BusinessMirror March 07, 2021

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BOOST AND BUST I

SECURITIES and Exchange Commission Chairman Emilio B. Aquino NONIE REYES

By VG Cabuag

F you walk past the office of the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, you will find three Emilios. Two of them are Philippine heroes—Emilio Jacinto and Emilio Aguinaldo—and the third is the current SEC chairman, Emilio B. Aquino.

The pictures of the two Emilios are hanging at the office of the SEC chairman, in place of those of President Duterte, who forbids government agencies from hanging his picture in their offices.

Jacinto was the youngest Filipino general in the ranks of the revolutionaries against colonial Spain. Aguinaldo, on the other hand, was the country’s first and youngest President at 29.

SEC Chairman Aquino, too, started his career at a young age.

He was the youngest director to lead the agency’s unit then called the Prosecution and Enforcement and Non-Traditional Securities and Instruments departments.

“As early as my kindergarten days, I would say that I will be a lawyer someday. My becoming a CPA [certified public accountant] was considered a stepping stone toward my vision to be a lawyer.

And now my being a CPA pays good dividends in my present position,” Aquino said.

Nemesis of scammers

AQUINO is the first CPA and lawyer to lead the agency, qualifications that, along with his previ-

ous experience with the corporate watchdog, are both needed to run after fraudsters. And run them down is something he is determined to do.

These scammers are becoming more and more cunning as many people are now glued to their smart phones or computer screens at home due to the lockdown measures.

“Technology and innovation are a constant bane and boon to all of us. We know that both technology and innovation have their light and rosy side. Yet, we also have to beware the accompanying darker underside which provides challenges to everyone,” he said.

Aquino admitted that cryptocurrencies and other innovative securities easily come to mind when it comes to technological challenges of the agency, along with other cybersecurity concerns for the corporates.

Cryptocurrencies and other innovative securities, such as the digital assets and similar other things that are still to be invented, may not necessarily be illegal, but a new type of investment scheme is constantly cropping up

PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 48.5730

SEC Chairman Emilio Aquino’s agency must constantly strike a balance between protecting the public from fraud while boosting business with just the right regulatory controls and the EODB ethic.

enough to keep the SEC personnel on their toes, their ears firmly on the ground. The attitude is mixed because each new “invention” is a potential tool for fraud, but also part of the push for financial inclusivity.

“We will establish an innovation hub called the Fintech Innovative Instruments and Exchanges, or Fintex Office, to address these fintech concerns. We want technology to flourish. What we watch out for is the misconduct of those behind the technology,” Aquino said.

Scams have always been a part of life, the most notorious dating back to more than a century. Only the company name changes, but the scheme remains the same.

The most common framework for ever-evolving means for fraud is the Ponzi scheme, named after Charles Ponzi, an Italian swindler who carried out his scheme in the United States. Its basic premise is to rob Peter to pay Paul. It first lures investors for their money, but it pays profits to earlier investors and the owner of the scheme with funds from more recent investors.

Akin to the Ponzi scheme is the pyramid scheme, which the organization can collapse even faster, as it encourages one to recruit at least two, but those two will also have to recruit two, and on and on, until they form a pyramid.

EODB vs consumer protection

AQUINO admits that the agency faces a dilemma of sorts, being bound by the ease of doing busi-

ness (EODB) program which mandates it to approve new company registrations as quickly as possible, while balancing this with investor protection.

A lot of scammers use the SEC’s Certificate of Registration documents, flaunting these to the public to scam people.

The regulator has an interesting “strategy” for balancing the EODB and anti-red tape requirements with the duty to protect the public from swindlers. Since “only 5 percent of the 100 are [not] legitimate anyway,” the SEC’s usual move is, “we just approve the entire 100 percent [of company registration] and just run after the questionable 5 percent.”

The running after has to be done quickly, he explains, in order to prevent people from being gypped. “From the moment we get reports, from the moment we get emails, inquiries and complaints, immediately we shoot down those firms who are being used by unscrupulous groups,” he said.

“Somehow our kababayan, due to financial hardships and difficulties, no longer mind robbing Peter to pay [Paul] or themselves, their rent. So it’s not even greed. The challenge is for us to address that,” he said.

Investors can also be blamed, however, as some of them know at the back of their minds that the returns are too good to be true but just take the risk anyway, he said.

“We issued a CDO [cease and desist order] against an investment

scam which, under their roulette program, allows an investor to double his money in a day, 30 or 45 days. Evidently, it’s a scam because no legitimate business can give you that kind of a return. But some of our kababayan, due to financial difficulties, no longer mind [the risk involved],” he said.

Aquino was referring to its move to prevent Chiyuto Creative Wealth Documentation Facilitation Services from operating as it uses a double-your-money roulette game.

Financial literacy

THE SEC chairman believes that the only way to prevent scams from happening is embodied in two words: financial literacy.

“We embarked on massive investor education, tapping vloggers and celebrities. We are reaching over 600,000 [people]. I will be creating an Office on Investor Education just to address this growing problem in this time and age,” he said.

“Enforcement sweep, we also do that regularly. We’d rather be proactive, preventing the victim from parting with his money in favor of the fraudsters. But the best is financial literacy. On the other hand, we don’t wait for complaints to come in.”

Investor education is also the SEC’s answer to the growing number of individual investors who are trading in the stock market, which replaced the hot money of the foreign institutional players. Foreign

funds previously took in more than half of the trade at the Philippine Stock Exchange. But due to the pandemic, a hefty part of that has left emerging markets such as the Philippines.

Since the start of 2021, daily foreign transactions at the PSE only comprise less than a quarter of the trade and the rest are from retail, a trend seen around the world.

That may sound like a boon to the market such as the Philippines with a low savings rate, but a deluge of trading activity from retail investors is clogging the system of some of the stock brokers, causing them to stop accepting new clients at least for the next six months.

Conrado F. Bate, president and CEO of COL Financial Group Inc., said they started to limit the number of new clients at the start of the year and completely halted to accept new ones in January as activity surged by at least five times.

COL has the most number of individual investors among the local online stock brokers in the country. It has about 404,000 customer accounts as of September with net equity of P78.45 billion.

“We’ve been looking at certain assumptions at the start of the year and all that has been thrown away. We’re seeing volume that we have not expected to happen in a couple of years and it is happening today. Some of us [stock brokers] have stopped accepting new accounts because it is not helping. If Continued on A2

n JAPAN 0.4499 n UK 67.5116 n HK 6.2603 n CHINA 7.5065 n SINGAPORE 36.3244 n AUSTRALIA 37.5226 n EU 58.1419 n SAUDI ARABIA 12.9490

Source: BSP (March 5, 2021)

NewsSunday BusinessMirror

A2 Sunday, March 7, 2021

www.businessmirror.com.ph

The vaccine revolution is coming inside tiny bubbles of fat

I

By Tim Loh |

enzymes designed to immediately cut up any mRNA found circulating outside of cells.

To prevent that from happening, the mRNA in Covid shots sits inside the shell composed of four lipids. After protecting the mRNA on its journey into a person’s arm, the nanoparticle gets taken up into a cell. There, a positively charged lipid helps the mRNA to escape.

Once in the cell’s cytoplasm, the mRNA instructs the cell to produce copies of the coronavirus’s spike protein, inducing the body’s immune system to build up defenses.

Moderna has designed its own charged lipids, while Acuitas licenses its delivery technology to BioNTech and CureVac. Each of these companies was engaged in early clinical trials of mRNA treatments before the pandemic.

When Covid-19 emerged, Madden flew to Germany to talk to regulators and BioNTech officials about how they could most quickly commence clinical trials of mRNA Covid shots. They decided to repurpose the lipid nanoparticle from a rabies vaccine developed by CureVac, since it had already proved effective in people.

“The package doesn’t really care what’s inside,” Madden explains. “It’s just going to deliver it.”

Bloomberg News

F messenger-RNA vaccines are the breakout medicine of the pandemic, then the tiny lipid spheres that bring them into people’s cells are the unsung heroes.

The world desperately needs more of both.

Consider BioNTech SE, which until a year ago purchased only a few grams at a time of lipids to support a drug-development program that most people thought was years away from becoming mainstream.

Now it’s tapping big German chemical companies like Merck KGaA and Evonik Industries AG to vastly scale up production of the materials, a crucial step if it and partner Pfizer Inc. are to make good on plans to ship 2 billion doses of their Covid-19 vaccine this year.

“We need kilos and kilos and kilos of that stuff,” said Sierk Poetting, BioNTech’s chief financial officer, citing lipids as one of his most pressing needs.

Lipids catapulted toward the top of the world’s health-care priority list because the potent vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna Inc., as well as others still being developed by CureVac NV and Sanofi, can’t do their job without them. Messenger RNA, the genetic material at the heart of these vaccines, needs a protective shell composed of four different types of the fatty material—collectively called a lipidnanoparticle—so that

it can successfully journey from factory to a person’s arm, and then get inside of human cells.

With governments looking to turbocharge production of Covid vaccines, officials are learning that making more lipids isn’t so easy.

“This is an incredibly complex process,” said President Joe Biden, touring a Michigan factory last month alongside Pfizer Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla, who vowed to produce more lipids—along with mRNA—at the facility as part of a push to double vaccine supplies. Biden marveled at the close collaboration between machine technicians, chemists and biologists who were “pioneering technologies that less than a year ago were little more than theories and aspirations.”

For Bob Langer, those aspirations stretch back a lot longer. As early as the 1970s, he was trying to prove you can capture and transport big, complex molecules like DNA and RNA inside tiny particles without destroying them.

“Everybody told me it was impossible,” he recalled during a phone interview. “I got my first nine grants rejected. Couldn’t get a faculty job.”

More doses

Turns out it was possible, and Langer wasn’t out of a job for long.

Today, the professor has a chemical engineering lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) bearing his name, focused on the intersection of biotechnology and

materials science. Following decades of development, Langer in 2010 co-founded Moderna, where he’s still on the board. That company—like BioNTech and CureVac— is developing mRNA vaccines for infectious diseases beyond just Covid, along with therapies for cancer and rare illnesses.

“I don’t think people realized just how important the delivery systems are to all kinds of medicines,” Langer said. “If you get more and more complex medicines, like RNA and DNA and things like that, you’ll see more and more work on delivery systems and more and more problems will be solved.

Lipid nanoparticles are going to be a big piece of the arsenal.”

First RNA therapy

THE drug delivery field had a watershed moment in 2018, when the US Food and Drug Administration

approved a new therapy from Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc. That drug, Onpattro, treats a rare genetic disease that causes nerve and heart damage. While it works somewhat differently than mRNA therapies, it’s delivered via lipid nanoparticles. That meant regulators had at least some comfort level with the concept before the pandemic.

Thomas Madden worked for years with Alnylam on developing those pioneering lipids. By the time the approval came, though, he had long since refocused his Vancouverbased company, Acuitas Therapeutics, on what he considered the more promising field of mRNA. He recalls a eureka moment in about 2011, when he read a scientific paper detailing recent progress in the field, and concluded companies still needed better tools for delivery. That’s because the body is teeming with

IN addition to the 2 billion planned doses from Pfizer and BioNTech, Moderna is looking to produce 1 billion shots, while CureVac is targeting another 300 million. These and other companies are also moving fast to develop other mRNA products in their pipelines, adding to the unprecedented demand for lipid nanoparticles.

Major drug and chemical makers have taken notice. In early February, Germany’s Merck agreed to speed up the supply of lipids to Bio­ NTech while Evonik followed suit a week later.

Evonik is repurposing tanks and vessels at two plants in Germany and buying new instruments for the purification process.

“Typically, this process in the pharma industry takes a year or two,” Thomas Riermeier, head of the company’s health-care unit, said in a video interview. “What’s required here is to do this more or less in a couple of months.”

Boost and bust Continued from A1

you get into these new accounts... they are very active and that’s causing system to clog,” he said.

“We normally have 40,000 new customers a year. We more than doubled it last year. I know it’s not a big number but the behavior of the people [is] much different in the past,” he said.

Most of these individual investors are going for the cheap but speculative stocks, causing the PSE to issue several inquiries for the unusual price movement of several stocks, such as the mining firms and other shell companies, over the past month.

Aquino said the SEC was compelled to sustain its financial literacy program that it previously was doing only on a tentative basis.

“We created the Capital Market Promotions Inter-agency Network or CAMPAIGN. We entered into agreements with our network partners to help us in pursuing our financial education program,” he said.

The top corporate regulator admitted much more needs to be done to achieve his goal outlined in what the SEC called Super Vision 2025, a set of achievable goals by the time he steps down as the chairman of the agency.

The pandemic, he said, is one of the biggest stumbling blocks to achieving the agency’s self-imposed targets.

“We contributed substantially to the anti-Covid war chest with P2 billion. Those were intended for

AQUINO: “We want technology to flourish. What we watch out for is the misconduct of those behind the technology.” NONIE REYES

our new building and IT programs.

On the other hand, the pandemic was the great reset; it led everyone including our neighbors back to square one,” he said.

“We aimed to be among the best in the Southeast Asian Region in our Super Vision 2025. Since everybody is starting all over, we stand a good chance making a good finish by 2025. Deepening the depth and breadth of the capital markets is what we need to be in the game. We are eyeing more SME [small and medium enterprises]

and REITs [real-estate investment trust] listings. We should do more enforcement work as well,” Aquino said.

To catch scammers, deal with the lending companies and deepen the capital market—all at the same time and during the coronavirus pandemic at that— Aquino and the SEC will need the right strategy to win the battle.

Each time he walks down the SEC halls, he may be looking to his two namesakes for inspiration in waging this modern war.

www.businessmirror.com.ph • Editor: Angel R. Calso

The World BusinessMirror

World seen paying more for meat as global food inflation deepens

By Michael Hirtzer, Megan Durisin & Tatiana Freitas

T

here are signs that the food inflation that’s gripped the world over the past year, raising prices of everything from shredded cheese to peanut butter, is about to get worse.

The Covid-19 pandemic upended food supply chains, paralyzing shipping, sickening workers that keep the world fed and ultimately raising consumer grocery costs around the globe last year.

Now farmers—especially ones raising cattle, hogs and poultry—are getting squeezed by the highest corn and soybean prices in seven years. It’s lifted the costs of feeding their herds by 30 percent or more. To stay profitable, producers including Tyson Foods Inc. are increasing prices, which will ripple through supply chains and show up in the coming months as higher price tags for beef, pork and chicken around the world.

Feed prices “go up and down, and you tend to take the rough with the smooth,” said Mark Gorton, managing director at the British chicken and turkey producer Traditional Norfolk Poultry. “But when it rallies as much as it has, it starts to impact massively on the business.”

The last time grains were this expensive was after the US drought of 2012, and meat prices saw a dramatic run-up. Now, meat is again poised to become a driver of global food inflation, and part of the intensifying debate over the path of overall inflation and exactly what central banks and policy-makers should do to aid economies still working to recover from the pandemic.

Vaccinations promising a return to normal life and fiscal stimulus programs amounting to trillions of dollars are already expected to unleash pent-up demand and drive a surge in consumer prices. US and European bond markets are sending signals that inflation is back. Americans’ one-year inflation expectations last week rose to the highest since 2014.

As for what’s driving the feed prices, that’s due to bad crop weather shrinking world har vests. Demand is also increasing. China, the biggest buyer of commodities, is scooping up record amounts of the available supplies to feed its expanding hog herds.

Meat producers across major exporting countries

are feeling the impact of the higher grain costs. In Brazil, the biggest poultry shipper, the cost of raising chickens jumped 39 percent last year due to feed, according to Embrapa, a state-owned agricultural research agency. Costs rose again last month by around 6 percent, said Itau BBA bank.

In Europe profitability of livestock operations has plunged due to the combination of high feed expenses and stifled demand from Covid-19 lockdowns. Some smaller hog farmers may be forced to exit the market, according to Rabobank senior analyst Chenjun Pan. The United Nations’s Food & Agriculture Organization said global meat prices in January climbed the fourth straight month.

Since December 1, corn futures in Chicago have risen 28 percent and soybeans 18 percent.

Animal disease outbreaks could also push meat prices higher, with parts of Europe and Asia seeing avian influenza outbreaks. A deadly hog virus called African swine fever is still spreading in some countries after decimating Chinese herds, and recently caused a Philippine hog company to exit the industry.

Shrinking herds

Meat prices at retail grocery stores rise the most after farmers shrink their herds due to declining profits. That’s a process that takes time, which means there’s a lag between the feed-cost inflation and rising consumer prices, said Will Sawyer, animal protein economist at farm lender CoBank ACB. In the US, livestock and poultry operations have already started contraction due to slim profits amid the pandemic. The American hog herd in December fell 0.9 percent from the previous year and the cattle herd in January by 0.2 percent, according to government data.

Cattle profits are already down. CRI Feeders in Oklahoma, a feedlot with 42,000 animals bulking up on corn, is breaking even, said co-owner Scott Anderson. Expanding drought is withering pastures and feed prices have shot up 30 percent.

The market and weather challenges likely will prompt ranchers to scale back, according to Clayton Huseman, executive director of the Kansas Livestock Association.

“Over the next couple of years, we do expect the supply to get tighter,” Huseman said.

Bloomberg News

HK dumped from economic freedom list it had dominated

By Natalie Lung

year ago, when Hong Kong was dethroned by Singapore in the annual Heritage Foundation ranking of the world’s freest economies, a top official predicted the city would soon return to the spot it had held for 25 straight years.

Instead, Hong Kong disappeared entirely from the latest edition of the list, published on Thursday.

Together with Macau, it is now counted as part of China to reflect Beijing’s increasing sway over policy following months of pro-democracy protests in 2019.

China resides in 107th place in the ranking, sandwiched between Uganda and Uzbekistan among economies rated as “mostly unfree.”

While Hong Kong and Macau residents benefit from policies that offer greater economic freedom than on the mainland, “developments in recent years have demonstrated unambiguously that those policies are ultimately controlled from Beijing,” the study’s authors wrote.

Hong Kong remained at the top of the list of freest economies following its 1997 return to Chinese rule, buttressing the argument that it was the ideal gateway to China, with an independent judiciary, free press and deep financial markets. Officials often referred to the Heritage Foundation ranking when touting Hong Kong’s credentials as a financial hub.

Heritage Foundation rates as “free.” The other four are New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland and Ireland.

The move to scrap Hong Kong and Macau’s independent ratings comes as top Communist Party officials prepare to meet in Beijing for the National People’s Congress, where they’re expected to unveil more measures designed to bring Hong Kong’s prodemocracy movement to heel. In June, they imposed a sweeping national security law on the city, under the auspices of which police have arrested 100 people accused of crimes such as sedition.

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam, whose approval rating stood at 23 serial in a February survey, was set to attend the NPC opening ceremony in Beijing.

Last year, Lam made the unprecedented move to delay her annual policy address so she could first consult with Chinese leaders.

When she finally delivered the address in late November, it was heavy on policies aimed at integrating Hong Kong more with the mainland.

“What has become clear over the last two years is that the city’s administrators are now extremely hesitant to make policy decisions without clearance from Beijing,” said Terry Miller, an editor of the index and a director of the Center for International Trade and Economics at the foundation. “And Beijing has shown that it is not reluctant to impose its will, and specific changes in law, on the people of Hong Kong.”

But the cracks in that edifice were exposed in 2019, when simmering discontent with Beijing’s rising influence boiled over into months of mass demonstrations and violence that sapped business confidence. The unrest led to Hong Kong losing its top Heritage Foundation ranking for the first time since its inception in 1995.

At the time, Hong Kong officials struck a defiant tone. “I can confidently say that the conditions that have long made Hong Kong a place with a high level of economic freedom won’t change because of what we experienced in the past,” Edward Yau, the secretary for commerce and economic development, told reporters after the 2020 ranking was published in March last year. He said he expected Hong Kong’s ranking to recover.

Yau’s office had no immediate comment on Hong Kong being dropped from the rankings.

Singapore retained the top spot in the latest report, leading a crop of just five economies the

China’s ranking dropped in the latest economic freedom index, trailing far behind other large Asian economies like Japan and South Korea—in part because business there is still dominated by large, opaque, state-linked enterprises.

The Fraser Institute, which compiles its own annual economic freedom ranking, warned last year that Hong Kong’s long reign as the freest economy is at risk due to China’s efforts to quell dissent.

“Hong Kong’s importance and vitality as a financial center have always depended on its unique position as a bridge between Chinese and western systems,” Miller said. “That uniqueness has been eroded over time by the development of alternative channels of commercial and financial interaction between China and other countries, and also, importantly in recent years, by the loss of confidence in the fair and impartial administration of world standards of law and respect for human rights within Hong Kong itself.” Bloomberg News

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Unrest erupts

‘Unique position’

Sunday, March 7, 2021

A3

Countries call on pharmaceutical firms to share vaccine know-how

By Maria Cheng & Lori Hinnant

P

The Associated Press

ARIS—In an industrial neighborhood on the outskirts of Bangladesh’s largest city lies a factory with gleaming new equipment imported from Germany, its immaculate hallways lined with hermetically sealed rooms.

It is operating at just a quarter of its capacity.

It is one of three factories that The Associated Press found on three continents whose owners say they could start producing hundreds of millions of Covid-19 vaccines on short notice if only they had the blueprints and technical know-how. But that knowledge belongs to the large pharmaceutical companies who have produced the first three vaccines authorized by countries including Britain, the European Union and the US—Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca. The factories are all still awaiting responses.

Across Africa and Southeast Asia, governments and aid groups, as well as the World Health Organization, are calling on pharmaceutical companies to share their patent information more broadly to meet a yawning global shortfall in a pandemic that already has claimed over 2.5 million lives. Pharmaceutical companies that took taxpayer money from the US or Europe to develop inoculations at unprecedented speed say they are negotiating contracts and exclusive licensing deals with producers on a case-by-case basis because they need to protect their intellectual property and ensure safety.

Critics say this piecemeal approach is too slow at a time of urgent need to stop the virus before it mutates into even deadlier forms. WHO called for vaccine manufacturers to share their know-how to “dramatically increase the global supply.”

“If that can be done, then immediately overnight every continent will have dozens of companies who would be able to produce these vaccines,” said Abdul Muktadir, whose Incepta plant in Bangladesh already makes vaccines against hepatitis, flu, meningitis, rabies, tetanus and measles.

All over the world, the supply of coronavirus vaccines is falling far short of demand, and the limited amount available is going to rich countries. Nearly 80 percent of the vaccines so far have been administered in just 10 countries, according to WHO. More than 210 countries and territories with 2.5 billion people hadn’t received a single shot as of last week.

The deal-by-deal approach also means that some poorer countries end up paying more for the same vaccine than richer countries. South Africa, Mexico, Brazil and Uganda all pay different amounts per dose for the AstraZeneca vaccine—and more than governments in the European Union, according to studies and publicly available documents. AstraZeneca said the price of the vaccine will differ depending on local production costs and how much countries order.

“What we see today is a stampede, a survival of the fittest approach, where those with the deepest pockets, with the sharpest elbows are grabbing what is there and leaving others to die,” said Winnie Byanyima, executive director of UNAIDS. In South Africa, home to the world’s most worrisome Covid-19 variant, the Biovac factory has said for weeks that it’s in negotiations with an unnamed manufacturer with no contract to show for it. And in Denmark, the Bavarian Nordic factory has capacity to spare and the ability to make more than 200 million doses but is also waiting for word from the producer of a licensed coronavirus vaccine.

Governments and health experts offer two potential solutions to the vaccine shortage: One, supported by WHO, is a patent pool modeled after a platform set up for HIV, tuberculosis and hepatitis treatments for voluntary sharing of technology, intellectual property and data. But no company has offered to share its data.

The other, a proposal to suspend intellectual property rights during the pandemic, has been blocked in the World Trade Organization by the United States and Europe, home to the companies responsible for creating coronavirus vaccines. That drive has the support of at least 119 countries and the African Union but is adamantly opposed by vaccine makers.

Pharmaceutical companies say

instead of lifting IP restrictions, rich countries should simply give more vaccines to poorer countries through COVA X , the public-pr ivate initiative WHO helped create for more equitable vaccine distribution. The organization and its partners delivered its first doses last week in very limited quantities.

But rich countries are not willing to give up what they have. Ursula Von der Leyen, head of the European Commission, has used the phrase “global common good” to describe the vaccines but the European Union imposed export controls on vaccines, giving countries the power to stop shots from leaving.

On her first day as director general of the WTO, Nigeria’s Ngozi OkonjoIweala said the time had come to shift attention to the vaccination needs of the world’s poor.

“We must focus on working with companies to open up and license more viable manufacturing sites now in emerging markets and developing countries,” she told the organization’s members. “This should happen soon so we can save lives.”

The long-held model in the pharmaceutical industry is that companies pour in huge amounts of money and research in return for the right to reap profits from their drugs and vaccines. Last May, Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla described the idea of sharing IP rights widely as “nonsense” and even “dangerous.”

Thomas Cueni, director general of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers, called the idea of lifting patent protections “a very

bad signal to the future. You signal that if you have a pandemic, your patents are not worth anything.”

Advocates of shar ing vaccine blueprints argue that, unlike with most drugs, taxpayers paid billions to develop vaccines that could help end the world’s biggest public health emergency in living memory.

“People are literally dying because we cannot agree on intellectual property rights,” said Mustaqeem de Gama, a South African diplomat involved in the WTO discussions.

Paul Fehlner, the chief legal officer for biotech company Axcella and a supporter of the WHO patent pool board, said governments that poured billions of dollars into developing vaccines and treatments should have demanded more from the companies they were financing from the beginning.

“A condition of taking taxpayer money is not treating them as dupes,” he said.

Last month, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the leading pandemic expert in the United States, said all options need to be on the table, including improving production capacity in the developing world and working with pharmaceuticals to relax their patents.

“Rich countries, ourselves included, have a moral responsibility when you have a global outbreak like this,” Fauci said. “We’ve got to get the entire world vaccinated, not just our own country.”

It’s hard to know exactly how much more vaccine could be made worldwide if intellectual-property restrictions were lifted. But Suhaib Siddiqi, former director of chemistry at Moderna, said

with the blueprint and technical advice, a modern factory should be able to get vaccine production going in at most three to four months.

“In my opinion, the vaccine belongs to the public,” said Siddiqi. “Any company which has experience synthesizing molecules should be able to do it.”

Back in Bangladesh, the Incepta factory tried to get what it needed to make more vaccines in two ways, by offering its production lines to Moderna and by reaching out to a WHO partner. Moderna did not respond to requests for comment about the Bangladesh plant, but its CEO, Stéphane Bancel, told European lawmakers the company’s engineers were fully occupiedonexpandingproductioninEurope.

“Doing more tech transfer right now could actually put the production and the increased output for the months to come at great risk,” he said. “We are very open to do it in the future once our current sites are running.”

Muktadir said he fully appreciates the extraordinary scientific achievement involved in the creation of vaccines this year, wants the rest of the world to be able to share in it, and is willing to pay a fair price.

“Nobody should give their property just for nothing,” he said. “A vaccine could be made accessible to people— high quality, effective vaccines.”

Maria Cheng reported from Toronto.

Jamey Keaten in Geneva, Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, Al-Emrun Garjon in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Andrew Meldrum in Johannesburg, South Africa, contributed to this report.

A4

The World BusinessMirror

Sunday, March 7, 2021

Brexit antagonism escalates as EU, UK go another round

W

By Ian Wishart

hen the UK and European Union shook hands on a trade deal late last year, few expected the new relationship to be plain sailing. And as with many divorces, antagonism between the sides has refused to fade.

Among the most sensitive issues is Northern Ireland, and tensions ramped up considerably this week when the UK announced it will ignore some crucial obligations under the Brexit deal and the EU responded with a dramatic threat of legal action.

With Johnson already under pressure from members of his own party to rip up the Northern Ireland deal, the risk is a further escalation that erodes relations.

That could have spillovers far beyond politics, and the ongoing saga is a frustration for business. The UK’s huge finance industry, for example, is seeing the potential for beneficial trade agreements being slowly whittled away by endless political spats.

For its part, the EU had already raised the temperature when it controversially suggested in January—albeit briefly—that it could use an emergency clause in the Northern Ireland deal as part of export controls on vaccines.

Officials on both sides don’t expect any drastic consequences immediately, and the UK and EU will continue talking. But with the bloc yet to ratify December’s deal, and a fear in Brussels that this may not be the government’s last attempt to rip up what it previously agreed, the next few months will be rocky.

Strains on the fragile compromise over Northern Ireland a re p a r t i c u l a r l y d a n ge rou s , threatening stability in a region that suffered decades of bloodshed. The Irish News reported that some paramilitary loyalist

groups in the region are withdrawing their support for the Good Friday peace deal, which largely ended the violence.

The deal signed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson avoids border checks on the island of Ireland, and keeps Northern Ireland inside the EU’s customs union and much of its single market. That means the border, and its accompanying checks, are effectively in the Irish Sea, between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. To ease the adjustment for businesses, not all trade checks were introduced on goods moving between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK at the end of the post-Brexit transition period. But now the UK has extended the waiver until October, beyond the March 31 date agreed with the bloc.

Ireland’s Foreign Minister Simon Coveney called the move “deeply unhelpful.” Johnson on Thursday said these were “temporary, technical measures” to help trade.

“I’m sure that with a bit of goodw il l and common sense, all these issues are eminently soluble,” he said.

On Wednesday, Johnson had told Parliament the government would act as needed to ensure Northern Ireland’s position within the UK internal market, and “we leave nothing off the table.”

Northern Ireland is just one example of the inherent tension in the agreements that established the post-Brexit relationship. Given those needed nearly four years of

Tensions ramped up considerably this week when the UK announced it will ignore some crucial obligations under the Brexit deal and the EU responded with a dramatic threat of legal action.

Bloomberg photo

complicated, bad-tempered, and at times chaotic negotiations there’s a sense of foreboding behind the scenes in London and Brussels.

Within Johnson’s Conservative Party, some members want him to invoke the agreement’s Article 16, which gives both sides the unilateral power to take action should its application create “serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties that are liable to persist, or to diversion of trade.” It’s considered by architects of the agreement on both sides as the nuclear option that was never expected to be used.

Many in Brussels believe it suits Johnson’s government to constantly pick holes in the deal, in what’s ostensibly a post-Brexit manifestation of the way the UK blamed the EU before the split.

But the EU’s blunder in January— which Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said she regretted—has given the UK reason to push the issue.

For the UK, there’s frustration with the stance in Brussels.

One official with knowledge of the discussions said it was clear that EU figures see the issue solely through the perspective of the Republic of Ireland and are too sympathetic to Northern Ireland’s nationalist community.

Dealing with the province isn’t the only source of contention.

There’s also finance, a sector vital to the UK economy and one that the EU would like to raid for spoils.

The City of London has already seen some share and swaps trading slip away, and a slow exodus of bankers is expected to continue. Last month, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey warned the EU against demanding euro derivatives be settled by clearinghouses inside the bloc, saying such a move would be a “very serious escalation.”

The two sides have also bickered over a ban on shellfish exports. And Johnson’s government is standing alone in the world in refusing to grant full diplomatic status to the EU’s ambassador in London.

Adding to the tension is the appointment of David Frost, formerly Johnson’s chief negotiator, as a minister in charge of relations with the EU. He’s considered a hardliner who, in private meetings in Brussels, has made clear his dislike for the Northern Ireland Protocol, despite helping to negotiate it. He has also several times spoken of the need to prioritize sovereignty over short-term economic benefits.

Mujtaba Rahman, director of political risk consultancy Eurasia, summed it up recently in a note to clients: “Permanent conflict will be the new normal.” Bloomberg News

US eyes sanctions against Lebanon central bank chief

T

By Ben Bartenstein & Dana Khraiche

he US is considering sanctions against Lebanon’s long-serving central bank chief as a broader investigation into the alleged embezzlement of public funds in the country gathers pace, according to four people familiar with the matter.

Officials within the Biden administration have discussed the possibility of coordinated measures with their European counterparts targeting Riad Salameh, who’s led the Middle Eastern nation’s monetary authority for 28 years, said the people, who requested anonymity because the talks are private.

The discussion has so far focused on the possibility of freezing Salameh’s overseas assets and enacting measures that would curtail his ability to do business abroad, the people said.

Deliberations are ongoing and a final decision over whether to take action may not be imminent, they said. Salameh denies any wrongdoing.

US authorities have considered penalizing Salameh before. The possibility emerged as recently as last year, but then-President Donald Trump wasn’t interested in taking action, two of the people said. His administration focused much of its Middle East policy on countering the influence of Iran and its proxies like Lebanonbased Hezbollah, whereas President Joe Biden has initially emphasized accountability on corruption and human-rights abuses.

“The United States supports the Lebanese people and their continued calls for accountability and the reforms needed to realize economic opportunity, better governance and an end to the endemic corruption,” US State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a press briefing on Thursday, adding “I wouldn’t want to preview or speak to any potential policy responses at this time.”

Should any measures be imposed, it would be a rare instance in which a foreign government has taken action against the sitting head of a central bank over alleged corruption. It would also amount

to a remarkable reversal of fortune for one of the world’s longest-tenured monetary policy chiefs and further complicate Lebanon’s efforts to win international financial support.

Salameh, 70, was once celebrated as the financier who stabilized Lebanon’s currency against all odds and was even considered at one time to be a presidential contender. As recently as 2019, he earned an A-grade from the New York-based magazine Global Finance in its annual rankings.

Euromoney named him central bank governor of the year a decade earlier.

A household name on Wall Street and in foreign capitals, Salameh has been one of the few constants over the past three decades as Beirut wrestled with war, debilitating political standoffs and an economic meltdown.

That backdrop sparked mass protests in October 2019 against a political class accused of bleeding state coffers through decades of corruption and mismanagement. Demonstrators also blamed Salameh for ever-riskier policies to sustain a financial model that ultimately failed, wiping out the life savings of a generation of Lebanese. More than half the population now lives in poverty, according to the United Nations.

Swiss probe

In January, the Swiss attorney general’s office asked the Lebanese government for help with an investigation into money laundering linked to possible embezzlement from the coffers of Banque du Liban, as the central bank is known.

Swiss authorities didn’t identify the target of their probe and the Lebanese judiciary said it had been approached about transfers abroad made via the central bank.

Th e i nve s t i g at i o n a l s o i nvo lve s o t h e r jurisdictions, including the UK and France, where authorities are reviewing Salameh’s links to properties, shell companies and overseas bank transfers, the four people said. While the Swiss probe lends momentum, potential American sanctions don’t necessarily depend on its outcome

as much as on shifting political calculations, they said.

Salameh dismissed the allegations made against himself and the central bank.

“It is utterly untrue that I have benefited in any way or form, directly or indirectly, from any funds or assets belonging to BDL or any other public funds,” he wrote in an e-mailed response on Thursday to questions from Bloomberg News.

Salameh said his net worth was $23 million when he took on the role of governor in 1993, a fortune amassed during his previous career as a private banker. His salary at Merrill Lynch was $165,000 a month, he said.

“The source of my wealth is clearly identified,” he wrote in the e-mail.

A spokeswoman at the White House’s National Security Council referred questions to the Treasury Department. A representative there didn’t respond to requests for comment. A spokeswoman at the Swiss attorney general’s office said the investigation is ongoing but declined to comment on coordination with US authorities. The UK Treasury referred queries to the Foreign Office, which declined to comment. Lebanon’s justice minister didn’t respond to questions. Neither did an official at the French presidency.

four of the people said. The commissions under scrutiny total more than $300 million, according to a person familiar with the Swiss investigation.

The Beirut-based investigative news web site Daraj previously reported on the link between Salameh’s brother and Forr y. The firm was registered in 2001 in the British Virgin Islands, an offshore tax haven, and administered by Mossack Fonseca, the Panamanian agent exposed in the 2016 Panama Papers leak. Forry was struck off in 2011, according to data from the leak.

As early as 2007, the then US Ambassador to Lebanon Jeffrey Feltman raised concerns in Washington over the financial relationship between the Salameh brothers and the central bank. In a diplomatic cable later made public by WikiLeaks, he wrote that Raja earned commissions off a central bank contract dating back to the 1990s, which paid him any time new banknotes were printed.

Raja Salameh could not immediately be reached for comment when contac ted via Solidere, a real-estate company where he’s a board member. There is no publicly available contact information for him and efforts to reach him via individuals known to him were unsuccessful. In the past he’s said that he owns businesses and investments in real estate and hospitality, locally and internationally, using his own private funds.

Swiss authorities are looking into allegations that Salameh indirectly benefited from the sale of Lebanese Eurobonds held in the central bank’s portfolio between 2002 and 2016, according to a Lebanese judicial official and a person familiar with the Swiss investigation, both of whom requested anonymity as the information is sensitive.

The monetary authority holds Eurobonds from market-to-market transactions, as well as swap agreements with the government. BDL would cancel Treasury bills and receive the bonds in return.

Also of interest to authorities is the relationship bet ween Salameh’s brother, R aja, and the brokerage firm Forry Associates Ltd, which charged commissions on the sale of Eurobonds to investors,

Under Trump, the US sanctioned several Lebanese officials for supporting Iran-backed Hezbollah, an armed group with a powerful political wing.

In November, it also imposed penalties on the leader of the largest Christian bloc—a Hezbollah ally—under the Global Magnitsky Act, which seeks to curb serious human-rights abuses and corruption overseas.

It isn’t clear if any action against Salameh would fall under the Magnitsky provisions or other regulations allowing Treasury officials to penalize foreign officials accused of using the US dollar for illicit transactions, the people said.

Brother’s commissions

Anti-Hezbollah ally

Bloomberg News

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Greensill’s overnight downfall was many months in making

By Lucca de Paoli, Nicholas Comfort, Luca Casiraghi & Steven Arons

F

rom the outside, 2020 was bringing validation to the idea behind Lex Greensill’s financial empire.

His eponymous firm was seeking funds at a lofty valuation with the pitch that the pandemic laid bare small suppliers’ need to be paid quickly.

But by the middle of last year, two parallel sets of events were quietly threatening two of the biggest sources of funding that enabled his brand of financial disruption—eventually bringing the firm to a breaking point.

In July, an obscure Australian insurer refused to extend policies covering the loans Greensill made, taking away the security blanket that allowed major investors like Credit Suisse Group AG to get comfortable with his courting clients below their radar. And around the same time, the German regulator BaFin started a probe into his fast-growing bank in Bremen.

At issue in both cases was the question of risk, and in BaFin’s case, the amount of it that was tied to another entrepreneur in Greensill’s inner circle, Sanjeev Gupta. He had been an early client and investor in Greensill, and the loans to Gupta’s firms fueled the growth of both men’s conglomerates.

Interviews with more than a dozen people familiar with the matter show how the twin threads unraveled rapidly this week, bringing Greensill’s firm to the verge of collapse. Started a decade ago with a promise of “making finance fairer”— attracting backers such as SoftBank Group Corp. and advisers like former UK Prime Minister David Cameron—Greensill Capital’s swift spiral now is risking thousands of jobs at borrowing companies, disrupting the supply chains of multinationals and even the UK health-care system.

It has been a stunning comedown for a firm that as recently as last year was touting a valuation of $7 billion. Greensill Capital is planning to start insolvency proceedings in the UK as it seeks to sell its operating business to Athene Holding Ltd., the annuity seller backed by Apollo Global Management. And Germany’s financial watchdog shuttered Greensill Bank after asking law enforcement officials to investigate accounting irregularities at the lender.

Greensill, whose interest in supply-chain finance stemmed from his early years working on his family’s farm in Australia, carved a niche for himself in a fast-growing business that saw a boost in the years following the global financial crisis more than a decade ago. Banks were pulling back from lending to smaller firms, as regulations around risky lending practices grew increasingly more onerous.

Cameron, Gupta

To lawmakers eager to stimulate a recovery, supply chain finance seemed like the perfect solution. In 2012, then-Prime Minister Cameron announced a supply-chain finance program that was designed to get funding to small companies quicker.

Greensill was an adviser to the UK government on that program, and in 2017 was anointed as a Commander of the British Empire for his services to the economy.

Greensill had started his own firm in 2011 after stints at Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Inc., later attracting $1.5 billion of investment from SoftBank Group Corp. The firm says it provided $143 billion in financing last year.

Over the years, Greensill has also been closely linked to British-Indian businessman Gupta, the man once dubbed the “savior of steel” by the UK press because of his penchant to buy up moribund steel plants.

Greensill’s links to Gupta have roiled other money managers. Long-dated project finance notes tied to Gupta’s GFG Alliance and arranged

by Greensill were at the center of an investigation that prompted the suspension of GAM Holding AG’s one-time star Tim Haywood in 2018.

BaFin’s audit

BaFin last year started a forensic audit of Greensill Bank, charging KPMG with the task, after concerns

emerged that too many of the assets on the bank’s books were ultimately tied to the same source: Gupta.

Gupta, a former commodities trader, heads GFG Alliance, a loose collection of entities owned by him and other family members. Much of the business, which spans steel, aluminum and renewable energy, was built at a breakneck pace that saw him spend about $6 billion over a five-year period on a series of deals and investments from Scotland to South Carolina. The targets were largely old, unwanted assets in need of significant investment.

Providing the financial firepower that drove the spree was Greensill’s eponymous firm. Gupta told Bloomberg News in October that Greensill was the company’s biggest lender. Athene isn’t planning to take on assets linked to Gupta, according to people with the matter.

The links between Greensill and Gupta ultimately proved to be the focus of BaFin’s probe.

The KPMG probe found irregularities with how Greensill Bank booked certain assets linked to Gupta. One of the most serious findings was that the bank had booked claims for transactions that hadn’t yet occurred but which were accounted for as if they had.

“BaFin found that Greensill Bank AG was unable to provide evidence of the existence of receivables in its balance sheet that it had purchased from the GFG Alliance Group, ” according to a statement from the German regulator.

‘Extensive advice’

Greensill said in a statement late Wednesday that it had received “extensive advice,” from law firms in the UK and Germany, “which informed the way in which the assets were classified.” The company also said that it immediately complied after BaFin advised it late last year and early this year that it didn’t agree with its accounting.

“Greensill Bank has at all times been transparent with its regulators and auditors about its approach to classifying assets and the methodologies for determining such classifications,” a spokesman for the company said by e-mail.

Pressure from BaFin was a factor that prompted Greensill to look for potential buyers for its exposure to Gupta earlier this year. One of the parties that Greensill reached out to was Credit Suisse, people familiar with the matter said.

But on the other side of the globe in Australia, separate developments were afoot. In a last-ditch effort to make its insurer extend policies that were due to lapse on March 1, Greensill took Bond and Credit Company, a unit of Tokio Marine Holding, to court. The company warned that losing $4.6 billion in insurance coverage for its 40 or so clients could spark defaults and put 50,000 jobs at risk.

But late on Monday a judge in Sydney struck down Greensill’s injunction.

H o u r s l a t e r i n Zu r i c h , C re d i t S u i s s e suspended its $10 billion family of funds that invested in loans arranged by Greensill, choking off a key source of funding to the companies.

The insurance lapse left some debt no longer valued on the strength of the insurer but rather on the underlying borrower, triggering questions on the valuations of the assets.

Cracks on the value of the loans had started to show last year. Several companies that borrowed through Greensill-backed Credit Suisse funds collapsed, including NMC Health, Agritrade International, and BrightHouse.

The insurance arrangements had given firms like Greensill’s the flexibility to court smaller borrowers that wouldn’t otherwise be able to get investment-grade ratings, with a measure of security that an insurance policy brings. The impeccable credentials also allowed Credit Suisse to sell funds to investors such as pensions and corporate treasurers seeking suitable assets to help boost returns.

It’s not clear why Bond and Credit Company allowed the policies to lapse. In denying Greensill’s injunction to force the insurer to renew the contracts, the Australian judge noted that “despite the fact that the underwriters’ position was made clear eight months ago, apparently Greensill only sought legal advice about its position” in the last week of February. Bloomberg News

Broadcom CEO says demand is ‘real’ as chip orders pile up

B

By Ian King

r oadco m Inc. Chief Executive Officer Hock Tan said customers are beefing up semiconductor orders at an unprecedented pace and tried to quell concern that this will create a glut later on.

“We see customers accelerating the bookings for early deliveries and attempting to build buffers and creating the demand-supply imbalance you all hear out there,” Tan told analysts during an earnings conference call on Thursday.

About 90 percent of Broadcom’s 2021 supply has already been ordered by customers. Normally, chipmakers have about a quarter of their supply locked up like this. Since the middle of 2020, the company has reviewed its order backlog to make sure it aligns with the actual consumption of end products such as smartphones and networking gear. While some industries have complained of a chip shortage, Tan said Broadcom has enough production from its outsourced providers to meet the needs of its customers having anticipated order levels.

“We believe this is real,” Tan said. “Our revenue reflects what’s being consumed by end users.”

Across the industry, lead times—how long it takes to get a chip after you order it—have climbed above 14 weeks. That has sparked concern customers are purposely ordering too many semiconductors to head off future supply shortfalls. This double ordering often leads to

order cancellations and declining revenue for chipmakers later on.

Chip stocks have slumped in recent days on concern that industry earnings are peaking.

Tan’s assurances that the current expansion is sustainable were questioned throughout Thursday’s call. Broadcom shares slipped about 2.5 percent in extended trading.

Almost a year ago, Tan was one of the first chip CEOs to warn customers to order well in advance to guarantee supply.

Despite a seasonal decline in smartphone chip orders, Tan expects fiscal second-quarter chip revenue to grow at about 17 percent and sees growth persisting throughout the year. Still, he acknowledged that this growth rate is unusually high. He also noted that Broadcom customers can’t cancel orders.

The company predicted revenue in the three months ending April will be about $6.5 billion compared with an average analyst estimate of $6.33 billion.

Broadcom is one of the world’s largest chipmakers with businesses spanning smartphone parts, key components of networking equipment and semiconductors that run home Wi-Fi gear and set-top boxes. That reach, which also includes mainframe and security software, makes its projections an indicator of future demand for major technology companies such as Apple Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. and Google. Bloomberg News

Science

BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph • Editor: Lyn Resurreccion

Advancing engineering innovations for sustainable development

By Lyn B. Resurreccion

‘I

nvestment in the education of the youth in science and technology [S&T] courses is a priority of the Department of Science and Technology [DOST].”

Science Secretary Fortunato T. de la Peña made the statement during the World Engineering Day for Sustainable Development event organized by the Manila Water Foundation on March 4.

De la Peña, himself an engineer, added: “We encourage them to pursue S&T careers in the future through our scholarship programs that are offered beginning from secondary education through our Philippine Science High School system to undergraduate and graduate levels.”

He said that the DOST undergraduate scholarship program has produced a total of 17,777 engineering graduates from the FY 2000 to FY 2020.

Topping the list are those who took up electronics and communications engineering with 5,478 graduates (31 percent); mechanical engineering, 2,879 (16 percent); chemical engineering, 2,726 (15.3 percent); and electrical engineering, 2,519 (14.2 percent).

At the graduate levels under the Engineering Research and Development for Technology scholarship program, 1,383 graduated with master’s degree and 182 with PhD from 2008 to 2020.

At the master’s degree level, the highest number of graduates was in agricultural engineering (165), followed by chemical engineering (140), civil (138) and environmental engineering (132).

Graduates in environmental engineering topped the list in the PhD level with 35 graduates followed by agricultural (32) and chemical engineering (24).

De la Peña also disclosed that in the DOST system itself, among the 4,846 plantilla positions, 951 (19.5 percent) are occupied by engineering graduates: 808 are bachelor of science degree holders, 127 and 16 are master in science and PhD holders, respectively.

DOST’s projects and plans

The DOST, as the government institution mandated to steer science and technology development in the country, de la Peña said, is making concrete steps to develop the country’s capabilities and harness these technologies to benefit the economy and our society.

De la Peña said the “Science for the People” strategic plan outlines the strategies, programs and projects to harness science, technology and innovation in addressing the country’s problems—such as reducing poverty incidence, increasing the productivity of various sectors such as agriculture, manufacturing and services industries.

“Our goal is to make the products, services and opportunities in science and technology contribute to making development more inclusive; by ensuring greater access by the regions, including the marginalized sectors,” he said.

The DOST’s R&D programs, he said, are guided by the Harmonized National R&D Agenda (HNRDA), which articulate the national priorities and guide public investments in R&D. The HNRDA priorities, which would require engineering interventions, are classified in five sectors: 1) agriculture, aquatic and natural resources; 2) industry, energy and emerging technology; 3) health; 4) disaster risks reduction and climate change; and 5) basic research.

He said agriculture, research on farm mechanization involves design and performance efficiency machineries which would call for expertise in mechanical, electrical and industrial engineering.

Industry, energy and emerging technologies include space technology applications, advanced transport system, materials and minerals processing, and security and defense.

In sustainable mass transport system, he noted the development of the hybrid electric train, hybrid electric road train, and the hybrid trimaran.

He said the promising technologies produced from the different R&D engagements that benefitted from engineering interventions include the CharM, a charging station for electric vehicles (Evs) that can recharge within 30 minutes.

There is also the Chemical Sensors for Mine Site Monitoring which reduces risk for our miners in the field, and the 81 Automated Weather Station and the 100 Automated Rain Gauges that provide timely data in key areas of the country.

The space technology and applications promotion, expansion and capability development, he said, are being implemented by the following programs which are also established and run by many engineers: 1. Philippine Earth Data Resource and Observation Center, a facility that securely receives, processes and distributes space-borne imagery from supported remote sensing satellites for various applications, such as disaster mitigation, natural resource management, environmental monitoring, pollution control, energy exploration, emergency response management, among many others.

2. PHL-Microsat that developed and launched the first Philippine microsatellite, Diwata-1, and 3. Stamina4Space, the continuing program to establish a space industry in the country by increasing the capacity of the universities to produce experts in space technology applications.

DOST contribution to the attainment of the SDGs

DOST’s contribution to the attainment of the sustainable development goals are through the generation of knowledge and information as well as development of various technologies from its R&D programs, de la Peña said.

For Goal 2 on zero hunger, the Malnutrition Reduction Program of the DOST-Food and Nutrition Research Institute addresses the undernutrition problem among young children.

It involves a package of intervention, including the direct feeding of rice-mongo based complementary foods for children below 3 years old children, and nutrition education among mothers and caregivers.

Various technologies are also being deployed to increase agricultural productivity, such as the carrageenan plant growth promoter to increase rice production, protocols for aquaculture, raising indigenous vegetables, For Goal 3 on good health and well-being, one of the DOST’s major program, the Tuklas Lunas Program, promotes the discovery and development of health products from natural resources.

The program pursues a parallel track of drug development, such as the development of standardized herbal drugs and the identification and characterization of high-value purified active compounds from marine and terrestrial resources for specific therapeutic indications.

De la Peña pointed out the development of various biomedical devices and diagnostic kits for the detection of dengue and Covid-19 viruses.

For Goal 4 on quality education, showed the DOST’s role in providing scholarships from the secondary to graduate studies. It is also developing supplementary materials for teaching science and mathematics and implementing special scholarship programs for important fields such as data science.

For Goal 8 on decent work and economic growth and to make a dent on the innovation of the industry, the DOST is enhancing the productivity and efficiency of communities and the production sector.

“One avenue is through upgrading the technology used by MSMEs [micro, small and medium enterprises] which comprise 99 percent of industry in the Philippines,” de la Peña said.

The Small Enterprise Technology Upgrading Program (Setup) aids in upgrading the technological capabilities and improve the productivity and efficiency of MSMEs, he said.

From 2018 to June 2019, a total of 1,135 MSMEs received innovation-enabling fund support to upgrade their technological capability and improve productivity in their operations.

Taking one notch higher, Setup 2.0 is intended to fully harness science, technology and innovation in order to enhance the competitiveness of MSMEs both in local and global markets.

For Goal 9 on industry, innovation and infrastructure, the HNRDA’s major initiative is the Science for Change (S4C) Program. It involves the adoption of science, technology and innovation by implementing capacity-building initiatives in partnership with academic institutions and industry stakeholders.

The S4C has four component programs namely: the Niche Centers in the Regions for R&D; R&D Leadership Program; Collaborative R&D to Leverage Philippine Economy; and Business Innovation through S&T. For Goal 10 on sustainable cities and communities, the DOST’s programs on smart cities, sustainable mass transport and disaster-risk reduction are contributing to the achievement of this goal.

For Goal 12 on climate action, there is a risk resiliency and climate change program of the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration, and the Philippine Institute on Volcanology and Seismology and that contribute to attainment of this goal.

De la Peña said: “The DOST gives premium to research and the generation of new knowledge. At the same time, we give equal importance to delivering these results and seeing them used to promote more inclusive socio-economic development.”

“We believe that the value of science, technology and innovation can only be measured by the solutions and opportunities they provide and the positive impact they create to society,” he added.

In this regard, he urged the «private sector to use science-based information and adopt technologies, especially locally developed by our universities, research institutions and inventors, in expanding your businesses and creating new ones.»

He said: “We call on your entrepreneurial spirit to invest on these technologies, in new businesses and startups or support our budding entrepreneurs as they hone their skills, engage more customers and perfect business processes to enable their ventures to grow and mature.”

Sunday

Sunday, March 7, 2021 A5

Not only a surfing capital of the Philippines

NRCP: Siargao is home to hundreds of fauna, flora

T

here is more to Siargao Island than its being named as the Surfing Capital of the Philippines. It is recorded to be a home to hundreds of species of flora and fauna—another proof that the Philippines surely has a rich diversified ecosystem.

The municipality of Del Carmen alone has recorded a total of 110 species of plants and 403 species of animals from the aquatic and terrestrial habitats, said a news release from the National Research Council of the Philippines (NRCP).

A study conducted by members of the Division V (Biological Sciences) of NRCP, led by Dr. Cecilia Banag-Moran, has found remarkable plant and beach forest species.

The study also discovered that there are possible new species of frog, rat, tarsier, insects, marine fish and decapod crustaceans in Del Carmen, Siargao.

“With this rich diversity, a move for the global importance of Del Carmen, Siargao, should be considered for its conservation and sustainability,” the news release said.

Consider these identified species of animals: 11 amphibians, 14 mammals, 23 reptiles, 52 birds, and 81 marine fish.

What’s more, it was found that nine species of plants and 34 species of terrestrial vertebrates are endemic to the Philippines.

In addition to this, 45 species of plants and 17 species of terrestrial vertebrates are not yet assessed for their conservation status.

Also, according to the NRCP study, the amphibians and reptiles in mangroves and surrounding habitats are in excellent condition, which prompted the project researchers to recommend for the need to place protection measures in the area.

On the other hand, the highly diverse Del Carmen mangrove forest is home of interesting species, host to unique f loral assemblages, and haven of high f loral diversity.

According to the study, out of the 54 mangrove species in the world, Del Carmen has 19, or 35.19 percent, of the world species.

“There is also a remarkable record of new 90 species of marine f lora, thus, the need for continuance of correct and diversified mangrove planting,” the NRCP said.

Overall, “this data will support the request for Del Carmen, Siargao, to be listed as new Ramsar Site in the Philippines,” it added. The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands’s primary aim is to conserve and sustain the utilization of wetlands. It is named after the city of Ramsar in Iran, where the convention was signed in 1971.

The accord also seeks to recognize the significant ecological

The highly diversified mangrove flora in Del Carmen, Siargao.

roles played by the wetlands and their scientific, recreational, cultural, and economic significance.

To date, there are six wetland habitats in the Philippines that have been designated as Ramsar wetlands of international importance.

The presence of a threatened and endemic flora and fauna and possible new species, aside from the high diversity in the area is sufficient support for the Del Carmen Mangrove Forest to be listed under Ramsar for its long term conservation and sustainable utilization, the NRCP said.

Besides the move to consider Del Carmen as a new Ramsar site, the project recommends for policy conservation and protection of Siargao ecosystems and its biodiversity resources.

The study was under the Saklaw (Saklolo sa Lawa—Sustainable Com-

NRCP

munities) of the National Integrated Basic Research Agenda (Nibra) initiative of the NRCP. It was conducted, in response to Siargao local government unit’s request for scientific evidence to support their bid for Ramsar.

The study assessed the biodiversity of the mangrove forests in Del Carmen, Siargao Island, through biological field surveys A three-pager Photoguide of the Birds of Del Carmen Siargao has been produced under the study.

T he comprehensive results of the project were presented by the researchers during the sta keholders meeting , which was attended by the heads of the municipa lit y of Del Carmen, Mayor Proserfina M. Coro and Vice Mayor Alfredo M. Coro II, on January 6 via online, the NRCP said.

Graduate scholarships in Korea open to Filipinos, Southeast Asians

R

esearch scholarships for master’s and doctoral degrees are being offered to Filipinos and other Southeast Asians.

The Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (Searca) and Sejong University in Seoul, South Korea, Joint Graduate Research Scholarship for Southeast Asian Countries is open to Filipinos and nationals of Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, Timor-Leste and Vietnam.

Searca Director Dr. Glenn B. Gregorio said the joint scholarship aims to strengthen the capacities

of Southeast Asian scientists and researchers by enabling them to obtain master’s and doctoral degrees by research in the fields of agricultural biotechnology, aquaculture, food science and international development.

He said the scholarship is for junior and midlevel executives, managers, researchers, or technical staff of government or nongovernmental agencies and universities.

Deadline for applications for the Sejong UniversitySearca research scholarships is on March 19.

Preference is given to applicants who hold key core

positions in implementing plans of action, policies and good business or management programs affecting biological sciences and agriculture, horticulture, and animal sciences at the national, regional and international levels.

Moreover, according to Dr. Maria Cristeta N. Cuaresma, Searca program head for Education and Collective Learning, the applicant’s planned research must be aligned with Searca’s priority areas until 2025.

They are in agri-business models for increased productivity and income, sustainable farming systems and natural resource management, food

and nutrition security, transformational leadership for agricultural and rural development, gender and youth engagement in ARD, enhanced ARD towards climate resilience, and EcoHealth/One Health applications to ARD. Cuaresma said the Sejong University-Searca research scholarship includes tuition and other school fees; stipend for food, lodging, and incidental expenses; research budget; travel allowance to cover international airfare; and health insurance.

The scholars will be conferred their master’s or Doctor of Engineering degree by Sejong University.

‘Pagbangon at Pananaig’: Research council’s meet to address pandemic woes

‘R

ecovery and rebuilding ought to be the focus of local research efforts in the pandemic’s wake,” said Dr. Gregorio E. H. del Pilar, president of National Research Council of the Philippines (NRCP).

The NRCP Governing Board set “Pagbangon at Pananaig: National Recovery and Rebuilding” as the theme for the council’s online Annual Scientific Conference and 88th General Membership Assembly on March 10, an NRCP news release said.

The second virtual general assembly by the premier collegial body since 2020 will convene its membership dispersed across the 17 Philippine regions, composed of nearly 5,000 seasoned and young researchers and artists, along with local and foreign practitioners in science and technology, and research.

Del Pilar pointed out that it is not enough to address recovery from the overwhelming effects of the pandemic alone (pagbangon).

He said the country needs rebuilding through the many lessons and various strides already attained

by Filipinos (pananaig).

He cited the resource efficiency and convenience

of online meetings, now a daily routine of Filipinos, as an example of one such positive attainment.

Pre-pandemic meetings were beset with issues—such as nonattendance, heavy traffic, lost time, and food costs or wastage, del Pilar noted.

Leading Filipino anthropologist and Academician, Emeritus Prof. Michael Lim Tan, will deliver a plenary presentation tackling how “pagbangon at pananaig” can be realized.

Department of Finance Undersecretary and Chief Economist Gil S. Beltran will deliver the conference keynote message.

Top Department of Science and echnology officials, Secretary Fortunato de la Pena and research and development Undersecretary Rowena Cristina Guevara will also deliver presentations.

The conference features parallel sessions on the essential aspects and lenses on national recovery and rebuilding by some of the country’s most notable experts-researchers, NRCP said. These are in: n Reviving the Philippine Economy and Sustaining Growth n Bridging Science, Politics and People in Research

n Securing the Country from Pandemic and Other Disruptions n Interdisciplinary Research for Public Policy: Development for the Countryside n Arts and Human Expressions in Policy Studies The council aims to produce recommendations for policy and insights to help reorient researchers toward the goal of contributing to national recovery and rebuilding.

The council will also hold its first-ever virtual poster exhibit and competition, and name seven NRCP Achievement Awardees for 2020 from various scholarly disciplines and fields, along with two senior NRCP members being conferred the NRCP Member Emeritus distinction.

Another highlight of the conference is the revealing of the commissioned sculpture masterpiece by artist Manolo Sicat dedicated to the Filipino researcher.

A membership Business Meeting, to be led by del Pilar, will follow the plenary and parallel sessions, while an oath-taking of newly elected Governing Board members, regular members, and confirmed

associate members of the Council will proceed after its Business Meeting.

In March 2020, the NRCP was the first among all local collegial organizations to postpone a major conference days before the event upon Malacañang’s pronouncement declaring a state of national emergency brought by Covid-19. It successfully pulled off an online mode for the conference and membership assembly in only less than three months.

NRCP Vice President and Medical Sciences Division Chairman, Dr. Raul V. Destura, who delivered the last conference’s virtual plenary presentation on Global Health Risks, was widely cited for having developed the first local test kit for Covid-19.

Moreover, the council held a series of webinars billed “Kapakanan ng Tao sa Oras ng Pandemya” to inform the public about the results of its quick smallbudget commissioned researches on the various social dimensions of the pandemic. The successful webinar series continues until the end of 2021.

Attached to the DOST, the NRCP serves as a think-tank on issues of national interest, and funds researches on a wide array of disciplines, particularly those that are transdisciplinary in approach.

Faith A6 Sunday, March 7, 2021

Sunday

Editor: Lyn Resurreccion • www.businessmirror.com.ph

Cebu’s jubilee year for 500 years of Christianity gets nod from pope

P

ope Francis has granted the request of Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma to declare within the archdiocese a Special Jubilee Year, along with the attached plenary indulgence, in commemoration of the 500 years of the arrival of Christianity in the country.

In a recent Facebook post, the Archdiocese of Cebu reported that the Holy Father, through a decree, approved the request of the archbishop early last month.

It added that based on the decree, the yearlong jubilee celebration in the archdiocese would start on April 4 and last until April 22, 2022.

The whole of the country will also launch the year-long commemoration on April 4, Easter Sunday.

“In commemoration of the 500 Years of the Arrival of Christianity in the Archdiocese of Cebu, His Holiness Pope Francis, through a Decree from the Apostolic Penitentiary, has graciously granted the request presented

by His Excellency the Most Reverend Jose Palma, Archbishop of Cebu, to declare within the Archdiocese a Special Jubilee Year, along with the attached plenary indulgence,” it said.

A n indu lgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian gains under certain prescribed conditions through the action of the Church.

The plenary indulgence is also granted to the faithful under the usual conditions—sacramental confession, Eucharistic Communion, and prayer for the Pope’s intentions—to Christians who, with a spirit detached from any sin, participate in the Jubilee Year celebrations and/or who devotedly make a

Pope to lead Mass for Filipinos in Italy

visit, in the form of a pilgrimage, to the 12 declared pilgrim churches.

The Archdiocese of Cebu announced that it would solemnly launch the festivities through a liturgical rite, which includes the opening of the Holy Door of the Cebu Metropolitan Cathedral.

Similar celebrations will be replicated in eight other churches from the oldest and farthest parishes of the archdiocese: Saints Peter and Paul Parish, Bantayan, Bantayan Island; San Nicolas Parish, Cebu City; St. Catherine de Alexandria Parish, Carcar City; Patrocinio de Maria Parish, Boljoon; St. Anne Parish, Barili; National Shrine of St. Joseph Parish, Mandaue City; San Guillermo de Aquitania Parish, Dalaguete; and St. Michael the Archangel Parish, Argao.

Other strategic churches will also be declared as pilgrim sites—the Sto. Tomas de Villanueva Parish, Danao City; St. Vincent Ferrer Parish, Bogo City; St. Francis of Assisi Parish, Balamban; and the National Shrine of Our Lady of Rule, Lapu-Lapu City.

Furthermore, a series of jubilee celebrations in the archdiocesan and parish levels will be organized, which

will involve the socially, spiritually marginalized and peripheries of society, as part of the call to the new evangelization.

“We pray that as the entire Church in the Philippines, and in particular the Church in Cebu, the Cradle of Christianity in the Far-East, looks forward to the fifth centenary of its evangelization, we as a pilgrim People of God we may be stimulated to grow further in our journey of faith by the living coherently the seed of the Gospel planted in us and we may steadfastly proclaim the message of charity, forgiveness, and fraternal solidarity in the service of the common good,” the archdiocese added.

The jubilee celebration in the whole of the Philippine comes after a nineyear preparation, with each year carrying a specific theme that reflects the pastoral priorities of the church in the country.

The bishops have chosen, “Missio ad Gentes [Mission in the World],” as the theme of the pastoral year 2021.

“Gifted to Give,” taken from Matthew’s Gospel (10:9), is the theme for the celebration.

Meanwhile, Pope Francis will lead the Filipino community in Italy in celebrating the 500 Years of Christianity in the Philippines, a Filipino priest based in Rome said.

Scalabrinian Fr. R icky Gente of the Filipino Chaplaincy in Rome said the celebration w ill be highlighted w ith a Mass to be officiated by Pope Francis at St. Peter’s Basilica at 10 a.m. (5 p.m. in the Philippines) on March 14.

Card ina l Lu is A ntonio Tagle, prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, and Cardinal Angelo De Donatis, the pope’s vicar of Rome, will also be present in the event.

Due to the Cov id-19 pandemic restrictions, a limited number of people will be allowed to attend the Mass physically inside the basilica.

The celebration, he said, will be livestreamed from the Vatican to reach Filipinos in different parts of the world.

“Join us in Rome to pray, praise and thank God for his gift of the Christian faith,” Gente said.

After the Mass, the pope will lead the traditional recitation of the Angelus prayer in St. Peter’s Square at midday.

“You can also receive blessings from the pope after Mass in Vatican Square where he will lead the Angelus prayer at noon,” Gente added.

Italy hosts the largest population of overseas Filipino workers in Western Europe. According to government statistics, there are about 168,000 Filipinos in the country and mostly in Lombardia region.

Ferdinand Patinio/PNA and Roy Lagarde/ CBCP News

Benedict XVI talks about his resignation, Iraq and Biden

V

ATICAN—Benedict XVI addressed conspiracy theories about his resignation as pope, Pope Francis’s trip to Iraq and Joe Biden in an interview with an Italian newspaper published recently.

The pope emeritus told Corriere della Sera that he stood by his decision despite criticism from his friends in an interview released on March 1, a day after the eighth anniversary of the end of his pontificate.

“It was a difficult decision. But I made it in full consciousness, and I think I did the right thing,” the 93-year-old former pope told journalist Massimo Franco during a private visit.

“Some of my friends who are a bit ‘fanatical’ are still angry, they didn’t want to accept my choice. I think of the conspiracy theories that followed it: some said it was because of the

Vatileaks scandal, some said it was because of a conspiracy of the gay lobby, some said it was because of the case of the conservative Lefebvrian theologian Richard Williamson.”

“They do not want to believe in a choice made consciously. But my conscience is fine,” he said.

He also underlined that there is only one pope—Francis—rather than two.

Benedict XVI announced his resignation on February 11, 2013. His resignation went into effect on February 28, 2013, when he became the first pope in almost 600 years to step down.

His almost eight-year-long pontificate was overshadowed by the publication of confidential papal documents, known as the Vatileaks scandal, leaked by his butler.

The Italian media speculated about the existence of a “gay lobby” at the Vatican before Benedict XVI’s resignation and Pope Francis commented that “so much is written about the gay lobby” months after his election in 2013.

In 2009, Benedict lifted the excommunication of four SSPX bishops, including Williamson.

Shortly afterward, Swedish television broadcast an interview with Williamson that led to the English bishop’s conviction for Holocaust denial by a German court.

The German pope wrote a letter to the world’s bishops in which he acknowledged that the controversy could have been avoided if Vatican officials had researched Williamson’s statements on the Internet.

In the interview, Benedict also said that he was praying for the success of Pope Francis’s trip to Iraq.

He said: “Unfortunately it falls at a very difficult time that also makes it a dangerous trip: for security reasons and for Covid-19. And then there is the unstable Iraqi situation. I will accompany Francis with my prayers.”

According to the Italian newspaper, Benedict also commented on US President Joe Biden, saying, “It is true, he is Catholic and observant.

And personally he is against abor tion,” but “as president, he tends to present himself in continuity with the line of the Democratic Party....And on gender policy, we still don’t really understand what his position is.”

Catholic News Agency

Buddhist temple food pantry a lifeline for Nepalese students

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EW YORK—Inside the temple in the New York City borough of Queens, monks clad in maroon robes chanted and lit incense and candles at an altar before a golden statue of Buddha.

Earlier, on the sidewalk outside, people with face masks, shopping baskets and reusable bags stood in a socially distanced line stretching two city blocks, waiting to cart off badly needed rice, fruit and vegetables to get them through hard times due to the pandemic.

“It’s really a big help because you get all fresh, organic,” said Jyoti Rajbanshi, a Nepalese nursing student at Long Island University who has lost work and resorted to running up her credit cards and relying on the weekly pantry. “And then at least you don’t have to spend some money on buying the groceries.”

The United Sherpa Association launched the food program from scratch last April as the coronavirus was ravaging the borough and other parts of the city.

The Buddhist temple and community center serves all comers, including immigrants living in the country without legal permission and the swollen ranks of the unemployed.

But it has become a particularly important lifeline for Nepalese college students living thousands of miles from their families.

Some were forced by lockdowns to leave dorms where previously they got most of their meals. They

don’t qualify for federal stimulus checks. Their student visas generally don’t allow them to work full-time or off-campus to support themselves.

And there’s often little help from home, with families in their heavily tourism-dependent country struggling mightily during the pandemic.

“They don’t have unemployment insurance. They don’t have homes here. They are far away from home,” said Urgen Sherpa, the association’s president, who calls the students it helps “unknown victims” of the coronavirus.

They’re part of the estimated 2 million residents of New York City facing food insecurity, a number said to have nearly doubled amid the biggest surge in unemployment since the Great Depression.

Early on in the pandemic, residents of the immigrant-rich Jackson Heights, Elmhurst and Corona neighborhoods of Queens were hit hard and tested positive for the virus in greater numbers than in other parts of the city. The United Sherpa Association closed its temple and canceled its sports programs, cultural activities and Sherpa and Nepali language classes.

It also sprang into action to help those who were struggling, with members calling contacts across the world to import masks, gloves and hand sanitizer that were often out of stock at local stores.

The association gave $500 stipends to more than 30 students and mobilized an army of volunteers

to make home deliveries of personal protective equipment and boxes of food.

When the pantry launched, word spread through social media and students volunteered to pick up food and distribute it every Friday outside the temple, housed in a former Christian church.

Some of the volunteers are beneficiaries themselves, like Tshering Chhoki Sherpa, a 26-yearold graduate student at Baruch College who started working there in July.

“It feels good being a part of it,” she said, “and also getting help.”

Beyond mere sustenance, the pantry also comforts the spirit, she said: “When I come here I feel like I’m back home, because everyone talks in Nepali.”

Like many who worship at the temple, she belongs to the Sherpa, an ethnic group from the Himalayan region whose members are known for working as guides and support staff for adventurers who come to climb Mount Everest and other peaks among the highest in the world.

Nepal, a country of 30 million people, was closed to foreigners much of the last year because of the pandemic, devastating the tourism industry and resulting in shuttered businesses and lost jobs.

Tshering Chhoki Sherpa’s family, for their part, temporarily closed the hotel they ran on one of the trekking paths to Everest, and she got by in New York

on savings and the pantry.

Nepal was also hit hard by the virus, and shortages of available hospital beds led the government to ask patients with lesser symptoms to isolate at home.

So for students struggling in New York, going home wasn’t seen as a viable solution.

Rajbanshi said her parents both contracted Covid-19. So did her uncle, who died. She hasn’t seen her family in Nepal in three years, and she worries about them.

It’s a common sentiment.

“In Nepal, every day I hear harder news,” said Mina Shaestha, 23, who deferred her entrance to LaGuardia Community College because of the pandemic. “People are dying of hunger. They are staying in the same room because of quarantine.”

Her partner works part-time at a grocery store, and with little money coming in, the potatoes, onions, pasta, pumpkins and milk they get from the pantry are crucial to feed them and their 2-year-old son.

“We save the money from the food and we can pay the extra things, like rent,” Shaesta said.

Pantry volunteer Dechhen Karmo Sherpa, a 16-year-old who was born in the United States to Nepalese parents, said she was moved to support it because she saw a community in need.

It was “a way to actually give back,” she said, “in a time where you feel so helpless.” AP

List of Jubilee Churches for PHL’s celebration of 500 yrs of Christianity First of a series

Diocese of Alaminos

1. St. James the Great Parish (Bolinao, Pangasinan) 2. St. Joseph, the Patriarch Cathedral Parish (Alaminos City, Pangasinan) 3. Our Lady of Lourdes Parish (Bugallon, Pangasinan) 4. St. Isidore, the Farmer Parish (Burgos, Pangasinan)

Diocese of Antipolo

1. National Shrine: Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage (Antipolo Cathedral) 2. Diocesan Shrine: Parish of Our Lady of Light (Cainta, Rizal) 3. Diocesan Shrine: Parish of Our Lady of the Abandoned (Marikina City) 4. Diocesan Shrine: Parish of Our Lady of Aranzazu (San Mateo, Rizal) 5. Sta. Ursula Parish (Binangonan, Rizal) 6. San Ildefonso de Toledo Parish (Tanay, Rizal) 7. Nuestra Señora de la Anunciata Parish (Bosoboso, Antipolo City)

Diocese of Bacolod 1. San Sebastian Cathedral (Bacolod City)

Diocese of Baguio

1. Our Lady of the Atonement Cathedral (Baguio City) 2. St. Vincent Ferrer Parish (Naguilian Road, Baguio City) 3. San Lorenzo Ruiz Parish (Loakan, Baguio City) 4. San Isidro Labrador Parish (Abatan, Buguias, Benguet) 5. San Jose the Husband of Mary Parish (Poblacion, Buyagan, La Trinidad,Benguet) 6. Immaculate Conception Parish (Acop, Caponga, Tublay, Benguet) 7. Our Lady of Fatima Parish (Tuding, Itogon, Benguet)

Diocese of Balanga

1. Cathedral: Shrine of St. Joseph, Husband of Mary (Balanga City, Bataan) 2. Minor Basilica and Parish Church of Virgen Milgrosa del Rosario del Pueblo de Orani (Orani, Bataan) 3. Diocesan Shrine of Saint Pope John Paul II (Culis, Hermosa, Bataan) 4. Santuario Diocesano de la Sagrada Famiglia (Tala, Orani, Bataan) 5. Parish Church and Diocesan Shrine for Healing of San Roque (Lamao, Bataan) 6. Saint John the Baptist Parish Church (Dinalupihan, Bataan) 7. Saint Peter Martyr of Verona Parish Church (Hermosa, Bataan) 8. Saint Catherine of Siena Parish Church (Samal, Bataan) 9. Saint Dominic Parish Church (Abucay, Bataan) 10. Our Lady of the Pillar Parish Church (Pilar, Bataan) 11. Saint Michael the Archangel Parish Church (Orion, Bataan) 12. Saint Francis of Assisi Parish Church (Limay, Bataan) 13. Saint Catherine of Alexandria Parish Church (Bagac, Bataan) 14. Our Lady of the Pillar (Morong , Bataan) 15. Saint Nicholas of Tolentino Parish Church (Mariveles, Bataan)

4. Holy Family Mission Parish, Hapao (Hungduan, Ifugao Province)

Diocese of Borongan

1. Parish Church of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception (Guiuan, Eastern Samar) 2. Cathedral Parish Church of the Nativity of Our Lady (Borongan City, Eastern Samar) 3. Parish Church of St. Joachim the Patriarch (Dolores, Eastern Samar) 4. Parish Church of St. John the Baptist (Casuguran, Homonhon Island)

Diocese of Butuan

1. Saint Joseph Cathedral Diocesan Shrine (E. Luna St., Butuan City, Agusan del Norte) 2. Saint Michael the Archangel Parish (Prosperidad, Agusan del Sur)

Diocese of Cabanatuan

1. St. Nicholas of Tolentine Cathedral (Cabanatuan City) 2. National Shrine of La Virgen Divina Pastora and Three Kings Parish (Gapan City) 3. St. Anthony Abbot Parish (San Antonio, Nueva Ecija) 4. St. Francis of Assisi Parish (Peñaranda, Nueva Ecija) 5. NuestraSeñora de las Saleras Parish (Aliaga, Nueva Ecija) 6. St. Isidore the Worker Parish (Talavera, Nueva Ecija) 7. St. Francis of Assisi Parish (Bongabon, Nueva Ecija)

Archdiocese of Caceres

1. St. Michael the Archangel Parish Church (Caramoan, Camarines Sur) 2. Sts. Philip and James Parish Church (Lagonoy, Camarines Sur) 3. Holy Cross Parish Church (Nabua, Camarines Sur) 4. St Bartholomew Parish Church (Baao, Camarines Sur) 5. St. Raphael the Archangel (Pili, Camarines Sur) 6. St. John the Evangelist Cathedral Church (Naga City) 7. Our Lady of Penafrancia Parish Church, (Naga City) 8. Our Lady Immaculate Conception Parish Church (Quipayo, Calabanga, Camarines Sur) 9. St. Paschal Baylon Parish Church (Tinambac, Camarines Sur)

Archdiocese of Cagayan De Oro

1. San Agustin Metropolitan Cathedral (Cagayan de Oro City) 2. Immaculate Conception Parish (Jasaan, Misamis Oriental) 3. San Nicolas Tolentino Parish (Mambajao) 4. Divine Mercy Shrine (El Salvador City, Misamis Oriental) 5. St.Francis Xavier (Pueblo de Oro, Cagayan de Oro City) 6. Our Lady of Lourdes Shrine (Binuangan, Misamis Oriental) 7. Sta.Rita de Cascia Parish (Balingasag, Misamis Oriental) 8. Sta. Rita de Cascia Parish (Gingoog City, Misamis Oriental)

Apostolic Vicariate of Calapan

1. St. James the Elder Cathedral (Bangued, Abra) 2. San Lorenzo Ruiz Shrine (Bangued, Abra) 3. Our Lady of the Pillar Parish (San Isidro, Abra) 4. San Narciso Parish (Bucay, Abra) 5. St. Catherine of Alexandria Parish (Tayum, Abra) 6. Holy Cross Parish (Lagangilang, Abra)

1. Sto. Niño Cathedral (Calapan City, Oriental Mindoro) 2. Immaculate Conception Church (Puerto Galera, Oriental Mindoro) 3. Blessed Trinity Church (Baco, Oriental Mindoro) 4. San Nicolas de Tolentino Church (Naujan, Oriental Mindoro) 5. Good Shepherd Church (Victoria, Oriental Mindoro) 6. San Agustin Church (Pinamalayan, Oriental Mindoro) 7. St. John the Baptist Church (Pola, Oriental Mindoro) 8. St. Joseph Church (Bongabong, Oriental Mindoro) 9. Sto. Niño Church (Roxas, Oriental Mindoro) 10. Sts. Peter and Paul Church (Bulalacao, Oriental Mindoro)

Prelature of Batanes

Diocese of Calbayog

Diocese of Bangued

1. Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (Basco, Batanes)

Diocese of Bayombong

1. St. Dominic de Guzman Cathedral Parish (Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya) 2. St. Louis Beltran Parish (Solano, Nueva Vizcaya) 3. St. Augustine of Hippo Parish (Saguday, Quirino, Isabela)

Diocese of Boac

1. Immaculate Conception Cathedral (Mataas na Bayan, Boac, Marinduque) 2. Holy Cross Parish Church (Pag-asa, Sta. Cruz, Marinduque) 3. St. Joseph Spouse of Mary Parish Church (Gasan, Marinduque)

Diocese of Bontoc-Lagawe 1. Sta. Rita de Cascia Cathedral (Bontoc, Mountain Province) 2. Holy Family Mission Parish (Sadsadan, Bauko, Mountain Province) 3. St. Mary Magdalene Mission Parish (Lagawe, Ifugao Province)

1. Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul (J. D. Avelino Street, Calbayog City, Samar) 2. St. Bartholomew, the Apostle Parish (Catbalogan City, Samar) 3. Our Lady of the Annunciation Parish (Calbiga, Samar) 4. St. Michael the Archangel Parish (Basey, Samar)

Archdiocese of Capiz

1. Immaculate Conception Metropolitan Cathedral (Roxas City, Capiz) 2. St. Monica Church (Panay, Capiz) 3. St. Joseph the Worker Church (President Roxas, Capiz) 4. St. Martin of Tours Church (Dumalag, Capiz) 5. St. Catherine of Alexandria Church (Mambusao, Capiz) 6. St. Thomas of Villanova Church (Dao, Capiz)

To be continued

Biodiversity Sunday BusinessMirror

Asean Champions of Biodiversity Media Category 2014

Editor: Lyn Resurreccion

Sunday, March 7, 2021

A7

Online illegal wildlife trade targeting PHL’s monitor lizards C

By Jonathan L. Mayuga

ommonly seen in forests, lakes, ponds, rivers or streams, Philippine “bayawak,” or monitor lizards, are fast-becoming the most common traded wildlife in the Philippines. The Internet and smartphone technologies, with the help of social media, are driving them to the brink of extinction.

Hunted for their skin, meat and parts, these large forest lizards are now fast-becoming a popular pet among socalled hobbyists. They are kept in the aquarium while still young, and later on transferred to man-made lagoons or ponds with steel mesh as they grow older and bigger.

Through the Internet in computers or smartphones, buying and selling of wild monitor lizards are now openly done in social media, pushing the endangered species to the brink of extinction.

While the trade of the monitor lizards in the Philippines is relatively small compared to other markets, such as Japan, Europe and the United States, the authors of the report, “The Trade of Live Monitor Lizards [Varanidae] in the Philippines,” Emerson Y. Sy and Antonio N. Lorenzo of nongovernment group Traffic named the Philippines both as importer and exporter of illegally sourced and traded monitor lizards.

This highlighted the need for authorities to step up the work in curbing illegal wildlife trade in the country.

Ecosystem function The Department of Environment and Natural Resources-Biodiversity Management Bureau (DENR-BMB) said it is important to protect and conserve monitor lizards because they are vital constituents of the food web.

Monitor lizards feed on a variety of food types, such as insects, crabs, snakes, fish, etc., thereby controlling the population of their prey.

In turn, they are a source of food to larger predators, such as crocodiles and raptors.

In addition, monitor lizards are also excellent ecological indicators due to their high degree of sensitivity to even a minor change in the environment.

At the same time, as some Philippine monitor lizards are uniquely fruiteating species, they also play the role of a unique seed disperser in the forest.

Endemic species There are 11 known monitor lizard species in the Philippines which are native and endemic to certain restricted areas in the country.

Three of them are the only known frugivorous, or fruit-eating, species

in the world. They are the northern Sierra Madre forest, Gray’s and Panay monitor lizards.

The others are the Bangon water monitor lizard, Philippine yellowheaded water monitor, Enteng’s water monitor lizard, marbled water monitor lizard, Philippine white-headed monitor lizard, Palawan monitor lizard, Rasmussen’s water monitor lizard, and Samar water monitor lizard.

‘Bayawak’ for sale Anchored on the 30-month online study and review of 30 years (1989– 2018) of Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) trade data, the study revealed that a total of 541 individual bayawak representing 13 species were documented for sale from September 2017 to February 2020.

Sold from as low as $8 to $29 (P436.64 to P1,407) to as high as $16,667 (P808,616.17) depending on the species, the monitor lizards are both imported and exported, the CITES trade data analysis show.

The Philippines imported 671 live individuals of 20 species from at least 20 countries, and exported 144 live individuals of nine species during the period of 1989 to 2018, the study said.

Online shopping As social networking sites, such as Facebook, has become the most popular marketplace in the world, online buying and selling has become a breeze for a wide range of products, including illegally sourced or collected wild plants and animals.

It became even more popular during the community lockdowns put in place last year by governments worldwide due to the pandemic.

Ironically, whether they are plants or animals, wildlife trading is illegal in the Philippines unless the trader is armed with special permits from the DENR or the BMB. Some of the laws that make wildlife trade illegal are the Republic Act 9147, or the Wildlife Act; Republic Act 9072, or the Caves Act, Republic Act 7586, or the National Integrated Protected Areas System (Nipas) Act and its amended version, the Republic Act 11038 or the Expanded Nipas Act. The DENR or the BMB has not is-

The Asian water monitor, also called common water monitor, is a large varanid lizard native to South and Southeast Asia. It is one of the most common monitor lizards in Asia. Gregg Yan sued a special permit for harvesting monitor lizards in the wild since 2001.

Yet the report noted the rampant online trading in Facebook, which became the subject of the online survey.

Market price With the market shift from physical to online trade, the report revealed that on Facebook alone, a total of 359 monitor lizard posts by 187 unique accounts involving 13 species and 541 individual animals were documented during the 30-month online survey of 20 Facebook groups.

The quantity of monitor lizards per post ranged from 1 to 40 individuals.

The typical price of a juvenile, ranged from P700 to P1,500, or as low as P400 per individual.

One post documented by the authors even offered a CITES Appendix I-listed Komodo dragon for P850,000 in August 2018. CITES Appendix I list include the most endangered species.

The authors noted that out of the 187 unique accounts, at least 11 traders had been observed to use at least two Facebook accounts.

Deactivated Facebook groups, accounts Interviewed via Messenger on March 1, Sy noted that Facebook has shut down secret and private groups suspected of promoting online illegal wildlife trade.

By Sy’s estimate, 344 groups were deactivated by Facebook so far. The oldest group was created in December 2009 with a membership ranging from 6, which was created a few days before it was deactivated, to nearly 52,000 individual accounts.

While Facebook is a member of the Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online and is working with Traffic and others through a multifaceted approach to address the issue, Sy said the system could only do so much.

Encouraging Netizens to report to Facebook via its system the suspicious groups or accounts, he said, it is a “hit or miss.” The system cannot detect groups and accounts that use coded messages in transacting business, he said.

However, although hundreds of accounts have been deactivated,

hundreds more are expected to take its place. “ There are now newly created groups. It will be good to ask Facebook what it can do to prevent this?

Do they plan to deactivate or suspend the accounts that create these groups also?” he asked.

Online surveillance Wildlife law enforcers from the DENR-BMB and the DENR-led Task Force Philippine Operations Group on Ivory and Illegal Wildlife (Pogi) are conducting online surveillance to combat illegal wildlife trade, now a P50-billion annual underground economy.

Facebook’s deactivation of secret and private groups used by wildlife traders was confirmed by Rogelio Demelletes, senior science specialist and a member of the Task Force Pogi.

“Even my own accounts which I use in my surveillance operations were deactivated, too,” he said.

Gargantuan task DENR-BMB Acting Director Amelita D.J. Ortiz said while the department is working to curb the illegal wildlife trade, its limited resources is unable to cover the magnitude and scale of the online illegal business.

“The DENR cannot do this alone, that is why we are working with other government agencies and the law enforcement units like the National Bureau of Investigation,” Ortiz told the BusinessMirror in a telephone interview on March 1.

She said the DENR is also banking on the help and support of netizens to report suspicious activities so the concerned authorities could act appropriately.

Transnational crime The online illegal wildlife trade is not unique to the Philippines. It is a global problem as markets go online to reach out to more buyers, said Asean Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) Executive Director Theresa Mundita S. Lim. Because of the profitability of illegal wildlife trade, it grew into one of the largest transnational crimes next to humans, drugs and arms trafficking over the decades.

Lim told the BusinessMirror via Messenger that the move of illegal wildlife trade to online markets have been reported in recent years.

“Online wildlife trafficking has escalated the illegal trade, with millions of online users potentially having direct access to illegal suppliers all over the world with just a few clicks. This makes it more difficult for authorities to detect and to take effective action,” said Lim, a former DENR-BMB director.

She said that authorities of Asean member states have also reported arrests and convictions of online wildlife traders, and seizures of traded wild animals and their parts.

Lim said last year, the National Bureau of Investigation-Environmental Crime Division of the Philippines arrested two online wildlife traders and seized 42 turtles and tortoises in one operation.

Also last year, an Indonesian court convicted an online wildlife trader caught with over a dozen reptiles, including a critically endangered turtle.

In 2018, Malaysia seized over 680 wildlife and parts in three separate operations against wildlife cybercrime.

Concerted effort Lim said there has been a concerted effort by authorities, nongovernment organizations (NGOs) and the private sector to regulate online spaces.

In 2018, technology companies, including Google and Facebook, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, she said, pledged to combat wildlife cybercrime.

“Yet, a variety of virtual markets are still easily available for those involved in the trade, despite efforts to curb illegal trade online. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 2020 report cites an example of this difficulty when in May 2019, Facebook added a functionality to its site enabling the public to report illegal wildlife trade, and subsequently shut down various Indonesian Facebook groups,” she noted.

However, the illegal traders moved to alternative media platforms, even keeping the same group names they had on Facebook.

“These efforts take time to create

impact. But we believe that over time and with more users made aware of the effects of illegal trade, there will be more civil society policing to weed out illegal sellers, buyers and groups and put pressure on online companies to take responsibility for illegal activities on their platforms,“ Lim said.

“National legislations have to keep up with this trend, as many of the existing laws may not enable enforcers to take action on [the illegal activity] online. Authorities also have to be innovative in their approach to deter wildlife cybercriminals,” she added.

According to Lim, Asean have laudable initiatives that are worth supporting or replicating.

She said online trade, including on wildlife, is regulated by law in Vietnam.

“However, the challenge in the prosecution of these cases is in collecting adequate evidence,” she said.

Meanwhile, in Malaysia and the Philippines, the governments are in the process of amending their respective wildlife laws to address advertising and illegal online trade.

In Thailand, its Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation has established the “Forest Hawk” Task Force that has established a social media group.

It urged all Thai and international wildlife conservation NGOs to share information on suspicious activities, and enforcement action among its members.

Building capacity Lim said building capacity among the wildlife and other related authorities to monitor online trade—specializing in investigation and prosecution of online wildlife crimes, infiltrate existing online wildlife markets, collect evidence using digital forensics and develop institutional enforcement strength focused on wildlife and cybercrimes—is needed to address the gaps in combatting illegal wildlife trade.

“New technology should be constantly learned and employed to strengthen these efforts and keep up with the changes,“ she said.

In parallel to these efforts, Lim added that every individual who uses social media should be equipped with the knowledge and appreciation for the importance of species to remain in their natural habitat.

“They should help report such activities to the authorities as well as put pressure on sellers, buyers and those who create spaces for illegal wildlife trade in order to drive them out of the virtual marketplace, just like how they are being driven out of physical markets, shops and trade shows, she said.

“At the regional level, it would be beneficial to implement mechanisms to develop capacity and share information among countries on the presence of online illegal wildlife trade operations and identified online criminal organizations, especially those with transnational illicit operations,” Lim said.

FAO taps Searca for forest monitoring, climate finance project in Palawan

T

he Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations has commissioned the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (Searca) to develop a pioneering jurisdictionallevel platform for Palawan for the management and monitoring of forest and landscape climate finance investments.

“As both carbon source and sink, forests play a key role in climate change mitigation. To achieve a significant emissions reduction, there is a need for investment in forest landscape and climate finance to support scalable approaches and programs, such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+),”

Searca Director Dr. Glenn B. Gregorio said.

He explained that there is a need to demonstrate profitable business models for forest restoration that target environmental and social benefits to engage the private sector as investors, service providers or implementers beyond their corporate social responsibility advocacy.

Private investor engagement is key to the sustainability of environmental efforts.

On the other hand, Dr. Rico C. Ancog, Searca program lead for Emerging Innovation for Growth and Associate Professor at the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB), said the correct determination of the scale of crediting for emissions reduction from the forest sector

is also key to achieving the objective of REDD+, with entire jurisdictions likely to be the optimal scale because only governments have the main authority to regulate land use change.

In the case of the FAO-funded project, Ancog said the operational example of a jurisdictionallevel platform being developed for Palawan is intended to “support quantitative evaluation for forest monitoring and leveraging, and landscape climate finance at the jurisdictional scale.”

He explained that the project will assess the viability of Palawan to follow a Jurisdictional Sustainability (JS) Approach and identify potential financing sources.

According to Dr. Daniel Nepstad, the president

of the Ear th Innovation Institute based in Berkeley, California, the JS is achieved when an entire political geography or region also coincides with the correct ecological scale of a given environmental problem and completes the transition to sustainable development.

S p e c i f i c a l l y, t h e S e a rc a p ro j e c t w i l l “determine if Palawan has the components to operationalize JS, the gaps of JS and climate investment and how to address them, the government’s role in the implementation of JS, and the comparative approaches versus reforestation and afforestation management and the REDD+ Approach.”

Moreover, Ancog said the jurisdictional-level

platform being developed will facilitate the analysis of multi-stakeholders and the layers of the government to provide sufficient information to the private sector on how their investment will be managed and monitored to align corporate governance to that of forest conservation vis-à-vis climate change mitigation initiatives.

To raise awareness on the merits of the JS Approach, the project collaborators, together with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources‘ (DENR) Forest Management Bureau and DENR-Ecosystems Research and Development Bureau, jointly organized an online forum recently on Jurisdictional Sustainability Approach for Climate Change Initiatives in the Forestry and

Natural Resources Sector.

During the forum, Ancog shared some initial takeaways of the project. One is the “ability to find solutions to forest management challenges that were effectively analyzed based on the correct ecological scale. In turn, such solutions for climate change mitigation must be designed not just in response to gaps in knowledge and awareness gaps, but also to impediments in governance.”

He also noted that governance innovations is needed, particularly in relation to different forms of forest resource tenure so that climate change initiatives balance environmental conservation and economic development.

Sports BusinessMirror

A8 | S

L

EBRON JAMES has faced Giannis Antetokounmpo as an opponent in the last three All-Star Games.

The Los Angeles Lakers’ star got him as a teammate this year.

James used the No. 1 overall pick on Antetokounmpo—the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) two-time reigning MVP from Milwaukee—in the draft for Sunday’s All-Star Game in Atlanta. Kevin Durant, who will not play in the All-Star Game because of injury but still is the captain for Team Durant, took Brooklyn teammate Kyrie Irving with his first pick.

The other starters for Team LeBron will be Stephen Curry of Golden State, Luka Doncic of Dallas and Nikola Jokic of Denver. The other starters for Team Durant will be Joel Embiid of Philadelphia, 2020 All-Star MVP Kawhi Leonard of the Los Angeles Clippers, Bradley Beal of Washington and Jayson Tatum of Boston.

This is the fourth year of the NBA’s playing captain format for the All-Star Game. James is 3-0, beating teams captained by Curry in 2018 and Antetokounmpo in the last two seasons.

“I just try to pick players that can complement one another,” James said during the draft that was taped Wednesday and aired Thursday night on TNT. “When we’re on the floor, we’ll try to play the

unday, March 7, 2021 mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph Editor: Jun Lomibao

LBJ, KD MAKE ALL-STAR PICKS game the right way. It’s the All-Star Game, so there’s going to be some shenanigans out there. But for the majority of the game, we’re going to try to play the right way and come out with a win.”

Durant had the first pick of the reserve round and took another Brooklyn teammate, James Harden with the opening selection there. James’s first pick among the reserves was Damian Lillard of Portland, Durant followed by taking Devin Booker of Phoenix, and James countered by selecting Ben Simmons of Philadelphia.

“I wanted Ben Simmons. I wanted Ben,” Durant said.

The remaining Team Durant subs: Zion Williamson of New Orleans, Zach LaVine of Chicago, Julius Randle of New York, Nikola Vucevic of Orlando and Donovan Mitchell of Utah. James’s final selections were Chris Paul of Phoenix, Jaylen Brown of Boston, Paul George of the Los Angeles Clippers, Domantas Sabonis of Indiana and Rudy Gobert of Utah.

Mitchell and Gobert, respectively, were the last two players taken despite being the only All-Stars from the Jazz—who hit the break with the NBA’s best record at 27-9.

“This is slander, America,” TNT analyst Charles Barkley said during the taping.

Durant took Mitchell, which left Gobert to James as the final selection. And James did his best to diffuse what he knows will inevitably be a topic of conversation—how the Jazz got snubbed during the draft.

“Listen, I just want to say something,” James said. “There’s no slander. There’s no slander to the Utah Jazz. But you guys got to understand, just like in video games growing up, we never played with Utah. Even as great as Karl Malone and John Stockton was, we never picked those guys in video games. Never.”

The NBA and the National Basketball Players

Giannis Antetokounmpo gets to play alongside LeBron James this time. AP

Association have committed more than $3 million to aid historically Black institutions as part of All-Star Sunday, with at least $1.75 million coming from the game itself.

Team LeBron will play on behalf of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. Team Durant will play for the United Negro College Fund. Both organizations will receive $500,000 to start, and the winners of the

first, second and third quarters will collect another $150,000. The team that reaches the target score and wins the game first will get $300,000 more.

“It’s an honor that we get to represent so many people and use this platform to help advance education, our youth, just the world in general,” Durant said. AP

Love honored for mental-health advocacy, charity C

LEVELAND—Kevin Love’s devotion to raising awareness and advocating for mental health during isolating times has earned him another honor.

The Cavaliers forward and five-time All-Star received the first Humanitarian of the Year Award on Thursday night at the Greater Cleveland Sports Awards, an annual event that brings out the city’s top sports names but was held virtually this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Love first went public with his own mental-health issues in 2018, chronicling those struggles in an essay.

His openness and willingness to share his personal story since has helped erase stigmas about mental issues and led to the NBA adopting programs to assist players.

During the pandemic, Love, who has been sidelined most of this season with a calf injury, donated $100,000 through his foundation to assist team employees and workers at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse. He’s also donated meals to workers at the Cleveland Clinic.

“Everybody’s going through something,” Love said in accepting the award. “Let’s continue to positively affect everyone who is going through something with mental health.”

Last year, Love received the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the ESPYs for his efforts to promote mental wellness.

Indians ace Shane Bieber, who won the

KEVIN LOVE receives the first Humanitarian of the Year Award on Thursday night at the Greater Cleveland Sports Awards. AP American League CY Young Award after leading the majors in wins, ERA and strikeouts last season, was voted the city’s top professional athlete.

The Browns ending their 18-year playoff drought was voted the best sports moment of 2020.

“It was a whole team playing as one,” quarterback Baker Mayfield said. “Hopefully we have a lot better moments and there’s more to come.” AP

Heart problems may be rare in pro athletes after Covid-19

THE research involved professional athletes in the US and Canada who play in major league football, hockey, soccer, baseball and men’s and women’s basketball. AP

H

EART inflammation is uncommon in pro athletes who’ve had mostly mild Covid-19 and most don’t need to be sidelined, a study conducted by major professional sports leagues suggests.

The results are not definitive, outside experts say, and more independent research is needed. But the study published Thursday in JAMA Cardiology is the largest to examine the potential problem. The coronavirus can cause inflammation in many organs, including the heart.

The research involved professional athletes in the US and Canada who play in major league football, hockey, soccer, baseball and men’s and women’s basketball. All tested positive for Covid-19 before October and were given guidelinerecommended heart tests, nearly 800 total. None had severe Covid-19 and 40 percent had few or no symptoms—what might be expected from a group of healthy elite athletes with an average age of 25.

Severe Covid-19 is more common in older people and those with chronic health conditions.

Almost 4 percent had abnormal results on heart tests done after they recovered but subsequent MRI exams found heart inflammation in less than 1 percent of the athletes. These five athletes all had Covid-19 symptoms. Whether their heart problems were caused by the virus is unknown although the researchers think that is likely.

They were sidelined for about three months, had no further problems and at least some returned to play, said Dr. Matthew Martinez of Morristown Medical Center in New Jersey. He’s the study’s lead author and team cardiologist for football’s New York Jets.

Two previous smaller studies in college athletes recovering from the virus suggested heart inflammation might be more common. The question is of key interest to athletes, who put extra stress on their hearts during play, and undetected heart inflammation has been linked with sudden death.

Whether mild Covid-19 can cause heart damage ‘’is the million-dollar question,’’ said Dr. Richard Kovacs, cofounder of the American College of Cardiology’s Sports & Exercise Council. And whether severe Covid-19 symptoms increase the chances of having fleeting or long-lasting heart damage ‘’is part of the puzzle,’’ he said.

Kovacs said the study has several weaknesses.

Testing was done at centers affiliated or selected by each team, and results were interpreted by team-affiliated cardiologists, increasing the chances of bias. More rigorous research would have had standardized testing done at a central location and more objective specialists interpret the results, he said.

Also, many of the athletes had no previous imaging exams to compare the results with, so there is no way to know for certain if abnormalities found during the study were related to the virus. ’’There is clearly more work to do but I think it is very helpful additional evidence,” said Dr. Donald Lloyd-Jones, president-elect of the American Heart Association. AP

BusinessMirror

Nike’s executive saga exposes uneasy relationship with resellers

March 7, 2021

2

BusinessMirror MARCH 7, 2021 | soundstrip.businessmirror@gmail.com

YOUR MUSI

REALIZING A DREAM

Teacher-composer Jayson Dedal releases debut single

O

F the billions of dreams cast into the void every day, few make it with the certainty—and confidence—that gifted singer-songwriter Jayson Dedal felt when he did.

JAYSON Dedal

Publisher

: T. Anthony C. Cabangon

Editor-In-Chief

: Lourdes M. Fernandez

Concept

: Aldwin M. Tolosa

Y2Z Editor

: Jt Nisay

SoundStrip Editor

: Edwin P. Sallan

Group Creative Director : Eduardo A. Davad Graphic Designers Contributing Writers

Columnists

: Niggel Figueroa Anabelle O. Flores : Tony M. Maghirang, Rick Olivares, Darwin Fernandez, Leony Garcia, Stephanie Joy Ching Pauline Joy M. Gutierrez : Kaye VillagomezLosorata Annie S. Alejo

Photographers

: Bernard P. Testa Nonie Reyes

Y2Z & SOUNDSTRIP are published and distributed free every Sunday by the Philippine Business Daily Mirror Publishing Inc. as a project of the

The Philippine Business Mirror Publishing, Inc., with offices on the 3rd Floor of Dominga Building III 2113 Chino Roces Avenue corner Dela Rosa Street, Makati City, Philippines.

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The 28-year-old Dedal, who is a real-life MAPEH teacher in a public school in Quezon City, recently signed up with maverick record label Insight Music, which has just produced and released his debut single “Bilyon-Bilyong Panalangin”.

“Bilyon-Bilyong Panalangin” marks Jayson Dedal’s first break as a recording artist under Insight Music, making his first professional affiliation an exceptionally propitious one.

The song also served as one of the official movie soundtracks of the label’s movie production and marketing arm Insight 360 Films’ “Miss Q&A: Para Sa Maganda Lang Ba Ang Love Life?” starring Kakai Bautista and Zoren Legaspi and directed by Lemuel Lorca. The first is expected to be released this summer.

“The movie is about lost dreams and trying to redeem them,” says Cahilig. “So having a song like ‘Bilyon-Bilyong Panalangin’ is—pun intended—a dream match.”

Apart from his day job as a public school teacher, Dedal has been writing songs since college and is an active member of the Filipino Society of Composers, Artists, and Publishers (FILSCAP). However, the opportunity to be a solo artist seemed to elude Dedal until Insight Music recognized his potential.

Indeed, Insight Music President and Chief Creative Director Chris Cahilig took notice of this fresh new talent early on.

It was Dedal, after all, who wrote boy band 1:43’s hit songs such as “Pasensya Na” and “Ikaw Lang Talaga,” as well as “Sa Iba Na

Lang” by BOU, which eventually became the official movie sound track of “Mia” (2020).

“I have always been incredibly drawn towards Jayson as an artist,” says Cahilig. “His body of work speaks volumes of his gift. And when you listen to what he has to say in ‘Bilyon-Bilyong Panalangin’, you’ll understand why we simply had to make sure that his talent is heard.”

Set against lush instrumentation and fueled by Dedal’s buttery vocals, “BilyonBilyong Panalangin” conveys Dedal’s deep anxieties about an ambiguous future. Does God hear the songwriter’s ‘prayers’ for a better future?

“It’s a personal track, to be sure,” says Dedal. “I wrote it during the lockdown, and it’s the collective result of everything I’ve been worried about—my love life, the future, and my relationship with God.” Having made peace with his vulnerabilities, Jayson Dedal is even more grateful to Cahilig and Insight Music for giving him the chance to express his creativity, and vent his anxieties, the only way he knows how—through his music.

Cahilig is likewise buoyant about Dedal’s journey in the music industry. “Some people might give a public school teacher one look and put them in a box,” he says. “But if anything, teachers are some of the best storytellers out there, and we’re lucky to have found one as talented and as enthusiastic as Jayson Dedal.”

“Bilyon-Bilyong Panalangin”

by Jayson Dedal will be available on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, and all other streaming platforms on March 5, 2021.

IC

soundstrip.businessmirror@gmail.com | MARCH 7, 2021

BUSINESS

SoundSampler

by Tony M. Maghirang

ON THEIR FEET Celebrating the very best in Pinoy Shoegaze

I

FELL in love with shoegaze the first time I heard Catherine Wheel’s “Crank” at NU 107’s new music program sometime in the early ‘90s.

The wall of sound dissonance paired with dreamy vocals just about captured something fresh and contrarian to the prevailing heavy music of the times.

Subsequent conversations with Pinoy rock musicians and fans revealed there was little interest in the genre.

As if to prove the point, only a smattering of a typically thin crowd gather at special shoegaze showcases at Club Dredd and Mayric’s.

Years onwards, I contented myself reliving the music’s thrill in CD samplers in foreign new music magazines and the farin-between local releases from the likes of Sugar Hiccup.

Then lo and behold, just when I’m consigned to listening to new shoegaze acts from elsewhere comes three various artists compilations from Pilipinas Shoegaze label. The albums trawl the past and luxuriate in pretty recent brave

rockers who continue to traffic in the “scene that celebrates itself.”

As for the future, all I’m sure is I will keep coming back to my favorites in these excellently curated compilations.

ALUNIG: A Shoegaze Pilipinas Compilation Volume 1

ALUNIG (translates to “resonance”) offers a historical perspective, beginning sometime in the early 1990’s and then presenting the influence of the late ‘80’s/ early ‘90’s UK scene on the local under-the-radar subculture. The resonance with the bands that arose from the famed No Zone and Awakening scenes in Metro Manila is all over the place. It

should serve as a foretaste of how shoegaze and dream pop influenced the Philippine music scene from the early/ mid ‘90’s to the turn-of-the-millennium Buzz Night fuzzheads down to the current crop of Furiosa noisemakers.

Favorite tracks: Aurora Borealis – “Walkie Toki”; Avalyn – “Blusher”; Candyaudioline - :An Empty You”; Some Gorgeous Accident – “A Million Miles Away”; The Rave Tapes –“Sucker Punch”.

ALIMBÚKAD: A Shoegaze Pilipinas Compilation Volume 2

ALIMBÚKAD (translates to “in full bloom”) Volume 2 broadens its sound and reach from the first volume to cover kindred acts from Metro Manila to Pampanga; from Cebu to Dumaguete; from Cagayan de Oro and Davao all the way to the UAE, Oman and Qatar. Featured is the spectrum of influence of beautiful noise by Filipino bands all over the archipelago and the Middle East united by the common love for shoegaze and dream pop.

Favorite tracks: Concave - Gaze”; KRNA – “Wide Eyes”; Precal Dropouts – “Stay... It’s Eventide; Lilybeth Ostman – “Stay”; Megumi Acorda – “Unexpectedly”.

ALPAS: Beyond Reverb And Noise

ALPAS, which translates as “to become free or break loose”, is the third installment of the Shoegaze Pilipinas compilation series. It’s a continuation of Alunig and Alimbukad and goes beyond the spectrum of beautiful noise and reverb and travels well past the Philippines and Asia.

This compilation features bands from the USA and Canada with members of Filipino descent, joined by several bands from the motherland. From shoegaze and dream pop, the featured acts proceed to dig into post rock, psychedelia and indierock and ultimately crosses over to indiepop, ambient and electronic pop and dreamy synth pop.

Favorite tracks: Pale Blue Morning – “Lost In Oblivion”; Apple Orchard – “A Slow Dissolve”; Cinéma Lumière – “Dream Catcher”; Day & Dream – “A Study In The Pixels Of Your Face”; Mister Disco – “All Forever”.

Favorite tracks are my personal choices. Truth be told, every track deserves to be a favorite of anyone who enjoys great sounds.

Let the bliss resonate on your mortal soul!

3

Nike’s executive saga exposes uneasy relationship with resellers

By Kim Bhasin and Richard Clough

A

Foot Locker Inc. in 2019, recently scored an investment from Groupe Artemis, Kering’s controlling shareholder. StockX and GOAT are marketplaces that offer platforms for buying and selling, and they also authenticate products to weed out counterfeits.

Interest in resale has boomed for more than just sneakers. Online clothing and accessories marketplaces such as the RealReal and Poshmark have gone public in the last two years, while ThredUp is reportedly planning an initial public offering this year.

Combined, the three move about $3 billion worth of secondhand goods annually. This week, Gucci and Saint Laurent owner Kering led a $216-million investment round into European reseller Vestiaire Collective.

Bloomberg

senior Nike Inc. executive’s abrupt departure has laid bare the sometimesuncomfortable relationship between sneaker makers and the underground network of resellers who thrive off their brands.

The sneakerhead community was buzzing last week over the resignation of Ann Hebert, Nike’s vice president and general manager of North America. The revelation came just days after a Bloomberg Businessweek report about her son’s lucrative business reselling shoes. (See related story) Nike and its chief footwear rival, Adidas AG, don’t often talk about the secondary market, even as demand for rare Air Jordan 1s and Yeezys has turned sneaker flipping into a billion-dollar business. The companies don’t benefit directly from it. And since resellers make it harder for the average customer to buy their favored sneakers, shoe brands and their retailer partners go to great lengths to stop people from scooping up multiple pairs.

Yet Nike and its peers benefit indirectly from the sneakerhead hype, giving both sides incentive to keep the resale market strong.

“The reality is resale within footwear has become critical to the entire footwear ecosystem,” said Simeon Siegel, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets. “The fact that re-

A customer carries boxes of Nike Inc. shoes outside of the NikeTown Los Angeles retail store in Beverly Hills, California. Bloomberg sale exists is what allows for such strong sell-through.”

The awkward alliance—and potential for conflicts of interest—spilled out into the open Monday after Nike announced the immediate departure of Hebert, who had been with the Beaverton, Oregon-based company for more than 25 years. Nike didn’t give a reason for her resignation.

Joe Hebert, the executive’s 19-year-old son, flips hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of shoes each month, Businessweek reported. Nike has said the executive disclosed relevant information about her son’s business to the company in 2018, and that Ann Hebert did not violate “company policy, privileged information or conflicts of interest.”

Bad look Still, the optics can be troubling. Hebert’s responsibilities reportedly included the SNKRS app, where Nike’s rarest and most sought-after products are typically released.

A 2018 business filing with the state of Oregon for “West Coast Streetwear” was

filed by Pascal Hebert, who is listed at the same address as Ann and Joe. That business was subsequently transferred to Joe. Ann Hebert didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on LinkedIn. Nike didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on resale.

The major footwear brands have largely stayed quiet on the topic of resale, content to maintain the status quo.

“I don’t think we’re really fixated or focused on trying to capture that secondary market,” Mark Parker, Nike’s then-chief executive officer, said on Bloomberg TV in 2014. “Are there some things we could do to take advantage of that? Possibly. We’re looking at that, but that really hasn’t been out fixation or focus.”

True to his word, Parker stayed away from resale through his tenure, which ended last year. That hasn’t changed under his successor, John Donahoe.

The growing market has fueled the rise of more specialized start-ups such as StockX, which is reportedly weighing an initial public offering. Rival GOAT Group, which got a $100-million investment from

Different beast But sneakers are a different beast. Unlike secondhand clothing, which is typically used and sold for less than the retail price, the bulk of resold sneakers are brand new, never worn and still inside the undamaged box—a condition known as “deadstock.”

Limited sneakers typically sell for more than retail, and big-time flippers often deal in bulk.

That has made reselling a lucrative activity for those who can get their hands on the right product—often through connections with retailers or wholesalers, or using automated software to quickly buy sneakers online. The sneaker and streetwear resale market is more than $2 billion in North America and growing by more than 20 percent each year, according to estimates from Cowen & Co. Those kinds of numbers are turning heads across the industry, though Nike still isn’t saying much, even as questions bubble up amid the departure of a longtime executive.

“Nike’s been fairly mum on what their view is of the resale market,” said John Kernan, an analyst at Cowen. “Clearly, there was an issue in this specific case.”

Executive leaves following report about son’s business

N

ike Inc. executive Ann Hebert abruptly left the company following a Bloomberg Businessweek report about her son operating a business reselling sneakers and using a credit card in her name.

Hebert, who served as vice president and general manager of North America, departed Monday, effective immediately, Nike said in a brief statement. She had been in the role since last June, overseeing Nike’s sales, marketing and merchandising in the region.

The executive had spent more than 25 years with the Beaverton, Oregon-based company, which said it would announce a new leader for North America shortly.

Bloomberg Businessweek’s latest cover ar-

ticle explored the story of Joe Hebert, Ann’s son, a college dropout who makes a living as a sneaker reseller. Known to his customers as West Coast Joe, he started reselling streetwear in high school and now flips hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of shoes each month.

Ann Hebert didn’t reply to e-mailed questions for that report, but a Nike representative said the executive disclosed relevant information about her son’s business to Nike in 2018. The company said at the time that Hebert did not violate “company policy, privileged information or conflicts of interest.”

After Hebert’s departure, a spokesperson for Nike said the executive made the decision to resign. Bloomberg

4 BusinessMirror

Sneaker resellers on Instagram WEST.COAST.STREETWEAR/Instagram and @510KICKS/Instagram

March 7, 2021