 6.1 percent in 2016.

■ Weaker oil prices will drag on inflation, with consumer prices rising only 1.0 percent in the advanced economies and 5.7 percent in emerging markets.

■ Volatility in prices for oil and other resources has raised risks in global financial markets, with a potential for destabilizing outflows of money from emerging markets.

■ Geopolitical risks, such as turmoil in the Middle East and war in the Ukraine, remain high, though ample supplies have reduced the likelihood of serious supply disruptions.

■ Lower oil prices could give both producing and consuming countries the leeway to enact energy reforms. Eliminating subsidies may free up resources for helping the poor or building needed infrastructure. AP

Continued from A1

Due to the failed bidding, the current upkeep provider, APT Global Inc., will continue maintaining the line, along with the shadowing team deployed by the transport agency.

“I’m not surprised that no one bought bid documents for the MRT’s maintenance,” Rene S. Santiago, a railway expert, told the BusinessMirror via phone. “Serious railway contractors will never bite into that bidding.” Maintenance providers, he said, are spooked by the lack of transparency as to the real state of the line.

“The audit of MTR Hong Kong was accurate, but the government refused to acknowledge it. Nobody would want to participate in a fantasy bid,” Santiago explained.

In a 39-page summarized audit report, nine railway experts from Hong Kong’s MTR Corp. Ltd. agreed that the most congested train line in the Philippines had obsolete facilities that require immediate attention to safely and conveniently ferry passengers between the northern and southern terminals in Metro Manila.

The document concluded that the overhead mass-transit system had major flaws in rails, emphasizing on the need to replace “unsafe tracks” that was backed by a fourfold increase in broken rails over a period of three years. Tracks, according to the report, were graded poor, meaning extensive defect exists.

The audit team concluded that most of the existing problems in the asset system of the 15-year line stemmed from insufficient attention in the management of the asset, handover, maintenance performance, and the overall planning and development of the railway line.

The government is currently rolling out a P9.7-billion venture to overhaul the line. The complete makeover is ex-

pected to be done within the term of President Aquino.

It includes the procurement of additional train coaches, train general overhauling, ancillary systems upgrade, platform edge doorstep, signaling system upgrade, rail steel replacement, communications system upgrade, traction motors replacement, and the improvement of the overhead catenary system.

The rehab venture also includes security fence and noise barrier, consulting services, upgrade of conveyance facilities, a footbridge for the North Avenue Station, weather-protection cladding, Internet connection, passenger-information system and passenger hand straps.

Separately the local flagship of the Hong Kong-based First Pacific Co. Ltd. is proposing to shoulder the upgrade costs of the train system and free the government from paying billions of pesos in equity-rental payments.

Metro Pacific Investments Corp. President Jose Ma. K. Lim said his group will soon submit its $524-million proposal to the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC), which has already rejected the then $565-million offer.

The lower budget for the offer, Metro Pacific Business Development Officer John B. Echauz explained, stemmed from the removal of the automated farecollection system and another component from the proposal. The unified ticketingsystem project was auctioned off by the transportation agency in 2013, and was awarded to the consortium between Metro Pacific and Ayala Corp. in 2014.

The total $524 million also included the $30-million working capital and the $229-million budget for the settlement of the government’s equity-rental payment.

The group of businessman Manuel V. Pangilinan earlier entered into a partnership agreement with the corporate

3-DAY EXTENDED FORECAST JANUARY 21, 2015 | WEDNESDAY

TODAY’S WEATHER

JAN 22 THURSDAY

owner of the MRT, a move that would have allowed the firm to invest roughly $600 million to improve the services of the train system.

The venture would effectively expand the capacity of the railway system by adding more coaches to each train, allowing it to carry more cars at faster intervals.

The multimillion-dollar expansion plan would double the capacity of the line to 700,000 passengers a day, from the current 350,000 passengers. It was submitted in 2011, but the transportation agency’s chief back then rejected the proposal.

The government, on the other hand, intends to buy out the corporate owner of the line, the MRTC, which is wholly-owned

by MRT Holdings II Inc. of businessman Robert John L. Sobrepena.

The government aims to completely take over the line by the time President Aquino steps down from office in 2016.

But recent delays, including the “tying up of loose ends,” are forcing the government to double its efforts to effect the buyout.

One of the requirements to execute the takeover is for the government to strike up a compromise deal with the private owner of the train line.

This would effectively end the ongoing arbitration case in Singapore that was lodged against the government in 2008 due to its failure, as the operator of the line, to pay billions of equity-rentals payment to the owner of the rail system.

Should the buyout be completed in 2016, the transportation agency may then bid out the operations and maintenance contract of the line, thereby tapping private-sector efficiency and customer-service orientation for operational needs, while retaining regulatory functions for passenger protection with the government.

Since 2004, the train system has been operating at overcapacity. Currently, the line serves nearly 550,000 passengers a

JAN 23 FRIDAY

JAN 24 SATURDAY

JAN 22 THURSDAY

JAN 23 FRIDAY

JAN 24 SATURDAY

24 – 31°C

24 – 31°C

23 – 31°C

22 – 30°C

23 – 30°C

23 – 31°C

METRO CEBU

TUGUEGARAO

19 – 26°C

19 – 27°C

19 – 27°C

TACLOBAN

24 – 31°C

23 – 30°C

23 – 30°C

22 – 29°C

CAGAYAN DE ORO

24 – 32°C

24 – 32°C

25 – 32°C

METRO DAVAO

25 – 33°C

24 – 33°C

24 – 33°C

24 – 33°C

BAGUIO

LAOAG CITY 21 – 28°C

TUGUEGARAO CITY 19 – 25°C

BAGUIO CITY 13 – 20°C

SBMA/ CLARK

SBMA/CLARK 20 – 30°C TAGAYTAY CITY 18 – 28°C

TAGAYTAY

22 – 28°C

13 – 19°C

21 – 30°C

19 – 28°C

22 – 29°C

13 – 20°C

21 – 31°C

19 – 28°C

13 – 20°C

22 – 31°C

LEGAZPI ILOILO/ BACOLOD 24 – 30°C METRO CEBU 24 – 30°C

TACLOBAN CITY 24 – 30°C

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY 24 – 31°C

ZAMBOANGA CITY 23 – 34°C

PUERTO PRINCESA

ILOILO/ BACOLOD

23 – 31°C

22 – 31°C

ZAMBOANGA

SUNSET

MOONSET

MOONRISE

6:25 AM

5:49 PM

6:39 PM

6:41 AM

22 – 30°C

NEW MOON HALF MOON

24 – 32°C

JAN 27

12:48 PM

CELEBES SEA

10:31 PM

1.23 METER

Partly cloudy to at times cloudy with rainshowers

24 – 31°C

24 – 31°C

24 – 32°C

Cloudy skies with rain showers and/or thunderstorms

Weekday hourly updates: 6:00 AM on Balitaan, 7:00 AM & 8:00 AM on Good Morning Boss!, 9:00 AM, 10:00 AM, 11:00 AM, 12:00 PM, 1:00 PM on News@1, 3:00 PM, 4:30 PM, and 6:00 PM on News@6

www.panahon.tv

SABAH

5:56 AM

-0.27 METER

Partly cloudy to at times cloudy with rain showers and/or thunderstorms

Watch PANAHON.TV everyday at 5:00 AM on PTV (Channel 4).

METRO DAVAO 25 – 32°C

LOW TIDEMANILA HIGH TIDE SOUTH HARBOR

JAN 20

24 – 32°C

24 – 34°C

SUNRISE

9:14 PM

24 – 31°C

24 – 33°C

19 – 29°C

LEGAZPI CITY 22 – 31°C

PHILIPPINE AREA OF RESPONSIBILITY (PAR)

With Jovee Marie N. dela Cruz

METRO MANILA

LAOAG

PUERTO PRINCESA CITY 24 – 31°C

3-DAY EXTENDED FORECAST

day, it even reached, at one point this year, the 650,000 daily passenger mark. It has a rated capacity of 350,000 daily passengers.

Meanwhile, multisectoral leaders on Tuesday filed a letter-petition before the Office of the President, asking President Aquino to review and suspend the fare adjustment for the MRT and the Light Railway Transit.

The groups, led by Party-list Reps.

Walden Bello and Barry Gutierrez of Akbayan, together with student-council leaders from different universities, as well as sectoral leaders representing several people’s organizations, asked Mr. Aquino to exercise his “power of control” by revoking Department Order 2014-14 issued by the DOTC, which provided for the fare hike.

“In addition to the Constitution, the powers of the President are also provided

by Executive Order 292, s. 1987, otherwise known as the Administrative Code of 1987. Specifically, Book III, Title I, Chapter I, Section 1 gives the President the ‘mandate of control’ or ‘power of control’ over all the executive departments, bureaus and offices,” Gutierrez said.

“As such, President Aquino has the power to immediately suspend, if not put a permanent halt, to the implementation of fare hike. President Aquino is well within his mandate if he decides to put on hold the fare-hike adjustment pending a comprehensive review of the scheme and its impact on the riding public,” he added.

On January 13 the Supreme Court decided not to issue a temporary restraining order against the MRT-LRT fare increase.

It instead ordered Transportation Secretary Joseph Emilio Abaya, LRTA Administrator Honorito Chaneco, MRT 3 Officer in Charge Renato San Jose, the MRT Corp. and the Light Rail Manila Consortium to give their side on the petitions challenging the fare hikes’ legality.

NORTHEAST MONSOON AFFECTING NORTHERN LUZON. (AS OF JANUARY 20, 5:00 PM)

Northeast Monsoon locally known as “Amihan”. It affects the eastern portions of the country. It is cold and dry; characterized by widespread cloudiness with rain showers.

METRO MANILA 21 – 31°C

news@businessmirror.com.ph

@PanahonTV

Light rains

news@businessmirror.com.ph

The Nation BusinessMirror

Editor: Dionisio L. Pelayo • Wednesday, January 21, 2015 A3

Chairman of MNLF faction seeks Cha-cha for BBL

T

By Jovee Marie N. dela Cruz

HE leader of one of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) factions on Tuesday asked lawmakers to consider amending the 1987 Constitution, or Charter Change (Cha-cha), to resolve all constitutional issues in the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL).

Datu HJ. Abdul Khayr Alonto, chairman one of the four factions of the MNLF, said during a hearing of the House ad hoc committee on the BBL that his faction is backing the Cha-cha proposal to pave the way for the passage of the BBL, following several issues on the constitutionality of the BBL. “If there are, indeed, constitutional infirmities in the BBL, then let us raise and address them now, so that our nation may be made aware that the time to amend the Constitution has come,” he said.

Earlier, Puwersa ng Masang Pilipino Rep. Rufus Rodriguez of Cagayan de Oro City, chairman of the ad hoc committee, admitted that there are some questionable provisions in the bill, like the delegation of the duties of constitutional bodies to the envisioned Bangsamoro political entity.

Alonto, meanwhile, also expressed support for the creation of a federal parliamentary form of government.

He said federal parliamentary form of government will result in the attainment of genuine peace, justice and freedom.

“A federation can enhance national unity in diversity, strengthen the mechanism of transparency and accountability in good governance, and usher in a truly equitable development, progress and prosperity in the Philippines,” Alonto said.

For his part, Rodriguez welcomed the full support of the MNLF group, led by Alonto, for the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro and the BBL as its legal iteration.

Rodriguez said a statement signed by Alonto and Moro Islamic Liberation Front Chairman Al Haj Murad Ebrahim expressed a reiteration of MNLF’s support to the “full implementation of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro, particularly the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro and all its annexes as published in the MNLF Declaration of Unity at Lama Mardeka published on March 18, 2014.”

Alonto is a founding leader of the MNLF and first vice chairman of the original MNLF Central Committee. Early last year, he was elected by 35 out of the 39 surviving members of the original Central Committee as their head, and he represents one of the four groups of the MNLF. “We welcome the support of the Chairman Alonto’s group,” Rodriguez said. “It has always been our position that the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law is not only for the MILF, but is for all Bangsamoro, all Muslims, Christians and Lumads, and all other groups and sectors.”

Meanwhile, the statement of Alonto also cited that both Moro fronts agree to “continue working together to foster strong Unity, Solidarity and Brotherhood as one Bangsamoro people.”

The statement also called on the rest of the Filipino nation to “rally behind the President and Congress…for the immediate passage of the Bangsamoro Basic Law and the establishment of

Makabayan bloc hits Comelec for P300-M deal with Smartmatic

By Marvyn N. Benaning Correspondent

T

HE seven-member Makabayan bloc in the House of Representatives hits the Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Tuesday for awarding the P300-million contract for the refurbishment of voting machines to Smartmatic-TIM without public bidding.

Makabayan said the contract covers more than 80,000 Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines.

“Entering into a negotiated contract for the refurbishment of the Pcos machines not only violates the Government Procurement Act but also exposes our electoral system to high risks of fraud, especially as Smartmatic—which has been involved in the stillunresolved issues of election rigging in the 2013 elections— will again get its hands on the Pcos machines,” the lawmakers said.

Senior Deputy Minority Floor Leader Neri Colmenares particularly slammed the “lack of transparency” in the whole process of selecting Smartmatic-TIM for the contract.

“The Government Procurement Act has been enacted to make procurement transparent. By choosing Smartmatic-TIM for the refurbishment contract without the benefit of a public bidding, Comelec has closed that small window of transparency afforded by the Procurement Act,” he said.

Party-list Rep. Terry Ridon of Kabataan also stressed that Smartmatic-TIM should not even have a part in the upcoming elections.

“There are still unresolved anomalies with regard to the Pcos machines used in past elections. Instead of awarding another contract to Smartmatic-TIM, Comelec should have blacklisted this company,” Ridon added.

Party-list Rep. Luz Ilagan of Gabriela Women’s {arty reminded Comelec that the competency of the Pcos machines is still under question.

“Comelec cannot simply discount the continuing objections of technical experts led

by AES [Automatic Election System] Watch on the competency of the machines previously supplied by Smartmatic to ensure the sanctity of the ballot. Now, they are even allowed to tinker with the machines again. This move will seriously affect the credibility of the 2016 presidential elections,” Ilagan said.

“Even the Comelec knows that Smartmatic-TIM should be blacklisted. The only thing preventing them from doing so is the fact that such move will confirm reports of election rigging in past automated polls,” the legislators said in a statement.

the Bangsamoro government.”

Moreover, Rodriguez said the ad hoc committee is expected to finish its hearing on BBL on Wednesday for them conduct a executive session on January 26 finalizing the measure.

The BBL is expected to be passed

by Congress during the first quarter of the year, followed by a plebiscite in the envisioned core territory toward the

entrenchment of the Bangsamoro political entity.

Meanwhile, Muslimin Sema, also one of the chairmen of the four factions of the MNLF, said there are other important issues on BBL that need to be resolved immediately, such as the participation in the whole process of the MNLF. “Where is the MNLF in all of these, considering it

is the MNLF that negotiated for our people the principles of autonomy laid down in 1976 Tripoli Agreement?”

Sema asked.

Sema added that the “MNLF did not come here in the presence of this august body to register our rejection, as well as our acceptance of the BBL. We are present in the body and spirit only as a reminder to those who may have

forgotten that our people have sacrificed so much only to be on the verge of losing what they have gained out of their sacrifices.”

Sema added that the current form of the proposed BBL is a recipe for disintegration of the current autonomous region, unless “our perspective on this matter is taken with a grain of salt.”

Economy

A4 Wednesday, January 21, 2015 • Editors: Vittorio V. Vitug and Max V. de Leon

BusinessMirror

news@businessmirror.com.ph

Poverty reduction gets lion’s share of 2015 budget–DBM

I

N support of the Aquino administration’s intensified drive to reduce poverty in the country, the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) on Tuesday said that social services have been allotted with 36.6 percent, or P952.7 billion—the largest of all sectoral allocations—of the 2015 P2.606-trillion national budget.

The allocation toward the administration’s poverty-reduction programs reinforces President Aquino’s key message for the 2015 fiscal year: “No one, especially the poor and the

vulnerable, should be left behind.”

The social services component of the 2015 budget program of P952.7 billion—up by 13.2 percent compared to last year’s budget—will help

the national government achieve its Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of reducing poverty incidence to 16 percent by 2016 while sustaining equal opportunities for all.

Budget Secretary Florencio B. Abad said, “To ensure that the administration can properly reach out to the country’s poorest, we had to ensure sufficient funding support for programs under our agencies on the front lines of poverty reduction.”

One of these agencies, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), was already set to receive a larger share from the then-proposed 2015 national budget even before the latter’s congressional review and approval. In the end, the DSWD received P108.2 billion, 29.8 percent higher from its 2014 budget.

The DSWD’s primary program

in helping the poor is the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program, also known as the Conditional-Cash Transfer (CCT) Program. With a budget of P62.3 billion, the program provides conditional-cash grants to extremely poor households to help reduce poverty for 4.3 million families.

The DSWD also has other programs to address social protection: The Kalahi-CIDSS National Community-Driven Development Project, which seeks to empower communities in accessing services and participating in local planning, budgeting and implantation. This program will support 6,735 community projects that cater to 1.5 million poor households.

The Sustainable Livelihood Program, which covers families who

graduate from the CCT Program. This program will support 265,175 family beneficiaries with microenterprise developments and 113,647 households under the employment facilitation through capacity development.

Social pensions for indigent senior citizens, which allocates a monthly social pension of P500 to 939,609 indigent senior citizens aged 65 and above.

The Supplemental Feeding Program, which is part of the government’s Early Childhood Care and Development Program, is a foodsupplementation program that will give hot meals to children during snack/mealtime five days a week for 120 days.

The National Household Targeting System, an information-management system that identifies who

and where the poor are, besides ranking and classifying them. Updated every four years, it has already identified 5.2 million poor households entitled to social protection as of 2011.

Abad said, “The budget allocation for social protection is part of the administration’s investment in the people, who are ultimately the country’s most invaluable resource.

From creating more jobs for our growing population to ensuring the well-being of the poorest and most vulnerable, the national government is resolved to improve the quality of life of our citizens.

“More important, however, is ensuring that Filipinos get equal opportunity to benefit from our economic gains, and that the growth we’ve already tracked can be sustained beyond this administration.” PNA

PCCI sees potential to transform PHL into Asean manufacturing hub

By Catherine N. Pillas

T

he Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) is urging businesses to maximize the Asean-Korea Free Trade Agreement (AKFTA), stressing that the country has the potential to be a manufacturing hub by which South Korea can tap the rest of Asean.

PCCI President Alfredo M. Yao, in a speech delivered to the PhilippineKorea Economic Council (Philkorec), promoted better use of the freetrade arrangement between Asean and South Korea as an avenue to

boost business ties.

“Fur t her streng t hening our business ties means better utilization of the provisions of Asean-Korea Free Trade Agreement in order to further increase trade between the parties through the elimination of tariff and nontariff barriers, as well as creation of conducive market conditions,” Yao said during the inauguration of the new members, board of directors, and senior advisers of Philkorec.

According to Export Marketing Bureau Director Senen M. Perlada, the utilization of the AKFTA, mea-

sured in terms of the issuances of certificate of origin by the BOC from 2008 to 2013, have seen a gradual rise in the period measured.

A certificate of origin (CO) is a declaration by the exporter, submitted to the BOC for validation, that shows his export products comply with the origin requirements specified under bilateral, regional, or multilateral trading arrangements to which the Philippines is a party to.

Data given by Perlada show that from 2008 to 2013, COs have shown a steady increase in the five-year period, increasing as such: 2008—1,970;

Thank you!

2009—2,082; 2010—2,415; 2011— 3,475; 2012—3,383; and 2013 —3,701 The Export Marketing Bureau, under the Department of Trade and Industry, spearheads the Doing Business in the Free Trade Area (DBFTA) Program, which aims to educate and inform businesses around the country on using the free-trade arrangements that the Philippines has.

“I encourage you to attract Korean firms so that they can consider the Philippines as a manufacturing hub for products for export to the 600-million population of Associa-

tion of Southeast Asian Nations,” Yao said.

Philkorec is a nonstock organization created under the auspices of the PCCI and is composed of local companies doing business with Korean firms. Members of the Philkorec are mostly in manufacturing and service organizations, specifically in the fields of agribusiness, import and export, consumer goods, auto parts servicing and manufacturing, consumer goods, durable equipment, educational services, metro rail, insurance, hotels and leisure, security services, steel manufacturing, con-

WB, DA: No special projects for calamity-stricken areas

By Marvyn N. Benaning Correspondent

B

T

he ALC Group of Companies joins the nation in thanking the hardworking men and women who labored day and night to ensure the safety and comfort of His Holiness Pope Francis during his pastoral visit to the Philippines from January 15 to 19.

We congratulate the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, the Philippine National Police, the Armed Forces of the Philippines, the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority, the Philippine National Red Cross and other volunteer groups for a job well done in service to the nation and the whole Christian community.

Maraming salamat po!

—Amb. Antonio L. Cabangon Chua Founder and Chairman Emeritus

struction and maintenance works.

South Korea is ranked as the Philippines’s fifth major trading partner, sixth export market and fifth import supplier.

Data from the Philippine Statistics Authority show that trade with South Korea amounted to $4.115 billion, of the total external trade for the first semester of 2014, or 6.7 percent of the country’s total external trade.

Total exports receipts to the Republic of Korea amounted to $1.334 billion, while imports were valued at $2.780 billion, posting a trade deficit of $1.446 billion.

oth the Department of Agriculture (DA) and the World Bank (WB) have admitted that the Philippine Rural Development Project (PRDP) has no special emphasis on disaster-hit areas in central Philippines.

Moreover, they still have to bare publicly the accomplishments of the Mindanao Rural Development Project (MRDP), which Agriculture Secretary Proceso J. Alcala hailed as a “success,” even as a previous WB review noted the sluggish absorption of funds and the low number of proposed projects in many of the more than 100 municipalities targeted by the DA and WB. At a news briefing on Tuesday at the Fernando Lopez Hall of the Bureau of Soils and Water Management at the DA main office in Quezon City, Carolina F. Geron, WB lead rural development specialist, said it is the DA which has to pursue the projects for three regions in the Visayas hit by Supertyphoon Yolanda in 2013.

The typhoon cost agriculture more than P3 billion in damage, destroyed 16 million coconut trees, killed 7,350 people with hundreds, even thousands, still missing, and ruined up to 90 percent of Tacloban City and the Samar provinces.

However, Alcala said “PRDP will be implemented with the Asean Economic Community [AEC] in mind. With PRDP, we shall be competitive.” Geron assured journalists that the final report on the MRDP will be released soon.

MRDP is important in planning and implementing PRDP, considering that the DA officials had to fan out to hundreds of towns to convince local officials to make use of the funds borrowed from the WB. Curiously, a most significant segment of the PRDP, the Enterprise Component (I-REAP), only has a portfolio of 31 subprojects worth P361.84 million and it covers market assistance, capability-building, technology development and production and postharvest support.

In the case of Mindanao, as noted by economist Dr. Gilbert Llanto in his paper “Strengthening Markets of High Value Fruits and Vegetables in Mindanao: The Case of Transport and Shipping Service Improvement” delivered during the second international conference on Agriculture and Rural Development 2014 at the Makati Shangri-La Hotel on November 12 and 13, farmers have to contend with high freight costs to bring their produce to markets in the Visayas and Luzon.

Llanto also wrote a monograph on the same issue for the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Research and Graduate Study in Agriculture (Searca) and argued that even with better roads, good telecommunications facilities and adequate power supply, the cost of transporting vegetables and fruits within Mindanao was still a high P1,000 per metric ton (MT.)

Alcala and Geron are practically arguing that pumping in more money for farmers and fishermen would ipso facto lead to higher incomes, with PRDP executive director saying that in the case of MRDP, the target was to raise the incomes of farmers and fishermen by 20 percent.

The goal is crucial since 49 percent of millions of fishermen live below the poverty line, like 44 percent of scores of millions of farmers, including the more than 1.2 million in Southern Luzon who do not own land and those who have reverted back being tenants in land covered by the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP.) Alcala and Geron said that there is a total of P11.382 billion earmarked for production, marketing and logistics support for farmers and fishermen in the countryside and the projects to be covered have been proposed by local government units (LGUs).

However, the question is just how significant these projects would be in the light of the AEC, which reduces tariffs to a range of zero percent to 5 percent, thus militating against millions of Filipino farmers who have to contend with imported rice from Vietnam and Thailand.

Similarly, the farmers and fishermen being supported by the PRDP will be at the losing end as foreign agricultural commodities flood the market.

The government and the WB signed PRDP’s P27.5billion loan-and-grant agreement on September 8, 2014, which was declared effective and ready for loan drawdown in early December 2014, even as the supposed beneficiaries are still on the planning stage.

For the project’s official first year from July 2014 to June 2015, planning covered 66 provinces out of the total 80 as of December 2014.

Of this number, 29 had their provincial commodity investment plans (PCIPs) approved by their respective Provincial Development Council (PDC).

A total of 195 subprojects have already been proposed

by LGUs under the Infrastructure Development Component (I-BUILD) worth P11.02 billion, part of which is the construction and rehabilitation of 1,121 kilometers of farm-to-market roads (FMRs) costing P9.7 billion.

“We do not need to start new projects and enterprises if there are those we can enhance, upscale or mainstream.

All our trading posts, grains processing centers, fish ports and other facilities are I-REAP projects in waiting. Some of these only need to be appropriately situated in the commodity value chain or only need to be jumpstarted through one of our financing programs,” Alcala said.

Based on PRDP’s progress report, 58 provincial LGUs have already entered into a partnership with the DA for the project by signing memoranda of agreement.

Since its inception two years ago, the project now has value-chain analyses for 25 PRDP priority commodities all over the country, including coffee, rubber, mango and seaweeds.

Economy BusinessMirror

news@businessmirror.com.ph

briefs aquino retains satisfaction ratings in sws survey, palace says

THE Aquino administration, despite setbacks from climate-induced and man-made calamities that hit the country last year, managed to retain its +34 net satisfaction rating in the Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey conducted during the last quarter of 2014, the Palace said on Tuesday.

“We take cognizance of the latest survey of the SWS which shows a net satisfaction rating of +34 for the general performance of the administration,” Communications Secretary Herminio B. Coloma Jr. said.

Coloma assured that in the remaining 18 months of President Aquino’s six-year term, the government “shall continue to ramp up the implementation of vital plans, activities and programs,” as well as other public services launched under President Aquino’s watch.

The Palace official also affirmed the Aquino administration’s commitment “to achieve our goals of inclusive growth especially in the areas of peace and order, job security and livelihood, strengthening the purchasing power of consumers and providing justice to the victims of the Maguindanao massacre.”

Coloma’s brief statement, however, did not provide other details of the SWS survey. Butch Fernandez

u.k. health-care trade mission visits phl A health-care trade mission from the United Kingdom is seeking local partners and business prospects in the Philippines.

Eight UK-based companies in the health-care sector will be in the country on Wednesday to meet with key players and potential partners in the same sector.

The companies will showcase their expertise in a wide range of products and services, among them health-care technologies, equipment and devices; hospital infrastructure, design, management and maintenance; medicines and health supplements.

Participating companies include: Brandon Medical Co. Ltd., Dental Composite Ltd., EC Harris Ltd., GCE Ltd., Halewood Chemicals Ltd., International SOS (PHL) Inc., Medikit Ltd. and Sidhil Ltd. As of the first semester of 2014, total external trade in goods of the Philippines with the European Union amounted to $7.004 billion, or 11.4 percent, of the country's total external trade. Of the $7.004 billion, the UK accounted for 6.1 percent, or $427 million.

dnd allots p246.4m for acquisition of 3 flight simulators

IN line with its efforts to increase the proficiency of its military pilots, the Department of National Defense (DND) is allocating P246,430,000 for the acquisition of three full-motion flight simulators for the Philippine Air Force.

This includes integrated logistic support for the equipment.

Natalio Ecarma III, DND bidding and awards committee chairman, said the full-motion simulators will allow pilots “almost full sensory experience that can aid in improving flight instruction, enhancing proficiency, minimizing risks associated with emergency procedures training, reducing accidents, filling up downtimes, and saving on aircraft operational and maintenance costs.”

The Philippines’s is in the process of rebuilding its Air Force with the acquisition of 12 new South Korean F/A-50 “Fighting Eagle” jet fighters, eight attack helicopters, and possible six attack planes. Winning bidders are required to deliver the equipment within 600 calendar days from the opening of the letter of credit.

Prebid conference is slated for January 22, while bid opening is on February 5. Both events will be held at the DND bidding and awards committee conference room, ring wing basement, DND building, Camp Aguinaldo, Quezon City. PNA

Wednesday, January 21, 2015 A5

PHL still leads in devt aid effectiveness–Neda

D

By Cai U. Ordinario

espite the need to increase the use of the country’s rules and regulations in development aid, the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) believes the Philippines remains a leader in meeting the commitments under the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness.

The declaration, drafted in 2000, aims to improve the use of official development assistance (ODA) and make it more respon-

sive to the world’s development needs by 2015.

“The Philippines comes out as a leader in responding to the Paris

commitment areas, particularly with ownership, alignment, and it is very evident in the way we deal with our development partners,” Neda Deputy Director General Rolando G. Tungpalan said.

“We still need to work on the use of country systems but on the whole, I think, [in] the key commitment areas, the Philippines stands highly. We’re a leader,” he added.

Tungpalan said the country’s dependence on ODA has significantly decreased because of the availability of government funds to finance projects and the increase in the use of public-private partnership schemes to undertake key infrastructure projects.

With this, Tung pa lan said the Philippines’s use for ODA is focused on building capacity of

various line agencies and local governments. Apart from these, ODA is used to finance strategic projects like those on access to energy and rule of law.

As of December 2013, the country’s total ODA portfolio amounted to $12.05 billion consisting of 77 loans worth $9.09 billion and 503 grants worth $2.97 billion.

However, trend in ODA commitments over the past 10 years has been declining. “ W h i l e t h e t o t a l ODA i s shrinking, the use of ODA must be more strategic and selective, and we will benefit from the experience and technologies [of development partners],” Tungpalan said.

The 12 indicators of the Paris Declaration are on development

partners having operational development strategies, building reliable country systems, aligning aid flows with national priorities and strengthening capacity by coordinated support.

Other indicators were on the use of country Public Financial Management Systems; use of Country Procurement Systems; avoiding parallel implementation structures; the predictability of aid and untying aid.

T he last batch include indicators on using common arrangements or procedures; joint country missions; joint country analytical work; quality of count r y per for m a nce a ssessment framework; and the availability of mechanisms for mutual assessment of progress.

Malaya Unit 1 repair, rehab on track, PSALM’s Ledesma assures

By Lenie Lectura

T

he Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management (PSALM) on Tuesday said STX Marine Service Co. Ltd. of South Korea is currently assessing the extent of repair that needs to be done on Unit 1 of the Malaya thermal power plant.

“We have completed the uncoupling and are now in the process of evaluating the extent of the damage and rehab works,” PSALM President

Emmanuel Ledesma Jr. said in a text message when sought for an update.

The unit was last inspected on Wednesday last week, prior to the January 5 inspection in which one of the four couplings was removed.

Still, the state firm is hopeful that the 90-day work schedule to overhaul Malaya 1 would be met in time for the anticipated power shortage in summer of 2015.

Once Malaya 1 is rehabilitated, the entire Malaya facility can run at its full

LTFRB holds consultation on regulation of transport network, vehicle services

t

he Land Transportation Franchising and ReguGINEZ: “The board latory Board (LTFRB) is is open to embracing holding a consultation workshop new technology that with representatives of various can improve public transport network companies land transportation (TNCs) and taxi operators this and promote safety week to discuss guidelines and of the public, but we policies in regulating transport also have an obligation network and vehicle services to exercise our duty (TNS/TNV). to regulate public The workshop with TNCs is network services.” scheduled on Tuesday afternoon, and with taxi operators and the public on Wednesday afternoon at the board’s main office in Quezon City.

“Nais po naming marinig ang panig ng iba’t-ibang sector ng transportasyon at ng publiko bago po kami magpatupad ng regulasyon na magbibigay ng permiso at accreditation sa mga transport network companies na magoperate ng transportation network vehicle service,” LTFRB Chairman Winston Ginez said.

Ginez said the board is holding the workshop in response to the increasing preference and clamor of the riding public to allow private transport operators offer online-enabled transportation services.

A series of crackdown on these operators late last year resulted in the apprehension of several private car owners operating without a permit or franchise from the board.

“The board is open to embracing new technology that can improve public land transportation and promote safety of the public, but we also have an obligation to exercise our duty to regulate public network services,” Ginez added.

Expected to be discussed during the two-day workshop include policy papers on: Transportation Network Service as a New Mode of Service for Public Land Transportation and Accreditation of Transportation Network Companies; Terms and Conditions of a Certificate of Transportation Network Company Accreditation; Rules and Regulations to Govern the Accreditation of Transportation Network Companies; Implementing Guidelines for the Issuance of a Certificate of Public Convenience to Operate a Transportation Network Vehicle Service; and Terms and Conditions of a Certificate of Public Convenience to Operate a Transportation Network Vehicle Service Among the salient points that will be tackled during the public consultation include: Obligations of accredited TNCs to offer online-enabled services with rate structure approved by the board, including total fare and range by distance or time; Comprehensive screening and background check of TNC drivers and proper identification displayed in accredited vehicles; Compliance of TNCs on insurance requirements to protect the riding public in the event of an accident; and Issuance of electronic receipts to passengers approved by the internal revenue, either by e-mail or text message.

“Bottomline is we want to ensure the public’s safety and convenience by issuing CPCs only to qualified TNCs/TNVs who will meet the requirements that the board will set based on the result of this workshop,” Ginez said. PNA

capacity of 650 megawatts (MW).

“We are still looking at finishing the work on March 3, 2015, or 90 days after, per contract stipulation,” Ledesma added. Under the terms of reference, STX Marine work must be completed within 90 days from issuance of the Notice to Proceed.

The government wants the rehabilitation of the Malaya Unit 1 done before summer of next year to make it available in time for the 2015 Malampaya shutdown.

The Malampaya facility will go offline from March 15 to April 14, 2015, to commence Phase 3 of the Malampaya project involving the installation of a platform aimed at maintaining the fuel supply to power plants providing half of Luzon’s power needs.

The Malaya power facility consists of a 300-MW unit with a once-through type boiler and a 350-MW unit fitted with a conventional boiler. It was rehabilitated in 1995 by the Korea Electric Power Corp. under a 15-year rehabilitate-operate-

manage-maintain agreement.

STX Marine also recently bagged a one-year contract to operate and maintain the two units of the Malaya thermal power plant.

STX is engaged in the design, construction, supervision and repair of system or equipment related to energy. The company is also a provider of maritime solutions, and among its services are ship management, marine transportation and brokerage, and ship design, construction, leasing and repair.

Opinion BusinessMirror

A6 Wednesday, January 21, 2015

editorial

Freedom and responsibility

A

FTER Pope Francis’s five-day visit to the Philippines, we are left to ponder the meaning of his messages to us and to the people of the world at large on compassion for the poor, opposition to inequality, abhorrence of corruption. Here we focus on his comment on freedom of expression, as reported by the press.

The press reports that when asked to speak on the recent attack on the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo that left 12 people dead, the pope defended freedom of expression as not only a fundamental human right but a duty to speak for the sake of the common good. However, the pope said that there are limits to this freedom. When this freedom is used to insult another person, one can expect a response.

“It’s normal. You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others.

You cannot make fun of the faith of others.

“There are so many people who speak badly about religions or other religions, who make fun of them, who make a game out of the religions of others.

They are provocateurs.”

Provocateurs should expect a reaction of some sort. There is a limit, as the pope said.

The pope did not, by any means, condone the attack on Charlie Hebdo. Quite the contrary. He said that such horrific violence inflicted in God’s name cannot be justified. On another occasion, Francis called on Muslim leaders to speak out against Islamic extremism.

The issue is actually much older than the French satirical weekly. In our youth, we were told that our freedom of speech did not include freedom to scream “fire” in a crowded theater. In another version, we were told that our freedom to swing our arm stops where our neighbor’s nose begins.

In other words, freedom must be tempered with responsibility. As the press reports noted, in virtually all societies, freedom of speech has its limits, from laws against Holocaust denial to racially motivated hate speech.

Recently, the Vatican and four prominent French imams issued a joint declaration that, while denouncing the Paris attacks, urged the media to treat religions with respect.

In the Philippines, we are fond of quoting Voltaire: “I do not agree with what you say but I shall defend to the death your right to say it.” But we tend to forget that perhaps Voltaire did not mean using freedom to insult others.

But where freedom has, in fact, been used to insult, surely the person insulted has the right to retaliate.

What kind of retaliation, or what specific method of retaliation, will be used by the insulted, whether the retaliation is excessive, is just right, is deficient, we cannot pretend to know. Who will do the determining?

In the battle of civilizations, will Christianity do the determining or will Islam? As in Nuremberg, the victor will.

BusinessMirror A broader look at today’s business Ambassador Antonio L. Cabangon Chua Founder Publisher Editor in Chief

T. Anthony C. Cabangon Jun B. Vallecera

Associate Editor News Editor City & Assignments Editor Special Projects Editor

Jennifer A. Ng Dionisio L. Pelayo Vittorio V. Vitug Max V. de Leon

Online Editor

Ruben M. Cruz Jr.

Research Bureau Head Creative Director Chief Photographer Chairman of the Board & Ombudsman President VP-Finance VP-Corporate Affairs VP Advertising Sales Advertising Sales Manager Circulation Manager

Dennis D. Estopace Eduardo A. Davad Nonilon G. Reyes Judge Pedro T. Santiago (Ret.) Benjamin V. Ramos Adebelo D. Gasmin Frederick M. Alegre Marvin Nisperos Estigoy Aldwin Maralit Tolosa Rolando M. Manangan

BusinessMirror is published daily by the Philippine Business Daily Mirror Publishing, Inc., with offices on the 3rd floor of Dominga Building III 2113 Chino Roces Avenue corner De La Rosa Street, Makati City, Philippines.

Tel. Nos. (Editorial) 817-9467; 813-0725. Fax line: 813-7025.

(Advertising Sales) 893-2019; 817-1351, 817-2807.

(Circulation) 893-1662; 814-0134 to 36. E-mail: news@businessmirror.com.ph.

HOM

www.businessmirror.com.ph

REGIONAL OFFICES

n DXQR -93dot5 HOME RADIO CAGAYAN DE ORO STATION MANAGER: JENNIFER B. YTING E-MAIL ADDRESS: homecdo@yahoo.com ADDRESS: Archbishop Hayes corner Velez Street, Cagayan de Oro City CONTACT NOs.: (088) 227-2104/ 857-9350/ 0922-811-3997 n DYQC -106dot7 HOME RADIO CEBU STATION MANAGER: JULIUS A. MANAHAN E-MAIL ADDRESS: homecebu@yahoo.com ADDRESS: Ground Floor, Fortune Life Building, Jones Avenue, Cebu City CONTACT NOs.: (032) 253-2973/ 234-4252/ 416-1067/ 0922-811-3994 n DWQT -89dot3 HOME RADIO DAGUPAN STATION MANAGER: RAMIR C. DE GUZMAN E-MAIL ADDRESS: homeradiodagupan@ yahoo.com ADDRESS: 4th Floor, Orchids Hotel Building, Rizal Street, Dagupan City

CONTACT NOs.: (075) 522-8209/ 515-4663/ 0922-811-4001 n DXQM – 98dot7 HOME RADIO DAVAO STATION MANAGER: RYAN C. RODRIGUEZ E-MAIL ADDRESS: home98dot7@gmail.com ADDRESS: 4D 3rd Floor, ATU Plaza, Duterte Street, Davao City CONTACT NOs.: (082) 222-2337/ 221-7537/ 0922-811-3996 n DXQS -98dot3 HOME RADIO GENERAL SANTOS STATION MANAGER: AILYM C. MATANGUIHAN E-MAIL ADDRESS: homegensan@yahoo.com ADDRESS: Ground Floor, Dimalanta Building, Pioneer Avenue, General Santos City CONTACT NOs.: (083) 301-2769/ 553-6137/ 0922-811-3998 n DYQN -89dot5 HOME RADIO ILOILO STATION MANAGER: MARIPAZ U. SONG E-MAIL ADDRESS: homeiloilo@yahoo.com ADDRESS: 3rd Floor, Eternal Plans Building,

Ortiz Street, Iloilo City CONTACT NOs.: (033) 337-2698/ 508-8102/ 0922-811-3995 n DWQA -92dot3 HOME RADIO LEGAZPI STATION MANAGER: CLETO PIO D. ABOGADO E-MAIL ADDRESS: homeradiolegazpi@ yahoo.com ADDRESS: 4th Floor, Fortune Building, Rizal St., Brgy. Pigcale, Legazpi City CONTACT NOs.: (052) 480-4858/ 820-6880/ 0922-811-3992 n DWQJ -95dot1 HOME RADIO NAGA STATION MANAGER: JUSTO MANUEL P. VILLANTE JR. EMAIL ADDRESS: homenaga@yahoo.com ADDRESS: Eternal Garden Compound, Balatas Road, Naga City CONTACT NOs.: (054) 473-3818/ 811-2951/ 0922-811-3993

Printed by BROWN MADONNA Press, Inc.–San Valley Drive KM-15, South Superhighway, Parañaque, Metro Manila

Call to action: Take care of the poor Susie G. Bugante

All About Social Security

P

OPE Francis is now back in Vatican City and yet the Pope Francis effect continues to captivate the hearts of millions of Filipinos. Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle, archbishop of Manila, called on the Catholic faithful to live out and put into action the words of the pope, who in the six homilies that he gave during his five-day visit to the Philippines, repeatedly challenged his flock to care for the poor.

Dubbed as the champion of the poor, Francis said, “The great biblical tradition enjoins on all peoples the duty to hear the voice of the poor. It bids us break the bonds of injustice and oppression which give rise to glaring, and, indeed, scandalous, social inequities.” He

further stated, “There is the challenge for the poor, with your bishops. Do you think of the poor? Do you feel with the poor? Do you do something for the poor? Do you ask the poor to give you the wisdom they have?” This is a challenge for all of us Filipinos, Catholics and

non-Catholics alike, to respond to the poverty, social exclusion and inequality around us.

As I listened to these words of the pope, I couldn’t help but feel grateful that I work for an institution that is a “powerful instrument for poverty reduction and social cohesion.” Just like many social-security institutions around the world, the Social Security System’s (SSS) mandate is to provide social protection against life’s contingencies that result in economic distress for the worker and his family. Such contingencies include old age, disability, death, sickness and child birth. The SSS deals with the elderly, the sick, the infirm, the widows and orphans who are oftentimes the “least of our brethren.” Being able to serve them is a great blessing!

On another note, to make SSS services more accessible to the public, a new branch in Santa Mesa is

What Obama could teach China William Pesek

BLOOMBERG VIEW

W

HAT a difference six years makes. China’s Premier Li Keqiang lands in Davos this week, leading the most highlevel Chinese delegation to the annual Swiss retreat since 2009. Those meetings took place as the US economy was crashing and threatening to bring down the global economy. By contrast, just weeks earlier, Chinese leaders had unleashed a bold, $586-billion stimulus package to shore up growth. Grateful policymakers hailed the move—a rare bright spot amid the prevailing gloom.

This year, the positions are reversed. A Chinese slowdown is shaking confidence around the globe, while America’s strengths are more evident than ever. Today’s 7.7-percent plunge inShanghai stocks—the biggest since 2008—underscores how volatile conditions have grown on the mainland. Li had intended tomorrow’s speech on “The New Global Context” to reassure political and financial leaders that Beijing has matters under control. The job is getting harder by the day.

China could do worse than to study how the US has recovered so quickly since 2009. President Barack Obama’s policies have drawn endless flak in Washington from both ends of the political spectrum. To the traditionally pragmatic Chinese, though, the results should be

incontrovertible. With its strengthening dollar and 5.6-percent jobless rate, the US is offsetting the increasing drag from China. Indeed, without the rebound in US demand, the mainland economy itself would be worse off right now: Last December exports to the US climbed 9.9 percent from a year earlier.

Economists can debate whether Obama’s own post-crisis stimulus package was big enough. What the US has been able to do, though, is cleanse its excesses quickly and transparently. The purchase of distressed assets and equity from financial institutions, coupled with regulatory reforms like the Dodd-Frank Act to rein in Wall Street risk, reopened credit channels and facilitated growth.

The US, says John Calverley, head of economic research at Standard

Chartered Bank, “turned around once balance sheets were fixed. China needs to fix balance sheets.”

For all the talk about a “new normal” and scrapping its debt-fueled, investment-led growth model, credit is still exploding in China: Up about $20 trillion since 2008. Well-connected state-run enterprises are exploiting loopholes to borrow from the vast shadow-banking system at the expense of the private sector.

With China’s property bubble beginning to burst, worrying cracks are starting to appear in the financial system. Nonperforming loans grew to $11.7 billion in the third quarter alone.

Only when China truly clamps down on these excesses and creates mechanisms to rid balance sheets of bad assets can the economic healing begin. Instead, Li and his boss, Chinese President Xi Jinping, are delaying the surge in defaults everyone knows is coming. The travails of Kaisa Group, which could be the first Chinese real-estate company to default on dollar-denominated bonds, have already generated global headlines. What should be even more worrying to the Davos set is that 62 percent of all US dollar bond sales in the Asia-Pacific region ex Japan last year ($244.4 billion of the $392.5 billion total) were by Chinese companies.

At the same time, China needs to do something for which Obama has been pilloried: redistribute wealth.

To spur the consumer spending

scheduled to be inaugurated at 4 in the afternoon onFriday, January 23, 2015. It is located at the second floor of J&T Building, 3894 Ramon Magsaysay Boulevard corner Santol extension road, Santa Mesa, Manila.

At present, there are 3,244 employers and 22,634 employee-members under the jurisdiction of the branch.

This number is expected to grow as SSS continues the coverage of informal-sector workers such as market vendors, tricycle drivers and other self-employed persons.

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

Susie G. Bugante is the vice president for public affairs and special events of the Social Security System.

Send comments about this column to susiebugante.bmirror@gmail.com.

needed to rebalance the economy, Beijing needs to enact tax cuts for the middle class, strengthen worker rights and build a proper social-safety net.

Obama achieved this last goal with the Affordable Care Act. China could deploy some of its $3.8 trillion of currency reserves to improve access to health care and education. Instead, Li recently rolled out a $1.1-trillion stimulus bonanza—nearly double the size of the 2009 package—that will enrich Communist Party cronies more than average families, while adding to public debt.

Finally, China’s political leaders would be better off leaving the task of boosting growth to central bank Gov. Zhou Xiaochuan. Just as Obama deferred economic-maintenance duties to the Fed, Beijing should entrust the People’s Bank of China to fan growth without exacerbating the nation’s liabilities. With the threat of deflation rising, China could use all the monetary assistance Zhou can provide to relieve stress on borrowers.

China doesn’t send its premiers to Davos lightly. A 1992 visit to the conclave by Li Peng marked China’s reemergence from the dark days of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. The next appearance was Premier Wen Jiabao’s 17 years later—a far more exuberant moment for the rising power. This time around, US officials are sure to hear more kudos than Li is. Rather than sulking, China’s premier should think hard about why.

Opinion BusinessMirror

opinion@businessmirror.com.ph

OFW compulsory insurance Dennis B. Funa

INSURANCE FORUM

R

EPUBLIC Act (RA) 8042, otherwise known as the “Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos Act of 1995”, provided for numerous welfare schemes for our overseas heroes, the overseas Filipino workers (OFWs).

Among these schemes include the various measures implemented for the prevention and punishment of illegal recruitment. This law also provided for free legal assistance for victims of illegal recruitment and for the creation of a Legal Assistance Fund (Section 25). Its provisions also mandated the establishment of the Emergency Repatriation Fund (Section 15), the Migrant Workers Loan Guarantee Fund (Section 21) and the Congressional Migrant Workers Scholarship Fund (Section 37).

However, despite the existence of these indispensible measures, the law has proved insufficient in providing adequate protection.

Thus, on July 27, 2009, RA 10022 was enacted, inserting Section 37-A in RA 8042, which provided for the “Compulsory Insurance Coverage for Agency-Hired Workers”.

Under Section 37-A, “(i)n addition to the performance bond to be filed by the recruitment/manning agency under Section 10, each migrant worker deployed by a recruitment/manning agency shall be covered by a compulsory insurance policy which shall be secured at no cost to the said worker. Such insurance policy shall be effective for the duration of the migrant worker’s employment x x x.”

Every migrant worker shall be covered for: a) accidental death (with a minimum survivor’s benefit of $15,000); b) natural death (with a minimum survivor’s benefit of $10,000); c) permanent total disablement (with a minimum of $7,500 disability benefit); d) repatriation cost of the worker when the employment is terminated without any valid cause; e) subsistence allowance benefit (with a minimum of $100 per month for a maximum of six months for a migrant worker who is involved in a case or litigation for the protection of his/her rights in the receiving country; and f) money claims arising from employer’s liability.

In addition, the insurance policy shall also provide for: g) compassionate visit (where the insurance company shall pay for the transportation cost of the family member or requested individual to the major airport closest to the place of hospitalization of the worker); h) medical evacuation; and i) medical repatriation.

On July 8, 2010, the Omnibus Rules and Regulations Implementing the Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos Act of 1995, as Amended by RA 10022, was signed by the heads of the five government agencies involved, which include the Insurance Commission.

Rule XIV thereof created an InterAgency Committee that included the Insurance Commission (IC) “to implement a shared government information system for migration.”

Rule XVI deals with the compulsory insurance for “agency-hired workers”.

Under Section 5 of Rule XVI, “the recruitment/agency shall have the right to choose from any of the qualified insurance providers the company that will insure the migrant worker that it will deploy.

After procuring such insurance policy, the recruitment/manning agency shall provide an authenticated copy thereof to the migrant worker. It shall then submit the certificate of insurance coverage of the migrant worker to the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) as a requirement

for the issuance of Overseas Employment Certificate (OEC) to the migrant worker. In the case of seafarers who are insured under policies issued by foreign insurance companies, the POEA shall accept certificates or other proofs of cover from recruitment/manning agencies: Provided, that the minimum coverage under subparagraphs (a) to (i) are included therein. For this purpose, foreign insurance companies shall include entities providing indemnity cover to the vessel.”

Thus, without the insurance coverage, the OEC cannot be issued to the migrant worker.

Under Section 15 of Rule XVI, the IC, “as the lead agency, shall, together with Department of Labor and Employment, National Labor Relations Commission and POEA, in consultation with the recruitment/ manning agencies and legitimate non-government organizations advocating the rights and welfare of OFWs, issue the necessary implementing rules and regulations, including a) qualifications of participating insurers, b) accreditation of insurers, c) uniform standard policy format, d) premium rates, e) benefits, f) underwriting guidelines, and others.”

The POEA issued Memorandum Circular 9, dated October 21, 2010, clarifying that all agencyhired OFWs, whether land-based or sea-based, shall be covered by the compulsory insurance. Agency-hired OFWs are those hired through POEA, licensed land-based recruitment or manning agencies.

As provided by this circular, it is the recruitment/manning agencies or the foreign principal/employer who shall pay the cost of the insurance coverage.

Recently, there have been clamors in Congress to include “war risks” among the coverage of the compulsory insurance. House Bill 4924, for example, calls for the inclusion of war risk, including “invasion, insurrection, revolution, military coup and terrorism” among the covered risks.

On March 7, 2011, the IC issued Circular Letter 10-2011 (modifying Circular Letter 35-2010 dated December 7, 2010). Through this circular, “the determination of premium rate” is left “to the sound business decision of the insurance providers based on prudent underwriting principles and practices.”

However, the circular also decreed the strict observance of “the reserve requirements from which the claims fund shall be drawn” and mandated that the minimum reserves computation shall be strictly implemented.

In 2013 the remittances of the Filipinos working overseas had amounted to $22.97 billion and are expected to reach up to $24 billion for the year 2014. For these people who have given so much of themselves for the sake of providing for their family and who have become one of the strongest pillars of our country’s economy, it is only right for the national government to give its utmost best to protect them, their families and their interests. Impediments continue to challenge the government’s ability to fulfill its role, but by upholding the law, surely, nothing is impossible.

Dennis B. Funa is presently the Deputy Insurance Commissioner for Legal Services of the Insurance Commission.

E-mail: dennisfuna@yahoo.com

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

An ambassador for mankind Sen. Edgardo J. Angara

T

HIS past weekend, millions filled the streets and braved the rains just to catch a glimpse of Pope Francis. The warmth of the crowd’s welcome marks the intensity of their faith as much as it demonstrates the Argentinean pontiff’s charisma.

Nearly two years since he became leader of the world’s 1.8 billion Catholics, Pope Francis has grown in popularity, jump-starting a Vatican turnaround from an institution hounded by bureaucratic inertia and controversy to an exemplar of compassionate moderation. In the process, he has become a favored global leader, respected even by non- Catholics across the world.

With immense social capital,

he effectively brokered the normalization of US-Cuba diplomatic relations through personal letters to Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro. He convened a December 2014 summit, where leaders of various faiths and religions jointly pledged to eradicate modern slavery by 2020—a scourge affecting up to 36 million people today.

During these instances and more, Francis demonstrated his capacity to spur action and rally people

around “secular” causes—following through on his pronouncements that the Church should address practical matters and “smell of their flock,” as much as it should be rooted in doctrine.

In the run-up to his visit to the Philippines, Francis expressed his resolve to influence the global debate on climate change, particularly the UN Climate Change talks in Paris this year. The pope said that he is preparing to circulate an encyclical on the moral imperative of arresting climate change, given the poor and marginalized are the ones most affected by its devastating effects. During his sermon at the University of Santo Tomas, he challenged Filipino youth to have a “concern for the environment,” adding that the Philippines, “more than others is likely to be seriously affected by climate change.”

He has also taken steps toward addressing issues related to religious extremism, even before recent

A7

horrific acts of violence in Paris, Hamburg, Sydney and Northern Nigeria brought these to light.

In his annual “State of the World” address to the diplomatic corps at the Holy See, he underscored that “violence is always the product of a falsification of religion,” as he urged “religious, political and intellectual leaders” to “condemn all fundamentalist and extremist interpretations of religion.” Reacting to questions about the recent Charlie Hebdo attacks, Francis said, “To kill in the name of God is an aberration.”

As bishop of Rome, Francis follows in the holy—even, divine— lineage of Saint Peter, the “rock” of the worldwide Catholic Church.

As an emerging global leader, respected by people of different religions, places and origins, he appears to be humanity’s most staunch advocate.

E-mail: angara.ed@gmail.com

People who buy ‘humane meat’ are kidding themselves

By Michelle Kretzer

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

A

T dinner with a friend the other night, it became glaringly obvious to me how ubiquitous the “humane meat” movement is becoming in our food culture. As we perused the menu at a quaint, locally owned Italian restaurant, we were struck by the prominently placed reassurances that the chicken was “free-range” and “all-natural.” Our server was well versed in humane meat vernacular, rattling off phrases such as “small, sustainable farms” with the same quick recall with which she could recite chardonnays.

The growing demand for meat labeled “organic” and even “humane” and raised “according to the highest animal-welfare standards” is a response to our collective distaste for the factory farming of animals. People are disgusted, and rightly so, by the intense confinement, deprivation and mutilation that animals endure, followed by what is often a violent and painful slaughter.

But when author, historian and Texas State University professor James McWilliams took a closer look at the claims of humane meat and the farms that supply it, he found that behind the “agrarian myth, bucolic marketing, media hype, and self-interested rational-

izations” are more torment and abuse of animals. In his new book, The Modern Savage: Our Unthinking Decision to Eat Animals, McWilliams exposes the pervasive cruelty even on so-called humane farms and examines the hypocrisy of claiming to care about animal welfare while still “supporting the very products that allow agribusiness not only to stay in business, but to thrive.” And he convincingly presents the only real solution to the problem of industrial animal agriculture: We must stop eating animals.

Simply removing animals from the industrial setting usually doesn’t change people’s view or treatment of them. Even on so-called humane farms, animals are still commodities

to be processed and turned into profit. McWilliams writes about a dairy farmer who names each of his cows but still slaughters them when their milk production starts to wane. Farmers of grass-fed cattle heartlessly tear calves away from their loving mothers and sell them to industrial farms for “cash flow.”

Pigs have septum rings clipped to their snouts to stop them from rooting. A sow has each of her babies wrenched away and sold, “squealing and shrieking,” and the males are castrated without painkillers.

Chickens—heavily medicated and denied veterinary care—die of disease, extreme weather and attacks by other animals.

As People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals noted in a complaint filed last November with the Federal Trade Commission, even deliberate abuse of animals, including kicking and throwing them, does not necessarily cause a company to fail the humane certification process.

And the idea of humane farming is built on a glaring, inescapable paradox: The animal is killed, but death is never mentioned. It’s what McWilliams calls a clever “sleight of hand” trick that allows humane meat purveyors to convince

consumers that because the animals may have had one or two small improvements to their living conditions compared to conditions in factory farming, their deaths are somehow immaterial.

Most “humanely raised” animals are killed in the same slaughterhouses used by factory farms.

McWilliams quotes a farmer who talks about a “kind and gentle” pig: “I will never forget the way she looked back at me as she walked through the slaughter chute.” A goat farmer laments, “To watch a sentient being gasp for air and to look into his eyes filled with fear and to see the blood coming from his neck?

It’s the most heart-wrenching, awful thing.”

A self-proclaimed “ humane farmer” admits that “out of the corner of your eye, in the blurry periphery of your vision, something dark, and something evil lurks: It is the truth: Meat is indeed murder.”

We are, of course, outraged by industrial animal agriculture. But the appropriate response isn’t the rhetoric of humane meat. We can do better. We can show genuine compassion to animals and let them have the only thing they would ask for: simply to live in peace. TNS Forum

2nd Front Page BusinessMirror

A8 Wednesday, January 21, 2015

D.O.E. ENDORSES MORE R.E. PROJECTS TO E.R.C.

T

By Lenie Lectura

he Department of Energy (DOE) has endorsed to the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) several renewable-energy (RE) projects for approval.

The agency, in a statement issued on Tuesday, said it has already issued certificates of endorsement to five biomass, three hydro, two solar and four wind projects, with a total feed-in-tariff (FIT) capacity of 304.051 megawatts (MW).

To promote the use of RE on a larger scale and to attract new investments for RE facilities, the government is banking on the FIT system.

The FIT is a premium rate paid for electricity fed into the power grid from a designated RE generation source, like solar-energy system and wind power plant.

The DOE said it will continue to monitor the FIT applications alongside its campaign for sustainable development. Energy Secretary Carlos Jericho L. Petilla continues to encourage industry players to invest more in RE. He said his office has been vigorously increasing the list of issuances for the COE to the ERC. Petilla said this trend reflects the behavior of the energy sector, and the entrance of new technologies, which simplify the construction of RE facilities. The milestone approach, which

accelerated the application processes from 100 days down to nearly 45 days, also contributed to the active participation of the private sector in developing potential RE areas in the country.

Meanwhile, the National Renewable Energy Board (NREB) urged the government to avail itself of the policies, mechanisms and incentives provided under the Renewable Energy Act of 2008 (Republic Act 9513) to beef up the power supply in the next two years. “The NREB says RE is the best option. Given the need to address the immediate requirement for new power capacity, several RE solutions may provide such capacity within 1- to 2-year time frame,” said Techie Capellan, president of the Philippine Solar Alliance, in a recent interview with the BusinessMirror.

Capellan said RE can be deployed faster, citing San Carlos Solar Energy Inc. in San Carlos City, Negros Occidental, which was completed in less than 12 months.

“Solar-energy and wind-energy farms are the fastest to build, with full construction schedules within a year,” Capellan added. Meanwhile, Capellan said the 40-MW solar power plant of Majestics Energy Corp. in Cavite City was completed several months ago and, when connected to the grid, would immediately augment the power supply in Luzon.

With Rizal Raoul Reyes

www.businessmirror.com.ph

BOP slightly recovers, but yields largest deficit on record in 2014

T

By Bianca Cuaresma

he balance of payments (BOP), which details the country’s transactions with the rest of the world, ended as a shortfall or as deficit in 2014, totaling $2.88 billion.

This was the widest shortfall the BOP has sustained since the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) started tracking the BOP under the so-called new BPM6 concept or method of computation, of which data is available since 2009.

This was also a steep reversal from a surplus in the balance of payments, aggregating $5.085 billion in 2013. According to the BSP, however, the imbalance in the BOP did not, at all, disappoint the government, which had, in fact, anticipated a wider shortfall aggregating $3.4 billion for 2014.

The recovery in the BOP was made possible by a significant surplus last December totaling $843 million.

This was the widest surplus in the BOP for the year.

This also compared against a

shortfall in the BOP aggregating $314 million last November when the Philippines spent far more than it earned by way of trade, services, capital and financial transfers for the period.

“The BOP surplus for December 2014 of $0.8 billion, which was more than double the deficit posted last November of only $0.3 billion, helped to reduce the full-year 2014 BOP deficit to only $2.9 billion. You may recall that in first quarter of 2014, capital flowed out of emerging-market economies, or EMEs, including the Philippines, in reaction to global developments, particularly to the commencement of the US Fed tapering. At that time, our cumulative deficit topped $4.4 billion. When markets viewed the Fed taper as orderly, global funds

returned to EMEs that had good fundamentals, including the Philippines. Going forward, our policy remains to strengthen our buffers against external shocks, so that good macro fundamentals would continue to be a pull factor for investments. It bears mentioning that, throughout this period of market volatility, our current account stood in surplus,” BSP Governor Amando M. Tetangco Jr. said in a statement.

The BOP is a broad measure of the country’s transactions with the rest of the world. A deficit in the BOP means the country’s foreign-currency earnings proved insufficient to cover its foreign-currency expenses.

For 2014 the widest deficit was reported in January, when this aggregated about $4.48 billion.

Likewise, the country’s BOP yielded an imbalance in five out of 12 months last year.

Last October the government revised the assumed BOP from a surplus of $1 billion to deficit of $3.4 billion, taking into consideration the market’s reaction to the recovery and anticipated normalization of monetary policy in the US, still the country’s largest trading partner.

Central bank officials shrugged off the imbalance in the BOP given that the country’s current account,

the largest and most stable component of the BOP, remains in surplus.

The current account reflects the difference between the country’s foreign-currency savings and its investments. The state of surplus in the current account means the $270-billion Philippine economy is a net lender, rather than borrower, on the global stage.

The BSP also expressed optimism the BOP will revert to surplus in this year, likely aggregating $1 billion.

The country’s BOP position yielded a surplus of $712 million in third quarter of 2014. This was lower by 42.9 percent than the $1.2-billion surplus recorded in the same quarter a year ago. This developed mainly on account of the net outflows (or net lending of residents to the rest of the world) in the financial account, a reversal of the net inflows in third quarter 2013.

Meanwhile, the current account surplus improved, buoyed by the narrowing of the trade-in-goods deficit and the sustained increase in net receipts in the secondary income account. Global growth prospects remain uneven and subpar. The outlook for the US economy continues to strengthen while economic conditions in the euro area remain fragile.

It’s a scary world–Krugman Continued from A1

the US will start taking the lead to become the world’s engine of growth, although that may not last.

“The US looks good now, but it is just transient. The US will carry the way but it wouldn’t take so much for the US to slide back. From my point of view the dangerous level is complacency,” Krugman said.

He warned, however, that the markets may again be spooked when the US Federal Reserve (the Fed) starts raising its rates, which could affect the Asian markets, including those of the Philippines, just like when it started pulling the plug on its QE, or flooding the market with dollars by buying bonds, early last year.

“I hope they [US Fed] think twice before raising interest rate.

But they’re not really considering that they might be wrong. They will raise it anyway,” Krugman said.

The US Fed is hinting that it may raise current ultra-low rates as early as June.

Krugman, who is transferring to New York University, said he is “concerned” that the European Central Bank’s version of the QE, through the allotment of €500 billion for the purchase of its own bonds, may not work.

“What if the stuff goes haywire? Are we talking about a second great depression? Probably not. Even if QE fails in Europe, I don’t think it will be something drastic as 2008,” he said.

Krugman said what scares him was China, not of its policies, but the level of adjustment that it will have to do as its economy slows down.

About half of the Chinese economy, as measured by its gross domestic product (GDP), is investment and 30 percent is driven by consumption.

Krugman, a Nobel Prize winner in 2008, said that ratio is only sustainable if its economy is growing at 9 percent.

“You can only have 9-percent growth if you very rapidly move people from low productivity rural sector into high productivity urban sector. Now that the process

is coming to an end, that’s not sustainable,” he said.

“How do you transfer 20 points of GDP from one use to another use fast enough to avoid a very severe downturn?”

Krugman said he would not be surprised if China will have a “nasty recession” in the coming quarters as investments will fall and consumption will try hard to catch up.

“But it’s not a permanent implosion. The future still belongs to China, but it will be a farther than now.”

China, the world’s secondlargest economy, reported a 7.3-percent growth during the fourth quarter last year, a notch better than expected, but the figure was still the weakest in more than two decades.

“It’s a scary world. But I’d like to say that I think it’s gonna work out in the end. I suppose, in the long run, it will. Do I believe in the future of Asia? Of course, and, in the long run, this will be the center of the world economically,” Krugman said.

Pope: Catholics don’t have to breed ‘like rabbits’ Continued from A1

African bishops, in particular, have long complained about how progressive, Western ideas about birth control and gay rights are increasingly being imposed on the developing world by groups, institutions or individual nations, often as a condition for development aid.

“Ever y people deser ves to conserve its identity without being ideologically colonized,” Francis said.

The pope’s comments, taken together with his defense of the Catholic Church’s ban on artificial contraception during the trip, signal that he is increasingly showing his more conservative bent, which has largely been ignored by public opinion or obscured by a media narrative that has tended to highlight his populist persona.

On the trip, Francis gave his

strongest defense yet of the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, which enshrined the Church’s opposition to artificial birth control.

He warned against “insidious attacks” against the family—a reference to gay-marriage proposals—echoing language often used by overwhelmingly conservative US bishops. And he insisted that “openness to life is a condition of the sacrament of matrimony.”

At the same time, however, he said it’s not true that to be a good Catholic “you have to be like rabbits.”

On the contrary, he said “responsible parenthood” requires that couples regulate the births of their children, as Church teaching allows. He cited the case of a woman he met who was pregnant with her eighth child after seven cesarean sections.

“That is an irresponsibility!” he said. The woman might argue that she should trust in God. “But God

gives you methods to be responsible,” he said.

He said there are many “licit” ways of regulating births that are approved by the Church, an apparent reference to the natural familyplanning method of monitoring a woman’s cycle to avoid intercourse when she is ovulating.

During the Vatican’s recent meeting on the family, African bishops denounced how aid groups and lending institutions often condition their assistance on a country’s compliance with their ideals: allowing health-care workers to distribute condoms, or withdrawing assistance if legislation discriminating against gays is passed.

“When imposed conditions come from imperial colonizers, they search to make people lose their own identity and make a sameness,” he said. “This is ideological colonization.” AP