BusinessMirror June 02, 2023

Timely fund release in ₧5.75-T budget eyed

THE Department of Budget and Management (DBM) stressed that “timely” release of budget is “crucial” in the implementation of the government’s various programs and projects as the national government prepares for the P5.75-trillion budget next year.

T he DBM also expressed optimism that the national government’s proposed 2024 budget would be approved within its published timeline.

“ With regards to the movement of the budget proposal for 2024, the DBM is optimistic about its

published budget timeline,” Budget Undersecretary Goddes Hope Libiran told the BusinessMirror in a recent interview.

DBM Secretary Amenah F. Pangandaman acknowledges that the timely release of budget is crucial in the implementation of government programs and projects,” Libiran added.

L ibiran pointed out that only “implementation-ready” programs, activities and projects (PAPs) will be included in the 2024 national budget to prevent “unnecessary delays.”

L ibiran added that DBM is ensur -

ing that the proposed PAPs for next year are aligned with the priorities of the Marcos Jr. administration, including those stipulated under the Medium-Term Fiscal Framework and the 8-point Socioeconomic Agenda.

“ These initiatives prevent unnecessary delays as the PAPs are aligned with the priorities, are clear in their targets, and are ready to be executed within the fiscal year,” she said.

B ased on the DBM’s National Budget Memorandum No. 147 (NBM), the Tier 1 budget ceiling for next year is pegged at P3.288

trillion, about 42.82 percent of the P5.75-trillion proposed 2024 national budget.

T he national government follows a two-tier budgeting approach, with Tier 1 covering ongoing spending; proposals for new and expanded expenditure are under Tier 2.

L ibiran noted that the increase in next year’s budget from this year’s P5.268 trillion takes into consideration the latest domestic developments, global economic status, and the administration’s priorities and strategies.

See “Timely,” A2

Factory output on rebound in May

By Jasper Emmanuel Y. Arcalas @jearcalas

THE Philippines’s Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) rebounded in May, snapping three consecutive months of slowdown as factory orders and manufacturing output posted “quicker” expansions, according to Standard & Poor’s (S&P) Global.

I n its latest report, S&P said the country’s PMI improved to 52.2 from the eight-month low of 51.4 recorded in April.

“ The headline S&P Global Philippines Manufacturing PMI—a composite single-figure indicator of manufacturing performance— signaled a quicker improvement in operating conditions across the Philippines goods-producing sector,” it said on Thursday.

Moreover, the latest headline figure extended the current run of expansion to 16 consecutive months and posted above the average recorded over the series history to indicate a solid upturn,” it added.

S &P Global Market Intelligence

Maryam Baluch said the improvement in the Philippines’s manufacturing sector was supported by a “solid” rise in both output and factory orders, with firms “also expanding their workforce numbers for the first time in four months.”

More encouragingly, vendor performance improved in May for the first time in almost four years. Companies reported that improved logistics routes helped shorten delivery times,” Baluch said.

C iting anecdotal evidence, S&P said the increase in new orders was driven by “stronger” demand conditions and acquisition of new clients.

See “Factory,” A2

GUIMARAS MANGO GETS IPOPHL 1ST ‘G.I.’ SEAL

By Andrea E. San Juan

THE Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) said it recently approved Guimaras mangoes as the Philippines’s first geographical indication (GI).

I n a statement on Thursday, IPOPHL said the Guimaras Mango farmers have worked for about a decade for the “coveted” seal.

G uimaras Mango Growers and Producers Development Cooperative (GMGPDC) President Felipe Z. Gamarcha revealed the economic benefits the group expects to gain from the GI approval.

H e said, “ Ngayon, kapag na -

katatak na ‘yung GI, [ sana] almost double na from the local price. [Now with the GI seal, we hope local prices will double]. So additional income [for] farmers,” Gamarcha said.

G amarcha was referring to the farm gate price of Guimaras Mangoes which averaged P200 in 2022. This, IPOPHL said, “already marks an astronomical rise from the P20 to P50 that one kilo would usually fetch before the association secured a collective mark in 2017.”

A ccording to IPOPHL, a GI serves as a marketing tool that “accentuates” a products’ distinctiveness and appealing narratives.

It also noted that a GI seal cer -

tifies a link between the quality, characteristics and reputation of a product and its geographical source. These factors, IPOPHL noted, may have been shaped due to environmental influences, such as soil and climate, or human factors, such as tradition and local know-how.

F or her part, IPOPHL Deputy Director General Ann Claire C. Cabochan highlighted the “great potential” of GI “not only in spreading development outside our bustling metropolitan areas, but also in ensuring that the people of the originating locality benefit from their produce.”

See “Guimaras,” A2

By Samuel P. Medenilla @sam_medenilla

THE Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) is now in talks with several local firms for possible investments, which will help in the country’s efforts towards energy security.

D uring his meeting with President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. in Malacañang last Wednesday, JBIC Chairman of the Board Tadashi Maeda disclosed they want to help the country transition from its traditional sources of power towards renewable sources of energy.

To address this, he said they want to increase the availability of hydropower as well as solar and wind energy in the country.

J BIC is already exploring partnerships with several Philippine companies including Aboitiz, Metro See “JBIC,” A2

JBIC talks to PHL firms on energy investments

TRIPLE-WHAMMY OF CYCLONES, 1-IN-200-YEAR EVENT, DROVE DEADLY FLOODING–SCIENTISTS

‘Govt will fast-track production, distribution of national ID cards’

By Andrea E. San Juan

THE Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA)

A fter applying in November 2022, the GMGPDC’s application was approved by IPOPHL on May 13,2023 after passing the Bureau of Trademarks’ (BOT) thorough examination process, IPOPHL noted.

the physical national IDs.

T he PSA said out of the 79 million registrations, 37.8 million national IDs have already been printed.

P SA Officer-in-Charge-Deputy

National Statistician Fred S. Sollesta said in a televised interview on Thursday that the agency is now in talks with the BSP to fasttrack the production of the physical cards.

We are studying options for

Continued from A16

Next, PE2 expects new procurement guidelines that would enable the flow of private capital and

accelerating the printing of the national IDs and to complete the distribution and production of the physical cards. If this cannot be done within the year then we will have a good chance of completing it next year,” Sollesta said in a mix of English and Filipino. T he PSA, he said, has been able to register 79.12 million and generate 76.17 million Philippine

knowhow to public sector energy efficiency projects through energy service company (ESCO) performance contracts, public-private partnership (PPP) transactions and joint-venture agreements,” he said. L astly, Ablaza said, the DOE’s

Identification System (PhilSys) numbers. “

So far iyong na -print natin na ID ay 37.73 million.” This, he said, is the same number of physical IDs that the PSA turned over to Philippine Postal Corp. (PHILPOST).

So, out of that nakapagdeliver sila ng 31.95 million or close to 32 million and then for PSA, nag complement kami ng pag-isyu ng credentials through the ePhilID which is around 34.53 million na ngayon as of May 26,” he added.

T he total number of ID credentials that the PSA has distributed or delivered to citizens is now at 66.48 million, according to Sollesta.

A s for those who received national IDs made of paper, he said, “Actually iyong paper na national ID ay ePhilID iyon, iyong sinasabi ko na ePhilID.”

H e added that the PSA did this to accelerate the issuance of PhilSys credentials. The ePhilID, he noted, contains PCM and QR code. He said the QR code has a security feature which can be used in the transaction to prove the identity and age.

GEMP outreach is expected to permeate from the levels of national government agencies and government-owned and -controlled corporations to the local government units, which will certainly need more time and resources to build

But we assure all the citizens na lahat ng nag -register sa national ID will also receive the physical card which is printed at BSP. So by giving those na, iyong pag -address namin ng malaking gap ng registration and then the issuance of credentials, ginamit namin iyong pag-isyu ng ePhilID,” Sollesta said.

He also said Filipinos can download an e-copy of their ePhilID, so that they can easily store it in their cellphones.

Meanwhile, Sollesta said PHILPOST had informed the agency that the fire that recently broke out at the Manila Central Post Office affected some 7,500 national IDs.

“ We would like to clarify that the cards affected were only cards na para sa City of Manila. Hindi siya iyong parang repository siya ng lahat ng printed cards coming from BSP,” he said.

And PHILPOST was able to give the number around mga 7,500 iyong affected. They have already forwarded the information including data kung ano iyong mga cards na affected, and tini-trigger na namin ngayon iyong reprinting sa BSP,” Sollesta added.

EEC awareness and capacities.

T he GEMP implementation is guided by IAEECC created by Republic Act (RA) No. 11285 or the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Act. It aims to reduce the whole government’s electricity and fuel consumption by at least 10 percent through energy efficiency and conservation (EE&C) strategies.

T he committee prepares an annual assessment of opportunities for energy cost reduction in state-owned and leased buildings and facilities and mandating the adoption of energy-efficient measures and technologies. This includes the use of light-emitting diode (LED) lamps, inverter-type air-conditioners, and other energy-efficient technologies in government facilities.

T he EE&C Public Sector Management Division of the DOE-Energy Utilization Management Bureau is mandated to conduct energy audits and spot checks under the EEC Act and targets a minimum of 100 annual energy audits. At the same time, it authorized third-party auditors, such as the Philippine National Oil Company-Renewable Corporation (PNOC-RC), which assisted in the conduct of energy audits to reach more government entities nationwide. We commend the efforts of our government agencies in implementing energy efficiency measures. Small acts and what appears to be minor could indeed drive significant impact, especially when the entire bureaucracy, LGUs and State Universities and Colleges [SUCs] would adopt behavioral changes and imbibe energy conservation as a way of life,” DOE  Secretary Raphael Lotilla had said.

Continued from A1

Increased budget is mainly attributed to large transfers to LGUs, maintenance and other operating expenses as a result of the releases for the targeted cash transfer program, and improved spending on infrastructure and other capital outlays as well as personnel services,” she said.

B ased on DBM documents, the agency plans to submit the 2024 budget documents to President Marcos Jr. on July 20. Marcos is expected to submit the 2024 budget proposal to Congress on July 24, the same day that he will deliver his second State of the Nation Address. Jasper Emmanuel Y. Arcalas

D uring the month-long publication period that followed to allow for third-party protests, IPOPHL said the association did not face any concerns of possible damage to an existing trademark.

G uimaras Mangoes are produced across the entire island province of Guimaras which is comprised of five municipalities— Jordan, Buenavista, San Lorenzo, Sibunag and Nueva Valencia.

I POPHL said while it may have taken the association less than a year to secure protection, the first steps toward GI trace back to 2013 when it first worked with the European Union under the Trade-Related Technical Assistance Project and consulted with IPOPHL.

Former Provincial Economic Development Officer Elena V. Quezon recalled the “extensive” meetings that took place before members could reach consensus over a single characteristic of the product.

Factory...

S he said many were negotiating for production processes and requirements that were “achievable” but still preserved the premium qualities that characterize the Guimaras Mangoes. For our co-participants here who will be applying for the GI, don’t be discouraged because we have this journey but now we are enjoying the gains we have,” Quezon said.  S he said the association is already getting offers to export to the Czech Republic, Dubai and Republic of Korea after making its first export to Switzerland of an initial two tons in 2022.

Q uezon, however, cited infringement as one “major challenge” that needs to be resolved following the GI registration.

I POPHL said Quezon hopes for stronger safeguards to prevent deceptive traders from falsely claiming their products as Guimaras mangoes when they did not meet approved standards.

M eanwhile, to combat counterfeiting, BOT Director Jesus Antonio Z. Ros acknowledged the importance of establishing a strong GI regime through a Sui generis law.

Continued from A1

“ Demand from foreign markets also fared well in the latest survey period, with export volumes growing solidly, albeit at a slightly softer pace compared to April,” it said.

T he S&P report also indicated that the average lead times for the delivery of inputs in the country’s manufacturing sector improved in May.

“ The degree of improvement was only fractional but marked the first month in which delivery times have shortened since July 2019,” it said.

S &P added that buying activity increased in May for the ninth consecutive month “with the rate of growth broadly in line with that seen in April.”

“ Firms purchased additional inputs to meet growing demand. Moreover, in anticipation of future demand, manufacturing firms were

JBIC...

Continued from A1

Pacific Investments Corporation, and San Miguel Corporation for the projects.

We have the potential…between Japan and the Philippines to work together. For example, I already had a meeting with Aboitiz Chairman Sabin and I proposed to him to have an MOU [memorandum of understanding]…and to Metro Pacific, and also to San Miguel,” Maeda said.

J BIC is a financial institution owned by the Japanese government, which supplements the financial transactions implemented by private financial institutions.  M aeda said they may come out with more strategic cooperation with local corporations once they get details on the country’s other targeted projects.

O fficials said rice farmers and traders will also benefit from the National Agricultural and Fisheries Modernization and Industrialization Plan and the proposed preshipment inspection system by the Department of Finance (DOF).

Additional request

PRISM Founder and Lead Convener Rowena Sadicon said they were pleased with the President’s response to their concerns.

Overall we were very happy that at last the importance of the whole rice value chain has been recognized. It was a success, ev -

keen to raise their inventory levels,” it said.

“ Stocks of preproduction items rose further, thereby extending the current sequence of growth seen since September 2021, while manufacturers also raised their holdings of finished items following back-to-back months of depletion,” it added. S &P said Filipino goods producers remained “broadly” optimistic regarding the growth in manufacturing output, as they “anticipate expansions in production in the coming 12 months.” The optimism stemmed from hopes that “new projects and stronger demand” will drive manufacturing growth. “ However, the degree of confidence moderated to an 11-month low and remained historically subdued,” S&P said.

M arcos said the country will be able to initiate more crucial projects once the Maharlika Investment Fund (MIF) is finally created.  “ So, that is the plan for the sovereign fund. We now have to go and look at the design or the structuring of the fund. But it is basically seen as our government’s participation in projects that, mostly, will really be in the Philippines,” Marcos said during his meeting with Maeda.

T he legislation creating the MIF is now close to being signed into law after it was passed by the bicameral conference committee of Congress last Wednesday.

L ast February, Marcos said at least three Japanese firms have already expressed their interest in investing in the MIF.

eryone in the room including the government officials were very happy with the meeting’s outcome,” Sadicon told BusinessMirror via SMS.

However, Sadicon said they requested another meeting with the president to discuss the RTL and its IRR.

“ We knew that time to discuss this will not be enough, that’s why we have requested to discuss this in a separate meeting,” she said.

T he DA said last year that it could come out with the results of the RTL review in the first quarter of 2023.

and the Bangko

Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) are targeting to accelerate the production and distribution of

45th CATHOLIC MASS MEDIA AWARDS

WHO CAN NOMINATE?

PROFESSIONAL LEVEL :

Entries may be submitted by any person or organization wishing to direct the attention of the CMMA to a meritorious program, series, article, material and the like. A person or a company may submit more than one entry in each category. Entries need not be Christian and nominees need not be Catholics. All entries must be those media works released from May 2022 to April 2023.

STUDENT LEVEL:

All bona fide students enrolled in any of the participating schools, colleges and universities within the school year 2022-2023.

ADVERTISING

Best TV Ad-Branded

Best TV Ad-Public Service

Best Digital Ad-Branded

Best Digital Ad-Public Service

MUSIC

Best Inspirational Song-Religious

Best Inspirational Song-Secular

Best Music Video

PRINT / E-PUB

Best Children’s Magazine

Best Editorial Cartoon

Best Investigative Report

Best Local Community / Parish Newspaper

Best News Coverage

Best News Photograph

Best Opinion Column

Best Short Story

Best Special Feature

Best Comic Story

Best Children’s Short Story

Best Youth Magazine

Best Family-Oriented Magazine

RADIO (AM OR FM) / PODCAST

Best Business News

Best Counseling Program

Best Public Service Program

Best Drama Program (Episodic or Serial)

Best Educational Program

Best Entertainment Program

Best News Commentary

Best News Program

Best News Feature

TELEVISION

Best Adult Educational / Cultural Program

Best Children and Youth Program

Best Comedy Program

Best Drama Series / Program

Best Entertainment Program

Best News Magazine

Best News Program

Best Public Service Program

Best Special Event Coverage

Best Talk Show

Best Tv Special (One-Time feature)

Best Station ID

FOR INQUIRIES PLEASE WRITE OR CALL:

THE CMMA Secretariat Office: 5/f Dominga Building III , 2113 Chino Roces Ave. corner Dela Rosa Street, Makati City 0922-8568220  0922-8356147

thecatholicmassmediaawards@yahoo.com www.facebook.com/Official CMMA

SUBMISSION OF ENTRIES FOR CMMA:

 Student—April 24–June 23, 2023

 Professional—April 24–June 30, 2023

SOCIAL MEDIA

Best Website

Best Vlog

STUDENT CMMA

Best Student Organ-Grade School

Best Student Organ-High School

Best Student Organ-College

Best Short Film (Documentary or Narrative)

Best TV Production (Documentary or Narrative)

Best Student Public Service-Radio Ad

Best Student Public Service-Print Ad

Best Student Public Service-TV Ad

Best Literary Publication

SERVIAM AWARD

Individual

Corporate / Institutional

ST. JOHN PAUL II AWARD

The Nation

SP Zubiri confident Maharlika fund law ‘can withstand judicial scrutiny’ Romualdez: House OKs 33 out of 42 priority bills

By Butch Fernandez @butchfBM

DESPITE the huge majority vote that approved the Maharlika Investment Fund (MIF) bill in both chambers of Congress, Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri still expects some parties to question the law before the Supreme Court, but is confident it can “stand the test of judicial scrutiny.”

In an interview with reporters after the Senate, voting 191-1, approved the MIF on second and on third and final reading at dawn of Wednesday, Zubiri gave an overview of the changes made in the final version that addressed serious questions on the bill, especially the source of funding and avenues for abuse.

Asked if, given all the effort to address those concerns, he still sees a “reason” for anyone to question it in court, Zubiri replied, “Well, alam mo lahat naman ng batas namin may nag que-question paminsan minsan sa  [you know that in most laws, someone will occasionally raise it in the] Supreme Court. I’m sure people will raise it, but I’m sure we can stand the test of judicial scrutiny by the Supreme Court.”

As for the safeguards introduced in the period of amendments, Zubiri stressed that the final version addresses the concern of Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel III about penalties against

responsible officers misusing the Maharlika fund. “It’s there, it’s part of the law. It’s part of the last two pages of the law. As a matter of fact, Sen. Risa [Hontiveros] wanted to add an amendment yesterday on embezzlement, but that is already under the penal code. We reiterated the penal code sections—these, that… so [it’s highlighted there: estafa, syndicated estafa. That’s syndicated estafa; the point there is, if you’re working for the Maharlika investment fund and you stole money, you’ll be under several laws. You’ll be under the plunder law, graft and corrupt practices act and of course, the law governing syndicated estafa, which by the way is also nonbailable.”

The safeguards are strict, he explained, “because we want to protect the money of investors, particularly the government funds,” referring to, among others, the seed contributions from state-run Land Bank of the Philippines and Development Bank of the Philippines, and the central bank dividends.

On the concern of Sen. Chiz Escudero about the absence of a test of economic viability for the envisioned Maharlika Investment Corp. (MIC) to be created to manage the MIF, Zubiri brushed aside this issue by noting that of “about...maybe 90 plus countries that have sovereign wealth funds,” only one has faltered, which is Malaysia’s 1MDB, “because the one that was behind

it was a racketeer” whom the Malaysian government is still tracking down.

“That is why we are learning from that mistake, but almost 99 percent of other sovereign wealth funds have been very successful.” He noted that Singapore’s Temasek Foundation “and many others who have invested heavily in their countries and in other funds” saw their money grow.

“So let’s give it a chance. I think some people are saying, ‘we can’t manage that kind of fund; the Filipino can’t. You know, why do we put the Filipino down? Aren’t there many Filipinos working in the United Nations, World Bank, WHO, IMF, Asian Development Bank who are competent and they are well-respected and reputable people?”

This, he added, is the same caliber of people being eyed to run the MIC, the country’s first sovereign wealth fund. “Let’s give the Filipino a chance to show that we are better than just being laborers…We are going make this Maharlika Investment Fund work for the country.”

He then cited several discussions on plans to invest in toll bridges like the Bataan-Cavite span seen to decongest Metro Manila and “would be the second longest bridge in the world… compared to the Macau-Hongkong bridge.”

It is seen, he said, to boost the economy for Central Luzon and the National Capital Region. Those coming from Bataan, from the ports of Bataan, Subic, Clark, Zambales do not have to pass through Metro Manila, Quezon City and Edsa, going south. They can use that bridge.

Also eyed for infrastructure

By Jovee Marie N. dela Cruz @joveemarie

investments, he added, are the Iloilo-Panay-Guimaras-Negros Bridge, and more tollways—or projects that cannot be funded under the General Appropriations Act (GAA). “We don’t have enough funds to fund those projects.”

Apparently addressing concerns that the MIF’s existence is like insulting Congress because it assumed the role of lawmakers who craft the GAA, Zubiri replied, “No, we did not transfer any power to the MIF. For example, they are increasing capitalization? They have to go back to Congress for approval.”

For very big projects, the law provides for a joint oversight committee that will review periodically, every quarter, every three months the proposed projects. And, he added, “they are also under the scrutiny of government agencies, like COA [Commission on Audit]. They have to pay taxes so there is no undue disadvantage to the private companies” that would ask how they can bid for these toll projects if the MIC is tax-free.

Zubiri added, “They will be subjected to taxes like any regular agency. That way, there is still competition. It’s not a monopoly, there is still competition for the various projects they are interested in.”

He said the concerns raised by senators and other parties were mostly quelled after the amendments given by Senate President Pro Tempore Legarda, Sen. Chiz Escudero, Minority Leader Pimentel, Deputy Minority Leader Risa Hontiveros, Majority Leader Joel Villanueva, and Senators Juan Edgardo Angara, Francisv Tolentino, and Pia Cayetano, whom he credited for “her many good amendments.”

Thir T y-T h ree out of 42 bills listed as priority measures of President Ferdinand r . M arcos Jr. and the Legislative- e xecutive Development Advisory Council (L e DAC) have already been approved by the h o use of r e presentatives.

S peaker Ferdinand Martin r o mualdez said the chamber was able to process a total of 9,600 measures consisting of 8,490 h ouse bills, including these L e DAC priorities, 1,109 resolutions and one petition before the first regular session of the 19th Congress went into sine die adjournment last Wednesday.

i n his speech, r o mualdez thanked the h o use members whose hard work for the past 10 months helped shape the successes achieved by the legislature in line with the administration’s socio-economic development agenda.

“Needless to say, our first regular session has been both eventful and productive,” r o mualdez said.

The Speaker also reported that the h o use ratified the bicameral conference committee report relative to establishing specialty centers in hospitals under the direct supervision and control of the Department of h e alth (DO h )

The Speaker said it is “worthy to note is both h o uses have earlier agreed on a version of the Maharlika Fund, the country’s first ever sovereign investment fund,” which “is designed to promote economic development by making strategic and profitable investments in key sectors, including public road networks.”

During the final week of sessions, the h o use gave final approval of L e DAC measures, h o use Bill ( h B) No. 8203 or the proposed Bureau of i mmigration (B i ) M odernization Act; and h B No. 8278 or the proposed Philippine Salt i n dustry Development Act. A mong the measures that have been approved on third and final reading during the past 10 months include the proposed Maharlika i nvestment Fund, Magna Carta of Seafarers, e - Governance Act / e G overnment Act, Negros i s land r e gion, Virology i nstitute of the Philippines, Passive i ncome and Financial ntermediary Taxation Act, National Disease Prevention Management Authority or Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Medical r e serve Corps, Philippine Passport Act; i nternet Transaction Act / e Commerce Law, Waste-to- e nergy Bill, Free Legal Assistance for Police and Soldiers, and Apprenticeship Act. Also passed on third reading were the BuildOperate-Transfer (BOT) Law, Magna Carta of Barangay h e alth Workers, Valuation r e form, e a stern Visayas Development Authority, Leyte e c ological i ndustrial Zone, Government Financial i nstitutions Unified i nitiatives to Distressed e nterprises for e c onomic r e covery, National Citizens Service Training Program, and National Government r i ghtsizing.

More importantly, a handful of the Marcos priority bills that hurdled the h o use are now laws of the land, r o mualdez said.

Two of these are r e public Act ( r A) No.11934, otherwise known as the “Subscriber i d entity Module

(S i M) r e gistration Act”; and r A N o.11939, or an “An Act Further Strengthening Professionalism and Promoting the Continuity of Policies and Modernization initiatives in the Armed Forces of the Philippines, and Amending for this Purpose r e public Act No. 11709”.

Unity

rOMUALD e Z a lso thanked his colleagues for their hard work and for their fidelity to their job, resulting in the record-breaking accomplishments of the h ouse of r ep resentatives during the First r e gular Session of the 19th Congress.

e a ch and every member of this august body truly deserves commendation for a job well done.

Congratulations to all of us! When assumed the post as your Speaker, i invited each one of you to support and join me in fulfilling the aspirations of the Filipino people. For readily heeding this call, i e xpress my sincerest gratitude to everyone,” r om ualdez said.

The Speaker also called back to his long-running message of unity, which has become the foundation of the Marcos administration.

“The unity that we have shown in the performance of duty, and our relentless action in keeping the legislative mill grinding to full efficiency, are now reaping fruits for our beloved institution. Public opinion on the performance rating of the h o use of r e presentatives is fast reaching an all-time high,” he said. A side from doing its legislative duties, the Speaker said the h o use also performed its oversight function to find solutions to the country’s pressing problems, like the recent unwarranted increase in the price of onions. h e r ecalled that earlier this year, the h o use Committee on Agriculture conducted a motu proprio inquiry in aid of legislation to determine the root cause of the surge in the price of onions and other agricultural products and ascertain the appropriate government intervention to keep basic commodities affordable and accessible to everyone.

“We are also equally determined to recommend the prosecution of cartels and their cohorts, including all other profiteers, who continue to manipulate the supply and price of onion in the country,” he said. r o mualdez said due to the inquiry and work done by the committee on agriculture, the biggest onion cartel in the country has been dismantled and the price of the commodity has returned to its previous level.

The Speaker also expressed his gratitude to the political parties in the h ouse for their commitment and cooperation in the approval of priority bills of President Marcos and L e DAC.

Just a few days ago, the r o mualdez-led LakasChristian Muslim Democrats (Lakas-CMD) signed alliance agreements with each of seven national, local, and sectoral political groups in the h o use.

These groups are the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban), National Unity Party (NUP), Nacionalista Party (NP), Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC), Party-list Coalition Foundation i nc. (PCFi), Partido Navoteño, and Centrist Democratic Party of the Philippines (CDP).

Editor: Vittorio V. Vitug

DENR order revises guidelines on mineral exploration reporting

The Department of e nvironment and Natural Resources (D e N R) has revised the guidelines in the classification and reporting standards of exploration results, mineral resources a nd ore reserves.

D e N R Secretary Maria Antonia Yulo-Loyzaga recently signed

D e N R Administrative Order (DAO) No. 2023-05, which allows the local mining industry to adopt with a dvances and upgrades of internationally accepted standards set out i n the Philippine Mineral Reporting Code of 2020.

The new guidelines, in effect, amended DA 2020-09.

In a statement, the D e N R chief believes that the compliance of mining contractors, permittees, permit h olders and operators, and mining applicants with the new DAO is seen to expedite the evaluation and development of mining projects as a result of the harmonization and streamlining of the entire reporting process related to mineral exploration results.

A mong other changes, DAO 2023-05 updated some terminolo -

gies, such as replacing “Competent

Person” with “Accredited Competent

Person” or ACP to refer to an industry professional duly accredited by t he Philippine Society of Mining

e n gineers (PS e M ), the Geological Society of the Philippines (GSP), and the Society of the Metallurgical e ngineers of the Philippines (SM e P), or other similar professional organizations accredited by the Professional R egulation Commission. It also replaced the terms “ore reserve” with “ mineral reserve,” and “potential or target mineral resources” with “exploration targets.”

T he updated guidelines also entailed consideration of “modifying f actors,” which are applied to mineral resources to support mine planning and final evaluation of the economic viability of mineral deposits b efore they are converted to mineral reserves. These may include m ining, processing, metallurgical, infrastructure, economic, marketing, legal, environmental, social, a nd governmental factors.

The latest DAO provided an expanded or detailed checklist of assessment or reporting criteria that must be considered by an ACP in pre -

SMPC readies second coal shipment to Japan

By Lenie Lectura @llectura

CONSUNJI- L e D Se mirara Mining and Power Corporation (SMPC) is targeting 4.5 m illion to 4.8 million metric tons (MT) of coal shipment this year.

“For 2023, we are targeting to export around 30 percent of our full-year sales target of 15 to 16 million MT,” said SMPC President Maria Cristina Gotianun in a disclosure to the stock exchange on T hursday.

SMPC is scheduled this month to make its second trial shipment to Japan in a move to reduce i ts dependency on the Chinese market. The company will export 50,000 MT of Semirara coal to Shikoku e l ectric Power Corporation for its 700-megawatt coal f ired ultra-supercritical power station.

“China is still our main foreign buyer but with their industrial output growing slower than expected, we want to develop other

A sian markets like Japan,” said

ERC achieves full resolution rate for citizens’ concerns

paring a report on exploration results, mineral resources, or mineral reserves. Should any item in the c hecklist not be discussed, the ACP must explain the reason for such.

Section 5 of DAO 2023-05 also introduced technical studies, which include scoping, pre-feasibility, and feasibility studies.

Other revisions include the required reporting of metal equivalents as well as non-technical aspects of reporting of items, notably c ommodity pricing and marketing, permitting, legal requirements and sustainability considerations.

The latest DAO explicitly requires ACPs to prepare the necessary reports for public disclosure. S pecifically, reporting of exploration results and mineral resources s hall be disclosed by ACP geologist, while that for mineral reserves shall be disclosed by ACP mining engineer.

Additionally, the ACP metallurgical engineer shall disclose reporting of metallurgical test works that f orm part of a feasibility study of a mineral project.

Mineral industry players will be given a transition period of two

years from the approval of DAO 2023-05 to adjust to the revised guidelines.

Prior to PMRC 2020, the industry had been adopting public reporting standards set under PMRC 2007, which was then compatible with the Australasian Joint Ore Reserves Committee (JORC) Code of 2004 and the Committee for Mineral Reserves International Reporting S tandards (CRIRSCO) International Reporting Template of 2006.

The CRIRSCO Template and the JORC Code have since been upgraded in 2019 and 2012, respectively, re ndering the PMRC 2007 incompatible with its standards.

T he revision of the PMRC to its 2020 edition was undertaken by the PMRC Committee, whose member-organizations include PS e M , GSP, and SM e P a long with minerals industry-related organizations a nd bodies, such as the Philippine Stock e x change Inc., the Chamber of Mines of the Philippines, the Philippine Mining and  e x ploration Association, the PhilippinesA ustralia Business Council, and the Philippine Chamber of Coal Mines.

Jonathan L. Mayuga

FPA urged to further enhance services to agriculture sector

Gotianun.

From January to March, Semirara coal shipments to China plunged by 50 percent from 2.2 million MT to 1.1 million MT, accounting for 72 percent of exports.  S outh Korea was a steady market at 300,000 MT, representing o ne-fifth of export sales. The rest of the exports went to Japan, 5 percent, and Brunei, 3 percent.

SMPC first made a trial shipment to Japan in January 2023, s elling 78,410 MT of mid-grade coal to J-Power, a utility company that operates coal, hydroelectric, wind and geothermal power stations.

I n the first quarter, standalone coal revenues sank by 40 percent from P25.7 billion to P15.5 billion mainly due to high base effect of record production, shipments and selling prices.  Standalone reported net income slumped by 51 percent from P 14.2 billion to P7 billion on topline weakness and slower decline in cash costs.

The government urged the Fertilizer and Pesticide Authority (FPA) to continue e nhancing its services and initiate appropriate changes for the benefit of farmers, a Department of Agriculture (DA) official said.

You must keep up with your mandate to help the agriculture sector… o btain adequate supplies of fertilizers, pesticides, and other inputs; e nforce the highest quality control standards for both fertilizer and pesticides, and other agricultural chemicals,” DA Senior Undersecretary Domingo Panganiban said.

And also provide farmers with the technical capacity and the capital they need to produce their own o rganic fertilizer through the implementation of the Fortified Organic F ertilizer Development Program; and educate both the industry and the country’s farmers on the safe and judicious use of [the] farm input,” he said during the FPA 46th founding anniversary recently.

Moreover, Panganiban said that even before the President (Ferdinand Marcos Jr.) took office, he organized a group of economists to study t he issues affecting the country’s

food security, particularly those related to increasing the country’s rice harvest.

h e s aid the FPA should work with DA and its attached agencies in providing relief to farmers who are confronted with high production costs.

P anganiban added that the department’s collective effort last y ear led to the 19.76 million metric ton-palay production record, which exceeded the yield between 2000 and 2020 year-on-year.

“The DA distributed 7.7 million kilograms of fertilizer last year, along with 2,500 gallons of pesticides and a billion pesos in fertilizer d iscount vouchers,” he said.

Furthermore, the DA official said the interventions provided essential farm inputs for the enterprises of 1.8 million farmers and 14,000 farmers’ cooperatives.

Panganiban also congratulated the men and women of the FPA for improving the quality of life of Filipinos through increased farm incomes, p roductivity and food production using safe and appropriate fertilizer and pesticide inputs for the past 46 years. Raadee S. Sausa

Group pushes preservation, promotion of indigenous food products in Negros

By Ma. Stella F. Arnaldo @akosistellaBM

Special to the BusinessMirror

SILAY CITY—Batwan, a fruit resembling a tiny green apple, is used mostly as a souring agent in many popular dishes in Western Visayas such as Cansi; KBL (kadyos, baboy, langka); Pinalmahan, among others. The tree is indigenous to the region but difficult to propagate; it can take about two years before a seed grows shoots. As such, most of the fruits that actually make it to the market are found in the wild.

Batwan is just one of the many agricultural products that are included in the Ark of Taste, an international list of heritage food that need to be protected because of their limited production and small-scale cultivation. Leading the way in preserving these products, as well as introducing these to a new generation is Slow Food Negros.

The batwan fruit and saplings were one of the many indigenous food and ingredients showcased at the Negros Island Slow Food Earth Market inaugurated on May 27

at Casa A. Gamboa, here in Silay. Starting out as a pop-up market in March 2021, the Earth Market will now be held regularly on the last Saturday of every month. Reena Gamboa, spokesperson for Slow Food Negros, credits Negros Occidental (3rd District) Rep. Francisco Benitez for supporting the Earth Market.

Paying farmers fair market price

P R OMOTING an d preserving our traditional food is of the utmost importance if we are to cultivate and continue Filipino culture to our future generations. We believe that the best way to do this is to talk to our main protagonists—the small farmers,” she said.

“It’s through them that we can all learn what is endemic to our community, and the Earth Market will allow the community to deal directly with the farmers and pay them the fair price they’re due. By doing so, we value our local food sources and appreciate their importance—not only for our physical health, but also for our Filipino soul,” Gamboa added. The Slow Food Earth Market initially

featured 28 producers and farmers from Silay, Bago, Victorias and the town of Murcia. Other products featured Morado red bananas, heirloom rice in black and red varieties along with Adlai grains, robusta coffee from Mount Kanlaon, salt blocks called tultul, chocolate bars made of premium criollo cacao, dairy cheese, vegetables, mushrooms, honey, coconut oil and coconut sugar, and the local sinamak (spiced vinegar). There was also a goat roasting on an open spit for guests to partake.

Where to eat ‘slow food’

S LO W F ood Negros advocate Ramon Uy Jr., who also participated in the Earth Market, uses many ingredients included in the Ark of Taste at his farm-to-table restaurant Lanai by FreshStart in Bacolod City. “Slow Food is a global grassroots organization that wants to change our food suite, for the better. We want everyone to have access to good, clean, fair food—good for the environment, health, and taste; clean, i.e., no chemicals that are harmful to us or the environment; and fair for both the consumers and produc-

The e n ergy Regulatory Commission ( e R C) said it has resolved all complaints received from the 8888 Citizens’ Complaint Center in three days.

T he complaints range from slow process of electricity reconnection, billing issues, meter readings, damaged lines, relocation of electric p oles, and power interruption.

The agency said Thursday it received recognition from the Office of the President’s (OP) 8888 C itizens’ Complaint Center for its 100-percent resolution rate of citizens’ concerns for the period of January to April 2023. The e R C said it promptly addressed all 48 tickets within 72 hours.

The 8888 Citizens’ Complaint h o tline is a platform for citizens to report complaints and voice concerns related to acts of “red tape” or c orruption within any national government agency or instrumentality.

We know we have a long way to go, but the e R C is fully committed to addressing consumer concerns despite our agency’s limitations. We actively use these complaints as opportunities to identify systemic issues and find ways to improve industry practices.

“

By analyzing the root cause behind the complaint, the Commission fosters an environment of t ransparency and responsiveness, and promotes the principle of energy democracy,” e R C Chairperson Monalisa Dimalanta said.

The e R C complements this government-wide platform with its own a utomated Consumer Complaints Ticket ID System (CCTS) that is on beta-testing since June 2022. The CCTS is a web-based portal that monitors and records all consumer complaints lodged through e-mail, text messages, and web-based messaging applications. This information system assigns a specific ticket I D to every complaint, allowing consumers, distribution utilities, and e R C to track and monitor the status of the complaints for quick reference and speedy resolution. The full-scale launch of the CCTS is scheduled this month.

The e R C reported that other day that it issued 33 show cause orders (SCOs) directing 25 electric cooperatives ( e C ) and three private dis -

tribution utilities (PDUs) to explain w hy they should not be penalized for failure to provide information on the pass-through fuel cost charged to their customers.

According to the e R C, the DUs failed to provide the necessary information within the prescribed t imelines set by e R C regulations, including Resolution No. 16, Series of 2009, Resolution 24, Series o f 2011, as well as the respective e R C approvals of the Power Supply Agreements (PSAs). The e R C emphasized that the submission of reports related to fuel charges is a condition for the grant of authority to charge generation rates under t heir PSAs.

The DUs have been directed to provide verified explanations to the e R C or face potential administrative penalties.

T he three private DUs served with SCOs include Iligan Light & Power, Inc. (ILPI), Mactan e l ectric Company, Inc. (M e C O), and Olongapo e l ectric Distribution Co. (O e D C).

The e C s, meanwhile, include  Abra e l ectric Cooperative, Inc.; Aklan e l ectric Cooperative, Inc.; Albay e l ectric Cooperative, Inc.; Camiguin e l ectric Cooperative, Inc.; Capiz e l ectric Cooperative, Inc.; Camarines Sur II e l ectric Cooperative, Inc.; Cebu I e l ectric Cooperative, Inc. and Central Negros e l ectric Cooperative, Inc.; North Cotabato e l ectric Cooperative, Inc.; Davao Norte Davao Oriental e l ectric Cooperative, Inc.; Don Orestes R omualdez e l ectric Cooperative, Inc.; Iloilo III e l ectric Cooperative, Inc.; Kalinga Apayao e l ectric Cooperative, Inc.; La Union e l ectric Cooperative, Inc.; Northern Davao e l ectric Cooperative, Inc.; Oriental Mindoro e l ectric Cooperative, Inc.; Pampanga III e l ectric Cooperative, Inc.; Pampanga Rural e l ectric Cooperative, Inc.; Surigao Sur II e l ectric Cooperative, Inc.; and Zambales II e l ectric Cooperative, Inc. There are five e C s that were issued with two SCOs. These are Ilocos Sur e l ectric Cooperative, Inc.; Isabela II e l ectric Cooperative, Inc.; Lanao Del Norte e l ectric Cooperative, Inc.; Pangasinan III e l ectric Cooperative, Inc.; and Zamboanga Sur I e l ectric Cooperative, Inc. Lenie Lectura

Mayor Abby revives free movies program for over 82,000 Makati senior citizens

MAKATI M ayor Abby

Binay announced the highly anticipated return of free movies for some 82,617 senior citizens in the city who are Blu card members and Makatizen Virtual Card holders.

ers,” he explained. On Lanai’s menu, for instance, is Tsokolate Negrense, a hot, thick chocolate drink featuring criollo cacao, the most expensive cacao variety in the world, but grown extensively in Negros Occidental. It also has Kadios Falafel using local pigeon peas; Labuyo Blue Crab Salad, using sustainable blue swimming crabs; pizza using Negros Blue cheese with wild honey, and topped with organic arugula; a piaya using muscovado sugar, to name a few.

The Slow Food movement, with over 1 million activists in the world, is gradually taking hold in the Philippines. According to Slow Food International, there are 14 communities and 1 convivium across the country dedicated to the preservation of endangered and indigenous food products, and education on local heritage cuisine.

(https://www.slowfood.com/nazioni-condotte/philippines/ ) About 86 Ark of Taste entries from the Philippines including Angel Wings Clam (Diwal), Barako Coffee, Tawilis, Lingaro berry, Pili nut, Tuba (coconut wine), among others.

During the relaunch of the program at Glorietta 4 on Thursday, the mayor said the city had to temporarily halt the free movies program at the height of the pandemic in 2020 to prioritize the safety and well being of senior citizens.

"The past years have been challenging for everyone, particularly our senior citizens who were among the most vulnerable during the health crisis. By reinstating this initiative, we aim to provide them with a much-needed avenue for entertainment, joy, and social engagement," she said.

With the program's revival, Mayor Abby said the elderly can now watch movies again for free in Glorietta, Greenbelt, and Circuit Makati, three times a day for the first and second screenings.

She said senior citizens who are active Blu Card members and Makatizen Card holders only need to download their Makatizen

Virtual Card at https://mymakatizencard.ph/ virtualcard and have their Makatizen Virtual Card QR codes scanned by cinema partners to avail themselves of the free cinema tickets.

Mayor Abby said the city plans to include persons with disabilities (PWDs) in the program this year and expand the number of cinema partners to include Power Plant Mall and Walter Mart.

The mayor also said Blu Card holders will receive their mid-year cash gift this month directly from their GCash accounts.

Under the Blu Card program, registered senior citizens aged 60 to 69 are eligible for P3,000, distributed in two equal installments in June and December. Those aged 70 to 79 receive P4,000, while individuals between 80 and 89 years old get P5,000 each year, also in two tranches.

In 2019, the City Council approved City Ordinance No. 2019A-023, which grants P10,000 to Blu cardholders aged 90 to 99, as well as those who are 101 years and older. Since 2012, Makati has given P100,000 to qualified residents who have reached 100 years of age. Claudeth Mocon-Ciriaco

Republic of the Philippines DEPARTMENT OF LABOR AND EMPLOYMENT Regional Office No. IV-A

4th Flr. Andenson Bldg. II, Brgy. Parian, Calamba City Telefax No.: (049) 545-7362

June 2, 2023

NOTICE OF FILING OF APPLICATION/S FOR ALIEN EMPLOYMENT PERMIT/S (AEP/S)

Notice is hereby given that the following companies/employers have filed with this Regional Office application/s for Alien Employment Permit/s:

1 AICE PHILIPPINES ICE CREAM INC. Block 9A, Lots 1-3, Lima Technology Center, Special Economic Zone, Santiago, Malvar, Batangas

2 AICE PHILIPPINES ICE CREAM INC. Block 9A, Lots 1-3, Lima Technology Center, Special Economic Zone, Santiago, Malvar, Batangas

LIU, XIN Machine Specialist

Brief Job Description: Provide strategic technical experience, determine parameters, develop technical plans, task & resources

12

3 AICE PHILIPPINES ICE CREAM INC.

Block 9A, Lots 1-3, Lima Technology Center, Special Economic Zone, Santiago, Malvar, Batangas

NIAN, BAOFENG Machine Specialist

Brief Job Description: Provide strategic

Basic Qualification: Highly technical skills in machine /equipment installation operations and maintenance from ice cream factory with the capacity of 200t to 300t per day

Salary Range: Php30,000 - Php59,999

Qualification: Highly technical skills in machine /equipment installation operations and maintenance from ice cream factory with the capacity of 200t to 300t per day

13

CORPORATION POGO 1 Building, Covelandia Road, Pulvorista, Kawit, Cavite

TRIEU, VAN THUAN Vietnamese Customer Service Representative

Brief Job Description:

Manage incoming calls and customer service inquiries

Basic Qualification: Able to speak, read and write Chinese and Vietnamese language

Salary Range: Php30,000Php59,999

Basic Qualification:

14 BRICKHARTZ TECHNOLOGY INC.

Lot 4044, Molino Boulevard, Niog III, City of Bacoor, Cavite

CHEN, HUANGHONG

Mandarin Customer Relations Officer

Brief Job Description:

Ensure outstanding customer satisfaction by maintaining strong working relationships

Has excellent problemsolving and communication skills in Mandarin, with related BPO experience

Salary Range: Php30,000Php59,999

Basic Qualification:

15 BRICKHARTZ TECHNOLOGY INC.

Lot 4044, Molino Boulevard, Niog III, City of Bacoor, Cavite

HE, JUN Mandarin Customer Relations Officer

Brief Job Description:

Ensure outstanding customer satisfaction by maintaining strong working relationships

Has excellent problemsolving and communication skills in Mandarin, with related BPO experience

Salary Range:

Php30,000Php59,999

Basic Qualification:

16 BRICKHARTZ TECHNOLOGY INC.

Lot 4044, Molino Boulevard, Niog III, City of Bacoor, Cavite

JIANG, XIN

Mandarin Customer Relations Officer

Brief Job Description:

Ensure outstanding customer satisfaction by maintaining strong working relationships

WANG, YICHAO

17 BRICKHARTZ TECHNOLOGY INC.

Lot 4044, Molino Boulevard, Niog III, City of Bacoor, Cavite

Mandarin Customer Relations Officer

Brief Job Description:

Ensure outstanding customer satisfaction by maintaining strong working relationships

WANG, YUANFANG

18 BRICKHARTZ TECHNOLOGY INC.

Lot 4044, Molino Boulevard, Niog III, City of Bacoor, Cavite

Mandarin Customer Relations Officer

Brief Job Description:

Ensure outstanding customer satisfaction by maintaining strong working relationships

YANG, YANBING

19 BRICKHARTZ TECHNOLOGY INC.

Lot 4044, Molino Boulevard, Niog III, City of Bacoor, Cavite

Mandarin Customer Relations Officer

Brief Job Description:

Ensure outstanding customer satisfaction by maintaining strong working relationships

Has excellent problemsolving and communication skills in Mandarin, with related BPO experience

Salary Range:

Php30,000Php59,999

Basic Qualification:

Has excellent problemsolving and communication skills in Mandarin, with related BPO experience

Salary Range:

Php30,000Php59,999

Basic Qualification:

Has excellent problemsolving and communication skills in Mandarin, with related BPO experience

Salary Range:

Php30,000Php59,999

Basic Qualification:

Has excellent problemsolving and communication skills in Mandarin, with related BPO experience

Salary Range: Php30,000Php59,999

House approves debt ceiling bill; swift Senate OK to avoid default

By Lisa Mascaro, Kevin Freking, Stephen Groves & Farnoush Amiri The Associated Press

WASHINGTON—Veering away from a default crisis, the House approved a debt ceiling and budget cuts package late Wednesday, as President Joe Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy assembled a bipartisan coalition of centrist Democrats and Republicans against fierce conservative blowback and progressive dissent.

years, suspends the debt ceiling into January 2025 and changes some policies, including imposing new work requirements for older Americans receiving food aid and greenlighting an Appalachian natural gas line that many Democrats oppose. It bolsters funds for defense and veterans, and guts new money for Internal Revenue Service agents. Raising the nation’s debt limit, now $31 trillion, ensures Treasury can borrow to pay already incurred US debts.

Top GOP deal negotiator Rep. Garret Graves of Louisiana said Republicans were fighting for budget cuts after the past years of extra spending, first during the Covid-19 crisis and later with Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, with its historic investment to fight climate change paid for with revenues elsewhere.

But Republican Rep. Chip Roy, a member of the Freedom Caucus helping to lead the opposition, said, “My beef is that you cut a deal that shouldn’t have been cut.”

For weeks negotiators labored late into the night to strike the deal with the White House, and for days McCarthy has worked to build support among skeptics. At one point, aides wheeled in pizza at the Capitol the night before the vote as he walked Republicans through the details, fielded questions and encouraged them not to lose sight of the bill’s budget savings.

did, advancing the bill that hardright Republicans, many from the Freedom Caucus, refused to back.

“Once again, House Democrats to the rescue to avoid a dangerous default,” said Jeffries, D-N.Y.

“What does that say about this extreme MAGA Republican majority?” he said about the party aligned with Trump’s “Make America Great Again” political movement.

Then, on the final vote hours later, Democrats again ensured passage, leading the tally as 71 Republicans bucked their majority and voted against it.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the spending restrictions in the package would reduce deficits by $1.5 trillion over the decade, a top goal for the Republicans trying to curb the debt load.

In a surprise that complicated Republicans’ support, however, the CBO said their drive to impose work requirements on older Americans receiving food stamps would end up boosting spending by $2.1 billion over the time period. That’s because the final deal exempts veterans and homeless people, expanding the food stamp rolls by 78,000 people monthly, the CBO said.

Triple-whammy of cyclones, 1-in-200-year event, drove deadly flooding–Scientists

By Frances D’emilio & Seth Borenstein

Associated Press Writers

ROME—A rare, triple-whammy of cyclones drove the deadly flooding that devastated much of northern Italy this month, but scientists said Wednesday that climate change doesn’t seem to be to blame for the intense rainfall.

Using computer simulations and past observations, a team of researchers looked for but found no evidence of human-caused warming behind the drenching. World Weather Attribution compared what happened to a computer-simulated world of no human-caused warming and didn’t see the fingerprints of fossil-fuel-induced climate change, unlike in many past studies.

hasn’t been peer-reviewed. While the flood-prone region has a history of severe flooding, “the heavy rainfall over the first 21 days of May 2023 is the wettest event of this type in the record,’’ the study concluded. But “of the 19 models used, none of them show a significant likelihood or intensity of such an event to occur,’’ the study said.

“This suggests, that in contrast to most parts of the world, there is indeed no detectable increase in heavy rainfall in the EmiliaRomagna region in spring.”

Looking at the May flooding, that phenomenon is “one where we clearly see no trend,’’ said Otto.

The hard-fought deal pleased few, but lawmakers assessed it was better than the alternative— a devastating economic upheaval if Congress failed to act. Tensions ran high throughout the day as hard-right Republicans refused the deal, while Democrats said “extremist” GOP views were risking a debt default as soon as next week.

With an overwhelming House vote, 314-117, the bill now heads to the Senate with passage expected by week’s end.

McCarthy insisted his party was working to “give America hope” as he launched into a late evening speech extolling the bill’s budget cuts, which he said were needed to curb Washington’s “runaway spending.”

Amid deep discontent from Republicans who said the spending restrictions did not go far enough, McCarthy said it is only a “first step.”

The package makes some inroads in curbing the nation’s debt as Republicans demanded, without rolling back Trump-era tax breaks as Biden wanted. To pass it, Biden and McCarthy counted on support

from the political center, a rarity in divided Washington.

In a statement released after the vote, Biden said: “I have been clear that the only path forward is a bipartisan compromise that can earn the support of both parties. This agreement meets that test.”

He called the vote “good news for the American people and the American economy.”

Biden had sent top White House officials to the Capitol and called lawmakers directly to shore up backing. McCarthy worked to sell skeptical fellow Republicans, even fending off challenges to his leadership, in the rush to avert a potentially disastrous US default.

Swift passage later in the week by the Senate would ensure government checks will continue to go out to Social Security recipients, veterans and others and would prevent financial upheaval at home and abroad. Next Monday is when the Treasury has said the US would run short of money to pay its debts.

Overall, the 99-page bill restricts spending for the next two

The speaker has faced a tough crowd. Cheered on by conservative senators and outside groups, the hard-right House Freedom Caucus lambasted the compromise as falling well short of the needed spending cuts, and they vowed to try to halt passage.

A much larger conservative faction, the Republican Study Committee, declined to take a position. Even rank-and-file centrist conservatives were unsure, leaving McCarthy searching for votes from his slim Republican majority.

Ominously, the conservatives warned of possibly trying to oust McCarthy over the compromise.

One influential Republican, former President Donald Trump, held his fire: “It is what it is,” he said of the deal in an interview with Iowa radio host Simon Conway.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said it was up to McCarthy to turn out Republican votes in the 435-member House, where 218 votes are needed for approval.

As the tally faltered on an afternoon procedural vote, Jeffries stood silently and raised his green voting card, signaling that the Democrats would fill in the gap to ensure passage. They

Liberal discontent, though, ran strong as nearly four dozen Democrats also broke away, decrying the new work requirements for older Americans, those 50-54, in the food aid program.

Some Democrats were also incensed that the White House negotiated into the deal changes to the landmark National Environmental Policy Act and approval of the controversial Mountain Valley Pipeline natural gas project. The energy development is important to Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., but many others oppose it as unhelpful in fighting climate change.

On Wall Street, stock prices were down.

In the Senate, Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell are working for passage by week’s end.

Schumer warned there is “no room for error.”

Senators, who have remained largely on the sidelines during much of the negotiations, are insisting on amendments to reshape the package. But making any changes at this stage seemed unlikely with so little time to spare before Monday’s deadline.

A P White House Correspondent Zeke Miller and AP writers Mary Clare Jalonick, Seung Min Kim and Jill Colvin and video journalist Nathan Ellgren contributed to this report.

Still, precisely because having three exceptionally heavy downpours in such a short timeframe is so rare—the study estimated there was a 1-in-200 probability that three cyclones would strike within a three-week period—the climate experts cautioned that more time for study is needed.

“This is not the end of the story,’’ said study co-author Davide Faranda, a researcher in climate physics at the Pierre-Simon Laplace Institute in France. “This event is too rare,’’ he said during a panel to present the findings.

“Remember there was a drought before” the first storm pummeled the Emilia-Romagna region on May 2, and “this (drought) was due to climate change,” Faranda said. He was referring to two years of scant or no rainfall that left land so parched it couldn’t absorb the first rainfall. Drought derived in large part to lack of Alpine snowfall, which usually replenishes the Po River and other, smaller waterways in Italy’s north.

This study was undertaken “to answer the question of whether and to what extent climate change” was an influence in the flooding in Emilia-Romagna, said Friederike Otto, of Imperial College London, and a founder of the scientific group.

With hundreds of streets, homes, farms and other businesses still deep in floodwater, the study was done only a week ago and

The last of the three May floods was the most devastating and claimed 15 lives. The extremely heavy and concentrated rainfall triggered some 300 landslides and caused nearly two-dozen rivers to overflow. The floodwaters were so high; firefighter and coastguard helicopters were needed to rescue some residents who climbed onto rooftops of three-story buildings to avoid drowning.

The study’s findings corroborated earlier research that found that “with human-induced climate change, the number of lowpressure systems in the Mediterranean has decreased. This leads to a reduction in heavy rainfall, offsetting the expected increase in heavy rain from global warming.”

Emilia-Romagna is one of Italy’s most productive regions for both agriculture and manufacturing.

Like elsewhere in the north, during the nation’s post-war economic boom, much of region was rapidly urbanized, depriving the area of terrain needed for drainage and increasing the risk of flooding.

All that “has exacerbated the impacts of the heavy rainfall. However, this was an extremely rare event, and most infrastructure cannot reasonably be built to withstand such low-frequency events,’’ the scientists said in their findings.

“Disasters just don’t happen from rain falling from the sky,’’ said study co-author Roop Singh, of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, based in the Netherlands. Borenstein contributed from Washington.

China Defense Ministry accuses US of interfering in training exercise before aerial confrontation

BEIJING—China’s Defense Ministry accused the US of “interference and surveillance” of a naval exercise in the South China Sea ahead of an incident in which a Chinese fighter pilot flew at high speed in front of a US Air Force reconnaissance plane, underscoring the rupture in contacts between their militaries.

A statement issued late Wednesday by the Chinese military’s Southern Theater Command said it had “organized air forces to track and monitor the whole process, dealt with it according to laws and regulations, and operated professionally.”

The US Indo-Pacific Command said the pilot of a Chinese J-16 fighter had “performed an un -

necessarily aggressive maneuver”

while intercepting a US Air Force RC-135 aircraft on May 26, flying directly in front of the plane’s nose.

“The RC-135 was conducting safe and routine operations over the South China Sea in international airspace, in accordance with international law,” the US side said. “We expect all countries in the Indo-Pacific region to use international airspace safely and in accordance with international law.”

Southern Theater Command spokesperson Senior Col. Zhang Nandong was quoted in the statement accusing the US of “mixing up black and white and making false accusations in an attempt to confuse the international audience.”

“We solemnly urge the US to conscientiously restrain the actions of front-line naval and air forces, strictly abide by relevant international laws and relevant agreements, and prevent accidents at sea and in the air,” Zhang said.

“If not, the US will bear all consequences,” he said.

Zhang did not say what international laws he was referring to. China’s claim to virtually the entire South China Sea is not recognized by the US and strongly contested by other countries bordering on the strategic waterway, through which an estimated $5 trillion of international trade passes each year. The nature of the Chinese exercise wasn’t clear, nor was it ap -

parent that Beijing had informed other countries of its activities.

While Beijing and Washington have signed agreements to handle “unexpected events” between their air and naval forces, China has broken off communication between the two militaries, largely in retaliation for US support for Taiwan. China claims the self-governing island as its own territory, to be annexed by force if necessary.

China also reacted angrily to the US shooting down earlier this year of a suspected Chinese spy balloon that had traversed the US, while Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu is under a US travel ban and other sanctions for overseeing arms transfers from Russia. China has ruled out a meeting

between Li and US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin when the two men attend a security conference in Singapore over the weekend.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday that the plane incident showed the importance of the US and China maintaining dialogue at a senior level. He said it was “regrettable” that Beijing had rejected Austin’s request for a meeting with the Chinese defense minister.

“I think it only underscores why it is so important that we have regular, open lines of communication, including, by the way, between our defense ministers,” Blinken said at a news conference at the end of an EU-US trade and technology meeting in Lulea, Sweden.

China frequently challenges military aircraft from the US and its allies in the South and East China Seas, and the Taiwan Strait. Similar actions led to a 2001 inair collision over the South China Sea between a Chinese fighter and US Navy surveillance plane in which the Chinese plane was lost and pilot killed. The damaged US plane landed at a Chinese navy air force base, leading to the detention of the crew and a diplomatic standoff between the sides.

In Tuesday’s statement, the Indo-Pacific Command said America will continue to “fly, sail and operate—safely and responsibly—wherever international law allows,” and expects all other countries to do the same.

HOUSE Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-California, speaks as House Minority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise, R.La., left, and Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., listen at a news conference after the House passed the debt ceiling bill at the Capitol in Washington on Wednesday, May 31, 2023. The bill now goes to the Senate. AP/JOSE LUIS MAGANA

PEOPLE are rescued in Faenza, Italy on May 18, 2023. A rare, triple-whammy of cyclones drove the deadly flooding that devastated much of northern Italy this month, but scientists said Wednesday,

UN chief criticizes Cambodia’s upcoming elections after top opposition party ban

By Edith M. Lederer The Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS—UN

Secretary-General Antonio

Guterres implicitly criticized Cambodia’s upcoming elections Wednesday for failing to be inclusive,

the top opposition party was not allowed to register.

The Candlelight Party would have been the sole credible challenger to the governing Cambodian People’s Party in the July elections, but the country’s Constitutional Council last week refused to overturn a ban on its registration in a decision that cannot be appealed.

“The secretary-general reiterates that inclusive elections, in which a plurality of views

and voter choices is represented, are important to engender confidence in the electoral process and underpin the ability of Cambodia’s people to exercise their democratic rights,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters.

“As (Guterres) said during his visit to Cambodia last year, it is vital that civic space be open, for human rights defenders to

NASA holds first public meeting ahead of report on unidentified flying objects

By Marcia Dunn AP Aerospace Writer

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.— NASA held its first public meeting on UFOs on Wednesday a year after launching a study into unexplained sightings and insisted it’s not hiding anything.

The space agency televised the four-hour hearing featuring an independent panel of experts who vowed to be transparent. The team includes 16 scientists and other experts selected by NASA including retired astronaut Scott Kelly, the first American to spend nearly a year in space.

“I want to emphasize this loud and proud: There is absolutely no convincing evidence for extraterrestrial life associated with” unidentified objects, NASA’s Dan Evans said after the meeting.

Still, hundreds of questions from the public that poured in ahead of time were skeptical and veered into conspiracy theories.

NASA launched the study to probe what it calls UAPs—short for unexplained anomalous phenomena—in the sky, in space or under the sea.

Optical illusions can explain some of this, said Kelly, a former Navy fighter pilot. He recalled a Tomcat flight off Virginia Beach years ago during which his radar intercept officer in the back seat

was convinced they’d flown past a UFO.

“It turns out it was Bart Simpson, a balloon,” Kelly said. “And in my experience, the sensors kind of have the same issues as the people’s eyeballs.”

Evans pointed out that the livestream of the meeting led to considerable trolling. That comes on top of “online abuse” directed toward several committee members.

Harassment detracts from the scientific process and reinforces the stigma surrounding the topic, said Evans, adding that NASA security is dealing with it.

“It’s precisely this rigorous, evidence-based approach that allows one to separate the fact from fiction,” he said.

The group is looking at what unclassified information is available on the subject and how much more is needed to understand what’s going on in the sky, according to astrophysicist David Spergel, the committee’s chair that runs the Simons Foundation.

No secret military data are included, such as anything surrounding the suspected spy balloons from China spotted flying over the US earlier this year.

The meeting was held at NASA headquarters in Washington with the public taking part remotely. A final report is expected by the end of July.

be protected, and for civil society to play a wider role in society, all of which remain critical in preserving Cambodia’s substantial development gains and consolidation of peace,” Dujarric said. He said: “The secretary-general reaffirms the commitment of the UN to support a peaceful and

democratic Cambodia that fully respects the human rights of all its citizens.”

The entrenched Cambodian People’s Party has held an iron grip on power for decades and controls almost every level of government. Prime Minister Hun Sen, an authoritarian ruler in a

nominally democratic state, has held his position for 38 years.

The absence of the Candlelight Party leaves only Hun Sen’s party, its allies and small parties that lack a national presence to contest the July 23 elections for the 125 members of the National Assembly.

Hun Sen’s eldest son, army chief Hun Manet, is widely expected to replace his father as prime minister after the polls.

Before the Constitutional Council ruling, UN independent human rights investigators including Vitit Muntarbhorn, the investigator on Cambodian rights, expressed alarm at “the restrictions imposed on the right of political parties to participate in elections,” citing the election committee’s May 16 refusal to register the Candlelight Party.

After the Constitutional Council refused to overturn the election committee’s decision, the US State Department said it would not send official observers to witness the elections.

“Contrived legal actions, threats, harassment, and politically motivated criminal charges targeting opposition parties, independent media, and civil society undermine Cambodia’s international commitments to develop as a multiparty democracy,” spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.

The Candlelight Party is the unofficial successor to the Cambodia National Rescue Party, which had posed a serious challenge to Hun Sen’s party before being dissolved by a controversial court ruling before the 2018 elections.

Hun Sen’s party then swept those elections, winning all the seats in the National Assembly. Western nations declared the 2018 election was neither free nor fair, and imposed mild economic sanctions in response.

Most prominent opposition politicians are now in self-imposed exile to avoid being jailed on various charges they say are trumped up and unfair.

South Korea export slide eases, signaling global demand bottom

By Hooyeon Kim

SOUTH Korea’s exports slump eased for a second month in May, an early sign that weakness in global demand may finally be starting to moderate.

Shipments adjusted for working-day differences fell 9.3 percent from a year earlier, the smallest decline since October, according to data released Thursday by the customs office.

Headline exports dropped 15.2 percent, less than economists’ expectations for a 16.3 percent decline, according to the trade ministry. Overall imports fell 14 percent, resulting in a trade deficit of $2.1 billion, the narrowest in a year.

Korean exports serve as a barometer of international trade as the nation sells items such as chips, displays and refined oil, which straddle supply lines. While the data indicates some recovery in demand for Korean goods, overall exports remain weak amid a surge in chip inventories and China’s lackluster economic expansion.

T he South Korean won rose 0.5 percent to 1,319.55 per dollar Thursday, helped by the trade data but supported more by improving global risk appetite. The currency still remains about 4 percent weaker against the greenback this year, making it one of the worst performing in Asia.

“Things may not be as bad as some expected,” said Ha Keon-hyeong, an

economist at Shinhan Securities Co. But in order for this to become a clear upward trend, “the tech sector has to pick up, and there aren’t many signs showing that at the moment,” Ha said.

The economic recovery in China, South Korea’s largest trading partner, weakened in May as manufacturing activity fell to the lowest level since December 2022. Meanwhile, South Korea’s semiconductor inventory surged by the most in seven years in April, underscoring ongoing weak demand for chips. Shipments to six of Korea’s major trading partners declined in May, plunging the most for goods headed to Central and South America. Exports to China dropped 21 percent, the smallest drop since October.

Expor ts of chips slumped 36 percent as China and tech companies continue to work through a glut of inventory, and overseas shipments of displays fell 7.4 percent, the trade ministry said in a separate statement. One bright spot for Korea’s trade is automobiles, with exports surging nearly 50 percent—the 11th straight month of gains—supported by demand from the US and European Union.

The ongoing contraction in exports is set to weigh on South Korea’s economic growth. The Bank of Korea last week cut its forecast for gross domestic product growth in 2023 to 1.4 percent, citing lower exports and investments. With assistance from Myungshin Cho/Bloomberg

Fed signal for rate pause takes pressure off hot jobs report

By Steve Matthews

FEDERAL Reserve officials are signaling they plan to keep interest rates steady in June while retaining the option to hike further in coming months, steering market expectations ahead of a key employment report.

Governor Philip Jefferson, a centrist who’s nominated to be vice chair and who often echoes Chair Jerome Powell’s views, said Wednesday that skipping an increase would give policymakers time to assess data but not preclude future tightening.

That view undercuts the importance of the monthly jobs report, due Friday, which has often been viewed by Wall Street as a key data point swaying policy. After Jefferson spoke, investor bets for a hike at the June 13-14 Federal Open Market Committee plunged to about 35 percent Wednesday from nearly 60 percent a day earlier.

“I definitely think this was a signal” and “likely completely in sync with Chair Powell’s views,” said Rubeela Farooqi, chief US economist at High Frequency Economics. “Just the response of market pricing makes it clear that the message is getting through.”

Stocks in Asia were broadly higher in choppy trading on Thursday. US equity futures traded in and out of positive territory after an initial boost following news the House passed debtlimit legislation forged by President Joe Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy that would avert a destabilizing US default.

The FOMC has raised rates by 5 percentage points in the past 14 months to curb inflation running more than double their 2 percent target. With their benchmark rate now in a 5 percent to 5.25 percent target range following a quarter-

point increase in early May, Powell has said that policymakers could afford to watch the data and the evolving outlook.

The case for a suspension of hikes rests on the idea that monetary policy works with a time lag, so the impact of past rate hikes has yet to fully weigh on the economy and labor market. Moreover, recent bank failures have resulted in tighter financial conditions that will reduce credit availability by an uncertain amount, further hurting the outlook.

“Skipping a rate hike at a coming meeting would allow the committee to see more data before making decisions about the extent of additional policy firming,” Jefferson said.

At the Fed, the vice chair often speaks for the central bank. While Jefferson has yet to be confirmed by the Senate, economists took his comments as reflecting those of the Fed chair.

Jefferson’s remarks “seem like a campaign,” said Stephen Stanley, chief US economist at Santander US Capital Markets in New York. “He is taking to heart his new role as Powell’s wingman and vice chairman.”

The message was echoed Wednesday by Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker, who also urged a June pause while stressing that officials could instead shift to moving at every other meeting if they need to keep tightening.

There’s good reason for the Fed to want to get out front of a potentially hot jobs report.

Go vernment data on Friday are projected to show payrolls in the world’s largest economy increased by 195,000 in May, but the initial print has exceeded the median projection for the past year. Earnings are seen rising 0.3

percent from the prior month, when they posted the biggest advance in a year. The unemployment rate is projected to rise 0.1 percentage point to 3.5 percent.

P owell and other Fed leaders have said they want to see the economy slow to a below-trend pace and the job market to cool off from a level they see as overheated, with unemployment near a multi-decade low.

The chair says while goods prices have shown improvement and housing prices seem poised to ease later this year, other services prices are likely to be sticky and continue to rise in the face of a too-hot labor market.

W hile Powell has suggested “pain” would be needed to reduce inflation, some officials—including Governor Christopher Waller and Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee—have argued that there is not much of a relationship between the labor market and prices. Inflation measured by the consumer price index has fallen to 4.9 percent from 9.1 percent last June with a still robust job market.

“The immediate market reaction to a strong payroll figure seems to be automatically hawkish, but think this is far too simplistic,” said Luke Tilley, chief economist at Wilmington Trust Corp. “We’ve already seen inflation slow significantly even with wages still running a bit hotter than pre-pandemic levels. This can and should lead the FOMC to re-evaluate their view on the connection between the two.”

Any pause is likely to be met with some resistance as several Fed presidents, including Loretta Mester of Cleveland and James Bullard of St. Louis, who have suggested there’s more work to do to

cool off a strong economy and elevated inflation. The Atlanta Fed’s gross domestic product tracker says that second-quarter growth to date is tracking at about a 1.9 percent rate.

Hawkish positioning “ WITH consumer spending coming in strong, the jobs market remaining tight and inflation persistently running hot there is little ammunition to counter the hawks’ positioning right now,” said James Knightley, chief international economist at ING. T he Fed does have options to follow a pause with a potential hike in the following meeting in July or September to give time to assess the impact of recent bank failures on credit conditions and of past rate hikes on the economy.

In an effort to win support from hawkish voters, the FOMC could highlight a tightening bias in its post-meeting statement or in the “dot plot” for how officials see the rate path, which showed a median of 5.1 percent in March.

The Fed will also get the consumer price report for May during the first day of its two-day meeting. While economists see the inflation report as likely more important than employment for Fed policy, the lateness of the report could make the committee reluctant to change its previous plan based on a single data point they haven’t studied in detail.

“Chair Powell and other Fed officials are sensitive to the lagged and cumulative effects of policy after 500 basis points of tightening,” said Farooqi. “Our base case remains that the Fed will err on the side of caution and hold policy steady at the next meeting.” With assistance from Vince Golle and Matthew Boesler/Bloomberg

after

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres addresses the media during a visit to the UN office in the capital Nairobi, Kenya on May 3, 2023. Guterres implicitly criticized Cambodia’s upcoming elections Wednesday, May 31, 2023, for failing to be inclusive, after the top opposition party was not allowed to register. AP/KHALIL SENOSI

Let’s send our maids to truly safe countries

This is something difficult to stomach: since 2016, 196 Filipino workers have died in Kuwait, and nearly 80 percent of those deaths were due to physical abuse, according to the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration. in 2017, the Philippine embassy in Kuwait registered 6,000 cases of abuse, sexual harassment and rape.

Filipino maids do not only suffer from the cruelty of their employers. In 2014, the Philippine government filed a case against a Kuwaiti employer whose pet lion almost devoured a Filipino maid, resulting in her death. The victim, Lourdes Hingco Abejuela, died from the severity of the wounds she had suffered. She had deep bite wounds on her legs, according to her friend Nieva Edullantes.

In February 2018, President Duterte banned the deployment of Filipino workers to Kuwait following the discovery of Joanna Demafelis’ body in a freezer. In May 2019, Filipino maid Constancia Lago Dayag was killed in Kuwait, and a few months later, another Filipina, Jeanelyn Villavende, was sexually abused and tortured to death by her employer.

The many cases of sexual abuse and suicide, as well as unexplained disappearances of domestic workers in Kuwait angered President Duterte: “What are you doing to my countrymen?” the president asked. “Is there something with your culture? Is there something wrong with your values?”

Duterte decided to make permanent a temporary ban on Filipinos traveling to Kuwait to work. “I would like to address to their patriotism: Come home,” the president said. “No matter how poor we are, we will survive. The economy is doing good, and we are short of workers.”

Kuwait sought to calm the confrontation by sending a delegation to Manila, which asked that hiring of Filipino domestic workers be resumed at Kuwaiti agencies. Tensions cooled after the two nations signed a memorandum of agreement providing additional protection for OFWs in the Gulf state. Satisfied with Kuwait’s conciliatory move, Duterte ordered Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III to lift the ban on the deployment of overseas Filipino workers to Kuwait.

About 268,000 Filipinos currently work in Kuwait, including many domestic helpers. Last year, remittances from Kuwait amounted to around $597 million.

The latest OFW who was killed while employed in Kuwait is Jullebee Ranara. Police said she was killed by the 17-year-old son of her employer, who reportedly raped and burned her before dumping her body in the desert. Over 114 Filipino maids have left Kuwait in less than four days after the brutal killing of Ranara in January, according to news reports.

Following the Ranara murder, the Philippines in February stopped the first-time deployment of domestic workers to Kuwait. Kuwait retaliated by suspending all new visas for Philippine nationals indefinitely, in an escalation of a row between the Gulf state and the Philippines over worker protection and employer rights.

Kuwait went a step further, alleging that officials and staff of the Philippine Embassy in Kuwait have committed violations to diplomatic practices, and demanded that the Philippine government publicly admit these infractions as precondition to lifting the ban on visas to all Filipinos. The Department of Foreign Affairs said they will not bend to those demands. “We will not apologize or formally admit to infractions,” DFA Undersecretary Eduardo de Vega said. (Read, “Kuwait demands PHL to admit ‘violations;’ PHL says ‘No way!,’” in the BusinessMirror , May 30, 2023)

As talks ended up in stalemate, Kuwait stayed the ban on issuance of all kinds of visas to Filipino passport holders. The Department of Migrant Workers also maintained the ban on deployment of first-time Filipino domestic workers to Kuwait.

This could be a blessing in disguise for our OFWs, particularly our hardworking and cheerful domestic workers. Filipino maids are very popular all over the world. You can find many of them in Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai and other countries. As they are one of the most wanted workers in the world, let’s stop sending them to destinations with a lot of abusive employers. Let’s send them to countries where they are treated well, respected for their work, and truly protected.

Tatak Pinoy (Proudly Pinoy) Act

policies, ensuring that throughout the process, local enterprises are prioritized and provided ample support.

Better Days

Over the years, our government has taken steps to address the structural challenges of the economy—be it the high cost of power, inadequate skills of our workforce, or poor logistics. What has been lacking is a coordinated transformation of the economy across three specific, albeit interrelated dimensions. First is the imperative to modernize agriculture and increase its productivity. second is the need to increase the employment share of the manufacturing sector, and in general, of the complex sectors of the economy. And third, the production and export of a more complex basket of products and services, such as but not limited to the making of advanced microchips, electric vehicle components, and even aerospace parts.

According to the Atlas of Economic Complexity of Dr. Ricardo Hausmann of Harvard University and Dr. Cesar Hidalgo of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a country becomes prosperous when it is able to produce and trade a diverse array of complex and uncommon products and services. To achieve this diversity, it needs to leverage the relatedness of the skills, productive know-how, inputs, and technology it possesses, to make new products and services and further expand its capabilities. A country empowers itself to branch out into other forms of complex production and economic activity by aiming to be competent in producing and offering sophisticated products and services, thereby launching a virtuous cycle where high-paying “good” jobs are generated.

Indeed, economic development

should be pursued collectively as neither the public nor the private sector can achieve this by themselves. Hastening the process of transforming the Philippine economy demands that stakeholders from both the public and private sectors organize, plan, align, and integrate their respective efforts. Comparing our policies with countries that are more prosperous, it is clear that their efforts are more in sync and as a result they have been able to produce more advanced goods and services.

Inspired by the consultations our office has conducted over several years with various stakeholders, we recently filed Senate Bill No. 2218 or the Tatak Pinoy (Proudly Filipino) Act, which aims to institutionalize a programmatic and multisectoral approach to the country’s development planning and public expenditure

Specifically, the measure seeks to mandate government agencies to collaborate with the private sector, including the academe and civil society, to formulate, finance, implement, monitor and evaluate a comprehensive strategy—involving plans, programs, projects, and policies—focused on the expansion and diversification of the productive capabilities of local enterprises.

On May 30, 2023, as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, we held a public hearing to discuss the views of stakeholders on the bill. The measure drew unanimous support from all agencies and guests that attended with some even presenting recommendations on how to achieve the measure’s industrialization agenda.

For one, DTI Undersecretary Rafaelita Aldaba explained the Comprehensive National Industrial Strategy and Manufacturing Resurgence Program that starts with rebuilding existing capacities (i.e., auto) and strengthening emerging industries (i.e., aerospace parts) including maintaining competitiveness of comparative advantage industries such as electronics, garments, auto parts, food, and resource-based industries. This would then be followed with a shift to high value-added activities and investment in upstream industries (i.e., chemicals, iron & steel), moving up the value chain and linking and integrating industries and small and medium enterprises. The final phase of this Roadmap would entail moving to high tech transport equipment, chemicals, electrical machin-

Reflections on artificial intelligence

know nor care about AI until it affects them positively or negatively. But do we actually know how AI affects us because most certainly we do not even realize how it operates?

When ChatGPT, a large language model artificial intelligence (Ai) program, was released late november last year, it caught the world’s attention, and i was experimenting with its capabilities by the second week of December. By the time we had to submit our course syllabi for the second semester in January 2023, i did not change my class requirements in an economics course i would be teaching.

T hese were graded essays and discussion boards comprising a major portion of the final grade. I just made sure that essays and problem sets would always be accompanied by data sets for direct interpretation and analysis. I really was not worried about AI being used in my class requirements.

Why should we worry about AI? Another curious question is: Who are worrying about AI? The answer to the second question is only those who understand AI, including those who have seen its potential to replace people in jobs while all the rest are just speculative, a fear of the unknown. The majority do not

ery, manufacturing related services and participating as manufacturing hubs in regional and global production networks for auto, electronics, machinery, garments, and food.

Dr. Ronald Mendoza, IDinsight’s Southeast Asia Regional Director, said that the proposed measure aptly sets up a transparent, science and evidence-based process in formulating policies that is crucial to drive industrialization. Mendoza added that top-down approaches done in the past will not be effective anymore, and that the private sector must be involved in crafting these roadmaps.

Dr. Chris Monterola of the Asian Institute of Management stated the need to push specific products up the value chain, as well as an increased focus on research and development through education.

With the country being expected to achieve upper middle-income status in the coming years—driven by an increasing population and a productive industrial sector, now is the opportune time to pursue these goals. We dubbed this advocacy Tatak Pinoy because we believe that the results it seeks to achieve—namely, world-beating Filipino enterprises selling globally competitive Philippine-made products, goods, and services to the rest of the world—are things that the country as a whole can and should be proud of.

Senator Sonny Angara has been in public service for 18 years—9 years as Representative of the Lone District of Aurora, and 9 as Senator. He has authored, co-authored, and sponsored more than 330 laws. He is currently serving his second term in the Senate.

E-mail: sensonnyangara@yahoo.com| Facebook, Twitter & Instagram: @sonnyangara

The past AI’s most direct and widespread engagement with people is in social media, subtly directing us users to contents we are most likely interested, either affirming our biases or satisfying our curiosity. This created echo chambers that reinforce affinities to either right or wrong beliefs and to everything that people identify with. Never have we seen in history that social and political lines are so clearly defined in populations around the world, creating huge problems in consensus building for democracies to work. Experts point to this first wide engagement between AI and humanity in social media, and the verdict is that AI won. Guess then who will win in the next stage considering a much powerful and intelligent AI?

It is not hard to imagine that the

next widespread engagement with AI is on mainstreaming its use in our everyday work. It will be revolutionary in all aspects, but it is difficult to imagine how exactly it will pan out in education, industries, finance, medicine, and scientific research, among others. From the developed countries it will spread out throughout the world. How fast it will affect us, remains to be seen. It is not difficult to understand the main ideas of a neural network model being the platform of ChatGPT and other large AI models. It is a vast tangle of networks of input and output prediction system that makes hundreds and thousands of recursive iterations until it fits into the data it is trained. Once the neural network system has been programmed and designed, the key is the training data. If it is trained with hundreds of images of a dog, and then presented with a blurred image of a dog, it See “Eagle Watch,” A15

sonny M. angara

Joselito t sescon

Imagining One Hundred Islands

By Mike Cohen

THE BRICS group of emerging markets is ramping up its bid for greater global influence, sensing a moment to capitalize on the splintering world order to build out its ranks beyond Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Foreign ministers from BRICS nations meeting over two days in Cape Town starting Thursday will be joined by counterparts from countries including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Kazakhstan. On the agenda is expansion, with as many as 19 countries aspiring to join, and the potential establishment of a common currency.

The gathering, a precursor to an Aug. 22-24 summit of BRICS heads of state in Johannesburg, will showcase the bloc’s goals to establish itself as a serious economic and political force. Coming at a time of heightened tensions between Washington and Beijing, the talks are also likely to fan western concerns that the group is moving to become a counterweight to the US and the European Union.

Already, members have refused to join the likes of the Group of Seven in blaming—and sanctioning—fellow

BRICS nation Russia over President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The goals of expansion and a shared currency are aims espoused by China, and at least two of the country attendees in Cape Town—Iran and Cuba— are subject to US economic penalties.

“BRICS has acquired a very important stature in the world, with many countries across various continents of our world seeking to be part of it,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa told lawmakers in Cape Town on Wednesday. Naledi

Pandor, the foreign minister and meeting host, said last month that the bloc could be “transformative,” representing those nations “that wish to play a role in world affairs, ensuring benefit to the Global South.”

Eagle Watch . .

continued from A14

can predict as well as construct a clear image through a process called backward propagation. This is an optimization process that reduces the error of prediction in several iterations until it fits into, for example, a clear image of a dog modeled from trained data.

The neural network mimics how the brain works, which brings us to question if AI does also think like a human. Majority of the experts, including those who build large AI models, do not think so. It is just a perfect system of statistical predictions based on past “knowledge” (trained data) which is hardly a human thinking process. In fact, we do the thinking coded in certain forms of language, such as how we processed information and formed the conventional knowledge of what is a dog.

The neural network model reverses this process in the most efficient way of learning through backward propagation. Large AI models benefit from the vast human knowledge accumulated through the past millennia. This led one leading AI scientist to caution on AI development. The future of what a superintelligent AI can do being unparalleled is something that needs to be understood first.

As large AI models learn from the accumulated human knowledge, will they form values that are also aligned with human values? This is what experts call the alignment problem. It is not hard to figure out after some time using ChatGPT that it is liberal or biased to liberal ideas. Conservatives were the first to voice this out. So, what makes a universal common value that AI should possess when we, human populations, have conflicting values that sometimes explode into violent conflicts? This stokes the fear that the super-intelligent AI can subtly manipulate humans into more devastating conflicts thriving on our inherent human weaknesses.

Mr. Joselito T. Sescon is Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics of Ateneo de Manila University.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is a vocal supporter, championing the use of a shared currency and dispatching his Finance Minister Fernando Haddad to attend a meeting of the New Development Bank, the Shanghai-based lender created by BRICS nations, to lobby for assistance for beleaguered neighbor Argentina. Argentina’s foreign minister is due to attend the BRICS meeting remotely.

Lula’s protege and the bank’s president, Dilma Rousseff, said this week that the lender was looking to widen its membership further. Bangladesh and the UAE joined in 2021, while Egypt became a member in February. Now Saudi Arabia is discussing membership.  Riyadh’s accession to BRICS would bolster Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s attempts to diversify his nation’s economy, an effort that has bought it much closer to Russia and China in recent years. China is the kingdom’s most important oil customer, while it relies on relations with Russia to help prop up crude prices through Opec+.  For the Gulf region, joining major trade blocks makes sense as countries seek to expand trade ties and develop as global transit hubs, a person familiar with Gulf thinking said. Plans to join have been in the works for a while and momentum has been building toward this point, the person said.

The acronym BRIC was coined in 2001 by Jim O’Neill, then Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s chief economist, to highlight those countries’ rapid economic expansions. South Africa was invited to join in 2010, but BRICS has failed to punch its weight as a group. That’s despite its members representing more than 42% of the world’s population and accounting for 23% of global gross domestic product and 18% of trade, giving credence to demands for more sway. With assistance from Sudhi Ranjan Sen, Matthew Martin, Paul Richardson and Karl Maier / Bloomberg

Tito Genova Valiente annoTaTions

Are the hundred islands of Alaminos counted in the 7,100 or 7,641 islands of the Philippine archipelago? Or, are these counted as one set? If I am to believe the many data about the Hundred Islands available online, there are 124 at low tide and 123 at high tide. If this is the case, that beauty contestant of yore was not being smart-alecky but was factual?

The fact is one day I was on my way to the Hundred Islands, the number haunting me as we traversed the northern highway. I have not traveled much to the north as much as I have been to the south. The places therefore we passed by were not memorized nor were they capable of summoning memories for me. The first thing I noticed and this would be sensed by citizens of the southern part of this country was how smooth and paved and wide the roads and highways were. The tourists could marvel at this development; being part of the martial law generations, I realized how politics and politicians had structured inequality in this island republic. This northern path received more boon than bane from our leaders. The skies that day proved that the supertyphoon has not left yet the Philippine area of responsibility. The typhoons visit us like unloved relatives so frequently we know what PAR means although if you ask any meteorologist and disaster expert they will have no charming explanation why a typhoon should be our responsibility. Isn’t a storm, or a hurricane an indicator of how Nature can be quite irresponsible?

common currency LaBoREM EXERCEns

Here is where the weather activists are right: typhoons are the result of our irresponsibility. The travel to the north meant wide spaces on either side of the highway. Rice field and grassland stretched far and wide. Bulacan, the signs were telling us. The day was overcast when we made the first stop. We were at Marilao for lunch. Marilao had lost its Tagalog mysticism. It was near after all. Bulacan should be far. Movies told us that. Bukirin Parang. Palay. The indices of stereotypical rural villages and towns were gone. I could see students from a nearby medical school. Lovely coffee shops were all around us. We went to a popular restaurant. Fast food was the choice. Speed, cleanliness and tested taste were assurances that we learned from traveling. When we stepped out, it started to drizzle.

A long bridge appeared. Soon we were on it. Below were thin strips of stream disappearing behind bushes. A few minutes after we got on to the car, we sensed the absence of vehicles to our left. Then our lane began to slow down. We stopped.

Technology took over. Butch checked his Waze. Accident on the road. Our driver checked the online videos for that day. Accident for the day. One needed to specify one’s search because four and five years ago, violent crashes occurred in that area, too. I heard an announcer. It was from the phone of the driver. On the phone screen, there were cars and trucks parked. A truck was on its side. Then another video showed a car, more than half of its body wrecked, its front part contorted as if a great force pushed it to curl into itself. A bus teetering on the side of the highway completed the grand scene of danger and death. We were trudging on. No idea yet how the scene looked actually. After an hour, we approached the scene or so we thought. The truck looked funny on its side. Policemen were standing by it. A few meters farther up, the goriest sight of the black car all twisted made the image on the phone unreal. This was the real event. As we became part of the slow procession of onlookers, we saw the bus. How did this happen? There was no time to think. Time to breathe and move on. We decided to stop for coffee. The strongest brew for

this journey.

Then it was back on the road. Solitary trees were lonely sentry on the right side of the highway, my side. Streams appeared in the distance. Grasses and clumps of short trees surround ponds. We left the highway. Tarlac. An arch announced San Clemente of Tarlac. It started to drizzle. Mangatarem. We were entering Pangasinan. What is the meaning of this name? We googled it. Mango plantation. The name also came from the Ilocano phrase “mangga ken tirem” referring to mango and oyster. The land has changed so we cannot locate the source of the oyster. But there is no need to take this name seriously as it comes again from the misunderstanding between a “native” and a presumptuous Spaniard.

It was night when we reached Alaminos. Its plaza was well lit like it was Christmas again. The 18th century Saint Joseph the Patriarch Cathedral glowed in the evening. We were looking for Raquel Rarang Rivera, the festival director of the Hundred Islands Film Festival. She was at the park. We proceeded to the hotel where we would be billeted. We next went to the tourism office where young filmmakers were deep into their postproduction. Rivera and the festival are noted for sending young filmmakers to compete abroad. In that busy hub were familiar faces: Jerome, Sef, Carlo C., Carlo O., Victor, and Tim later. It was good to see them survive the pandemic. Never mind the weight gained and the age. Put together, the skills of these men plus Raquel could produce a festival of sterling quality. The one hundred plus islands (plus or minus depending on the tide) should be just the right site for their arts and beautiful madness.

E-mail: titovaliente@yahoo.com

Buy Pinoy, build Pinoy to secure economic independence

promises of providing Philippine agriculture, MSMEs and industry the needed protection against foreign trade onslaughts (e.g., dumping, smuggling, etc.) as well as the vital capacity-building programs to rejuvenate these stagnating sectors of the economy. Thus, the coalition’s new call: “Bantay RCEP, Buy Pinoy.”

THe Philippine Constitution expressly mandates the State to “promote a just and dynamic social order that will enable the prosperity and independence of the nation and free the people from poverty through policies that provide adequate social services, promote full employment, rising standard of living, and an improved quality of life” (Section 9, Article II).

Further, the Constitution fleshes out the goals of the national economy: “More equitable distribution of opportunities, income, and wealth; a sustained increase in the amount of goods and services produced by the nation for the benefit of the people; and an expanding productivity” (Section 1, Article XII). And to achieve the foregoing, the charter declares that it is the duty of the State to “promote full industrialization and full employment based on sound agricultural development and agrarian reform,” and to “protect Filipino enterprises against unfair foreign competition and trade practices.”

Sadly, the above Constitutional vision of a prosperous and independent economy standing on two strong legs—full industrialization and sound agricultural development —is not happening. Since the 1980s, both the industrial and agricultural sectors are either stagnant or have been crumbling, no thanks to the policy of “unilateral disarmament” that the country’s creditors and their neo-liberal economic allies in the government have managed to push in the policy corridors. As the ADB’s Norio Usui wrote in 2012, both the industrial and agricultural sectors of the Philippines had been collapsing and the economy was able to survive only because of OFW remittances and call center/BPO earnings.

“Unilateral disarmament” was the term coined by former Senator Wigberto Tanada when he questioned in 1994 the Senate’s rush to ratify Philippine membership under the World Trade Organization. He

bewailed that the country then had no readiness program in place, meaning the government did not have a clear “offensive” program (more and value-adding exports), “defensive” program (remedies against trade dumping) and a “coherent and integrated” program to build up both the industrial and agricultural sectors amid the harsh realities of economic globalization. What the government did under the WTO was simplistic: just open up wholesale the industrial and agricultural sectors (through a general tariff reduction lower than those of Thailand and other Asian neighbors) in the naïve belief of the neo-liberal economic planners that full integration in the global market under untrammeled free-trade conditions would make the economy competitive and robust.

A coalition of nearly 150 farmer, fisher folk and trade union organizations formed in 2022 also dubbed the Senate’s rush to ratify Philippine membership in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the China-led free-trade agreement in Asia, as “unilateral disarmament.”

Why ratify when no readiness program is in place? Why ratify amid a full-blown agricultural crisis, a crisis that is likely to take a turn for the worse under RCEP?

Now that the Senate managed to ratify RCEP despite their collective opposition, the coalition of farmer, fishery and trade union organizations has shifted its focus: monitoring how the policy makers in the executive and legislative branches would deliver on their “compromise”

However, it is abundantly clear that the coalition is envisioning the “Bantay RCEP, Buy Pinoy” campaign to be much more or a broader one, that is, a campaign that goes beyond the simple call on the people to patronize or buy local harvests and locally-made products. It is a campaign to revive the Filipino spirit of economic solidarity, of helping one another (“ damayan” in bad times and bayanihan” and “tangkilikan” in good times). It is a campaign to unite the Filipino producers and consumers in supporting a program to build up the capacity of the nation to produce more and better products as well as to create more and better jobs for as many Filipinos. After all, no consumer in his/her right mind will buy an expensive and shoddy product simply because it is a Filipino product. If there are no improvements in the price, quality and availability of Filipino products, the market shall easily be flooded by imported “ukay-ukay ” products, no thanks to WTO-RCEP-facilitated trade liberalization regime.

But how do we transform an economy with weak and broken industrial and agricultural sectors given the country’s new liberalization commitments to RCEP? How do we prevent the UNCTAD’s prognosis that the Philippines’ trade situation (mounting deficits) is bound to deteriorate further under the RCEP arrangement from happening?

The answer is that there is no substitute in finding new and bolder alternative economic policies, that is, alternatives to the existing policy regime of just letting the so-called market forces (global/national supply and demand) work out to reveal the country’s so-called “comparative advantages.” This means going back to the demand of the coalition—instituting a comprehensive readiness program to shield the economy from

unfair trade dumping and building up the capacity of Filipino farmers, Filipino MSMEs, Filipino manufacturers and Filipino workers to develop a stronger and self-reliant economy. This means going back to what the Constitution has mandated the State, which is to “promote full industrialization and full employment based on sound agricultural development and agrarian reform” and to “protect Filipino enterprises against unfair foreign competition and trade practices.”

Immediately, such a proposition will invite criticism from the neoliberal economists who will brand such a program of re-building the economy “protectionist” and violative of the national commitments to the WTO and RCEP. But look what’s happening in the world today. Developed countries that have been preaching “free trade” are the ones leading the movement to subvert the global free-trade rules of the WTO.

Take the case of the United States. Donald Trump’s “America First” has been replaced by Joe Biden’s “Buy America.” The American government has enacted an Inflation Reduction Act, which provides $370 billion worth of subsidies and tax breaks to American companies. The Biden administration has also asked US multinationals, especially the chip manufacturers, to bring back or reshore to the American mainland the production facilities that these firms have outsourced to Asia and other countries under their global production systems or GVCs. And yes, the Biden administration has rendered the WTO rules on free trade meaningless by imposing “trade sanctions” on China, Russia, Iran and other countries in the name of “national security.”

Not to be outdone, the European Union has adopted the French proposal for a “Made in Europe” program, which essentially means further strengthening of Fortress Europe and maintaining its major industries such as the Airbus-led aviation industry. It also means maintaining the subsidy-filled Common Agricultural Policy in support of European farmers.

Further, there is a national secu-

rity concern for the Philippines. The global economic order is witnessing today trade conflicts and disruptions that have serious implications on the country. For example, what happens to the country’s capacity to import critical or essential food items when the sources of these imports refuse to export these products in the name of their own food security program? This scenario has been discussed extensively by our own agricultural scientists such as Dr. Ted Mendoza, who warned that climate change is threatening the capacity of India, Vietnam and Thailand to produce enough rice for export.

The conflicts and disruptions that are dividing and fragmenting the global economic order are widely reported in the newspapers and social media. They include the following: Russia v. Ukraine/Nato/US war, China-US trade war, Opec keeping world oil price high, de-dollarization efforts of countries that are trying to get out of American economic embrace, developed countries reconfiguring existing GVCs in order to re-shore productive investments at home, China’s aggressive program to build a Belt-and-Road trading system that now reaches all the way to Africa and Latin America, advances in AI technology that are making some of the old trading and manufacturing practices superfluous, etc.

Amidst all these trade conflicts and disruptions, shall our economic planners remain wedded to their trade liberalization commitments? Is it not high time to look more closely at what we can do as a people to strengthen our industrial and agricultural muscles in order to insure the country’s survival in a dividing and fragmenting global economic order?

Is it not time to go back to what the Constitution says: build a prosperous and independent economy based on strong industrial and agricultural sectors that are capable of producing quality products and quality jobs for all Filipinos—at home?

Dr. Rene E. Ofreneo is a Professor Emeritus of the University of the Philippines. For comments, please write to reneofreneo@ gmail.com.

BRICS seize chance to counter US with expansion,

Dr. Rene E. ofreneo

Courtesy of Alaminos, Pangasinan Facebook page. Photo: Jay SantoS

A16

Friday, June

P

M arcos said the measure will establish soil maps for specific agricultural products, which will serve as guide for farmers on what to plant in their localities.

W hile geomapping is already being used by government agencies, such as the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), National Mapping and Resource Information Authority (NAMIRA), and the Department of Agriculture (DA), the president said it is being done on a limited scale.

“ We are putting together every-

thing because it is hard to survey everything. So, we will know the areas and it also started with irrigation with the NIA [National Irrigation Administration],” Marcos said. He also said the geomaps will also be useful in addressing farmland titling issues as the government pushes for consolidation of agricultural lands.

Stakeholder meeting

of the Philippine Rice Industry Stakeholders Movement (PRISM) in Malacañang last Wednesday.

RESIDENT Ferdinand R. MarcosD uring the meeting, PRISM members raised their concerns about the “roadblocks” in the country’s rice production, which includes the unavailability and lack of access to real-time data, which will be useful for their operations.

T hey also complained about the high cost of rice production as well as their limited access to market, capital investment, and extensive irrigation system. A lso discussed were the adverse impact of Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) policies, the threat of El Niño and climate change, slow adoption of vital rice production technology, misaligned programs and activities across agri-related government agencies, inconsistent consultative meetings among the various rice stakeholders, and

MANILA TO CHINESE FIRMS: INVEST IN CLEAN ENERGY

By Andrea E. San Juan

T

rice smuggling.

Interventions

GOVERNMENT officials who were present in the meeting noted that the said concerns are already being addressed by several government programs including the credit and financing by the DA and the Land Bank of the Philippines, as well as the establishment of climate-smart agriculture infrastructure.

T hey also said farmers can access useful data for food production, such as the Smarter Approaches to Reinvigorate Agriculture as an Industry in the Philippines.

We also welcome investors in the related sectors of battery energy storage systems and offgrid power supply systems,” Trade Secretary Alfredo E. Pascual said during the Offshore Wind Conference held in Makati City on Thursday.

I n line with this, the Trade chief pitched to the Chinese officials the incentives available for renewable energy (RE) projects. “ Tax and other incentives are available for renewable energy projects under the Philippines’s 2022 Strategic Investment Priority Plan [SIPP] from the DTI Board of Investments,” Pascual said.

minister corporate tax rates, net operating loss carry-over, and tax credits,” he said.

HE Philippines is inviting Chinese companies to bring in their technology and expertise in equipment design and manufacturing for solar and wind power generation, according to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).Renewable energy projects under Tier II will follow incentives under CREATE. Renewable energy projects under Tier II may include those renewable sources not defined in the Renewable Energy Law and those emerging, like hydrogen fuel, subject to certain conditions. Incentives under CREATE include income tax holidays and enhanced deductions,” he added.

Pascual laid out these proposals to the Chinese officials as “the demand for energy, especially for green energy, is expected to outpace our current supply level.”

We need over 52,800 megawatts [MW] of additional renewable energy capacity to reach our RE target by 2040,” Pascual said.

He added that by 2030, the Philippines aims to increase the share of renewable energy in the country’s power generation mix to 35 percent; and to 50 percent by 2040.

₧205-M savings in energy efficiency plan seen to grow

By Lenie Lectura @llectura

T

ciency Alliance (PE2) expects an accelerated progress in the Government Energy Management Program (GEMP) in the next few years after the Department of Energy (DOE) reported that the program has yielded electricity savings of P205 million.

“ DOE’s reported four-fold

HE Philippine Energy Effi -increase in cumulative energy savings under GEMP is already impressive given that DOE’s GEMP outreach has been limited through the pandemic years. The energy efficiency sector can expect accelerated GEMP progress in the next three to four years,” said PE2 President Alexander Ablaza.

T he DOE said the other day that the government saved 20 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) since

the signing of Republic Act No. 11285 or the Energy Efficiency and Conservation (EEC) Act of 2019. This is equivalent to P205 million worth of cumulative electricity savings.

P rior to the EEC Act, or from 2017 to 2019, the government’s cumulative electricity savings stood at 5 million kWh, equivalent to over P51 million.

A blaza is confident that the savings will increase exponentially if

the necessary policies are enforced.

“

First, we expect national and local policy issuances to operationalize the resolutions of the Inter-Agency Energy Efficiency and Conservation Committee [IAEECC], especially those relating to the forced obsolescence of low-efficiency cooling and lighting systems in government facilities, as well as the resolution instituting the GEMP guidelines.

See “Govt,” A2 See “Savings,” A2

A ccording to Pascual, proponents of RE projects may opt to be qualified under Tier I or Tier II of the SIPP, adding that the choice will depend on the “attractiveness” of applicable incentives and the endorsement to be made by the Department of Energy (DOE).

R E projects are qualified under SIPP which implements the Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises Act (CREATE) under Tier I will follow the incentives package and rules under the Renewable Energy Law, Pascual noted.

Under the Renewable Energy Law, the Board of Investments administers income tax holidays, duty-free importation, and tax exemption of carbon credits. Other government agencies ad -

Pascual also said the circular, which was issued by the DOE late last year, allows 100 percent foreign equity in RE projects in the Philippines.

“ This lifting of ownership restriction, I’m sure, makes the Philippine renewable energy sector more attractive to foreign investors. We look forward to more Chinese investments to harness solar, wind, and tidal energy,” the Trade chief said.

I n the first quarter, Pascual said the Board of Investments approved three offshore wind projects with a total capacity of 1,300 megawatts and an estimated investment cost of more than P390 billion.

Jr. has ordered the geomapping of agricultural lands in the country to optimize food production.

Govt aims to improve food production via geomapping

Editor: Jennifer A. Ng

Companies

Globe urges govt to adopt connectivity rating scheme

By Lorenz S. Marasigan @lorenzmarasigan

According to Globe President ernest Cu, the group is supportive of this plan, noting that it is “ready to collaborate” with the government to jumpstart this endeavor.

“ we are ready and eager to work with the government to establish a connectivity index rating in the

country. This will allow our consumers to choose which establishment or public place they would want to patronize because internet services are within standards,” he said.

Last month, consumer advocacy group Citizenwa tch Philippines

and its partners proposed the creation of a national Connectivity Index r ating to serve as a consumerfriendly, easy to understand rating system for the quality of internet experience in a particular indoor area.

The quality of internet experience includes speed, accessibility, availability and security. This rating will provide a benchmark for property owners and government institutions on the right level of connectivity vis-a-vis the volume of user traffic in a given building or area.

“ w i th this in place, we will cement the perception that the Philippines has internet services at par with other countries, just as external party surveys have been showing. This initiative

REDC, Gugler to develop pumped storage facility

ReP Ow er e nergy Development Corp. (r eDC) and Austria-based Gugler water Turbines GMBh (Gugler) have teamed up to develop seawater pumped storage projects.

resonates profoundly with the President’s blueprint for a digitally resilient and vibrant Philippines,” Cu said.

Currently, consumers have no way of assessing the quality of internet connectivity in public spaces such as airports, malls, hotels, libraries, and coffee shops.

Tim Abejo, co-convenor of Citizenwatch Philippines, said the index should be as straightforward as the familiar 5-star system used to rate hotels.

h aving a connectivity rating of an establishment publicly displayed or available online will affect the image of an institution and will force building owners to take steps to ensure high-quality digital connectivity for their users,” Abejo said.

MPIC: Vote on delisting deferred

By VG Cabuag @villygc

The bidders for the publiclyheld shares of Metro Pacific Investment Corp. (MPIC) have sought to delay the shareholders’ approval to take the company private.

In its disclosure, MPIC said it received a notice from the bidders’ consortium Metro Pacific holdings Inc., MIG holdings Inc., GT Capital holdings Inc. and Mit-Pacific Infrastructure holdings Corp. to delay the shareholders vote to delist the company from the Philippine Stock exchange (PSe)

This after the bidders commissioned the preparation of a third party fairness opinion and valuation report on the company for the tender offer, which is not yet ready.

MPIC said it accepted the request to delay the said vote.

The consortium is offering to buy stocks of shareholders at a price of P4.63 per share, which earned criticisms from investors who said the

price was “very low.”

The tender offer price, the consortium said, takes into consideration the voluntary delisting rules of the PSe and represents a premium of 22 percent over the 12-months volumeweighted average trading price of MPIC on the PSe

M PIC shares closed Thursday at P4.37 apiece. The shareholders’ vote was supposed to happen during MPIC’s annual stockholders’ meeting (ASM) on June 6.

“Unfortunately, the (third party) report has not been finalized and the bidders will not be able to provide a copy of the same to the company before the ASM,” MPIC said.

Instead, the consortium will request for the holding of a special shareholders’ meeting (SSM) at a later date after the report is finalized.

“They noted that deferring the shareholder approval will allow the report to be made available prior to the SSM and thus provide shareholders an opportunity to study the same and better appreciate the basis for the tender offer price and the proposed

voluntary delisting.”

In late April, First Pacific Co. Ltd. together with GT Capital holdings Inc., a consortium including Mitsui and Co. Ltd. and a Management Investment Group led by Manuel V. Pangilinan, launched a tender offer to MPIC shareholders.

Under the tender offer, First Pacific, through its Philippine affiliate, Metro Pacific holdings Inc. (MPhI), would spend approximately $90 million to increase its stake in MPIC by as much as 3.8 percent, using internal financial resources. MPhI owns 46.1 percent of MPIC.

GT Capital would increase its stake to a maximum of 20 percent from the current 17.1 percent by paying some $70 million in the transaction for the residual 2.9 percent, funded through internal cash.

Mit-Pacific Infrastructure holdings Corp., a joint venture of Mitsui and Japan Overseas Infrastructure Investment Corporation for Transport and Urban Development, would buy up to 20 percent of MPIC under the tender offer, becoming a share-

holder for the first time.

The management investment group of Pangilinan would buy up to 10 percent.

The subsidiary of Pure energy holdings Corp. said Thursday that it has signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with Gugler to bring this proprietary technology to the country, allowing r eDC to be the first energy developer to have seawater pumped storage projects in its portfolio.

The first project will be a 320-megawatt (M w ) seawaterpumped storage facility in Luzon. The elevation of this project will be around 300 meters above sea level, and the lower reservoir will utilize the coastline for unlimited seawater intake.

r eDC has identified an area in Luzon for the development of this project. It, however, did not divulge yet the exact location. The company is currently securing the necessary endorsements from the local government unit and indigenous communities so that the development of a pilot 50 M w facility can push through.

we are pleased to enter into a partnership with Gugler — a leading provider of state-of-the art turbine technology. we are looking to replicate Gugler’s success in a similar venture it has in South Korea, to further our ultimate goal of uplifting

living standards to communities by providing clean energy,” said r eDC President er ic Peter Y. roxas. he added that the MOA will allow reDC to diversify and enhance its capabilities as an emerging player in the hydropower space.

“The year 2023 promises to be full of potential for r eDC, given our ongoing construction of various runof-the-river hydropower projects in provinces such as Bukidnon and Quezon,” said roxas.

In Asia, Gugler is the technology partner of Korea Midland Power Co., which operates the Shinseocheon Seawater hydropower Plant based in South Korea. r e D C has 6 operating power plants in Laguna, Quezon and Camarines Sur. Two more power plants will come online by June 2023, increasing the company’s operational capacity by over 60 percent.

The company earlier said it has set its sights on “growing another 1,000 megawatts in its portfolio, concentrated on hydropower projects, possibly upstream and downstream of existing power plants and seawater pump storage” in the next 5 years. roxas said hydropower is one of the most efficient types of renewable energy compared to solar power plants whose efficiency is around 12.7 percent, while wind power plants have an efficiency of around 33 percent. Lenie Lectura

Globe Telecom Inc. said on Thursday it supports calls for the establishment of a national connectivity index rating, an initiative that will establish a standard for Internet quality in the Philippines.

Digital pay system to stay amid ‘phishing’

By Jasper Emmanuel Y. Arcalas @jearcalas

DESPITE recent phishing is-

sues involving certain mobile wallets, Filipinos would continue to use cashless payments and other digital transactions because of its convenience and security, a Visa Philippines executive said. Visa Inc. Country Manager for the Philippines and Guam Jeffrey V. Navarro emphasized that the “overall” benefits of going digital in terms of payments and transactions far “outweigh” the risks that they entail.

Navarro was responding to queries regarding the possible impact of recent phishing incidents involving some digital payment platforms on the Filipinos’ confidence in going cashless.

Navarro pointed out that the Filipinos’ confidence in the use of cashless payment systems remains high as they “feel safe against theft.”

Nonetheless, he did note that the risks surrounding digital transactions should be addressed by financial technology companies as it builds trust and confidence among their consumer base.

“Filipinos remain very confident to use [cashless] because of convenience and enables [them] to do a lot of things. Consumers need to balance [their] perceived risks and overall benefits,” he told reporters in an interview on Thursday in Makati City.

“We still feel that the overall benefit [of cashless payments]—on how it can empower you, on how you go with your lives in a convenient manner—still outweighs potential risks,” he added.

Navarro explained that consumer education remains as one of the key solutions in reducing cases of phishing as it empowers users to be knowledgeable about the “dos-and-don’ts” in the digital transaction space.

Spending, investment

NAVARRO added it is imperative for digital payment companies to invest in their cybersecurity programs while strengthening partnership with their clientele in combating phishing issues.

“We are seeing [financial technology companies] really spending and investing in education,” he said.

In its latest Consumer Payment Attitudes Study, Visa said 50 percent of Filipinos are carrying less cash as they increasingly opt for cashless payments last year.

“While cash remains a prevalent payment method, the study indicates that 82 percent of Filipinos have attempted to go cashless in 2022, with almost half (40 percent) succeeding for a few days. Notably, about 9 percent were able to go cashless for over one month,” it said.

Furthermore, Visa said the frequency of cash payments made by Filipinos last year declined to 6.4 in every 10 purchases from 7.8 in 2021. The firm attributed the decline to increasing reliance by Filipinos on cashless payments and concerns regarding the safety of carrying cash.

“The increasing adoption of cashless and contactless payment methods is a testament to the growing preference among Filipinos for safe and convenient transactions,” Navarro said.

“As consumers realize the benefits of cashless options such as mobile wallets and cards, we are witnessing a progressive shift towards a cash-lite society in the Philippines,” Navarro added.

For the past eight years, Visa has been conducting its annual study on Consumer Payment Attitudes. Visa interviewed 1,000 Filipino consumers aged 18 to 65 years old for its latest study.

‘Water firms passed on taxes to users’

By Joel R. San Juan @jrsanjuan1573

May 5, 2023.

In the said decision, the High Tribunal declared that water concessionaires Manila Water and Maynilad as public utilities, thus, cannot recover their corporate income taxes as operating expenses from consumers.

However, the SC denied the plea of Bayan Muna for refund, noting that the right to refund had already long prescribed due to the failure of any party to contest the water rates before the National Water Resources Board (NWRB) within the prescribed period of 30 days after the effectivity of such rates.

The 102-page decision was penned by Senior Associate Justice Marvic M.V.F. Leonen, which resolved consolidated petitions (GR 181764, 187380, 07444, 208207, 210147, 213227, 219362, 239938) involving Manila Water and Maynilad.

cluding the Agreements’ arbitration clause.

In GR 239938, the Court granted the petition for review filed by MWSS seeking to set aside the Court of Appeals’ ruling which had affirmed and confirmed the arbitral in favor of Maynilad.

“We are glad that the Supreme Court has now finally resolved the debate that has been going on for decades whether Maynilad and Manila Water are public utilities” former Bayan Muna Rep. Carlos Isagani T. Zarate said.

“We are merely moving for partial reconsideration of the Court’s decision prohibiting the consumers from demanding a refund for our payment of their income tax for many years,” Zarate added.

to inflation, low wages and unemployment. We were previously forced to pay these corporate income taxes despite our continuing protest and it is but right that we will be granted a refund because of the people’s victory in the Supreme Court. The refund could amount to tens of billions that could help pay months of water consumption by consumers,” the petitioner added.

Bayan Muna argued that the 30day period for the filing of protest before the NWRB has yet to prescribe considering that the SC’s ruling came out only this month.

In its partial motion for reconsideration, Bayan Muna, through its counsel Maria Cristina P. Yambot, also asked the Court to direct the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) to account all corporate income taxes of Maynilad Water Services Inc. and Manila Water Company Inc. it allowed to be included in applicable water rates from

2022 to 2012.

The petitioner insisted that the water utilities should be compelled to refund the “illegally” passed on corporate income taxes to their respective water consumers.

‘C’ of Opportunities

IT was a pleasant surprise reading an interview article of Mathijs Vleeming in the recent e-newsletter of Association Meetings International. Mathijs, a consultant for associations at Yard Digital Agency, is a familiar figure with the association community here, having conducted a webinar on online communities last year.

The article, “Membership: Seven Challenges Facing Associations,” includes Mathijs’s insights on keeping members engaged during this increasingly uncertain times. The seventh challenge he mentioned in the article is about dealing with uncertainty. Due to the uncertain and complex conditions prevailing in today’s world, association boards and management teams that traditionally execute a top-down strategic planning process are having a tough time adapting to the situation. Essentially, these plans are often based on predictions of future developments and trends. However, in a rapidly changing environment, it is increasingly difficult to predict what will happen next.

Uncertainty diminishes the value of these plans, making collaboration with members crucial to remaining relevant. Here are ways and good examples of collaboration between the

Bayan Muna’s partial MR stemmed from the ruling issued by the Court en banc dated December 7, 2021, but was made public only last Octavio Peralta Association World

association and its members:

1. Collecting feedback. Doing surveys, interviews, online discussions and focus groups, among others, with members helping identify problems and opportunities. Listening and getting the pulse of members on current issues can help improve member engagement and, ultimately, member retention.

2. Co-creation. Partnering and working with members on developing new services and offerings and other programmatic activities can enhance how associations can better respond to the needs of their key stakeholders.

3. Crowdsourcing. Soliciting ideas, information, or content through broad-based contributions from members is a great way to gather inputs in coming up with products, programs, and projects that are useful and relevant to the target audience.

4. Content curation. Gathering information from and for members related to a particular topic or area

In GR 181764 and 187380, the SC denied the petition for review filed by Maynilad claiming it is not a public utility whose rates may be questioned by the NWRB.

In GR 207444, 208207, 210147, 213227 and 219362, the SC upheld the respective Concession Agreements entered into by MWSS with Manila Water and Maynilad, in-

of interest, usually with the aim of adding value through the process of selecting and organizing them into a collection or body of knowledge, is another excellent means to provide pertinent content to members.

5. Connection sourcing. Tapping the network of members and making members as ambassadors can support in the marketing of the association, recruiting new members, and expanding its reach.

6. Community buildup. Setting up an online community as a complementary venue to in-person meetings where members interact with each other virtually by, sharing common interests, learning from each other, and doing business networking can enhance the member experience with the association.

Members want to be involved in the activities of their association and, most often than not, appreciate being able to contribute to the success of their organization. By simply asking them can create a sea of opportunities for the association.

Octavio Peralta is currently the executive director of the Global Compact Network Philippines and founder and volunteer CEO of the Philippine Council of Associations and Association Executives, the “association of associations.” E-mail: bobby@ pcaae.org.

EW HONORED This March 30, 2023, photo shows (left to right) PDS Group President and CEO Ramon S. Monzon, Securities and Exchange Commission Commissioner McJill Bryant T. Fernandez, EastWest Banking Corp. (PSE: EW) Investment Banking Officer Kenneth Gudito, EW Investment Banking Head Gerald K. Abrogar and Philippine Dealing & Exchange Corp. President and CEO Antonio A. Nakpil. For the fourth time, EW has been named one of the top five corporate issue managers/arrangers (bank category) at the 2023 PDS Annual Awards Night. The PDS Group, the Philippines’ complete capital market infrastructure provider, stages its Annual Awards Night to “recognize member institutions that have exhibited outstanding performance, leadership, innovation, and overall contribution to the development of the capital market.”

CREDIT: EasT WEsT Bank ng CoRp

LandBank loans to sugar sector at ₧1.55B

THE Land Bank of the Philippines (LandBank) announced it has extended a total of P1.55 billion in outstanding loans to the sugarcane sector as of April 2023.

Of the total disbursements, a cumulative release of P700.45 million in loans have benefitted a total of 4,366 individuals under the Socialized Credit Program-Sugarcane Industry Development Act (SCP-SIDA).

The state-run lender said the SCP-SIDA has provided support to

2,577 borrowers, composed of 2,567 individual small farmers, four cooperatives, five associations and one enterprise from 16 different provinces nationwide. According to the LandBank, the SCPSIDA aims to optimize the productivity of sugarcane farms by promoting advanced and cost-efficient farming practices, enabling farmers to invest in modern farming techniques, procure high-quality inputs and acquire necessary equipment for higher yields and

The petitioner said since Maynila and Manila Water are now considered public utilities, they are limited to a 12-percent limit on its returns of investment and prohibited from imposing on the public their corporate income tax.

“We hope that the Supreme Court will complete the momentous landmark decision by giving relief to millions of consumers who are suffering from extreme hardships due

“We argue that it is only now that both concessionaires are declared public utilities granting us the clear right to file a protest with the NWRB. Therefore, it is only now that the 30day rule should be required,” he said.

“We are thankful of the Supreme Court for siding with the consumers in the landmark decision. We just hope that it completes the relief asked by consumers and grants us the right to demand a refund and take back the billions we paid for the corporate income tax of the Maynilad and Manila Water arbitrarily imposed on us despite our opposition,” Bayan Muna’s statement read.

Digital bank, lender team up to loan to small stores

By Roderick Abad @rodrik_28

Contributor

UNO Digital Bank Inc. announced it has tied up with 1Sari Financing Corp. for a lending facility targeting about 1.3 million community retail stores.

UNO Digital Bank CEO and Founder Manish Bhai said they target these stores that “comprise the Philippines’s sachet economy but struggling to find sources of capital to grow their small enterprises.”

“This is a good starting point for UNO Digital Bank in making lending simpler and more accessible,” Bhai said. “We would like to offer loans both to the salaried class and selfemployed through a combination of general-purpose loans, inventory, financing loans and working capital loans.” He said this deal with 1Sari begins their focus on inventory financing.

1Sari Financing Cofounder and President John Madarang added their team up also bolsters their provision of loans to interested applicants.

Data cited by Uno Digital Bank

shows that sari-sari stores transact 70 percent of all manufactured goods in the country. Mainly cashbased, these entities manage their monetary flow daily, which can limit their profitability potential. Hence, loan access is vital for them, the lender said.

Citing the 2021 Financial Inclusion Study of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), the firm said that 57 percent of Filipinos still acquire loans via informal credit, mainly from relatives and informal lenders. Stringent documentary requirements and the stiff application process are two major reasons why borrowers choose not to apply for a loan from formal financial institutions, says the research.

UNO Digital Bank, a full-spectrum credit-led digital bank licensed by BSP, seeks to lessen informal lending practice by increasing loan access to more Filipinos.

Today, only 11 percent of Filipinos borrow from financial institutions and banks, according to Bhai.

“We want to take that number up. We believe credit inclusion is a very important part of financial empowerment,” he added.

in loans for 10 calamity areas–GSIS

STATE pension fund Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) announced it is offering emergency loan to active members and old-age and disability pensioners based in nine Occidental Mindoro areas in Luzon affected by the power crisis and in the municipality of Prosperidad in Agusan Del Sur in Mindanao damaged by flash floods and landslides.

improved crop quality. Rodolfo Medina, Chairman of the Dampe Palay and Sugarcane Producers Cooperative in Pampanga, attests to the positive impact of the SCP-SIDA program on their cooperative.

Through a loan with an interest rate of 2-percent per annum, the cooperative was able to procure a tractor, combine harvester and a ten-wheeler truck to enhance their harvesting and production processes, the state-run lender said.

“Having the financial means to provide for basic needs amidst a natural disaster is important. By readying over P437.5 million in emergency loan, we hope to help alleviate the plight of our 18,573 members and pensioners who were adversely affected by the recent power crisis and flooding,” GSIS President and General Manager Jose Arnulfo A. Veloso was quoted in a statement as saying.

The GSIS said a total of 17,010 active members and 1,563 old-age and disability pensioners are working or residing in the following: the municipalities of San Jose, Magsaysay, Calintaan, Rizal, Sablayan, Santa Cruz, Mamburao, Paluan, and Abra

de Ilog in Occidental Mindoro; and, the municipality of Prosperidad in Agusan Del Sur. They may apply for the emergency loan until June 21, the GSIS said.

To qualify, active members must: not be on leave of absence without pay; have at least three months of paid premiums within the last six months prior to application; have no pending administrative or criminal case; have no due and demandable loan; and, have a net take-home pay of not lower than P5,000 after all required monthly obligations have been deducted.

Old-age and disability pensioners are also qualified to apply if their resulting net monthly take-home pension after loan availment is at least 25% of their basic monthly pension.

Furthermore, members with existing emergency loan balance may borrow up to P40,000 to pay off their previous emergency loan balance and receive a maximum net amount of P20,000. Meanwhile, pensioners and those without existing emergency loan may apply for a P20,000 loan.

PARTYLIST group Bayan Muna yesterday asked the Supreme Court (SC) to partially reconsider its decision that barred water consumers from demanding a refund for the income tax collected from them despite its ruling that private concessionaires are public utilities and, thus, cannot recover their corporate income taxes as operating expenses from consumers.

₧437.5M

Winners, losers in ‘Succession’

TODAY’S HOROSCOPE

By Eugenia Last

CELEBRITIES BORN ON THIS DAY:

Justin Long, 45; Zachary Quinto, 46; Dana Carvey, 68; Dennis Haysbert, 69.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Think, establish your position and show kindness in everything you do this year. Aim to please, but don’t let anyone take advantage of you. Stick to your principles, and put your energy where it makes the most sense and a difference. Be humble about what you have to offer. Do what you can and go about your business; recognition will follow you. Your lucky numbers are 6, 17, 21, 25, 32, 37, 46.

aARIES (March 21-April 19): Pay attention, follow the money and budget for something that will make a difference in how you live. Listen to your inner voice regarding love, health and personal growth. Don’t act fast; let your intellect lead the way HHHHH

bTAURUS (April 20-May 20): Clear your head and speak your mind. You can resolve issues and take care of unfinished business if you use your smarts and pay attention to what’s going on around you. The sky’s the limit; apply your skills and knowledge. Romance is favored. HHH

cGEMINI (May 21-June 20): Preparation will lead to success. How you approach projects and handle people will determine how much you accomplish. Don’t waste your time trying to persuade or convince others. Believe in yourself, carry on and see who joins you in your pursuits. HHH

dCANCER (June 21-July 22): Make changes based on how you feel. Reach out to people who lift you. Implement activities and events that offer knowledge and experiences and enrich your life and attitude. A romantic encounter will encourage you to alter your living arrangements. HHHHH

LIKE many of the show’s fans, I still have an emotional hangover after watching the finale of HBO’s Succession

While most have dreaded Mondays, it being the start of the work week, Succession made me look forward to the day. (The series actually airs every Sunday in the US.) It was like unwrapping a Christmas present to jumpstart the day, or slowly sipping a satisfying cup of coffee after a meal if I watched it in the evening. It was rewarding and gratifying to watch each episode unfold from week to week. (Yeah, yeah, I probably should get out of the house more.)

For those who have yet to watch an episode of the hit series, Succession basically revolves around the Roy family led by the patriarch Logan (Brian Cox), and the events that build up to who gets to take over their media empire, Waystar Royco. Logan’s choice of his successor involves his three children by his second wife: the rehabilitated addict Kendall (Jeremy Strong), political strategist Shiobhan/Shiv (Sara Snook), and the bullied-turned-bully Romulus/Roman (Kieran Culkin).

Logan’s eldest, Connor (Alan Ruck), his child by his first wife, is far removed from all the corporate machinations, preferring to live out his own equally entitled existence through other activities.

But Succession is more than a tale of sibling rivalry and corporate takeovers; it is a story of emotional and physical abuse, substance abuse, misogyny, mental health, murder and mayhem. Or basically, a look into the lives of the rich and powerful. (Hahaha)

At the beginning of the series, it is Logan’s 80th birthday, and he is slated to announce his retirement, paving the way for Kendall, one of Waystar’s chief executives, to take over. But “the old geezer” is irked— first, by the fact that Kendall is unable to close a huge business deal, and second, by a magazine cover touting Kendall as his heir apparent. He thereafter decides to

stay on as Waystar’s CEO for “maybe 5 more years,” much to Kendall’s consternation.

The succeeding episodes and seasons then show Logan manipulating Shiv and Roman into thinking they could be his anointed, against a backdrop of more corporate schemes, family vacations, weddings and birthday celebrations. But Logan is disappointed in Shiv for marrying beneath her: Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen), who “didn’t come from money” and works for the company. Roman may have some talent there, but still needs more grooming from Waystar general counsel and interim CEO Gerri Kellman (J. Smith-Cameron).

Many became fascinated with the series because the Roy family, in a way, also mirrors our own families and relationships to each member. Even if the show is about the rich folk, we can also identify with the frailties of each character and our sometimes discordant ties with our own parents and siblings.

For one, who doesn’t crave parental approval?

In the Roy children’s case, despite the emotional distance of their father, they were all desperate to be in his warm light, to paraphrase Shiv’s eulogy for Logan. (Yes, he dies. Or the show wouldn’t have been titled Succession .) Then, we have siblings who we are closer to, but detest the others for not seeing our way. Kendall and Roman team up to try to run Waystar Royco, thus shutting out Shiv. It always seemed they never took her seriously.

As far as men go, Logan is just terrible. He is a serial womanizer, and looks at women with disdain. In his eyes, the only reason for a woman’s existence is to serve him by bearing his children, be an outlet for his lustful desires, and someone to cosmetically fix his company’s issues (as in the case of Gerri).

Logan also knew there were sexual harassment issues involving the cruise ship division’s CEO and female employees, but he didn’t do anything about it until there was a congressional hearing.

As a father, he is grossly manipulative, offering some amount of affection to his children in exchange for their loyalty, so they would accomplish certain tasks he needs completed. So everything in his life, he runs like a business—it’s all transactional. “You do something for me, I give you this.” Nothing gave him joy, not even his grandchildren because he sees them as flawed (i.e., Kendall’s son is autistic, while his daughter is South Asian and probably adopted).

The only semblance of love, or respect, that Logan has for family is probably for his older brother Ewan

(James Cromwell). While they are seemingly estranged, Logan keeps Ewan on Waystar’s board and takes in the latter’s grandson, Greg Hirsch (Nicholas Braun) into the company. Ewan, in turn, is fiercely loyal to Logan as well, denying Kendall a vote to oust his brother.

What drives Logan’s existence is landing “the deal.” And he detests weakness in anyone.

In the succeeding seasons, we see Tom and Greg bonding over being the odd men out; they are infatuated with the Roys and being rich, but are not seen as competent enough to take up any leadership position in the company. They are merely an accommodation. Eventually, Tom transforms himself from a patsy and willing scapegoat in the company’s troubles, to a wheeler and dealer himself. In the beginning, Tom truly loves Shiv, and is willing to stay in her shadow and be in an open marriage, but he eventually manages to stick up for himself and betrays Shiv’s confidence to give Logan a heads-up on his to children’s plan to block his deal to sell Waystar Royco to the morally depraved tech genius Lukas Mattson.

Toward the end of Succession, even knowing Shiv is pregnant with his child, Tom seems unsure of keeping their messy relationship going. It is later revealed that Lukas wants to make Tom the CEO of Waystar, instead of Shiv, to whom he initially promised the job. And despite Lukas’ admission that he wants to “clickety-clack” his wife, Tom accepts it if it means becoming the company’s top dog. “He’s competent” is how Shiv describes Tom in how he runs the news division ATN, Waystar’s flagship. I found the Succession finale perfect, in the sense that it was unexpected, and gives the top prize to the one who worked at his job the hardest: Tom, the one who doesn’t sleep and who forgoes being pallbearer at his father-in-law’s funeral to make sure things are running smoothly at ATN in the aftermath of the presidential election. It made sense because none of Logan’s children were really up to the job: Kendall only cared about being CEO and pushing people around; Shiv didn’t really have the corporate experience (although I must admit, I wanted her to get the job); and Roman was just plain immature (too bad he crossed Gerri).

Logan recognized this and so, it was probably a foreshadowing of the ending when, in Season 4, Episode 2, he shows up at the karaoke bar where his belligerent children are gathered and tells them, “I love you. But you are not serious people!”

‘circle back’

J.

eLEO (July 23-Aug. 22): A steady pace will help you avoid interference. Interacting with others will slow you down and confuse you. A lifestyle change will warm your heart and encourage you to consider how you can use your skills to further your position and long-term goals. HH

fVIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Listen, observe and be resourceful. What you discover will help you turn your attributes into a lucrative opportunity. Take a different approach to helping others, and make a point to show someone you enjoy spending time with how much you care. Travel is favored. HHHH

gLIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Visit friends or relatives, and you’ll gather ideas that will encourage you to turn your surroundings into a space that inspires you to utilize your strengths while improving your weaknesses. Don’t tolerate anyone who uses emotional manipulation to control you. HHH

hSCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Pay attention to meaningful relationships, how you look and what you share with others. Limit your spending; generosity will leave you in debt and feeling lost. Use your ingenuity to develop cost-effective ways to improve yourself and gain respect. HHH

iSAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Don’t share personal information or give anyone the OK to speak on your behalf. A partnership will cause concern if it lacks equality. Monitor situations that can interfere with your happiness or cash flow. Travel and personal growth are in your best interest. HHHH

jCAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Donate what you no longer use. Take care of a domestic problem before it has a chance to spin out of control. Too much of anything will leave you at a loss. Stick close to home and make romance a priority. HHHH

kAQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Problems with institutions, relatives and friends will surface if you let your emotions take over and anger set in. Protect your reputation and keep your thoughts to yourself. A change someone makes will turn out to be in your best interest. HH

lPISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Make a mental note of your expenses. Cutting back on spending will ease stress and give you hope. Spend on quality, not quantity or bargains you don’t need. Set a new budget, make conservative investments and watch your money grow HHHH

BIRTHDAY BABY: You are lively, creative and helpful. You are curious and charming.

Show BusinessMirror

Notes on cinema: From Bergman and Bergman to Buster Keaton

SIR, what do you read in between your columns?”

“Do you ever read reviews?”

“What does a critic read?”

These questions I get always from students and, sometimes, from teachers. I answer these questions in forums, and talk about them in my lectures. Almost always, this is the classic answer I resort to: To learn how to write, one must know how to read. Or listen (to what you are reading). Very general responses, if I may add.

I do not know how long ago was it that I explained the name I gave this column. “Reeling” as a title must be obvious to those who read books on criticism. Pauline Kael was the New Yorker reviewer who introduced a new way of reading films. She was accused of not being analytical but, as Owen Gleiberman of Variety says, Kael’s analysis was “seared into every word, woven into the expressive power of her free-style flow.” Continuing, Gleiberman describes Kael’s thoughts as “incisive, incantatory, indelible.”

I must say that to approximate a style that reaches the edge of those modifiers is difficult enough, but to be inspired by this woman is utterly attainable. So, I stay with the attainable.

From London, I received a delayed gift from Dr. Jaya Jacobo, an academic in transition from being a material presence to friends to being a mythical memory (a status that would certainly make her giddy despite her propensity to charm people with her elegant obscurantism). It is a back issue of Sight and Sound, not that old as it is a 2022 edition.

On the cover is Paul Verhoeven, the director behind such iconic films as Basic Instinct and Robocop; inside is an interview by another filmmaker, Kleber Mendonça Filho. Further inside is Verhoeven’s latest film, called Benedetta, which is about a young woman who enters a convent and has an affair with another novice. In the synopsis of the review written by John Bleasdale, it states how Benedetta “rises in hierarchy, aided by a series of ecstatic religious visions. Soon the Mother Superior and ecclesiastical authorities grow disturbed by her rise to power, and begin to plot against her.”

Bleasdale’s review fulfills what good reviews are all about, and that is to make films look real than how it appears on the screen (Gleiberman speaking of Pauline Kael still). Here are some lines from Bleasdale’s review: “Increasingly, the film resembles a sort of ecclesiastical Basic Instinct, with Benedetta as Catherine Tramell, possessing similar blonde locks once sans wimple and a penchant for exposing herself.”

The review goes on: “It is difficult to tell how seriously to take the film, and how seriously the film is taking itself.” These are lines we can, at any given time, apply to our reviews of our socalled winning films.

We know what are winning films but are there winning actors?

There are, but not in terms of awards but in their understanding of the craft and art of filmmaking. Liv Ullman—I am reading about her right now in the same 2022 issue of Sight and Sound where she talks about the genius of Ingmar Bergman, in an essay with the introduction and interview by Hannah McGill. And to talk of Ingmar Bergman is to bring into the circle another Bergman: Ingrid.

Listen to Liv Ullman speak of the two Bergmans: “I did Autumn Sonata [1978] with Ingrid Bergman, and seeing her working with Ingmar…. I don’t know how well they understood each other. Maybe not so well; but she was incredible.” Describing this incredibility, Ullman

narrates further: “She and Ingmar, it was two worlds—director and actor, and sometimes that’s difficult. I was the angry daughter in that film…. As Ingmar had it in the script, I had all the words; all she had to say was something like, ‘Please hold me; please forgive me.’ But when Ingmar turned the camera to her, she said, ‘I’m not gonna say that! I want to slap her in the face!’”

What happened next was terrific and terrible. According to Ullman, the two walked out of the set into a corridor. All they could hear were angry voices. They thought of the film not being completed. But Bergman and Bergman came back, with the director winning the battle. Ullman, however, saw something: when Ingrid Bergman said those words she did not want to utter, you saw in her face what she really wanted to say.

Ullman in the same interview has opinions about remakes that students of cinema should heed. When another Norwegian director, Erik

Poppe, did a “remake” (the quotation marks you will understand later) of The Emigrants, which was directed by Jan Troell in 1971, Ullman saw that the actor who played her role played the character of the refugee woman differently that Ullman believed it was not her role anymore.

But what are the lessons we could learn from Buster Keaton? Known as the Great Stone Face by John Gillet and James Blue in an interview done in the mid-1960s, Buster Keaton was also described in the essay as possessing “expressive immobility.” Overshadowed by the celebrity of Charlie Chaplin, cineastes are discovering once more this actor.

One of the many questions asked in the interview reveals how exactly we need to view Buster Keaton. This question was on how the great comedian treated women in his films, were “subjected to all kinds of humiliations and yet they battle on. They get pulled and pushed around but they always stand by you.” The question punches with “Did they mind at all?” To this, Buster Keaton replies: “No, no. They didn’t mind at all…. It’s because so many leading ladies in those days looked as though they had just walked out of a beauty parlour. We said, ‘To thunder with that, we’ll dirty ours a bit and let them have some rough treatment.’”

Jessica Soho continues mission of storytelling and helping others

WIDELY regarded as the Philippines’ most awarded broadcast journalist, Jessica Soho remains a GMA talent as she renewed her contract with the network on May 31, committed to carrying on with her mission of sharing the Filipinos’ story around the globe.

In the span of almost four decades, Soho has blazed a trail in broadcast journalism. She helped give the Philippines its first-ever George Foster Peabody award in 1999 and soon earned another Peabody win in 2014.

She became the first Filipino to be nominated and win in the New York Festivals (NYF) TV & Film Awards. She holds the distinction of having won all the medal categories at the NYF. Kapuso Mo, Jessica Soho took home the Gold World Medal earlier this year—the show’s third World Medal after winning Bronze Medals in 2019 and 2022. Her other former programs State of the Nation with Jessica Soho and Brigada have also brought home Silver and Bronze Medals in previous NYF Awards.

Yet through all the accolades, Soho, a self-confessed “promdi” or “a small town girl, who made good,” remains grounded and focused on her goal: to serve the public and do good.

GMA Network Chairman and CEO Atty. Felipe L. Gozon underscored the value of Jessica to the Network.

“Jessica Soho is not only the Philippines’ most awarded broadcast journalist, she is also one of GMA’s most-prized gems. Bilang isa sa mga itinuturing na mukha ng GMA, naging matibay na institusyon si Jessica ng GMA News, at isa siya sa mga nirerespetong haligi

LOS ANGELES—That ‘70s Show star Danny Masterson was led out in handcuffs from a Los Angeles courtroom Wednesday and could get 30 years to life in prison after a jury found him guilty on two of three counts of rape at his second trial, in which the Church of Scientology played a central role.

Masterson’s wife, actor and model Bijou Phillips, gasped when the verdict was read and wept as he was taken into custody, while a group of family and friends sat stone-faced behind him throughout both trials.

The jury of seven women and five men reached the verdict after deliberating for seven days spread over two weeks. They could not reach a verdict on the third count, that alleged Masterson raped a longtime girlfriend. They had voted 8-4 in favor of conviction.

M asterson, 47, will be held without bail until he is sentenced. No sentencing date has yet been set, but the judge told Masterson and his lawyers to return to court August 4 for a hearing.

“I am e xperiencing a complex array of emotion—relief, exhaustion, strength, sadness—knowing that my abuser, Danny Masterson, will face accountability for his criminal behavior,” one of the women, whom

ng award-winning team ng GMA Public Affairs,” says Atty. Gozon.

“Ang kanyang  programang Kapuso Mo, Jessica Soho ay patuloy na No.

1 sa viewers at humahakot ng karangalan sa loob at labas ng bansa.”  Soho’s heart is full of gratitude as she remains a loyal GMA talent.

Thank you very much. Walang hanggang pasasalamat,” she says to the network that has been her home for almost four decades. “GMA has been my home for the past 38 years and counting. Kung walang GMA, walang Jessica Soho. Ganun lang iyun kasimple,” she says.

Present during Soho’s contract renewal were GMA President and COO Gilberto R. Duavit Jr., Executive Vice President and CFO

Felipe S. Yalong; and First Vice President of Public Affairs Nessa Valdellon. Joining them were Public Affairs’ Senior Assistant Vice President Clyde Mercado; Asst. Vice President Angelie Atienza; Asst. Vice President Lee Joseph Castel; and Asst. Vice President for Systems and Budget Riza Laurente. Also present was Asst. Vice President for Corporate Communications Jojo Aquio.

Soho is one of the main driving forces behind GMA Network’s News and Public Affairs. From her ideas, some of the country’s most iconic public affairs shows were born. Among these were Brigada Siete, Emergency and I-Witness

“I think God blessed me with an overactive mind, kaya dapat lang -share even my craziest of thoughts,” she says. Soho was behind the idea of the hit adventure series Lolong

t’s not a surprise that people around Soho find inspiration

Masterson knew as a fellow member of the church and was convicted of raping at his home in 2003, said in a statement.

A second woman, a former girlfriend, whose count left the jury deadlocked, said in the statement: “While I’m encouraged that Danny Masterson will face some criminal punishment, am devastated that he has dodged criminal accountability for his heinous conduct against me.”

A spokesperson f or Masterson declined comment, but his attorneys will almost certainly appeal.

A fter a deadlocked jury led to a mistrial in December, prosecutors retried Masterson, saying he forcibly raped three women in his Hollywood Hills home between 2001 and 2003. They told jurors he drugged the women’s drinks so he could rape them. They said he used his prominence in the church—where all three women were also members at the time—to avoid consequences for decades.

“ We want to express our gratitude to the three women who came forward and bravely shared their experiences,” Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón said in a statement after the verdict Wednesday.

from her, especially her colleagues. “I promise to continue sharing my ideas and pitching storylines and program concepts as well as mentoring our production staff. My colleagues will bear me out on this—hindi ako madamot.”

From this generosity also comes Soho’s determination to pay it forward and share her talents and ideas to more people.

“I’m looking forward to keep on generating story concepts and sharing these with our producers and storytellers, in whatever formats or genres.”

Soho takes a step further to reach more audiences beyond television. She is set to lead “The GMA Public Affairs Talk” as it goes around the Philippines soon.

The first leg was called “The New York Festival Medalists & The National Artist GMA Public Affairs Talk on Storytelling and Producing,” where Soho shared to GMA staff and employees her extensive experience in reporting and broadcasting spanning almost four decades. GMA Public Affairs is planning a road show version of this, which will be open to students and young professionals.

Soho also wants to remind the young and future journalists of what journalism is all about.

“ Two things I’ve always been consistent about every time am asked for advice to young journalists: Keep on reading and that it’s never about us,” she says.

The first one is self-explanatory, so let me expound on the second one. We are not the story. I get the need for selfies and

“Their courage and strength have been an inspiration to us all.” Masterson did not testify, and his lawyers called no witnesses. The defense argued that the acts were consensual, and attempted to discredit the women’s stories by highlighting changes and inconsistencies over time, which they said showed signs of coordination between them.

“I f you decide that a witness deliberately lied about something in this case,” defense attorney Philip Cohen told jurors, going through their instructions in his closing argument, “you should consider not believing anything that witness says.”

T he Church of Scientology played a significant role in the first trial but arguably an even larger one in the second. Judge Charlaine F. Olmedo allowed expert testimony on church policy from a former official in Scientology leadership who has become a prominent opponent.

Tensions ran high in the courtroom between current and former Scientologists, and even leaked into testimony, with the accusers saying on the stand that they felt intimidated by some members in the room. Actor Leah Remini, a former member who has become the church’s

the influencing and promoting on our social media accounts, but when chasing after stories and reporting or producing them, the ‘old school’ rules should never be compromised. Because those are values and they are what journalism is all about: accuracy, fairness, responsibility.”

highest-profile critic, sat in on the trial at times, putting her arm around one of the accusers to comfort her during closing arguments.

R emini said on Twitter that the two guilty verdicts in the retrial are “a relief. The women who survived Danny Masterson’s predation are heroes. For years, they and their families have faced vicious attacks and harassment from Scientology and Danny’s well-funded legal team,” she posted. “Nevertheless, they soldiered on, determined to seek justice.”

T he alleged harassment, which the church denies engaging in, is the subject of a civil lawsuit filed by two of the accusers.

Founded in 1953 by L. Ron Hubbard, the Church of Scientology has many members who work in Hollywood. The judge kept limits on how much prosecutors could talk about the church, and primarily allowed it to explain why the women took so long to go to authorities.

T he women testified that when they reported Masterson to church officials, they were told they were not raped, were put through ethics programs themselves, and were warned against going to law enforcement to report a member of such high standing. AP

FROM left: GMA Public Affairs First Vice President Nessa Valdellon GMA Network President and COO Gilberto R. Duavit Jr., Jessica Soho, and GMA Network Executive Vice President and CFO Felipe S. Yalong.

LIV ULLMAN, Ingrid Bergman and Ingmar Bergman

Danny Masterson convicted of 2 counts of rape, ‘That ‘70s Show’ actor faces 30 years to life

mWell partners with Bayad; champions accessible healthcare

METRO Pacific Investments Corporation’s (MPIC) mWell, the Philippines’ healthcare mega app, recently announced its partnership with Bayad, the pioneer brand in the outsourced payment collection system in the Philippines and a full-service fintech subsidiary of Meralco. The collaboration is in line with mWell’s efforts to make healthcare accessible to more Filipinos.

As the country’s first fully integrated, fully digital health and wellness platform, mWell provides access to over 1,000 highly-trained Filipino partner-doctors: internal medicine doctors, cardiologists, endocrinologists, ophthalmologists, and more. Mind health experts are also available on the app. In partnership with Bayad Center, mWell app users, even those without digital wallets, credit, or debit cards can pay for doctor consultation fees at any Bayad Center nationwide.

To empower even those without smartphones to consult online, mWell Consult Stations have been set up in select Bayad Center branches. Online consultation booths are made available at Bayad Center Gulod, Novaliches, Quezon City and at Bayad Center, Brgy. Kapasigan, Pasig City. Bayad and mWell personnel are also present to help assist customers set an appointment with their preferred physician or other healthcare professionals.

mWell Chairman and MPIC Chairman and CEO Manuel V. Pangilinan said, “Our partners are an integral part of the mWell ecosystem. As we champion wellness and financial inclusivity through this collaboration with Bayad, we will continue with our mission to provide access to quality, affordable healthcare services through our fully integrated, sustainable and future-proof digital platform.”

“Our goal is to make healthcare affordable, available, and accessible to our countrymen. Through this partnership with Bayad, mWell app users, even those without digital wallets, credit or debit cards can pay for doctor consultation fees at the Bayad Center nearest them. Recognizing the need to help regular wage earners receive expert medical advice,

we have set up mWell Consult Stations in select Bayad Center branches. These digital clinics shall empower even those without smartphones to consult with our partnerdoctors, enabling them to become healthier and more productive,” said mWell CEO and President and MPIC Chief Finance, Risk, and Sustainability Officer Chaye CabalRevilla.

Bayad President and CEO, Lawrence Y. Ferrer shared: “As we proactively stay attuned to the digital shift, we also understand that face to face transactions remain to be a comfort zone for others. It’s the trust that a warm body, a familiar face, brings when receiving your hard-earned money. Our partnership with mWell veers towards a more inclusive healthcare system as we enable accessible payment solutions for our stakeholders that represent all walks of life.”

“As we push forth our advocacy for wellness and financial inclusivity, we are constantly on the lookout for more opportunities to expand our payment channel network to cater to mWell customers. Apart from enabling them to settle their health consultation, we are offering a one-stop-shop payment solution which covers other services such as electric and water utilities, cable and internet, government contributions, loan payments, credit cards, school tuition fees, online shopping, insurance, and many others,”

Experience Warner Bros‘ 100th year anniversary celebration at SM Supermalls until September

WARNER Bros. is set to commemorate its 100th year anniversary in the Philippines starting May 2023. Mallgoers will be able to experience the historic celebration with exciting activations, exclusive merchandise and special engagements for fans to enjoy.

For 100 years, Warner Bros., has been a trailblazer, standing at the forefront of the entertainment industry, and is home to one of the most successful portfolios of brands with millions of fans worldwide.

The WB 100 celebration aims to bring Filipino fans closer to the entertainment they love. Customers will be able to step into 100 years of Warner Bros.’ story with an animation studio experience, costume area, props studio, and a to-scale replica of the iconic Warner Bros. water tower similar to the one in Burbank, California. Fans can also bring home the exclusive WB 100 collectibles and other commemorative merchandise.

The fan-focused campaigns will include meet-and-greet with the classic Looney Tunes characters dressed as DC Super

Heroes in fun and fresh collaborations. Numerous photo spots from iconic Warner Bros. scenes will also be showcased all over the malls for fans to experience.

Experience will kick start at SM North Edsa on May 24 to June 4.

Catch the celebration across the key selected SM Malls in your city :

SM City BF Paranaque : June 13 to 20

SM City San Lazaro : June 19 to 30

SM City Sucat : June 23 to July 2

SM City Bicutan : July 7 to 16

SM City Fairview : July 10 to 22

SM City Novaliches : July 16 to 31

SM East Ortigas : July 28 to Aug 13

SM San Mateo : Aug 4 to 20

SM Marikina : Aug 18 to Sept 3

SM Taytay : Aug 25 to Sept 10

SM Masinag : Sept 8 to 24

From everyone’s childhood buddies to stories that allowed us to fall in love, gave us comfort and strength: let’s experience them all together at SM Supermalls and get your hands on the range of WB 100th merchandise starring a unique mash-up of Looney Tunes and DC!

added Ferrer.

mWell offers patients a seamless endto-end journey— from seeing a doctor 24/7 (with only 3 minutes of waiting time), paying for the consultation and even having medicines delivered straight to their doorstep. Free e-prescription, e-medical certificate and lab referral are loaded into the app after consultation. To help ease financial worries, affordable health plans for doctor consultations are easily within reach.

mWell also promotes preventive healthcare. It has an mWellness Score developed by data scientists which measures physical health based on daily activities – exercise, light activity, steps, and sleep. This serves as a guide to achieving a healthy physical lifestyle to fight against chronic diseases and attain long-term health. Specialized fitness programs and calorie-controlled recipes created by nutritionists are also a tap away.

Committed to change lives through the power of technology, mWell is the only healthcare app among the convenor organizations and supporting companies of the GoDigitalPilipinas (GDP) movement.

To consult with partner-doctors and access a wide range of wellness features, simply download the mWell PH app from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store and register. Follow mWell on Facebook and mwellph on Instagram for more updates.

MakatiMed’s Nursing Workforce and Bed Management Team Honored as 2023 TOWER Awardees for Covid-19 project

Implemented from July 2020 up to the present, this remarkable project produced an efficient system with its electronic records management. A Bed Management Team was formed to improve the admission process, coordinating bed movements from the ER floors to Inpatient floors. A Bed Prioritization Viber Group was also created by a multidisciplinary team composed of Bed Managers, Resident Doctors, Nurse Managers of regular and Intensive Care Unit (ICU) floors, Infectious Control Fellow and Physician, and an Emergency Physician.

The team discusses bed allocation and availability, as well as the prioritization in bed movement according to the assessment and severity of patient conditions. This resulted in faster turnaround time in admission which gave comfort to patients who could commence their inpatient care management sooner.

Livestock PHL Batangas Roadshow: A Resounding Success in Advancing Sustainable Poultry Production

LIVESTOCK Philippines, the flagship event for the Philippine livestock industry, recently held another installment in its enlightening series of roadshows. This engaging event unfolded at the Lima Park Hotel, Lipa-Malvar City, Batangas, centered around the theme of “Food Security, Safety, and Sustainability in Poultry Production.”

The Batangas leg of the roadshow had insightful presentations and meaningful discussions. Apple Limbo, standing on behalf of Rungphech Chitanuwat, the Regional Portfolio Director for ASEAN, Informa Markets, kicked off the proceedings. As the Assistant Sales Manager of Livestock Philippines, Limbo provided a warm welcome and introduction to the attendees, setting the stage for a day filled with valuable knowledge sharing.

One of the day's highlights was a presentation by Dr. Anthony Bucad, from the Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Animal Industry. He shed light on the challenges facing the poultry sector and outlined the agency's strategic plans to assist farmers. His in-depth discussion about avian influenza emphasized the current situation, the importance of preventative measures, and the vital role of industry collaboration in combating this infectious disease.

Following this, Cecille Aldueza-Virtucio, a social entrepreneur and the Managing Director of Batangas Egg Producers Cooperative

(BEPCO), highlighted the Philippine Egg Industry Plan 365 Egg Roadmap 2022 to 2040. Her comprehensive discussion detailed the roadmap and recent developments in the Philippine egg industry.

After an interactive question-and-answer session, Dr. Fletcher Del Valle, a professor from the University of the Philippines Los Baños, took center stage. His presentation, titled “From Farm to Lab: Pinpointing the Poultry Pathogen,” emphasized the importance of detecting and controlling poultry pathogens to maintain farm health and productivity.

Concluding the session line-up, Dr. Chris Patawaran, a Poultry Veterinary Consultant from The Chicken Doctors, presented the current situation in the layer industry. His talk, “Keeping your Head Above Water,”provided attendees with novel strategies to navigate the challenges in the poultry sector effectively.

After the success of the Batangas roadshow, the series continues with the next installment scheduled for June 14 to 15, 2023 at the SMX Convention Center in Clark, Angeles City, Pampanga. This upcoming event promises another invaluable opportunity for attendees to engage with industry experts, gain insights into market trends, and contribute to the discourse surrounding poultry production. It is events like these that underline the resilience, innovation, and significance of the Philippines livestock industry, further bolstering the Livestock Philippines' commitment to the sector's growth and development.

MAKATI Medical Center’s (MakatiMed) Nursing Workforce and Bed Management Team has been recognized as one of the recipients of the prestigious 2023 The Outstanding Workers of the Republic (TOWER) Awards under the Innovative Team – Services Category (Healthcare) for its Covid-19 Dashboard project. The nationwide awards, organized by the Rotary Club of Manila, the People Management Association of the Philippines (PMAP), and the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), celebrate employees with outstanding innovations in various sectors.

The Covid-19 Dashboard Project was presented by MakatiMed’s Nursing and Patient Care Services (NCPS) Division - Nursing Workforce, Budget, and Informatics (NWBI) Department Bed Management Officer Wilson S. Albay and Workforce Management Officers Abby Laureen E. Enriquez and Justine Kristel B. Balacano with the invaluable contribution of Workforce Management Officer Doris V. Oreta. Leading the charge within the NPCSD - Nursing Support Services were Charissa S. De Luna of NWBI, Head of Nursing Quality, Arthur Kevin V. Castor, and Head of Admissions, Maritess M. Colorado.

The recognition bestowed upon MakatiMed's Nursing Workforce and Bed Management Team is a testament to the nurses’ unwavering commitment to excellence and their exceptional contributions to the healthcare industry. Through their groundbreaking Covid Dashboard Project, the team demonstrated their innovative spirit and dedication to addressing the challenges presented by the pandemic. MakatiMed remains committed to providing quality healthcare services, guided by the dedication of groups like the MakatiMed Nursing Workforce & Bed Management Team.

MAKATI MEDICAL CENTER’S NURSING WORKFORCE & BED MANAGEMENT TEAM DURING THE AWARDING CEREMONY LAST MAY 25, 2023. From left to right, Nursing Workforce, Budget, and Informatics (NWBI) Workforce Management Officer Charissa S. De Luna; Nursing Quality Head, Arthur Kevin V. Castor; NWBI Bed Management Officer, Wilson S. Albay; NWBI Workforce Management Officer Doris Lilibeth V. Oreta; NWBI Workforce Management Officer Justine Kristel B. Balacano.

MWELL Head of Business Development Tisha C. Quinitio, mWell CEO and President and MPIC Chief Finance, Risk, and Sustainability Officer Chaye Cabal- Revilla, Bayad President and CEO Lawrence Y. Ferrer, and Bayad Chief Commercial and Marketing Officer Dennis S. Gatuslao

LEFT photo, from left to right: Jomia Pagkatotohan, Senior Marketing Executive, Livestock Philippines, Apple Limbo, Assistant Sales Manager, Livestock Philippines, Fletcher Del Valle, DVM, PhD, Veterinarian, Assistant Professor at the Department of Veterinary Clinical Science, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of the Philippines Los Baños, Cecille Aldueza-Virtucio, Social Entrepreneur-Agri-Coop Volunteer, Managing Director and Program Leader of Batangas Egg Producers Cooperative, Christopher Patawaran, DVM, Dip. PCPP Poultry Veterinary Consultant of the Chicken Doctors, Diplomate of the Philippine College of Poultry Practitioners, Jessa Gonowon, Sales Executive, Livestock Philippines. Right Photo: Anthony Bucad, DVM, Veterinarian III, OIC – Animal Disease Control Section, Animal Health and Welfare Division, Bureau of Animal Industry, Department of Agriculture

Jun Lomibao

POC set to give SEAG medalists cash incentives

THE Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) will grant cash bonuses to medalists in the recent Cambodia 32nd Southeast Asian Games through its Athletes’ Incentive Trust Fund.

Carlos Yulo gets the biggest cash bonus for winning two gold and two silver medals in men’s gymnastics with veteran swimmer Jasmine Alkhaldi also getting near the top of the list with her three silvers and three bronzes.

POC president Rep. Abraham “Bambol” Tolentino said a total of P12.40 million in bonuses will be distributed to the 260 athletes who won medals—58 golds, 85 silvers and 117 bronzes—in Cambodia.

O f the total bonus, P7.2 million are from the Manuel V. Pangilinan Sports Foundation (MVPSF) and P5.2 million from POC funds.

The athletes, particularly the medalists, deserve the reward and the POC will always be diligent on that,” said Tolentino, the first POC president who initiated a trust fund for incentives to athletes winning medals in international competitions.

Under the POC’s incentive program, P100,000 will go to an individual gold medalist, P50,000 to doubles and relay teams and P30,000 to team; P50,000 to silver medalist, P30,000 for doubles and P20,000 for relay; and P30,000 to individual silver medalist and P10,000 for doubles and relay.

The amount is from the generosity of MVPSF, Manny V. Pangilinan, through the efforts of [president] Al Panlilio,” Tolentino said.

Pangilinan is the chairman of the board of trustees of the MVPSF, which is headed by its president Panlilio, who is also the POC first vice president.

The POC bonuses are separate from the government incentives given through the Philippine Sports Commission to medalist athletes under Republic Act 10699 or National athletes and coaches Benefits and incentives Act.

Under the government incentives act, gold in the SEA Games is worth P300,000, silver P150,000 and bronze P60,000.

Yulo won gold medals in men’s all-around and parallel bars and silvers in rings and the men’s team all-around for a total of four medals.

Josef Ramos

THE Senate adopted five resolutions congratulating and commending Filipino athletes who brought pride and honor to the Philippines by bringing a total of 260 medals from the recent 32nd Southeast Asian Games held May 5 to 17 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Senator Cynthia Villar sponsored Senate Resolution No. (SRN) 619, taking into consideration SR Nos. 621, 622, 623, 625, and 640; Senator Francis “Tol” Tolentino (SRN 617 and 618), taking into consideration SRN 639; Senator Sonny Angara (SRN 632); and Senator Joel Villanueva (SRN 633), taking into consideration SRN 634, respectively.

THE Valley Golf South is back after nine years as host of the country’s premier circuit, Philippine Golf Tour (PGT), when the International Container Terminal Services Inc. (ICTSI) Valley Golf Challenge is staged June 6 in Antipolo City.

Tony Lascuña dominated the field in the 2014 Tour edition, beating Jhonnel Ababa by seven but the organizing Pilipinas Golf Tournaments Inc. has not made any stop at Valley since before it held the

ACTION in the Junior Philippine Golf Tour (JPGT) Series resumes at Mount Malarayat Golf and Country Club in Lipa City Friday with the 13- to 14-year-old players clashing for top honors in the boys’ and girls’ divisions at the composite Mt. Makulot and Mt. Lobo courses.

Heading the boys’ cast are Patrick Tambalque, Gabriel Handog, Tristan Padilla and Clark Bayani while Rafa

DENVER—Nikola Jokic wasn’t supposed to be here. Neither was Jimmy Butler, for that matter.

Jokic was drafted behind 40 other players in 2014. Butler was drafted behind 29 others in 2011.

Jokic grew up in Serbia, not even thinking about the National Basketball Association (NBA). Butler didn’t have the easiest upbringing in Texas, then went the junior college route at the start of his journey toward the pros.

Yet here they are in the NBA Finals.

O ne of them will become a champion for the first time, with Jokic leading the Denver Nuggets and Butler leading the Miami Heat in a matchup that starts Thursday night in Denver, with the Nuggets heavily favored to win it all.

“ This is going to be the hardest game of our life, and we know that,” Jokic said. “We are prepared for that. We are prepared for that. So, I think there is no favorite. Definitely, I think we are not favorites in this series. I think they’re not either. I think it’s just the finals.”

The Nuggets—in the finals for the first time—had by far the easier road to the title round. They climbed atop the Western Conference standings in mid-December and never fell from that perch, then lived up to that No. 1 seed by going 12-3 in the West playoffs.

M iami—a seven-time finalist now, seeking a fourth title—had about the rockiest path to the Rocky Mountains that a team could have.

The Heat had to rally in a play-in elimination game just to make the playoffs, knocked out No. 1 overall seed Milwaukee in Round 1, rival New York in Round 2 and then just had to go win a Game 7 in Boston,

10 teams that finished this season with better records than Miami—nine of them are no longer playing—and 589 teams in NBA history that had better regular seasons than the 2022-23 Heat yet still didn’t win a title.

They are improbable finalists. Their leader took an improbable path, too. But after stints with Chicago, Philadelphia and Minnesota didn’t always go as planned, Butler is now in the finals with Miami for a second time in four years.

Labadan makes all-around, ball finals of Asian artistic meet

By Josef Ramos

REANNA LABADAN has started to reap the fruits of her Hungarian training and found herself advancing to the individual all-around and ball finals of the 14th Senior Rhythmic Gymnastics Asian Championships on Thursday at the Ninoy Aquino Stadium.

Inspired by her dad Arnold and mom Laurice who watched her every move from the stands, the 16-year-old Labadan finished sixth in the individual all-around qualifiers with 107.90 points, including her scores in clubs (24.45) and ribbons (28.65) in the competition organized by the Gymnastics Association of the Philippines and supported by the Philippine Sports Commission.

Competing out of Butuan City but now based in Hungary where she trains, Labadan was among 18  athletes competing in the allaround finals starting at 10 a.m. Friday

in the  meet sanctioned by Asian Gymnastics Union.

I can say that yesterday was better and there were mistakes that happened today but I accepted that to move forward,” said the bronze medalist at last year’s Hanoi Southeast Asian Games. “My parents are also there watching and telling me how proud they are.”

Uzbekistan’s Takhmina Ikromova topped the qualification with 133.95 points, followed by Kazakhstan’s Elzhana Taniyeva with 127.90 and China’s Zilu Wang with 120.95.

A top 10 finish for Breanna will likely secure her a ticket to the world championships in Spain,” according to competition manager Anna Carreon. D aniela dela Pisa, however, failed to advance after she skipped the hoops on opening day Wednesday after mustering 65.75 points, including the clubs (20.20) and ribbon (21.80).

A g old medalist in the 2019 30th Philippine SEA Games, Dela Pisa wound up 27th in the all-around in the  20-nation championships serving as the continental qualifiers for the Rhytmic Artistic Gymnastics World Championships from August 23 to 27 in Valencia.

after nearly wasting a 3-0 lead, to vanquish last season’s loss to the Celtics in the East finals.

This is a special group,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “This group has been able to overcome a lot of different things, handle a lot of adversity, setbacks, things that have not gone the way we wanted them to go. And instead of having that collapse our spirit, it allowed us to develop some fortitude and grit collectively, and give us something to rally around, which was each other.”

At 44-38 this season, Miami would tie the worst regular-season record ever by an NBA champion. The Washington Bullets had that record and won the 1978 title. There were

“I would like to say that I’m never rattled. I’m very calm,” Butler said. “I’m very consistent in everything that I do, whether it’s before the game, after the game, during the game, and I think when my guys look at me like that, they follow suit in every single way. I love that about them because they’re never shook. No matter what.”

It’s not about Jokic vs. Butler; both have big-time players around them as well, namely, Jamal Murray for Denver and Bam Adebayo for Miami. Jokic and Butler are the two leading scorers left in these playoffs; Jokic is averaging 29.9 points, 13.3 rebounds and 10.3 assists, while Butler is averaging 28.5 per game— including a playoff-high 56 to help oust the Bucks. AP

Senate commends medalists in Cambodia

Christopher Lawrence “Bong” Go, sponsor of SRN 625.

Gilas Pilipinas’s victory is a testament to the Philippines’ growing reputation in the world of basketball. Gilas’ win not only cements their position as one of the top teams in the region but also puts them in an excellent position to compete on the global stage,” Tolentino stressed.

The Philippine team won a total of 260 medals in Cambodia—58 golds, 85 silvers and 117 bronzes.

“The performance of our Filipino athletes at the 32nd SEA Games brings pride and honor to the country and serves as an inspiration for all Filipino athletes to strive for excellence in future

international sports competitions,” Villar stated in her resolution.

It is appropriate and befitting that we extend our recognition and congratulate our Filipino athletes who have exemplified excellence and distinctions which have brought pride and honor to our country,” said

Valley Golf South returns to PGT loop

first Ladies PGT (LPGT) tournament, which top amateur Rianne Malixi dominated last year. The rolling Valley Golf South layout actually served as the Tour’s first venue during its four-leg inaugurals in 2009 with Jay Bayron emerging on top of the ICTSI-backed championship.

The upcoming P2-million

tournament will be the sixth leg of this year’s circuit following a two-leg Visayan swing in Bacolod and Iloilo, Caliraya Springs leg in Cavinti in Laguna, Luisita Championship in Tarlac and the ICTSI Villamor Philippine Masters at Villamor last week.

A baba ended a long title spell with a come-from-behind victory over Joenard Rates and Dutch Guido van

Jr PGT Series unfurl at Malarayat

Anciano and Levonne Talion lead the chase in the girls’ side of the 18-hole tournament to be played under the Modified Stableford scoring system. R egistration starts at 10 a.m. with competition to fire off at 11 a.m. Green fees and lunch will be covered by the JPGT.

Joining the hunt in the boys’ competition are Felix Saludar, Santi Asuncion, Javier Villavicencio, Sebastian Saycon, Alexander Crisostomo, Andrei Sulanik, Bien Fajardo and Rafael Leonio.

Organized by the Philippine Golf Tour under the International Container

A s for the Philippine Kickboxing Team, Tolentino said it deserves the highest praise, recognition and commendation for bringing pride and inspiration to the Filipino people and “for showing to the world the unrelenting spirit of Filipino sports excellence.”

der Valk in a fierce PH Masters battle that went all the way to the final hole with the same unpredictable finish expected at Valley, kept in championship form all-season long, which features narrow, rolling terrains, winding streams and sleek putting surface.

A down-to-the-wire battle is also seen in the LPGT side of the tournament with Harmie Constantino targeting a third straight victory after pulling off a pair of explosive rallies at Luisita and Villamor.

Terminal Services Inc. golf program, the junior series kicked off at The Country Club in Laguna last January with the drive-chip-and-putt competition.

The 9-10 and 11-12 age groupers then took center stage in the last JPGT Series at Caliraya Springs last month with Vito Sarines and Rafella Batican sharing the crowns in the younger category and Mona Sarines and Ralph Batican dominating the other division.

BREANNA LABADAN advances deeper in the competition, but Daniela dela Pisa misses a ticket to the finals. NONOY LACZA

PHL 3x3 dribblers take on Indonesians

THE Philippines kick off its campaign in the 12th Asean Para Games on Friday in men’s 3x3 wheelchair basketball against Indonesia at the Elephant Hall 1 inside the Morodok Techo Sports Complex in Phnom Penh.

The Filipinos, who bagged silver medal last year, battle the Indonesians at 10 a.m. followed by matches against Cambodia (2 p.m.), Thailand (4:30 p.m.) and Malaysia (6 p.m.).

The women’s squad will tackle Laos (1:30 p.m.), host Cambodia (3:30 p.m.) and Malaysia (6 p.m.).

The medal round is scheduled Saturday beginning at 9:30 a.m.

The 5x5 competition will start on Sunday with Cambodia taking on Malaysia at 9 a.m. in the men’s division.

Other matches pit the Philippines against Indonesia (10:30 a.m.) and Thailand against Malaysia (4 p.m.) while playing in the women’s division are Cambodia against Thailand (1 p.m.) and the Philippines against Laos (2:30 p.m.).

“ We’re hoping for the best,” said

head coach Vernon Perea, who is assisted by Harry Joseph Solanoy, Yolanda Hernandez and Juanito Mingarine.

T he men’s 5x5 team claimed silver while the women’s team placed fourth behind Thailand, Cambodia and Laos in 2022.

The men’s team is composed of Mark Vincent Aguilar, John Rey Escalante, Kenneth Christopher Tapia, Freddie Magdayo, Alfie Cabañog, Rene Macabenguil, Jannill Cañete, Clifford Trocino, Marlon Nacita, Jefferson Legacion, Kyle Carlo Carandang and Moises Escobar while the members of the women’s squad are Patricia Camille Castro, Lois Jean Delos Reyes, Jocelyn Follero, Janet Briñas, Cathreen Gem Tanyag, Rhebilyn Aniban, Mary Joy Hernandez, Mylene Margaha, Ihoricel Panquico, Lorna Lilagan and Cecelia Wells.

The men’s 5x5 team has qualified for the Hangzhou Asian Para Games after winning the bronze medal at the International Wheelchair Basketball Federation Asia-Oceania Championships in Suphanburi, Thailand last month.

Ironkids back to swim-bike-run format

THE Ironkids returns as a trirace on June 10 and promises to be another huge hit among the future of Philippine triathlon— all ready and eager to mix it up for top honors in various age groups at the Subic Bay Boardwalk.

The event, which traditionally ushers in the big Ironman races of each triathlon season, was held as a swim and run race the last time out in Davao as the organizing The Ironman Group/Sunrise Events Inc. introduced new distances to encourage more participation.

It also added an extra year in the premier side that saw those in

the 15-year-old bracket compete as part of their buildup for bigger competitions ahead.

But the upcoming Ironman will again be a swim-bike-run race, guaranteeing a spirited battle in a competitive but friendlier setting in four age-group classes in the individual competition and two in relay category.

The 6-8 years old bracket will be staged over a 100-meter swim, 2-km bike and 1-km run distance, the 9-10 crown will be contested over 150-meter swim, 4-km bike and 1.5-km run and hostilities in the 11-12 division will betere held over the 200-m, 4-km bike and 1.5-km run route.

DENVER’S Nikola Jokic and Miami’s Jimmy Butler take the unconventional route to the Finals. AP

VILLAR ANGARA VILLANUEVA GO

TOLENTINO

Motoring

Friday, June 2, 2023

Editor: Tet Andolong • www.businessmirror.com.ph

MAKE WAY FOR THE LEXUS RZ 450E ALL-ELECTRIC SUV

Human-centered

LEXUS has recently joined the EV race in the Philippines with the launch of the RZ 450e, the brand’s first model with the BEV-develop platform. Lexus intends not simply to deliver the benefits of zeroemission, all-electric driving but to capture the potential of BEVs to reinvent the driving experience.

Seamless e-Motion

THE primary theme was a seamless, emotional design inspired by the experience of driving a BEV. The new RZ has a lower nose profile and a silhouette flowing through a smooth cabin section. A sleek horizontal door axis accentuates the long wheelbase, and the large diameter 20-inch wheels are pushed out to the corners, expressing a wide stance and a low center of gravity. The RZ measures 4,805 mm long, with a 2,850 mm wheelbase and short overhangs—975 mm front, 980 mm rear. The overall height is 1,635 mm, and the width is 1,895 mm (excluding door mirrors).

T he rear presents a cool, high-tech look with a split roof spoiler and the hallmark Lexus design of an elongated LED light bar wrapping around the muscular rear quarters. The rear thread is widened to 1,620 mm. Further, aerodynamic features achieve a low drag coefficient (0.28 Cd). There is a rear spoiler, a shaped back door, a fully covered underfloor, and a small front grille aperture with shutters.

THE RZ’s cabin has an open, spacious, and airy feel with a driver-focused cockpit developed according to the principles of Lexus’ Tazuna concept—a design approach successfully applied previously to the all-new NX and RX models. The layout of the controls and information sources—a 14-inch center multimedia display, meters, a multi-information display, and a head-up display—require minimum hand and eye movement to reach, operate and read, helping keep the driver’s attention on the road ahead.

T he all-new Lexus Link multimedia platform has a faster, more intuitive operation and increased functions for connectivity, efficient journey planning, and information. There is also a new “Hey Lexus” onboard assistant. Smartphone integration is enabled via Apple CarPlay (wireless connection) and Android Auto—pure stage sound experience with a 10-speaker Mark Levinson Premium Surround Sound system. The vehicle’s DCM (data communication module) allows functions to be conveniently updated or added over the air without interrupting the vehicle’s use. Information, entertainment, navigation, air conditioning, and access to vehicle settings are via a 14-inch touchscreen. Mounted on the center of the instrument panel, this also includes physical buttons for periodic functions, including audio on/ off and climate control temperature. The instrument panel with thinner construction and set low enhances the interior’s open feel. The center console has a slim, elegant

upper section with a storage box. Of course, there are cupholders, USB ports, a 12V power outlet, and a wireless charging tray.

There are three interior color combinations available. The Orange upholstery (a shade of blue) is matched with black trim and a Solis White covering for the interior door shoulders and armrests. Hazel seat coverings are combined with black trim, Grayscale upholstery, and black trim. A new Tsuyasumi

ornamentation is available for the console, with a charcoal finish with subtle shiny veining like a natural cinder block. Moreover, the cabin has an ambient lighting system with 64 colors grouped into 14 themes.

The seats are upholstered with “deephung” seams integrated heaters. The rear seatbacks have a two-stage recline function. The outer rear seats are available with heaters with high and low-temperature settings. Sustainable Ultrasuede upholstery is available for the new RZ, a sustainable suede-like material for the seats and upper door trims partly made from bio- and recycled materials. The other options are Synthetic Leather with a cloud effect finish and a fabric with a woven texture. The fabric is made using a spin-dyed yarn, reducing wastewater from the dyeing process.

The RZ’s engineers and designers prioritized ensuring the cabin environment was appropriately calm and quiet, applying a three-part strategy: controlling the noise, preventing it from entering the cabin, and paying particular attention to the noise experienced in the rear seats. The driver’s instrument display presents a full-screen Omotenashi welcome. The meters in the instrument binnacle can be customized to suit the driver’s preference. There are three center faces for the meter: power meter and surplus energy gauge, analog speedometer, and digital speedometer.

The optional panoramic roof increases the cabin’s feeling of space and light. The glass has a low-e (low-emissive) coating that reflects infrared radiation and reduces radiant heat. It even has an electric dimming function.

Battery Electric Powertrain

LEXUS sought to strike a practical balance between performance and efficiency in developing a new battery electric powertrain.

Lexus has designed a compact, high-voltage system circuit in which a transaxle and inverter are contained within the eAxle units.

An Energy Storage Unit (ESU) integrates the charging, power supply, and power distribution functions. The permanent magnet motors have a high-power density and 17,000 rpm rotation speed.

The battery stack is positioned entirely beneath the cabin floor. It has 96 cells with a gross capacity of 71.4 kWh. Lexus claims the battery will retain at least 70 percent of its capacity after ten years. Most RZ variants— running on 20-inch wheels—achieve a range of around 395 km in the WLTP combined cycle test. Those which use 18-inch wheels see the range extended by about 40 km. The RZ is equipped with a compact and lightweight 11 kW onboard charger. Battery recharging takes around six-and-a-half hours; using a one-phase supply, the time is around 10 hours; connected to a DC fast-charging system, an 80 percent recharge can be accomplished in about 30 minutes.

The RZ also features Lexus’ new e-Axle, designed for use in BEVs. The vehicle uses both front and rear eAxles, which work with the DIRECT4 all-wheel drive control system to adjust the vehicle’s posture, traction, and power distribution, according to the driving conditions. The front motor produces 150 kW and 266 N-m of torque while the rear dishes 80 kW and 168 N-m of torque with a combined 230 kW and 434 N-m of torque maximum outputs. Depending on wheel size, the RZ’s excellent energy efficiency is 16.8 kWh or 18.7 kWh per 100 km in the combined WLTP cycle.

World-class safety

ADVANCED technologies are applied to detect more hazards, provide driver warnings and initiate steering, braking, and acceleration assistance to avoid or mitigate collisions. With Data Communications Module (DCM), the safety systems can be updated over the air without needing the vehicle to be taken to a service center.

T hese features combine with comprehensive passive safety provisions and the RZ’s robust construction to provide comprehensive protection for everyone on board. The RZ uses an AHB-G braking system (Active Hydraulic Booster) which delivers pressure on demand via a highperformance pump motor.

A side from standard safety features, other smart safety functions are Pre-Collision System, Dynamic Radar Cruise Control, Lane Departure Alert, and Lane Tracing Assist. The Lexus Safety System + package for the RZ also provides Automatic High Beam or an Adaptive High-beam System. Road Sign Assist (RSA) can recognize and display a broader range of highway warning and command signs. In addition t o the provisions of Lexus Safety System +, the new RZ offers a wide range of features such as Rear Cross-Traffic Alert and Rear Camera Detection, Advanced Park, Lexus e-latch with Safe Exit Assist, and Panoramic View Monitor. To help protect against rear-end collisions, hazard lights are activated automatically to warn a following vehicle. The RZ has a Drive Start Control, which recognizes excessive pressure on the throttle when the shift selector is used and suppresses acceleration.

New color options and pricing

THE RZ is available in Aether Metallic, Sonic Chrome, Sonic Quartz, Sonic Iridium, and Graphite Black. The RZ is available in a new bi-tone design with a contrasting black finish extending from the front of the car over the bonnet, pillars, and roof. The Lexus RZ 450e all-electric SUV retails at P4.828 million.

TIME TO PRIVATIZE EDSA BUSWAY? CHEVY SUCCESS

charging fares, ranging from P46 to P52 for the route covering Monumento, Caloocan to PITX (Parañaque Integrated Terminal Exchange). An average of 389,579 passengers benefit from the busway system daily.

The danger in privatizing the bus carousel is the profit factor eating up the spirit of the shift from public to private.

event highlighted the brand’s rich heritage and featured the exceptional line-up of Chevrolet vehicles of today.

IS it really time to privatize the Edsa busway, also known as the bus carousel, on Metro Manila’s busiest road network?

Recall tha t months back, Department of Transportation (DOTr) Secretary Jaime J. Bautista said that starting in June this year, the agency will start accepting bids for private companies to take over the operation of the bus carousel.

I t was an offshoot mainly of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) decision to disapprove the P12billion budget proposed by the DOTr for a continuous free ride program for the public in 2023.

It w as in June 2020 when the bus carousel was launched to remedy the shortage in train capacity due to transport constraints during the pandemic. To further ease up the burden of our financially-compromised passengers, the government offered free rides in November 2020, ending on December 31, 2022.

It was last January 1 that the participating buses in the carousel program started

W hile the government is the mandated guardian to safeguard the public’s interest at all times, not so with the private sector, whose motivation for existence is, sad to say, profit.

As Party-list Rep. France Castro of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers warned: The planned privatization of the Edsa bus carousel would be another burden to commuters as it would mean higher bus fares.”

N ot if the government would use its conscience in negotiating with profit-driven companies.

H ere’s praying that Sec. Bautista, famous for his pro-poor stance, would come up with a scheme leaning more on our commuters’ benefits than anyone else’s when the Edsa busway is finally privatized.

Chevy success

THE recent display of Chevy models at Chevrolet Makati was a super success, thanks to the efficient marshalling by the company’s top guns led by lawyer Albert Arcilla.

With the theme “World-Class Chevrolet: The League of North American Chevys,” the

Ex hibited were the North American models such as the Camaro 3LT RS and Tahoe High Country, plus a spotlight on the 2023 Corvette C8. Chevrolet Makati-MIG1 Auto Dealership Corp. was represented by its Chairman, Cong. Michael Edgar Aglipay and Vice Chairman Ginger Rosales-Aglipay.

T he Covenant Car Company Inc.

(TCCCI)-Chevrolet Philippines was led by President and CEO Atty. Albert B. Arcilla, National Sales Services VP and Director Leah Avante, Marketing Communications Services EVP and Director Lyn Buena, First AVP Jun Maneze, and Business Development Services First AVP and Director Victor Delarmente.

“ Today, we are glad to announce the good news that Chevrolet’s North American products like the Suburban, Tahoe and Camaro are now available,” said Arcilla. “With this development, we are confident to serve the demand for these models and we’re excited to see more of these new Chevys on the road moving forward.”

For more product information, visit www. chevrolet.com.ph.

PEE STOP Happy birthday (June 2) to Coach Dayong J. Mendoza of San Miguel Beer. A Toyota loyalist, the Coach drives a Previa and a Fortuner. Cheers!

Story & photos by Randy S. Peregrino

THE elegant interior with orange upholstery of the Graphite Black color version

UNDER the hood are the electric motor’s controller, converter and other vital components.

LEXUS’ first-ever battery electric SUV, the RZ 450e in Aether Metallic