BusinessMirror May 21, 2020

‘Interest rates to stay low for yrs’

By Tyrone Jasper C. Piad

T THE BROADER LOOK » A4-A5

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PHL HEALTH SYSTEM’S HOWLING ISSUES HAMPER FIGHT VS PANDEMIC

HE threat of economic recession due to coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic is leaving central banks across the world no choice but to keep policy rates low, or even negative, for a longer time, Moody’s Investor Services said.

“We expect the resulting global economic recession to compel central banks to maintain low or even negative interest rates for several more years,” the debt watcher said in a report on Wednesday.

Moody’s, however, warned that having low interest rates for a long period could erode the profits of the banking sector.

“In addition to deteriorating asset quality, banks that predominantly finance their lending with customer deposits rather than borrowing on wholesale markets will see profitability eroded by persistently lower in-

terest rates,” the credit-rating firm said.

“This is because banks are generally reluctant to impose negative rates on their retail customers in most jurisdictions, while market borrowings follow rates downward,” it added.

To recall, Moody’s said that central banks have been aggressively cutting policy rates to boost market appetite amid the pandemic.

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), for example, cut key policy rates by 50 basis points (bp), bringing overnight repurchase rate to 2.75 percent ahead of the May 21 policy meeting. It has also brought down the reserve requirement ratio on reservable liabilities of universal and commercial banks by 200 bp to 12 percent.

Analysts said that trimming policy rates could shield the Philippines from the ill effects of the pandemic on the economy, noting that this boosts liquidity, de-

mand for loans and investor confidence.

Apart from potential pandemic-induced recession, low oil prices could also keep the interest rates at the current level, the credit-rating agency added.

“The deflationary effects of a reduction in aggregate demand coupled with the decline in oil prices will keep interest rates depressed for the near future, from already low levels before the crisis,” the report said.

On top of low interest rates, the debt watcher said that measures being implemented by the government to contain the virus, such as the lockdowns, have also prompted businesses to suffer with revenue and profit dips.

The economic slowdown is seen weighing on the cash flow of the borrowers, with banks anticipating higher nonperforming loans this year.

See “Interest,” A2

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DEFICIT TO 9% OF GDP STIMULUS PACKAGE, BIG OR SMALL, MUST BE FOCUSED—EXPERTS

By Cai U. Ordinario

L

OCAL economists have expressed concern that if a stimulus package is too small, even more Filipinos will fall into poverty. On the other hand, a package that’s too big could lead to high leakage, robbing resources from those who need it the most.

Economists believe that the coronavirus 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic will set back the country’s efforts to reduce poverty rate to 14 percent by 2022—but a poorly targeted and insufficient stimulus may also have a similar outcome, if not worse.

On Tuesday, Sen. Ralph Recto, who served as the country’s Socioeconomic Planning Secretary during the Global Economic Crisis in 2009, recommended that the stimulus package of the government be increased to P1 trillion.

His views triggered differing reactions from economists sought for comment by the BusinessMirror.

“Government should not be reluctant to spend for health, safety nets and employment. That said, spending should likewise be targeted and efficient,” Action for Economic Reforms (AER) coordinator Filomeno Sta. Ana III told the BusinessMirror.

“Recto’s record on fiscal policy is poor; he favors populist spending that results in massive leakage. His proposal has to be scrutinized and vetted,” Sta. Ana added.

Scrutiny, regardless of size

WORK at the North Luzon Expressway Harbor Link C3-R10 Section project resumes today, after construction workers have all tested negative for Covid-19. They will remain on site until the project is completed on June 15. The segment is an elevated expressway touted to reduce travel time between Quezon City and Manila to 15 minutes. ROY DOMINGO

T

By Bernadette D. Nicolas

HE Executive’s proposed P170-billion fiscal stimulus program to keep the economy afloat amid the fallout from the pandemic will widen the country’s budget deficit to 9 percent of GDP, or P1.7 trillion based on constant 2018 prices.

Based on Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III’s presentation to lawmakers on Tuesday, the proposed program—a combination of the second phase of the Bayanihan to Heal As One Act and CREATE, the revised version of the Citira—has a combined value of P173 billion because he only included the total cost for Bayanihan II (P131 billion) and the immediate reduction of the corporate income

tax from 30 percent to 25 percent CIT (P41.96 billion). He did not include the P3.78 billion from the additional two-year sunset period for companies to keep enjoying existing fiscal incentives.

Citira, or the Corporate Income Tax and Incentives Rationalization Act approved in 2019 by the House of Representatives and pending in the Senate, has been

THE AER officer said that while the economy is in a good fiscal position, owing to the reforms the administration introduced in the past three year such as the tax reform program, a stimulus package should still be a targeted one.

He said even if the proposed stimulus package at the House of Representatives estimated at P568 billion is significantly smaller than Recto’s proposal, this should still be scrutinized for the sake of transparency and accountability.

Sta. Ana said that any stimulus package, regardless of the size, should be well targeted. He recommends that government spend the stimulus on increasing testing, strengthening the health care system and other expenses including PCR testing, contact tracing, PPE and masks.

He also recommended that funds be channeled to the continuation of cash and wage subsidies for those under quarantine, as well as on efforts that will increase job creation.

Continued on A2

See “Deficit ,” A2

Virus-fueled protectionist mode derails RCEP INDIA’S absence in some of the previous talks indicated that the trade deal is nowhere near conclusion, and it even spurred Japan to announce that it will not sign any agreement without India’s participation.

By Elijah Felice Rosales

I

T might be difficult to conclude the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) by the end of this year as planned, as parties are moving toward the direction of protecting their supply chains to the detriment of free trade.

In its Global Trade Monitor for

PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 50.7870

May, Moody’s said the coronavirus pandemic will accelerate the transfer of supply chains to regional and even domestic, from international. The health crisis, it argued, exposed the vulnerabilities of justin-time supply chain management, and this will likely trigger firms to relocate their factories closer to their final markets.

This shift in supply chains could delay the conclusion of the RCEP, as it is counterproductive to the objective of the agreement to liberalize trade.

“A move to more regional supply chains, which was already occurring in the auto[motive] and electronics sectors, could also accelerate, See “RCEP,” A2

A BICYCLE shop at the Port Area in Manila finds itself doing brisk business as the demand for bicycles increased with people returning to work with the easing of quarantine rules. With the fear of contracting the virus still in people’s minds, biking is gaining popularity as an alternative to public transport. ROY DOMINGO

n JAPAN 0.4714 n UK 62.1988 n HK 6.5525 n CHINA 7.1531 n SINGAPORE 35.8514 n AUSTRALIA 33.1588 n EU 55.4746 n SAUDI ARABIA 13.5270

Source: BSP (May 20, 2020)

News BusinessMirror

A2 Thursday, May 21, 2020

Mass tests still key to pandemic –lawmaker Continued from A8

For her part, Iloilo Rep. Janette LoretoGarin, citing relevant studies, said 40 percent to 50 percent of Covid-19 cases are asymptomatic.

“This allows the silent yet continuous spread of the virus. Worse, it was figured out that infected persons may become infectious two days before the onset of symptoms or even without symptoms at all,” she said.

“If left unidentified, the asymptomatic persons will unknowingly be transmitting the virus to people in the workplace and in their homes and communities,” Garin added.

With this, Garin pushed for the passage of House Bill 6707, or An Act Encouraging a Baseline Polymerase Chain Reaction Testing for Covid-19 Among Vulnerable Members of the Society.

Garin said the testing shall not exceed the amount of P1,700 for the government institution and P1,800 for private institution per asymptomatic vulnerable person tested.

In the same hearing, Health Undersecretary Ma. Rosario Vergeire said the government is continuously addressing the problem on the country’s testing capacity.

“Currently, our laboratories are choking because of the surge in the number of tests that are being done. We have hospitals which are waiting for the lab results of their patients for 10 to 14 days. Also, we have communities waiting for the results that were done among their constituents for a number of days already. We are prioritizing so that we could adjust to the capacity of our system,” she said.

Vergeire said the DOH has already created a team to fast-track the licensing process for laboratories. Jovee Marie N. Dela Cruz

RCEP… Continued from A1

as well as further shifts toward domestic production of critical goods, such as pharmaceuticals and food,” Moody’s said in the monitor. “Japan and India recently announced plans in this direction.”

It concluded, “RCEP aims to create the world’s largest free-trade bloc, but the coronavirus shock, in addition to diverging interests [between parties], highlights the difficulties in completing the agreement by the end of 2020.”

Moody’s also said there has been a fallout in negotiations between RCEP economies even before the pandemic erupted. India’s absence in some of the previous talks indicated that the trade deal is nowhere near conclusion, and it even spurred Japan to announce that it will not sign any agreement without India’s participation.

Last year the South Asian country opted out of the RCEP indefinitely, as its government raised issues against several provisions of the trade deal, most of which are on tariff reduction that it fears could injure domestic industries.

The development was played down by Philippine officials but raised the anxiety of exporters, as they fear it might cost them the opportunity to expand shipments to one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. After all, India is a market with a population of about 1.4 billion and an economy growing well above 7 percent yearly.

Without India, the conclusion of RCEP is now at the hands of member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.

The 15 remaining RCEP parties account for roughly 29 percent of the world economy, from around 32 percent when India was still part of the trade deal, according to Trade Secretary Ramon M. Lopez.

In 2018 RCEP countries, including India, comprised nearly half of the global population, 29.1 percent of world trade and about one-third of global investment inflows.

The RCEP covers trade in goods, services trade, investments, intellectual property, movement of people, e-commerce and dispute settlement, among others.

Negotiators are rushing to conclude and implement the trade deal, as it is seen to cushion the impact of the trade conflict between the United States and China. It is targeted to be signed by the end of this year.

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House may adopt Senate’s version of revised Citira bill

T

By Jovee Marie N. dela Cruz

O fast-track its approval, the chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means on Wednesday said the lower chamber is willing to adopt the Senate version of the modified Corporate Income Tax and Incentives Rationalization Act (Citira).

Albay Rep. Joey Sarte Salceda also backed the proposed changes to the second package of the comprehensive tax reform program on corporate income taxes and fiscal incentives.

No bicameral conference committee meeting is needed if the House adopts the Senate version of the modified Citira, or now the proposed Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises Act (CREATE).

“As long as the Senate’s final output is fiscally vetted, and without weird additions that threaten our financial position, we can go without a bicameral conference.

We are confident that the House submitted a very reasonable and very sound first draft. As long as they don’t compromise the overall fiscal health of the country,” said Salceda. “[Senate Committee on Ways and Means Chairperson] Pia [Cayetano] and I have an open line, as well as the economic managers.

So, the small details can be ironed out and the House will continue to provide insights. But, if the net revenue impact makes sense, we can adopt the Senate version. Kung ipasa nila bukas, bukas tapos na tayo [If they pass it tomorrow, then we finish tomorrow],” he said.

Revised bill

THE changes to the second package of tax reform, which will now be named CREATE—Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises Act—include an immediate cut in corporate income taxes by 5 percent starting July 2020, up to 2022, to be followed by a 1-percent cut every year until the rate reaches 20 percent, or 3 percent lower than the Asean average of around 23 percent.

Other amendments include a more universal net operating loss carryover (Nolco) provision, which will extend the carryover period of net losses in 2020 by two more years, prolonging the carryover period from three to five years. This will allow firms to utilize net losses in 2020 as additional deductions to their taxable income from 2021 to 2025.

“I broadly agree with the amendments [proposed by the economic managers]. Actually, I proposed that we cut CIT faster to help Covid-afflicted businesses even before the changes were made. So, with that critical input considered, it fits what I believe should be the tax policy counterpart of the economic recovery

plan. It’s P42 billion more money in hundreds of thousands of small businesses—[and, there’s no delay in] implementation, [because of its instant impact on the] bottom line. The cut is effective July 2020, if the Senate can manage to pass it before we go on break this June,” Salceda said.

“The House originally came up with an enhanced Nolco, but since the economy was doing okay then, we limited it as an incentive. Now all troubled enterprises, as long as they’re nonlarge, can avail themselves of the provision,” he said.

The Fiscal Incentives Review Board (FIRB), whose functions will be expanded under the bill, will also have the power to recommend the grant of longer tax incentives and nonfiscal incentives to deserving companies.

“That provision is best practice in countries like Vietnam.

During my committee hearings, some stakeholders would complain that we are unable to attract the likes of Samsung to the Philippines because of our tax incentives regime. That answers the concern.

We can now compete as much as we can if the opportunity is really worth our effort,” Salceda said.

Red Cross role in PHL mass testing cited F

OR the active role of the Philippine Red Cross (PRC) in the fight against the coronavirus 2019—specifically, by opening the biggest Covid-19 testing laboratory now doing almost half of the tests in the country—Sen. Richard J. Gordon, also PRC chairman, received praise from his peers.

At the hearing of the Senate Committee of the Whole, Minority Leader Franklin Drilon started the ball rolling by congratulating Gordon because “the Red Cross is contributing its share to nationbuilding,” noting the lower cost of the Red Cross Covid-19 test, or less than half of what hospitals are charging.

For his part, Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri pointed out how the Philippine Red Cross, which he is proud to be a member of, is getting way ahead by ramping up on testing centers.

“Senator Gordon is trying to ramp up almost all regions as well as city centers and they’ve done it in such a short time. More than anything, you provided the inspiration,

GORDON blood, sweat and tears to make it happen.

You showed everyone, especially government, that it can be done. No ifs or buts.

Congratulations, you have made all of us volunteers very proud,” he said.

Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian expressed amazement that 45 days after Gordon discussed the idea of a Red Cross laboratory, the laboratory is already opened and doing 45 percent of the country’s tests. He said Gordon showed that if there’s enough political will, it can be done.

“I’m also a Red Cross governor so I am very proud that Red Cross is leading the way in making sure that we have ample testing for our people,” Gatchalian said.

Senate President Pro-Tempore Ralph Recto also thanked Gordon for working with the Lipa city government to improve the testing capacity of Lipa City and the whole Batangas province.

“I also want to congratulate Sen. Dick Gordon. I was really monitoring the progress or the lack of progress of our testing facilities and I was so excited when I saw what he is doing. He made what seemed impossible, possible. So the Filipinos thank you,” Sen. Pia Cayetano, meanwhile said.

For his part, Gordon pinned the credit for the Red Cross success on the support and cooperation of all the people behind the operation, citing the Red Cross staff and volunteers, the donors, the people who helped the Red Cross raise resources and the government officials.

“The success of the Red Cross is the

success of all. The hardworking people that I really ran ragged, intimidated, you know, chastised, and they performed marvelously.

So, the Red Cross is pushing very hard.

Thank the Lord for giving us the vision and the energy, the drive for all our volunteers and staff and for all those who helped us to raise the resources so that we could do it,” the PRC chairman and CEO said.

“We have great cooperation from the government like I said, Vince Dizon has been spectacular of course, General Galvez has been a quiet as you say snappy general who has been doing the work. We have cooperation from the National Defense, we have chartered two PAL flights when the government allowed us to use a C130 to get our machines from China. There are a lot of other people, the Coast Guard in particular. I’d like to mention Admiral Garcia, who has been doing humongous work, along with his troops.... There are quite a few of them who support and this is the kind of country we have—everybody carrying the load,” he added.

Stimulus package, big or small, must be focused–experts Continued from A1

“Whether the amount is P568 billion or P1 trillion is a secondorder issue. What is important to ask: Is the spending sufficient, responsive, adequate and targeted to enhancing health-care capacity, preserving and creating jobs, providing social amelioration measures? So it is not only about the level of spending but also about the quality of spending,” Sta. Ana said.

Economist Calixto V. Chikiamco agreed and told the BusinessMirror that more than the amount of the stimulus, what is important is what will be funded by it.

Another consideration, Chikiamco said, would also depend on the extension of the variations of the community quarantine that were imposed on various locations nationwide.

The longer lockdowns are imposed, the greater the economic damage these will cause. Chikiamco said the government should implement more loose strategies to stop the virus and prevent further damage to the economy.

“I believe that the government should stop a virus suppression strategy with harsh lockdowns into a virus mitigation strategy with looser restrictions but with strict health standards,” Chikiamco said.

“The virus can’t be contained anymore. We just have to live with it. The cost of cure is worse than the cost of the disease,” he stressed.

Acerd: P1-T stimulus fine

MEANWHILE, Ateneo Center for Economic Research and Development (ACERD) Director Alvin P. Ang said their position was to allow the stimulus of P1 trillion.

He said that while the amount may be high compared to the proposal of the House of Representatives, this is needed especially in these extraordinary times.

This is especially the case considering that prior to the crisis, there were still a lot of poor Filipinos. Ang said the country was able to bring down poverty incidence to 16 percent in 2018 but it is likely that many are still living near the poverty line.

“Well for sure many people are affected even if poverty rate went down to 16 percent, it does not mean the incomes of those who were lifted out of poverty is high,” Ang said. “Many of them are just hovering above the poverty line.”

For this reason, the primary areas where the stimulus can and should be spent on are agriculture, infrastructure and health, according to Ang. The Ateneo de Manila University (ADMU) economists are recommending that the government turn to agriculture to drive the country’s recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic. (See: https://businessmirror. com.ph/2020/05/06/admu-economistssuggest-agri-driven-economy-for-phl-todeal-with-pandemic/)

Apart from promoting transparency and accountability, Ang said it is

also important to change the mindset of the government and even the beneficiaries. The program must be executed well and beneficiaries must “demand accountability.”

“No amount of money will suffice if there is no change in mindset among implementers and receivers of stimulus,” Ang said. “[There must be a] change [in] thinking from survival to how to thrive.”

Asuncion: Recto logic correct

FOR his part, Unionbank Chief Economist Ruben Carlo O. Asuncion said he agreed with Senator Recto’s logic of “forest fire” to justify increasing the stimulus package.

Asuncion said, for one, the unemployment outlook of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) may be conservative and thus, may not help in presenting a more accurate estimate of poverty incidence by 2022.

Chikiamco noted the government projects the unemployment rate to rise to 10 percent or 4.2 million unemployed. This, however, doesn’t count the underemployed.

Based on the January Labor Force Survey (LFS) results, the underemployment rate is 14.8 percent, equivalent to 6.32 million Filipinos who are looking for better jobs.

“If indeed a stimulus package will be insufficient, the outcome will be obvious, more people considered as poor,” Asuncion told the BusinessMirror.

“I agree with Senator Recto’s analogy of forest fire. I would like to add that

you don’t use a toothpick if you actually need a hammer,” he added.

In a statement on Tuesday, Recto said the stimulus package “should be as big and as bold as the problem it is addressing” and that “any piecemeal approach will just be wasting money without achieving the desired goals.”

Recto said he understands apprehensions against a package “with a large budgetary footprint, more so if it will be funded in part by loans.”

He said it would be better for the government to have a “one-time, big-time” pandemic response and resiliency package. Such will spare both Malacañang and Congress from “episodic and seasonal” passage of laws authorizing new rounds of spending.

A comprehensive package, Recto said, “will convey the comforting message to the nation that there is a longterm response. We have to give our people hope.”

In 2009 at the height of the Global Financial Crisis, the Arroyo administration approved a P300-billion Economic Resiliency Plan to prime the economy.

Then Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Recto said the stimulus included a private-sector stimulus of P20 billion through the reduction of corporate income tax to 30 percent from 35 percent, and P20 billion through higher income-tax exemptions to spur domestic consumption.

The stimulus prevented the country from recording a contraction in its economic growth in that year, one of a few to do so in Southeast Asia.

Interest…

Continued from A1

BSP, for its part, said the local banking system would be dealing with P556.6 billion worth of bad loans this year; and 50 percent to 80 percent of this amount is expected to be written off.

Shift to digital

MEANWHILE, Moody’s said that banks and other financial institutions that do not have digital offerings may find it hard to recover given that more customers are opting to transact online in observance of physical distancing.

The debt watcher said that demand for online commerce, contactless payments and electronic money transfers has since surged.

“Financial institutions whose offerings lack digital functionality will either suffer more rapid franchise attrition as customers seek to replicate their needs elsewhere, or they will be forced to enhance their product offerings very quickly,” it explained.

Moody’s said that customers would likely stick to digital platforms even after lockdowns are lifted due to user experience and utility.

Deficit…

11 pt

Continued from A1

recast to CREATE or Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises Act to take into account the devastating impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on business.

Acting Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Karl Kendrick Chua told the BusinessMirror that the expected additional deficit of 0.9 percent of GDP from their proposed fiscal stimulus program was not yet accounted for in the revised deficit-to-GDP ratio projection of the Cabinet-level Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC) this year at 8.1 percent of GDP or P1.56 trillion.

Sought to clarify if the expected additional deficit from the recovery program being proposed by economic managers was already included in the revised DBCC deficit projection, Chua said: “Additional, so max of 9.”

Of the expected additional deficit of 0.9 percent of GDP from recovery program, new programs under Bayanihan II will account for 0.67 percent of GDP while the “repackaged” Citira, now CREATE, will contribute an additional deficit of 0.23 percent of GDP, according to a separate document obtained by the BusinessMirror.

Despite increased deficit spending, the DBCC earlier said that the national government’s deficit-to-GDP ratio will remain in the median of comparable countries in Southeast and East Asia, among peers with similar credit ratings, and among other emerging market economies, as long as the ratio does not exceed 9.0 percent.

Below this threshold, the debt-toGDP ratio will be around 50 percent, far lower than the most recent peak of 71.6 percent in 2004.

The government’s revised deficit projection of P1.56 trillion or 8.1 percent of GDP is 2.8 percentage points higher than its previous estimate of 5.3 percent of GDP announced last March.

This, as the government expects revenue collection this year to go down to P2.61 trillion from the P3.17 trillion program previously approved by DBCC.

On the other hand, disbursements are estimated to increase to P4.18 trillion from the previous projection of P4.16 trillion due to higher government spending for Covid-19 initiatives.

Bayanihan II, CREATE cost: P176.7B

BASED on documents earlier obtained by the BusinessMirror, the Bayanihan II proposal of DBCC was estimated to cost the government a total of P131 billion, while the CREATE bill is seen to cost the government a total of P45.74 billion due to the immediate reduction of corporate income tax rate from the current 30 percent to 25 percent starting July this year (P41.96 billion) and the grant of additional 2-year sunset period to existing recipients and regional operating headquarters in giving up their incentives (P3.78 billion).

Overall, the proposed Bayanihan II and CREATE are set to cost the government a total of P176.74 billion this year.

The Executive’s proposed program was estimated by the economic managers, in an earlier powerpoint they presented to the House of Representatives, as representing an additional deficit of 0.9 percent of GDP or P160 billion.

Asked to explain the discrepancy on the combined value (P160 billion and P173 billion), a source said this was because a part of Bayanihan II is already in the 2020 budget. That is why the incremental value of P160 billion was the one accounted for when the economic managers computed for additional deficit.

“So, [the P160 billion is] incremental, or 0.9 percent of GDP,” the source told the BusinessMirror.

With a report from Cai. U. Ordinario

News BusinessMirror

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OWWA girds to send home 6,000 to 7,000 virus-free OFWs

Authorities bust ‘underground’ hospital for Chinese Covid-19 patients in Clark

By Ashley Manabat

By Samuel P. Medenilla @sam_medenilla

T

HE Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) is now preparing to transport and send home this week about 6,000 to 7,000 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) after completing their quarantine period and given Covid-19free certifications.

In a phone interview, OWWA Administrator Hans J. Cacdac told the BusinessMirror they are now coordinating with the Department of Transportation (DOTr) and the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) to complete the arrangements for the mass transport of the OFWs from different quarantine areas in Metro Manila and Batangas.

“At the rate we are going, we could hit around 7,000 to 8,000 [in our efforts to send home quarantined OFWs],” Cacdac said, stressing that the agency has already sent home about a thousand OFWs last Monday.

Covid-free

THE additional home-bound OFWs were among the 22,432 quarantined OFWs in the National Capital Region (NCR) and Batangas, whose reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests results were already completed by the Philippine Red Cross (PRC).

Chief implementer of the government’s national policy on Covid-19 Retired Gen. Carlito Galvez said 21,967 of those with RT-PCR results tested negative for Covid-19 and could go home as soon as they are issued with the necessary clearance from the Bureau of Quarantine (BOQ).

Among the Covid-19-free OFWs, 7,460 were already given certification by the BOQ. Cacdac said the 1,000 OFWs they were already able to send home belong to the said group. He said the BOQ-certified OFWs are either still waiting for government provided transportation, or were already sent home by their recruitment, or manning agencies.

Isolation measure

THE remaining 465 of the OFWs, who already have their test results, were found to be infected with Covid-19 and were brought to hospitals, or quarantine facilities.

Galvez noted had the Covid-19infected OFWs have not been identified, they could have triggered a second wave of Covid-19 infections in their home communities.

Cacdac said the OFWs, who tested positive Covid-19, will be given a P10,000 cash aid by OWWA once they recover from their sickness.

Galvez pointed out the government is currently rushing to send home all of the 30,918 quarantined OFWs in the NCR and Batangas in anticipation of the arrival in the coming week of 42,000 more repatriated OFWs in the country.

Correspondent

C

L A R K FR EEPORT—T he sprawling 300-hectare property of Fontana Leisure Parks here is now “closed and under full lockdown” after the discovery of an illicit hospital and pharmacy in one of its villas, catering exclusively to Chinese Covid-19 patients.

The Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) Regional Field Unit-3 (CIDG RFU-3), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Clark Development Corp. (CDC) and a crew of GMA News 7 conducted a joint operation on Tuesday, May 19, 2020, and raided a villa illegally operating as a makeshift medical facility.

As a result, the CDC ordered the closure and full lockdown of Fontana Leisure Park in this free port following the raid.

Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra, meanwhile, ordered the Bureau of Immigration (BI) to join the manhunt against Chinese nationals sought treatment at the illegal medical facility in Fontana.

Guevarra told reporters that these Chinese nationals whose whereabouts are now being determined by the police could still pose health risks to other individuals.

“I have instructed the BI to coordinate with the Philippine National Police and local government units in tracking down these Chinese and other nationals who sought treatment from this unauthorized medical facility in Pampanga and who could still be dangerously roaming around,” Guevarra said.

GUARDS from the Public Safety Division of Clark Development Corp. have been deployed at the gates of Fontana Leisure Parks after CDC officials ordered its closure due to violations on allowed business activities inside the leisure estate.

Guevarra said if found, these Chinese nationals will be brought to legitimate hospitals, or quarantine facilities for proper treatment, without prejudice to the filing of charges against those behind the illegal operation.

“This illegal activity not only violates the law but also poses danger to individuals who potentially need medical treatment for the deadly disease. CDC does not and will never tolerate this inside the Clark Freeport,” a statement re-

leased by CDC on Wednesday read.

Arrested in the raid were two Chinese nationals identified as Ling Hu, 45, the alleged owner and Seung-Hyun Lee, 38, the alleged pharmacist. They were taken to PNP Regional Office in Camp Olivas, City of San Fernando.

Aside from the operators who are now facing criminal charges, the CDC will also hold into account the management of Fontana for allowing the illegal facility to operate within their property.

M

“We assure Clark stakeholders, the locators, local communities and residents, especially, that we will not stop until all those involved are prosecuted and punished,” the CDC statement added.

The villa at No. 628 Florida Street was illegally operating as a makeshift medical facility and pharmacy for Chinese patients.

A GMA News 7 footage showed an illegal pharmacy stocked with drugs wrapped with Chinese character labels reportedly being used to treat

Covid-19 symptoms. The report said the Chinese medicine stocks do not have any permit from the FDA. The news footage also showed used syringe, used tubes and used container bottles, as well as other medical wastes in plastic bin containers within the premises.

CIDG deputy director for administration, Brig. Gen. Rhoderick Armamento, said the illegal facility exclusively caters to Chinese patients who are afflicted with the virus.

He stressed it is imperative that patients who were positive with Covid-19 that were treated there should be traced and recovered by authorities.

“Hahanapin natin kung sino-sino ang naging positibo dito at hindi natin alam na sila pala ay magaling na o sila ay patuloy parin nanghahawa ng virus dahil sa pagkakaalam nila nagamut na sila,” Armamento said.

The so-called underground hospital has also no permit from the Department of Health and the InterAgency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases in order to operate.

During the raid, a Chinese patient was discovered in the illegal facility and was brought to the hospital by the raiding team.

The two suspects who were arrested in the raid declined to issue any comment.

Armamento said charges of violation of RA 9711, or the Food and Drug Administration Act of 2009, and violation of RA 2382, or the Medical Act of 1958, for operating a hospital without any permit.

In the meantime, the CIDG is now looking into the identities of the cohorts of the arrested suspects.

DBM sets higher IRA share for LGUs in ’21 briefs

By Bernadette D. Nicolas @BNicolasBM

L

OCAL government units (LGUs) are set to receive higher internal revenue allotment shares for 2021 as the total IRA level next year increased to P695.49 billion.

According to Local Budget Memorandum 80 issued by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), the 2021 IRA level is 7.18 percent higher than P648.92 billion allotted this year.

Broken down, the bulk of IRA, or 34 percent (P236.47 billion), will go to 1,488 municipalities, 23 percent, or P159.96 billion, will be allotted to 82 provinces, 23 percent or P159.96 billion, will go to 146 cities and the remaining 20 percent, or P139.1 billion will go to 41,931 barangays, according to the May 18 document signed

by Budget Secretary Wendel E. Avisado.

Citing the provision under the Republic Act 7160 or the Local Government Code, the DBM also reminded LGUs that the IRA and other local resources shall first cover the cost of providing basic services and facilities, particularly those devolved by the Department of Health, Department of Social Welfare and Development, Department of Agriculture, and Department of Environment and Natural Resources,

as well as other agencies of the national government, before applying the same for other purposes.

Each LGU shall also appropriate in its annual budget no less than 20 percent of its IRA for development projects, which is commonly known as the 20-percent Development Fund.

Given the uncertainty as to when the Covid-19 pandemic will finally be over, the budget department also encouraged LGUs to continue to provide funds for Covid-19 related programs, projects, activities (PPAs) and expenses, as may be necessary.

“The Covid-19 related PPAs and expenses that may be funded by the LGUs may include those that are related to the prevention of the spread of Covid-19, and the provision of basic services to the affected population, including the necessary support to frontline workers,” the DBM said.

In addition to the IRA, some LGUs are entitled to special shares in the proceeds of national taxes.

These include share in the proceeds from the utilization and development of national wealth within their territorial jurisdiction; excise tax on Virginia tobacco cigarettes, excise tax on Burley and Native tobacco products; gross income taxes paid by all businesses and enterprises within the ecozones; value-added taxes and share in fire code fees.

MERP benefits 114,828 Makati City residents AKATI Mayor Abby Binay said on Wednesday the city government has already rolled out its P5,000 cash assistance to 114,828 qualified individuals, one week after the implementation of the Makatizen Economic Relief Program (MERP).

Under MERP, qualified Makati residents are entitled to P5,000 cash assistance as part of the city’s relief efforts to mitigate the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“I am happy to report that we have already rolled out our cash assistance to over 114,800 residents in just six working days.

This has been made possible through the digital platforms we have utilized to reach more beneficiaries faster,” Mayor Abby said in a news statement.

The city government has partnered with

Editor: Vittorio V. Vitug • Thursday, May 21, 2020 A3

GCash for the contactless and efficient delivery of financial assistance to residents.

Mayor Abby also noted that out of some 250,000 applications received since she announced the program, 142,267 have been approved. She added that around 10,000 applications were rejected by GCash due to incomplete and incorrect information submitted by the applicants.

She said those with rejected applications will receive a call, or text message, explaining why their application was rejected, and what appropriate steps they can take to get approved. “There is no need to panic because we have allotted enough budget for the program to cover 500,000 residents,” Mayor Abby said.

She encouraged Makatizens to apply online for the program via the Makatizen App

or the www.proudmakatizen.com portal, giving assurance that the processing of online applications is now faster. “Online applicants who qualify can receive their P5,000 in six working days after they register,” she said.

Residents can also visit the portal to view the status of their application for Makatizen Card. They just need to enter the application tracking number to access the application status. If they have submitted a hard copy, they need to go to the MyMakati Facebook page, send a message and ask for their tracking number.

To qualify as a beneficiary of the program, one must be at least 18 years old and a resident of Makati, or any of the relocation sites managed by the city government of Makati in San Jose del Monte City, Bulacan and Calauan, Laguna.

SENATE URGED TO HASTEN PASSAGE OF MODIFIED C.I.T. MEASURE HOUSE Deputy Speaker for Finance Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte called on the Senate to fast-track the approval of a modified version of the bill lowering corporate income tax (CIT) to 25 percent this year to attract foreign investors moving out from China.

Villafuerte, in a news statement, also called on the Department of Trade and Industry and the Board of Investments to work double time on conducting road shows abroad to attract these investors.

Aside from a bigger CIT cut, Villafuerte said the modified Corporate Income Tax and Incentives Rationalization Act , or Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises Act bill now being pushed

by President Duterte’s economic managers to help businesses amid the Covid-induced crisis provides for the retention of certain tax incentives. Jovee Marie N. Dela Cruz

NAVY COMMEMORATES SOLEMN 122ND ANNIVERSARY THE Philippine Navy commemorated on Wednesday its 122nd year anniversary in a “simple, solemn and austere” celebration due to the prevailing Covid-19 pandemic.

The ceremony, led by Navy chief Vice Admiral Giovanni Carlo Bacordo, began with a flagraising ceremony, with the flag flown at half-mast, simultaneously in all Navy units across the country and followed by a prayer, a one minute of silence and synchronized blowing of ships’ horns and sirens.

The opening activities were made in order to pay tribute to all medical workers and other frontline personnel in the battle against the novel coronavirus, especially those who have been lost by the Navy, including the longtime member of the Nany board of advisers, Dr. Aileen Baviera, and Navy reservist Petty Officer Second Class (PO2) Simplicio Dasargo. Rene Acosta

HOUSE OKs LOAN INTEREST CONDONATION BILL FOR FARMERS, FISHERFOLK

THE House of Representatives on Wednesday approved on third and final reading the bill seeking to condone the unpaid interest and penalties secured by farmers, fisherfolk and agrarian reform beneficiaries from lending programs of the government.

Voting 209 affirmative and 0 negative, lawmakers passed the House Bill 5083, or an Act Providing for the Restructuring and Condonation of Unpaid Interests, Penalties, and Surcharges on loans secured by the beneficiaries from the Department of Agrarian Reform, Department of Agriculture, People’s Credit

and Finance Corporation, Cooperative Development Authority, National Food Authority, and the Quedan and Rural Credit Guarantee Corp.

HB 5083 will now be transmitted to the Senate for its own deliberations. Jovee Marie N. Dela Cruz

DICT, ARTA TIE-UP PROMOTES EASE IN DOING BUSINESS AMID PANDEMIC

THE Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) has partnered with the Anti-Red Tape Authority (Arta) for the adoption of digital signatures that will facilitate public service continuity and promote ease of doing business even while the country is still in several levels of quarantine.

In a news statement, DICT Secretary Gregorio B. Honasan II said his group sought the participation of Arta in the department’s Philippine National Public Key Infrastructure (PNPKI). This will facilitate the digitization of signatures of the agency’s key personnel.

“We respectfully offer this service to Arta as we believe they are the most suitable agency to advocate for the use of digital signatures with their mandate to promote public trust and efficiency in the delivery of public services,” he said.

PNPKI allows users of public networks like the Internet to exchange private data securely. It is said to be essentially a set of hardware, software, policies, personnel and procedures needed to create, manage, distribute, use, store and revoke digital certificates.

Lorenz S. Marasigan

CRYPTOCURRENCY TRADER NABBED FOR ESTAFA IN PARAÑAQUE A FILIPINO freelance businessman reportedly engaged in cryptocurrency trading who is being sought by some complainants in the Philippines and Singapore was arrested by Pasay City in an operation in Parañaque City.

The suspect was identified as Malvin Kistiakowsky Chaneco Tianchon, 29, of 9006-69 Recto Extension, Villamor Air Base, Pasay City.

Tianchon is the subject of a warrant of arrest issued on March 11, 2020, by Jose Lorenzo Dela Rosa, Presiding Judge of Regional Trial Court Branch 117 of Pasay City.

In his report, National Capital Region Police Office chief Maj. Gen. Debold Sinas said Tianchon is accused of criminal Case R-PSY-20-00995-CR with no bail recommended for the crime of estafa in relation to Republic Act 10175, or The Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012. Rene Acosta

TheBroa

Business

A4 Thursday, May 21, 2020 | www.businessmirror.com.ph

PHL health system’s howling iss

By Cai U. Ordinario, @cuo_bm,

Bernadette D. Nichol @BNicolasBM, Reporters

& Jeremaiah M. Opiniano,

T

Contributor

HE foot-thick walls of Catanduanes province’s biggest health facility have withstood winds howling from the east. Then Covid-19 Patient No. 25 walked inside, and the echoes of her cough made the walls seemingly tremble.

Protocols were followed, according to Eastern Bicol Medical Center (EBMC) Hospital Chief Dr. Vietrez D. Abella. Using outdated machines, they confirmed the 63-year-old female patient’s fever and complaints of sore throat are symptoms of the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) infection.

Patient 25 also admitted to having returned from a trip to Japan.

However, the two-storey EMBC didn’t have an isolation room. The hospital scrambled to build one but acquiring construction materials proved to be another uphill battle.

Lumber supply was out of stock from the very few hardware stores that still opened under Luzon island’s enhanced community quarantine (ECQ). Luckily, the province’s environment officer donated 80 pieces of 2x2x12 wood.

An online appeal was made: the Level-II apex hospital needed facemasks, alcohol and personal protective equipment (PPE) sets for its health workers, Maria Angela Valeza posted on Facebook.

Generosity from provincemates poured and kept pouring in for the EMBC, located in Catanduanes capital Virac.

Abella said all the staff was ordered to go on 14-day quarantine.

However, those outside of EMBC’s aegis didn’t, as health workers in Catanduanes soldiered on to confront an unseen enemy that quietly invaded a serene islandparadise called “The Land of the Howling Winds.”

Indeed, Patient 25’s medical condition not only rattled the state of affairs at EBMC: it also showed the shaky foundations of a public hospital and the country’s health system.

Resource generation

THE 100-bed Center had to be innovative given the pandemic.

Abella said temporary triage and holding areas were set up for suspected patients.

Rooms in the pay ward (including an operating room and a delivery room) became temporary isolation rooms. It is in these temporary rooms where the 80 pieces of lumber were used.

EMBC then started “gate-keeping” by prioritizing cases “appropriate to its level of care as a general hospital with medical specialists,” Abella tells this newspaper. Those with mild respiratory infections, gastroenteritis and simple urinary tract infections were referred to Level 1 and district hospitals in Virac, Pandan, San Andres, Caramoran, Viga and Gigmoto (one per municipality, for a total of six).

On May 3, the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) handed to EMBC one of six Covid-19 specimen booths for the entire Bicol region. This whitepaneled booth, with glass encasing and two rubberized black gloves, now greets visitors at the EMBC.

In some ways, EMBC is holding on; not so the provincial government.

Last May 11, the provincial legislative council unanimously approved a resolution reverting the EMBC back to the Department of Health (DOH) as a provincial hospital.

Economic enterprise

SINCE the capitol released Ordinance 2010-001 declaring the EMBC a local government-run economic enterprise, the Center has been suffering “heavy economic losses” the last few years, according to Provincial Board Member Santos V. Zafe.

Speaking in a personal capacity, Abella confirmed that the hospital “had serious cash flow issues” that led to delayed salaries from 2013 to 2016.

Not surprisingly, some island residents have complained of poor services from EMBC. While it is easy to refer cases to other hospitals in the province or in mainland Luzon, situations of lockdown and referral for Catanduganons with severe cases would require them to take a three-hour to four-hour ride via ferry.

And if EMBC would like to be a fully-functioning hospital that complies with DOH standards, the average resources it needs from now until 2024 is P229 million —a fifth of the province’s annual budget.

Fighting Covid-19

THE Philippines’ army of public hospitals and local governmentowned rural health units (RHUs) and barangay hea lt h centers (BHCs) are on their toes fighting the pandemic. Privately-run health facilities, the ones with reputedly better medical care, have also joined the fray.

But even if these 1,224 hospitals, 2,581 RHUs and 20,216 BHCs —in locked lands and in island communities, both densely and sparsely populated— band together, they are all burdened.

The weight of this burden is systemically seen: unequal access to better care; decrepit public health facilities; fragmented, u n c o o rd i n at e d he a lt h m a n agement across geog raph ies; a nd , u nder -resou rced hea lt h programs. There’s also largely household-driven health spending that drives away the poor and drains moneyed folk and the unwieldy regulation of health interventions.

Assessments past and present

by Filipino health policy experts and practitioners about the systemic issues of the Philippine health system are like Catanduanes’ howling winds during typhoons: they still shriek.

Ongoing battle

INDEED, the pandemic exposed

the sordid state of the country’s hea lth system, which for mer health secretary Manuel M. Dayrit described as “not modernized.”

“Our system is not ready (for the pandemic),” this former director of the World Health Organization (WHO) told a virtual hearing by the House of Representatives mid-April. “We have to admit that [that] is the description of [our] health system.”

Such frank assessment lurks as countries’ health officials— during the recent virtual World Health Assembly last May 18 to May 19—said they continue to find ways to fight SARS-CoV-2 with what they have and with the way their health systems are run.

These economies’ ongoing battle against Covid-19 also comes at the heels of the Philippines’ first full-year foray into universal health care after the signing of Republic Act 11223 in February last year.

Real costs

THE cost of two short jeepney rides per day is all it took for every Filipino to pay for their daily health needs in 2018. But the truth is, this cost is too high a price, being on top of their food and non-food needs.

Based on the latest Philippine National Health Accounts (PNHA) data, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) estimated that individual Filipinos’ health in 2018 grew by 6.6 percent to P7,496. In real terms, and using 2018 as base year, per capita health expenditure of Filipinos amounted to P6,391.

But even under a new base year to compute expenditures made by the economy, this trend persists: households still accounted for the bulk of health expenses made. Of the P766.86-billion health spending made in 2018, more than half (58.6 percent) or P449.17 billion was spent by households through out-of-pocket (OOP) payments.

The national government only spent 29.8 percent (P228.86 billion) of the total, while corporations spent 2.6 percent or P20.11 billion in 2018.

Using old-base years to compute total health expenditures, comparable PNHA data from 1994 to 2014 (excluding unavailable 2006 data) showed OOP payments from households make up an average of 50.41 percent of total health expenditures.

Average national government spending for health is 15.98 percent; it’s 14.78 percent for local governments; and, is 7.97 percent from the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth).

Measure reformed

PAYMENTS for health care were previously made through fee-forpayment schemes.

This measure was reformed in 2013 through PhilHealth’s mandating of case rates. But Dayrit and three other health experts wrote in a 2018 assessment of the country’s health system that such case rates approach “has not resulted [in] technical efficiency, much less financial protection.”

“Health facilities can set their own service charges and then bill the patient whatever share of the service charge that isn’t covered by the PhilHealth case rate,” wrote Dayrit, Liezel P. Lagrada, Oscar F. Picazo, Melahi C. Pons and Mario C. Villaverde in the WHO-funded 2018 Philippine Health System Review.

Most of the OOP payments are for medicines, what with pre-RA 11223 benefits of PhilHealth not covering a comprehensive outpatient primary care benefit, Dr. Ramon Pedro Paterno of the University of the Philippines explained.

“A failure in spending enough at the lower levels of health care leads to higher spending at the higher levels,” said Paterno, a research faculty for UP’s Institute of Health Policy and Development Studies.

High fixed ceiling

ON one hand, rising OOP spending may mean Filipinos are trying to pay for better but more expensive medical care, according to a 2017 report by the UPecon Foundation of the UP School of Economics.

On the other hand, because a PhilHealth benefit has a high fixed ceiling, the support value of such benefit “declines as total health care bills increase.”

“This pressure increases as both public and private (health) facilities respond to rising demand,” physicians Carlo Irwin A. Panelo and Rebecca Q. Ramos and economists Orville C. Solon and Alejandro N. Herrin wrote in the report.

Historically-rising OOP shares to total health expenditures is not only a households’ response to the fee-for-service system. Panelo and colleagues wrote the health system “misses out on the efficiency gains of risk pooling,” or sharing the burden of health costs.

“Individual families will have to set aside resources equivalent to the average cost of hospitalization in the face of health risks,” the authors of “The Challenge of Reaching the Poor with a Continuum of Care: A 25-Year Assessment of the Philippine Health Sector” said.

Un s u r pr i s i ng ly, t a rget i ng health services for the poor is not done effectively while support for their health needs coming from public funds also inadequate. Panelo and colleagues wrote: “Moreover, when budgets are lacking, public facilities will increasingly rely on ‘outside purchases.’”

Entire sector

PHILHEALTH Vice President for Corporate Affairs Shirley B. Domingo told a May 15 webinar by the Filipino-run group Rights Corridor the new UHC law now provides inpatient and outpatient benefits to all Filipinos. All Filipinos are now mandatory members of PhilHealth, the country’s social-health insurer.

As for payments, Domingo says the new UHC will lead to better risk pooling of health expenses given the prospective implementation of PhilHealth’s “fixed payment rate.”

In this new approach, patients and their families will now know how much to shell out.

However, Domingo tells webinar participants that Filipino workers at home and abroad are required to pay premiums. These premiums have increments annually, from this year up to 2024, which can reach up to five percent of one’s monthly salary.

Local workers (classified by PhilHealth as “direct contributors”) and their employers pay equal share to a worker’s PhilHealth premiums through auto-

matic salary deductions.

Meanwhile, those called “indirect contributors” of PhilHealth membership, such as workers in the informal economy and overseas Filipinos, will bear the full costs of monthly premiums.

Apart from the PhilHealth premium payments, national and local tiers of government subsidize health care for senior citizens, indigents and people with disabilities (PWDs). Health funds also get allocations from the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (40 percent of PCSO’s charity fund) and the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (50 percent of Pagcor’s share). Republic Act 10351 or the sin tax law had also provided earnings for health.

All these revenue sources are “attributed to the entire health sector,” Undersecretary Tina Rose Marie L. Canda of the Department of Budget and Management told the BusinessMirror.

A small base

TO implement the gradual reforms of the UHC law, Health Secretary Francisco T. Duque III and Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez said the country needs P1.44 trillion. Earmarked thus far is P1.01 trillion. That is why both officials asked Congress a year ago that excise tax rates for tobacco and liquor be raised to cover the financing gap of P426 billion.

Nevertheless, government appropriations and taxes —not Phil-

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A5

sues hamper fight vs pandemic coordination between and among public and private health care providers for Filipinos’ primary health care needs—from initial diagnosis to recovery and palliative care.

Since 1992, the health system had become “pluralistic” in service delivery, Dayrit and colleagues wrote.

As well, the more endowed Philippine regions have the better health care facilities and equipment. Meanwhile, given the presence of 90,308 nurses, 40,775 doctors, 43,044 midwives, and 13,413 medical technologists nationwide, these health workers are abundant in developed regions and sparse in poorer Philippine regions, Panelo’s report wrote.

Thus, this “pluralistic” health system led to variations in health service delivery, with lagging regions behind in providing quality care, Panelo wrote.

Geographic factors also hinder delivering quality care, like the remoteness of mountainous regions and remote islands, according to Abrigo. Calimag added that high security risks prompt health workers to also avoid these areas.

Slipped goals

Artists paint an image of Darna, a fictional Filipino comics superhero, wearing a protective mask and scrub suit to honor health workers and frontliners in their fight against the new coronavirus on a building in Manila, Philippines on Monday, May 18, 2020. Crowds and vehicular traffic returned to shopping malls in the Philippine capital after a two-month coronavirus lockdown was partially relaxed over the weekend, prompting police to warn of arrests and store closures. AP/Aaron Favila

Health premiums— must be the main source of funds for UHC so as to slash high OOP share to total health expenditures, Paterno said Citing a WHO study on global health financing, Paterno said lowand middle-income countries like the Philippines must have government appropriations as “the main source of compulsory revenues for the health system.” This is because the country has a visible number of informal workers and poor families.

PhilHealth premiums will not be enough to finance UHC, Paterno said, “given the structure of the economy and a small levy base.”

“Innovative health financing” schemes such as sin taxes are also not enough, Paterno said adding that OOP payments are also “a regressive way to fund health services.”

Localized system

BUT even as efforts to reform health financing are being done, a bigger elephant in the room is the archipelago with thousands of localized health systems.

The 1991 Local Government Code (Republic Act 7160) had devolved many health services to LGUs. This led to the creation of provincial, city and health offices while expanding the number of RHUs and BHCs to tailor health interventions to local health needs.

Since 1992, DOH has been providing nationwide policy direction, health standards and guidelines as well as highly-specialized,

specific tertiary health services through the tertiary hospitals the agency manages.

Some experts blame the devolution of health service delivery for failing to address the needs of the poor, and even for fragmented health interventions and financing.

Turning back

PANELO and colleagues (in the UPecon Foundation of the UP School of Economics report) wrote that since LGUs are less-capable handling of health needs, they had fragmented the “previously integrated network of public health facilities, personnel and budget.”

Health devolution had all but weakened the ability of local health care systems to deliver health services, especially to the poorest, they added.

De La Salle University economist Maria Ella C. Oplas agrees: resource issues encountered by hospitals like EBMC are mainly rooted in this fragmented health system.

Many LGUs are ill-equipped to search for health funds, are short of manpower, and even have networks to access private sector funds “which could come in handy in dire straits,” Oplas said.

That’s why “some hospitals actually want to go back under DOH jurisdiction again,” she added.

Dayrit and his colleagues also said that devolution “increased health service coverage, includ-

ing facility-based deliveries and utilization of inpatient and outpatient care.”

Health access

HOWEVER, Michael Ralph M. Abrigo of the Philippine Institute of Development Studies (PIDS) said devolution is not the “root cause” why the Philippine health system is egregious.

Abrigo said increased health access have led “to positive impacts on health outcomes, when we consider (findings from) betterdesigned research.”

Even decentralization and some increases in LGUs’ annual budgets for health “did not result to better health-seeking behaviors,” Abrigo said citing a PIDS study on pregnant women.

The greater amount of LGUs for health “does not readily translate to greater health expenditures as local governments may have other [development] priorities,” Abrigo told the BusinessMirror.

Local hospitals like EMBC are left to find means to become economically viable.

According to �Abella, around 70 percent of EBMC’s annual income comes from reimbursement of PhilHealth claims. The rest comes from non-cash assistance from a DOH program for health facilities and from the PCSO.

Suffering cuts

ACCORDING to University of Santo Tomas Medical Professor Dr.

Maria Minerva P. Calimag, politics also contributed to the problems surrounding health devolution.

While the DOH budget posted a 2.98-percent growth to P100.56 billion under the 2020 General Appropriations Act (GAA) from P97.65 billion in 2019, there were budget cuts for health facilities.

The area that suffered the largest budget cut was the Epidemiology and Surveillance Program (ESP). The budget for ESP in 2020 was slashed by 56.08 percent to P115.51 million from P262.997 million.

Locally, Abrigo adds, generally low resources of LGUs are reflected in not just health funds but also in other basic services locally.

“Our presumption, when we devolved health, was that there is integrity within the system: there’s no conflict of interest [and] there’s transparency, accountability and good governance,” said Calimag, a former president of the Philippine Medical Association. �She said health should be the priority of the government and the highest budget should be allocated to it.

“At the end of the day, if your people are sickly, apart from spending higher amounts for further care, you have lost manpower on other things that needed to be done,” Calimag said.

Yawning issue

WHAT health devolution may have also contributed is the problematic

THE “devolved” health system may have inadvertently led to citizens’ disturbing health conditions.

Panelo and colleagues bared in their report that health targets for maternal, infant and child mortality, child under-nutrition and tuberculosis under the old Millennium Development Goals were not met.

Devolution also negatively affected the ability of local health systems to respond to emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases (Ereids), like Covid-19.

Even before Covid-19, Panelo and colleagues had doubted the ability of the country to respond effectively to challenges from disease outbreaks. Their 2017 assessment even called on government to “ build capacities to respond to Ereids” as overseas Filipinos and tourists will be the next pathogen carriers.

And the poor will be more vulnerable from community-level disease transmission “owing to weaker health status, lack of knowledge of the disease, poor health-seeking behavior and limited access to health services, including that for surveillance and containment of emerging diseases,” Panelo and colleagues wrote.

Targeted risks

GIVEN these realities, Domingo said the UHC law will see DOH implementing a functional “Service Delivery Network,” or SDN. This platform is expected to integrate the network of fragmented health care providers in an area’s health system.

The SDN will integrate private and publicly-run health facilities, diagnostic centers, laboratories pharmacies into a “primary care provider network” so that referred patients’ needs are facilitated and addressed even when they’re recuperating in home communities, Domingo said.

The SDN will also be operationalizing an approach called “Konsultasyong Sapat at Tama,” or Konsulta (consult), covering both private and public health facilities. Covered in Konsulta are initial and follow-up consultations, targeted health risk screening and assessment, some diagnostic tests and some medicines, Domingo explained during the May 15 webinar.

She added these reform measures under the UHC law will be gradually implemented from 2020 up to 2024, coinciding with the

new premium rates for PhilHealth.

Per-year changes include the following: expanding primary care benefits (2021); expanding such benefits to include emergency services and outpatient drugs (2022); integrating the SDN (2023); and, increasing the support value for inpatient care and for addressing debilitating diseases, and integrating health care financing and patient referral (2024 onwards).

“UHC is a very nice (health) reform measure,” Domingo told webinar participants, “that addresses risk pooling (of expenses) and builds social solidarity for the health needs of those who can’t afford.”

Eye-opener

THE Panelo assessment report of 2017 and the Dayrit report of 2018 had many wish lists for the country’s health system.

Common recommendations include consolidating national and local health care financing; strengthening the capacities of health facilities and their workers under a localized, fragmented health system set-up; and, implementing the SDN. Meanwhile, recent international assessments on national health systems’ response to infectious diseases are giving eye-openers to Filipino health authorities.

Last February, The Nuclear Threat Initiative and the Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health released results of the 2019 Global Health Security Index to assess countries’ readiness to biological threats and infectious diseases. The Philippines ranked 53rd out of 195 countries with an index score of 47.6.

That Index had six indicators: prevention from pathogens; detection and reporting of epidemics; rapid response and mitigation of epidemics; risk environment and vulnerability to biological threats; compliance with international norms on health capacity and financing; and sufficient and robust health system. The Philippines scored the lowest in the “health system” (sub-indicator score: 38.2) and “prevention” (38.5) indicators.

A major player in the fight against the pandemic is the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM). This DOH unit got P519 million in this year’s budget, spearheading the nation’s Covid-19 testing efforts.

Making do

FOR now, the Philippines contends with nearly-13,000 Covid-19 cases, including deaths and recoveries. Over 1,500 health workers have contracted the deadly virus. More than 30,000 overseas Filipino workers, displaced from their host countries and from their ships, have been repatriated.

The hospitals and health facilities in the richer provinces, cities and municipalities not only have more Covid-19 cases; they’re heavily burdened. Contrast this to the burden of developed reg ions and 42 prov inces, like Catanduanes, with no or limited Covid-19 cases.

In the meantime, health facilities in provinces like Catanduanes would have to make do with the support of politicians and private donors.

And the May 11 resolution of the province’s legislative council, a funding window was shut.

Indeed, the country’s health system must rely not on cash but the compassion and profession of professional health workers.

They form the only abundant resource this country has to be strong against the howling winds of Covid-19.

A6 Thursday, May 21, 2020 • Editor: Angel R. Calso

Opinion BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

editorial

What if a vaccine is never developed?

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here are around seven or eight “top” candidates for a vaccine to combat Covid-19 and work on them is being accelerated, according to World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. He said the original thinking two months ago was that it may take 12 to 18 months for a vaccine to be developed. Last week, he said an accelerated effort is under way, helped by $8 billion pledged by leaders from 40 countries, organizations and banks for research, treatment and testing. “Since January, WHO has been working with thousands of researchers all over the world to accelerate and track vaccine development from developing animal models to clinical trial designs and everything in between,” he said.

That sounds like good news for a global economy flattened by Covid-19.

The Asian Development Bank said the pandemic could inflict losses in the global economy of up to $8.8 trillion. The head of the International Labor Organization said 305 million full-time jobs will be lost around the world by June 30. ILO Director-General Guy Ryder compared this to the 22 million full-time jobs lost when the financial crisis hit in 2008 to 2009, which means the pandemic is not only killing people but also ravaging livelihoods as well.

Economists said any recovery is likely to be subdued until a vaccine or effective treatments have tamed the virus.

As people all over the world hope that a vaccine will eventually be developed, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said this might not come at all.

He wrote in The Daily Mail on Sunday: “I said we would throw everything we could at finding a vaccine. There remains a very long way to go, and I must be frank that a vaccine might not come to fruition.”

That no effective vaccine will be developed for Covid-19 despite the huge global effort to produce one is a worst-case possibility nobody is prepared to accept. If a vaccine can’t be produced, life will not go back to the good old days.

In a World Economic Forum article—“Coronavirus: What if a vaccine doesn’t work?”—medical experts Tammy Hoffman and Paul Glasziou raise their concerns over the lack of contingency planning if a vaccine isn’t found, and what alternatives the global community should consider.

The world has bet most of its research funding on finding a vaccine and effective drugs. That effort is vital, they said, but it must be accompanied by research on how to target and improve the nondrug interventions that are the only things that work so far.

In an article published in edition.cnn.com—“What happens if a coronavirus vaccine is never developed? It has happened before”—author Rob Picheta said in 1984, the US Secretary of Health and Human Services Margaret Heckler announced at a press conference in Washington, D.C., that scientists had successfully identified the virus that later became known as HIV—and predicted that a preventative vaccine would be ready for testing in two years. “Nearly four decades and 32 million deaths later, the world is still waiting for an HIV vaccine.”

Dr. David Nabarro, a professor of global health at Imperial College London, who also serves as a special envoy to the World Health Organization on Covid-19 said: “There are some viruses that we still do not have vaccines against. We can’t make an absolute assumption that a vaccine will appear at all, or if it does appear, whether it will pass all the tests of efficacy and safety.”

As countries all over the world are announcing their plans to emerge from virus-inflicted lockdowns, medical experts are also pushing governments to implement an awkward new way of living and interacting to buy the world time in the months, years or decades until a vaccine can eliminate Covid-19. “It is absolutely essential to work on being Covid-ready,” Nabarro said. He called for a new “social contract” in which citizens in every country, while starting to go about their normal lives, take personal responsibility to self-isolate if they show symptoms or come into contact with a potential Covid-19 case because the virus could be with us for many years into the future.

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Imagineering the future of elections James Jimenez

spox

D

espite the threat of Covid-19, the National and Local Elections of 2022—a Presidential race, in case that little fact has slipped your mind—will most likely still involve more than 45 million voters, crowding into less than 100,000 polling places nationwide. Even two years down the road, those are still ideal conditions for a coronavirus super-spreader scenario.

To cut down on the number of people going to polling places and potentially spreading or catching Covid-19, we really ought to be looking seriously at two existing alternatives to in-person voting: absentee voting and voting-by-mail.

As currently practiced, absentee voting is only available to government employees who have been called on to perform election duties, and members of the media. This is accomplished by sending blank absentee ballots to the heads of office—including commanding officers in the case of police and military personnel—who are then tasked to conduct the elections in their respective government offices or units.

After the ballots are filled out, they are then returned—by the heads of office again—to the Comelec.

Members of the media seeking to vote in absentia, on the other hand, are simply told to go to the Comelec office where they filed their applications for absentee voting. The voting period for both runs three days,

and take place well in advance of election day.

Voting-by-mail or postal voting, on the other hand, simply involves mailing blank ballots to qualified voters and waiting for those ballots to be mailed back. The voting period runs for 30 days, with the end coinciding with the close of voting on Election Day. Unfortunately, under the laws that institute these alternative modes of voting, the voters are able to vote only for those positions which are nationally contested, i.e., President, Vice President, Senators and Party-list Representative. There are several rationalizations for this particular limitation—most of them rooted in arguments of practicability.

It has been argued, for instance, that since votes gathered via these alternative modes are not counted at the local levels, having the local count—which ends with the proclamation of local winners such as Members of the House of Representatives, Governors, Vice Governors,

Mayors, Vice Mayors and Sanggunian members of all levels—wait on the absentee and postal vote results would unduly delay local proclamations. I’ve also heard the tonguein-cheek argument (demonstrably false, by the way) that the people who avail themselves of these alternative modes—particularly overseas voters—are so far removed from local politics that they probably won’t care to vote local anyway.

However it may have been justified, the fact remains that essentially cutting the franchise in half has been deemed an acceptable trade-off for the relatively miniscule numbers of people actually availing themselves of those alternative modes thus far.

However, when you start talking about scaling up the coverage of absentee and postal voting, giving up the local vote quickly becomes an unconscionable cost.

To fix this, there must be a broad effort to creatively reengineer—to imagineer, if you will—how the entire counting and canvassing system works—not just the voting.

The observation that absentee and postal votes are not counted locally and might therefore delay the proclamation of local winners is a fairly valid point—but, I submit, only in the context of how we do things now.

Imagine what could be possible is we were unbound from those old procedures and freed to redesign the entire voting, counting, and canvassing system from the ground up. This was what Congress did when they approved and subsequently amended the Automation Law; when they approved the mandatory use of biometrics for voter registration; and yes,

Grim but not the ‘Grim Reaper’ John Mangun

OUTSIDE THE BOX

W

orld War II was such a cataclysmic event that it shaped global thinking through every generation since it ended.

Everything was on such a vast level and intensity—from the firebombing of Dresden to atomic weapons used on Japan.

Germany conducted near daily bombings on England for the eight months of “The Blitz.” The Battle of Stalingrad lasted five months, with 2 million dead and wounded. Over 300,000 soldiers were evacuated from Dunkirk and two years later 350,000 troops took part in the Normandy invasion.

Perhaps in order to psychologically face this scale of calamity, films reflected similar scenarios for decades.

The 1959 movie On The Beach depicted the aftermath of a nuclear war and the end of humanity. The Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to the

brink of nuclear disaster. We imagined and tried to survive every imaginable catastrophe from comets causing a mass extinction (Deep Impact) to a global infestation of zombies in World War Z. Alien invasions have always been popular since H.G. Wells wrote War of the Worlds in 1897 and Will Smith and Randy Quaid saved the human race in Independence Day a hundred years later.

We even supposed a global pandemic with 26 million dying worldwide from a disease caused by a combination of genetic material from pig and batborne viruses in Contagion.

But what happens next in the movie

when humans might be eating tree bark and dirt isn’t often talked about, except maybe for Woody Harrelson and his “Twinkies” in Zombieland.

This time in real life, our travel through the pandemic will not end with humanity being wiped out or reduced to a few people-pockets here and there. But there is a day after and it is not pretty.

Of course, as with the predictions that millions and millions would be dead from Covid-19 by now, forecasts are generally doomsday oriented. You don’t make the front page saying, “It will be tough but will eventfully be OK.” However, there is a grim if not Grim Reaper reality coming. The Philippines will experience some of this but with a much lighter impact.

The National Bureau of Economic Research says more than 100,000 US businesses have already permanently shut down, representing millions of jobs. Forty-two percent of workers experiencing recent layoffs will suffer permanent job losses. The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago reports the real rate of US unemployment is now 30.7 percent. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta is now projecting that the US

when they synchronized elections.

This kind of paradigm shifting is precisely the point of the “new normal” concept, and the same kind of energy and thinking can and should be applied to electoral processes now.

It’s going to be a big challenge, and it will be a long-haul effort. Which means that we can’t put this off until a year before the elections. We must start now. Thankfully, there are apparently already moves to expand the coverage of these alternatives to include several vulnerable sectors— persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples, the elderly, and pregnant women, and that’s awesome. But, dollars to donuts, I’m betting that those moves will keep the existing “national positions only” limitation.

And in any case, simply expanding the coverage of alternative voting modes to additional subsets of the voting population will only benefit that handful of voters, but it probably won’t make a significant difference in the number of people going to the polling places on election day. It would be ideal if more could be done.

It has been common to think of Covid-19 as being destructive of our way of life. And it is. But we can also see it as having provided us an opportunity to shed the old ways of doing things; to rewrite the whole democracy playbook and, in doing so, rationalize election procedures and processes in the light of the new realities Covid-19 has thrust upon us, leveraging modern technology, and drawing on best practices from all around the world. With a little bit of imagineering, we can even choose to quit trying to fit square pegs into round holes.

economy will shrink by 42.8 percent in the second quarter.

The reason the US, in particular, and the Western economies, in general, are in critical trouble is because of debt.

Borrowing money is wonderful on two occasions. The first is to expand and enhance in the good times. The other is to survive and recover in the bad times. But too much of the first means any of the second can be fatal.

Government, business, and consumer debt in the Philippines is so contained and manageable that a necessary expansion at this time is not going to be a problem. Certainly, there will be many businesses that will not recover, just as in the aftermath of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. Rest in peace knowing that you screwed up badly.

For most though, this is just another big bump in the road added to the many others in the past 40 years.

Stay safe and be responsible.

E-mail me at mangun@gmail.com. Visit my web site at www.mangunonmarkets.com. Follow me on Twitter @mangunonmarkets. PSE stockmarket information and technical analysis tools provided by the COL Financial Group Inc.

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Opinion

The pandemic diaries

I am with you always

BusinessMirror

Msgr. Sabino A. Vengco Jr.

Val A. Villanueva

Businesswise

T

he Philippines now faces the ignominy of being dead-last among countries considered safest in Asia-Pacific in the wake of the pandemic, according to the list prepared by Hong Kong-based venture capital firm Deep Knowledge Ventures.

This is not surprising, however.

Time and again this column has pointed out the glaring inefficiency of those tasked with planning and overseeing the country’s response to the pandemic. In fact, I’m no longer even sure of the veracity of the government’s Covid-19 statistics.

It now appears that what we have been writing all along does not accurately reflect the total number of infected individuals. As Vince Dizon, deputy chief implementer of the national policy on coronavirus disease, has admitted, there is a backlog of about 7,000 tests nationwide as of May 15. In effect, the current testing capacity of 4,500 is still less than half of the 30,000-per-day goal set by the government.

Health Undersecretary Ma. Rosario Vergeire clarified that the health department has been aiming to conduct “expanded” testing, rather than mass testing, due to the limited resources of the government. She said the DOH has expanded its scope for testing, which now includes individuals exhibiting mild to no symptoms of Covid-19.

She issued the clarification after Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque said the government does not have enough resources to conduct mass testing, and instead will shift the burden to private sectors, which drew flak among the public. The DOH has since then been ramping up the country’s testing capacity. It aims to conduct at least 30,000 Covid-19 tests a day by the end of May. What does this say about the policies of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) which directs the country’s response to the virus?

Without a reliable database about the actual extent of the contagion, the agency is operating blindly. Based on their erroneous data, the task force has divided the nation into high-risk, moderate-risk, and safe areas. Are the classifications they made accurate? In a nutshell, our freedom of movement and conduct of commerce are all based on speculation or on something the government is simply clueless about.

After more than two months of enhanced community quarantine (ECQ), major parts of the country continue to fend off the pandemic blindly. The Duterte administration had earlier boasted that it had the capacity to conduct mass testing— a crucial exercise which was able to save many lives in countries such as South Korea and Vietnam. The boast has proved empty. This administration has instead passed on the burden of mass testing to the already overburdened private sector which is also mandated to shuttle thousands of employees to and from work. What is truly sickening is the callous remark of a police officer who quipped: “If the private companies cannot do this then they might as well remain closed. They have no business operating if they can’t comply.”

Deep Knowledge Ventures, a company that focuses on health care and longevity technology, sought to determine how 20 Asia-Pacific nations are faring in their management of the pandemic based on the following criteria: Lowest likelihood of infection, lowest chance of mortality, and highest likelihood of recovery based on efficiency of quarantine and government management, monitoring and detection, and emergency treatment readiness.

The Philippines, ranked 20th on the list, behind Indonesia (19th) and Bangladesh (18th), was considered the least safe and most at-risk country in the region.

I couldn’t agree more. Despite placing the entire country under a virtual police state where quarantine violation is almost equally considered a heinous crime, the government has not done enough to control the spread of the disease and assuage the people’s apprehension about dying from Covid-19, but also from hunger, especially for those who do not get paid if they do not work. An added fear is the violent repercussions that come with even a simple violation of community quarantine regulations. Why not enforce the rules but with a more humane and compassionate approach? If someone is caught loitering, or not observing social distancing, the police could just simply escort the violator home, with a monetary fine, if needed.

If caught going out of their homes without face masks, the violators could be provided with face masks that they should pay for, but with a corresponding official receipt.

What we have witnessed the past weeks have been arrogant displays of power over the powerless. A former soldier with post-traumatic stress disorder was gunned down; a vendor was beaten black and blue; violators are made to do unnecessary physical punishment in the guise of physical exercise, and/or locked up, etc.

The latest incident involves the arrest and alleged torture of factory worker Ronald Campo, 30, on the evening of May 12, in Tropical Village in Barangay San Francisco, General Trias, Cavite, on the charge of violating simple quarantine protocols. His offenses: “Resistance and disobedience upon agent of person in authority, violation of City Ordinance on non-wearing of face mask, violation of provincial ordinances [liquor ban and curfew], and qualified trespass to dwelling.”

Cavite Police Chief Col. Marlon Santos denied the allegation, and insisted that the alleged victim was not beaten up. He even offered a comical sequence of the event: “In his effort to escape, [Campo] went to the top of the roof, and because he was drunk, he fell with his head first. He jumped into a swimming pool without water.

He fell in the canal in his efforts to elude arrest.”

The penalties for ordinary citizens have been exceptionally harsh, but for quarantine violators who are tasked to implement the law, exceptions are being made. Take the case of Metro Manila’s top-ranking cop, Police Major General Debold Sinas, who has been filmed in his house celebrating his birthday with his men—obviously violating quarantine protocols. There have been massive calls for the PNP leadership to kick him out of service, but PNP chief Gen. Archie Gamboa said Sinas has “a lot of programs in relation to the novel coronavirus.”

President Duterte has come to Sinas’ aid. “I hope the public would understand that since we’re here in an emergency situation,” Duterte said, “if you try to replace him, we will never know. He’s incredibly difficult to replace because he’s behind many programs in relation to Covid-19.”

Duterte added: “You’ll say, ‘the law is the law.’ Well, that’s up to me.

It’s my responsibility. But I will not order his transfer. He stays there until further orders.”

There you go! The painful part of this saga is that those killed, mauled, and tortured by the police by violating simple quarantine protocols have not even been afforded the same benefit of the doubt and courtesy of due process.

For comments and suggestions, e-mail me at mvala.v@gmail.com

Alálaong Bagá

T

O enable the faithful to participate in the celebration of Jesus’ Ascension to heaven, the solemnity is held in the Philippines on Sunday (the Seventh Sunday of Easter) instead of exactly on the 40th day after Easter. The departure of Jesus from the company of His followers does not mean separation or abandonment; He remains with His own even to the end of the world with all power in heaven and on Earth (Matthew 28:16-20).

Last appearance Matthew does not speak explicitly of the ascension of the risen Jesus, but only of His last appearance, the end of His visible presence among His disciples. This final appearance is placed by the evangelist “in Galilee,” where Jesus began His ministry (4:13). “Galilee of the Gentiles” on the border to the pagan world, thus underlining the continuity between the ministry of Jesus and the mission of the apostles to the world. It took place on a mountain, just as Jesus proclaimed the charter of the kingdom of heaven on a mountain (5:1ff ) and taught the crowds from a mountain side on the shore of the Sea of Galilee.

Recapitulating the resurrection appearances of Jesus, our gospel scene on Jesus’ initiative is intended to allow the disciples to see, recognize and worship Him. More than the other evangelists, Matthew

places much emphasis on the respect owed the Lord as He narrates 10 such instances of prostrations and acts of homage (2:2.8.11; 8:2; 9:18; 14:33; 15:25; 20:20; 28:9.17).

Like other theophanies manifesting the divine, the appearance of Jesus resurrected was not so obvious as to exclude all doubts (Mark 16:8; Luke 24:11; John 20:25). For the followers of Jesus, faith in Him must also still overcome uncertainty and reservation.

Make disciples of all nations

Recognition and worship include mission. As Jesus was transfigured on a mountain witnessed

by Peter, James and John with the glory that would be His at the end of His exodus (17:1ff ), He now declares on a mountain that all power in heaven and on Earth has been given Him by God. On the mountain in the desert the devil tempted

Thursday, May 21, 2020 A7

This daunting task of making disciples of all nations and of evangelization by example is not left entirely to the means of the disciples. The mission is on the premise of the promised presence of Jesus: “I am with you always.” This last saying of Jesus in Matthew fulfills all His other promises, echoing the prophecy in the name given Him at the beginning: Emmanuel— God is with us (1:23).

Him to seize power for Himself (4:810), which He refused to do adhering to His fundamental option that God alone should be worshipped and served. Faithful to God, cosmic dominion is now His as foretold of the Son of Man, a term Jesus used in referring to Himself (26:63-64, quoting Daniel 7:13).

This absolute and universal sovereignty of Jesus demands that all nations be invited and given the opportunity to follow Him. Discipleship begins with baptism in the name of Jesus, i.e. belonging to Him and adhering to His gospel way. This act of faith in Jesus has at its heart believing in and entering into communion with the God He revealed: the Trinity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So, this kind of faith entails concretely keeping His commandments. Faith translated into action and life is imitation of Jesus who wants only that God’s will be done (6:10; 26:39),

and for whom fidelity to the will of His heavenly Father is the basis of true communion with him (12:50), not merely spouting “Lord, Lord” (7:21).

Alálaong bagá, as at the Transfiguration, the disciples must come down from the mountain of lifechanging encounter with the Lord.

Now they must get beyond the boundaries of Galilee and go to all nations. They are to teach all peoples the faith in Jesus, a way of life they must live first. Fidelity to His commandments is taught by, through and in keeping them, not just repeating the words of Jesus. Spreading by example Jesus’ way of life calls for sensitivity and creativity whereby like “the scribe who has been instructed in the kingdom of heaven” the evangelizing disciples know how to draw new and old things from the measure they have received (13:52), according to the times and the cultures and needs of the other peoples. And this daunting task of making disciples of all nations and of evangelization by example is not left entirely to the means of the disciples. The mission is on the premise of the promised presence of Jesus: “I am with you always.” This last saying of Jesus in Matthew fulfills all His other promises, echoing the prophecy in the name given Him at the beginning: Emmanuel—God is with us (1:23).

Join me in meditating on the Word of God every Sunday, from 5 to 6 a.m. on DWIZ 882, or by audio streaming on www.dwiz882.com.

Magna Carta for the Informals–Now na!

Dr. Rene E. Ofreneo

LABOREM EXERCENS First of two parts

T

he Covid-19 pandemic has made the huge informal economy visible.

The two-and-a-half month lockdown knocked down the jobs and livelihoods of millions of informals—the street vendors, solo micro entrepreneurs, home-based workers, transport workers, construction workers unaffiliated with the big developers, migrant workers, small coastal fisherfolks, landless rural poor, camote miners, waste pickers, on-call service workers (repairs, care giving, etc.), domestic service workers, bit players in the entertainment industry, tourist aides, etc. The informals constitute at least two-thirds of the labor force. They and their families form the bulk of the congested urban poor communities, peri-urban poor communities, rural poor communities, coastal poor communities and upland poor communities.

The numerous social, economic and cultural links, relationships and activities that the informal workers and their families pursue together at the community level make up an economy that is somehow distinct from the formal economy of the better-off members of Philippine society. The formal economy is composed of the Social Security System/Government Service Insurance System/Bureau of Internal Revenue-listed wage workers in the public and private sectors, the licensed professionals, the incorporators and officers of Securities and Exchange Commission/Philippine Economic Zone Authority/Board of Investments-registered firms big and small, the officers and members of the government bureaucracy and military, the Department of Trade and Industry-Local Government Units (LGU)-registered small businesses, the academicians, and so on and so forth. To complete the overall picture of the labor market, one may add the 10 million or so overseas Filipino workers as the third sector of the labor market.

When the distribution of the cash assistance under the social amelioration program for the poor came, the government was flooded with complaints on the exclusion of numerous informal workers and their families. What the Department of Social

Welfare and Development has is the list of around 4 million beneficiaries of the conditional cash transfer. As of mid-May, government only had limited success in SAP distribution, reaching over 10 million families versus the 18 million target of the Bayanihan to Heal as One program. This is so because of the DSWD’s reliance on the CCT list and “mean testing” measures based on the 2015 data of the Philippine Statistics Authority. A number of mayors, exasperated over the incomplete list of the poor by the DSWD, voiced out what they know on the ground: the actual number of the deserving poor is about twice of the DSWD list.

In particular, the migrant workers circulating within Metro Manila such as the construction workers coming from far-flung provinces are usually not registered in the barangays where they are temporarily staying. Residents of informallybuilt homes in different nooks and crannies of the urban/peri-urban poor communities are also not active in barangay affairs. And so are the families allowed by the original barangay-listed families to build “extensions” or rent a room or two as domicile for these families that are not barangay-listed.

But today, the informals have become more visible. The mass media, from week one of the lockdown, have

been focusing public attention on the plight of so many informals who have failed to receive government assistance simply because they are “not in the list.”

It is, therefore, heartening to see that Congress is moving to make the informals more visible and is trying to address the socioeconomic development challenges posed by the informal sector/informal economy.

House Labor Committee Chairman Enrico Pineda convened a virtual House hearing on the Magna Carta for Workers in the Informal Economy (MCWIE) based on the bills filed by Representatives Evelina Escudero, Michael Edgar Aglipay, Dan Fernandez, Lawrence Fortun, Luis Raymund Villafuerte, Raymond Democrito Mendoza and Alfred Vargas.

The MCWIE idea is not new.

It was originally hatched by the home-based workers affiliated with Homenet Philippines, which, in turn, forged a broader Magna Carta for the Informal Sector Alliance (MAGCAISA) involving trade unions, academe and civil society organizations espousing the interests of informal workers, from the “endo” workers in the formal sector to the informal construction workers, from the landless rural poor to the ambulant street vendors, and so on.

In the 13th and 14th Congresses, MAGCAISA got the active support of Representatives Dan Fernandez, Sonny Angara, Sonny Escudero and Erin Tanada, and in the Senate, the late Sen. Miriam Defensor. Hopefully, with the Covid-19 threat unresolved, Congress and Malacañang will be able to summon the political will to pass this urgent and critical social legislation.

Dan Fernandez, in his sponsorship speech explained the rationale: “…the numbers of workers in the informal economy in the country is HUGE—the April, 2018 data indicate that there are around 25.7 million workers. They comprise almost 63 percent of all economically active Filipinos. The women workers in the informal economy are 56.4 percent of all economically active women.

“They are among the poorest of the poor workers YET in the same year, they contributed around P5.7 trillion, or 33 percent of our country’s gross domestic product [GDP]….

Indeed, they are poor but they are productive.

“Sadly, these workers are not protected by our labor laws. They are without benefits and social protection enjoyed by those formally employed. There are no labor standards that protect their rights, health, safety, and well-being while working. Our labor laws favor workers in formal employment setting, and mostly ignore those in the informal economy.

“There is little government attention in terms of addressing their needs, honing their skills, and supporting their enterprises and livelihood activities.”

Fernandez argued that had the MCWIE bill been enacted into law, the big problems on SAP distribution—specifically, identification of beneficiaries and quick delivery of assistance to the needy (to prevent hunger and anger)—would have been avoided or minimized. MCWIE has provisions on the development of a database of all informal workers, from the LGU level up to the national level. This means the LGUs themselves need to institute a system of cheap but friendly system of registering the informals. The LGUs shall have also a system of recognizing the organizations of the informals as development partners.

However, the overall goal of MCWIE is indeed developmental, that is, to help the informals “transition” to a higher level of development through government-informal sector partnership on skilling, enterprise development, technology and capital acquisition. The International Labor Organization call this process “transitioning,” that is, helping the informals become formal players in the labor market and the economy. But to Homenet and MAGCAISA, it is a process that leads not only to the general upgrading of the informal economy but also to the empowerment of the informals as citizen-producers, that is, as citizen-producers who have basic rights such as the right to form their own organizations as provided in the Constitution (Section 3, Article XIII). By recognizing the rights of the informals, the government is able to develop a stronger platform for whole-of-society approach in addressing the myriad challenges of economic and human development in Covid times.

To be concluded

A8 Thursday, May 21, 2020

DOE revising power demand, outlook

By Lenie Lectura

T

@llectura

HE Department of Energy (DOE) is revising the country’s projected power demand and supply for the year as economic activity slowed down during the pandemic.

DOE Assistant Secretary Redentor Delola said this year’s projected electricity demand would likely not be reached. Initial indications, he said, point to retaining the 2019 power demand forecast.

“For Luzon, Visayas and Mindano, it seems the 2020 projections can’t be reached. We’re likely just at the 2019 levels towards the end of the year. With zero economic growth, we expect little to no growth also for power demand,” he said in a text message in mixed English and Filipino on Wednesday.

Last year’s actual peak demand for Luzon reached 11,344 megawatts on June 21. Demand for power in Visayas reached 2,224MW on May 16, 2019. For Mindanao, it reached 2,013MW on May 8, 2019.

For 2020, DOE’s demand forecast for Luzon will reach 12,285MW in May; 2,419MW in May for Visayas; and 2,278MW in December for Mindanao.

“Actually, we are still lower than 2019 year-to-date. So, as we gradually transition to the new normal, demand will slowly begin to increase. But it will not be as aggressive as originally projected,” Delola said.

The figures would be updated soon as the agency may have to present its revised forecast to the Joint Congressional Energy Commission (JCEC). Meantime, the DOE awaits actual data from the distribution utilities (DUs) after they suspended their

meter reading activities.

“These are just initial updated projections based on economic projections. This may be updated once more data, specifically load side, becomes available. The DUs need to resubmit their Distribution Development Plans, taking into consideration the impact of Covid-19,” he said.

During the implementation of the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ), Delola said demand dropped by 30 percent.

“What happened during the pandemic was that residential consumption in Luzon went up. But it didn’t compensate for the decline from the industrial and commercial sectors, so we saw as low as a 30-percent plunge in demand,” said Delola, adding that demand in the residential sector will continue to be higher than projections.

“In Mindanao and Visayas, although demand also fell, it wasn’t as deep compared to Luzon in terms of percentage. Because in Visayas and Mindanao, it’s mostly residential that drives the share,” said Delola.

Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi said his office is assisting power generation companies in securing permits and necessary IDs so that their work is unhampered.

“We have to ensure that power supply is sufficient. Under the post-quarantine scenario, demand will rise all around. They will try to start their facilities and that will require a lot of power in Luzon.

“We have a supply of around 11,000MW. Our demand is already at 9,000MW. We want to make sure that we have enough supply. We are thankful that Gencos are working to make sure that they will be able to meet the demand for power,” Cusi said.

FRONTAL SYSTEM AFFECTING EXTREME NORTHERN LUZON EASTERLIES AFFECTING VISAYAS AND MINDANAO as of 4:00 am - May 20, 2020

Govt reviewing digital platforms’ tax leaks–DOF

F

By Bernadette D. Nicolas

@BNicolasBM

INANCE Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III said the government is now studying how to plug revenue leakages and impose tax on video streaming services and e-commerce platforms, such as Lazada.

This, as the country looks for ways to boost its limited source of funds as the government spends more in its fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.

While Dominguez said they have yet to determine the total amount of transactions involved in these services, the country’s finance chief said the study is aimed at boosting the government’s tax collections.

“Right now, we don’t have the picture of the total amount of transactions. What we are trying to figure out is how to implement a tax collection program so right now, our team from the BIR [Bureau of Internal Revenue] and DOF [Department of Finance] is working very hard to

determine the way to tax transactions that are supposed to be taxed but are escaping taxation because they are on the Internet,” Dominguez told senators on Wednesday during the Senate hearing on the Covid-19 situation in the country.

“For instance, the issue on VAT [value-added tax], if you buy a floor polisher from the store, you pay a VAT but if you buy from Lazada, there is no VAT charge, so we are figuring out how to do this. Also on Internet streaming, how are we going to identify the transactions and the amounts involved,” he added. Dominguez was replying to a question by Sen. Ramon “Bong” Revilla.

Revilla bill

REVILLA earlier filed PS Resolution 410, urging the Senate Committee on Ways and Means and the appropriate Senate Committees to conduct an inquiry, in aid of legislation, into the possibility of collecting taxes from multinational online streaming services and the digital economy in general.

The senator said in a statement that the revenues raised from such taxes could be used to finance the national economic recovery plan, especially the rehabilitation of severely affected industries, and the construction of “Schools for the Future” which are equipped with digi-

tal technologies and laboratories.

According to the same statement, the Philippine digital economy was expected to grow by more than 250 percent from $7 billion to $25 billion by 2025, equivalent to 5.3 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) even before the Covid-19 pandemic.

Revilla said that while local online businesses have already been covered by Philippine tax laws, multinational corporations with more sophisticated technological capabilities, less physical presence yet wider reach may have to be properly taxed given the outdated provisions and leakages in existing tax measures.

Digital economy VAT

BASED on the presentation of Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Karl Kendrick Chua to the House of Representatives earlier obtained by the BusinessMirror, the economic team has identified digital economy VAT as one of the options to raise revenues.

Under the digital economy proposal, all nonresidents shall be VATregistered and that e-commerce platforms, such as Google and Amazon are responsible for withholding VAT from clients.

The government expects this move to yield P50 billion in revenues in three years. Broken down, P15 billion is seen to be raised in 2021, P16.6 billion in 2022 and P18.4 billion in 2023. Sought for comment, BIR Deputy Commissioner Arnel Guballa told the BusinessMirror that it is “high time to tax the digital economy.”

“We have to adopt with new normal. Online selling will flourish for health reasons [physical distancing],” Guballa said.

Mass tests still key to pandemic –lawmaker A

N economist-lawmaker on Tuesday reminded the Department of Health that mass testing is key to the total reopening of the economy, which is losing P18 billion each day due to the lockdown.

During the virtual hearing of the health cluster of the House Defeat Covid-19 Committee, Marikina Rep. Stella Luz Quimbo said the government only needs P9 billion for mass testing of around 10 million people, compared to the P18-billion daily loss caused by the pandemic’s impact on the country’s economic activities.

In the proposed P568-billion Philippine Economic Stimulus Act, Quimbo, House Committee on Ways and Means Chairman Joey Salceda, and House Committee on Economic Affairs Chairman Sharon Garin said P10 billion will be allotted for massive testing this year and another P10 billion next year for mass testing to facilitate faster economic recovery and ensure safe working enviroment.

“The cost benefit [of mass testing] is a societal benefit including averting the huge economic cost as the result of a lockdown,” she said.

“It’s never just about purchase price of the [testing] kits. If there is an activity like mass testing, which is not very costly but the benefits are huge, then you should find the budget for that,” she said.

According to Quimbo, tracing the asymptomatic cases is very important for the country to control the spread of the virus.

“The cost of not testing is not knowing the asymptomatic. What is our asymptomatic incidence? We do not know because the country has no mass testing,” she said.

Earlier, Quimbo, cochairman of House Defeat Covid-19 Committee economic cluster, cited two main obstacles in reopening the economy—first, the liquidity concerns of firms, especially those that did not have revenues during the lockdown yet continued to pay overhead costs, including payroll and interest expenses; and the second, the so-called fear factor especially among workers, because the country has no mass testing.

“Because of that fear factor, we cannot have an effective reopening of the economy. And this is very costly. For each day of lockdown, we lose about P18 billion in output,” Quimbo has said.

Continued on A2

Fintech can help MSMEs move toward digital track, BSP says

By Tyrone Jasper C. Piad

T

@Tyronepiad

HE Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said financial technology (fintech) can help the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) move forward to the forthcoming digital economy after the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic.

BSP Governor Benjamin E. Diokno, in a webinar hosted by FintechAlliance.ph on Wednesday, said that MSMEs are among the most vulnerable sectors during this pandemic and fintech is seen to ease the burden of the economy, including the sector.

“Fintechs are uniquely positioned to support the country’s bid to shape a new economy that is more resilient, inclusive and technologyenabled,” he said.

For one, fintech can provide digital solutions to distribute the government’s financial aid and loan support to targeted recipients, he said.

Fintech can serve as digital tools for MSMEs shifting to e-commerce and underwriting platform for government’s direct lending programs, Diokno added.

BSP Center for Learning and Inclusion Advocacy Managing Director Pia Roman-Tayag, meanwhile, said that fintech can enable platforms for MSMEs to reach bigger markets to ensure efficiency in the delivery

of their products and services. The digital solutions provided by fintech could also help MSMEs in acquiring insights from online transaction data to streamline operations.

“To be sustainable and rebuild after this pandemic, what we will need is support financially, technical expertise, linkages to market, enabling platforms that will help them [MSMEs] adjust to this new digital economy,” she added, noting that MSMEs are the backbone of the country’s employment.

MSMEs comprise 63 percent of the total employment and 99.5 percent of total enterprises in the Philippines.

Barriers

BUT some matters related to the success of fintech still needed to be addressed.

FintechAlliance.ph Chairman Angelito M. Villanueva, who is also Rizal Commercial Banking Corp.’s executive vice president and chief innovation and inclusion officer, said the national identification (ID) system should be in place soon.

He observed that the government had a hard time distributing social amelioration funds because of concerns on IDs. “Once we have the national ID system in place, I don’t think it [distributing funds] would be a problem anymore and disbursing

it [amelioration funds] would be a matter of seconds or minutes,” Villanueva said.

For Roman-Tayag, a cause for worry are the challenges when it comes to awareness and understanding of fintech’s usage, stressing that digital financial literacy should be promoted to educate the customers. “We cannot go digital without people trusting the system,” she said, adding that the fintech firms should also ensure safe and secure platforms.

Digital economy

THE future economy is indeed digital, Diokno said.

“Our aspirations for a more inclusive and prosperous post-Covid world necessitates putting in place the critical pillars of a digital economy, including robust digital infrastructure, digital skills, e-government, digital ID and an enabling legal and regulatory framework,” he said.

Diokno said the BSP’s goal was to increase digital retail transaction by 50 percent. This, as the Central Bank aims to have 70 percent of the Filipino adult population be financially included.

“Fintech as an innovative provider and enabler of digital financial services will find compelling opportunities in this digital transformation agenda. Now is the good time to act,” he added.

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Companies BusinessMirror

Thursday, May 21, 2020

B1

Banking unit boosts FDC income in 2019

By VG Cabuag

F

@villygc

ilinvest Development Corp. (FDC) said its attributable net income grew 23 percent last year to P12 billion, from the previous year’s P9.8 billion, due to the strong performance of its core businesses of banking and property.

The company said revenues grew 15 percent to P74.84 billion, from the previous year's P64.91 billion.

FDC’s property business, composed of the real estate and hospitality segments, continues to be a solid source of growth for the group, contributing more than half of its bottom line in 2019, the company said.

The company said its banking unit East West Banking Corp. delivered a net income contribution to the group of P6.1 billion, higher by 45 percent than the previous year's P4.5 billion.

Power subsidiary FDC Utilities

Inc. (FDCUI) contributed P2.5 billion in net income, rising by 20 percent year-on-year.

“The year 2019 was a banner year for FDC. We met our goals for our core businesses, gained further traction in the new businesses and achieved record financial results. This was done through our continued focus on the delivery of products and services to the dynamic yet underserved middle market,” said FDC President and CEO Josephine G. Yap. “The Covid-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] pandemic, however, has put an unexpected pause to our 2020 plans. Our attention was diverted as we worked closely with the public and private sectors to mobilize resources towards health care, testing and community assistance,” Yap added.

Sales of lots, condominium and residential units rose by 5 percent to P21.5 billion in 2019, led by higher residential sales reported by its property development unit Fil-

invest Land Inc. (FLI). Meanwhile, rental revenues from FLI as well as Filinvest Alabang Inc. grew 21 percent year-on-year to P7.5 billion on the back of a total building and land lease portfolio of almost 1.1 million square meters of gross leasable area.

Hotel operations expanded 24 percent to P3.3 billion, boosted by the opening of Crimson Resort and Spa Boracay in November 2018 and Quest Tagaytay in April 2019, combined with higher occupancy rates, it said.

Filinvest Hospitality Corp., which handles the hotel operations, currently has a portfolio of six managed properties with approximately 1,800 rooms under the Crimson and Quest brands.

The company said EastWest Bank’s revenues and other income grew by 21 percent to P36.4 billion, driven by a combination of a 12-percent growth in net interest income and 16-percent increase in

noninterest income.

“EastWest Bank recorded its most profitable year in 2019 following a consumer-led loan portfolio that expanded remarkably well. It also maintained its top-tier position in profitability with a return on equity of 14 percent,” said FDC Chairman Jonathan T. Gotianun.

The company also said FDCUI revenues rose by 17 percent to P10.1 billion as a result of higher sales volume brought about by increased demand from its customers and the sale of replacement power to other power generators.

FDC’s power unit operates an aggregate 405-megawatt clean coal plant in Misamis Oriental, considered the largest operating baseload power plant in Mindanao.

The plant was able to maintain a high availability factor of 91 percent in 2019, allowing it to serve its disperse customer base of 15 distribution utilities and a private company.

Nlex resumes construction of big projects

N

lex Corp. on Wednesday said construction of its major projects has resumed after the government gave it the go signal to continue building expressways even during the community quarantine period.

Luigi L. Bautista, the president of the company, said his group has taken all necessary measures required

by the Inter-Agency Task Force on the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) and other government agencies to ensure the safety of workers while building roads.

“We have complied with the safety protocols laid out by the government for the implementation of infrastructure projects amid the modified enhanced

community quarantine,” he said.

Measures, Bautista said, include the following: rapid antibody testing of workers; strict observance of safety and hygiene protocols such as wearing of personal protective equipment and monitoring of temperature; compliance to physical distancing; provision of washing facilities at strategic locations; and

regular disinfection of equipment and work area, among others.

Included in the list of projects that have resumed are the Nlex Harbor Link C3-R10 Section, Nlex Connector, Subic Freeport Expressway (SFEX) Capacity Expansion, and the heavy maintenance program for the Candaba Viaduct. Lorenz S. Marasigan

House aims to finish ABS-CBN franchise hearings by July

By Jovee Marie N. Dela Cruz @joveemarie

T

he leadership of the House of Representatives is targeting to finish the deliberations on the bills granting ABS-CBN Corp. a fresh 25-year franchise before President Duterte’s State of the Nation Address (Sona) in July.

In an interview, Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano said the hearings of the House of Representatives on the franchise proposals will begin on May 26.

“The deliberations by the committee on legislative franchises will continue during our recess. They will not stop until they are finished so that no one can say we’re stopping the process or dragging our feet,” said Cayetano.

“I foresee that the hearings would not go beyond July, and by August, after President Duterte’s Sona, we should be ready to decide,” he added.

The Congress is set to take a sine die adjournment on June 4 and will resume on July 27 for the opening of the second regular session and Sona of the President.

“That is why we are giving the legislative franchises committee full autonomy, while I and other House leaders and members are focusing on bills to fight the Covid-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] and postlockdown and post-pandemic measures like economic stimulus proposals. We will have to multitask,” he said.

Cayetano said the committee would most likely hold two to three hearings a week.

He said some witnesses and resource persons would be required to physically appear before the committee, provided social distancing and other health protocols are observed.

Other hearings would have to be conducted via videoconference, he added.

Cayetano said the committee would look into “no

more than 10 issues” in relation to ABS-CBN’s proposed new franchise, including the network’s alleged violations of tax and labor laws, breaches of the terms and conditions of its previous broadcast privilege, and Filipino ownership and foreign citizenship issues.

According to Cayetano, the ABS-CBN franchise issue has become “so divisive” and the national debate “so polluted” that the House has to attend to it even if it wanted to focus on pressing Covid-19 response measures. Cayetano said the House is committed to conduct impartial and comprehensive hearings on the proposed fresh franchise grant.

“First, we must not forget our bigger concern, which is to defeat Covid-19 and provide hope to our countrymen. We must continue to focus on measures that will ensure saving of lives and livelihood of our kababayans,” he said.

“Second, as I’ve said time and again, the hearings must be fair, impartial, comprehensive, and thorough.

All voices must be heard and all issues for and against will be discussed...this will require a lot of time—time we do not have. And so, there will be sacrifices on our part if we hope to finish this without delay.

“Three, that we all vote according to our conscience and not our politics. For those who are calling for an outright approval or denial, I ask that you suspend your extreme views until all the facts have been presented, and all the testimonies have been heard."

Last Tuesday, Cayetano abandoned the chamber's plan to grant ABS-CBN Corp., a provisional franchise until October 31 and instead will push through with hearings on the company's application for a 25-year franchise.

The NTC has ordered the broadcast network to stop the operations of its television and radio stations since the broadcast firm no longer has a franchise. ABS-CBN Convergence’s franchise expired last March 17, while ABS-CBN Corp.’s franchise ended on May 4.

B2

Companies BusinessMirror

Thursday, May 21, 2020

RHI cuts losses on higher raw sugar output in Negros

R

By Jasper Emmanuel Y. Arcalas

@jearcalas

oxas Holdings Inc. (RHI) said its net loss in the first semester of fiscal year 20192020 was trimmed to P92 million, from P364 million, due mainly to the improvement in the raw sugar output of its Negros operations.

The integrated sugar and bioethanol producer said it was able to reduce its net loss during the October-toMarch period despite “persisting sugar industry and market challenges.”

“RHI’s sugar operations were sig-

nificantly affected by the drop in cane supply due to unfavorable weather conditions, the eruption of Taal Volcano in January and increased cane competition in the Batangas area,” RHI Chairman Pedro E. Roxas said

in a statement on Wednesday.

“The Group’s milling operations in Negros fared better with a 7-percent increase in raw sugar production compared to the previous year,” Roxas added.

RHI President and CEO Hubert D. Tubio said the company is now crafting a road map that would outline strategies for increasing the group’s annual sugar production.

Tubio added that RHI bioethanol segment’s profit declined during the reference period “as feedstock costs soared during the first half of the crop year.”

“The high price of molasses affected the ethanol segment’s operations, resulting in lower production volume,” he added.

RHI said its ethanol group is eyeing to venture into the commercial

production of ethyl alcohol to aid in the fight against the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic.

“RHI, principally through the PLDT/Smart Foundation, has contributed more than 90,000 liters of ethyl alcohol to various government units and other groups since March as the country intensified its fight against Covid-19,” it said.

RHI Executive Vice President and CFO Celso T. Dimarucut said the group is keen on its thrust to “de-risk the business” amid external forces like Covid-19.

“Despite the many challenges we face, especially with the onslaught of Covid-19, RHI has continued to manage its cashflow to ensure continuous manufacturing operations and is exploring all opportunities to reduce debt,” Dimarucut said.

RCBC partners with remittance centers

By Tyrone Jasper C. Piad @TyronePiad

R

izal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC) is teaming up with local remittance centers to provide additional channels where customers can claim money transfers.

Apart from RCBC branches and automated teller machines (ATMs), customers can now now claim remittances from MLhuiller, Palawan Pawnshop, Palawan Express Padala, Bayad Center and LBC Payments & Remittance Centers.

Customers can also now send up to P5,000 per transaction to recipients who are unbanked or do not have an RCBC account through these partner remittance centers.

“To send money, clients need only to access their account through the RCBC Online Banking web site and fill out the recipient’s information,” the listed bank said, noting that a

reference number will be provided after for claiming.

Earlier, RCBC introduced more mobile banking application services as Metro Manila remains on a lockdown.

Among these are send cash service for unbanked recipients, cardless withdrawals, e-wallet reloading for GCash and PayMaya and split bill feature.

“The RCBC Mobile Banking App is one of the most comprehensive online banking apps in the industry which makes us a reliable partner especially during this time,” said Angelito M. Villanueva, RCBC executive vice president and chief innovation and inclusion officer.

RCBC also reported on May 15 that digital transactions surged by 821 percent since the lockdown, while digital banking enrollment soared by 167 percent.

“All these features have become important and essential in empower-

ing RCBC clients to do their banking transactions in the new norm,” said Villanueva. In the first quarter, the bank saw its net income grew by 77 percent to P2.3 billion, while gross revenues rose by 23 percent to P10 billion on the back of robust core business and trading gains.

The bank’s annualized return on equity and return on assets stood at 11.1 percent and 1.28 percent, re-

mutual funds

spectively, in the first three months.

As of end-March, its total assets and capital stood at P715.3 billion and P84.7 billion, respectively. RCBC has capital adequacy ratio of 13.8 percent and common equity ratio 1 of 12.9 percent.

RCBC shares slid 18 centavos, 1.14 percent, to end at P15.62 each amid the 0.47-percent uptick for the benchmark index on Wednesday.

May 20, 2020

www.businessmirror.com.ph

PSE STOCK QUOTATIONS

May 20, 2020

Net Foreign Stocks Bid Ask Open High Low Close Volume Value Trade (Peso) Buy (Sell) FINANCIALs

ASIA UNITED BDO UNIBANK BANK PH ISLANDS CHINABANK EAST WEST BANK METROBANK PBCOM PHIL NATL BANK RCBC SECURITY BANK UNION BANK COL FINANCIAL MEDCO HLDG NTL REINSURANCE PHIL STOCK EXCH SUN LIFE

46 92.5 63 19.38 7.05 34.85 17.62 20.2 15.5 85.2 53.7 15.6 0.29 0.65 165 1530

48 93 63.95 19.4 7.06 34.9 19.9 20.4 15.62 85.25 53.9 16 0.31 0.66 169 1600

48 93.2 62 19.5 7.12 34.4 18 21.2 15.82 86.55 54 15.9 0.29 0.63 169 1590

48 93.75 63.95 19.5 7.19 34.9 24 21.2 15.82 87.5 54 16.06 0.3 0.67 169 1590

48 92 61.25 19.34 7.05 34.05 18 19.12 15.62 84.8 53.7 15.6 0.29 0.63 169 1580

48 93 63.95 19.38 7.06 34.9 20.8 20.2 15.62 85.25 53.7 15.6 0.3 0.66 169 1580

5000 1005480 3266340 54700 314300 2139500 42000 706600 17600 863980 16530 2500 120000 467000 50 25

240000 92944927.5 204872598 1060518 2226241 74066450 873970 13947460 274960 73843796 889915 39564 35000 302520 8450 39550

240000 -1534708.5 76006211.5 -288870 -1347245 12779300 -3829365 -157810 -23019702.5 -562177 -8450 7950

INDUSTRIAL AC ENERGY 2.2 2.21 2.24 2.24 2.15 2.21 9825000 21460240 0.87 0.95 0.92 0.92 0.86 0.86 65000 59050 ALSONS CONS 26 26.05 26.1 26.1 25.5 26 1080400 27943490 ABOITIZ POWER 0.161 0.166 0.166 0.166 0.166 0.166 10000 1660 BASIC ENERGY 18 18.02 18.1 18.1 18 18 606800 10938612 FIRST GEN 54.6 54.85 55 55 54.6 54.6 16670 913793 FIRST PHIL HLDG 267.8 271 272.2 272.2 266.2 271 161480 43362144 MERALCO 11.82 11.84 11.94 11.94 11.74 11.82 659200 7796044 MANILA WATER 2.99 3 3.05 3.05 2.98 3 924000 2770240 PETRON 2.38 2.4 2.38 2.4 2.38 2.4 20000 47980 PETROENERGY 11.1 11.26 11.2 11.32 11.1 11.32 23700 267694 PHX PETROLEUM 16.38 16.48 16.94 17 16.3 16.38 726900 12,105,774( PILIPINAS SHELL 7.88 7.9 7.9 7.9 7.86 7.9 139700 1103057 SPC POWER 12.02 15.06 15.06 15.06 15.06 15.06 1600 24096 VIVANT 7.35 7.4 7.5 7.55 7.2 7.4 66600 491351 AGRINURTURE 2.75 2.76 2.72 2.78 2.71 2.75 284000 780950 AXELUM 15.26 15.28 15.28 15.3 15.26 15.28 1115700 17048488 CENTURY FOOD 3.82 3.95 3.83 3.85 3.82 3.82 20000 76500 DEL MONTE 5.02 5.07 5.1 5.15 5.01 5.02 1257900 6343349 DNL INDUS 7.63 7.66 7.65 7.77 7.62 7.63 2730400 20882585 EMPERADOR 62.8 63 62 64 60.95 63 950830 58343085.5 SMC FOODANDBEV 0.53 0.54 0.53 0.54 0.53 0.54 142000 75790 ALLIANCE SELECT 1.31 1.32 1.31 1.34 1.3 1.31 4053000 5307770 FRUITAS HLDG 29.3 30 30.45 30.45 29.2 30 42100 1247460 GINEBRA 137.2 138 140 140 137.2 137.2 477520 66076362 JOLLIBEE 5.65 5.69 5.8 5.8 5.62 5.65 458900 2607643 MAXS GROUP 1.9 1.91 1.9 1.91 1.9 1.91 72000 136870 PEPSI COLA 5.66 5.69 5.83 5.84 5.65 5.69 724800 4140145 SHAKEYS PIZZA 1.6 1.61 1.57 1.65 1.57 1.61 4456000 7049720 ROXAS AND CO 4.23 4.49 4.49 4.49 4.49 4.49 2000 8980 RFM CORP 1.28 1.4 1.29 1.29 1.28 1.28 10000 12850 ROXAS HLDG 0.103 0.114 0.103 0.103 0.103 0.103 20000 2060 SWIFT FOODS 121.4 121.6 124.2 126 121 121.4 1390350 170211290 UNIV ROBINA 0.79 0.8 0.78 0.8 0.78 0.79 2259000 1773120 VITARICH 2.21 2.39 2.3 2.3 2.3 2.3 20000 46000 VICTORIAS 1.08 1.09 1.08 1.11 1.06 1.09 9773000 10652900 CEMEX HLDG 8.31 8.35 8.4 8.57 8.24 8.35 25200 211792 EAGLE CEMENT 5.06 5.08 5.07 5.19 5.06 5.06 307800 1569462 EEI CORP 7.72 7.8 7.75 7.89 7.69 7.8 291700 2266657 HOLCIM 5.1 5.18 5.41 5.7 5.05 5.1 17091100 92490387 MEGAWIDE 8.25 8.7 8.84 8.84 8.25 8.25 12800 105659 PHINMA 0.78 0.8 0.81 0.81 0.78 0.8 62000 48510 TKC METALS 0.63 0.64 0.65 0.66 0.63 0.63 290000 183830 VULCAN INDL 120.2 150 138 138 138 138 200 27600 CHEMPHIL 2.58 2.59 2.6 2.6 2.53 2.58 836000 2134520 EUROMED 3.4 3.54 3.5 3.5 3.5 3.5 4000 14000 MABUHAY VINYL 22.5 23 23 24 23 23 5400 125540 CONCEPCION 1.43 1.44 1.35 1.44 1.35 1.43 8787000 12348780 GREENERGY 5.5 5.57 5.6 5.9 5.48 5.5 1348900 7,633,538( INTEGRATED MICR 1.18 1.2 1.2 1.21 1.18 1.18 554000 661490 IONICS 1.27 1.28 1.33 1.33 1.24 1.28 4282000 5468660 SFA SEMICON 7.79 7.8 7.91 7.95 7.72 7.8 1957700 15346621 CIRTEK HLDG

140610 1800 -12030150 -7781908 -264337.5 -18014656 -1050134 425920 3,803,052.0003) -14182 132110 -1719992 3830 1295225.9997 -17551311 52056908 -180480 2950 -10425585 -39660 13370 391933 -75326683 5420 -121610 -26773 -226490 775 -12757228 -113650 -366560 2,461,465.9997) 25400 -14185

HOLDING & FRIMS

ABACORE CAPITAL ASIABEST GROUP AYALA CORP ABOITIZ EQUITY ALLIANCE GLOBAL AYALA LAND LOG ANSCOR ATN HLDG A ATN HLDG B COSCO CAPITAL DMCI HLDG FILINVEST DEV FORUM PACIFIC GT CAPITAL HOUSE OF INV JG SUMMIT LODESTAR LOPEZ HLDG LT GROUP METRO PAC INV PRIME MEDIA SOLID GROUP SYNERGY GRID SM INVESTMENTS SAN MIGUEL CORP SOC RESOURCES TOP FRONTIER ZEUS HLDG

0.5 8.07 663 41.6 6.05 1.64 5.98 0.51 0.52 5.02 4.05 7.9 0.158 374 3.5 48.5 0.52 2.46 7.26 2.73 0.78 0.94 160 806 94.55 0.67 131 0.139

0.52 8.23 665 41.9 6.12 1.65 6.05 0.52 0.57 5.03 4.11 8.96 0.17 380.4 3.56 48.6 0.54 2.48 7.3 2.76 0.82 1.01 164 820 96.4 0.69 136 0.146

0.51 7.92 651 41 6.19 1.69 6 0.53 0.53 5.2 4.05 8.15 0.154 390 3.79 47.8 0.52 2.44 7.46 2.78 0.77 1 164 813 96.5 0.68 136 0.139

0.52 8.43 665 41.95 6.19 1.69 6.05 0.53 0.53 5.25 4.13 8.2 0.158 390 3.79 49.4 0.55 2.48 7.46 2.81 0.82 1 164 820 96.5 0.68 136 0.148

0.5 7.92 642 39.7 6.05 1.65 6 0.5 0.52 5 4.03 8 0.154 374 3.5 46.2 0.51 2.44 7.25 2.73 0.77 0.96 164 800.5 94.25 0.68 131 0.138

0.52 8.23 665 41.9 6.05 1.65 6.05 0.52 0.52 5.02 4.05 8.02 0.158 374 3.5 48.6 0.52 2.48 7.26 2.73 0.82 0.96 164 820 96.4 0.68 136 0.148

1130000 24000 186240 470800 1132600 1800000 29000 772000 300000 2808600 3818000 39100 130000 254700 203000 754100 98000 679000 1500800 24789000 121000 212000 20 114140 167120 17000 130 470000

577970 201560 121206235 19434230 6891400 2981470 174250 392810 156040 14239243 15495150 313985 20140 96600270 718410 36320575 51800 1675550 10919962 68667110 94170 205930 3280 92566260 15921962 11560 17480 67000

-91680 823 -3356630 5017220 -4921986 144000 -2120 -153318 -5532800 -100995.9999 -32219464 -180030 169540 -1055972 3263710 20578745 -6076764.5 5640 17940

PROPERTY ARTHALAND CORP 0.5 0.52 0.52 0.52 0.52 0.52 13000 6760 31.9 32 31.9 32.25 31.5 32 6807800 217811980 AYALA LAND 1.06 1.07 1.09 1.09 1.03 1.07 42000 44200 ARANETA PROP 1.31 1.35 1.33 1.35 1.32 1.35 892000 1186670 BELLE CORP 0.53 0.54 0.53 0.54 0.52 0.54 910000 477500 A BROWN 0.125 0.13 0.13 0.13 0.125 0.125 30000 3850 CROWN EQUITIES 3.93 3.98 3.98 3.98 3.95 3.98 77000 305800 CEB LANDMASTERS 0.34 0.345 0.345 0.345 0.34 0.345 690000 235200 CENTURY PROP 0.28 0.29 0.285 0.285 0.28 0.28 1910000 535200 CYBER BAY 16.78 16.8 16.8 17.12 16.66 16.8 317900 5376246 DOUBLEDRAGON 6.52 6.53 6.9 6.9 6.5 6.53 121100 788719 DM WENCESLAO 0.057 - 0.053 0.077 0.052 0.077 1690000 92150 EVER GOTESCO 0.93 0.94 0.92 0.93 0.91 0.93 12186000 11224130 FILINVEST LAND 0.78 0.79 0.78 0.79 0.78 0.79 23000 18160 GLOBAL ESTATE 10.1 10.34 10.12 10.36 9.9 10.36 3100 31556 8990 HLDG 0.76 0.77 0.78 0.78 0.76 0.77 110000 84350 PHIL INFRADEV 2.56 2.57 2.6 2.6 2.51 2.56 5924000 15169350 MEGAWORLD 0.145 0.147 0.142 0.145 0.14 0.145 10460000 1504010 MRC ALLIED 0.27 0.305 0.31 0.31 0.31 0.31 100000 31000 PHIL ESTATES 14.6 14.7 14.8 14.8 14.58 14.6 1127700 16501590 ROBINSONS LAND 0.235 0.237 0.235 0.235 0.235 0.235 30000 7050 PHIL REALTY 1.44 1.48 1.44 1.48 1.42 1.48 301000 430520 ROCKWELL 2.66 2.7 2.68 2.68 2.66 2.66 15000 40140 SHANG PROP 1.82 1.9 1.9 1.9 1.9 1.9 52000 98800 STA LUCIA LAND 29.3 29.65 29.8 29.9 29.3 29.65 3831200 112888775 SM PRIME HLDG 3.62 3.74 3.73 3.73 3.62 3.62 18000 66820 VISTAMALLS 1.18 1.21 1.22 1.22 1.19 1.19 1173000 1399640 SUNTRUST HOME 3.46 3.48 3.55 3.56 3.44 3.48 1430000 5000680 VISTA LAND

-10317240 -1330 8758 -117033 1228790 40040 -2221400 86400 1226058 1480 -13340 -12027980 -3646520

NAV One Year Three Year Five Year Y-T-D per share Return* Return Stock Funds ALFM Growth Fund, Inc. -a 183.52 -27.98% -12.11% -8.28% -27.14% ATRAM Alpha Opportunity Fund, Inc. -a 0.9345 -40.87% -15.12% -9.56% -32.38% ATRAM Philippine Equity Opportunity Fund, Inc. -a 2.4679 -37.86% -16.57% -11.12% -32.9% Climbs Share Capital Equity Investment Fund Corp. -a 0.6387 -29.4% n.a. n.a.

-28.8% First Metro Consumer Fund on MSCI Phils. IMI, Inc. -a 0.669 -20.54% n.a. n.a. -21.23% First Metro Save and Learn Equity Fund,Inc. -a 4.019 -23.88% -9.05% -7.45% -24.57% First Metro Save and Learn Philippine Index Fund, Inc. -a,4 0.6194 -26.46% -13.12% n.a.

-27.44% MBG Equity Investment Fund, Inc. -a 74.23 -39.19% n.a. n.a. -28.16% PAMI Equity Index Fund, Inc. -a 36.6527 -26.86% -10.66% n.a. -28.53% Philam Strategic Growth Fund, Inc. -a 395.26 -24.55% -9.89% -7.28% -25.81% Philequity Alpha One Fund, Inc. -a,d,5 0.8426 n.a. n.a. n.a.

-18.2% Philequity Dividend Yield Fund, Inc. -a 0.9436 -26.17% -9.76% -6.61% -26.68%

SERVICES Philequity Fund, Inc. -a 27.6472 -26.18% -9.37% -6.48% -27.05% ABS CBN 16.1 16.2 15.8 16.3 15.5 16.2 505400 8050236 Philequity MSCI Philippine Index Fund, Inc. -a 0.7272 -27.32% n.a. n.a. -28.57% 4.94 4.95 5.05 5.05 4.85 4.94 489700 2418800 GMA NETWORK 0.365 0.37 0.36 0.365 0.36 0.365 80000 28900 MANILA BULLETIN Philequity PSE Index Fund Inc. -a 3.7338 -26.44% -10.22% -6.44% -28.52% 15.1 18 13.52 19 12.86 18 49500 829828 MLA BRDCASTING Philippine Stock Index Fund Corp. -a 624.16 -26.33% -10.21% -6.65% -28.43% 2250 2276 2182 2276 2182 2276 90945 201375510 GLOBE TELECOM Soldivo Strategic Growth Fund, Inc. -a 0.5754 -36.87% -13.71% -10.3% -32.42% 1208 1218 1221 1223 1200 1208 68930 83453240 PLDT Sun Life Prosperity Philippine Equity Fund, Inc. -a 2.9374 -29.9% -11.07% -7.53% -30.21% 2.75 2.85 2.8 2.8 2.8 2.8 1000 2800 DFNN INC 2.16 2.17 2.19 2.2 2.13 2.16 11917000 25692030 DITO CME HLDG Sun Life Prosperity Philippine Stock Index Fund, Inc. -a 0.7161 -26.5% -10.36% -6.56% -28.45% 0.061 0.08 0.08 0.08 0.08 0.08 10000 800 ISLAND INFO United Fund, Inc. -a 2.6813 -25.88% -8.12% -5.43% -26.61% 1.72 1.73 1.79 1.79 1.71 1.72 586000 1007080 NOW CORP Exchange Traded Fund 0.176 0.18 0.179 0.182 0.176 0.181 540000 95810 TRANSPACIFIC BR 2.31 2.32 2.36 2.36 2.29 2.32 524000 1209460 PHILWEB First Metro Phil. Equity Exchange Traded Fund, Inc. -a,c 83.7056 -26.22% -9.74% -5.83% 9.71 9.72 9.72 9.78 9.7 9.72 35200 342222 2GO GROUP -28.43% 3.08 3.13 3.17 3.17 3.08 3.08 41000 126910 CHELSEA ATRAM AsiaPlus Equity Fund, Inc. -b

$0.907 -6.69% -1.89% -3.29% -11.8% 39.45 39.55 40.9 41.75 39.45 39.45 102300 4073635 CEBU AIR 84 84.05 84 84.45 83 84 691120 57982679 INTL CONTAINER Sun Life Prosperity World Voyager Fund, Inc. -a $1.2744 0.14% -7.57% 3.82% n.a.

0.72 0.77 0.77 0.77 0.77 0.77 3000 2310 LORENZO SHIPPNG Balanced Funds 4.15 4.16 4.45 4.49 4.04 4.15 16200000 68013010 MACROASIA Primarily invested in Peso securities 2.63 2.64 2.7 2.83 2.6 2.63 5274000 14075030 METROALLIANCE A 2.56 2.78 2.7 2.7 2.7 2.7 2000 5400 METROALLIANCE B ATRAM Dynamic Allocation Fund, Inc. -a 1.4971 -10.54% -5.43% -5.11% -4.2% 6.9 6.95 6.7 6.97 6.7 6.95 8300 56469 PAL HLDG ATRAM Philippine Balanced Fund, Inc. -a 1.9496 -13.76% -5.92% -3.88% -10.61% 0.8 0.83 0.83 0.84 0.8 0.8 114000 92940 HARBOR STAR First Metro Save and Learn Balanced Fund Inc. -a 2.3216 -9.86% -3.38% -4.73% -11.78% 0.026 0.027 0.026 0.027 0.026 0.027 6500000 172700 BOULEVARD HLDG 0.365 0.38 0.38 0.38 0.38 0.38 30000 11400 WATERFRONT First Metro Save and Learn F.O.C.C.U.S. Dynamic Fund, Inc. -a,1 0.1818 n.a. n.a. n.a.

6 6.29 6 6 6 6 2000 12000 CENTRO ESCOLAR -20.44% 6.27 8 6.01 6.27 6 6.27 73500 448899 IPEOPLE NCM Mutual Fund of the Phils., Inc. -a 1.779 -6.03% -2.03% -1.79% -9.38% 0.305 0.31 0.3 0.31 0.295 0.31 1390000 419300 STI HLDG 2.01 2.08 2.04 2.09 2 2.08 136000 274840 BERJAYA PAMI Horizon Fund, Inc. -a 3.3002 -8.65% -3.75% -3.31% -12.9% 5.21 5.3 5.4 5.43 5.21 5.21 6184000 32972881 BLOOMBERRY Philam Fund, Inc. -a 14.761 -9.48% -3.93% -3.4% -12.97% 1.85 1.91 1.9 1.92 1.9 1.91 27000 51380 PACIFIC ONLINE -13.12% -5.02% -3.19% -13.99% Solidaritas Fund, Inc. -a 1.8284 1.43 1.5 1.43 1.5 1.43 1.5 3000 4430 LEISURE AND RES 2.23 2.3 2.25 2.25 2.25 2.25 5000 11250 MANILA JOCKEY Sun Life of Canada Prosperity Balanced Fund, Inc. -a 3.1127 -17.6% -6.01% -4.46% -19.44% 2.3 2.33 2.35 2.35 2.14 2.3 346000 752560 PH RESORTS GRP Sun Life Prosperity Achiever Fund 2028, Inc. -a,d 0.8924 -8.64% n.a. n.a.

-12.14% 0.295 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 3330000 999000 PREMIUM LEISURE Sun Life Prosperity Achiever Fund 2038, Inc. -a,d 0.7828 -19.1% n.a. n.a. -21.44% 5.79 5.8 5.88 5.88 5.76 5.79 670200 3898243 ALLHOME 1.67 1.68 1.68 1.68 1.64 1.67 2049000 3393510 METRO RETAIL Sun Life Prosperity Achiever Fund 2048, Inc. -a,d 0.7581 -21.43% n.a. n.a. -23.67% 45 45.15 45.9 46 44.6 45 2013200 90915405 PUREGOLD Sun Life Prosperity Dynamic Fund, Inc. -a 0.7674 -20.72% -7.11% -6.04% -21.28% 70.5 70.55 71.7 71.7 69.95 70.5 282190 19882218.5 ROBINSONS RTL Primarily invested in foreign currency securities 130 132 130 132 130 132 140 18301 PHIL SEVEN CORP 1.12 1.13 1.15 1.15 1.11 1.13 1851000 2076170 SSI GROUP Cocolife Dollar Fund Builder, Inc. -a $0.03793 3.72% 2.15% 1.36% -0.78% 15.26 15.3 15 15.34 14.92 15.3 2671100 40451404 WILCON DEPOT -0.88% PAMI Asia Balanced Fund, Inc. -b $0.9327 -2.77% -1.79% -10.14% 0.305 0.31 0.31 0.31 0.305 0.305 430000 131400 APC GROUP Sun Life Prosperity Dollar Advantage Fund, Inc. -a $3.6427 -1.15% 2.6% 1.77% -6.86% 7 7.2 6.93 7.32 6.93 7 17900 126906 EASYCALL 300 309.8 300 300 300 300 270 81000 GOLDEN BRIA Sun Life Prosperity Dollar Wellspring Fund, Inc. -a,3 $1.0683 -1.46% 1.01% n.a.

-5.36% 2.15 2.28 2.15 2.15 2.15 2.15 5000 10750 PAXYS Bond Funds 0.21 0.212 0.21 0.212 0.208 0.212 150000 31480 PRMIERE HORIZON Primarily invested in Peso securities

ALFM Peso Bond Fund, Inc. -a 363.22 4.2% 2.99% 2.46% 1.51% MINING & OIL ATOK 9.85 10.4 9.86 10.5 9.84 10.5 10200 100540 ATRAM Corporate Bond Fund, Inc. -a 1.9326 1.94% 1% -0.25% 1.61% 0.94 0.95 0.93 0.97 0.93 0.95 1969000 1882380 APEX MINING Cocolife Fixed Income Fund, Inc. -a 3.1751 4.82% 5.13% 5.1% 1.89% 0.0009 0.0011 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.001 19000000 19000 ABRA MINING Ekklesia Mutual Fund Inc. -a 2.2785 5.15% 2.8% 2.25% 2.4% 1.8 1.92 1.93 1.93 1.8 1.8 141000 254050 ATLAS MINING 0.95 1.12 1.12 1.12 1.12 1.12 1000 1120 BENGUET A First Metro Save and Learn Fixed Income Fund,Inc. -a 2.4243 6.99% 3.1% 1.84% 2.76% 0.171 0.185 0.179 0.188 0.171 0.187 390000 68450 COAL ASIA HLDG 4.5221 Philam Bond Fund, Inc. -a 11.24% 3.76% 2.28% 3.41% 6.99 7.15 7.15 7.15 7.15 7.15 100 715 DIZON MINES Philam Managed Income Fund, Inc. -a,6 1.2827 6.77% 3.76% 2.04% 2.07% 0.76 0.77 0.74 0.78 0.72 0.77 1486000 1126290 FERRONICKEL 0.2 0.205 0.201 0.215 0.201 0.201 220000 44900 GEOGRACE Philequity Peso Bond Fund, Inc. -a 3.8866 7.23% 3.82% 2.01% 2.6% 0.075 0.079 0.075 0.076 0.075 0.075 90000 6770 LEPANTO A Soldivo Bond Fund, Inc. -a 1.0211 10.81% 3.37% 1.59% 5.89% 0.0063 0.0065 0.0063 0.0063 0.0063 0.0063 1000000 6300 MANILA MINING A Sun Life of Canada Prosperity Bond Fund, Inc. -a 3.1328 8.1% 4.63% 2.84% 1.85% 0.53 0.54 0.52 0.54 0.5 0.54 179000 92660 MARCVENTURES Sun Life Prosperity GS Fund, Inc. -a 1.7288 7.6% 4.06% 2.35% 1.63% 1 1.04 1 1.03 1 1 24000 24110 NIHAO 1.59 1.6 1.53 1.6 1.51 1.59 11002000 17270380 NICKEL ASIA Primarily invested in foreign currency securities 0.49 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.49 0.49 70000 34500 ORNTL PENINSULA ALFM Dollar Bond Fund, Inc. -a $469.98 3.17% 2.34% 2.47% 0.38% 2.23 2.35 2.3 2.3 2.23 2.23 640000 1436420 PX MINING ALFM Euro Bond Fund, Inc. -a Є214.29 -0.85% 0.53% 0.71% -2.48% 11.32 11.38 11.56 11.56 11.32 11.32 520300 5942208 SEMIRARA MINING 0.004 0.0043 0.0042 0.0042 0.0042 0.0042 2000000 8400 UNITED PARAGON -0.61% ATRAM Total Return Dollar Bond Fund, Inc. -b $1.1998 2.48% 2.33% 2.07% 6.55 6.7 6.73 6.73 6.5 6.7 42800 284076 ACE ENEXOR First Metro Save and Learn Dollar Bond Fund, Inc. -a $0.0258 1.57% 1.19% 1.04% 0% 0.0084 0.0087 0.0087 0.0087 0.0087 0.0087 1000000 8700 ORNTL PETROL A PAMI Global Bond Fund, Inc -b $1.0525 -1.62% -0.71% -0.72% -3.9% 0.008 0.0083 0.0081 0.0081 0.0081 0.0081 10000000 81000 PHILODRILL 5.39 5.4 5.07 5.43 4.79 5.39 4380300 22566133 PXP ENERGY Philam Dollar Bond Fund, Inc. -a $2.4032 5.34% 2.79% 2.47% -0.02%

Philequity Dollar Income Fund Inc. -a $0.0597927 2.18% 1.56% 1.49% -0.86% PREFFERED Sun Life Prosperity Dollar Abundance Fund, Inc. -a $3.1561 5.53% 2.02% 1.98% -0.6% ALCO PREF B 100 101 101 101 101 101 50 5050 Money Market Funds 510 525 510 510 510 510 1780 907800 GLO PREF P 972 1000 1000 1000 1000 1000 2000 2000000 GTCAP PREF A Primarily invested in Peso securities 100 100.3 100 100 100 100 940 94000 MWIDE PREF ALFM Money Market Fund, Inc. -a 127.62 3.82% 3.13% 2.37% 1.46% 996 998 999 999 997 999 11390 11378310 PNX PREF 4 First Metro Save and Learn Money Market Fund, Inc. -a 1.0385 2.7% n.a. n.a.

1.19% 1021 1022 1020 1021 1020 1021 1100 1123000 PCOR PREF 3A 1023 1054 1053 1055 1050 1055 1525 1607675 PCOR PREF 3B Sun Life Prosperity Money Market Fund, Inc. -a 1.2795 3.33% 3.01% 2.55% 1.18% 77.05 77.3 77 77.05 77 77.05 4300 331110 SMC PREF 2C Primarily invested in foreign currency securities 74.95 75 74.95 74.95 74.95 74.95 240 17988 SMC PREF 2D Sun Life Prosperity Dollar Starter Fund, Inc. -a $1.0423 1.65% n.a. n.a.

0.49% 75.3 75.9 75.95 75.95 75.9 75.9 3530 268102 SMC PREF 2G 75.25 76 76.5 76.5 76 76 23250 1771000 SMC PREF 2I Feeder Fund

Primarily invested in foreign currency securities PHIL. DEPOSITARY RECEIPTS ALFM Global Multi-Asset Income Fund Inc. -b,d,2 $0.91 n.a. n.a. n.a.

-8.08% ABS HLDG PDR 15 15.3 14.32 15.5 14.18 15 68300 989808 a - NAVPS as of the previous banking day. b - NAVPS as of two banking days ago. c - Listed in the PSE. d - in Net Asset Value per Unit (NAVPU).

1 - Launch date is September 28, 2019. 2 - Launch date is November 15, 2019. 3 - Adjusted due to stock dividend issuance last October 9, 2019.

- Renaming was approved by the SEC last October 12, 2018 (formerly, One Wealthy Nation Fund, Inc.). 5 - Launch date is December 4 09, 2019.

6 - Re-classified into a Bond Fund starting February 21, 2020 (Formerly a Money Market Fund).

"While we endeavor to keep the information accurate, the Philippine Investment Funds Association (PIFA) and its members make no warranties as to the correctness of the newspaper’s publication and assume no liability or responsibility for any error or omissions. You may visit http://www. pifa. com.ph to see the latest NAVPS/NAVPU."

25493190 -43696485 -1222100 -15720 90090 119568 -3132210 2208500 20156570 -724 12000 -72300 -16550449 1105561 -29324035 1217891 16981 -842259.9997 10542606 -

-334510 25500 -3811060 -280680 -3555330 -120820

-

-520258 4.66 4.69 4.7 4.7 4.66 4.66 119000 555400 GMA HLDG PDR

WARRANTS LR WARRANT 0.69 0.72 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 35000 24500

SMALL & MEDIUM ENTERPRISES ITALPINAS 1.92 1.93 1.91 1.94 1.88 1.92 942000 1796940 6.1 6.29 6.15 6.3 6.08 6.29 18800 115251 KEPWEALTH 1.75 2.38 1.57 1.8 1.57 1.75 11000 19170 MAKATI FINANCE 0.59 0.6 0.59 0.6 0.59 0.6 320000 190100 21000 XURPAS

EXHANGE TRADE FUNDS

FIRST METRO ETF 84.6 84.7 85.5 85.5 84 84.6 8160 690295.5 127677.5

Editor: Eleanor Leyco-Chua

Health&Fitness BusinessMirror

The stress response: Understanding And reducing its effects on your health

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By Dr. Kent Bradley

So, what is the “stress response” and why do we have it?

In a nutshell, it is for our own survival.

You see, we are geared toward survival and our minds are constantly on a threat alert. Some have called this the “fight or flight” response. I think we all know how it feels—the sudden increase in heart rate, perhaps increased respirations, all meant to prepare the body with oxygen needed to suddenly move into action. Underlying this is a shower of hormones that stimulate the body’s actions but also have impacts on other aspects of our health.

We increase the circulation of adrenaline, known as epinephrine, that activates our heart rate, but it also stimulates the release of glucose and fat from storage sites as a source of fuel. If left unchecked a second response happens that causes the release of cortisol into the blood stream. Cortisol increases the amount of glucose in our bloodstream and can stimulate hunger, which can lead to eating more calories than we

n Routine—In the midst of change why add another one? Stay consistent.

Suddenly you need to work from home, so, get up at the same time, set up an office and work like you normally would.

actually need, thus, becoming overweight or obese.

What does all of this mean when we are under stress from Covid-19 worries?

Acute stress can be both helpful and harmful to our body. It can be helpful as it forces us to be vigilant in protecting ourselves and our loved ones. It can be harmful because it causes our blood pressure to rise and our heart rate to increase, and for those who have underlying cardiovascular disease, this may trigger a heart attack or stroke.

However, what is of greater concern is a state of chronic stress, such as many people are experiencing in this time of uncertainty. In this state, the body is continuously activated, resulting in elevated blood pressure and weight gain, which are factors in cardiovascular disease. Additionally, cortisol is known to reduce the production of our immune protective cells known as lymphocytes. In the acute phase, we may actually see an increase of these cells, but as we move to a more chronic state of stress the cortisol release leads us to a decrease of lymphocytes making us potentially more susceptible to ineffectively fighting off infection.

Overcoming the “stress response”

So, our perception of threat is what cre-

Dr. Kent Bradley ates a cascade called a stress response.

That response is natural if there is an actual threat and if momentary. However, our health, through the possible impact on weight and blood pressure, can be negatively impacted by this stress cascade if not managed well.

Focusing on reducing our stress and improving our health can be accomplished with a handful of simple practices. I call them my six Rs.

n Rest—First, get enough sleep.

Adequate sleep is extremely helpful in calming down the stress response. n Relaxation techniques—Deep

breathing—whether done through meditation exercises or while you are doing yoga—the key is slow, intentional deep breathing.

n Recreation—Keep active while practicing social distancing—whether that means a walk or reading a book (something you love to do). Taking time for yourself doing something you love to do that involves some form of activity (mental or physical) is helpful.

n Reframing—Reassess the perceived stress so it is no longer viewed as a threat. You may need the help of a coach to help you through the practice of first identifying why something is viewed as a threat and then placing that into a context that is helpful.

At Herbalife Nutrition we have a global nutrition philosophy that recognizes the importance of a holistic approach to health and thus a more resilient response. Managing your stress is one critical component. We also believe in the power of community and the importance of a coach who can help you on your journey toward improved health.

Dr. Kent Bradley is a retired Army Colonel, graduate of the United States Military Academy and has a Master in Public Health from the University of Minnesota, an executive Master of Business Administration from the University of Denver, and his medical degree from the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences, Bethesda, Maryland. He is board certified in Public Health and Preventive Medicine and holds a certificate in Corporate Governance from INSEAD.

Adapting to the new normal as PHL fights pandemic

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Ilocos Norte records no new Covid-19 cases in more than a month

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t a time that the number of Covid-19 cases in the country’s capital region continues to escalate, Ilocos Norte has not recorded new cases of the disease since the province announced its first two confirmed patients on March 31.

The first two Covid-19 patients who were admitted at the Mariano Marcos Memorial Hospital and Medical Center (MMMH&MC) recovered last April 12, after they tested negative on their laboratory tests.

Based on the report provided by the MMMH&MC, only suspect cases were recorded since the first two confirmed patients were discharged on April 13.

Last Wednesday, the remaining suspect cases in the province have been reclassified as regular patients after their laboratory test resulted negative from Covid-19, thus clearing records of any cases in Ilocos Norte.

Ilocos Norte was placed under the Luzon-wide enhanced community quarantine which lasted from March 16 to April 30. At present, the province is following an interim modified general community quarantine guidelines from May 1 to 15.

Starting May 16, Ilocos Norte and other provinces, which were previously classified as low risk under IATF-EID Resolution 35, shall be placed under general community quarantine anew, as announced by Presidential Spokesman Secretary Harry Roque yesterday.

The Provincial Government, through the leadership of Gov. Matthew Marcos Manotoc as the chairman of the Task-Force Salun-at, continues to lead various efforts in securing the safety and welfare of the entire province.

he pandemic has changed the way Filipinos deal with everyday life. Today, services are now delivered through digital platforms, and adjusting to this new reality may come in with some form of learning curves.

Now, Filipinos are advised to leverage digital technologies and smartphone apps in conducting day-to-day activities to reduce their risks of contracting Covid-19 outside their homes. For most, working from home has become the new normal, and social interaction is now being done through social networking sites and messaging apps.

Some Filipinos also have turned to online marketplaces for their groceries, medicines, and other supplies, and some have also maximized the use of food delivery apps and ordering services to minimize their time outside of their homes.

Suddenly, many parts of the Philippines have become powered by the digital realm, and payments are now being coursed through digital finance. Today, more and more Filipinos are embracing digital finance, seeing the value that it brings versus conventional cash.

“In a world where digital is the new normal, financial technology should be considered the bedrock of digital services. Through digital finance, people have the power to pay for goods and services without the need for physical cash.

Aside from the convenience, it is also less risky than cash handling, more efficient than physi-

cal payments, and is also very transparent,” GCash Chief Technology and Operations Officer Pebbles Sy said.

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has been promoting the use of digital payments for almost a decade now, adopting several key policies and programs like the National Retail Payments System, and the creation of automated clearing houses for more seamless transactions.

This huge push for digital finance has given birth to a new working target of migrating cash transactions to noncash. Now, the government aims to increase the share of cashless transactions to 30 percent of the total transaction from the original target of 20 percent.

GCash has been supportive of this shared goal and has made it easier for Filipinos to adapt to the new normal. Aside from the easier knowyour-customer (KYC) process, GCash also offers Filipinos a convenient and very affordable way to transact with merchants both online and offline. Likewise, GCash users may use their digital wallets to pay for bills and government dues, as well as transfer money to almost anyone with a bank or nonbank account.

“We want our customers to be able to use GCash to its full potential. The app has multiple features that would help ease the burden of the average Filipino, from paying their utilities to sending money to their relatives in the provinces.

Contactless payments are preferred by many merchants, especially during this time where long lines crowd banks and other shops,” Sy said.

With GCash, a simple tap and click would suffice in accomplishing everyday tasks, making financial services more accessible to anyone with a smartphone. Through contactless payments, Filipinos can reduce exposure, preventing the spread of the virus from the exchange of money and the use of cards.

Partnering with over 70,000 merchants nationwide, going cashless is an option GCash easily offers, with over 20 million users availing of services like QR code payments, bills payments, and even credit services.

“During this difficult period, GCash stays true to its mission of staying connected. Our services are important, now more than ever, as the Filipino looks for ways to minimize exposure to the virus,” Sy said.

Another service GCash has put in place during this crisis is the ability to help, offering a quick and easy way to donate to frontline workers and other marginalized sectors.

“We’ve also made it easier for the Filipino to help those who are most affected by this global health crisis. Truly, this day and age is now powered by the digital arena, and we all have to learn and adapt to it, as long as this new normal persists,” Sy said.

Community frontliners continue to receive home-cooked meals

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ifficult times can bring out the best in people, as the global pandemic has shown.

Amid the climate of fear and uncertainty, people are showing gratitude and appreciation to those who are at the forefront of the war.

To show its gratitude and support to frontliners, the Mega Malasakit Kitchen continues to provide home-cooked meals to the men and women in the trenches, especially those who operate services that serve the community during the lockdown. By far, the Mega Malasakit Kitchen has distributed more than 15,000 meals to checkpoints officers, barangay health workers and volunteers, supermarket staff, bank staff, security guards and street dwellers.

An initiative of sardine brand manufacturer, Mega Global, the Mega Malasakit Kitchen started out providing 500 meals a day, but has since increased its output to 700 to 800 meals a day to serve more frontliners. It intends to provide meals for as long as these are needed by our frontliners—a simple way of keeping to its commitment to help in nation-building by

Doña Maria Group helps boost Filipinos’ immunity

n Relationships—staying connected is so important. We are meant to be in community and we may be physically isolated but that doesn’t mean we need to lose our connections to others.

Telephone or video calls can be a great way to stay connected.

id you know that our body does not discriminate between sources of stress—it simply responds to the stress.

So, whether the stress is coming from an actual event—like a car nearly hitting you—or simply a thought—I wonder if I will get hit by a car someday—the body may react in a similar way. Now, in these times when there is so much uncertainty, stress can have a huge impact on our bodies.

Thursday, May 21, 2020 B3

improving people’s lives.

“There were social-media posts and news that we came across where the checkpoint officers, supermarket personnel, bank personnel, security guards, barangay health workers have difficulties in looking for places to get their meals during work hours, because most establishments are closed. Since we are a food manufacturing company who takes pride in the quality of our products, and taking inspiration from our previous CSR program Mega Sustansya Everyday, home-cooked meals are what we thought of providing these unseen frontliners. We hope to boost their morale, and energy by providing them nutritious and delicious meals daily,” said Marvin Tiu Lim, VP for Sales and Marketing.

Mega Global partnered with other food manufacturers in making these meals possible and accessible. To further scale up its outreach efforts, the Mega Malasakit Kitchen extends its invitation to those who want to help out in its feeding efforts, by way of donations in cash and in-kind.

To date, Mega Global has earmarked P50

million to help the country’s Covid-19 efforts.

It has provided funds for employee upliftment and goods for donations to LGUs, companies and private organizations during the enhanced community quarantine. It has also donated ventilator machines, PPE and other medical materials to hospitals.

It also launched a care package program to show its solidarity with merchandisers and distributor sales personnel who tirelessly work in groceries and supermarkets nationwide.

“Through our humble contribution, we are able to help keep their spirits up as they render steadfast service to the community. Seeing the joy in their faces inspires us at Mega Global to do more, knowing that in the end, we will all emerge from this crisis stronger than ever,” said Tiu Lim. For those who wish to show their appreciation to community frontliners through the Mega Malasakit Kitchen, details can be found at the Mega Global Corp. Facebook page (@megaglobalofficial). Your humble donation will certainly be appreciated by our valiant frontliners.

S

L Agritech Corp. (SLAC), the Philippines’s leading hybrid rice company and manufacturer of Doña Maria Premium Quality Rice, donated 25,000kg of Doña Maria Jasponica brown rice to different foundations, hospitals and donation networks in a bid to boost the immune system of Filipino recipients. Some of the company’s partners are GMA Kapuso Foundation, the Quezon City local government and online food community Let’s Eat Pare.

SLAC Chairman and CEO Dr. Henry Lim believes brown rice will help improve the health of those in the frontlines and in other affected communities. According to research, brown rice contains essential phytonutrients and vitamins such as vitamins A, C and E, and selenium, all of which boost the immune system. The Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) has campaigned for a change in the Filipino diet staple from white to brown rice given the latter’s health benefits.

Dr. Robert Michael Gan, an internist and endocrinologist from Metropolitan Medical Center and Makati Medical Center, is one of the many medical professionals advocating for the inclusion of brown rice in the Filipino diet.

“There is a good number of articles, both locally and internationally, that underscore the health benefits of eating brown rice. Now that we are up against a pandemic, it is imperative that we have a healthy diet to boost our immune system,” notes Gan. Cognizant that a healthy diet is vital in overcoming the global health crisis, Lim highlights the need to prioritize food security amid the implementation of quarantine protocols in many across the country and the resultant difficulty by many Filipinos to access food.

Securing food for the most vulnerable

The philanthropist businessman through SLAC hopes to help secure food for those most impacted by Covid-19: the frontliners and vulner-

able communities. With many businesses and work suspended since the implementation of the enhanced community quarantine in Luzon and mobility restricted because of the lack of public transportation, underprivileged Filipinos are hard-pressedto provide for their families.

In addition to the sacks of brown rice, the company donated a total of 100,000 kg of white rice to its partner-organizations. It also gave away 7,000 packs of its snack food product Doña Maria Brown Rice Puff and 3,000 servings of ready-to-eat meals to different hospitals, including Covid-19 referral centers UP-Philippine General Hospital and Dr. Jose N. Rodriguez Memorial Hospital. The other SLAC beneficiaries are the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM), UERM Memorial Hospital, and the University of Santo Tomas Hospital.

Acting as one global village

Lim encourages everyone to rise to the occasion and show compassion to each other as members of one global village. “We at SL Agritech view ourselves as citizens of a single global village, especially in times such as this Covid-19 pandemic. We try our best to help alleviate the unfortunate conditions of our countrymen and to provide aid wherever and whenever we can.

During these uncertain and challenging times, we remain committed to helping ensure food supply, especially for our frontliners and our fellow Filipinos with scarce resources. Together, we can heal as one,” Lim shared.

Last August 2019, Lim was conferred the Order of Lakandula with the rank of Marangal na Pinuno by Duterte for his outstanding contributions to the improvement of the country’s economic and civic welfare. Envisioning a Philippine society with zero hunger, Lim spearheads different corporate citizenship projects such as the Rice Bucket Challenge and the Balik Biyaya program, through which SLAC is able to provide rice to more than 50,000 Filipino families.

SOS Children’s Villages Philippines receives aid

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llianz employees have raised funds to respond to a call for help from SOS Children’s Villages Philippines as the nongovernment organization continues to provide for almost a thousand abandoned and neglected in their eight villages across the country. In this file photo, Allianz PNB Life’s Chief Marketing Officer Gae Martinez (left) and President and Chief Executive Officer Alexander Grenz (second from left) together with SOS Children’s Villages’ Corporate Relations Head Admore Alzate (fourth from left) during a visit at the SOS Children’s Villages in Alabang, Muntinlupa.

At a time when they are facing their own challenges amid the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, Allianz PNB Life employees responded to a call for help and raised funds for SOS Children’s Villages Philippines, an organization that supports orphaned, abandoned, and neglected children in the Philippines.

SOS Children’s Villages Philippines is experiencing a decrease in donations as its regular donors have also been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. Allianz employees rallied and donated P150,000 of their own money to help cover the basic necessities of the children.

“We commend our employees for stepping up and helping a vulnerable sector during this pandemic. While we continue to send support to our front-liners, let us not neglect others

whose food and shelter have also been severely affected,” said Allianz PNB Life Chief Marketing Officer Gae Martinez.

SOS Children’s Villages Philippines rely on support from organizations and individuals to sustain its operations. Its villages have been placed under lockdown to ensure the health and safety of the children under its care.

“As SOS Children’s Villages remain at work for abandoned and neglected Filipino children under quarantine, we thank Allianz PNB Life for helping us keep the children safe, healthy, and in loving homes. Their outpouring of generosity in this time of crisis ensures that although our children are isolated, they are not alone,” said Romil Rayos del Sol, deputy national director of SOS Children’s Villages Philippines.

This is not the first time that Allianz PNB Life employees extended their help to SOS Children’s Villages Philippines. They did the same just last February as part of their Dare To Be Fit 3 program, which promotes fitness as well as helping the community. The employees did a number of activities that earned points, which were then converted into pesos and donated to different organizations.

Last April, Allianz PNB Life donated meals to the Lung Center of the Philippines. The company sent freshly cooked dinner to the frontliners of the hospital for four weeks.

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Thursday, May 21, 2020

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The strong new normal ‘paren-team’: Part I Clockwise: My husband and daughter as we celebrated her birthday with a steak dinner; my daughter putting up her “Happy Birthday, Kong x 2” sign for my dad’s birhtday via WhatsApp; Gary Valenciano’s Hopeful concert poster from his Facebook page; my kids and I watching Gary V via Facebook Live on April 18; and our TV Screen with “Mom’s Karaoke” playlist in YouTube prepared by my daughter for Mother’s Day.

Today’s Horoscope

By Eugenia Last

z

CELEBRITIES BORN ON THIS DAY: Fairuza Balk, 46; Lisa Edelstein, 54; Nick Cassavetes, 61; Judge Reinhold, 63.

Happy Birthday: Spice things up, and do things differently. Take time to explore something unfamiliar.

Learn all you can, and reach out to those who have something unique to offer. Consider what you can do to make your life better, relationships stable and future bright. Discipline and hard work will result in enjoying the well-deserved benefits you receive. Your lucky numbers are 9, 12, 21, 28, 32, 36, 40.

a

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Charm, persistence and knowledge will make it difficult for others to deny you what you want. Don’t exaggerate or oversell what you have to offer; it won’t be necessary, and it can lead to a reversal of fortune. HHH

b

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Channel your emotional energy into something constructive.

Consider what you want to accomplish, and don’t stop until you reach your destination. Establish a routine that allows you to be more productive. Be aware of what others expect, like and appreciate. HHH

T

hese past few months have been filled with mixed emotions for each of us. There have been many adjustments we had to make.

Frontliners from the health and various industries have had to face their daily fears for others and for themselves. Some of us had to experience deaths of people dear to us. As the enhanced community quarantine gets lifted slowly, it poses the question: “Are we ready to face our new normal?”

Personally, I feel that heavy sense of uncertainty.

I have that fear of “entering”...entering knowing some people dear to me have moved on; threading our business forward amid the economic challenges ahead; and questioning how to ensure we as a family stay safe and meaningful.

Last weekend, I decided that facing my new normal must start with seeking positive reflections from this whole quarantine period. As I scrolled through photos in my cameral roll, I found many celebrations.

We celebrated my daughter’s birthday last April.

It was fun to cook as a family. My husband cooked the steak, while the kids and I prepared the mashed potatoes. Just recently, we had a virtual WhatsApp surprise song greeting for my dad while he blew the candle from the frozen blueberry ice cream cake that my youngest sister prepared for him. For Mother’s Day, my firstborn Meagan gifted me with a “Mom’s Karaoke” playlist that she created in YouTube by looking through my Spotify list. My husband and kids were “obliged” to hear me sing almost 10 songs. Last but not the least, my favorite singer of all time, Gary Valenciano, staged his Hopeful concert on April 18 and 19 via Facebook Live. It was great to share my favorite Gary V songs with my kids then on the second night, watching it virtually together with my three dear friends from grade school: Joey, Mel and Reena.

Another positive reflection is how our family got closer this quarantine. We did activities together, like puzzles. We got to spend more time with our dog, Brad. Meagan discovered that Brad was a great companion while she was studying. She now bathes him. Because some airconditioners had start to leak, we have been sleeping in one room for almost a month

c

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Dealing with others will not be easy. Listen, question motives and consider what’s fair before you agree to something that may jeopardize your future. Know your rights, and voice your opinion. Verify facts, and proceed with caution. HHH

d

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Forward motion will be better for you than living in the past.

Don’t fear the unknown. An open mind, innovative spirit and the will to bring about positive change will make your life better. Focus on what’s possible, and don’t look back. HHHH

e

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): You can improve your financial situation if you are disciplined and choose to follow your path. Getting involved in someone’s plan will diminish your chance to explore what you want and do best. HH

now. Recently, my daughter did a makeshift sleeping area with his brother on the floor. Next week, she plans to do indoor camping beds complete with a tent we are buying from Bestway Lazada.

Moreover, I realized even more the need for human connections. It was fun to have more casual, less business talk with my dad and my sister. It was great to catch up with friends over Zoom and WhatsApp. It made me realize even more how important my “paren-team” is in facing the new normal.

Paren-team is a term I have used in previous columns. It started to mean as a couple who involves themselves jointly in the holistic development of their children. Later on, I actually extended this to team work with the parents’ community, including our extended family, household staff, friends, teachers and people who care for our children’s well-being.

“New normal” as defined in Urbandictionary.com is “the current state of being after some dramatic

Megaworld Lifestyle Malls deploy ‘social distancing ambassadors’

MEGAWORLD Lifestyle Malls has taken extra measures to ensure proper discipline among mall-goers as it opens its malls and commercial centers in Metro Manila and the provinces.

Starting today, it is deploying so-called “social distancing ambassadors” around its malls to ensure that mall-goers practice the required 3-meter physical distancing between persons while inside mall premises.

“These social distancing ambassadors, who are also part of our security force, act as disciplinarians inside the mall,” says Graham Coates, head of Megaworld Lifestyle Malls.

Megaworld Lifestyle Malls has already reduced its malls’ carrying capacity to maintain the required “one person in every 2 square meters” density. Only 50 percent of each mall’s total floor area will also be opened at this time. “We thank all our mall visitors for their continued discipline and cooperation. So far, we have not encountered any problems with overcrowding as we have already anticipated and diligently prepared for this several days ago,” adds Coates.

change has transpired, what replaces the expected, usual, typical state after an event occurs. The new normal encourages one to deal with current situations rather than lamenting what could have been.” This translates to the new way of life each of us must adopt to. It also connotes positivity and flexibility in facing the situation.

I believe a strong paren-team is needed as each of us and our families face this new normal. There are many realities to overcome. There may be a financial pinch from adjusted work hours or, worse, company shutdowns. This might require both financial and emotional support from your paren-teams. There might be other anxiety factors since even when the lockdown is lifted, our elderly and our kids must still stay home. We need to address their needs by keeping their mind, body and spirit active.

I believe our primary concern must still be on safety. We cannot be complacent. We still need to contribute to flattening the curve. Second is positivity.

We need to believe there is life after Covid-19. It might be different, but definitely it can be a bright one. I psyche myself into believing we are now in “in medias res.” We are amid the “past normal” and the normal where the world is able to manage Covid-19.

The only way to get through this is building resilience as an individual, as a family, as a company, and as a society. That’s where a strong paren-team comes in.

We conclude this week’s installment with the first of several tips I have in building resilience and positivity with our own paren-teams. The rest comes next week.

PARENTS/ADULTS n STAY HEALTHY. We might think because we are generally healthy, we are not susceptible to the virus.

Continue to have enough nutrients and sleep. Try weekly exercise classes available via Zoom. It helps both our physical and psychological health. n

f

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Set goals as well as boundaries. If you spread yourself too thin, you will miss your mark. Pick up information, skills and insight into what’s possible, and set your plans in motion. HHHHH

g

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Explore your options, gather information or take a correspondence course. Do whatever it takes to prepare for your next venture. Refuse to let someone interfere with your plans. Instead of being controlled, take the reins. HHH

h

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): It’s up to you to make change happen. Consider what it is you want, and work diligently to put everything in place to ensure your success. Altering your lifestyle should bring you peace of mind and a more significant opportunity to fulfill your dreams. HHH

i

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Move things around at home to suit your changing lifestyle. Distance yourself from individuals who are indulgent or untrustworthy. Nurture meaningful relationships that bring out the best in you and encourage and support your efforts. HHH

j

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): When uncertain, sit tight. Spend more time making positive changes at home that will bring you comfort and ease your stress. Set high standards when it comes to relationships, health and lifestyle. HHHHH

k

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Consider your options, and you’ll figure out the best way to proceed. Refuse to let opposition and meddlers stand between you and what you want. Follow the path that suits you, not what someone chooses for you. HH

l

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): A change to the way you live, your financial situation or your relationship with someone you’ve known for a long time will leave you questioning the decisions you’ve made in the past. Learn from experience, but don’t lose sight of the future. HHHH Birthday Baby: You are intense, passionate and appreciative.

You are motivated and intelligent.

‘prime numbers’ by evan kalish The Universal Crossword/Edited by David Steinberg

ACROSS 1 Do some shading 7 Puncture 13 Horses and zebras 15 Lumber source 16 With 17-Across, 1981 Grover Washington Jr. and Bill Withers hit 17 See 16-Across 18 “What a nice massage!”

19 Rage 20 Sheldon’s friend on The Big Bang Theory 21 Entry cost 22 Piece of nose jewelry 23 ___ Spunkmeyer 25 Atrocious 28 Scottish boy 30 Clublike medieval weapons 34 1978 Commodores hit 37 Word before “ring” or “swing” 38 At the perfect time 39 ___ Brockovich 40 The “S” of UCSD 41 With 64-Across, “Gemini Man” director 42 Supporter’s side

4 Winter solstice mo.

4 45 With 47-Across, 1959 Dave Brubeck hit 47 See 45-Across 49 Pet shelter org.

51 Lobe’s locale 54 Renter’s document 57 Start of an advice column question 58 Computer network manager, for short 60 Speak unclearly 61 1982 Stevie Nicks hit 64 See 41-Across 65 Rival who’s somewhat on your side 66 GPS lines: Abbr.

67 Hosp. areas 68 War and Peace author 69 ___ a good example DOWN 1 ___ vu 2 Watery blue 3 Try to join, as a sorority 4 Build-it-yourself purchase 5 Grant a right to 6 1960s jacket style 7 Bat around, cat-style

8 Site of an iconic flag-raising photo 9 Angsty rock genre 10 Jazzy refrain 11 Board game set in a mansion 12 “What ___ is new?”

14 Young plant 15 Walked over with confidence 22 Took to court 24 Post-Thanksgiving event 25 Drive-up bank conveniences 26 “Hold on, horse!”

27 Newsstand sights 29 Theater chain 31 Sellers with a lot of products?

32 Actress Falco 33 Harmonize 35 Voice or muscle quality 36 Feudal laborer 41 Sometimes called, briefly 43 Liquid in a slick 46 Farm area unit 48 Part of a three-piece suit 49 “Set Fire to the Rain” singer 50 Jewish meal with a special plate 51 1950s Ford flop 52 Churchgoers’ chorus

3 Fastener for Rosie 5 55 Boot leather 56 ___ & Young 58 Hairdo for Questlove 59 Finding Dory fish 62 Frequently, in poems 63 Bronx Bombers, on scoreboards

Solution to yesterday’s puzzle:

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A pedestrian walks through the near-empty West End district in London.

London’s West End faces existential crisis as theaters stay dark

A

By Alex Morales Bloomberg News

gatha Christie’s murder mystery play The Mousetrap has been staged continuously in London since 1952, making it the world’s longest-running show.

But the coronavirus lockdown brought the famous production to an abrupt halt in March, along with the musicals Les Miserables—showing since 1985—and the composer Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera—staged since 1986.

As the UK faces months of restrictions on social gatherings, there’s no prospect of any of London’s West End hits opening again soon.

Live theater in the land of William Shakespeare now faces a crisis from which many in the business fear it might never fully recover. When the lights went out at the end of a production of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus at Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre on March 14, the actors didn’t know it was for the last time. Two days later, Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Britons to avoid theaters.

“Our business model just stopped,” Sheffield Theatres Artistic Director Robert Hastie said. “We lost nearly 90 percent of the money coming in, and that is presenting us with enormous business problems.”

The government’s 60-page strategy for getting the UK working again, published on Monday, doesn’t mention reopening the country’s more than 1,000 theaters. Even as the UK takes what Johnson called its first “baby steps” to get the economy moving, the virus makes it hard for theaters to host audiences.

Social distancing rules—with people required to keep two meters apart in public—are “here to stay,” according to ministers.

TOO RISKY “IF social distancing is maintained, theaters will not be able to open: simple as that,” said Rebecca Kane Burton, chief executive officer of LW Theatres, Lloyd Webber’s portfolio of venues.

The industry operates by packing strangers into cramped auditoriums, with actors in close contact on stage and support crews behind the scenes.

“A West End production can cost £5 million to £7 million before it even hits the stage,” Kane Burton

said. “Theater producers are already incredibly bold for doing this in a normal environment. With social distancing in place, why would you take the risk with no prospect of breaking even, let alone any of the upside?” The pandemic poses a threat to venues from the smallest provincial theaters to London’s West End, which draws tourists from all over the world to see musicals, such as The Lion King, Wicked and Mamma Mia! According to Kane Burton, musical theaters need to be at 60 percent-70 percent capacity just to cover costs. There are already casualties. The Artrix Arts Centre in Bromsgrove stopped trading in April. Nuffield Southampton Theatres went into administration on May 6. The Old Vic, one of London’s most prestigious theaters, is in a “seriously perilous” financial situation, Artistic Director Matthew Warchus told the Guardian.

“Progressively as you go through June, July, August and into September, theaters just start having cash-flow issues,” said Julian Bird, chief executive officer of UK Theatre. He said the industry will need government assistance not just for actors and theaters but for the “whole ecology” of the sector, including agents, lighting and sound designers, set builders, and costume and wig makers.

The performing arts and associated creative industry contributed £9.9 billion to the UK economy last year, according to the Office for National Statistics. Beyond the economic value, they improve the lives of millions of people.

On Thursday, 245 musicians from 30 West End shows and major orchestras wrote to members of Parliament to warn the performing industries face “annihilation.”

“They will be instrumental not only in getting our country back on its feet again, but in reminding us what life is supposed to be about,” they wrote.

TAX HOLIDAYS SOME support is available. The government has brought in tax holidays, grants and a program for the state to pay the wages of furloughed workers through October and Arts Council England has announce a £160 million ($195 million) emergency fund.

“We are working with the creative and cultural sectors to plan for the future, understand their challenges and consider a variety of ways to ensure

safe working,” the Culture Department said in a statement. “As soon as it is safe to do so, we will be encouraging everyone to visit the UK’s vibrant entertainment venues.” But many of the industry’s self-employed workers fall through the cracks in support programs, and the funding so far doesn’t come close to replacing revenue: UK theaters took in £1.3 billion in 2018, with a combined audience of more than 34 million people. Last year, London’s West End alone took in £800 million.

Even if theaters are allowed to reopen, they’ll face major logistical difficulties. Long-running shows may need new cast members as well as fresh marketing campaigns to drive ticket sales, according to Kane Burton. Venues without a show will need months to audition and rehearse, as well as to build sets and arrange costumes.

Then there is the question of how to make venues safe. LW Theatres has bought hundreds of selfsanitizing door handles to test. The company is also looking at taking temperatures, providing staff with protective equipment and encouraging the public to wear face masks. Other measures could include deep cleaning and one-way systems for audiences moving around the buildings.

Giles Watling, a Conservative member of Parliament who’s spent 55 years in show business, said he’s urged Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak to ensure the arts don’t get put to “the back of the queue” as they do “so often.” He stressed the importance of protecting regional theaters which feed the more resilient London West End, adding that the industry “is a vital part of our world offer.”

“It is what we do best and it sells UK Plc. to the world,” Watling said in an interview. “From Shakespeare and others onwards, we have led the world on this, and if we lose that, we have lost something that is incredibly valuable.”

In Sheffield, Hastie said the greatest concern is what happens at year-end, when the traditional program of holiday pantomimes and musicals would normally bring in a large proportion of annual income.

“The big fear that everybody’s got is can Christmas be made to work?” he said. “If we can’t do Christmas, things will look even bleaker.”

With assistance from Andrew Atkinson

Thursday, May 21, 2020

More local news available to viewers nationwide MORE viewers will have access to local news that matters as GMA Regional TV launches its GMA Regional TV Strip airing weeknights on GMA News TV. Every night at 9:45 pm, GMA News TV viewers will be able to catch the featured local newscast for the day which was aired earlier that afternoon on GMA Regional TV’s local channels.

On Monday, bannering GMA Regional TV Strip’s weeklong lineup is leading North Central Luzon newscast Balitang Amianan. Seasoned TV journalist CJ Torida, award-winning local news correspondent Joanne Ponsoy, and news presenter Jasmin GabrielGalban give the latest news and developments in various areas in North Central Luzon.

Meanwhile, the network giant’s local newscast in Central and Eastern Visayas, Balitang Bisdak, becomes available to viewers nationwide every Tuesday. It is anchored by tri-media personality Bobby Nalzaro, award-winning local news correspondent Alan Domingo, and news presenter Cecille Quibod-Castro.

Delivering the latest news and information from Western Visayas during Wednesday is pioneering unified Hiligaynon newscast One Western Visayas.

Headlining this newscast is Sedfrey Cabaluna with Bacolod coanchor and correspondent Adrian Prietos, and Iloilo coanchor Kaitlene Rivilla.

Thursday nights on GMA Regional TV Strip put the spotlight on unified local newscast One Mindanao led by veteran broadcast journalist Tek Ocampo with coanchors Sarah Hilomen-Velasco and Real Sorroche.

And on Fridays, viewers from other parts of the country get to catch the replay of GMA Regional TV Live! Launched in April, the newest addition to GMA Regional TV’s growing number of original local programs is broadcast live weekdays at 8 am via GMA Regional TV’s Central and Eastern Visayas channels. The program is hosted by GMA Regional TV correspondent Nikko Sereno with Cecille QuibodCastro as segment host.

Prior to the replayed episodes on GMA News TV, the regional newscasts are available weekdays, 5 pm, via GMA Network’s local channels all over the country.

Viewers can expect more quality programming from the GMA’s regional arm. Earlier this month, GMA Regional TV Weekend News also began its fourth season by returning to GMA News TV with a new primetime timeslot every Saturday at 6:15 pm.

“Because local news matters, we are bringing to more Kapuso viewers nationwide all the news and developments in key cities and provinces all over the Philippines via GMA Regional TV Strip which will be made available on GMA News TV beginning May 18,” says GMA Regional TV Vice President and Head Oliver Amoroso. “As part of our commitment of being ‘Buong Puso, Para Sa Pilipino,’ we continue to innovate and exert efforts to give our real boss—the viewers—the best programs we can offer.”

More information is available at www.gmanetwork. com/regionaltv.

‘Little Fires Everywhere’ director Lynn Shelton dies at 54 LOS ANGELES—Lynn Shelton, an independent filmmaker who directed Humpday and Little Fires Everywhere, has died. She was 54.

Shelton’s publicist, Adam Kersh, said in a statement on Saturday that she died on Friday in Los Angeles from an unidentified blood disorder.

Shelton had become the leading voice of the new American independent cinema movement. She caused waves with her low-budget films, then made splashes through her work on television including Mad Men,

Fresh Off the Boat, The Mindy Project and GLOW. She directed four episodes of the Hulu miniseries Little Fires Everywhere, starring Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington.

“We made so many things together,” said Mark Duplass on Twitter. He was a frequent collaborator with Shelton, starring in her 2009 film Humpday, which was a depiction of male sexuality through a female lens.

The actor said he lost a “dear friend” and admired her creativity.

“I wish we had made more,” Duplass said. “Her boundless creative energy and infectious spirit were unrivaled. She made me better. We butted heads, made up, laughed, pushed each other. Like family. What a deep loss.”

Shelton began her filmmaking career in her mid-30s after initially being an aspiring actor and photographer. She went on to write and direct eight feature films in the span of 14 years.

The statement said she had an

“infectious laugh, was full of life and had an esprit de corps that touched many.”

Ava DuVernay said Shelton changed her life after handing her an award at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012.

“She announced my name with pride,” said DuVernay, who posted a photo on Twitter that included both filmmakers. “Handed it to me with love. Rooted for me long after. I can’t believe I’m typing this. Rest In Peace, Beauty. Thank you for your films. And for your kindness.” AP

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B6 Thursday, May 21, 2020

Sitel Puerto Princesa donates to communities in need Toyota offers more car purchase options and deals as we look forward to better days ahead

“Sitel joins PPUR volunteers in distributing donations to communities severely impacted by COVID-19”

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A

S the country moves forward and makes its way to recovery from the global pandemic, Toyota Motor Philippines (TMP) acknowledges the challenges it will face once we transition to the new normal. As we aspire for “mobility for all”, TMP continues to provide options that will make car purchase lighter for customers. This month of May, TMP will be offering various deals, financing schemes, and rebates, such as: Outright cash discounts on wellloved Toyota models.

Get as much as P125,000 savings on a new Vios or up to P60,000 if you purchase a Hilux. Up to P30,000 savings are also offered on the Innova and Fortuner. Other models such as Wigo, Rush, Avanza, and Hiace also offer savings on select variants.

Flexible financing and payment holidays.

Toyota Financial Services will be offering payment holidays which allows customers to buy their dream Toyota now with a pre-set downpayment, and pay the monthly amortization two months later. Pre-approved customers and frontliners are eligible for a lower downpayment under this promo.

Light monthly payments are also available for the Vios for as low as P6,683, or the Avanza for as low as P7,378. Aside from these, all-in low downpayment or low monthly options are available for selected variants of the following models: Wigo, Altis, Innova, Fortuner, Rush, Hilux, and Hiace.

Free Periodic Maintenance Service (PMS) and vehicle interior sanitation services. Participating dealer outlets will be offering free PMS up to 20,000 KMS and free vehicle sanitation services when customers purchase select variants of the Vios, Corolla Altis,

Rush, Fortuner, Hilux, and FMC Hiace.

Aside from free PMS, customers are also eligible for 5 free Bactaklenz Vehicle Interior Sanitation treatments which can be availed during Periodic Maintenance Service. Bactaklenz is an antibacterial treatment administered using misting system and is clinically proven to kill 99.9% of bacteria, molds and fungi inside your air conditioner and vehicle, and eliminate cabin odor and foul smell.

Furthermore, existing Toyota owners who will avail of Periodic Maintenance (PM), General Service (GS), or Body & Paint (BP) from May 11 – June 16, 2020 will get one (1) Free Bactaklenz Vehicle Interior Sanitation treatment. Customers can go to https:// toyota .com.ph/promos/bactaklenz for more details on the Welcome Back promo.

Extended warranty coverage for the Vios, Select variants of the Vios will also come with an extended warranty coverage of 5 years or 150,000KM, whichever comes first, when you purchase the locally-assembled flagship passenger car within the month.

Rebates when you trade-in your vehicle for a Toyota, Get as much as P40,000 rebate when you trade-in your vehicle for a Corolla Altis, or P35,000 for a Vios. P20,000 rebate is also available when you trade-in your vehicle for an Innova, Fortuner, Avanza, Wigo, Rush, Pre-FMC Hiace Commuter, and Hilux (except for PUV, Cab & Chassis, and FX). The rebates can be used on top of existing promos, and may also be used to purchase accessories.

For more information on available deals, visit https://toyota.com.ph/ promos/betterdaysahead As of May 19, the following dealer outlets have resumed operations:

Metro Manila Luzon Toyota Quezon Ave Toyota Ilocos Norte Toyota Valenzuela Toyota La Union Toyota Balintawak Toyota Isabela Toyota North Edsa Toyota Tuguegarao Toyota Otis Toyota Calapan Toyota Bicutan-Parañaque Toyota Puerto Princesa Toyota Alabang Toyota Camarines Sur Toyota Cubao Toyota Marikina Toyota Pasong Tamo Toyota Sta. Rosa Toyota Manila Bay Toyota Marilao Toyota Abad Santos Toyota San Jose Toyota Commonwealth Toyota Baguio Toyota Makati Dagupan Toyota Global City Toyota Toyota Fairview Toyota Nueva Ecija

Toyota San Fernando

Toyota Plaridel

Toyota Tarlac

Toyota Bataan

Toyota Angeles

Toyota Subic

Toyota Dasmarinas

Toyota Batangas

Toyota Calamba

Toyota Taytay

Toyota Lipa Batangas

Toyota Bacoor

Toyota Silang

Toyota Albay

Toyota Iloilo Visayas Mindanao Toyota Aklan Toyota Cagayan De Oro Toyota Negros Occidental Toyota Iligan Toyota Roxas Toyota Valencia Toyota Dumaguete Toyota General Santos Toyota Tagbilaran Toyota Kidapawan Toyota Tacloban Toyota Butuan Toyota Calbayog Toyota Zamboanga Toyota Talisay Toyota Davao Toyota Lapu Lapu Toyota Matina

Toyota Tagum

Check out https://toyota.com. ph/HereForYou for dealer inquiries, updates on advisories, and more information. For more Toyota updates, visit www.toyota.com.ph or check out Toyota’s official social media pages at ToyotaMotorPhilippines (Facebook and Instagram), and @ ToyotaMotorPH (Twitter).

Widus Foundation donates P4M Covid-19 relief goods

ITEL in Puerto Princesa Palawan recently partnered with Puerto Princesa Underground River (PPUR) Festival Partners Foundation, Inc. to help distribute donations to people and communities that were severely impacted by COVID-19. Through this partnership, Sitel associates were able to help put together care packages and assist in the distribution to recipient communities.

“Prior to the Enhanced Community Quarantine, Puerto Princesa communities enjoyed a thriving tourism industry thanks largely to the Underground River,” shared Beth Maclang, Puerto Princesa Underground River Senior Park Superintendent. “With the ECQ in place, however, people were no longer allowed to travel and communities that heavily relied on tourism for income were greatly affected. These communitybased sustainable tourism groups were left without a means to work and earn income.”

The foundation called on local business partners to help raise funds and purchase essential goods for families in need.

Volunteers put together 400 care packages consisting of rice, vegetables, vegetable seedlings, and basic grocery essentials, and on April 16, volunteers distributed these to the impacted communities and its residents.

“We have all been badly hit by the current situation,” said Christina Gonzalez-Pierson, Leadership Development Manager, Sitel Puerto Princesa. “As a long-time partner of the Underground River Foundation, we definitely wanted to do what we could to help. It was a way for us to give back to the communities where our Sitel associates live and work.”

“We are hopeful that Palawan will re-open to tourists and visitors soon, when it is safe to do so,” Maclang said. Until then, we need to work hand-in-hand to live in this new normal, to survive and to heal together.”

Negative Pressure tents help curb Covid-19 Infection

THE LOCALLY-PRODUCED NEGATIVE PRESSURE TENT. helps decrease the risk of infection by eliminating the suspension of COVID-19 microbes in aerosolized air through the airflow inside the tent

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HE global pandemic has pushed essential businesses to find innovative and efficient ways to ensure that they can still provide their much-needed services while keeping both employees and customers safe. At De Los Santos Medical Center, this meant creating a “new normal” that would allow their invaluable healthcare frontliners all the protocols and equipment they need to provide healthcare services most safely and effectively.

Raul C. Pagdanganan, President and CEO shared: “Virtually overnight, hospitals had to innovate new ways to be able to address the COVID-19 crisis and keep their frontliners safe, while still being able to provide essential health services to other patients in need.”

While coordinating logistics and operations, DLSMC also focused on ways to bolster safety. Preventing the spread of infection while caring for patients has become a top priority.

Alongside PPEs, a 24-hour emergency and COVID-19 hotline, and stringent safety measures like regular disinfecting, sanitizing, mandatory masks, social distancing, designated COVID-19 areas, separate elevator access, and temperature checks; the hospital also sought other innovative ways of creating a safer environment. That’s how the Negative Pressure Tent (NPT) program began.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an increase in infections in hospitals; greatly affecting health care workers.

According to the World Health Organization, this accounts for

roughly 13% of COVID-19 infections. In the region, this is at around 2-3%.

"We knew we had to take further steps to prevent infection spread in the face of dwindling PPEs so we devised the NPT to use on COVID-19 patients and those suspected of COVID-19 said DLSMC Biomedical Engineering Manager, Visha H. Madrangca-Leonor.

A Negative Pressure Tent is a modified version of the Deboisblanc/LSU-Oschner NPT built with available local materials and outsourced parts and created with the help of a biomedical engineer. The team behind the project includes doctors Avenilo “Jun” Aventura Jr. and Emily Aventura along with Visha H. Madrangca-Leonor and August Patacsil.

These tents may be used with COVID-19 patients or suspect or probable cases who are on BiPAP/High Flow Nasal Cannula, patients who need nebulizing, patients for sputum indication, patients with cough on supplemental oxygen, and patients with procedures done that may require negative pressure.

“NPTs are another way we can help keep our frontliners and patients safe and to curb infection spread,” explained Madrangca-Leonor. “And the design is multi-purpose, too. NPTs may be utilized beyond the Intensive Care Unit. NPTs have also been donated to other private hospitals.

For inquiries, contact 8835762 ext. 3190 or productinfo@ dlsmc.ph.

QC seals partnership with Chinese General, PH Genome Center to hasten release of COVID-19 test results

TURNOVER OF WFI COVID-19 RELIEF GOODS THROUGH CLARK CARES. Widus Foundation Inc. (WFI) Executive Director Neki Liwanag (middle) together with Clark Development Corporation (CDC) President Noel Manankil (fourth to the right) led the turnover of about P4 million worth of food packs to the LGUs of Pampanga and Tarlac at the Clark Skills and Training Center .

W

IDUS Foundation Inc. (WFI) in coordination with the Clark Development Corporation (CDC) and Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (PAGCOR) gave P4 million worth of food packs to the cities and municipalities of Pampanga and Tarlac as covid-19 response efforts for the two month-long Luzon-wide quarantine.

The relief goods project which aims to provide food assistance to the most vulnerable communities near Clark benefited around 11,500 families from Mabalacat and Angeles City including those from the Municipalities of Porac and Bacolor, Pampanga; Capas, and Bamban, Tarlac.

The food donations were prepared by

employees from CDC –Corporate Social Responsibility and Placement Division (CSRPD), CDC- Estate Preservation and Recovery Division (EPRD), and volunteers from the Philippine Air Force (PAF).

Each food pack consisted of 25 kilos or rice and various grocery items. These were distributed by CDC with Clark CSR Association Inc. (CCAI) and the aid of the respective LGUs in Pampanga and Tarlac.

In the true spirit of bayanihan, WFI Executive Director Neki Liwanag thanked WFI partners and volunteers for their continued support in creating and executing pandemic-relief projects.

“Despite the challenges we are faced with during these trying times, we won’t cease in working hand in hand with CDC,

PAGCOR and the LGUs to extend our helping hands to our communities in need,” Liwanag said.

WFI has also previously donated P1.5M worth of personal protective equipment (PPE) and medical supplies to 16 government hospitals and local infirmary units within Pampanga and Tarlac.

Widus Foundation, Inc. (WFI) is a nonstock, non-profit organization established on June 16, 2017 as the Corporate Social Responsibility arm of Widus Hotel and Casino. Certified by the Philippine Council for NGO in July 11, 2018, it was established to have a more committed, efficient and regular way of helping the community through education, health and disaster response.

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HE Quezon City government has forged partnerships with the Chinese General Hospital and the Philippine Genome Center to hasten the processing and release of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) test results from its intensified community-based testing.

“As we increase our testing capacity, we need more laboratories that will process the specimen and speed up the identification of positive COVID-19 cases in our city,” said Dr. Rolly Cruz, head of the QC-Epidemiology and Surveillance Unit (ESU) of the City Health Department.

"Our target is to do 10,000 or more tests by the end of the month," said Cruz.

Under the agreement, Cruz said the Chinese General Hospital and Medical Center will accept and process 50 tests per day with a turnaround time of 2-3 days.

The Philippine Genome Center, which can also process swab tests gathered from the community-based testing centers, recently received 2,000 PCR test kits donated to the Quezon City government by San Miguel Corporation (SMC) and 13,000 rapid testing kits from Bloomberg, Ayala Corp. and other anonymous donors led by Project Ark. “The rapid testing serves as guide for city health officials.

Anybody can do 10,000 tests, including us, but at the end of the day we still rely on PCR test, which is considered the gold standard worldwide,” he added.

Cruz added that intensified and timely testing has contributed immensely to the city’s recovery rate of 38.81

percent as of May 18 based from the validated cases.

“Nakikita na natin agad iyong mga positive or suspect cases then we isolate and treat them immediately. Once they are doing better, they undergo further testing to make sure that they are COVID free,” Cruz stressed.

Joseph Juico, project manager of the community-based testing, welcomed the addition of partner laboratories, saying it would greatly contribute to the city’s aim to flatten the curve.

“As more laboratories are being accredited by the Department of Health (DOH), we intend to partner with some of them who can process the bulk of our tests,” Juico said.

The QC government has earlier entered into partnerships with St. Luke’s Medical Center-Quezon City, Philippine Genome Center, Singapore Diagnostics, and Philippine Red Cross for the processing of PCR tests.

"Partnering with laboratories is important. What QC is after is not just test, test, test but we are after results, results, results. The quicker the turnaround time is, the better," Juico said.

"If we rely solely on national government hospitals who are already at their limit given the number of tests they have to fulfill, it will affect the ideal schedule turnaround of 2- 3 days," he added.

He said this will help QC in educating the patients to properly isolate so they won't infect other people.

"For those who can't follow proper quarantine procedures we have the HOPE facility for those patients," Juico said.

Envoys&Expats BusinessMirror

B7 Thursday, May 21, 2020

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Covid-19 pandemic:

The defining health crisis of our time beyond the current crisis. The pandemic exploits the gaps and inequalities in health systems, underscoring the importance of investing in health workers, health infrastructure and systems to prevent, detect and respond to disease outbreaks.

by Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus Director-General, World Health Organization

& Jutta Urpilainen

Commissioner for International Partnerships, European Commission

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(Exclusive to the BusinessMirror’s ENVOYS&EXPATS)

EGINNING with a cluster of pneumonia cases of an unknown cause in Wuhan, China, the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) has spread with alarming speed, shaking the foundations of health systems, economies and societies around the world.

Countries in Europe are among the most heavily affected. At the time of writing, the continent has five of the six most-affected. And yet, even as it is fighting to bring Covid-19 under control at home, it is also playing a leading role in building global solidarity.

Even as we are physically distancing as individuals, we need to pull together collectively as actors on the world stage. The European Union

(EU) and the World Health Organization (WHO) share a commitment to support vulnerable communities and countries around the world.

Standing together as a global community is particularly crucial now, because we are all in this together, as the disease knows no borders and does not discriminate. As long as it affects some of us, none of us is safe.

To support the global response to Covid-19, the EU and its member-

UHC Partnership

TEDROS

states recently put forward a “Team Europe” package, which is growing to be well over €23 billion. Of course, Team Europe will be delivering parts of its response to the coronavirus pandemic with the United Nations.

Plans and tools

LIKE in so many crises, the most vulnerable suffer the most, and they must be our focus. The EU is supporting the WHO Strategic Preparedness and Response Plan, with €30 million in new funding to strengthen emergency preparedness and response in countries with weak health systems or which are affected by humanitarian crises.

In addition, the European Com-

URPILAINEN

mission, the WHO and partners from around the globe have also teamed up to launch “The Access to Covid-19 Tools Accelerator” to speed-up the development, production and equitable distribution of vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics for Covid-19 so that all people have equitable access to these lifesaving products.

Building on this historic commitment, the European Commission hosted a pledging event on May 4, where more than 40 countries came together to pledge some €7.4 billion to support research and development for vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics.

But our partnership extends well

US supports speedy SAP subsidies issuance T

HE United States’s government, through the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and in partnership with the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), formally launched the “ReliefAgad” Web application on May 14 to speed up the distribution of financial assistance to Filipinos affected by the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic.

The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) and Developers Connect Philippines, through the Devcon Community of Technology Experts, are working in partnership with the DSWD and USAID on ReliefAgad.

The Social Amelioration Program (SAP) is the Philippine government’s emergency subsidy program for more than 20 million Filipino families belonging to the low-income and most-vulnerable sectors, or those severely affected

eficiaries across the Philippines and support the most vulnerable during the pandemic,” said Ambassador Sung Y. Kim. “The introduction of the ReliefAgad system will improve the gathering of beneficiary data by taking advantage of mobile phone technology,” Social Welfare Undersecretary Danilo G. Pamonag noted. “We also thank USAID, the DICT and Devcon for helping us in this critical task of providing emergency assistance to our fellow countrymen during this crisis.”

USAID is also supporting the rollout of ReliefAgad by providing quality assurance and technical support, as well as developing a digital user guide and instructional materials to ensure the application’s ease of use. It is also assisting the DSWD and a select number of LGUs to adopt e-payment systems for the disbursement of relief to SAP beneficiaries.

by Covid-19. Target beneficiaries include senior citizens, persons with disabilities, pregnant women, single parents, repatriated overseas Filipino workers, indigenous peoples, the homeless, farmers, fisherfolk, and those working under “no work-no pay” arrangements.

ReliefAgad w ill enable the DSW D and loca l gover nment units (LGUs) to hasten capturing SAP details and provide data to expedite disbursement of cash assistance through electronicpayment systems. Using their smartphones, SAP beneficiaries can now register their social amelioration cards on the ReliefAgad system through its web site, www. reliefagad.ph.

“The US is committed to support the Philippine government’s response to the Covid-19 health crisis. The ReliefAgad application will help expedite the delivery of relief assistance to SAP ben-

STRONG health systems are the best prevention not only against outbreaks and pandemics, but also against the multiple health threats people around the world face every day. And yet, on current trends, more than 5 billion people will lack access to essential health services by 2030—including the ability to see a health worker, access to essential medicines, and running water in hospitals. Even when services are available, using them can mean financial ruin for millions of people.

These gaps don’t only undermine the health of individuals, families and communities; they also undermine global security and economic growth. That is why the EU has contributed €102 million to the Universal Health Coverage Partnership with the WHO, supporting health system strengthening in 115 countries in Africa, the Caribbean, the Pacific, Eastern Europe, as well as

Central and Southeast Asia.

The world spends around $7.5 trillion on health each year—almost 10 percent of the global gross domestic product. But too many countries spend too much of their health budget on managing diseases in hospitals, where the costs are higher and the outcomes are often worse, instead of promoting health and preventing disease at the primary health-care level.

‘History will judge us’

THE Covid-19 pandemic will eventually recede, but there can be no going back to business-as-usual. As we work on responding to this pandemic, we must also prepare for the next one. Now is an opportunity to lay the foundations for resilient health systems around the world.

Investments to strengthen health infrastructure and work force are the only ways to avoid future global health crises like the one we are facing now. If we learn anything from Covid-19, it must be that investing in health now will save lives later.

History will judge us not only on whether we got through this pandemic, but also on the lessons we have learned, and the actions we took once it is over.

EU responds to challenges in local justice system

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HE European Union’s (EU) Governance in Justice (GOJUST) Programme, in consultation with the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP), will provide detention facilities with multimedia tablets for the “eDalaw” system, as well as test kits, disinfecting agents and personal protective equipment (PPEs) for inmates and jail personnel.

With the heightened concerns on the plight of persons deprived of liberty (PDL) during the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) outbreak, this set of initiatives will further build on the support being provided by the program to establish and expand “eDalaw” in justice zone areas in Quezon City, Davao City, Cebu City, Angeles City, Bacolod City and Naga City, including the rollout of videoconferencing between courts and jails.

“We are pleased to provide assistance to the criminal justice system as they address new challenges resulting from [the pandemic],” the EU Delegation to the Philippines’s Chargé d’affaires a.i. Thomas Wiersing said.

According to the EU Embassy, support for GOJUST is in-line with the commitment of the bloc to help strengthen the Philippines’s formal justice system through increased efficiency, effectiveness and accountability. With the country having one of the highest congestion rates in the world for detention facilities, Covid-19 positive cases and fatalities have been registered in several jails.

On April 20, 124 cases, or 60 percent of the 207 con-

firmed cases nationwide, were reported from the BJMP facility in Cebu City. As of May 3, the Department of Health recorded at least 249 inmates and 34 jail staff as having tested positive for the disease. As such, the embassy believes more tests and PPEs are needed to contain the spread of infection in jails. Additional test kits and PPEs will help the BJMP identify and treat positive cases immediately.

As a preventive measure against the spread of Covid-19, the BJMP has prohibited access to all outsiders in detention facilities. The eDalaw, however, enables inmates to communicate with their families and lawyers through online video calls. GOJUST is also handing out multimedia tablets and will ensure connectivity for jails in justice zone areas. These tools will also support the pilot test of the hearing of criminal cases involving PDLs through video conferencing based on Supreme Court Circular 90-2020.

The GOJUST Programme works primarily with key justice sector institutions such as the Supreme Court, the Department of Justice as well as the Department of the Interior and Local Government to strengthen sector coordination and policy making, create space for reform implementation through decongestion and automation, as well as generate resources for reform implementation through the improvement of administrative and financial management. The embassy said the program is valued at over P900 million, or more than €16.5 million, and will be operational until June 2020.

Filipino scholars.

On May 21 and 22, Australia will host a free online screening from “Flickerfest,” Australia’s only Academy-Award accredited and British Academy of Film and Television Arts-recognized short-film festival.

Robinson commented, “I am pleased that we can continue our tradition of providing Filipino film lovers the opportunity to experience Australian filmmaking excellence and learn more about Australian contemporary culture.”

The embassy is also offering a “Taste of Australia” experience by bringing together online retailers of Australian food and beverage. Robinson offered, “Food brings people together, so sharing Australians and Filipino food is a perfect way to cel-

ebrate Friendship Day. Australian fine food reflects the pristine environment and high standards of food safety in Australia. It’s a pleasure to be able to share Australian-made and grown products that Filipinos can enjoy at home to create delicious meals for their families.”

To join the celebrations, follow the Australian Embassy on Facebook: @AustraliaInThePhilippines, Twitter: @AusAmbPH and Instagram: @AusEmbPH, as well as the hashtag #FilAussieDay. The Philippines-Australia Friendship Day 2020 is presented with the Australian Embassy, in partnership with Australian companies Austal, Crone Architects, Orica, Prime Metro BMD, Qantas, QBE, Site Skills and Telstra.

PHL, Australia to mark ‘Friendship Day’

T

HE Commonwealth of Australia is marking its Friendship Day with the Philippines on May 22 with an online celebration, its embassy in Manila has announced.

“Each year, we celebrate Philippines-Australia Friendship Day by holding festivals in different parts of the country, with events in Manila, [as well as the cities of] Cebu and Davao in recent years. This year, we’re adapting to the current situation around the coronavirus disease 2019 [Covid-19 pandemic] by inviting everyone to celebrate with us online by using and following the hashtag #FilAussieDay,” said Australian Ambassador Steven J. Robinson AO. “I am very pleased that we can still celebrate our deep ties and enduring friendship from the safety of our homes.”

“Australia and the Philippines are close friends. We enjoy broad cooperation in trade, development, defense and security,” Robinson added.

“I would like to thank our friends in government who are sharing their

messages of friendship as part of this celebration.”

“This online celebration is also an opportunity for us to thank frontliners who have been delivering assistance to the Covid-19 response, as well as those from national and local government units who have provided assistance to Australian tourists who have been stranded in the Philippines,” explained the ambassador.

“Beyond our bilateral relationship, our people-to-people links are broad and deep,” the Australian envoy affirmed. “One of the first waves of Filipino migration to Australia occurred in the late 1800s when young men—mostly from the Visayas and parts of Mindanao—settled in northern Australia to work in the pearling industry. Today, more than 300,000 Filipinos call [our country as their] home.”

Celebrities, students

ROBINSON went further: “A number of Filipino-Australian celebrities have been very supportive of our

celebration over the years, including Ms. Universe 2018 Catriona Gray, siblings Anne and Jasmine Curtis [Smith], James and Lauren Reid, as well as young talents Ylona Garcia and Leila Alcasid. They embrace their ties with both countries and represent our ongoing links.”

He also explained: “Education exchanges have deepened our peopleto-people links strongly. Each year, close to 20,000 Filipinos undertake training and studies in Australia. To keep the education exchanges strong at a time when we can’t travel, the Australian Trade and Investment Commission, or Austrade, has collaborated with social learning platform FutureLearn.com to provide free online courses from leading Australian universities to help international students stay ahead of the learning curve.”

“The ‘Study with Australia’ initiative is opening up access to highquality online resources across businesses; digital technologies; science, technology and mathematics; as well

as health care and teaching courses, to name a few,” the diplomat pointed out. “These will be available for free until the end of June 2020. All Australian universities’ online learning showcases are included in the Australian partner directory on the said web site.”

Lineup of projects

EACH year, according to the embassy, the Australian government supports the prestigious “Australia Award” scholarships for Filipinos to study in top Australian universities. Upon their return, the scholars become part of the global Australia alumni network and serve as citizen ambassadors for both countries. These alumni are currently sharing their experience and success stories online during the celebration using the hashtag #AustraliaGlobalAlumni.

The embassy recently opened the applications for the 2021 intake of Australia Awards, as they have been extended until June 30, in response to the impact of Covid-19 on potential

Sports BusinessMirror

B8 Thursday, May 21, 2020

mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph / Editor: Jun Lomibao

A HUNDRED BICYCLES FOR NATL ATHLETES THE cover design of Number 1 Shimbun. AP

PHILIPPINE Olympic Committee President Rep. Abraham “Bambol” Tolentino sees the importance of bicycles during quarantine.

By Ramon Rafael Bonilla

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HILIPPINE Olympic Committee (POC) President Rep. Abraham “Bambol” Tolentino will lend a hundred bicycles to national athletes who don’t have the means to travel to and from their training venues.

“With the new normal which mandates that we find new ways to go about our daily business, national athletes who do not have a personal mode of transportation will surely benefit from this,” said Tolentino, also the president of the national federation for cycling, PhilCycling.

“Cycling is not only a healthy way to get from one point to another, it also promotes social distancing, not to mention avoiding traffic jams,” he added.

Tolentino sought the POC Board’s approval for the provision for 100 bicycle units that would be made available to members of the various national teams.

But with only a hundred bicycles available, the POC would implement a first-come, first-served policy for interested athletes. There are at least a thousand national team members in 56 sports under the POC umbrella.

“We need to be innovative so the POC is looking for ways so that our athletes would stay fit and ready for competitions once the situation allows it,” Tolentino said.

“Whether to commute to and from their training venues, or even for leisure, cycling is a good way for our national athletes to keep in good physical condition,” the Cavite congressman added.

The POC’s offer came a day after the PhilCycling engaged in an endeavor to make the bicycle the “king of the road” or the safest mode of transportation while the entire world is threatened by the Covid-19 virus.

On Tuesday morning, the major stakeholders in Philippine cycling banded together in the hope of instilling a cycling culture among Filipinos.

AIR21’s Bert Lina, also the PhilCycling chairman, joined Ronda Pilipinas’s Moe Chulani (LBC) and Go For Gold’s Jeremy Go in a virtual meeting to lay the groundwork of establishing a more concrete advocacy on making cycling the vehicle of choice in the “new normal.”

The group included convenor and Le Tour de Filipinas President Donna Lina and Project Manager Sunshine Joy Mendoza, 7-Eleven Cliqq Roadbike Philippines AIR21’s Ric Rodriguez, Lina’s Chief of Staff Titus Reyes and national team coaches Ednalyn Hualda (Go For Gold) and Reinhard Gorantes, also of Philippine Navy-Standard Insurance and PhilCycling Director Jun Lomibao.

The group intends to significantly complement government’s efforts to encourage the use of bicycles following the filing of separate bills in Congress—Reps.

Karlo Nograles and Jericho Jonas Nograles—and in the Senate—Sen. Pia Cayetano—that would institutionalize bicycle lanes and parks all over the country.

The Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases has lifted the ban on cycling, walking and jogging outdoors after the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) was relaxed to a modified ECQ. However, the task force stressed physical distancing and the use of face masks remain compulsory.

TOKYO ORGANIZERS SLAM LOOK-ALIKE GAMES LOGO T OKYO—Tokyo Olympic officials are incensed that the Games emblem has been used in the cover design of a local magazine that combines the logo with the coronavirus.

Tokyo spokesman Masa Takaya said in an online news conference on Tuesday that organizers had requested the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan (FCCJ) “take down” the image.

Takaya did not answer a direct question if the organizing committee was planning a legal challenge. He

said negotiations were going on “in a private manner” with the Tokyo foreign journalists’ club.

“It is very disappointing to see the Games emblem being distorted and associated with the novel coronavirus, which affects human life, people’s lives, the economy, and our society,” Takaya said. “The design is clearly using the design of the Olympic emblem. We therefore consider it an infringement on our legally secured copyright to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic emblem.”

He said the organizing committee had not yet received a

formal reply to its request.

The “look-alike” emblem, which had “Covid-19” written underneath, was published on the cover the the April issue of the club’s magazine. It also appeared in an online edition.

The FCCJ did not respond immediately to a request for comment from The Associated Press.

In an article about the logo published several days ago by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, it named the artist as Andrew Pothecary. It identified him as a British designer based in Japan who serves as the magazine’s art director.

The artist said he viewed the design as a parody, though other designers interviewed by the newspaper suggest parody was difficult with a topic such as the virus and pandemic.

“It is insensitive to many people being affected,” Takaya said. AP

TV production does significant part in golf’s conservative return

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RESSURE wasn’t limited to a closest-to-the-pin contest for six skins worth $1.1 million that Rory McIlroy won to wrap up the TaylorMade Driving Relief exhibition.

Imagine trying to produce the first live golf on TV in two months with only six cameras on the course, using a bonded cellular network to send images 250 miles away instead of radio frequency to a truck stationed right there at Seminole.

And if that wasn’t enough, the plane providing overhead shots had to leave at the end because it was low on fuel.

“It was vastly different from any PGA [Professional Golfers Association] Tour broadcast on network TV,” said Greg Hopfe, executive producer of PGA Tour Entertainment. “And we did this without a single TV truck.”

It could be maddening at times.

Using bonded cellular meant a second-and-a-half delay for the play-by-play announcer (Rich Lerner) and the NBC analysts (Paul Azinger and Gary Koch) to see the video

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PHOTOGRAPHER Jason Vinlove (right) gets tested for Covid-19 antibodies before covering UFC 249 in Jacksonville, Florida. AP

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ISING One Championship strawweight prospect Lito “Thunder Kid” Adiwang is one of the most exciting athletes in his division with a knack for scoring highlight-reel finishes and electrifying huge crowds with his fan-pleasing style.

The Filipino pride Adiwang has captivated audiences in his time inside the One Circle.

The One Warrior Series (OWS) product earned a sixfigure contract to join the promotion’s main roster after blowing away the competition in One Warrior Series—Rich Franklin’s reality television show—winning his first three encounters, two of them by knockout.

Adiwang remains unbeaten in One so far, demolishing top talents Senzo Ikeda and Pongsiri Mitsatit since his global debut.

Needless to say, Adiwang is a man fans have gone wild about. But while he undoubtedly possesses natural talent, “Thunder Kid” is quick to point out that training at Team Lakay has fortified his skill set.

“Training at Team Lakay is intense. I’m very fortunate to be working with a great group of guys who are not just talented and highly skilled, but also close like family,” Adiwang said.

“There are instances when we are really deep in training, and we let loose and forget to hold back.

There’s the occasional heavy shot we land here and there, or sometimes we put each other in some painful submissions,” he said.

“But we’re all professionals, and we know it’s part of the game. We just say sorry and continue with no hard feelings. After all, we’re like brothers here,” he added.

Sitting atop the division is Adiwang’s Team Lakay teammate Joshua Pacio, who holds the One strawweight world title. If Adiwang keeps winning, he will eventually find himself on track for a shot at the world title, too.

While Adiwang isn’t ruling out a showdown with his comrade, he prefers to avoid it if necessary, and instead looks to take out any top contenders to boost his stock.

“My personal goal is to be known as one of the best fighters in the division. Of course, I want to eventually compete for a World Title. It’s every athlete’s dream to become a world champion,” Adiwang said.

Adiwang is setting his sights on former 12-time flyweight world champion and One world Grand Prix winner Demetrious “Mighty Mouse” Johnson of the United States.

Johnson will face reigning One world champion Adriano Moraes sometime this year and Adiwang has no qualms about potentially being first in line to face Johnson should he win the belt.

“That would be a dream come true for me. Demetrious Johnson is the best in the world right now, in my opinion.

And I’ve dreamed of facing him since I started my career.

Before, that was just an impossible dream. But now that he’s with One Championship, it’s closer to reality,” he said.

Ronaldo reports to Juventus camp, gives thumbs up

in St. Augustine, Florida. The Top Tracer technology made it impossible to sync, which is why the click of contact was heard when players were at the top of their swings.

TV trucks in the compound have a person who can shade the camera, making it easier to pick up the ball in flight.

“This technology doesn’t allow for it,” Hopfe said. “We were hoping for a blue sky the entire day. When it goes up to a white sky, we struggled to keep it in the frame. That was a big challenge. We lost some golf balls. The good things is we had the plane up there.”

Except at the end.

The plane provided the magnificent overhead shots of Seminole, the fifth star of the charity match.

“We got to 18, there’s a carryover and we’re about to go to a playoff,” Hopfe said. “I look over at the monitor of the plane and it’s in color bars. It’s running out of fuel. It’s done for the day. I get on the radio and said, ‘Get a second camera to 17 green.’We hustled back and got there before the players.” AP

No universal playbook for virus testing in pro sports ACKSONVILLE, Florida—There is no universal playbook for coronavirus testing in professional sports.

Protocols and procedures, guidelines and handbooks—they could be as different as rulebooks. There’s plenty of common ground, though, which explains why executives and doctors from various leagues have consulted with each other while moving closer to at least a partial return to competition amid a pandemic.

League officials essentially are choosing the best option from a list of bad choices, and it comes down to how much risk are they willing to take.

“When you look at the people that run these other sports, these are all really smart guys,” UFC

‘Thunder Kid’ sets sights on world title

President Dana White said. “And nobody knows their business better than they do.

“They have to literally sit down and break through item by item on what they need to do and how they need to make it as safe as they possibly can. And they’ll figure it out.”

There already have been several approaches in the United States: n UFC took blood (antibody test) or swabbed nostrils (viral test) for roughly 1,200 people during its weeklong stay in Jacksonville, Florida, this month—part of the mixed martial arts behemoth’s health and safety protocols. It took minutes for antibody results and as little as a few hours for viral test results. n Nascar logged temperatures of about 900 people Sunday at its return race in Darlington, South Carolina. n Major League Baseball delivered a 67-page proposal of a 2020 operations manual last week, still subject to negotiation with the players’ association. Proposed details include temperature checks twice a day and multiple fluid swabs weekly. Blood samples to detect Covid-19 antibodies will be collected less frequently. n The NBA hasn’t implemented a full-scale testing program for its 30 teams; a little more than half have reopened practice facilities for voluntary workouts. The National Football League, National Hockey League, tennis, golf and other sports are working on their procedures.

Options differ internationally, too: n South Korea’s top soccer league, the K-League, tested 1,100 players and staff at the end of April, and all came back negative, clearing the way to begin its season. South Korean baseball, the KBO, screens players and coaches for fevers. n Australia’s National Rugby League will mandate vaccines—not for the coronavirus, but for the seasonal flu. It’s part of Queenland’s contentious “no-jab, no-play” policy that means players who skip an annual flu shot won’t be permitted to play north of the Queensland-New South Wales border. n The English Premier League conducted its first wave of Covid-19 testing this week and found six of 748 people infected. Those six have to self-isolate for a week. AP

CRISTIANO RONALDO is coming out of two weeks of isolation at his home in Turin after spending the lockdown in his native Portugal. AP

C

RISTIANO RONALDO reported to Juventus’s training center for medical tests on Tuesday after a 10-week absence and gave the media a thumbs up when he left three hours later.

The five-time Ballon d’Or winner observed a two-week isolation period at his home in Turin after spending the lockdown in his native Portugal.

He has not been alongside his teammates since helping the Serie A leaders beat Inter Milan 2-0 on March 8, after which he flew to his home island of Madeira, Portugal.

Serie A was suspended a day later when the Italian government ordered a nationwide lockdown. The league is hoping to resume on June 13 if it can reach an agreement with the government, which has banned sports events until June 14.

Outside the training center in Turin, journalists and photographers plus some fans were on hand when Ronaldo arrived alone driving a Jeep. He was the first of several Juventus players who left Italy during the lockdown to report back to the team.

When he left the facility, Ronaldo rolled his window down, smiled for reporters and photographers and gave a thumbs up.

Like all Serie A players, Ronaldo was tested for the

coronavirus and underwent other physical exams. While Juventus did not release the results of the tests, the club posted images on its web site of Ronaldo training individually.

Three Juventus players—Daniele Rugani, Blaise Matuidi and Paulo Dybala—tested positive for Covid-19 during the lockdown. All three recovered.

Ronaldo was in top form before the lockdown, scoring 21 times in 22 Serie A matches. In his penultimate game before the suspension, Ronaldo marked his 1,000th official match by scoring in his 11th straight Serie A game. That matched the Serie A record set by Gabriel Batistuta in 1994 and equaled by Fabio Quagliarella last season.

In his second season at Juventus, Ronaldo is on course to win a second straight Serie A title. The Bianconeri lead Lazio by one point.

In the Champions League, Juventus needs to overturn a 1-0 first-leg deficit to Lyon in the round of 16.

In the Italian Cup semifinals, Juventus drew with AC Milan 1-1 in the first leg courtesy of an injury-time penalty from Ronaldo.

Ronaldo shared details of his home workouts on social media during the lockdown. Six days ago, he posted a video on Instagram of him kicking a ball back and forth with his son at home. AP