U.N. climate talks iN BakU reach compromise oN $300 BillioN aNNUal climate fUNdiNg deal
TBy Reine Juvierre Alberto @reine_alberto
HE government’s spending on infrastructure accelerated as of the end of the third quarter of 2024, exceeding last year’s level and the programmed target for the period by double digits.
Latest data from the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) showed that infrastructure spending jumped by 14.6 percent to P982.4 billion from January to September 2024, up from the P857.6 billion disbursed in the same period a year ago.
Significant disbursements by the Department of Public wo rks and Highways (DP w H ) for its banner infrastructure projects and the Department of Defense (DND)’s defense modernization projects also drove increased spending as of the end of September.
The government also overspent during the nine months, allocating P100.5 billion or 11.4 percent more for infrastructure and other capital outlays.
Infrastructure spending of the DP w H , particularly for carry-over and ongoing projects, and the direct payments made by development partners for foreign-assisted rail projects of the Department of Transportation (DOTr), were attributed to the overspending.
Infrastructure disbursements, including the infrastructure components of subsidy and equity to state-run corporations and transfers to local government units, totaled P1.142 trillion as of the third quarter, higher by 11.9 percent year-on-year from P1.021 trillion.
By Cai U. Ordinario @caiordinario
THE Philippine peso is the third worst performing currency against the United States since the RussiaUkraine conflict, according to an analyst, and the worst performer among Asean countries.
Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) Chief Economist Michael L. Ricafort said in his outlook for the peso that the currency has already depreciated by P7.77 to the US dollar since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war nearly three years ago.
Ricafort said this represented a 15.2- percent depreciation to P58.87 to the US dollar as of No -
vember 22, 2024, from P51.1 to the greenback as of February 23, 2022.
“Already weaker by at least 3 percent versus the performance of other Asean currencies that appreciated more recently vs. the US dollar since the start of 2024,” Ricafort noted.
“The peso (is) also weaker/ worse by at least 4.5 percent versus the performance of other Asean currencies versus the US Dollar over the past 2.5 years (or) since the Russian-Ukraine conflict started in February 2022,” he also said.
Based on the data, Ricafort said the worst-performing currency in the region since the start of the Russia-Ukraine con -
flict was the Japanese yen which depreciated by 17.8 percent in 2.5 years, followed by the Korean won at 17.8 percent.
In the Asean, however, the Philippine peso was the worstperforming currency. After the peso, the Indonesia rupiah depreciated the most at 10.7 percent since the Russia-Ukraine war.
This was followed by the Thai baht which depreciated by 6.9 percent in 2.5 years and Malaysian ringgit, 6.8 percent against the US dollar.
‘ talk of rate cuts’ ME AN w HILE , t his week, Jonathan Ravelas, senior adviser at professional services firm Reyes Tacandong & Co., told Business-
Mirror that the foreign exchange market will mainly be affected by “talks of rate cuts” by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP). Ravelas also expects that the strength of the US dollar in global markets as well as heightened geopolitical tensions will make the Philippine currency vulnerable to hitting the P59 to the greenback levels.
Nonetheless, Ravelas said, Overseas Filipino workers (OF ws) and their families will benefit from the weakness of the peso, as the dollar remittances will have higher peso values, allowing them to see an increase in their purchasing power.
By Lorenz S. Marasigan @lorenzmarasigan
government processes. The EPI evaluates how effectively nations utilize online platforms to encourage public participation in governance. For the Philippines, Depart -
ment of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Secretary Ivan Uy attributed the rise to the eGov Super App.
“This milestone underscores our dedication to making government services more accessible, transparent, and participatory for every Filipino,” Uy said. The eGov Super App, launched under the government’s e-Governance program, serves as an integrated platform consolidating a range
DA issues rules on 25K-MT fish, aquatic items imports
By Ada Pelonia @adapelonia
THE Department of Agriculture (DA) released guidelines for the implementation of the 25,000 metric tons (MT) of certain imported frozen fish and aquatic products.
This, after Agriculture Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. signed the Certificate of Necessity to Import (CNI) 25,000 MT of approved importable species to curb inflation, ensure food security, and diversify food choices.
Under the Memorandum Order (MO) 51, the maximum importable volume (MIV) of 24,000 MT
would be allocated for salmon (whole), species of squid that will not compete with the local production, tuna (byproducts only), black cod (whole), gindara (whole), sardines, red snapper, grouper, and halibut (whole).
The agency said the remaining 1,000 MT allocated to the Kadiwa ng Pangulo (KNP) Program would be limited to small pelagic fish species. This move aims to ensure the steady supply of affordable fish and aquatic products.
Under an earlier circular, the DA said the KNP Program primarily supports Filipino farmers
Manalo meets Pope Francis, to join G7 ministers in Italy
By Malou Talosig-Bartolome
FOREIGN Affairs Secretary
Enrique Manalo will join the Group of Seven foreign ministers in a side meeting in Italy where he will discuss the latest developments in the South China Sea.
On Friday, while in Italy, Manalo took the chance to meet Pope Francis at the Holy See. G7 Meeting T HE G7 foreign ministers from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States are meeting in Fiuggi and Anagni, Italy on Monday and Tuesday.
This will be the fourth time the foreign ministers of the world’s most advanced economies will meet this year.
The first meeting was in Capri, Italy in April, where foreign ministers expressed serious concern on China’s “increasing use of dangerous maneuvers and water cannons against Philippines vessels.” (See related story: https://businessmirror.com. ph/2024/04/21/g7-ministers-blast-chinafor-use-of-water-cannon-vs-phl-in-wps/).
According to the Italian Foreign Ministry, the Fiuggi Ministerial Meeting will focus on the situation in the Middle East, i.e. Israel-Hamas clashes on October 2023, humanitarian crisis in Gaza,
situation in Lebanon and Red Sea; and the war between Russia and Ukraine.
“The stability of the Indo-Pacific, a priority region for political balances and world trade, will be discussed,” the Italian Foreign Ministry said.
Manalo told BusinessMirror a side meeting with foreign ministers from four Indo-Pacific region countries—the Philippines, South Korea, India and Indonesia—is slated.
A separate statement from the DFA said Manalo is expected to exchange views on Indo-Pacific regional security with G7 members. The EU is also represented at the G7 meetings.
Manalo’s visit is upon the invitation of Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani. Italy holds the rotating G7 presidency this year.
Manalo-Pope meeting
M A NALO left Manila few days before the G7 Meeting, as he was able to get an audience with Pope Francis.
“Blessed to meet Pope Francis, and bring him good wishes
from the Philippines, especially from the Filipino Catholic faithful.
“I conveyed our hopes for his good heath, and the joy felt by Filipino pilgrims, as they prepare for #Jubilee2025. Truly an auspicious start to my meetings in Italy and The Holy See,” Manalo tweeted.
On Saturday, Manalo also met with the Holy See’s Secretary for Relations with States, Archbishop Paul Gallagher.
“We discussed many shared concerns, from climate change, to peace, migration, developments in the South China Sea, and the upcoming Jubilee 2025,” Manalo wrote in his X post.
He also had a meeting with the head of Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Director-General Qu Dongyu. “All nations, big and small, must also work with institutions like the FAO to find solutions to shared problems. Multilateralism is the key to our success,” Manalo told Qu, a Chinese national.
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In September alone, disbursements for infrastructure and other capital outlays rose by 16.9 percent to P137.1 billion from last year’s P117.3 billion.
This was mainly due to payments for progress billings for the completed road network and bridge programs of the DPWH and the implementation of various foreign-assisted projects of the DOTr. Capital outlay projects under the Revised Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Modernization Program (RAFPMP) of the DND; the cons truction and repair of justice halls under the Justice System Infrastructure Program of the Department of Justice (DOJ); and the implementation of the Computerization Program of the Department of Education (DepEd) also accounted for the expansion.
Overall, government spending as of the third quarter reached P4.263 trillion. This is higher by 11.6 percent from the P3.821 trillion disbursed during the same period a year ago.
The government overspent by 1.1 percent or P46 billion higher than the P4.217 trillion programmed for the first nine months of the year due to faster infrastructure spending.
This was, however, partly offset by lower subsidy support to government corporations and equity, including the shift in the timing of the release of subsidy to the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PHIC) and the equity contribution to the Maharlika Investment Corporation (MIC).
The DBM said spending in the last quarter of the year will continue to be supported by key expenditures of line agencies, specifically the priority social and agriculture programs and infrastructure projects.
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of national and local government services.
From business registration and tourism information to job applications and e-commerce services, the app provides a seamless user experience via Single Sign-On (SSO) and Application Programming Interface (API) integration.
“The eGov Super App aggregates existing systems using Single Sign-On (SSO) and API integration, allowing seamless access to government services while maintaining compatibility with current agency systems,” ICT Undersecretary
David Almirol explained.
The DICT collaborated with different government agencies to develop the eGov Super App.
It has recently signed an agreement with the Bureau of Immigration (BI) to integrate the Philippine eVisa Portal, which simplifies the visa application process for tourists and bolsters the country’s tourism sector.
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There had been apprehension thaht recent political tensions stemming from the Vice President’s tirades against the President, the first lady, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives might impact the market.
“It could be noise. If allegations of assassination plot are serious then that is a different story. It could be all talk: for now it’s rate cuts and strong dollar,” Ravelas told this newspaper.
However, analysts like Ricafort told BusinessMirror that it is worth observing what will happen on Monday's trading to determine whether the weekend’s events could have a bearing on the peso this week.
Nonetheless, Ricafort noted that the tirade of the Vice President may not be new compared to last month when she said the President did not know how to be the country's Chief Executive (https://businessmirror.com.ph/2024/10/19/vp-saraduterte-slams-marcos-as-feud-escalates/).
Last month, Duterte said the nation’s leader Ferdinand Marcos Jr. “doesn’t know how to be a president,” unleash -
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and producers. However, it allows flexibility such as the sale of imported products to address potential product supply gaps, but only under certain conditions.
This would occur when locally produced are “evidently unavailable” due to factors such as seasonal limitations or insufficient supply to meet demand and when prior approval is secured from the National Program Management Team (NPMT) to ensure transparency and compliance with the “Filipino First Policy.”
Meanwhile, the order said individuals, corporations, partnerships, registered fisheries associations or cooperatives with active accreditation as importers of food fish under FAO 195, or registered under FAO 259, may import under the CNI.
“For this purpose, a written intent shall be submitted to the BFAR, addressed to the Director, through the Fisheries Inspec -
Aside from climbing the EPI, the Philippines also made progress in the UN’s 2024 EGovernment Development Index (EGDI), where the country advanced from 89th to 73rd place, overtaking 16 nations. With an EGDI score of 0.7621, the Philippines outperformed the global average of 0.6382, reflecting improvements in online service provision, telecommunication connectivity, and human capacity. Looking ahead, the DICT plans to enhance the eGov Super App’s functionality by integrating citizen reporting modules, job matching systems, artificial intelligence (AI) bots, and tools to empower start-ups.
“Our vision is to empower Filipinos with a citizen-centric solution that simplifies their interactions with the government,” Almirol said.
To solidify this digital shift, the DICT has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with over 50 government agencies. This initiative aims to further expand the app’s reach and reinforce the Philippines’ position as a leader in digital governance.
ing her strongest criticism yet against him since their political alliance collapsed.
Speaking at a news conference that was livestreamed on her Facebook page, Duterte said she has a list of impeachable offenses that Marcos has committed, but declined to elaborate.
The animosity between the country’s two highest officials has intensified since Duterte resigned from Marcos’ cabinet in June. Marcos’ allies in Congress had also scrutinized the vice president over her office’s use of confidential funds and proposed budget for next year which the House of Representatives cut by more than 60 percent.
The daughter of former firebrand leader Rodrigo Duterte said lawmakers were trying to build a case to impeach her, because she is deemed the strongest rival of Speaker Romualdez, who is widely seen as having set his sights on the presidency in 2028. She challenged critics to “drag me to hell.”
Analysts earlier warned that the increasingly fractious disagreements between Marcos and his predecessor’s family could raise the risk of political instability and may undermine one of Asia’s fastest-growing economies.
tion and Quarantine Division (FIQD), within seven working days from the issuance of this order,” it read.
The order also noted that importers who failed to comply with the following would be disqualified from applying SPSICs under the CNI.
This includes those with a pending case regarding any food safety or importation rules and regulations or those who failed to secure a Bureau of Customs (BOC) accreditation and/or clearance at the start of the importation period.
The disqualification would also cover those who could not submit updated requirements for accreditation before the issuance of the CNI and those who failed to submit complete and updated requirements within seven working days from the date of the CNI’s issuance. The DA said the order would take effect immediately and remain in force unless revoked in writing. It added that all previous issuances inconsistent with the provisions stipulated under this order are already revoked.
House leaders on Sara’s claims: Desperate lies
By Jovee Marie N. dela Cruz @joveemarie
VICE President Sara Duterte’s claims that congressional hearings on the alleged misuse of P612.5 million in confidential funds were “politically motivated” were characterized as desperate lies by House of Representatives leaders on Sunday, as they urged her “to put an end to the drama and instead focus on answering issues on your millionpeso disbursements.”
House Majority Leader Manuel Jose Dalipe, House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability chairman Joel Chua, and Quad Committee lead chairman Robert Ace Barbers denounced Duterte’s allegations, calling them an affront to Congress and the Filipino people.
Dalipe branded Duterte’s accusations as “baseless, unhinged, and unbecoming of a public official,” insisting that the House hearings are rooted in its constitutional mandate to hold public officials accountable.
“This isn’t about elections, fundraising, or petty politics. It’s about where the millions, if not billions, of pesos in taxpayers’ money went. Instead of explaining, the Vice President resorts to profanity and baseless accusations. Her tantrums won’t hide the truth,” said Dalipe, who represents Zamboanga City. The majority leader added that Duterte’s repeated refusal to cooperate only deepens the public’s suspicion.
“She can lash out all she wants, but the question remains: Where did the money go? Until she answers that, her expletives are just noise meant to distract from her glaring lack of transparency,” Dalipe said.
For his part, Chua, a primary target of Duterte’s attacks, said her statements aimed to intimidate lawmakers into silence.
“The Vice President’s foul language cannot cover up her foul record. Her decision to hurl insults instead of providing answers reeks of desperation. Profanity won’t erase the stench of corruption,” Chua, who represents Manila, said. Pure fiction
CHUA dismissed Duterte’s claims of off-camera apologies from lawmakers as “pure fiction.”
“Let me be clear: No one in the House apologized to her, nor do we need to. If she truly has evidence, let her bring it forward. Otherwise, it’s just another pathetic attempt to discredit a
legitimate investigation,” Chua added.
Barbers emphasized that the investigations are necessary for legislative reforms and ensuring government transparency. He dismissed claims of political bias.
“One of the campaign promises of the UNITEAM is to institute reforms in the government and its systems in order to ensure transparency and accountability for any malfeasance committed in office, whoever and whatever position you hold. All this investigation is necessary as a prelude to legislating reforms and guaranteeing accountability of public officers, including members of Congress,” Barbers, who represents Surigao del Norte, said.
“Instead of facing the music, the Vice President has chosen to hide behind lies, theatrics, and name-calling. This is not the behavior of a leader—it’s the behavior of someone desperately dodging accountability,” Barbers said.
Barbers also debunked Duterte’s assertion that the hearings are politically motivated.
Not about 2028
“THIS isn’t about 2028 or her presidential ambitions. It’s about ensuring that every peso of taxpayer money is used properly. If she can’t answer simple questions about how confidential funds were spent, the public has every right to question her integrity,” Barbers said.
The House leaders underscored that the investigation would continue, undeterred by Duterte’s attempts to discredit the process.
“She can scream, curse, and cry foul all she wants, but at the end of the day, the Filipino people deserve answers. If the Vice President cannot lead by example, she has no right to cry victim when held accountable,” Chua said.
Dalipe added, “Public office is a public trust. If the Vice President refuses to uphold that principle, she is unfit for her position.”
Barbers vowed that the House would not back down. “This is not about her or her ambitions. It’s about the truth—and no amount of noise from the Vice President will stop us from uncovering it,” he said.
Enough with the drama LA Union Rep. Paolo Ortega, a deputy majority leader, urged Duterte to channel her energy into addressing the inquiries instead of engaging in dramatic outbursts.
Go reaffirms commitment
SENATOR Christopher Go showed his support to the Philippine Councilors League (PCL) during the Region 7 4th Quarter Regional Assembly and Seminar, where he emphasized the critical role of local leaders in shaping policies that directly impact the lives of their constituents. During the gathering, a total of 337 delegates received tokens from the Senator’s Malasakit Team. The event was held at the Bai Hotel in Mandaue City, Cebu on Wednesday, November 20. He particularly thanked the officers of the PCL Region 7, including Chairman Mark Fidencio Aurelia, Vice Chairman Rey Lyndon Lawas, Secretary-General Jan Vincent de la Serna, Treasurer Anna Jay O. Ortega, Auditor Jamel Patrick Royo, and Public Relations Officer Mark Christoffel Banque,
Legislators react with concern, alarm to VP’s assasination threat
MEMBERS of the House of Representatives on Sunday emphasized the seriousness of Vice President Sara Duterte’s statements as they demanded an immediate and comprehensive investigation into the disturbing assassination threat against President Marcos, his wife Liza and Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez.
They said that such an act would not only be a horrifying crime but also represent a profound betrayal of trust and duty by the second highest government official.
Duterte told a news conference that she had spoken to an assassin and instructed him to kill Marcos, First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos, and Speaker Martin Romualdez if she were to be killed.
Duterte’s controversial remarks came in response to comments urging her to “stay safe” during her visit to the House of Representatives.
Duterte had gone to the House premises following the detention of her chief of staff, Zuleika Lopez, who had refused to answer questions regarding the alleged misuse of P612.5 million in confidential and intelligence funds allocated to the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and the Department of Education (DepEd) during Duterte’s watch as Education secretary.
“The gravity of these statements cannot be overstated. A kill-order on the President is not only a heinous crime but also a betrayal of the highest order—one that shakes the very foundation of our democratic institutions,” said Senior Deputy Speaker Aurelio Gonzales Jr.
“The Vice President, as the next in line to the Presidency, is entrusted with the responsibility of safeguarding the Constitution, not undermining it,” Gonzales, who represents Pampanga, said.
House Majority Leader Manuel Jose M. Dalipe urged authorities to conduct a full and impartial investigation into the alleged plot.
“The people deserve to know the full extent of this plot, including any potential abuse of power or betrayal of public trust. The integrity of our democracy demands nothing less,” Dalipe, who represents Zamboanga City, said.
“The Vice President’s role as a constitutional successor makes this case extraordinarily sensitive. It is essential that we send a clear message that no one, regardless of position, is above the law,” Dalipe said.
Highlighting the potential risks to the nation, Deputy Speaker David Suarez warned of the broader implications of such an alleged plot.
“This situation transcends politics—it is about the survival of our democracy, the preservation of public trust, and the safety and stability of our nation. Any individual, no matter how high their rank, must be held accountable for actions that threaten the integrity of our government,” Suarez, who represents Quezon, said.
Thanks
“CONSPIRING with an assassin to target the President is a serious crime,” he pointed out.
The House leaders said their institution is prepared to work with law enforcement agencies and ensure full transparency in
addressing the assassination plot against the President.
Should evidence point to the Vice President’s culpability, the leader assured the public that the House would fulfill its constitutional mandate to uphold accountability and justice.
“We owe it to the Filipino people to ensure that the truth comes out and that the rule of law prevails,” Gonzales said.
“This is not just about justice— it is about defending the very soul of our democracy,” he stressed.
Deeply concerning
SEN ATE President Francis Escudero said over the weekend that he found Duterte’s statements “deeply concerning as “they are inappropriate for an official occupying the second highest office of the land.”
Escudero gave this piece of advice: “She [Duterte] should keep in mind that as a public official, she has a duty to set an example for the personnel in the Office of the Vice President and our fellow Filipinos, especially our children.”
“The Vice President and her allies must also consider how her actions have contributed to rising tensions. I call on all parties involved to de-escalate the situation to prevent further harm to the safety, health, and well-being of everyone involved.”he added.
Moreover, he “urge those who are close to her—those who truly care about her as a person and as a leader—to advise her to refrain from making “these indecorous and possibly criminal statements in public. These do not benefit the Vice President, her office, or our country.”
Troubling statements
THE implied admission by the Vice President of having access to a hitman has sent shockwaves across the nation, raising grave concerns about the erosion of democratic principles and the potential misuse of power, House Assistant Majority Leader Zia
Alonto Adiong said.
“The mere suggestion of such a capability reflects a dangerous normalization of extrajudicial means to address personal or political grievances,” said Adiong, who represents Lanao del Sur.
“This is not just a matter of rhetoric—it touches the core of our democratic values and the rule of law. Public officials are expected to uphold justice, fairness, and the Constitution, not to insinuate access to violence as a means of retribution.”
Adiong emphasized that this revelation demands urgent action to ensure no public official wields influence or power that operates outside the bounds of the law.
“Our democracy cannot and should not tolerate even the suggestion of extrajudicial solutions to conflicts. The public deserves leaders who uphold justice, not those who imply access to violence as a solution. Alarming,” he said.
‘Heed your father’s advice’ TH E Vice President should heed the advice of her father, former President Rodrigo Duterte, who had urged her “to get out of politics” as soon as possible, House Minority Leader Marcelino Libanan said on Sunday.
“We strongly urge the Vice President to listen to her father’s counsel for her to step away from politics before it’s too late,” Libanan, a 4Ps party-list representative, said in a statement.
“She is clearly unlike her father. It would appear that she makes crucial judgments and issues utterly reckless pronouncements without any preparation or thoughtful consideration,” Libanan added.
“The Vice President lacks both the gumption and the grace required of a national leader,” Libanan added.
Earlier this month, the former President had called on his daughter, who has had a falling out with Marcos, to get out of politics. Butch Fernandez and Jovee Marie N. dela Cruz
DILG’s Remulla eyes review of local code
NEWLY confirmed Secretary of the Interior and Local Government (SILG)
Juan Victor “Jonvic” Remulla Jr., who served as a local official for nearly three decades, has expressed strong support for a review of the Local Government Code (LGC) of 1991, a senior lawmaker said on Sunday.
among others.
Go also acknowledged the Board of Directors consisting of Councilors Juna Teves, Annabeth Cuizon, Abner Lomongo, Jonathan Villegas Sir., Joseph Pangatungan, Jayson Dawami, and Alona Arcamo. The gathering also saw the presence of other elected officials, including Valencia, Negros Oriental Mayor Edgar Teves, Jr.; Negros Oriental Liga ng mga Barangay Chair Shaquille T. Teves; Tagbilaran, Bohol Vice Mayor Paz Rozgoni; and Bantayan, Cebu Vice Mayor Antonio Montemar, among others. As a dedicated ally in the Senate, Go reiterated his commitment to supporting local governments and their officials.
Go called councilors to action, urging them to continue their mission as public servants dedicated to their constituents.
During his confirmation hearing at the Commission on Appointments (CA), Remulla highlighted the urgency of revisiting the LGC in light of the Supreme Court’s 2018 Mandanas-Garcia ruling and the increasing demands on local governments owing to climate-induced disasters.
Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte, CA majority leader, said that Remulla also backed a management overhaul of the prison system to improve the conditions of local jails along with a review of DILG directives, which, in his experience as governor for 11 years, need to be streamlined to actually make it easier for local government executives to do their jobs.
Villafuerte noted that local governments are now set to receive P1.034 trillion in National Tax Allotment for 2024.
However, he stressed that while local governments must allocate portions of these funds to development projects (20 percent) and
disaster management (5 percent), the increased responsibilities devolved to them still outpace their available resources.
Remulla agreed, sharing his own experience as governor of Cavite, a province of five million people.
He revealed that Cavite’s P6.7 billion annual budget was insufficient to meet the demands of its population, especially after the Mandanas-Garcia ruling transferred additional functions like health and education to local governments without adequate funding.
Remulla also pointed out inefficiencies in the Department of the
Interior and Local Government’s (DILG) issuance of memorandum circulars.
“In my 11 years as governor, we received over 2,000 circulars, many of which complicated rather than simplified our work,” he said as he committed to review and streamline these directives.
On prison management, both Remulla and Villafuerte called for the nationalization of local jails to address issues of congestion and poor maintenance.
Remulla noted that the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) faces significant budget
Heavy traffic at Nlex northbound up to Lawang Bato until Wednesday
By Lorenz S. Marasigan @lorenzmarasigan
N
ORTH Luzon Expressway Corp. is conducting safety repairs on the Lawang Bato Overpass Northbound in Valenzuela City, requiring a phased lane closure to ensure the project is completed efficiently and with minimal risk to motorists.
In an advisory, the company. said the repair works began on Friday and will be completed by Wednesday.
From 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. on November 24, lanes 2, 3, and 4 (middle and rightmost lanes) were closed, with only the
Akap seen as a thorn in ’25 budget bicam talks
By Butch Fernandez @butchfBM
THE Executive Branch’s social service programs, which have become an object of dispute between administration officials and leaders of Congress, are seen to become the sticking point once the Senate approves the 2025 budget bill and a the legislative bicameral conference committee is convened to reconcile conflicting provisions between the two chambers.
Senate Deputy Minority Leader Anna Theresia “Risa” Hontiveros acknowledged this stark possibility of a clash between senators and congressmen, who insist on retaining the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s (DSWD) Ayuda sa Kapos ang Kita Program (Akap), which the Senate deleted in its version of the proposed 2025 General Appropriations Act.
House Speaker Martin Romualdez has vowed to fight for AKAP’s retention, despite serious concerns by several senators that it partakes of a soft pork barrel that allows politicians to dispense of billions of funds on the eve of elections, and that it skews the authentic, sustained social service
programs of government.
Former Sen. Panfilo Lacson, reputedly the most zealous in scrutinizing budget bills when he chaired the Senate Committee on Accounts, weighed in on the issue at the weekend.
Review social programs
LACSON is seeking at least a review of the Executive Department’s various social service programs, to make sure they are investments and not mere doleouts.
Lacson said the agencies tasked with implementing such programs should have at least a reliable database of recipients as well as clear goals that will improve the lives of Filipinos.
In a radio interview, he also cited persistent information that the aid from such programs do not reach their recipients.
“At the very least, we must review these programs. If they have reliable databases and clear goals, that’s okay. And what direction will these programs have? They should not be for mere doleouts, because this will hurt the economy,” he said in the same interview.
Lacson said agencies including
BARMM health workers get ₧840 million back pay
By Manuel T. Cayon @awimailbox
AVAO CITY—Govern -
Dthe Department of Social Welfare and Development, Department of Labor and Employment and Department of Health must have such databases to make sure the help goes to those who need it.
In addition, Lacson said the programs must have clear goals for the beneficiaries—like the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) introduced during the incumbency of former President Gloria Arroyo, which seeks to let children from poor families graduate so they can become productive taxpayers while helping improve their families’ lot.
“If the programs are mere doleouts, that is sad. Social service programs must improve the lives of Filipinos so they can give back in terms of revenues and taxes. But it seems many such programs cannot because they are not wellplanned,” he said.
Romualdez: We want Akap back CITING four million Filipino beneficiaries, Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez said the House will fight for the continuation of the program after the Senate removed the P39.8billion allocation for the AKAP,
thank and provide support for their sacrifice in the midst of every community health challenge,” said Health Minister Kadil Sinolinding Jr.
which was inserted by the House. Romualdez also challenged senators to engage directly with communities to understand the importance of Akap.
“Some of our colleagues in the Senate fail to grasp the significance of this program because they rarely go to the grassroots level.
That’s why I ask my friends in the Senate: visit communities, talk to the people, and ask them what they need. Everywhere we go, the people express their strong support for this program,” Romualdez said.
With this, Romualdez called on the Senate to reconsider proposals to defund Akap, echoing Social Welfare Secretary Rex Gatchalian’s appeal to protect the program in the 2025 budget.
“We stand with Secretary Gatchalian in urging our colleagues in the Senate to uphold the AKAP budget.
This is about ensuring that no Filipino family falls back into poverty because of insufficient support. The House of Representatives is ready to champion this cause in the bicameral discussions if necessary,” Romualdez stated.
He insisted that “Akap is not just a safety net; it is a lifeline for millions of Filipino families tee -
tering on the edge of poverty.” The initiative, he claimed, has proven its value by providing immediate relief to struggling households, empowering them to weather economic challenges, and ensuring their resilience against inflation and other shocks.”
The program, conceptualized under Romualdez’s leadership, has been instrumental in supporting working families with insufficient income.
It provides a one-time cash assistance of P3,000 to P5,000 to qualified beneficiaries whose incomes fall below the poverty threshold and who are not covered by other government aid programs.
Romualdez noted that Akap’s impact is evident in its extensive reach, with P20.7 billion of the P26.7 billion allocation already utilized, benefiting millions across all regions, including over 589,000 families in the National Capital Region (NCR) alone. Regions like Central Luzon, Bicol, and Western Visayas have also achieved significant fund utilization rates exceeding 70 percent. With earlier report by Jovee Marie N. dela Cruz
DAR condones ₧727-M debts of Negros Oriental farmers
By Jonathan L. Mayuga @jonlmayuga
ment health workers in the Bangsamoro region are set to receive P840 million in back pay for services rendered during the Covid-19 pandemic and last year.
The Bangsamoro Information Office said the automous region’s Ministry of Health (MOH) has disbursed P840 million in Health Emergency Allowance (HEA) to 1,894 healthcare workers.
The MOH disbursed the HEA amount on November 11-12 to cover 10 months of allowance, from October to December of 2021 and January to July of last year.
“This allowance is a small way for the government to
Former colleagues laud Lim
FORMER Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Center for Biodiversity Executive Director Theresa Mundita S. Lim was hailed by her former colleages in the Department of Environment and Natural Resources for playing a pivotal role in shaping the evolution of the Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau (PAWB) into the Biodiversity Management Bureau (BMB).
“From its early days as the Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau to its evolution into the Biodiversity Management Bureau with expanded mandates and conservation goals, Dr. Theresa Mundita Sison-Lim played a pivotal role in shaping its journey,
Assistant Director Armida “Neneng” Andres, speaking on behalf of DENR-BMB employees said.
Lim ended her six-year leadership of the Asean Center for Biodiversity on November 13.
She was the ACB’s fourth and first female Exectutive Director.
“For 15 years, she led the Bureau with unwavering dedication, setting new benchmarks in biodiversity management and nurturing its growth with the care and vision of a true steward,” Andres said.
Lim began her journey as a biologist and veterinarian for the Pawikan Conservation Project and the Wildlife
Rescue Center of the then PAWB.
She then continued to become the Bureau’s Assistant Director in 2000 and its Director from 2006 to 2018 before serving as the Executive Director of the ACB until November 2024.
It was during Lim’s stint as BMB Director that the Expanded National Protected Areas System (E-Nipas) Act was enacted into law and biodiversity mainstreaming has started across sectors. At present, she continues to support BMB programs and projects as a member of the Biodiversity Multi-Sectoral Advisory Council (BMSAC).
“Dr. Mundita Lim’s enduring legacy at the
He added, “Healthcare workers are real heroes who served as frontliners during the pandemic. Their efforts have been the key to suppressing the spread of Covid-19.”
Sinolinding said the financial support was aligned with Republic Act 11712, which mandates benefits for healthcare workers who served during the Covid-19 pandemic.
BMB continues to inspire and create lasting impacts, opening doors to new opportunities in biodiversity conservation. Her leadership has been instrumental in enacting transformative laws, implementing groundbreaking programs, and, most importantly, improving lives. Her influence remains a guiding force that strengthens and expands the Bureau’s mission to this day.”
Jonathan L. Mayuga
NHA Navotas project to benefit 180 families
By Bless Aubrey Ogerio
THE National Housing Authority (NHA) has initiated the construction of three low-rise buildings in Navotas Homes 5 Phase 2 in barangay Tanza 1, that will provide housing for 180 beneficiaries once finished.
NHA said the project is part of the city’s plan to relocate 6,500 aquatter or informal settler families living in danger areas and waterways.
“Ang okasyon pong ito ay isang pagpapatunay ng aming parte at suporta para sa ikatatagumpay ng hangarin ng
ating Pangulong Marcos na mabigyan ang ating mga kababayan ng ligtas na pabahay sa tahimik na komunidad,” NHA general manager Joeben Tai said during the event. Each 24-square-meter unit will be equipped with basic amenities, and the site will feature community facilities, including a community center, tricycle terminal, and police station.
The entire Navotaas Homes 5 Low Rise Building Housing Project, consisting of 24 low-rise buildings, is expected to benefit 1,440 families.
THE Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) distributed recently a total of 5,549 certificates of condonation and release of mortgage (CoCRoMs) and certificates of land ownership awards (Cloas) and electronic land titles to agrarian reform beneficiaries in Negros Oriental.
They were distributed during a simple ceremony held on November 16 at the Convention Center of Dumaguete City 6,707 CoCRoMs to 5,549 ARBs, and 75 Cloas to 98 ARBs covering 73.13 hectares and 2,225 e-titles to 1,642 ARBs covering 2,269 hectares of land.
DAR-Central Visayas Regional Director Atty. Sheila B. Enciso said condonation will relieve the ARBs from paying P727,750,154.39 in agrarian debts, marking a pivotal step in ensuring their economic independence.
Continued from A3
“If she can release bold statements that barely make sense, she should also have the courage to explain how P612.5 million in confidential funds were spent,” Ortega said. “Enough with the drama and deception.”
Duterte has faced backlash for recent outbursts, including threats against President Marcos, his wife Liza and Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez.
“Such behavior is unbecoming of a vice president,” Ortega noted.
DILG.
Continued from A3
constraints, requiring cooperation with local governments to improve facilities.
Villafuerte emphasized the need to amend the LGC, particularly the formula for computing local government tax shares, which currently relies on tax collections from three years prior. He proposed re -
Manuel Galon, DAR Provincial Agrarian Reform Program Officer said the ARBs now possess individual land titles, as compared to when they received collective titles distributed by the DAR.
The e-title recipients are from Canlaon City, Vallehermoso, Guihulngan City, Jimalalud, Tayasan, Ayungon, Manjuyod, Bais City, Mabinay, Tanjay City, Pamplona, Amlan, Siaton, Sta. Catalina, Bayawan City, and Basay. Agrarian Reform Undersecretary for Support Services Office Rowena Niña Taduran and Undersecretary for Office of Mindanao Affairs Amihilda J. Sangcopan, and local government officials from Negros Oriental also graced the event.
The distribution of CoCRoMs is part of the nationwide initiative under Republic Act No. 11953, also known as the New Agrarian Emancipation Act (NAEA), to empower the agricultural sector and enhance economic independence for Filipino farmers. CoCRoM beneficiaries include La Libertad, Bindoy, San Jose, Bacong, Dauin, and Zamboanguita farmers.
“Instead of making threats, she should use that spunk to clarify the allegations against her.” Ortega criticized Duterte’s actions, including “camping out” in the House, as distractions. “While Filipinos struggle, every peso must be accounted for. Her theatrics aren’t helping rebuild public trust,” he said. Calling for accountability, Ortega highlighted the importance of Duterte cooperating with the Blue Ribbon Committee. “If she values honesty, integrity, and the rule of law, she’ll face the hearings. Theatrics won’t restore public confidence—it’s time to act like a leader and answer the nation’s questions.”
ducing this lag to two years. Remulla expressed full support for such amendments, citing how limited resources hamper local government’s ability to respond to disasters. He noted that during recent typhoons, including severe Tropical Storm Kristine, local governments quickly depleted their resources, underscoring the need for greater financial capacity.
Jovee Marie N. dela Cruz
Director Theresa Mundita S. Lim
November 25, 2024
NOTICE OF FILING OF APPLICATION FOR ALIEN EMPLOYMENT PERMIT (AEP/S)
Notice is hereby given that the following companies/employers have filed with this Regional Office application/s for Alien Employment Permit/s:
1 AIRVENT MECHANICAL SYSTEM INC.
Block 2D, Lot 5-9, Grand Centennial Homes, Magdalo, Kawit, Cavite
2 GENSAI CAREER CONSULTING CORP.
Unit F 2/F Wilbincom Building, J.P. Rizal Ave., Kaybagal South (Pob.), City of Tagaytay, Cavite
TANG THIEN HUY
Mandarin Speaking Customer Service Representative
Brief Job Description:
Attracts potential customers by answering product and service questions, suggesting information about other products and services
TAKAOKA, YUKI
Japanese Language Translator
Brief Job Description:
Administrative tasks, translate documents, acts as translator and liaison officer
WU, HONGSHENG
3 PHILIPPINES HUANYA DATA TECHNOLOGY AND TRADING INC.
No. 7 Pastor Avenue, Pallocan Kanluran, Batangas City (capital), Batangas
Mandarin Fire System Consultant
Brief Job Description:
Specialize in fire protection engineering and safety systems, providing expertise in the design, implementation and evaluation of the fire safety measures
4 PHILIPPINES HUANYA DATA TECHNOLOGY AND TRADING INC.
No. 7 Pastor Avenue, Pallocan Kanluran, Batangas City (Capital), Batangas WANG, SIFU
Mandarin Power Distribution System Consultant
Brief Job Description:
provide expertise in design, analysis, and optimization of electrical power distribution systems.
Control a gas, coal, electric oil or other type of furnance in preparation to melt metal
7 PROCTER & GAMBLE PHILS., INC.
10 Main Avenue, Light Industry and Science Park 1, Diezmo, City of Cabuyao, Laguna SUZUKI, KOJI
Human Resources Director Manufacturing Site HR Leader
Brief Job Description:
Lead and develop HR talents in the global manufacturing company
9 RURAL BANK OF STA. ROSA (LAGUNA), INC.
F. Gomez St., Malusak (Pob.), City of Santa Rosa, Laguna
Qualification:
ELIZAROVA, ANASTASIIA
Credit Risk Scoring & Strategy Lead
Brief Job Description:
This role is about collaborative working with stakeholders including the CRM Data Team, Commercial Systems, Risk Reporting, Portfolio Management and Finance to drive forward improvements to CRM’s data infrastructure, ensuring the environment provides the necessary information for a strong analytics function
8 RUIXINTONG INC.
AF-19, Cuevasville Bldg., Palico III, City of Imus, Cavite
MEI, PAN Mandarin Design and Communication Supervisor
Brief Job Description:
Responsible for overseeing all internal and external communications for a company
6
experience with
and written communication skills, knowledgeable in computer applications; 18-55 years old
Basic Qualification: Fluency in the Japanese language, should be able to travel to meet client, works under minimal supervision but works well with a team Salary
Basic Qualification:
Proven experience as Mandarin Fire System Consultant, familiarity, knowledge and awareness on machinery and heavy equipment use by company
Basic Qualification:
Proven experience as Mandarin Power Distribution System Consultant and with food oral & written skills specifically English and Mandarin
Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999
Basic Qualification:
With 5 years work experience in the same field
Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999
Basic Qualification: With 5 years’ work experience in the same field
Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999
Basic Qualification: With 15 years’ experience in leading HR organization of a multinational corporation
Salary Range: Php 500,000 and above
Basic Qualification:
Proven experience as mandarin design and communication supervisor, with oral & written skills specifically English & Mandarin
Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999
10 RURAL BANK OF STA. ROSA (LAGUNA), INC.
F. Gomez St., Malusak (Pob.), City of Santa Rosa, Laguna
11 WORLD DEPOT SUPPLY CHAIN (PHILIPPINES) INC.
1025, ME Toclong Rd., Toclong, Kawit, Cavite
PADIAROV, DENIS
Deposit Business Unit Head
12 YELLOW RIVER POWER CONSTRUCTION AND SUPPLIES CORPORATION
No. 20, Narra Rd, San Antonio, City of San Pedro, Laguna WANG, JINYUAN
13 YELLOW RIVER POWER CONSTRUCTION AND SUPPLIES CORPORATION
No. 20, Narra Rd, San Antonio, City of San Pedro, Laguna
Operation Manager
WENG, ZUTAO
Operation Manager
Brief Job Description: The Operation Manager are charged with monitoring, analyzing, and improving their company’s business. They accomplish this by conducting research, interpreting data, and making recommendations based on their findings.
Any person in the Philippines who is competent, able and willing to perform the services for which the foreign national is desired may file an objection at DOLE Regional Office IV-A located at 3rd and 4th Floors, Andenson Building II, Parian, Calamba City, Laguna, within 30 days after this publication.
Please inform DOLE Regional Office IV-A if you have any information on criminal offense committed by the foreign nationals. By authority of the Regional Director:
UN climate talks in Baku reach compromise on $300 billion annual climate funding deal
By Seth Borenstein, Sibi Arasu, Melina Walling & Michael Phillis Associated Press
BAKU, Azerbaijan—United Nations climate talks adopted a deal to inject at least $300 billion annually in humanity’s fight against climate change, aimed at helping developing nations cope with the ravages of global warming in tense negotiations.
The $300 billion will go to developing countries that need the cash to wean themselves off the coal, oil and gas that causes the globe to overheat, adapt to future warming and pay for the damage caused by climate change’s extreme weather. It’s not near the full amount of $1.3 trillion that developing countries were asking for, but it’s three times a deal of $100 billion a year from 2009 that is expiring. Some delegations said this deal is headed in the right direction, with hopes that more money flows in the future.
But it was not quite the agreement by consensus that these meetings usually operate with and some developing nations were livid about being ignored.
COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev gaveled the deal into acceptance before any nation had a chance to speak. When they did they blasted him for being unfair to them, the deal for not being enough and the world’s rich nations for being too stingy.
“It’s a paltry sum,” India negotiator Chandni Raina said, repeatedly saying how India objected to rousing cheers. “I’m sorry to say we cannot accept it.”
She told The Associated Press that she has lost faith in the United Nations system.
Nations express their discontent
A long line of nations agreed with India and piled on, with Nigeria’s Nkiruka Maduekwe, CEO of the National Council on Climate Change, calling the deal an insult and a joke.
“I’m disappointed. It’s definitely below the benchmark that we have been fighting for for so long,” said Juan Carlos Monterrey, of the Panama delegation. He noted that a few changes, including the inclusion of the words “at least” before the number $300 billion and an opportunity for revision by 2030, helped push them to the finish line.
“Our heart goes out to all those nations that feel like they were walked over,” he said.
The final package pushed through “does not speak or reflect or inspire confidence,” India’s Raina said.
“We absolutely object to the unfair means followed for adoption,” Raina said. “We are extremely hurt by this action by the president and the secretariat.”
Speaking for nearly 50 of the poorest nations of the world, Evans Davie Njewa of Malawi was more mild, expressing what he called reservations with the deal. And the Alliance of Small Island States’ Cedric Schuster said he had more hope “that the process would protect the interests of the most vulnerable” but nevertheless expressed tempered support for the deal.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio
Guterres said in a post on X that he hoped for a “more ambitious outcome.” But he said the agreement “provides a base on which to build.”
After tough talks, some feel relief THERE were somewhat satisfied parties, with European Union’s Wopke Hoekstra calling it a new era of climate funding, working hard to help the most vulnerable. But activists in the plenary hall could be heard coughing over Hoekstra’s speech in an attempt to disrupt it.
Eamon Ryan, Ireland’s environment minister, called the agreement “a huge relief.”
“It was not certain. This was tough,” he said. “Because it’s a time of division, of war, of (a) multilateral system having real difficulties, the fact that we could get it through in these difficult circumstances is really important.”
U.N. Climate Change’s Executive Secretary Simon Stiell called the deal
an “insurance policy for humanity,” adding that like insurance, “it only works if the premiums are paid in full, and on time.”
The deal is seen as a step toward helping countries on the receiving end create more ambitious targets to limit or cut emissions of heattrapping gases that are due early next year. It’s part of the plan to keep cutting pollution with new targets every five years, which the world agreed to at the U.N. talks in Paris in 2015.
The Paris agreement set the system of regular ratcheting up climate fighting ambition as away to keep warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels. The world is already at 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) and carbon emissions keep rising.
Hope that more climate cash will follow COUNTRIES also anticipate that this
Israeli strikes in central Beirut kill 20 as diplomats push for cease-fire
By Abby Sewell & Bassem Mroue Associated Press
BEIRUT, Lebanon—Israeli airstrikes Saturday in central Beirut killed at least 20 people, officials said, as the once-rare attacks on the heart of Lebanon’s capital continued without warning while diplomats scrambled to broker a cease-fire. Lebanon’s Health Ministry said 66 people were wounded in the strikes, which were the fourth in central Beirut in less than a week. The escalation comes after US envoy Amos Hochstein traveled to the region in pursuit of a deal to end months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah that has erupted into full-on war.
Israeli attacks have killed more than 3,500 people in Lebanon, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry. The fighting has displaced about 1.2 million people, or a quarter of Lebanon’s population. On the Israeli side, about 90 soldiers and nearly 50 civilians have been killed by bombardment in northern Israel and the fighting.
Eight-story building turned to rubble
The 4 a.m. strikes destroyed an eight-story building in central Beirut. Hezbollah legislator Amin Shiri said no Hezbollah officials were inside. The attack stripped the facades from some nearby buildings and crumpled cars.
“The area is residential, with closely packed buildings and narrow streets, making the situation challenging,” said Walid Al-Hashash, a first responder with the Lebanese
Civil Defense.
Israel’s military did not comment on the casualties.
Also Saturday, a drone strike killed two people and injured three in the southern Lebanese port city of Tyre, according to the Lebanese state-run National News Agency. Mohammed Bikai, spokesperson for the Fatah Palestinian faction in the Tyre area, said those killed were Palestinian refugees from nearby
al-Rashidieh camp who were out fishing.
Despite a warning last month by Israel’s army to avoid Lebanon’s southern coast, “you can’t tell someone who needs to eat that you can’t fish,” Bikai said.
The Health Ministry said other airstrikes killed eight people, including four children, in the eastern town of Shmustar, five others in the southern village of Roumin, and another five people in the northeastern village of Budai.
Sticking points in cease-fire talks
Two Western diplomatic officials on Saturday described disputed points between Israel and Lebanon in cease-fire negotiations. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the talks.
The current proposal calls for a two-month cease-fire during which Israeli forces would withdraw from Lebanon and Hezbollah would end its armed presence along the southern border south of the Litani River. Thousands more Lebanese army troops would patrol the border area with U.N. peacekeepers, and an international committee would monitor the deal’s implementation.
deal will send signals that help drive funding from other sources, like multilateral development banks and private sources. That was always part of the discussion at these talks—rich countries didn’t think it was realistic to only rely on public funding sources—but poor countries worried that if the money came in loans instead of grants, it would send them sliding further backward into debt that they already struggle with.
“The $300 billion goal is not enough, but is an important down payment toward a safer, more equitable future,” said World Resources Institute President Ani Dasgupta. “This deal gets us off the starting block. Now the race is on to raise much more climate finance from a range of public and private sources, putting the whole financial system to work behind developing countries’ transitions.”
And even though it’s far from the needed $1.3 trillion, it’s more than
the $250 billion that was on the table in an earlier draft of the text, which outraged many countries and led to a period of frustration and stalling over the final hours of the summit.
Other deals agreed at COP29 THE several different texts adopted early Sunday morning included a vague but not specific reference to last year’s Global Stock take approved in Dubai. Last year there was a battle about first-of-its-kind language on getting rid of the oil, coal and natural gas, but instead it called for a transition away from fossil fuels. The latest talks only referred to the Dubai deal, but did not explicitly repeat the call for a transition away from fossil fuels. Countries also agreed on the adoption of Article 6, creating markets to trade carbon pollution rights, an idea that was set up as part of the Paris Agreement to help nations work together to reduce climate-causing pollution. Part of that was a system of carbon credits, allowing nations to put planet-warming gasses in the air if they offset emissions elsewhere. Backers said a U.N.-backed market could generate up to an additional $250 billion a year in climate financial aid.
Despite its approval, carbon markets remain a contentious plan because many experts say the new rules adopted don’t prevent misuse, don’t work and give big polluters an excuse to continue spewing emissions.
“What they’ve done essentially is undermine the mandate to try to reach 1.5,” said Tamara Gilbertson, climate justice program coordinator with the Indigenous Environmental Network. Greenpeace’s An Lambrechts, called it a “climate scam” with many loopholes. With this deal wrapped up as crews dismantle the temporary venue, many have eyes on next year’s climate talks in Belem, Brazil. (Associated Press journalists Ahmed Hatem, Olivia Zhang, Aleksandar Furtula and Joshua A. Bickel contributed to this report.)
NATO chief meets Trump in Florida to discuss global security challenges
RUSSELS—US President-elect
BDonald Trump and the head of NATO have met for talks on global security, the military alliance said Saturday.
In a brief statement, NATO said Trump and its secretary general, Mark Rutte, met on Friday in Palm Beach, Florida.
“They discussed the range of global security issues facing the Alliance,” the statement said without giving details. It appeared to be Rutte’s first meeting with Trump since his November 5 election.
Rutte had previously congratulated Trump and said “his leadership will again be key to keeping our Alliance strong” and that he looked forward to working with him.
Trump has for years expressed skepticism about the Western alliance and complained about the defense spending of many of its member nations, which he regarded as too low. He depicted NATO allies as leeches on the US military and openly questioned the value of the alliance that has defined American foreign policy for decades. He threatened not to defend NATO members that fail to meet defense-spending goals. Rutte and his team also met Trump’s pick as national security adviser, US Rep. Michael Waltz, and other members of the presidentelect’s national security team, the NATO statement said. Rutte took over at the helm of NATO in October. AP
COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev applauds as he attends a closing plenary at
Summit on Sunday, November 24, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. (AP Photo/R Afiq M Aqbool)
ReSCUe workers search for victims at the site of an Israeli airstrike that hit central Beirut, Lebanon on Saturday, November 23, 2024. (AP Photo/hAssAn AMMAR
PReSIdeNt donald trump speaks during a meeting with the dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte in the Oval Office of the White House on July 18, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex bRAndon)
Editor: Angel R. Calso •
Haiti’s capital paralyzed by deepening gang crisis despite UN-backed police deployment
By Dánica Coto | Associated Press
SAN
JUAN, Puerto Rico—When
Kenyan police arrived in Haiti as part of a U.N.-backed mission earlier this year to tackle gang violence, hopes were high.
Coordinated gang attacks on prisons, police stations and the main international airport had crippled the country’s capital and forced the prime minister to resign, plunging Haiti into an unprecedented crisis.
But the crisis has only deepened since the international policing contingent arrived. The main international airport closed for the second time this year after gangs opened fire on commercial flights in mid-November, striking a flight attendant. Gunmen also are attacking once-peaceful communities to try and seize control of the entire capital, taking advantage of political infighting that led to the abrupt dismissal of the prime minister earlier this month.
Now, a new prime minister is tasked with turning around a nation that sees no escape from its troubles as Haitians wonder: How did the country reach this point?
‘No functioning authority’ BlOODY coups, brutal dictatorships and gangs created by Haiti’s political and economic elite have long defined the country’s history, but experts say the current crisis is the worst they’ve seen.
“I’m very bleak about the future,” said Robert Fatton, a Haitian politics expert at the University of Virginia. “The whole situation is really collapsing.”
The government is anemic, the U.N.-backed mission that supports Haiti’s understaffed police department lacks funding and personnel, and gangs now control 85% of the capital. Then, on Wednesday, an-
other blow.
Doctors Without Borders announced it was suspending critical care in Port-au-Prince as it accused police of targeting its staff and patients, including threats of rape and death. It’s the first time the aid group has stopped working with new patients since it began operating in Haiti more than 30 years ago.
“Every day that we cannot resume activities is a tragedy, as we are one of the few providers of a wide range of medical services that have remained open during this extremely difficult year,” said Christophe Garnier, mission director in Haiti. lionel l a zarre, deputy spokesman for Haiti’s National Police, did not return messages for comment. Neither did officials with Kenya’s mission when asked about the surge in gang violence.
In a recent statement, the Kenyanled mission said it was “cognizant of the road ahead that is fraught with challenges.” But it noted that ongoing joint patrols and operations have secured certain communities and forced gangs to change the way they operate.
André François Giroux, Canada’s ambassador to Haiti, told The Associated Press on Saturday that his country and others have been trying to bolster the Kenyan-led mission.
“They’ve done miracles, I think, considering all the challenges that we’ve been facing,” he said.
“What we have to keep in mind is that it’s still very much in deployment mode,” Giroux said. “There are not even 400 on the ground right now.”
A spokesman for Haiti’s new prime minister, Alix Didier FilsAimé, did not return messages for comment. In a statement Thursday, his administration said authorities were strengthening security along the capital’s main roads and had formed a special security council.
“The prime minister renews his commitment to find lasting solutions to current problems,” it said.
The statement was issued just days after gangs launched a pre-dawn attack Tuesday around an upperclass community in Haiti’s capital, forcing residents armed with machetes and guns to fight side-by-side with police to repel gunmen.
At least 28 gang members were killed, but not before some reached an area near an upscale hotel long considered safe.
“It tells you that there is no functioning authority in Haiti,” Fatton said Dwindling aid and growing
Mexico scrambles to defend free trade pact amid concerns over Chinese parts
By Mark Stevenson & María Verza Associated Press
MEXICO CITY—Mexico has been taking a bashing lately for allegedly serving as a conduit for Chinese parts and products into North America, and officials here are afraid a re-elected Donald Trump or politically struggling Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau could try to leave their country out of the US-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement.
Mexico’s ruling Morena party is so afraid of losing the trade deal that President Claudia Sheinbaum said Friday the government has gone on a campaign to get companies to replace Chinese parts with locally made ones.
“We have a plan with the aim of substituting these imports that come from China, and producing the majority of them in Mexico, either with Mexican companies or primarily North American companies,” Sheinbaum said.
While Sheinbaum claimed Mexico had been working on that effort since the 2021 global supply chain crisis — when factories around the world were stalled by a lack of parts and particularly computer chips from Asia — it appears to be an uphill battle. Even the United States has faced
big challenges in moving chip production back home despite billions in subsidies and incentives.
Mexico gained tens of thousands of jobs when US and foreign automakers moved their plants to Mexico under the free trade pact to take advantage of much lower wages. But the idea that Chinese parts—or even whole cars—could be piggybacking on that arrangement to further hollow out the US auto industry has enraged some people north of the border.
So Mexico is scrambling with private companies to get them to move parts production here.
“Next year, God willing, we are going to start making microchips in Mexico,” Mexican Economy Secre-
tary Marcelo Ebrard said on Thursday. “Of course they’re not yet the most advanced chips, but we are going to start producing them here.”
Mexico’s nationalistic ruling party, which is normally very resistant to being seen as bending to US demands, is scrambling in other ways, too.
The ruling party is in the process of eliminating a half-dozen independent regulatory and oversight agencies that were established by former presidents. That includes the anti-monopoly, transparency and energy regulatory bodies. Together with reforms that will make all judges stand for election in Mexico, that has sparked concern in the US and Canada.
isolation
A M AIN concern in the ongoing crisis is the temporary closure of the main international airport in Portau-Prince.
It means critical aid is not reaching those who need it the most in a country where nearly 6,000 people are starving and nearly half of the more than 11 million inhabitants are experiencing crisis levels of hunger or worse. Gang violence also has left more than 700,000 people homeless in recent years.
“We are deeply concerned about the isolation of Port-au-Prince from the rest of Haiti and the world,” said laurent Uwumuremyi, Mercy Corps’ country director for Haiti.
The aid group helps people including more than 15,000 living in makeshift shelters, but persistent gang violence has prevented workers from reaching a growing number of them in the capital and beyond.
Basic goods also are dwindling as the suspension of flights has delayed
imports of critical supplies.
“Before, there were some neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince that we considered safe that the gangs had never reached, but now they are threatening to take over the control of the entire capital,” Uwumuremyi said.
At least 150 people were reported killed in the capital and 20,000 forced to flee their homes in the second week of November alone. Overall, more than 4,500 people were reported killed in Haiti so far this year, the U.N. said.
Jimmy Chérizier, a former elite police officer who became a gang leader known as Barbecue, warned that a gang coalition known as Viv Ansanm will keep attacking as they demand the resignation of a transitional presidential council tasked with leading the country along with the new prime minister. The council also is supposed to organize general elections for the first time in nearly a decade so voters can choose a
president, a position left empty since President Jovenel Moïse was killed at his private residence in July 2021.
‘What else are you left with?’ THE US and other countries pushed for a U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti at a U.N. Security Council meeting this week. Only about 400 officers from Kenya have arrived, along with a handful of police and soldiers from other countries — way short of the 2,500 personnel slated for the mission.
“This is not just another wave of insecurity; it is a dramatic escalation that shows no signs of abating,” Miroslav Jenča, U.N. assistant secretary general for Europe, Central Asia and the Americas, said Wednesday at the meeting.
But Russia and China oppose a U.N. peacekeeping mission, leaving many to wonder what other options are left for Haiti.
Giroux, the Canadian ambassador, said his country supports a peacekeeping operation “when the time is right.”
“Everybody is looking at a peacekeeping mission as a silver bullet,” he said, adding that even if that were to happen, it wouldn’t be able to deploy for another six to 12 months. “We need to be realistic.”
Giroux said he is hopeful that some 600 Kenyans will arrive in Haiti in upcoming weeks, but added that “none of this matters if the political elite doesn’t get its act together.”
The nine-member transitional presidential council has been marred by accusations of corruption and infighting and was criticized for firing the previous prime minister.
“I’m at a loss for any short-term solution for Haiti, let alone any longterm solutions,” Fatton said. “The gangs have seen that they shouldn’t be afraid of the Kenyan mission.” He said one option may be for the government to negotiate with the gangs.
“At the moment, it is perceived as utterly unacceptable,” he said. “But if the situation deteriorates even more, what else are you left with?”
Canada’s top military commander calls out US senator for questioning women’s role in combat
HBy Rob Gillies Associated Press
A lIFAX, Nova Scotia—The first woman to command Canada’s military called out a US senator on Saturday for questioning the role of women in combat.
Gen. Jennie Carignan responded to comments made by Idaho Republican Sen. Jim Risch, the ranking member of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who was asked on Friday whether President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, should retract comments that he believes men and women should not serve together in combat units.
“I think it’s delusional for anybody to not agree that women in combat creates certain unique situations that have to be dealt with. I think the jury’s still out on how to do that,” Risch said during a panel session at the Halifax International Security Forum on Friday.
Carignan, Canada’s chief of defense staff and the first woman to command the armed forces of any Group of 20 or Group of Seven country, took issue with those remarks during a panel session on Saturday.
“If you’ll allow me, I would first like maybe to respond to Sena
tor Risch’s statement yesterday about women in combat because I wouldn’t want anyone to leave this forum with this idea that women are a distraction to defense and national security,” Carignan said.
“After 39 years of career as a combat arms officer and risking my life in many operations across the world, I can’t believe that in 2024, we still have to justify the contribution of women to their defense and to their service, in their country. I wouldn’t want anyone to leave this forum with this idea that this is some kind of social experiment.”
Carignan said women have been participating in combat for hundreds of years but have never been recognized for fighting for their country. She noted the women mili-
tary personnel in the room.
“All the women sitting here in uniform, stepping in, and deciding to get into harm’s way and fight for their country, need to be recognized for doing so,” she said.
“So again, this is the distraction, not the women themselves.”
Carignan received a standing ovation at the forum, which attracts defense and security officials from Western democracies. Hegseth has reignited a debate that many thought had been long settled: Should women be allowed to serve their country by fighting on the front lines?
The former Fox News commentator made it clear, in his own book and in interviews, that he believes men and women should not serve together in combat units. If Hegseth is confirmed by the Senate, he could try to end the Pentagon’s nearly decade-old practice of making all combat jobs open to women. Hegseth’s remarks have generated a barrage of praise and condemnation.
Carignan was promoted to the rank of general during the change-of-command ceremony this past summer, after being chosen by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government to become Canada’s first female defense chief. Carignan is no stranger to firsts.
The bodies of suspected gang members who were set on fire by residents, sit in a pile in the middle of a road in the Pétion-Ville neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, haiti on Tuesday, November 19, 2024. (AP Photo/odelyn JosePh)
MexicaN President claudia Sheinbaum gives a media briefing from the National Palace in Mexico city on October 2, 2024, the morning after her inauguration. (AP Photo/FernAndo llAno)
Trump’s 2nd term agenda alarms critics as he embraces hardline policies from ‘Project 2025’
By Bill Barrow | Associated Press
WASHINGTON—As a former and potentially future president, Donald Trump hailed what would become Project 2025 as a road map for “exactly what our movement will do” with another crack at the White House.
As the blueprint for a hard-right turn in America became a liability during the 2024 campaign, Trump pulled an about-face. He denied knowing anything about the “ridiculous and abysmal” plans written in part by his first-term aides and allies.
Now, after being elected the 47th president on Nov. 5, Trump is stocking his second administration with key players in the detailed effort he temporarily shunned. Most notably, Trump has tapped Russell Vought for an encore as director of the Office of Management and Budget; Tom Homan, his former immigration chief, as “border czar;” and immigration hardliner Stephen Miller as deputy chief of policy.
Those moves have accelerated criticisms from Democrats who warn that Trump’s election hands government reins to movement conservatives who spent years envisioning how to concentrate power in the West Wing and impose a starkly rightward shift across the US government and society. Trump and his aides maintain that he won a mandate to overhaul Washington. But they maintain the specifics are his alone.
“President Trump never had anything to do with Project 2025,” said Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt in a statement. “All of President Trumps’ Cabinet nominees and appointments are whole-heartedly committed to President Trump’s agenda, not the agenda of outside groups.” Here is a look at what some of Trump’s choices portend for his second presidency.
As budget chief, Vought envisions a sweeping, powerful perch
THe Office of Management and Budget director, a role Vought held under Trump previously and requires Sen-
ate confirmation, prepares a president’s proposed budget and is generally responsible for implementing the administration’s agenda across agencies.
The job is influential but Vought made clear as author of a Project 2025 chapter on presidential authority that he wants the post to wield more direct power.
“The Director must view his job as the best, most comprehensive approximation of the President’s mind,” Vought wrote. The OMB, he wrote, “is a President’s air-traffic control system” and should be “involved in all aspects of the White House policy process,” becoming “powerful enough to override implementing agencies’ bureaucracies.”
Trump did not go into such details when naming Vought but implicitly endorsed aggressive action. Vought, the president-elect said, “knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State” — Trump’s catch-all for federal bureaucracy—and would help “restore fiscal sanity.”
In June, speaking on former Trump aide Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, Vought relished the potential tension: “We’re not going to save our country without a little confrontation.”
Vought could help Musk and Trump remake government’s role and scope
T He strategy of further concentrating federal authority in the presidency permeates Project 2025’s and Trump’s campaign proposals. Vought’s vision is especially striking when paired with Trump’s proposals to dramatically expand the president’s control over federal workers and government purse strings— ideas intertwined with the presidentelect tapping mega-billionaire elon
Musk and venture capitalist Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a “Department of Government ef ficiency.”
Trump in his first term sought to remake the federal civil service by reclassifying tens of thousands of federal civil service workers — who have job protection through changes in administration—as political appointees, making them easier to fire and replace with loyalists. Currently, only about 4,000 of the federal government’s roughly 2 million workers are political appointees. President Joe Biden rescinded Trump’s changes. Trump can now reinstate them.
Meanwhile, Musk’s and Ramaswamy’s sweeping “efficiency” mandates from Trump could turn on an old, defunct constitutional theory that the president—not Congress— is the real gatekeeper of federal spending. In his “Agenda 47,” Trump endorsed so-called “impoundment,” which holds that when lawmakers pass appropriations bills, they simply set a spending ceiling, but not a floor. The president, the theory holds, can simply decide not to spend money
on anything he deems unnecessary. Vought did not venture into impoundment in his Project 2025 chapter. But, he wrote, “The President should use every possible tool to propose and impose fiscal discipline on the federal government. Anything short of that would constitute abject failure.”
Trump’s choice immediately sparked backlash.
“Russ Vought is a far-right ideologue who has tried to break the law to give President Trump unilateral authority he does not possess to override the spending decisions of Congress (and) who has and will again fight to give Trump the ability to summarily fire tens of thousands of civil servants,” said Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, a Democrat and outgoing Senate Appropriations chairwoman.
Reps. Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico, leading Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, said Vought wants to “dismantle the expert federal work-
force” to the detriment of Americans who depend on everything from veterans’ health care to Social Security benefits.
“Pain itself is the agenda,” they said.
Homan and Miller reflect Trump’s and Project 2025’s immigration overlap T RUMP S protests about Project 2025 always glossed over overlaps in the two agendas. Both want to reimpose Trump-era immigration limits. Project 2025 includes a litany of detailed proposals for various US immigration statutes, executive branch rules and agreements with other countries — reducing the number of refugees, work visa recipients and asylum seekers, for example.
Miller is one of Trump’s longestserving advisers and architect of his immigration ideas, including his promise of the largest deportation force in US history. As deputy policy chief, which is not subject to Senate confirmation, Miller would remain in Trump’s West Wing inner circle.
“America is for Americans and Americans only,” Miller said at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Oct. 27.
“America First Legal,” Miller’s organization founded as an ideological counter to the American Civil Liberties Union, was listed as an advisory group to Project 2025 until Miller asked that the name be removed because of negative attention.
Homan, a Project 2025 named contributor, was an acting US Immigration and Customs en forcement director during Trump’s first presidency, playing a key role in what became known as Trump’s “family separation policy.”
Previewing Trump 2.0 earlier this year, Homan said: “No one’s off the table. If you’re here illegally, you better be looking over your shoulder.”
Project 2025 contributors slated for CIA and Federal Communications chiefs JOHN R ATCLIFFe, Trump’s pick to lead the CIA, was previously one of Trump’s directors of national intelligence. He is a Project 2025 contributor. The document’s chapter on US intelligence was written by Dustin Carmack, Ratcliffe’s chief of staff in the first Trump administration. Reflecting Ratcliffe’s and Trump’s approach, Carmack declared the intelligence establishment too cautious. Ratcliffe, like the chapter attributed to Carmack, is hawkish toward China. Throughout the Project 2025 document, Beijing is framed as a US adversary that cannot be trusted. Brendan Carr, the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, wrote Project 2025’s FCC chapter and is now Trump’s pick to chair the panel. Carr wrote that the FCC chairman “is empowered with significant authority that is not shared” with other FCC members. He called for the FCC to address “threats to individual liberty posed by corporations that are abusing dominant positions in the market,” specifically “Big Tech and its attempts to drive diverse political viewpoints from the digital town square.” He called for more stringent transparency rules for social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube and “empower consumers to choose their own content filters and fact checkers, if any.” Carr and Ratcliffe would require Senate confirmation for their posts.
Romania’s presidential election: A pivotal vote amid political polarization, economic challenges
By Stephen Mcgrath Associated Press
BUCHAR e S T, Romania — Romanians are casting ballots on Sunday in the first round of a presidential election that could pit a far-right nationalist against the incumbent leftist prime minister in the runoff. Thirteen candidates are vying for the presidency in the e u ropean Union and NATO member country, and the vote is expected to go to a second round on Dec. 8. Polls opened at 7.00 a.m. local time (0500GMT) and will close at 9.00 p.m. (1900GMT). Romanians abroad have been able to vote since Friday. The final vote could see George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians, or AUR, face off against incumbent Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, backed by Romania’s largest party, the Social Democratic Party or PSD. The presidential role carries a five-year term and has significant decision-making powers in areas
such as national security, foreign policy, and judicial appointments. Romania will also hold parliamentary elections on Dec. 1 that will determine the country’s next government and prime minister. Simion, 38, is a vocal supporter of US President-elect Donald
Trump and has long been a controversial figure. He campaigned for reunification with Moldova, which this year renewed a five-year ban on him entering the country over security concerns, and he is banned for the same reason from entering neighboring Ukraine.
“I would like that in the next five to 10 years, for Romanians to be really proud to be Romanians, to promote Romanian culture, Romanian products,” he told reporters on Wednesday in the capital, Bucharest. “As a Romanian president, I will promote Romanian interests. In most cases, Romanian interests coincide with partner interests.”
Cristian Andrei, a political consultant based in Bucharest, says Sunday’s vote will be “a tight race” in which the diaspora will likely play a key role in which candidates make it to the runoff.
“We are at a point where Romania can easily divert or slip toward a populist regime because (voter) dissatisfaction is pretty large among a lot of people from all social strata,” he told The Associated Press. “And the temptation for any regime, any leader — will be to go on a populist road.”
He added that Romania’s large budget deficit, high inflation, and an economic slowdown could push more mainstream candidates to shift toward populist stances amid widespread dissatisfaction.
Ciolacu told the AP that if he is elected, one of his biggest goals is “to convince Romanians that it is worth staying at home or returning” to Romania, which has a massive diaspora spread throughout e U countries.
“Romania has a huge chance to become a developed economy in the next 10 years, where honest work is fairly rewarded and people have the security of a better life,” he said. “But for this, we need balance and responsibility ... I am running for the Presidency of Romania because we need a change.”
Other key candidates include e l ena Lasconi of the Save Romania Union party, or USR; former NATO deputy general secretary Mircea Geoana, who is running independently; and Nicolae Ciuca, a former army general and head of the center-right National Liberal Party, which is currently in a tense coalition with the PSD.
Geoana, a former foreign minister and ambassador to the United States, told the AP that he believes his international experience qualifies him above the other
candidates. “I think I bring a lot of competence and experience and connections in this complicated world,” he said.
Lasconi, a former journalist and the leader of USR, said she sees corruption as one of the biggest problems Romania faces and that she supports increased defense spending and continued aid to Ukraine.
Romania has been a staunch ally of war-torn Ukraine since Russia launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022. But Simion of the AUR party said he opposes Romania—which has sent a Patriot missile system to Ukraine— contributing further military aid and that he hopes Trump can “stop the war.”
In 2020, the AUR party went from relative obscurity to gaining 9% in a parliamentary vote, allowing it to enter parliament. Opponents have long accused Simion and AUR of being extremists, charges he denies.
“We are sort of a Trumpist party in this new wave of patriotic political parties in eu rope,” Simion said.
A copy of project 2025 is held during the Democratic National convention, August 21, 2024, in chicago. (AP Photo/J. Scott APPlewhite)
A womAN casts her vote in the country’s presidential elections, in Bucharest, Romania on Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/VAdim GhirdA)
Editor: Jennifer A. Ng
PHL meat imports seen surpassing ‘23 record
TBy Ada Pelonia @adapelonia
HE country’s meat imports by yearend could exceed last year’s record as animal diseases and bad weather crimped domestic output, according to the Meat Importers and Traders Association (Mita).
Mita made the pronouncement after the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) reported that the Philippines’s meat imports as of September 30 rose by 12.65 percent to 1.04 million metric tons (MMT) from 923,160 metric tons (MT) a year ago.
“Meat importation breached 1 million metric tons in September, which indicates that the Philippines will break last year’s record-high of 1.2 MMT,” Mita President Emeritus Jesus Cham said via Viber.
Data from BAI, an attached agency of the Department of
Agriculture, indicated that the Philippines imported 1.2 billion kilograms of meat products last year. Nearly half of the volume consisted of pork products.
Cham, however, warned that the increase in shipments would not automatically mean relief to consumers, especially during the holidays due to the threat of port congestion and the impact of a weak peso on prices.
“The record-high importation is worrisome as signs of port congestion are appearing.”
Cham also said the depreciation of the peso could increase
the landed cost of imported meat products.
“Meanwhile, the successive typhoons have hurt demand and consumption and importers may not be able to raise prices enough
to cover the added costs.”
Based on BAI data, chicken imports as of September 30 grew 6.43 percent to 345,860 MT from 324,977 MT. Mechanically deboned meat (MDM) accounted
Group pushes hike in climate finance share for farmers
THE Conference of Parties (COP) presidency should tackle the “inequities” in the resource allocation of the current climate finance to help farmers cope with the aftermath of extreme weather conditions, according to a nongovernment organization.
“The fight against climate change cannot emphasize enough the importance of agrifood systems. Ironically, this sector receives a meager share of the pie and it continues to decline,” Rice Watch and Action Network (R1) said in a statement.
Citing an analysis by the Climate Policy Initiative, R1 said it showed a mere 0.8 percent share of small-scale agrifood systems or $5.53 billion of the total climate finance across all sectors of $660.2 billion in 2019 to 2020.
The group also noted that the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) reported in 2021 that climate-related development finance contributions towards agrifood systems declined by $19 billion or 12 percent compared to 2020. Asia posted the biggest decline, by 44 percent compared to 2020.
THE Department of Agriculture (DA) called on the Bureau of Customs (BOC) to release 580 metric tons (MT) of seized frozen mackerel to the government’s social welfare arm after tests confirmed that these are safe for human consumption.
Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. noted that the shipments, which were earlier confiscated due to the absence of an import permit, should be transferred to the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) to aid relief operations and boost food security efforts.
“Consequently, the fish products are deemed fit for immediate release and can be utilized to address food security needs, especially in relief operations,” he said.
“This initiative would support
“The inequities in resource allocation and worse, its further decline has cost the most vulnerable small-scale farmers and agri-micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) their remaining hope for resolution to their sad state.”
R1 said the Philippines recently experienced four strong typhoons, leaving Filipino farmers barely able to recover from the devastation of one extreme weather event to another.
“We join the united efforts of smallholder farmers, civil society, Indigenous Peoples (IPs), youth and women in seeking equitable share in climate financing,” R1 said.
“Only then can we truly uphold climate change resilience among our sectors that are most vulnerable to the devastation of climate change impact.”
The country has been grappling with successive typhoons recently that devastated agricultural farmlands and the fisheries sector, with damage reaching over P10 billion so far from typhoon Kristine to typhoon Nika.
Bloomberg reported that nearly 200 countries agreed to triple the amount of money
the DSWD and the DA’s ongoing efforts to provide essential aid to victims of the recent typhoon.”
In a letter addressed to Customs Commissioner Bienvenido Rubio, the agriculture chief noted that laboratory tests confirmed that the frozen fish is fit for human consumption with no signs of spoilage or contamination.
These findings came from the National Fisheries Laboratory Division of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR).
The confiscated shipment worth around P178.5 million consisting of 21 container vans loaded with frozen mackerel arrived at the Manila International Container Port in early October without the required sanitary and phytosanitary import clearances (SPSICs).
available to help developing countries confront rapidly warming temperatures.
Rich countries have pledged to provide at least $300 billion annually by 2035, through a wide variety of sources, including public finance as well as bilateral and multilateral deals. The agreement also calls on parties to work toward unleashing a total of $1.3 trillion a year, with most of it expected to come through private financing.
Developed and developing countries entered the negotiations far apart. At one point on Saturday, the talks appeared to be on the brink of collapse, before numerous closed-door meetings brought a deal closer.
Rich nations are grappling with a slew of fiscal and political constraints, including inflation, constrained budgets and rising populism. The election of Donald Trump and his threat to pull the US out of the landmark Paris climate agreement also cast a shadow on the summit.
Under a compromise, rich nations eventually agreed to commit $50 billion more than called for in a draft agreement on Friday. They had also made any agreement contingent
An SPSIC would certify that an inbound shipment is safe for human and animal consumption and would not bring in any pests that could jeopardize the local agriculture sector.
Upon the confiscation, Laurel directed the BFAR to conduct laboratory tests to evaluate the suitability of the frozen mackerel for distribution to typhoon-affected communities.
The country has been grappling with successive typhoons that devastated agricultural farmlands and the fisheries sector, with damage reaching over P10 billion so far from typhoon Kristine to typhoon Nika.
This recently prompted the DA to consider importing vegetables and possibly expanding fish imports to stabilize prices of some key agricultural commodities
on reaffirming last year’s COP28 outcome in Dubai that included a vow to transition away from fossil fuels.
Meanwhile, the Department of Agriculture (DA) entered into a tripartite agreement for a $39.2-million climate change project set to benefit 1.25 million farmers in the climate-vulnerable regions of the country.
The department signed the Operational Partners Agreement together with the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical, and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) and FAO.
The seven-year initiative aims to boost the resilience of rural communities reliant on agriculture. The project spans five regions, nine provinces, and 100 towns.
The DA said a key outcome of the project is the adoption of climateresilient farming practices by farmers, empowering them to establish sustainable enterprises.
“The project also aims to strengthen regulatory frameworks, enhance market systems, and improve knowledge management to mainstream and scale up climate-resilient agriculture nationwide.” Ada Pelonia
that spiked following the damage brought by the typhoons.
To prevent unscrupulous individuals from smuggling or hoarding farm products, President Marcos Jr. had signed Republic Act (RA) 12022 or the Anti-Agricultural Economic Sabotage Act, which he said would aid in the government crackdown against the cartels behind price and supply manipulation for agricultural products.
“By eliminating smuggling, hoarding, profiteering, and other cartel activities, we are not only shielding our local producers but also providing consumers with affordable agricultural and fishery products,” Marcos said. Ada Pelonia
material,” Cham said.
The imports of turkey MDM stood at 995 MT in the reference period, which showed a significant increase from the 52 MT recorded in 2023.
Pork shipments accounted for the largest share of the country’s meat imports in January to September as it rose by 12.90 percent to 517,860 MT from the 458,703 MT recorded in the same period last year.
Cham said the increase in pork imports indicates that the pork shortage will continue despite the arrival of vaccines and inoculation of pigs against African swine fever. Beef imports registered the biggest jump during the period as shipments surged by 35.01 percent to 144,023 MT from 106,676 MT, the bulk of which consisted of beef cuts at 98,932 MT.
for the bulk of chicken shipments at 195,796 MT.
“However, turkey MDM jumped tremendously, albeit from a small base. Perhaps some processors have now learned to use it as a raw
“Beef continued its strong consistent increase, with total imports as of September almost matching the full year of 2023,” Cham said.
“More consumers and users apparently now see beef as a viable alternative to high priced pork and chicken.”
Indonesia curbing nickel supply to support locals, Eramet says
INDONESIA is squeezing supplies of nickel ore to protect smaller local miners as the market for the battery metal endures a prolonged slump, according to Eramet SA.
The French miner, which operates the world’s largest nickel mine in Indonesia’s North Maluku province, was this year given a sales quota by the Asian nation that was 29 percent less than it expected, causing its share price to plunge in October.
The government curbs were meant to protect local miners from the global slump in prices, but also led to a shift in production to higher-grade ores used to make stainless steel. That reduced local supply of battery-grade nickel ore, forcing local smelters—which are key to Indonesia’s ambitions to become a major player in electric vehicles—to turn to more expensive imports.
“They wanted to maintain a good price for the ore on the market,” Jerome Baudelet, chief executive officer of Eramet Indonesia, said in an interview in Jakarta last Thursday. “They wanted to protect the local small miners.” Nickel, which is used to make both stainless steel and electric vehicle batteries, has endured a two-year slump due to weak demand and booming Indonesian supplies. That’s forced some producers in other countries to shut entirely, and also put pressure on smelters in the Southeast Asian nation that are already dealing with high ore prices due to the shortages.
Indonesia now accounts for more than half of global nickel output after its ban on exports led to a smelter-building boom, largely by Chinese companies. On the mining side, production is highly fragmented between a large number of small local firms and a few large international miners like Eramet and Vale SA. Due to the sales curbs, miners have prioritized selling higher-grade ore that’s typically used in stainless steel production,
Baudelet said. That’s at the expense of the less-rich form called limonite that’s usually turned into battery-grade nickel in high pressure acid-leach facilities. Those plants, which are key to Indonesia’s ambitions to become a major player in electric vehicles, are being forced to import the bulky ore at extremely high costs, Baudelet said.
Eramet can apply for a higher sales quota next year, which could alleviate the tightness in the ore market. That may become more urgent as the country continues to bring processing capacity online.
President’s policy MUCH will depend on the attitude of the country’s new government toward the nickel sector. President Prabowo Subianto, who was inaugurated last month, has pledged to continue his predecessor’s policy of bringing the processing of minerals like nickel onshore.
The former general recently capped off a trip to the US, which included a meeting with President Joe Biden and a call with President-elect Donald Trump. Indonesia has been pushing the US to make electric vehicles containing its nickel eligible for the subsidies provided by the Inflation Reduction Act.
It remains to be seen whether Trump’s administration will be more amenable to a deal on that front, particularly given his repeatedly expressed desire to scrap large parts of the IRA. But the Southeast Asian nation’s growing dominance of the nickel market may force the US’s hand in the end, Baudelet said.
“When you look at Indonesia, within the next five, 10 years it’s going to be 70 percent of the world production,” he said.
“If you don’t want to source from Indonesia, it’s going to be a challenge for you to get the competitive nickel.” Bloomberg News
ADB report reveals deepening impact of climate change on PHL education
THe educational challenges in the Philippines are being worsened by the continuous effects of climate change, as emphasized in a recent study by the Asian Development Bank (ADB). Prolonged school closures due to extreme weather, such as the 32 days lost in the 2023-2024 academic year, are severely disrupting education. This situation demands urgent attention and action from policymakers, educators, and communities alike. (Read the BusinessMirror story: “Climatecaused closures could deepen learning crisis,” November 20, 2024).
Climate change is not just an environmental issue; it is fundamentally a challenge to education and human development. The ADB’s findings underscore a critical truth: without adaptive capacities in our education systems, the effects of climate-induced disruptions will deepen existing inequalities and hinder learning outcomes. If schools are unprepared for the realities of extreme weather, the future of countless students hangs in the balance.
The call for climate-resilient educational facilities and curricula is not merely a recommendation; it is a necessity. As ADB Sectors Group Director General Ramesh Subramaniam articulated, making education systems climate-ready involves a holistic approach that spans infrastructure, teacher training, and curricular reforms. By equipping students with the necessary skills for a green transition, we can foster a generation that is not only aware of climate issues but also prepared to tackle them.
Moreover, the ADB report emphasizes the importance of integrating education into the national agenda for climate action. As countries update their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement, it is crucial to embed educational strategies that promote climate literacy and green skills. This is not only about preparing students for future job markets but also about instilling pro-climate beliefs and behaviors that can lead to systemic change.
Neglecting this educational crisis could have severe economic consequences. With infrastructure projects under strain due to severe weather and government spending slowing down, we risk not only impacting current educational results but also jeopardizing long-term economic stability. The Philippine economy, which has already shown signs of slowing growth, cannot afford to overlook the intersection of education and climate resilience.
The ADB’s projection that the transition to a low-carbon economy could create more than 230 million jobs in Asia and the Pacific by 2030 is promising. However, around 8 million coal industry workers in the region will need reskilling as coal industries are phasing out. Additionally, all 4.7 billion citizens in the region require basic climate knowledge and awareness.
The ADB report acts as a clear signal for urgent action. As we face an uncertain climate future, we must prioritize making our education systems resilient. We cannot emphasize enough the importance of collaboration among government agencies, educational institutions, and communities to ensure that our children are not mere survivors of climate change but rather active participants in shaping solutions. Only then can we hope to mitigate the learning crisis and secure a sustainable future for the next generation of Filipinos.
eón Gallery is preparing to host a significant event that celebrates the rich heritage of Philippine history at its Kingly Treasures Auction on november 30, Saturday, at 2:00 p.m. This auction will pay homage to two of the nation’s most revered heroes, José Rizal and Andrés Bonifacio, whose contributions were instrumental in freeing the Philippines from colonial rule.
Among the standout pieces is José Rizal’s sculpture, “Josephine Sleeping,” a poignant tribute to his deep affection for Josephine Bracken, his ultimate love. Created during his exile in Dapitan, this work not only highlights Rizal’s artistic prowess but also reveals a tranquil and deeply personal aspect of his life.
Also featured is “The Last Seal of the Katipunan,” a significant artifact that resurfaces just in time for Bonifacio’s 161st birthday. This emblem symbolizes Bonifacio’s vision for freedom and unity in the Philippines and is associated with his final days during the revolution. The seal is part of the collection of Trinidad H. Pardo de Tavera, a noted scholar and ilustrado
The auction showcases an impressive array of works by celebrated artists, including Guillermo Tolentino’s “Bust of Andrés Bonifacio,” cast from the iconic “Monumento” dedicated to Bonifacio. This piece, entrusted to León Gallery by historian Ambeth R. Ocampo, offers col-
lectors a rare opportunity to own a fragment of Philippine revolutionary history. Professor Ocampo has also bequeathed other important pieces from his collection, including Félix Resurrección Hidalgo’s “Per Pacem et Libertatem.”
Additionally, the auction highlights another Hidalgo masterpiece: his “Portrait of Raimunda Chuidian Roxas,” depicting a matriarch whose lineage significantly influenced both Batangas’ landscape and Manila’s economy.
Fernando Zóbel’s works are also among the lots to watch for. “Orilla 69, En Amarillo y Gris” belongs to Zóbel’s last series, inspired by the powerful River Jucar that flows through Cuenca, where he lived later in life. “Azul sobre pardo,” from his coveted Saetas series, is particularly rare; only nine blue Saetas were ever painted by Zóbel, as noted by Alfonso de la Torre, author of the artist’s catalogue raisonné
The Kingly Treasures Auction also celebrates women who have
The auction showcases an impressive array of works by celebrated artists, including Guillermo Tolentino’s “Bust of Andrés Bonifacio,” cast from the iconic “Monumento” dedicated to Bonifacio. This piece, entrusted to León Gallery by historian Ambeth R. Ocampo, offers collectors a rare opportunity to own a fragment of Philippine revolutionary history. Professor Ocampo has also bequeathed other important pieces from his collection, including Félix Resurrección Hidalgo’s “Per Pacem et Libertatem.”
shaped Philippine history. Carlos “Botong” V. Francisco’s “Tinikling No. 2,” from Estefania “Fanny” Aldaba Lim’s collection—who was not only the country’s first female cabinet secretary but also a pioneer in psychology—captures the essence of Filipino culture through its depiction of traditional dance.
Anita Magsaysay-Ho’s “Lavanderas by the Stream,” created in 1934, showcases her early exploration of women as subjects, influenced by her mentor Fernando Amorsolo. Meanwhile, Nena Saguil’s abstract work, once a gift to Tetta Agustin, reflects the synergy between two women who redefined their paths —one in art and the other in international fashion.
Collectors who are vital to the Philippine art scene will play a key role in this highly anticipated sale. The collection of Freddie and Eliza-
beth Webb features notable Filipino artists, including Mario Parial’s “Higantes Festival” and Juvenal Sansó’s “Jagged Shore.”
From Ambassador Pedro Conlu Hernaez’s collection comes Juan Luna’s “La Majordoma,” a profound piece from Luna’s social realist era. Additionally, Jerry Elizalde Navarro’s “A Foul Wind on the 11th Day of February 1986” commemorates Evelio Javier, whose tragic death catalyzed the People Power Revolution. Art enthusiasts can also look forward to Alfonso Ossorio’s large-scale mixed-media panel, infused with the energy of his friendship with Jackson Pollock. With only five such works ever created, this offering is truly rare as it represents the last remaining piece in a private collection. In the spirit of giving this season, León Gallery is partnering with the International School Manila (ISM), which will auction several key lots— including a Jigger Cruz masterwork from his golden year of 2013—to support the ISM Filipino Scholars Program.
The Kingly Treasures Auction will take place on November 30 at Eurovilla 1, Rufino Corner Legazpi Streets, Legazpi Village, Makati City. The preview week runs from November 23 to November 29 from 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. For further inquiries, e-mail info@leon-gallery. com or contact +632 8856-27-81. To browse the catalog, visit www.leongallery.com. Follow León Gallery on their social media pages for timely updates: Facebook—www.facebook.com/leongallerymakati and Instagram @leongallerymakati.
Meralco leads the way: A bold step towards nuclear
energy for the Philippines
MAnny V. PAnGiLinAn, chairman and CeO of Meralco, is once again leading the way for the future of the Philippines, this time focusing on its energy security. Meralco, the country’s largest electricity distributor, has taken a bold step forward by entering into a groundbreaking partnership with France to explore nuclear energy options.
The partnership with Electricité de France (EDF), a global leader in nuclear power, offers the Philippines a proven blueprint for success. France, which has been building nuclear plants since 1948,
now derives 75 percent of its energy from nuclear power. Meralco’s move is not just an opportunity; it’s an urgent necessity—necessary for energy stability, sustainability, and a cleaner future.
This decades-long expertise is exactly what Meralco aims to leverage as it looks to introduce nuclear energy into the country’s power grid. This new focus is not a fleeting interest —it is a deliberate, strategic effort to reshape the Philippines’ energy future. With an energy mix heavily reliant on coal and oil, the country faces recurring issues of power shortages and rising costs.
The traditional energy system is unsustainable, both financially and environmentally. In a world confronting the realities of climate change, nuclear energy has become not just a viable option but an imperative.
Meralco’s commitment to nuclear energy is more than just a business decision; it is a promise for a reliable, affordable, and en-
vironmentally responsible energy future. As part of its partnership with EDF, Meralco is exploring the potential of both small modular reactors (SMRs) with a capacity of 300 megawatts and larger conventional reactors with up to 1,200 megawatts. These options could play a pivotal role in addressing the country’s growing energy demands.
Meralco’s initiative also underscores the urgent need for the Department of Energy (DOE) to recalibrate its energy strategy. The DOE’s current forecasts fall short of what the Philippines requires to future-proof its energy system. For example, the DOE projects that nuclear power will only account for 1,200 megawatts of the energy mix by 2032. This is
Atty. Jose Ferdinand M. Rojas II
Tech-driven government sustainability efforts
TDEBIT CREDIT
Part three
ax administrations can do a lot in promoting environmental sustainability while doing their tax collections. Particularly, the implementation of a green tax is a key ingredient in these objectives of countries to protect the environment and provide financing for these, including the imposition of taxes.
The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), under the leadership of Commissioner Romeo Lumagui, has been in the forefront of contributing its share in environmental sustainability thrusts, with its Electronic-Filing and Payment and E-invoicing systems. These have contributed to the green effort with the substantial impact on the reduction in the use of paper in the printing of tax forms and returns and gasoline with the reduced travel to BIR offices due to expanded access by taxpayers to online tax payment and engagements with the BIR.
What about green taxation?
Green taxation encompasses a broad range of taxes designed to promote environmental sustainability. This includes taxes on activities and products that harm the environment, such as air pollution, waste generation, water consumption, chemical usage and carbon emission. The most common tax implemented by most countries is the carbon tax.
Carbon taxation is a specific form of green taxation that targets carbon emissions, primarily from fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas. As commonly implemented, this tax imposes a direct financial cost on the emission of carbon dioxide (CO 2) and other greenhouse gasses. The tax is levied on each ton of CO2 emitted, usually at the point of emission, such as at fuel production, transportation, or consumption.
The primary goal of carbon taxation is to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and incentivize businesses and individuals to shift towards cleaner, low-carbon alternatives like renewable energy, energy efficiency, and sustainable practices Tax incentives take the form of enterprises implementing programs and practices to reduce their carbon emissions from their business activities so as to reduce their payment of carbon taxes that are based on such emissions.
Carbon trading also is another mechanism which allows countries or companies to buy and sell carbon credits as a way of meeting emissions reduction targets. A carbon credit is a tradable unit that represents a reduction of one metric ton of CO2 or other greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere. There are already global standards that provide the determination of these credits.
The tax implications of transactions on trading of tax credits provides a fertile ground for research and tax policy formulation by tax collection agencies, including the Bureau of Internal Revenue. Issues such as whether the gains arising from the trading of carbon credits are subject to income tax and value added tax; are such acquisition of carbon credits reported as assets or expenses for financial and tax purposes, and other matters have to be defined by the tax authorities.
The focus on carbon taxation was preceded by the Paris Agreement on Climate Change of the United Nations that was signed on December 12, 2015. This agreement is a landmark international treaty aimed at combating climate change and limiting global warming to below 2°C by the year 2100. Under the agreement, each country
SCarbon taxation is a specific form of green taxation that targets carbon emissions, primarily from fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas. As commonly implemented, this tax imposes a direct financial cost on the emission of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gasses. The tax is levied on each ton of CO2 emitted, usually at the point of emission, such as at fuel production, transportation, or consumption.
must set its own emissions reduction targets, known as Nationally Determined Contributions, which are to be updated and strengthened every five years.
Countries have also committed to provide financial support to developing countries for both mitigation and adaptation. The goal is to mobilize $100 billion per year by 2020 and maintain this level through the year 2025 While the Paris Agreement does not mandate carbon taxes, it encourages countries to explore and implement them as part of their broader climate strategies, including financing of environmental programs. I will discuss next week what are the developments in particular countries, including the Philippines, in this area of carbon taxation.
The roll out of these climate change and carbon taxation initiatives coincided with the adoption of innovative technology tools and processes to streamline the implementation. Such applications and tools were developed for monitoring and verification of carbon pricing and trading, emissions monitoring using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Predictive Analytics, Blockchain for carbon credits recording, and public engagement tools to include Data Dashboards and Apps to educate businesses and the public on carbon taxes. Countries also have developed digital tax platforms to streamline the administration of carbon taxes by automating calculations, collections,compliance checks, and reporting.
We all should be proud that the BIR is not behind in adopting similar technology solutions to aid in environmental sustainability. The BIR has put in place several measures, including the use of AI in BIR audits, the adoption of globally accepted quality standards, such as the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) certification to validate the conformity of its operations and services to independent standards, and various digital online services applications for use by taxpayers.
Let’s all be one with the BIR in its pursuit of technology-driven environmental sustainability and taxpayer-centric collection efforts.
Joel L. Tan-Torres was a former Commissioner of the Bureau of Internal Revenue. He has also held the various positions of Dean of the University of the Philippines Virata School of Business, Chairman of the Professional Regulatory Board of Accountancy, Tax partner of Reyes Tacandong & Co. and the SyCip Gorres and Velayo & Co., and director of various corporate boards.
By Rudenko Andrey Yurevich Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation
ince the establishment of diplomatic ties in 1976, RussianPhilippine friendship has gone through a test of endurance, including changes in the domestic and international political and economic spheres following the collapse of the USSR. am id the ongoing global transformation associated with the changing balance of power in the international arena, primarily due to the increasing role of the Global South and eastern countries, the Philippines remains an important and promising partner of Russia in the asia-Pacific region.
We believe that realizing the significant potential of our bilateral cooperation lies in the context of a multipolar world order, to which Russia and the Philippines, as an influential member of ASEAN, are making their tangible contributions. The convergence or proximity of the two countries’ approaches to the key challenges of our times, their adherence to international law, first and foremost to the principle of the sovereign equality of states, and their recognition of cultural and civilizational diversity and traditional values form the basis for bilateral cooperation.
Throughout their history, Russian-Philippine relations have been an example of mutually beneficial cooperation and mutual respect. As early as 1817, the first Russian consulate was opened in Manila on the initiative of Peter Dobel, subject of the Russian Empire, with the aim of expanding trade. Throughout the 21st century, the Filipinos welcomed Russian travellers and sailors, including Vasily Golovnin, Fiodor Litke, Nikolay MiklukhoMaklaiand Ivan Goncharov, who were keen to study the traditions, culture and customs of the locals and then introduced “Perlas ng Silangan” to the Russian public. At the height of the Russo-Japanese War, Manila became a refuge for the Russian cruiser “Aurora” and its crew, who had been badly injured in the Battle of Tsushima.
The stay of almost 6,000 Russian refugees from China on the archipelago in 1949-1951 is a littleknown chapter in the history of the two countries. Tubabao Island became their home for several years. Local people have kept memories of the stay of “White Russians,” as they used to call them, including Archbishop John of Shanghai (declared a saint by the Russian Orthodox Church).
In the second half of the twentieth century, cooperation between our countries took a new turn. In 1975, the USSR was visited by A. Melchor Jr., Executive Secretary of the President of the Philippines. This was the starting point for the establishment of diplomatic relations on June 2, 1976. It is noteworthy that this landmark political decision was taken by the father of the current President of the country, Ferdinand Marcos. Even back then, the Philippine leadership acknowledged that differences in socio-political systems were not an obstacle to successful and effective cooperation. The two countries signed their first trade agreement, which gave a new impetus to economic ties, cultural cooperation, tourism and scientific exchanges. Such an independent approach to bilateral relations, where mutual interests come to
woefully inadequate in the face of the country’s escalating energy crisis. While the DOE’s long-term goal is 2,400 megawatts by 2035, this is already outdated compared to global trends.
For context, France is set to build six more nuclear plants, and South Korea, just across the region, already operates 24 nuclear plants that were built by Westinghouse, the same company that could have provided us with our own nuclear power plant in Bataan but which was abandoned resulting in the blackouts that hit the country dur-
the fore, is still very much in demand today.
Regrettably, nowadays some countries are striving hard to maintain global geopolitical dominance through the so-called “rules-based order” and artificially “cancel” those parts of the world that do not support such a unipolar vision. Attempts are being made to isolate Russia, punish it for its sovereign political decisions aimed at ensuring its own security, and blame it for all the problems of the world.
We therefore appreciate the constructive attitude of the present administration, headed by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., which demonstrates the continuity of the policy of maintaining friendly relations with our country.
Russian and Philippine lawmakers fruitfully cooperate at international parliamentary forums.
In November 2023, the leaders of the two countries’ parliaments met on the sidelines of the 31st session of the Asia-Pacific Parliamentary Forum in Manila. Parliamentary friendship groups operate within the legislative bodies of both countries.
Trade and economic cooperation is of great importance, although it faces serious challenges, mainly related to the illegal economic sanctions imposed on Russia by the US and its allies, which is hampering bank settlements and disrupting supply chains.
However, as practice shows, obstacles in trade and economic relations are surmountable. On October 4-5, 2023, the 3rd meeting of the Russia-Philippines Joint Commission on Trade and Economic Cooperation was successfully held in Manila. We consider transport, space, information and communication technologies, etc. to be promising areas. As of 2023, bilateral trade turnover reached US$633.4 million. It is worth recalling that earlier our countries had joined efforts in the fight against Covid-19, during the difficult period of the pandemic.
In 2021, 20 million doses of the R ussian vaccine Sputnik V were delivered to the Philippines under a signed contract.
Russian companies are interested in establishing cooperation with Philippine partners in the field of peaceful nuclear energy, including its non-energy applications. Agricultural cooperation is intensifying. Since 2021, the office of the agricultural attaché has been functioning within the Russian Embassy in the Philippines. In June 2023, a Russian delegation headed by Sergey Levin, Deputy Minister of Agriculture, visited Manila as part of a business mission of Russian companies exporting agricultural products.
ing the administration of President Cory Aquino.
The country can ill-afford another round of brownouts with nuclear energy coming in 11 years from now that shows how myopic is the Department of Energy’s energy plan is. It is imperative for the DOE to “energize” its own program so that its energy calculus takes into account the rise in energy demand vis-à-vis the power plants it will allow to be built into the grid.
With Meralco leading the charge, the Philippines has a unique opportunity to embrace nuclear energy as a cornerstone of its future energy strategy. Nuclear power offers the country the chance to significantly reduce
The establishment of direct flights between Russia and the Philippines would have a positive impact on the development of mutual business and tourist exchanges. This is evidenced by the existing direct flights to Southeast Asian nations, i.e. Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia.
The conditions are in place for the Philippines to engage with the Eurasian Economic Union, a single market of 180 million consumers.
Recent years have seen an active development of interregional contacts. The city of Cebu maintains twinning relations with Vladimir, in 2022 an agreement on cooperation with Vladivostok was signed. In 2024 the province of Cebu concluded an agreement on cooperation in trade and economy, science and technology, and the humanitarian area with St. Petersburg. Moscow has cooperation programs in place with Manila and Cebu.
The rich cultural heritage of the two countries provides a basis for expanding humanitarian exchanges, including increasing cooperation in the fields of education and tourism.
Russian universities that hold leading positions in the world rankings offer Filipino students training, including free of charge, in such areas as Information Systems and Technologies, Applied Computer Science, Nuclear Energy, Medicine, Linguistics, etc.
Russian audiences have repeatedly had the opportunity to get acquainted with the Philippine ballet thanks to Lisa Macuja-Elizalde, founder and CEO of Ballet Manila, who is a graduate of the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet. In turn, in 2023, as part of the Days of Moscow in Manila, the Filipino audience warmly welcomed a gala concert by artists of the Moscow State Academic Dance Theatre Gzhel at the Aliw Theatre.
Friendly visits by Russian ships of the Russian Navy’s Pacific Fleet to Philippine harbors contribute to maintaining defense contacts. From 2021 to 2024, six such visits have been organized. Philippine officials annually participate in international meetings of HighRanking Officials Responsible for Security Matters held by the Security Council of the Russian Federation.
The importance of the AsiaPacific region cannot be overestimated. We note with regret that the security and cooperation architecture, created around ASEAN over
its dependence on fossil fuels while ensuring that power supply remains stable and reliable. By adopting nuclear energy, the Philippines can better position itself to achieve its climate goals— transitioning to a carbon-neutral future while safeguarding its energy needs for decades to come.
This is a critical moment for the country. The debate is no longer whether nuclear energy should be part of the energy mix—it’s about when and how to integrate it. Meralco, under the leadership of MVP, has taken the first step, and it is now up to the government and other industry stakeholders to follow suit. The urgency is clear. Meralco’s
recent decades, is under threat. Under the slogan of a “free and open Indo-Pacific region,” the United States and their allies are pursuing a confrontational course aimed at “bloc containment.” The Euro-Atlanticists deliberately heat up the situation around Taiwan and the Korean Peninsula, aggravate territorial disputes in the South China Sea, and use heightened tensions in the region to pump it up with arms, including strategic weapons. Russia opposes the militarization of the region and the “creeping expansion” of NATO into Southeast Asia. Such narrow-bloc organizations as the Indo-Pacific Four (Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand), the AUKUS military alliance with a nuclear component (the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia) are fully involved in this scenario. We note attempts to pull other ASEAN countries into similar narrow-bloc entities, with the aim of forming new “trios” and “quartets.”
We are convinced that the future of the Asia-Pacific region can be based only on a constructive agenda, the main items of which include maintaining peace and stability, developing mutually beneficial and multifaceted cooperation, and creating a regional architecture on a collective basis that would ensure equal and indivisible security for all.
In cooperating with its regional partners, Russia is guided by longterm national interests and contemporary realities. To this end, we are actively using the potential of the Russia-ASEAN strategic partnership and the opportunities of our participation in the EAS and ARF, the SCO, BRICS, APEC and other multilateral organizations and forums.
Moscow highly appreciates that the current Philippine leadership, in a difficult geopolitical situation, adheres to a balanced, pragmatic line in international affairs and strives to develop pragmatic relations with Russia.
In conclusion, I would like to emphasize that Russian-Philippine cooperation has great potential for further successful development and translation into mutually beneficial projects. Together we can make a significant contribution to overcoming global challenges and ensuring stability and security in the Asia-Pacific region.
Rudenko Andrey Yurevich was born in Moscow in 1962.
1985: Graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (now MGIMO University).
Diplomatic rank: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary since October 2020.
1985: Joined the diplomatic service and held various posts at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and at the ministry’s missions abroad.
2011-2016: Deputy Permanent Representative of Russia to the OSCE, Austria.
March 2016: Director of the Second CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) Department of the Ministry, member of the Foreign Ministry Collegium.
September 2019—present: Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. He is fluent in English and Chinese.
entry into the nuclear energy space marks a turning point in the Philippines’ energy trajectory. It is not just about adding another power source to the grid; it’s about securing the nation’s energy future, ensuring economic growth, and protecting the environment for future generations. The time for action is now. With Meralco’s leadership, the Philippines has the opportunity to build a safer, more reliable, and sustainable energy grid—one that will power the country for generations to come. The country’s energy future depends on it, and Meralco has shown the way forward, thanks to the visionary leadership of Manny V. Pangilinan.
Gagni . . .
Joel L. Tan-Torres
Yurevich
With low investment rates, PHL trails Asean neighbors
By Reine Juvierre Alberto @reine_alberto
THE Philippines’ anti-investment ecology stifles economic growth and must be reversed to align investment levels with neighboring countries, according to National Scientist Raul V. Fabella.
At the Department of Budget and Management’s (DBM) Fiscal Policy Conference, Fabella, an economist, said the Philippines has always trailed its neighbors in Asia in terms of investment rates, or the share of investment in gross domestic product (GDP).
the Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises Act (Create) already in place.
For 2024 and 2025, the country will likely post an investment rate of around 24 percent thereabouts, he added.
“Our task is to reverse the decadal march to the bottom [of the] investment ladder,” Fabella said.
that one way to improve the country’s investment rate is to allow private capital to go back to the agricultural sector.
Private capital, Fabella said, has been shunning the farming sector for the past 40 years and its return could make the sector become profitable and allow more investments to come in.
By Justine Xyrah Garcia
“Countries that invest less will over time eat the dust of countries that invest more,” Fabella said, adding that this has been the case for the Philippines in the past four decades.
Fabella said the Philippines’s investment rate has always been between 19 and 22 percent, if lucky, hardly breaching 25 percent even with
Citing data from GlobalEconomy. com, Fabella said that the Philippines’ investment rate in 2022 stood at 22.4 percent, while nearby Asean countries, such as Vietnam, Thailand and Singapore had investment rates of 33.4 percent, 27.9 percent and 43 percent, respectively.
The Philippines has an anti-investment and anti-tradable ecology that hampers its economic growth, particularly limiting investments in the agriculture sector, he asserted. “You cannot expect families at the brink of starvation to invest and save in farm equipment and innovative farming procedures,” Fabella said.
Mining and forestry industries were also “forbidden destinations” for private and foreign investments in the last decade, he said, noting the $6-billion Tampakan Gold and Copper Mine project is still in limbo after 40 years due to unresolved conflicts of principles.
The national scientist suggested
The Board of Investments (BOI) approved P9.59 billion worth of agricultural projects endorsed by the Department of Agriculture (DA) in July 2024. It has also approved agriculture-related projects amounting to P6.05 billion from February 2 to June 11, 2024, with an investment capital of up to P15 billion.
Meanwhile, data from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) showed foreign direct investments (FDIs) reached $5.256 billion from January to July 2024, higher by 7.5 percent from $4.888 billion last year. This was the highest since the $9.116 billion recorded at the end of 2023. (See: https:// businessmirror.com.ph/2024/10/11/phls-julyfdi-inflows-up-5-5-to-820m-a-5-mo-high/).
earned by an employee over the course of the year. However, DOLE clarified that allowances and other monetary benefits are typically excluded from the basic salary calculation, unless specified in an individual or collective agreement, company policy, or practice. Importantly, the labor department added that no requests for exemption or deferment of the 13th month pay will be accepted.
“No request or application for exemption from payment of 13th month pay, or for deferment of its payment shall be accepted and allowed,” the advisory read. To ensure compliance, DOLE requires all employers to
Employers are also reminded that no extensions will be
LOCAL government units (LGUs) are ultimately responsible for ensuring housing safety in urban areas, even with the availability of detailed geohazard maps and risk assessments, according to the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs).
Allan Rommel Labayog, Phivolcs regional monitoring officer, emphasized that the agency’s role is limited to prevention and mitigation, leaving the implementation of safety measures to LGUs.
“We have developed a website, webpage, and app, as well as a manual on home safety. This includes a training system and mapping tools for disaster-prone areas, which we’ve shared with LGUs and other stakeholders,” Labayog said in a mix of English and Filipino during a geological hazards seminar led by the Department of Science and Technology on Friday.
“However, Phivolcs’ current capabilities are limited to this extent.” He then urged local authorities, especially in vulnerable regions, to
translate this information into tangible actions, such as enforcing building codes, conducting risk assessments, and ensuring housing developments are located in safe zones.
“We [Phivolcs] provide information and interpretations, it’s up to them [LGUs] to implement or act on it,” he said.
Under Republic Act 10121 or the Philippine Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Act of 2010, LGUs, with partner stakeholders, “should build the disaster resilience of communities and institutionalize arrangements and measures for reducing disaster risks.”
The 2023 United Nations Habitat country report revealed that 70 percent of cities and urban centers in the Philippines are located along coastlines, with 3.7 million informal settler families, including 500,000 in high-risk areas, living in slums.
As of December 2022, the Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development reported a housing backlog of 2.2 million units, adding the need to prioritize safe areas for new developments.
Hidden risks
W H ILE n o fault lines exist in some regions, the Phivolcs officer said that proximity to trenches still poses significant seismic risks, citing Zamboanga’s proximity to the Sulu Trench as an example.
“Earthquakes from trenches are far stronger compared to fault lines. Even without a visible fault, urban housing here remains at risk,” he explained.
Based on the Phivolcs’ prediction, the West Valley Fault, which is anticipated to cause ‘The Big One,’ could trigger a magnitude 7.2 earthquake if it ruptures along Metro Manila’s eastern side. Areas near the Marikina Valley and Manila Bay’s edge are particularly vulnerable to intense shaking due to the underlying soft soil.
In contrast to the rest of the earthquake-prone Philippines, Labayog noted that Palawan stands out as a relatively sheltered region, with its distance from major fault lines and trenches significantly reducing its seismic risk.
“In the center of the development of the Philippines, almost everything is affected; Basically, everything is affected, except for Palawan,” he said.
By Samuel P. Medenilla @sam_medenilla
THE National Security Council (NSC) said the government security forces are on heightened alert following what is deemed a threat made by Vice President Sara Duterte on the life of President Ferdinand Marcos and his family.
“We shall be closely coordinating with law enforcement and intelligence agencies to investigate the nature of the threat, the possible perpetrators, and their motives. We shall do our utmost in defense of our democratic institutions and processes which the President represents,” the NSC said in the statement last Sunday.
The Council under the Office of the President (OP) made the assurance after it was reported last week that Duterte disclosed in an online interview that she contracted an assassin to take down Marcos, First Lady Liza A. Marcos, and House Speaker Fer -
dinand Martin G. Romualdez if she will be killed.
The outburst came after the House of Representatives ordered Duterte’s chief of staff, Zuleika Lopez, to be transferred from the detention facility to the Women’s Correctional Facility in Mandaluyong City, which the Vice President opposed.
The remark from Marcos’s running mate in the 2022 polls and once close political ally sparked concerns on the safety of the President, prompting the Presidential Security Command (PSC) to look into the matter.
Senate President Francis “Chiz” G. Escudero said the concerning statement of Duterte has led to “rising tensions.”
To allay the concern, the NSC assured the public that all government security forces are ready to defend the country’s democratic institutions.
“We enjoin the Filipino people to remain calm and confident in the knowledge that the security sector will ensure the President’s safety and will always uphold at
all times the constitution, our democratic institutions, and the chain of command,” the NSC said.
“We underscore that the safety of the President is a non-partisan issue, and we stand united in our commitment to upholding the integrity of the office and the democratic institutions that govern our great nation,” it added.
Citing the position of the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Presidential Communications Office (PCO) said the investigation by authorities on Duterte's statement is ongoing to determine if she can be held legally liable for it.
“The matter is now subject to an ongoing investigation. If the evidence warrants, this could lead to eventual prosecution,” Secretary Cesar Chavez told Palace reporters in a Viber message. Duterte claimed her assassination remark is not legally actionable since it was just part of her answer when she was asked about her security.
By Bless Aubrey Ogerio
Editor: Jennifer A. Ng
By VG Cabuag @villygc
ItalpInas Development Corp. (IDC) said over the weekend that it signed an agreement for the entry of businessman Benjamin tan Co as a strategic investor into the boutique developer by way of private placement.
IDC said Co has a broad portfolio of interests throughout Philippine industry, including in petrochemicals, PVC resins and products, and steel manufacturing.
Co, his family and associates also control a portfolio of landholdings throughout the Philippines, including in Palawan, Cavite, Boracay, Pampanga, Quezon province and Quezon City.
Italpinas said it originally se-
COA s TAL Renewable Energy Technology Center (CRETC), a renewable energy (RE) training and predevelopment firm in the Philippines, and German wind and solar farms developer Ammonit GmbH have teamed up to provide wind resource assessment products and services to RE firms in the country.
The partnership, according to CRETC Vice President and General Manager Peter Castro, aims to equip the Philippine RE sector with “top-
cured approval for such a move in 2022, when its stockholders during its annual stockholders’ meeting approved the sale of up to 20 percent of primary new shares to an incoming investor.
“It has taken us over two years to find the ideal strategic investor. A key decision such as this demands that we decide carefully and deliberately. With his years of experience, and his prominence and reputation in the
tier wind resource assessment instruments—solutions essential for ensuring accuracy, durability, and reliability across varied environmental conditions.”
“This partnership with Ammonit underscores our shared commitment to building a greener future. By integrating Ammonit’s globally recognized technology with our local expertise, we can empower communities, reduce carbon emissions, and contribute to the nation’s
business community, Mr. Co will be a great partner to IDC as it continues to grow,” Romolo Nati, the company’s chairman and CEO, said.
From inception, Italpinas has focused on being an early mover in emerging locations, foreseeing the current shift in real estate focus from Metro Manila to peripheral areas, which has been a major point of alignment between the company and Co, the company said.
Going forward, the company said it intends to expand in multiple new locations throughout the country.
The company also intends to develop assets in the tourism and hospitality market, following through from a partnership it signed with the Ascott Group last year.
“The Philippine economy has a bright and dynamic future, and this includes real estate, especially in areas outside Metro Manila that are still relatively underserved,” Co said.
“With a track record of 15 years
energy security,” Castro said.
The partnership was reaffirmed during the recent celebration of the 35th anniversary of Ammonit in Berlin.
Ammonit, a globally recognized leader in wind measurement and energy assessment, commemorated its decades-long dedication to wind energy innovation with this milestone event. The occasion provided a valuable platform to reinforce partnerships and emphasize the vital role that accurate
in the industry, its proven capabilities, outstanding Italian green architecture, and full commitment to sustainable development, IDC is a perfect strategic partner for me to join and develop my property portfolio.”
The deal between the parties for the acquisition of 15 percent of Italpinas primary shares priced at P1.99 apiece, calculated as book value as of the company’s 2023 financial statement, was finalized last Friday.
The said stake has a value of about P187.92 million.
Co has already signed a co-development deal with the company for a joint venture involving a prime property in Puerto Princesa last June.
“I believe that this synergy between the two groups will allow IDC to unlock its full potential in becoming the leading developer of sustainable properties in the country,” Jose D. Leviste III, the company’s president, said.
wind data plays in successful wind energy projects.
The firms stressed the importance of precise and reliable wind resource data particularly in the Philippines where unique geographic and climatic factors affect energy generation. They said that a properly assessed wind potential not only reduces investment risks but also maximizes energy yields for each project, making these instruments vital for informed decisionmaking. Lenie Lectura
By John Eiron R. Francisco
RENEWABLE energy (RE)
firm
Reurasia Management Corp. and French research vessel Plastic Odyssey signed a memorandum of agreement (MOA) last Friday for an initiative that seeks to recycle plastic waste into construction materials.
Reurasia and Plastic Odyssey said their partnership aims to tackle environmental challenges and create economic opportunities through “innovative” recycling technologies and communitybased solutions.
“We are very excited to actually work with Plastic Odyssey, as they have been doing great work in Africa, using legacy waste and plastic to produce construction materials, such as tubes and bricks,”
Maxime Droit, director at Reurasia, told the BusinessMirror in an interview.
The company, which has been in the Philippines for more than a decade, aims to expand its technological offerings.
Through a new collaboration, the company intends to roll out low-tech innovations, specifically two microfactories designed to convert plastic waste into valuable materials. These facilities, developed in partnership with the Delfingen Foundation, will be built in Manila and Cebu.
The handover of these micro-factories is scheduled to take place between late November and early December.
Droit said these technologies are ideal for development in small islands and remote areas. With plastic being lightweight and costly to transport to landfills or other locations, he said these solutions offer “a more efficient alternative.” For example, he said if waste is produced in siquijor and needs to be transported to Cebu, it would require a boat to move it, making the process costly. The goal is to recycle the plastic locally and convert it into construction materials.
“We can use it to build houses, tiles,
and walls for local communities,” Droit said, adding that this initiative complements their organic waste operations. He said organic waste, can generate energy, gas, and heat, which could power the plastic recycling factory.
Droit said nongovernment organizations can supply waste from municipalities, while the facilities will produce both energy and construction materials, creating “a mutually beneficial cycle.”
“We really want the Philippines to embrace this technology and promote it. I think there is a tremendous opportunity in the 7,000 islands here.”
When BusinessMirror asked about the future of their partnership, Benoit Blancher, CEO of Plastic Odyssey Factories, said their goal in the Philippines is to establish a network of entrepreneurs who will operate these factories. The company plans to provide the necessary technology to support the launch and growth of these businesses.
“We hope that in the coming years, we’ll deploy 10 of them in Ireland and maybe the Philippines will be the starting point for the southeast Asian region.” The Reurasia official said the company is committed to promoting and implementing advanced technologies through its ongoing partnership. He outlined three key areas of focus for their development efforts in the Philippines. For one, they aim to engage more people in the country, whether by encouraging them to purchase equipment or operate the facilities.
Droit also said the company is focused on combining efforts to address both organic and plastic waste, an initiative that will involve collaborative research and development. Lastly, they are working to expand their impact beyond the Philippines by promoting solutions that integrate organic waste and plastic recycling in international markets, with plans to bid for related projects abroad.
Banking&Finance
Salmon, rural bank fish out new access point
BLUE-collar workers who have accounts with FHL Financing Co. Inc. (DBA Salmon) and the Rural Bank of Santa Rosa Inc. (RBSRI) will soon be allowed to secure a prepaid card they can use to make daily purchases.
Salmon Co-Founder and Philippine Business Head and RBSRI Chairman Raffy Montemayor recenty told reporters that the card will be released in two weeks.
The card, Montemayor said, is attached to a revolving credit line allowing their cardholders access to financing to make daily purchases such as in grocery stores or other stalls that may not have QR codes.
“It provides more choice to underserved, under-banked Filipinos, where we’re able to provide them access to credit, and they’re able to use it in more places,” he said in a news briefing last week. “Now, we’re launching this in a couple of weeks in a limited number of offline locations, because we want to be conservative. We want to make sure the process goes very smoothly.”
According to Montemayor, the card is backed by MasterCard Inc., which has a network of 400,000 merchants in the Philippines. The card, he added, is made possible by a partnership with Salmon’s sister firm Sunprime Finance Inc., the Asia United Bank (AUB) and Singaporean firm Matchmove Pay Pte Ltd.
“We’re really excited about the potential of this and it’s our way of furthering access to credit to many more underserved, under-banked Filipinos,” Montemayor said.
According to him, the card is the “follow up” to the firm’s recent effort to extend cash loans to clients who need to secure loans of around P6,000 and pay it over a period of six months, nine months and 12 months. This provides clients with some flexibility in accessing financing, he added.
Montemayor said their clients can also look forward to more branches of
the RBSRI. The bank’s head branch is located in Laguna but, soon, he added, the bank will have a “Branch Lite” in BGC, Taguig City, to allow more clients to access their services.
Salmon is already in the process of securing permission from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) to create that branch. Montemayor said he expects this new branch will be up and running next year.
“Our preference is branch-lite because there’s lower capital requirements, more affordable licensing fee, but it allows you to act pretty much the same as a branch. And from an accounting standpoint, it’s simpler as well because it will connect to an existing branch from an accounting standpoint. So I think that’s why many banks now, when they expand, they actually use a branch like instead of a branch,” Montemayor said.
Meanwhile, he said these changes are all part of the overarching goal of growing the RBSRI into a thrift bank.
The process for this is expected to officially start at the end of next year.
In the first three quarters, Salmon’s net income skyrocketed to P166.7 million as of September 2024 from only P1.7 million in the same period last year.
Total deposits during increased five-fild to P522.1 million in the nine-month period this year from P77.5 million last year while loans increased 10-fold to P798.8 million in 2024 from P67.5 million last year.
In the third quarter, Salmon posted a net income of P84.2 million, a 7 percent quarter on quarter growth from the P78.4 million posted in the second quarter of this year.
Total deposits grew 15 percent quarter on quarter to P522.1 million in the third quarter from P452.7 million in the second quarter this year.
Total loans, meanwhile, surged 47 percent quarter on quarter to P798.8 million in the third quarter from P543.7 million in the second quarter of the year. Cai U. Ordinario
Perspectives
BSP to allow pawnshops to buy gold from miners
By Cai U. Ordinario @caiordinario
PAWNSHOPS could soon be allowed to purchase gold from small scale miners for the purpose of eventually selling these to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP).
In a draft circular, the BSP identified gold trading as a new corollary business activity of pawnshops along with foreign exchange dealer and/or operator of payment systems. The circular, however, said this corollary business will be subject to accreditation with the central bank.
“(Gold trading as a corollary business activity is) for purposes of buying gold from registered small-scale
miners and eventual sale to the Bangko Sentral,” the BSP said. The draft circular also allows pawnshops to be a “financial access touchpoint” for financial services such as acting as remittance subagents; serving as cash agents of banks and cash-in/cash-out (CICO) touchpoints; and, gold buying stations or partners of accredited gold traders.
The draft circular also provided
that pawnshops can do marketing and facilitate, on behalf of its partners, the availment of microinsurance, micro-investment and microfinance products and services.
Pawnshops can also act as bills payment and/or top-up partners of utility and other companies; cash collection services and/or as corporate payout partners; and other services as may be determined by the Monetary Board.
“(This is) provided, that the appropriate supervising department of the Bangko Sentral shall be notified within five working days from the date of actual engagement of the pawnshop in such business activity,” the draft circular stated.
The draft circular, however, stated that pawnshops, should not engage in any activity that will facilitate and/or encourage gambling of any form. This includes, but is not lim-
ited to, engaging and/or operating as betting outlets or branches of any game of chance and/or facilitating the funding of gambling and/or betting thereon.
Once approved, the BSP would give pawnshops one year from the effectivity of the Circular to re-assess their business activities and unwind any activities that are contrary and/ or inconsistent with the order.
“This period of preparation shall be treated as observation period. Imposition of applicable sanctions for non-compliance shall commence after the end of the observation period,” the BSP stated.
Stakeholders have until December 6 to submit their comments on the draft circular. Once approved, the circular will take effect 15 calendar days after publication in the Official Gazette or in a newspaper of general circulation.
LandBank expands lending program to fishers, MSMEs
By Reine Juvierre Alberto @reine_alberto
THE Land Bank of the Philippines (LandBank) rebranded a lending program to expand credit access to small farmers, fishers, agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) and agricultural micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). LandBank’s rebranded lending program called “Agrisenso Plus,” widened its scope by covering small fishers and MSMEs.
The state-run lender targets to support 10,000 beneficiaries in accessing credit assistance with low interest rates and simplified loan
KPMG Global Tech Report 2024
THE relentless speed of technology innovation is undeniable. When combined with a natural fear of missing out, ideas that may once have seemed like science fiction are rapidly converting into tangible reality. From generative AI to quantum computing, the potential benefits are huge, and so is the risk of making costly mistakes.
A key theme from this year’s “KPMG Global Tech Report” research is the perception among tech executives that they are struggling to keep up with the pace of change. In response to this sense of falling behind, organizations may be tempted to make a hurried response. However, this can lead to misguided investments that may prove both risky and expensive, potentially increasing the burden of technical debt which many well-established organizations are already struggling with.
“Balancing tech advancements with strategic, evidence-based decisions is essential to extracting genuine value. In the Philippines, where digital transformation is rapidly advancing across various sectors, this balance ensures solutions are not only resilient but also scaled safely and responsibly. With AI and other emerging technologies making waves, it’s critical for organizations to approach these tools thoughtfully to avoid costly missteps and drive sustainable growth,” R.G. Manabat & Co. Technology Consulting Head Jallain Marcel S. Manrique said. Identifying value amid the hype TO harness the full potential of the wave of new tech advancements, organizations must sustain a measured,
strategic approach to investment.
Rapid change is driving “fear of missing out” (Fomo). Our research shows that the rapidly accelerated technology innovation over the past year has amplified a strong sense of Fomo among organizations. The flood of AI-related news entering the mainstream has stirred a collective interest in AI that transcends seniority and technical expertise. This has only served to stoke the fires of ‘tech-envy’ and could encourage a ‘spend now, ask questions later’ attitude.
Digital transformation can bring many exciting benefits, and ambition to progress is only healthy, but organizations must not let it distort their judgement. Progress paranoia could lead to misguided investments and disjointed implementation initiatives.
Optimizing value through evidence-based decision ON balance, organizations are content with the outcomes of their digital transformation investments, mostly thanks to their ability to make sound decisions along the journey. With the pace of change pressuring tech execs, organizations must ensure haste does not compromise the quality of their judgment calls.
Investing for the long term is still a good discipline to follow. With execs fearing that their organizations are struggling to keep up with the pace of change, planning for the long term can be difficult when balancing the needs of the latest technological advancements. To maximize progress, tech execs should channel digital transformation efforts towards what matters most strategically to their organizations.
Delivering resilient solutions
SECURING the most value from identified opportunities relies on robust data-driven processes, security and governance. As they troubleshoot the problems that threaten their resilience, organizations are placing cybersecurity and data proficiency at the top of their priority lists.
Data both drives and sustains digital transformation. Data maturity, security, and governance enable the pace of innovation, and can help improve customer experiences. Insufficiently secure solutions create the risk of data breaches, inefficiencies, or missed opportunities, which can erode business value and customer trust. Data security and governance form a robust transformation delivery infrastructure that underpins an organization’s strategic ability to differentiate, maintain cost effectiveness and manage risk in the digital era.
Scaling AI with confidence
ALMOST three-quarters of organizations are already achieving business value from their AI investments, but only one in three has been able to achieve this at scale. Enthusiasm is being fueled by democratized experimentation approaches, but as use cases scale up many predict a tipping point marking a drive towards greater centralization.
The AI ‘black-box’ is causing workforce anxiety. Managing employee anxiety around change will be critical to AI adoption at speed. Those who navigate the evolving tech landscape with a focus on employee empowerment, and bringing everyone on board, will flourish amid rapid change. Organizations believe their workforce has an appetite for cuttingedge tech. But there is also fear that
process to improve their productivity and income.
The lending program has a fixed interest rate of 4 percent per annum for small farmers, fishers and ARBs, while a 6.5 percent to 7.5 percent per annum will apply to other borrowers.
Meanwhile, large enterprises and anchor firms lending to their partner small farmers and fishers and their cooperatives and associations, and ARBs and Agrarian Reform Beneficiary Organizations (ARBOs), also gain a concessional interest rate with a 0.5 percent discount.
Agriculture graduates are also now eligible to access the loan program within three years after gradu-
ation, the Landbank said.
Aside from financing, the loan program also provides free life insurance and credit life insurance to small farmers and fishers and ARB borrowers. Program borrowers can also access training and capacitybuilding programs to enhance agricultural practices and business management skills.
Moreover, LandBank reduced the documentary requirements by eliminating the need for Purchase Orders for individual farmers, and endorsements from Irrigators’ Associations for farmers in irrigated areas.
ARBs who are also rice farmers now have the option to use endorse-
ments from either the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) or the National Irrigation Administration. LandBank President and CEO Lynette V. Ortiz said the lending program “reflects the bank’s commitment to providing holistic and meaningful support” to the agriculture sector.
“Through strategic collaborations with public and private partners, we are complementing accessible credit with insurance benefits, capacitybuilding and other interventions to boost productivity, enhance income, drive sustainable growth, and contribute to national food security,” Ortiz said.
Manulife Investnment names new Asia head
By VG Cabuag @villygc
some individuals feel left behind by the rapidly evolving tech landscape.
Conclusion and recommendationskey
WHILE the pace of digital transformation can be daunting, our research shows that many organizations are taking considerable strides forward in their implementation journeys, especially with AI, XaaS and cybersecurity. The additional profitability that transformation has yielded so far is certainly encouraging and organizations are seeking value beyond profits. Execs are calibrating their digital transformation formulas to supercharge progress across a range of strategic objectives, including ESG responsibilities and customer experience elevation.
To help guard against stakeholder skepticism associated with the safety and viability of new digital transformation opportunities, organizations should also bring structure, discipline and an enterprise mindset to the adoption of new technology, to mitigate risks and optimize value realization.
This excerpt was taken from the KPMG Thought Leadership publication: https://kpmg.com/xx/en/ our-insights/transformation/kpmg-global-techreport-2024.html.
THE Manulife Investment Management Holdings (Canada) Inc. announced last Friday the appointment of former Citibank N.A. executive Fabio Fontainha as its new head for Asia effective February next year. Fontainha succeeds Michael Dommermuth, who will leave the company at the end of the year. Manulife Investment President and CEO Paul Lorentz said Fontainha is expected “to build on the momentum that has been growing” for the firm’s wealth and asset management business in Asia “as we look to provide wealth and investment solutions to even more investors.”
Lorentz added they “believe his expertise in key areas of focus for our business will make his transition into the role feel tangible almost immediately.”
He also expressed they are “appreciative of [Dommermuth]’s commitment to our firm and the impact he has had on our expansion in multiple markets over more than two decades, ranging from multiple emerging Asia markets including India, as well as the conversion of our joint venture in China into a wholly-owned entity in Manulife Fund Management.”
According to the company, Fontainha will become a member of the firm’s WAM leadership team and global leadership team. He will be based in Hong Kong and report to Lorentz and will also have accountability to Phil Witherington, president and CEO of Manulife Asia.
He will also be responsible to drive Manulife WAM’s strategic growth plans locally and provide local oversight to the retail, retirement and institutional businesses, partner with local functional heads and serve as a touch point for teams working on strategic initiatives throughout Asia.
Fontainha was previously at Citigroup where he had an extensive career spanning more than three decades including experience with consumer and private wealth, as well as retail markets.
He has also lived and worked in Tokyo, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. His recent stint was as global business execution head of Citi Private Bank.
Throughout his career he has managed global, regional and local businesses in Asia, Latin America, Europe, the United States and the Middle East with various mandates including head of retail banking for Citi across Asia Pacific and Europe Middle East Africa.
“I’m delighted to be joining Manulife WAM at a significant inflection point in their business. I have been privileged to see the expansion and growth in Asia throughout my career and admire the progress and the commitment Manulife WAM has made to serve its clients in the region,” Fontainha said.
“I am looking forward to bringing my knowledge and expertise to this role and help to meet the goals of our institutional, retail and retirement clients,” he said.
Fontainha will also collaborate with all country and regional heads, chief investment officers and global product teams to deliver investment capabilities for the region.
WAS IT ALL A JOKE?
How stand-up comedy helped reelect Trump
By Joseph Krauss The Associated Press
DID stand-up comedians help reelect Donald Trump? Not a joke, as outgoing President Joe Biden might say.
Trump has been the butt of countless late-night monologues and “Saturday Night Live” sketches for the better part of a decade, as much of Hollywood tracked the highs and lows of his political career with revulsion and ridicule.
But in the weeks leading up to Election Day, he sat for interviews with podcasting comedians who occupy an increasingly popular space where political discourse is mediated through roast-style insults, right-leaning conspiracy theories and mockery of the left.
“ They’re all sort of simultaneously entertainers and influencers and pundits and—I’ve argued, propagandists—who have massive, loyal fanbases,” said Seth Simons, a journalist who writes a newsletter about the comedy industry’s darker side.
Th e Trump era has coincided with the rise of the hourlong Netflix special and comedy podcast. And while the world of stand-up is as diverse as the nation itself, some of its hottest acts have punched left.
Dave Chappelle has repeatedly courted controversy by mocking transgender activists. Bill Burr has roasted feminists with relish, most recently in his post-election “SNL” monologue (“All right, ladies, you’re 0-2 against this guy”). Even Michelle Wolf, who famously roasted Trump at the 2018 White House Correspondents Dinner, has an extended riff in her 2022 special critiquing #MeToo, calling it “the worst-run movement I’ve ever seen.” None of these comics publicly supported Trump, but nonetheless trained their fire on the so-called
woke left, a bogeyman of Trump’s campaign.
Trump got a warm welcome — but not everyone was amused THAT’S what seems to have brought Trump, a veteran TV entertainer himself, into the studios of Joe Rogan, the nation’s most listened-to podcaster, and other comedians.
He discussed addiction and the opioid crisis with Theo Von, who told the past and future president that “cocaine will turn you into a damn owl, homie.” On another podcast, Andrew Schulz and Akaash Singh laughed out loud as Trump went through his nicknames for political rivals—like “Comrade Kamala” Harris—and recounted his near-assassination.
Politicians have long sought to reach voters on alternative platforms. Former President Barack Obama slow jammed the news with Jimmy Fallon, who ruffled Trump’s hair in 2016. Both Obama and Hillary Clinton appeared on Zach Galifianakis’s web series “Between Two Ferns.” Harris appeared on “SNL” days before the election and sat with an array of more earnest podcasters, with less evident success. For Trump, the podcasts were part of a larger effort to reach young male voters—a tactic he says his son Barron, 18, suggested. More than half of male voters ages 18-44 supported Trump, and 45% supported Harris, although Biden won this group in 2020, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters.
W hile politicians’ late-night appearances tend to be carefully scripted affairs, Rogan interviewed
Trump for a whopping three hours in a conversation that veered from false claims about the 2020 election to speculation about UFOs and John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Rogan, who supported Bernie Sanders in 2020, subsequently endorsed Trump this cycle.
Trump’s interviewers aren’t political comedians; they’re just as likely to chat about internet curiosities, mixed martial arts or weightlifting. Their views seem primarily rooted in suspicion of the establishment, devotion to free speech and openness to alternative—and often unfounded—theories about things like vaccines and immigration.
Th at may have led them to see Trump as a kindred spirit.
The rebels are Republicans now. You want to be a rebel, you want to be punk rock, you want to like buck the system, you’re a conservative now,” Rogan said during the interview, which has nearly 50 million views on YouTube.
Simons says Rogan and his acolytes, consciously or not, have shifted what’s acceptable in comedy rightward.
“ The relationship that people have with these roast comics, these comics who tell racist jokes or sex-
ist jokes, is that they don’t mean what they say, it’s just funny,” Simons said.
M arc Maron, whose podcast “WTF” helped birth the genre, called out his fellow comics in a blog post after the Rogan interview.
The anti-woke flank of the new fascism is being driven almost exclusively by comics, my peers,” Maron wrote. “When comedians with podcasts have shameless, self-proclaimed white supremacists and fascists on their show to joke around like they are just entertainers or even just politicians, all it does is humanize and normalize fascism.”
A fractured media landscape IT wasn’t always like this.
Johnny Carson, the king of late night for three decades until his 1992 retirement, steered clear of political controversies to cultivate a mass audience. This was also when most Americans got their news from the “Big Three” television networks.
Fast forward to today: Leftleaning hosts of comedy shows across many channels deliver nightly polemics interspersed with news clips. To their critics, come -
dians like Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and John Oliver are indistinguishable from MSNBC commentators.
Comedian Wayne Federman, the author of a history of standup, says these hosts can only draw a fraction of Carson’s viewers, removing the economic incentive to appeal widely.
As most late-night hosts seemed openly aligned with [the Democratic National Committee], a market niche opened in the podcast space. Enter Joe Rogan,” he said.
Rogan’s show, for which he landed an estimated $250 million deal with Spotify, has become a springboard for up-and-coming comics.
For a lot of comedians right now, following in Joe Rogan’s footsteps and trying to be in his world and emulate him is a smart career move,” Simons said. “I think that’s partly why there are so many Andrew Schulzes and Theo Vons.” Presidential candidate or insult comic?
BEYOND his podcast appearances, Trump may have benefited more subtly from stand-up’s proliferation.
Much was made of Trump’s extemporaneous speaking style—what he referred to as “the weave”—in which his hourlong speeches meandered through stories, digressions, movie references and obscenities.
A s political speech, it was unconventional, but it bore many of stand-up’s hallmarks: deliberate provocations, trademark punchlines and callbacks eventually wrapping it all together.
“Because some of the things he says seem like they’re so off-center, people take it as a joke,” said Shilpa Davé, a University of Virginia professor of media studies. “The kind of comedy that he’s doing doesn’t come off as threatening, it comes off as acceptable.”
It also posed problems for journalists covering his speeches: When he said he would be a dictator for a day, or inveighed against “enemies from within,” or promised to round up and deport millions of immigrants in the US without authorization, was he laying out policies or joking around?
“ You can first denounce what journalists do by having called everything they say ‘fake news,’ and then you can denounce what they expose by saying they just don’t get it—the stand-up comedy defense,” said Robert Thompson, a professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University.
Th ere were times when the jokes didn’t land—but they weren’t his. Trump faced outrage after Tony Hinchcliffe, another comedian with a roast-style podcast, referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage” and made other racist jokes at a rally. The campaign distanced itself from Hinchcliffe as Puerto Rican celebrities backed Harris and commentators wondered if it would turn off Latino voters.
“Imagine bombing so hard you save america from fascism,” comedian Zack Bornstein posted on X. But barely a week later, it was Trump who brought the house down.
(FROM left) Comedian and podcaster Theo Von, President Donald Trump, and comedian-commentator and podcaster Joe Rogan. A
THE HOLIDAY SEASON 2024
ACCORDING TO FENDI
STARTING November 2024, Fendi gets ready to celebrate holiday season with dedicated boutique windows and decorations. Opening the doors to Fendi’s centenary year happening in 2025, the festive set-up sublimates the maison’s codes into graphic and playful ornaments.
A Fendi logo with a bubbly glass lettering becomes the fil rouge of the holiday set-up. Inspired by the Italian craftsmanship of Murano glass and traditional decorations, the Fendi festive logo is coloured in antiqued and metallic silver, azure and dusty pink.
Windows follow the same aesthetic, in a joyful play of materials and shapes. Drawing inspiration from an archive sketch by Karl Lagerfeld from 1984, Santa Claus becomes a vintage-inspired silhouette shaping a festive tree together with Peekaboo and Baguette bags, Fendi yellow packaging and glass baubles, all placed in an apparently unsteady balance on a seesaw. The metallic effect on these elements recalls the textures of the leathergoods of the Fendi Winter Holiday 2024 collection, in the shades of platinum, silver, azure and dusty pink.
Colorful festive decorations will shape the Fendi holiday tree, in a combination of various glass baubles and bubbly Fendi letters, as well as a bouncy reinterpretation of the FF logo placed on top. From the beginning of November, the festive tree light up in the iconic boutiques of Palazzo Fendi Seoul, London New Bond Street, Tokyo Ginza 6 and Palazzo Fendi Tokyo Omotesando—where it is placed at the entrance hall to be visible through the magnificent arched glass façade.
Macro baubles in iridescent colors and different dimensions light up the façade of the iconic Palazzo Fendi Roma boutique from late November 2024. In addition, a magnificent festive tree will be placed in Largo Goldoni in front of the boutique, shaped by a combination of the same glassy baubles, striped or solid, colored a palette of jolly red, delicate gold, metallic green and light pink.
Lulu Tan-Gan: Her timeless ethos and grace
EVEN if she is deemed the alpha female in Philippine fashion, did Lulu Tan-Gan still feel pressure, trepidation—and pride—when she was asked to be the first woman designer to headline the Red Charity Gala?
“Yes! I was aiming to accomplish 60 sets of handmanipulated design processes. I am truly so honored and so deeply motivated to be thrown into this creative arena. I’ve never viewed myself in strictly male or female terms but as a creative being. With an inclusive mindset, I naturally resonate with the spirit of the times,” asserted Tan-Gan.
Organized by Tessa Prieto, Kaye Tinga and Ben Chan, the gala was held on October 22 at Shangri-La The Fort. Directed by Robby Carmona, it was styled by Noel Manapat, with hair and makeup by Henri Calayag and Eric Maningat. Accessories were by Ricky Vicencio, Richoy Colina and Jewelmer.
The beneficiaries of the 12th edition are the Assumption High School Batch 1981 Foundation, The Philippine Red Cross, and the Hope for Lupus Foundation.
With her “Farm-to-Fashion” philosophy, Tan-Gan presented the ethereal possibilities of the piña fabric in a showcase she called “Crafting Fashion.”
Here, the Designer of the Year shared her ethical, sustainable and transformative journey.
ARTISANAL DESIGNER
CRAFTING Fashion’ has always been central to my work. As an artisanal designer, my journey began with a love for craft, leading me to explore knitwear. Then 20 years later, PiñaWear.
“In the early 1980s, knitwear was mostly limited to basic cardigans and sweaters. Drawn to the ease of wash-andwear fabrics that didn’t need ironing, I wanted to transform knitwear into contemporary pieces for career women like myself who needed practical, stylish options for a busy lifestyle.
“Reaching 20 years in knitwear, I questioned myself, what makes me a Filipino designer? I was already attracted to piña as I would wear my dad’s barong.”
FARM TO FASHION
“MY ‘Farm to Fashion’ story was coined during a workshop I led for students at the Zobel School in Calatagan, where Patty Araneta shared her ‘Farm to Table’ projects. As we worked on natural dyes for my piña, it was clear how indigenous materials like piña are as rooted in the land as the ‘luyang dilaw’ we used for dyeing.
“My connection with our Visayan heritage piña fabric runs deep; I’m captivated by its ethereal beauty and cultural resonance. I’ve selected indigenous carvings—one from the North and one from the South—that speak to our diverse heritage.
“Tradition isn’t static; it thrives when woven into contemporary expression. By introducing a contemporary element, we keep our traditions not only alive but relevant, fostering a dialogue between past and present that inspires future generations.”
KNIT VERSUS PIÑA
KNIT and piña are opposing materials. There were several
Heart Evangelista’s face card never declines
FOR Heart Evangelista, eyeliners are serious business. As a chinita, her eye shape changes.
“If you know, you know the difference of brown, light brown, and black liquid liners. That’s my obsession. I am very particular with my eyeliner and how the liquid liner blends with a pencil liner,” said the actress, host and global fashion influencer during a press conference to announce her as GRWM Cosmetics’ new endorser.
In particular, Heart singles out GRWM’s Super Fine Liner Duo as one of her favorite products from the brand.
The #HeartMadeMeBuyIt is very popular on social media and this is naturally one of the reasons why GRWM Cosmetics reached out to the actress.
The first time we saw that she [Heart] used our Brow Lift, talagang nagbunyi kami sa buong company [we all celebrated]. She is really perfect for our eye collection. When
you say eye makeup, eyeliner, talagang [it is Heart] ’yung naiisip,” said GRWM Cosmetics founder, chief product officer, chief marketing officer and CEO Mae Layug Madriñan. Her fans like to say that Heart’s face card never declines and it is true. From her teenage years up to today, Heart is considered one of the most beautiful faces of Philippine entertainment, and in the fashion, and beauty industries.
More than beauty, Madriñan said she is happy that GRWM Cosmetics and Heart Evangelista share the same values when it comes to animal welfare.
The GRWM CEO is an advocate for animal welfare and sustainable practices, and has been a driving force behind numerous initiatives to promote animal welfare.
“Our shared passion for animal welfare creates a powerful alliance, driving change and inspiring everyone to make a difference,” said Madriñan.
Heart is an animal rights advocate who uses her platform to raise awareness about the need to support aspins.
“It is a pleasure to be part of GRWM. I was genuinely moved by their innovative approach to beauty, inclusivity, especially their commitment to animal welfare, and our shared goal of empowering Filipina beauty,” said Heart.
The press conference was held at the sidelines of the GRWM Ball 2024 during which GRWM Cosmetics introduced their mega collection, called “Face Card.” I will be talking about this collection in the future.
n CONSTRUCTION: Knit fabric stretches easily while the traditional weave does not.
n COLOR: The challenge in the color was getting the right tone of knit to match the nostalgic vintage color and feel of old piña. Matching the right tone of knit allows the indigenous material to keep its ‘natural’ color.
n TEXTURE: Knit stretches, more tactile and strong while indigenous weaves are very fine and fragile. I had to switch to finer yarns
n FALL: When it comes to the fall of the fabric, piña has the tendency to float, while knits collapse.
“I have a fascination with reconciling seemingly dissonant materials and techniques. This challenge became the perfect inspiration for the new phase of my designs, creating wearable piña that is relevant to the present market and suitable for various occasions. The end product must be both
for some stiffness that required synthetic petticoat materials. Though synthetic doesn’t mean it’s not sustainable, as long as you can upcycle, reinvent its usage. Dyeing are from the following plants: Turmeric (luyang dilaw) for mango yellow; Abra sapang to achieve blush to pinks; and Abra indigo to achieve blue. There’s a secret to [piña not being stiff, itchy or needing to be dry-cleaned]. Actually, just wash it.
“My designs also go through so many processes and pairs of hands. From pre-washing, ironing, dyeing, to printing, ironing again, and embroidery. By that time, I will have to cut it (I am the cutter of every piece of piña), it has softened.
“My mindset—concept of clothes—is that the end product has to be wearable and feasible as a garment, not for one dressy occasion. I am into sustainable, timeless fashion.”
The Face Card Collection will launch this November 29 on GRWM Cosmetics’ e-commerce platforms. The products will also launch in Watsons stores.
THE CHALLENGES OF BEING A FEMALE DESIGNER IN A MALE-DOMINATED INDUSTRY
HONESTLY don’t think about it much. However, I do notice that they have an advantage in terms of time. They don’t juggle the same household responsibilities.” n
natural, clean beauty.
Revlonissimo Color Sublime showcases two categories of shades. The Natural Shades—6 Dark Blonde, 5 Light Brown, 4 Medium Brown, and 3 Dark Brown—are designed to complement Asian hair, offering rich, natural-looking results that enhance the beauty of darker tones. Meanwhile, the Cool Shades are in 7.1 Medium Ash
and
the
for
naturallooking color with light reflection properties. Treat yourself to a stunning new look with Revlonissimo Color Sublime at top salons in the Philippines like Studio Fix by Alex Carbonell and Bench Fix Salon. Professional stylists at these salons use the full potential of the Revlonissimo Color Sublime range to make sure your hair is healthy and For salons looking to offer this exceptional color line, Revlonissimo Color Sublime is exclusively distributed by New Summit Colors Distribution Inc. For inquiries, contact sales@newsummitcolors.com.
FARM TO FASHION Models Ria Bolivar, Kim Ross Williams, Christian Bootle, Aiyana Wagonner, Ann Umali and Kat Llegado. Center: Red Charity Gala organizers Tessa Prieto, Kaye Tinga and Ben Chan with
THE holiday season at Fendi stores in Tokyo Ginza 6 and Palazzo Roma
NEW BRANCH AT UPTOWN BONIFACIO Uptown
Suzuki PHL expands dealer network with soft opening of Otis dealership
SUZUKI Philippines recently announced the soft opening of the Suzuki Auto Otis dealership, further expanding its dealer network in the heart of Manila.
Suzuki Auto Otis is located at 1502, 1007 Paz Mendoza Guanzon Street in Paco, Manila, and is owned and managed by NXT Mile Motor, Inc. The company also operates Suzuki Auto Kawit and is also set to open Suzuki Auto Silang by the first quarter of 2025.
The soft opening of Suzuki Auto Otis features a temporary display area where customers can explore Suzuki’s latest
models under a covered tent just outside the dealership, which is currently under construction. Once the facility is fully completed, it will feature a showroom capable of accommodating up to four cars on display.
Visitors are invited to check out the Suzuki models on display and are welcome to request a test drive to experience Suzuki’s performance firsthand. The
dealership is ready to assist with any sales inquiries and is committed to providing exceptional customer service.
The target grand opening date for Suzuki Auto Otis is April 2025, at which time the dealership will feature seven operational service bays to provide enhanced aftersales support.
Suzuki Auto Otis’ display area is open Monday to Saturday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and on Sundays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information or to schedule a test drive, you can reach Suzuki Auto Otis at 0916-4799-243.
For more information, you may check out any authorized Suzuki Auto dealerships nationwide or visit http:// suzuki.com.ph/auto/. For daily updates on Suzuki, please like Suzuki Auto PH’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook. com/SuzukiAutoPH, follow them on X at https://x.com/suzukiautoph and Instagram at @suzukiautoph.
Baby: First-Time Moms’ Helping Hand in Holistic Baby Skincare
Cpersonal advice and experiences as parents, offering relatable insights for new mothers, on how they built healthy skin habits with Cetaphil Baby as their helping hand for a safe, effective, and trusted skincare routine for their little ones.
Guest dermatologist Dr. Mel Padiernos provided expert advice on selecting baby skincare products, highlighting key ingredients and qualities to look for. Dr. Padiernos addressed the various skin needs of babies, like Eczema, Cradle Cap, and even Baby Acne, ensuring parents are well-informed about the proper skincare practices.
Nico Bolzico were on hand to share their
The event officially launched the
Cetaphil Baby Diaper Cream, an innovative product designed to reduce the intensity and frequency of diaper rash while preventing its recurrence. This premium skincare solution for baby’s sensitive skin offers deep moisturization, skin softening and smoothing properties, and a protective layer that shields the skin while allowing it to breathe.
The addition of this new product to the Cetaphil Baby line is expected to drive premium, efficacious skincare that is clinically proven to soothe and comfort ultra-sensitive skin.
To add an element of fun and engagement, the event featured a blindfolded baby diapering challenge. Guests competed to diaper a baby doll correctly and quickly while blindfolded Cetaphil Baby continues to stand as a beacon of trust for new parents, offering science-backed solutions for the delicate skincare needs of infants. This event underscores the brand’s dedication to supporting parents in nurturing healthy, happy babies.
For more information about Cetaphil Baby and its products, please visit the website and instagram.
Harvesting holiday cheer; savoring the season with Coolaire Consolidated Inc.
AS the holidays approach, Coolaire Consolidated Inc. is prepared to keep all your seasonal favorites fresh, safe, and full of flavor. With over 55 years in the industry, Coolaire stands as a trusted manufacturer of high-performance refrigerated vans engineered to preserve the quality of food as it journeys from farm to market. Our systems are designed to support Filipino businesses and deliver top-quality freshness to communities across the Philippines.
Coolaire’s advanced refrigerated vans maintain the ideal temperature for a wide range of products—from crisp vegetables and premium seafood to quality meats— ensuring that holiday essentials arrive at their destinations as fresh and flavorful as the moment they left the source. By extending shelf life, we help sustain the
food supply chain and make local produce available to markets and restaurants during the festive season and beyond. This holiday, as we celebrate and share meals, let us honor the hard work of Filipino farmers, fisherfolk, and food producers. Coolaire is proud to be a part of their success, providing the technology and precision needed to bring their products to every Filipino table. With a commitment to preserving quality and freshness, Coolaire remains dedicated to serving the Philippines for generations to come.
For more information on Coolaire Consolidated Inc., contact us at (02) 8372 8879 to 82, visit our website at www. coolaireconsolidated.com, or follow us on Facebook at Coolaire Consolidated, Inc. and Instagram at @coolaireph.
PlayTime Partners with Gawad Kalinga to Build PlayTime
Playgrounds Across the Philippines
In a ceremony held recently, PlayTime, the fastest-growing online gaming platform in the country, through its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) arm PlayTime CARES (Community Action, Relief, Empowerment, and Sustainability), is thrilled to announce a partnership with Gawad Kalinga Community Development Foundation, Inc. (GK), a renowned non-profit organization dedicated to eradicating poverty and uplifting communities across the Philippines.
Through this collaboration, PlayTime will be sponsoring a series of “PlayTime Playgrounds,” a play area for the kids and their families, to be placed inside each GK community. In addition, each playground will also be equipped with Obstacle Course Racing (OCR) setups designed to promote active play, resilience, and community engagement among children and families. The playgrounds will be open to all and are designed to foster inclusivity and excitement for people of all ages.
For this year, the program will start with three locations: Cavite City, Quezon City, and
Cebu City. Starting 2025, more PlayTime Playgrounds will be constructed nationwide. This initiative aligns with PlayTime’s commitment to making a positive social impact by fostering safe and accessible play spaces that encourage physical fitness and community unity.
As a leading organization in poverty alleviation, Gawad Kalinga works to build empowered communities through various initiatives, from livelihood programs to education and housing. PlayTime is honored to work alongside GK in this project to extend positive, enduring change to communities across the country.
“Partnering with Gawad Kalinga allows us to give back to the Filipino community by building spaces that inspire joy, connection, and physical health,” says Jay Sabale, Senior PR Manager of PlayTime. “We hope that these playgrounds will help preserve the history and culture of physical play, teach children the values of teamwork, endurance, problem-solving skills, and provide them with a safe environment to gather.”
Cetaphil
Handshake
The enduring power of meaningful connecTions
AS public relations practitioners, we have always been taught that much of our success depends on the strength, depth, and breadth of our network. Of course, our connections are not the be-all and end-all of our existence, but they do make our lives much easier and enable us to do our job better. Because I spent more than a decade as a journalist, I brought with me a vast network of connections from various industries when I moved to corporate PR. This greatly helped me in my transition, and paved the way for expanding my network even more.
Following my resignation from an almost nine-year stint as a marketing and customer experience executive, some long-time friends have stepped in to become my partners: tapping me as a consultant, trainer, and writer. These are friends from a long time ago, some of them from as far back as my college days and from when I was just a greenhorn business reporter.
This reinforced my belief that the people we meet along the way can become our biggest blessings, especially during times when we need them the most. On the flip side, some of the people we encounter in life can be our biggest curse as well. Par for the course, I guess.
The past years have taught me a lot about people, and I would like to share those learnings with you so you may avoid making the same mistakes I made.
Old friends are treasures WE will meet hundreds, some of
the
MANILA, PHILIPPINES—Disinformation is everywhere. From your social media feed to what you overhear during your daily commute, it takes an extra effort to not get duped or scammed these days. But what makes disinformation so powerful? Simply put, information is power. It has the ability to shape public opinion, incite outrage, and even influence elections.
The power of information—and its misuse—took center stage during the 2022 national elections. The surge of misleading content on social media influenced public opinion and strained personal relationships—perhaps this happened in your own family
or friend group. The rifts the elections created still linger, and the tactics to spread disinformation are continuously utilized until today—fake celebrity endorsements, out-of-context sound bites, the use of deep fakes via AI—all make disinformation seem as if it reflects genuine public sentiment. As the nation gears up for the 2025 midterm elections, the spread of fake news will proliferate once again. Filipinos need a way to weed out healthy public discourse from political influence operations, to arm themselves with the tools you need to be more critical and discerning over the content you take in. The first step is knowing how to spot disinformation; then you can put up a fight.
a first in the country
As the Philippines’ first dedicated digital platform to tackle the complicated world of fake news, the PH Disinfo Hub is built to make it make sense—for the ordinary mamamayan to have the right tools they’ll need to make informed choices.
Currently, several initiatives led
us even thousands, of people in our lifetime. Inevitably, we will become friends with a lot of them. Some of them will be there for a season in our lives, then fade away. Some will stay for a bit, then move on after teaching us a lesson or two. But there are those who, no matter how long you lose contact, will somehow be able to pick up where you left off, as if you just saw each other yesterday. These are the keepers.
I recently realized that as we grow older, we tend to gravitate toward our old friends again— the people we met when we were young, impressionable, and fearless. The mutual trust and support forged through shared struggles and triumphs provide a solid foundation for moving forward together. If you have the same goals, it just makes sense to work together to achieve them.
New friends are precious, too WHILE old friends are valuable, there is still always room for new ones. These friends may come to you later in life, but some of them can turn out to be your best ones. Time is not the primary determinant of a successful relationship, after all.
In allowing new people into your inner circle though, do be cautious as not everyone has good intentions. Making new friends later in life can be hit or miss: some of them may pan out, some may turn out to have ulterior motives, and some may just be passing through for a specific season in your life. Treat each one as a learning experience and a chance to expand your reach.
by various media titles and independent organizations have been done in order to combat the issue of disinformation. Initiatives providing practical tips on how to spot fake news and how it’s disseminated have been prominent in the digital literacy space, while investigative reports provided guiding frameworks for these initiatives. More recently, creative interventions such as podcasts and online comics have been explored by actors, proving the capacity of artistic expressions to create spaces for political dialogues.
Sigla Research Center further advances these efforts through its collaboration with investigative journalists, community leaders, and a team of experts. The result is the PH Disinfo Hub, an integrated platform that consolidates years of research on disinformation.
The PH Disinfo Hub digs deep into the root cause of disinformation and divulges that the proliferation of fake news is backed by an organized group of individuals. It’s an entire ecosystem, a black market of sorts wherein people are paid to achieve the objectives of its chief architects and to steer public
Connecting people to each other reaps benefits
SHARING our network to help other people can be quite fulfilling, especially when you see them succeed through the partnerships you helped bring to life. People you help bring together can sometimes even develop into your new circle of friends.
This does not mean you have to share everyone you know with anyone who asks for an introduction or a connection. Be aware of potential motives, as you do not want to put friends in a tight spot. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people with bad intentions who will not hesitate to throw someone under the bus.
Never stop expanding your network
A S w e age and go through stages in our lives, the people we know can help make a world of difference. While it is important to develop our skills and add to our knowledge, it is equally important to continue building our network of friends and connections. There will be instances in life when who you know may be more important than what you know, so cultivate your network well.
opinion to their favor. Disinformation operators take advantage of legitimate concerns of the public. And while debunking fake news has been proven to facilitate clarity amidst fictitious or misleading information, seeing the bigger picture is the key to fighting disinformation and winning.
Additionally, the PH Disinfo Hub seeks to support the empowerment of Filipinos. It provides a space where publics from various communities can meet in the middle, as they gain a broader perspective of the problem. The Hub’s aim is not about changing someone’s mind on the spot; it’s about opening the door for dialogue despite the influence of misinformation’s chief architects. Why bother?
Regardless of your privilege, we are all vulnerable to the deceitful, organized industry of disinformation. As these work with manipulation of public sentiment at the core, it has the potential to affect relationships, reputations, and even personal matters. With the PH Disinfo Hub, fake news is finally put to the spotlight, learning more infor-
When you build your network, do so deliberately. It is important to associate more with the people whose values align closely with yours, and steer clear of those who may have significantly different goals and motivations. After all, there is some truth to the old proverb: tell me who your friends are, and I will tell you who you are.
Letting go is necessary AS difficult as it may seem, there are times when we will have to let go of people in our lives, especially when they are already having negative effects on us. Do not regret the time and effort spent in the relationship. Put yourself, and your mental well-being, ahead of that.
This is easier to do with people who have clearly and openly wronged you, but may be more difficult with those whose goals and values just no longer align with yours. For such people, you may keep them at arms’ length and not necessarily cut them off from your life. They may still be part of your network of connections, but no longer within your circle of friends.
There are no hard-and-fast rules for relationships, and peo -
mation on its hows, whos, and whys. Fake news affects all of us. Whether or not you believe disinformation, its reach transcends the virtual realm and affects real-life interactions. It has the ability to create strained relationships, ruin reputations, even rid you of resources, such as falling for financial or emotional scams.
What’s next?
Papunta palang tayo sa exciting part. Sigla is rolling out more initiatives, like the Community Engagement Fund, which aims to support grassroots projects that build toward a healthier information ecosystem and public sphere. Communities empowered with such tools and knowledge will help in the fight against disinformation while it’s still at a smaller scale, and easier to address.
With the 2025 midterm elections around the corner, Sigla’s national elections research project will also monitor the flow of information during the campaign period, giving Filipinos the resources they need to make their vote count.
ple do not come with instruction manuals. How we fare in our relationships is a product of both our self-awareness and our experiences dealing with others. Still, do not be afraid to grow your network and make new friends, but also prepare yourself to meet, and subsequently cut off, people who are not worthy of your time—because the joy and fulfillment of having meaningful and fruitful relationships and friendships trump the pain of encountering a few bad eggs along the way.
PR Matters is a roundtable column by members of the local chapter of the United Kingdom-based International Public Relations Association (Ipra), the world’s premier organization for PR professionals around the world. Abigail L. Ho-Torres is the Chief Marketing Officer of Ikigai Philippines and an independent consultant and trainer, with more than two decades of experience in media, public relations, marketing, and customer experience.
We are devoting a special column each month to answer our readers’ questions about public relations. Please send your questions or comments to askipraphil@gmail.com.
“This research project seeks to shift academic attention from the national level of electoral disinformation to the local level,” Juan Felix, Head of Partnerships and Engagements of Sigla Research Center shared. With their research on digital disinformation spanning several elections since 2016, the study aims to “outline national trends and characteristics of electoral disinformation an d influence operations, while also uncovering hyperlocal forms of political influence work online and offline in and across the 2025 Philippine national, local, and BARMM elections,” Juan added. Through partnerships with organizations and fact-checkers, Sigla Research Center hopes this initiative will keep the 2025 elections clean and voters safe, well-informed, and ready to fight fake news.
Sigla Research Center isn’t just a platform for understanding disinformation—it’s part of a movement advocating for truth and transparency. Now, more than ever, is the time to be proactive in taking a stand against fake news, and engage in conversations based on facts.
New records set on opening day
By Josef T. Ramos
PRINCESA — Discus
UERTO
Pthrower Courtney Jewel
Trangia from Masbate had mixed emotions as she earned gold and set a new record in her final stint in the Batang Pinoy 2024 national championships on Sunday.
Trangia bagged her third straight gold medal in the women’s U-18 discus throw event to retain her title at the Ramon V. Mitra Sports Complex in Palawan.
She set a new record of 38.30 meters at the start of centerpiece athletics as Hannah Regaya of Davao del Norte clinched silver medal with a 31.54-m throw, while Trisha Gayle Nalla of the City of Maasin earned the bronze at 31.06m.
“This will be my last Batang Pinoy that’s why I am sad, and happy that I will be leaving a new record,” the 17-year-old Trangia said, after beating the 37.17m meet record she set in Manila. She shared her dream of
BOx ING icon Manny Pacquiao stressed the importance of supporting national athletes and sports development in general, especially after the country’s successful campaign in the Paris Olympics.
“We really need to focus on the fight for the development of sports. We can clearly see today that our great athletes are giving honor to the nation,” said Pacquiao. The former senator said he is glad to see sports leader Milka Romero continue the legacy of her father, Mikee, in inspiring, motivating, and giving financial support to athletes and individuals in dire need of help. Mikee Romero was the godfather of amateur basketball in 2007 and headed the national cycling and shooting associations, and is among sports backers who reward athletes who deliver for the country —Tokyo Olympics champion Hidilyn Diaz, silver medalist Nesthy Petecio and bronze medalist Eumir Marcial among them.
becoming a teacher and a coach but not discounting the possibility of becoming a national athlete as she also dreams of becoming an Olympian.
“I am thankful to represent Masbate in Batang Pinoy. I want to be a coach or teacher someday, that is my goal,” the Grade 12 student from Masbate Sports Academy (MSA) added. “Becoming a national athlete? If that’s my destiny, I am happy to fulfill it.”
Trangia is part of the 56-strong delegation sent by Masbate under MSA school Jed Rufine Arellano and coaches John Rey Mendoza and Jeric Cabug. She will compete in the Malaysian Open Athletics in Kota Kinabalu on November 24.
Trangia won in the U18 Indonesia Athletics Open this year with 39.70m and had a personal best of 40.19m in April’s Philippine National Open in Philsports Arena in Pasig City.
Being an athlete herself – a former co-captain of Ateneo football team in the University Athletic Association of the Philippines—Milka is carrying on the job that will be left by her father next year.
“Our biggest advocacy is sports. We have grassroots programs where we want to support children in their journey na maging isang atleta. We have already created laws and projects such as the National Academy for Sports and tinutuloy din natin yung mga
WMy last PFF-related event was the
Tarlac’s Rich Justin Torres had a 12.16-m
Ithrow to win the boys’ U16 shot put event. Lloyd Mahinay of Cagayan de Oro was second at 10.86 while 10.57m netted Nicholas Siobal of Quezon City the bronze in the multi-sport competition for 12 and 17-year-old below athletes organized by Philippine Sports Commission and the local government unit of Puerto Princesa.
BMX freestyler Marc Joseph Bona, 14, tallied 80.33 points to take home the gold, defeating Kiara Marca Gatus of Parañaque City who got 78.75 for silver and Kenji Miguel Miral settled for bronze with 70.75 at the Tiniguiban Elementary School.
UNIVERSITY of Santo Tomas completed a sweep of the women’s and men’s beach volleyball eliminations without dropping a set, staying on course for a third consecutive golden double in the University Athletic Association of the Philippines at Sands SM By The Bay.
Sofiah Pagara and Khy Progella topped the elimination round after repulsing National University’s Honey Grace Cordero and Kat Epa, 21-16, 21-11, for a 7-0 record in a duel of undefeated teams.
UST will take on Far Eastern University in the knockout semifinals after Lovely Lopez and Melody Pons secured the No. 4 spot with a 21-18, 21-14 dismantling of University of the Philippines’ Euri Eslapor and Julia de Leon. The Lady Tamaraws ended the eliminations with a 4-3 card. Adamson University clinched the No. 3 ranking after rookies Shai Nitura and Fei Sagaysay prevailed over Ateneo’s Liz
“I would like to become a member of the national team and become an Olympian,” Bona said.
Over at the Ramon V. Mitra pool, Anton Paolo Dominick of San Fernando City, La Union, 17, bagged topped the boys’ 16 to 17-year-old boys’ 200-meter individual medley by clocking two minutes and 15.58 seconds.
He broke the previous mark of Peter Cyrus Dean’s 2:16.66 in Manila last year.
2023 Batang Pinoy most bemedalled swimmer Arvin Naeem Taguinota II of Pasig City won his first gold in this meet by ruling the boys’ 12-13 200m individual medley at 2:22.02, followed by Taguig’s Isaiah Lagnason of General Santos (2:23.36) and Mohammad Mojdeh of Parañaque City (2:24.66).
Ashton Clyde Jose of Taguig clocked 2:14.08 to get the gold medal in the boys’ 14-15 200m IM
not taking Depilo lightly in TCC Match Play
F form char ts hold true, the top-ranked players should make quick work of their lower-seeded counterparts in the opening round of the International Container Terminal Services Inc. The Country Club Match Play Invitational. Yet, match play—golf’s head-to-head format—introduces an unpredictable and thrilling dynamic, ensuring every hole can shift momentum dramatically.
The P2-million, season-ending tournament gathers the country’s top professionals and rising stars for 16 first-round duels, kicking off Tuesday at the tough TCC course in Santa Rosa, Laguna.
Top-seed Tony Lascuña, fresh off securing his fifth Order of Merit title, faces No. 32 Rico Depilo, while No. 2 Angelo Que battles promising youngster Elee Bisera.
Third-ranked Reymon Jaraula takes on former Philippine Masters champion Jerson Balasabas, fourth-ranked Rupert Zaragosa squares off with Arnold Villacencio, and fifth seed Clyde Mondilla clashes with Nelson Huerva.
“It’s anybody’s game in match play. There’s no guarantee even if you’re the top seed, it depends on your mindset, how you react and adjust after each hole,” said Lascuña, who dominated the 2022 Match Play finals and finished runner-up to Miguel Tabuena in last year’s edition at TCC. With Tabuena missing this year’s event due to overseas commitments, the spotlight falls on the top five seeds,
programs natin,” said Romero, who co-owns Capital Solar Energy in the Premier Volleyball League and now the No. 1 nominee of 1Pacman
Tiger Sands secure top seeding in UAAP beach volley semifinals
Lomocso and Gena Hora, 21-17, 21-16.
The Lady Falcons, who finished with a 5-2 slate, will face the 6-1 Lady Bulldogs in the other semifinal pairing.
UST’s Dominique Gabito and Alche Gupiteo also scored a seven-match sweep, topping NU’s Alex Iraya and Sky Gemarino, 21-11, 21-14, in a showdown of unbeaten squads. The Bulldogs placed second with a 6-1 and will go up against the third-ranked Tamaraws in the semifinals.
FEU chalked up its fifth win in seven matches after Amet Bituin and Reynan Postorioso downed Ateneo’s JM Yu and Carl Corregidor, 21-14, 21-14.
joined by a stellar field of competitors, including Jhonnel Ababa, Guido van der Valk, Zanieboy Gialon, Hyun Ho Rho, Michael Bibat, Ira Alido, Ryan Monsalve, Russel Bautista, Kakeru Ozeki, Randy Garalde and Nilo Salahog. Ababa faces Marvin Dumandan, Van der Valk challenges veteran Mars Pucay, Gialon tests Eric Gallardo, and Rho takes on Francis Morilla. Other notable first-round matchups include Bibat vs. Tae Soo Kim, Alido vs. Albin Engino, Monsalve vs. Dino Villanueva, Bautista vs. Collin Wheeler, Ozeki vs. Daiya Suzuki, Garalde vs. Jay Bayron, and Salahog vs. Art Arbole.
In the Ladies PGT, defending champion Mikha Fortuna and 2022 winner Harmie Constantino headline the field.
The men’s Round of 16 and the LPGT quarterfinals are set Wednesday. From there, the competition heats up for the PGT field with a grueling third day featuring quarterfinal matches in the morning and semifinals in the afternoon. Meanwhile, the LPGT semifinalists will battle it out on Thursday morning. The finals and third-place matches are set Friday.
memory, but clearly, I do not know many people from the sport today. However, thank you for the warm welcome and kind words. The last time I handled a press room was my last tour of duty with Yeng Guiao with Gilas, and the Filoil Summer Basketball Tournament; both in 2019. It has been five years since I left sports. And I thought for good, having shifted elsewhere. Nevertheless, thanks to the PFF and to the LOC. Made some new friends too. It was nice reconnecting with an old friend and colleague in Gelix Mercader. Gelix was telling me while looking down from the VIP section, he remarked to PFF President John Gutierrez, “ Biro mo...magkatrabaho kami before and now Rick is here with us again.”
Thanks, man. Appreciate you. We should have that conversation right at the start of my appointment and not with two days left.
The semifinal is set Tuesday morning, while the final and the third place match will be played in the afternoon.
Salle finally earned a victory after six straight defeats after Ela Raagas and Julliane Javelosa closed out their season by beating UE’s Van Bangayan and Ash Cañete, 21-15, 21-8.
UP clinched the last berth in the Final Four as Angelo Lipata and Christian Pitogo beat La Salle’s Andre Espejo and Von Marata, 21-11, 18-21, 15-9. The Fighting Maroons made sure that there will be no playoff for No. 4 by recovering a second set defeat to wrap up the eliminations with a 4-3 slate. The Green Spikers ended with a 2-5 mark. Adamson fell a win short of forcing a do-or-die with UP’s win, as Willie Hiltones and Iverson Tan swept UE’s Allen Buensalida and Julian Celestial, 21-9, 2113, for a 3-4 card.
Lady Tams edge out Lady Tigers for SSL podium spot
FAR Eastern University overcame University of Santo Tomas, 20-25, 25-19, 23-25, 25-19, 15-12, Sunday to claim bronze in the 2024 Shakey’s Super League Collegiate Pre-season Championship at the Rizal Memorial Coliseum.
Jaz Ellarina scored three of FEU’s five kill blocks in the deciding set and finished with 13 points including 10 attacks. Gerzel Petallo had 11 points and Faida Bakanke added 10 as the Lady Tamaraws shut the door on UST attackers with 17 kill blocks.
Chenie Tagaod and Alyzza Devosora added nine points each while seasoned setter Tin Ubaldo tallied 18 excellent sets on top of four markers for FEU, which took down UST in straight sets in their second-round meeting.
The Lady Tamaraws, runners-up in the National Invitationals last July, carried the momentum of their dominating fourth set win into the deciding frame as they raced to a 9-4 advantage after back-to-back kill blocks by Bakanke and Ubaldo.
Refusing to go down without a fight, the Tigresses behind Kyla Cordora, Pia Abbu and Angge Poyos mounted a telling run to
breathe down FEU’s neck, 11-10. A costly service error by Cordora gave the Lady Tamaraws an opening to regain their bearing as Ubaldo and Devosora scored in the frame’s next three points to move at match point, 14-11. Poyos saved a point before Ellarina sealed the deal with a kill to end the two-hour, 36-minute winner-take-all battle for third. Poyos finished with 21 points on 20 spikes and one ace while Jonna Perdido added 11 markers before suffering a left knee injury midway in the fourth set for UST. Regina Jurado got 10 points while Cordora scored seven as UST missed a podium in the tournament supported by Shakey’s Pizza Parlor, GCash, Chery Tiggo, F2 Logistics, Peri-Peri Charcoal Chicken, Potato Corner, R and B Milk Tea, Grab Philippines and Summit Water, with Smart Sports, PLDT Fibr, Mikasa, Asics, Rebel Sports, Eurotel, Victory Liner, Commission on Higher Education, Philippine Sports Commission and SM Tickets as technical partners. Matches
Nevertheless, that was a great conversation. My old running mates in the game—Rely San Agustin who I go back from our Solar Sports, Ateneo Football League, and Tap Go TV days to all these individual tourneys and festivals; Ritchie Gannaban who worked with in the old UFL and the Asia 7s; Coach Mario Eala who I did LOC work before under the late great Cathy Nazareno; and Ariel Serrantes also from the old Azkals matches from 2011-14. Rey Ritaga and Allan Martinez back from the UAAP and UFL years when I was on the beat.
Kevin Goco, nice seeing you again (we have not met face to face since before the pandemic. Enjoyed our convos.
Ingrid for being Santa’s little helper—I so appreciate you. Greg, pare...we will have coffee soon. Rob Cainglet who is always supportive. Ms. Bing...grabe. Thankful. My press room is always your place of refuge too.
To the members of the press...the press room was fun and enjoyable, no? It was nice working with many new and a few old hands.
The bouncers and stewards—many who I worked with from the old days in the PFF to the UFL to Shakey’s V-League and Premier Volleyball League to the PBA; some even during concerts. Thanks for all the assistance. The coaches, team managers, and media officers of Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, and Myanmar... it was great working and befriending all of you. Thank you to Team Thailand for inviting me over next time. Kap kun kap.
Danny Moran for the incredible support he provides to our women’s futsal team. And lastly, to our Philippine Women’s Futsal National Team. My heart broke for you ladies, but thanks for your courage and fight. I come away from this tournament a fan of futsal thanks to you and all the other participating teams. My press assistant Randy who has been with me from Gilas to 3x3 to my concert production, and now... to futsal. And to the assistance of Ken and Christian. Signing off from this tournament. Always grateful, appreciative, and thankful.
