BusinessMirror January 3, 2015

www.businessmirror.com.ph n Tuesday, November 18, 2014 Vol. 10 No. 40 P25.00 nationwide | 4 sections 20 pages | 7 days a weekn saturday, January 3, 2015 Vol. 10 No. 86

A broader look at today’s businessBusinessMirrorthree-time

rotary club of manila journalism awardee2006, 2010, 2012u.n. media award 2008

Peso exchange rates n us 44.6170 n jaPan 0.3706 n uK 69.4062 n hK 5.7489 n china 7.1813 n singaPore 33.6961 n australia 36.2063 n eu 54.3390 n saudi arabia 11.8899 Source: BSP (29 December 2014)

Operators OK integrated toll-collection scheme

‘Risks to GDP growth manageable’monetary officials haVe enough flexibility to ensure continued economic growthPAPAL VISIT 2015

11 DAYSINSIDE

THE FINESTTOY SHOP

IN THE WORLDIS HERE »D3

IN THE WORLDLife Saturday, January 3, 2015 D1BusinessMirrorEditor: Gerard S. Ramos • [email protected]

L OVING Father, through Christ our Lord, You call us to a new paradise. More than we could ever have hoped for is giving to us by the gift of Your Son. His

becoming man made it possible for man to have a share in Your divine life. In this time of attack upon married life, give husbands and wives the grace to persevere in their vocations. May marital fidelity conquer all the temptations of Satan. May the love of husband and wife truly become an image of Your own love. We ask this in the name of Jesus the Lord. Amen.

His becoming man

THE MAGNIFICAT ADVENT COMPANIONAND LOUIE M. LACSON

Word&Life Publications • [email protected]

B R C

A RGUABLY one of the most bankable actresses working the prime-time TV circuit, Marian Rivera looked every inch beautiful as she walked down the aisle last

December 30 for her wedding to Dingdong Dantes, a fellow GMA star. The highly anticipated nuptials unfolded just before 2014 drew to a close, at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Cubao, Quezon City. It has been said that a woman is at her prettiest on her wedding day, and Marian was, indeed, beauty personified.

Marian began her walk down the aisle solo but was then met by her grandmother Francisca who, in turn, brought her to her parents—her father, Francisco Javier Gracia Alonso, who flew in from Spain expressly for the wedding, and her mother, Amalia Rivera. Needless to say, Marian’s grandmother was nothing less than emotional.

The bride wore a stunning gown created by Michael Cinco which had a 3-meter-long trail, while Dingdong wore a suit by Randy Ortiz.

Dingdong looked emotional during the wedding rites and, according to veteran entertainment scribe, talent manager and TV host Lolit Solis, who was one of the wedding sponsors, the groom fought back tears as he watched Marian made her walk down the altar. As a young boy, Dingdong would hear Mass at the Immaculate Conception Cathedral and, there, he prayed to one day walk hand in hand with his chosen partner in life.

The traditional wedding ceremony was officiated by his Most Rev. Honesto Ongtiongco, DD, and nine other bishops. President Aquino, who was the Witness of Honor, came without much fanfare and did not join the wedding march.

Among the female sponsors, it was only Megastar Sharon Cuneta who failed to show up, but the other sponsors were present and joined the march: Kris Aquino, Helen Gamboa, Regine Velasquez, Gov. Vilma Santos, Dr. Vicki Belo and director Joyce Bernal. All wore red, which was the wedding’s color motif.

Almost all male sponsors were there, like Ogie Alcasid, Vic Sotto and German Moreno. However, GMA Chairman and CEO Atty. Felipe Gozon, and GMA President and COO Gilberto Duavit Jr. were not present,

presumably because both were on their respective annual holiday vacations with their families.

Notwithstanding the high-powered list of sponsors and guests, the wedding was simple but nonetheless truly elegant. The word is that Marian’s gown cost several millions, and the Dubai-based Cinco flew to Manila expressly to personally dress up Marian.

Outside the cathedral, a huge monitor had been set up and on it, the wedding was beamed—this to give the couple’s legion of supporters the chance to watch what to them could only have been a moving and magical dream-come-true. The presidents of the Marian’s and Dingdong’s fans clubs were invited to the wedding and each had a designated seat in the church.

The music was provided by the Hail Mary the Queen Church Choir and the Ateneo Boys Choir. The ceremony was solemn but the mood was palpably high and happy. The ceremony took almost two hours.

Even with the deluge of fans who came to witness what has been touted as the wedding of 2014, there was no chaos outside the church and everyone seemed to be on their best behavior.

When Dingdong arrived at the cathedral on a Ducati motorcycle, fans erupted in shrieks of delight. The GMA

star said he couldn’t muster the necessary words to sum up his feelings.

A side event was when Kris Aquino approached top comedienne Ai Ai de las Alas, her estranged BFF with whom she hadn’t spoken for a year after Kris failed to attend the wake of Ai Ai’s mom last year. It was easily apparent Ai Ai was left speechless when Kris approached her and told her that she had a peace offering. As Kris embraced Ai Ai, the comedienne was unable to react at first and seemed to fight back her tears. Kris later revealed that she gave Ai Ai a necklace with three pendants depicting the Blessed Mother because they are both prayerful and are Marian devotees. She added that she long been wanting to make peace with her BFF and she felt that such a happy occasion as Dingdong and Marian’s wedding provided the perfect opportunity to do so.

At the wedding reception held at The Arena in the Mall of Asia Complex in Pasay City, a short film put together by Joyce Bernal, in which Dingdong and Marian talked about their love story, was shown. Another video was played and, in it, people close to Marian and Dingdong expressed their love and support for the newlyweds. ■

And then they were one...

aARIES (March 21-April 19): Focus on your health, your appearance and your talents. Invest time in perfecting

and preparing to take a leap ahead. Romance will bring you happiness and lead to a stable, long-lasting connection. Actions will speak louder than words. HHHH

b TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Honesty will play a big role in the way things unfold. Speak up and set the record

straight if you disagree with someone. Protect your health by eating well and getting the exercise required to build a strong body and progressive attitude. HHH

cGEMINI (May 21-June 20): Make positive personal changes to your surroundings, your outlook and the

way you present who you are and what you can do. A serious attitude will help you gain respect and get back on track. Budget wisely and control unwanted debt. HHH

d CANCER (June 21-July 22): Don’t give in. Stand up for your rights and make it clear how you wish to move

forward. You may not come to an agreement, but you will be able to take charge of your life and follow through without feeling guilty. HHH

e LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Check into new hobbies or interests you’d like to pursue this year. Travel plans can

be put into motion, along with updating your résumé and investing in your skills, knowledge and future. Love is highlighted, and relationships should be nurtured. HHHH

f VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Use your skills and connections to get your plans up and running.

Discussing your strategy will be met with positive suggestions that can help you eliminate setbacks. Sticking to a budget is a must. Expect the unanticipated. HHHH

g LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Put greater emphasis on improvement. Fix up your digs or update your image. Don’t

let the changes someone else makes influence what you do. Follow your heart and do what’s best for you. Say little and do a lot. HH

hSCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Figure out your strategy, but don’t share your thoughts with others.

Research will give you the confidence and the know-how to move forward without a hitch. Avoid setbacks by being well-informed and ready to conquer. HHHHH

i SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Travel, connect with old friends and make decisions regarding how

you intend to put your talents to good use. Consider offering a service that is in dire need in your community. Start small and build a solid base. HHH

j CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): You can take control of your own life, but don’t try to direct others. Focus on how

you can make personal improvements that will encourage you to advance. Strengthen your skills and find new ways to utilize what you do best. HHH

k AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Take the initiative to learn all you can and to experience whatever will

help you improve your skills and outmaneuver the competition. Utilize your time wisely so you are able to accomplish as much as possible. HHHHH

lPISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Being a team player will work to your advantage. Show an interest in what

everyone around you is doing, and you will learn what you need to know in order to move into a position of leadership. HH

Today’sHoroscopeBy Eugenia Lastz

BIRThDAy BABy: You are reserved, energetic and competitive. You are realistic and frank.

ACROSS 1 Struggle for air 5 It goes through the roof 10 Pierce with a knife 14 Chip in a pot? 15 Holiday pie ingredient 16 Call to mind 17 Small biter 18 Absinthe flavoring 19 God of love 20 Brought up pickled fish? 23 Thaws a freezer 25 For this reason 26 Batters in Baltimore 27 Amount in grandma’s recipe 29 Acknowledge the villain’s entrance 30 It’s guaranteed to remove wrinkles 31 Guevara grills Kasparov’s

equipment? 38 Chew the fat 39 Swarm 41 Key West shows? 45 Collection of sacred songs 48 Bring together

49 Second Amendment words 50 James Bond’s depressing drink? 53 ___ Van Dyke 54 Like many teenagers’ rooms 55 Haitian’s head 58 Dueling sword 59 One of classic TV’s Huxtables 60 “Terrible” czar 61 Loch ___ monster 62 First vertebra 63 Transmit, as a text

DOWN 1 Prevent from speaking 2 Massachusetts cape 3 Celebrities’ favorite seafood? 4 He broke Ty Cobb’s record 5 Thinly distributed 6 Dogmata 7 They turn litmus paper red 8 Charge alternative 9 Reflex-testing site 10 Like a Stephen King reader, often 11 Comic actor’s asset

12 Immediately 13 He wasn’t the dummy of the act 21 “You’ve got mail” co. 22 Thick-skinned jungle beast 23 Play-___ 24 Rocker Clapton 27 They’re ahead of jrs. 28 Organized criminals 30 Make angry 32 Male bovine 33 Stuff one’s face 34 Franken and Capone 35 Mythical island 36 What hunting dogs do 37 Have an opinion 40 Bride’s title 41 Like a sneak attack 42 Needing more time on the vine 43 Sister’s daughters 44 Vampires may take them to heart 45 Old Iran 46 Greek woodland deities 47 Former White House spokesman

Fleischer

49 Metabolism type 51 Urban organization of song 52 Leave a solid state? 56 Convert into leather 57 Author’s last word?

‘now ear this’ By MAR JERSEyThe Universal Crossword/Edited by Timothy E. Parker

Solution to yesterday’s puzzle:

D2

EntertainingBusinessMirror www.businessmirror.com.phSaturday, January 3, 2015

CELEBRITIES BORN ON ThIS DAy: Eli Manning, 34; Danica McKellar, 40; Mel Gibson, 59; Victoria Principal, 65.

hAPPy BIRThDAy: Take a different approach to the way you do things this year and you will discover skills and talents you never knew you had. Use your innovative ideas to change the way you do things both professionally and financially, and you will reach your goals. Relying on others will be your downfall. Be a leader, not a follower. Your numbers are 1, 16, 23, 27, 35, 38, 48.

By Maan D’Asis Pamaran

Jack Daniel’s Whiskey is made in the Brown-Forman distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee. The whiskey brand has been around for more than a century and the process has remained the same throughout the years. It is made from at least

51-percent corn, filtered through maple charcoal and then aged in new, charred oak barrels manufactured by the company itself.

Three hundred of these iconic Jack Daniel’s oak barrels made the long trip to the Philippines, where they were repurposed as christmas trees.

Two tall barrel trees were set up in the spirit of the holiday celebrations at Eastwood and The Fort, each bearing a message that rings loud, clear and true: It’s not what’s under the tree that matters. It’s who’s around it.

The trees were lighted in a ceremony that included live bands and fireworks—and Jack Daniel’s drinks, of course.

“We’ve had a good year in the Philippines,” said anthony Ramirez, Philippine market manager for Brown Forman corp. “We’ve been going double figures for the last five years. This is an indication of how good the team is and that the brand is catching up with the growing economy of the country.”

Gabriel Fajardo, Jack Daniel’s Philippine brand manager, said Filipinos have also become morebrand-conscious.

“consumers have more money to spend and they are looking for more premium brands. Beer and brandy drinkers are now looking toward imported spirits.” Their market, the executive said, are those who appreciate the sweeter american whiskey compared to the Scotch which is a little more on the sour side.

Their market is younger too. anthony added, “They are those in their 20s up to 40 or 45. The loyalty of the consumer is based on the personality of the brand. a Jack Daniel’s drinker is somebody who is not rebellious at all, but a free-thinker who is independent and self-confident. They would be the ones who say, ‘I’m doing what I’m doing because I like it.’”

Women are so into Jack too, as the executives added that their female market share has grown considerably. according to Gabriel, from 70-percent male four years ago, it has become 50-50, and ladies usually consume it mixed with their cola of choice.

“One of the good traits of the brand is that it is not gender-specific. While it has been identified with iconic male celebrities such as the band Led Zeppelin, it identifies more with americana, which is a very strong influence in our culture.”

The concept behind the barrel christmas trees, which were the first ones to be put up in the Southeast

asian region, mesh well with Filipino culture, too. anthony explained, “It is about togetherness and celebrations. christmas is traditionally the time for reunions with family and friends, and Jack Daniel’s is a very good celebratory drink for occasions like these.”

TIP BOXHOW to avoid hangovers? We asked Gabriel and anthony for their pointers on how to wake up merry and bright the morning after a party.

n Pace yourself. celebrating doesn’t meangetting wasted.

n Hydrate. Take a water break in between your alcoholic drinks.

n Fill up. Make sure you have had something adequate to eat before the drinking session starts. alcohol is not part of a meal-replacement plan.

n As much as possible, stick to one. Mixing different types of drinks can give a higher possibility of a hangover.

n Note: If you do get a hangover, just stay hydrated and wait it out. n

The spirit that goes beyond the season

Jack Daniel’s Philippine Brand Manager Gabriel Fajardo (from left), Brown Forman corp. Philippine Market Manager anthony Ramirez, andrea Jacob, Vic Narciso, Sandro Hermosa and Franko Lumanlan

The late surge by Derrick Rose lifts the Bulls to their 11th win in 13 games. The 2011 National Basketball Association Most Valuable Player misses his first eight shots, including all seven in a scoreless first half, but the point guard dominates down the stretch, coming up with one big basket after another.

AT CRUNCH TIME

OUT FOR TWO WEEKS

ROSE DELIVERSC1 | Saturday, January 3, [email protected]@businessmirror.com.phEditor: Jun Lomibao

BusinessMirrorSports

DERRICK ROSEgoes up for a shot

against Denver’s Kenneth Faried. AP

CHICAGO—Derrick Rose scored 13 of his 17 points in the fourth quarter, and the Chicago Bulls beat the Denver Nuggets, 106-101, on Thursday night to maintain its stranglehold on the Central division. Jimmy Butler scored 26 for Chicago, and Pau

Gasol added 17 points, nine rebounds and a career-high nine blocks as the Bulls stretched its divisional lead over Cleveland to 4-1/2 games. The late surge by Rose lifted the Bulls to their 11th win in 13 games. The 2011 National Basketball Association Most Valuable Player missed his first eight shots, including all seven in a scoreless first half, but the point guard dominated down the stretch, coming up with one big basket after another. Wilson Chandler led Denver with 22 points. Ty Lawson scored 20, while Arron Afflalo had 19 points. Kenneth Faried added 18 points and 19 rebounds, but the Nuggets fell to 4-12 on the road. Chicago, which trailed by 13 early in the third, was clinging to a 100-97 lead, after Denver’s Jusuf Nurkic scored on a layup with 46 seconds left. Rose then nailed a jumper, and the Bulls hung on after Faried dunked with 22 seconds remaining to get the Nuggets within three again. Chicago’s Aaron Brooks hit two free throws to make it a five-point game before Nurkic hit two of his own, after he got fouled trying to dunk on Taj Gibson with 11 seconds left. But Rose then hit two more foul shots to make it 106-101. The Bulls were trailing, 74-70, late in the third quarter when Gasol blocked Nurkic. Butler then got fouled and hit two free throws, sparking a nine-point run. Kirk Hinrich nailed a three from the corner with 16 seconds left, giving the Bulls a three-point lead, and Gasol capped the run with a running hook to make it 79-74. ROSE MOST IMPORTANT STATS: PLAYING TIMEBEFORE the Denver game, Derrick Rose’s percentage rose from 46.7 percent to 86.7 percent. Yes, there’s his 20-percent shooting performance over the last two games (7-for-35) and the troubling trend of 5.4 three-point attempts per game—sixth-tenths higher than his previous career high—despite 26.3-percent accuracy from that distance. But the most important statistic regarding Rose is that he played in 13-of-15 December games for that 86.7 percent. This is after he played in only seven-of-15 November games (46.7 percent), as he battled nagging ankle and hamstring injuries. That Rose increased his playing time from 25.9 minutes to 30 minutes per game is also important for a franchise that lacked its most dynamic star for all but 10 games the last two seasons. “I’m feeling great,” Rose said. “My health is the last thing I’m worried about.” In fact, December marked Rose’s busiest regular-season month—not counting shortened-schedule months, such as

October, or a four-game month during the lockout season—

since April 2011. Rose averaged 18.3 points on

a 41.4-percent shooting (23.3 percent from three-point range), 5.1 assists and 3.5 turnovers for the month.

“I can’t control people’s thoughts,” Rose

said, when asked if his dominant days from

2010 to 2011 are gone. “People are going to think what they want to think. All I can do is try to win the game. “We have a great team. Certain nights, it’s going to be like that, where I have 30 [points] or whatever. I can’t play the way people want me to play. They want me to score 40 points every night. If I can score 15 and still win the game, it’s a good win for me.” Nets Coach Lionel Hollins theorized before Tuesday’s game that Rose is working more on his shooting to avoid playing the relentless—reckless?—attacking style that defined his game before successive season-ending knee injuries and surgeries. Whether Hollins—who referenced former teammate Phil Ford and Kevin Johnson, a player he coached, as doing the same—was prophetic or pandering is open to debate. After all, there’s a reason defenses continue to go under screens on Rose—a jump-shooting Rose is far less dangerous than a penetrating one. But Rose has talked about trying to master even how he falls, as he continues a comeback that remains just 22 games in. The ankle and hamstring issues cost him eight games, and he missed two December games because of illness. “I’m a smarter player,” Rose said. “As far as taking care of my body, picking and choosing during the game and not overusing myself. “I haven’t really thought about falling or getting injured again. When I start making the shots that I’m taking, it’s going to be a real simple game where it’s going to be pick your poison. If you’re going to go under [the screen], I’ll shoot. I’m going to force you to go over the screens all the time and put the big [defender] in a tougher situation to guard either me or the roll guy [on a pick-and-roll].” Rose knows he has to shoot better to keep defenses honest. Talk is cheap, but his confidence remains high. “I’m going to have 40-point games, so I’m not worried about [defenders going under screens],” he said. “They’re even going under at the free-throw line, so I have to take those shots no matter how many times I miss. I’m just waiting for that game where I have a good one.” Rose had averaged 23.3 points in the four games before this two-game shooting slump. Maybe the wait won’t be long. Either way, the best news for the Bulls is he’s on the court playing. STRUGGLING KINGS SLIP PAST TIMBERWOLVESIN Minneapolis Rudy Gay had 21 points, six rebounds and five assists, and the struggling Sacramento Kings handed the Minnesota Timberwolves their 10th straight loss with a 110-107 victory. DeMarcus Cousins had 19 points and seven rebounds, after being ejected one night earlier, and the Kings shot 54 percent, while each of their starters scored in double figures. Darren Collison scored 21 points and Derrick Williams had 17 points, including a big three-pointer down the stretch. Andrew Wiggins had 27 points and nine rebounds, but the Timberwolves couldn’t take advantage when Cousins and Gay both fouled out in the fourth quarter. Troy Daniels’s three-point attempt at the buzzer was partially blocked. Gorgui Dieng added 15 points and 10 rebounds for Minnesota.

AP and Chicago Tribune

CLEVELAND—Cleveland Cavaliers superstar LeBron James is expected to miss at least the next two weeks with injuries to his left knee and back.

The timing of the injuries is another blow to the Cavaliers, who have been jarred by a rash of medical issues and failed to live up to the enormous expectations triggered by James re-signing as a free agent with Cleveland last summer.

The team said on Thursday that James has knee and back strains. He’ll be treated with “anti-inflammatories, rehabilitation, training

room treatments and rest,” and the Cavs projected he will miss two weeks. If he’s out for just that span, James will be back for a January 15 game in Los Angeles against the Lakers. The Cavaliers begin a five-game West Coast trip on January 9. James, who turned 30 last December 30, missed his second straight game on Wednesday. Before his team lost, 96-80, to Milwaukee, the four-time league Most Valuable Player said all tests on his knee had

come back negative. He acknowledged his knee has been hurting all year, which helped explain why James hasn’t shown the same explosiveness driving to the basket, and his willingness to defer to teammates. He also acknowledged that 11 National Basketball Association (NBA) seasons have taken a toll on his body. “I’ve got 41,000 minutes on me, including the playoffs,” he joked. “You drive that car in the winter time.” James has never missed more than five straight games in his professional career. If the two-week timetable holds up, his absence could reach 10 games or more. That could be a major problem for the Cavaliers, who’ve had issues with chemistry and recently lost starting Brazilian center Anderson Varejao for the season with a torn Achilles. On top of that, forward Kevin Love missed Wednesday’s game with back spasms and reserve Shawn Marion has sat out the past two games with a sprained ankle. If that wasn’t enough, first-year coach David Blatt has come under intense scrutiny for the team’s sluggish start. At 18-14, the Cavs have lost three straight and four-of-five heading into Friday’s game in Charlotte.

James briefly left Cleveland’s game at Miami on Christmas Day—his first in the regular season against his former team—after jumping into the stands to chase an errant pass, and was grabbing at his left knee in obvious discomfort not long afterward. That was not the cause of the injury, just a recurrence of an ongoing issue, James said before the Milwaukee game. “It was before that, but it reaggravated it,” James said. “It’s been hurting pretty much all year. I’ve been playing with it and it goes away, it comes back.” Including playoffs, James has logged 41,082 NBA minutes—ninth-most among all active players. James lost weight before this season, but insisted it wasn’t to compensate for a loss of speed, to help him jump higher or try to prolong his career. However, he seemed to understand that he needed to make changes to remain the game’s best all-around player. AP

» LEBRON JAMES is nursing knee and back injuries. AP

eNTerTaiNiNg d2

sporTs C1

life d1

and then they were one...

Sources: W. Foo, Reuters, FlightRadar24, Airbus, BBC TNS

* According to FlightRadar24

The flight with 162 people on board lost contact with air traffic control after the pilots asked to change course to avoid bad weather during a flight from Surabaya to Singapore.

Surabaya

Singapore

SUMATRA

JAVA

KALIMANTAN

Palembang

Pontianak

Jakarta

MALAYSIA

ChangiInternational

Airport

Java SeaIndian Ocean

South China Sea

The search continues for missing jet

100 miles

100 km

INDONESIABelitungIsland

Flight pathof QZ8501 on Dec. 25*

Last positionof flight QZ8501 on Dec. 28*

Searcharea

WING SPAN: 35.80 mRANGE: 6,100 km

AIRBUS A320 SPECIFICATIONS

SEATING: 150 (2-class) to 180PAYLOAD: 16.6 tons

LENGTH: 37.57 m

HEIGHT: 11.76 m

The missing AirAsia jet could be at the bottom of the sea after it was presumed to have crashed off the Indonesian coast, an official said on Monday.

DETAILAREA

Fatal accidents and onboard fatalities of worldwide commercial fleet from 2004-2013.

Taxi, load/ unload, parked, tow

Takeoff Initial climb

Initial approach

Final approach

Climb LandingCruise Descent

Number of fatal accidents

Source: Boeing, Statistical Summary of Commercial Jet Airplane AccidentsGraphic: Greg Good, TNS

7 6 4 6 72 6

16 18

564

845709

471

774

108109267

1

Fatal commercial plane accidents60

40

Fata

l acc

iden

ts

Onb

oard

fa

talit

ies

20

0

1,000

500

0

Number killed onboard planes

A mAssive hunt for the 162 victims of AirAsia Flight

QZ8501 resumed in the Java sea on Wednesday, with six bodies, including a flight attendant identified by her trademark red uniform, recovered. But wind, strong currents and high surf hampered recovery efforts as distraught family members anxiously waited to identify their loved ones. more ships arrived on Friday with sensitive equipment to hunt for the fuselage of the flight and the more than 145 people still missing since it crashed into the sea five days ago. World»B1

aN indonesian Muslim man prays during a special prayer for the victims of airasia flight QZ8501 at al akbar Mosque in surabaya, east Java, indonesia, on friday. AP/DitA AlANgkArA

By Lorenz S. Marasigan

The operators of the three ex-pressways to Northern Luzon are supportive of the proposal

to integrate the toll-collection sys-tems among their thoroughfares. In separate statements, Manila North Tollways Corp. (MNTC), Tollways Management Corp. and Private Infra Development Corp. (PIDC) said the proposed integra-tion would further improve the services at the expressways. “It will solve the traffic at the toll plazas that we saw during the holidays,” MNTC President Rodrigo e. Franco said in a phone interview late Friday. The management of the Tarlac-Pangasinan-La Union expressway (TPLex), likewise, “views the pro-posed integration of toll-fee collec-tion systems in expressways north of Metro Manila as a positive step toward improving overall traffic flow and enhancing convenience for motorists.” “While this involves extensive

technical study involving all the companies managing the toll roads, TPLex management expressed its strong support and willingness to take an active part,” PIDC said. In 2014 the Subic-Clark-Tarlac expressway (SCTex) entered into an agreement that transferred op-erations of the SCTex Tarlac north-bound toll plaza to the TPLex entry plaza. Under this arrangement, the SCTex has access to 10 lanes at the TPLex entry point to collect toll, compared to only four or five lanes at its previous toll plaza. Sen. Franklin M. Drilon, who had his taste of the congestion during the holidays, called for a Senate probe on the matter, say-ing that the toll-collection system at the expressways should be in-tegrated to lessen the queue on toll payments. The solon said he went to Baguio City last month during the Christ-mas rush, and claimed the drive from Manila to Baguio lasted 12 hours. The trip normally takes five hours or less by private car.

the sPirit that goes beyond the season

rose deliVersat crunchtime

By Bianca Cuaresma

The Bangko sentral ng Pilipinas (BsP) has expressed confidence of having sufficient flexibility

to manage so-called downside risks to the country’s local output, measured as the gross domestic product, and vowed to provide support for the continued expansion of the $270- billion southeast Asian economy down the line. In a special interview with the New York-based think tank Global Source Partners, BSP Governor Amando M. Tetangco Jr. said they can handle the downside risks seen hounding the economy this year by appropriately maintaining or cutting interest rates to ensure the country’s continued growth. The local economy grew by 5.3 percent in the third quarter last year, which disappointed markets given that its year-ago growth av-eraged 7 percent. “We have sufficient maneuver-ing room. The early preemptive adjustments we made on the SDA [special deposit account] and RRP [reverse repurchase or borrowing rate] of 50 basis points each, com-bined with recent lower inflation

prints, have caused real interest rates to be less negative in recent months,” Tetangco said. Sufficient policy-maneuvering space is important, but unlike coun-tries under the european Union, whose ability to respond to mon-etary-policy challenges is limited by interest rates already near zero percent, Manila is not hampered by such restraint. The country’s within-target infla-tion should allow the BSP sufficient policy space to maneuver to ensure continued growth, no matter that US interest rates were seen elevated beginning midyear before US Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen is forced to raise interest rates again. “This, together with interest-rate

See “BSP,” A8

SUNRISE SUNSET

6:22 AM 5:39 PM

MOONRISEMOONSET

4:22 AM 4:08 PM

TODAY’S WEATHERMETROMANILA

LAOAG

BAGUIO

SBMA/CLARK

TAGAYTAY

LEGAZPI

PUERTOPRINCESA

ILOILO/BACOLOD

TUGUEGARAO

METROCEBU

CAGAYANDE ORO

METRODAVAO

ZAMBOANGA

TACLOBAN

3-DAYEXTENDEDFORECAST

3-DAYEXTENDEDFORECAST

CELEBES SEA

LEGAZPI CITY24 – 28°C

TACLOBAN CITY23 – 31°C

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY

METRO DAVAO25 – 30°C

ZAMBOANGA CITY24 – 33°C

PHILI

PPIN

E ARE

A OF R

ESPO

NSIB

ILITY

(PAR

)

SABAH

PUERTO PRINCESA CITY 24 – 29°C METRO CEBU

24 – 30°C

ILOILO/BACOLOD

24 – 30°C

25 – 32°C

24 – 31°C 24 – 31°C 24 – 32°C

23 – 30°C 24 – 30°C 23 – 29°C

24 – 31°C 25 – 31°C 25 – 32°C

24 – 31°C 25 – 31°C 25 – 32°C

24 – 34°C 25 – 34°C 25 – 34°C

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

Weekday hourly updates: 6:00 AM on Balitaan, 7:00 AM & 8:00 AM on Good Morning Boss!, 9:00 AM, 10:00 AM, 11:00 AM, 12:00 PM, 1:00 PM

on News@1, 3:00 PM, 4:30 PM, and 6:00 PM on News@6

www.panahon.tv

@PanahonTV

JANUARY 3, 2015 | SATURDAY

HIGH TIDEMANILA

SOUTH HARBOR

LOW TIDE

4 : 27 AM-0.11 METER

TUGUEGARAO CITY 18 – 26°C

LAOAG CITY 18 – 29°C

TAGAYTAY CITY 20 – 27°C

SBMA/CLARK 22 – 29°C

21 – 30°C 22 – 30°C 22 – 30°C

20 – 28°C 20 – 28°C 19 – 27°C

19 – 29°C 20 – 30°C 20 – 30°C

13 – 23°C 12 – 23°C 12 – 23°C

20 – 28°C 20 – 28°C 21 – 28°C

24 – 30°C24 – 29°C 24 – 31°C

25 – 30°C 24 – 31°C

23 – 30°C23 – 29°C 23 – 30°C

25 – 31°C25 – 31°C 25 – 32°C

Partly cloudy to cloudy skies withisolated rain showers and/or thunderstorms

Cloudy skies with rain showersand/or thunderstorms.

HALF MOON

2:31 AMDEC 29

BAGUIO CITY11 – 22°C

25 – 31°C

8:45 PM1.06 METER

JAN 4SUNDAY

JAN 5MONDAY

JAN 6TUESDAY

JAN 4SUNDAY

JAN 5MONDAY

JAN 6TUESDAY

Light rains

Partly cloudy toat times cloudywith rainshowers

TAIL-END OF A COLD FRONT AFFECTING EASTERN VISAYAS.

NORTHEAST MONSOON AFFECTING LUZON.(AS OF JANUARY 2, 5:00 PM)

METRO MANILA21 – 29°C

Tail-end of a cold front is the extended part of the boundary, which happens when the cold air and warm air meet. This may bring rainfall and cloudiness over a�ected areas. It is felt at the northern

hemisphere winter season.

Northeast Monsoon locally known as “Amihan”. It a�ects the eastern portions of the country.

It is cold and dry; characterized by widespread cloudiness with rains and showers.

FULL MOON

12:53 PMJAN 05

Subsidies. . . Continued from A8

BusinessMirror [email protected] Saturday, January 3, 2015A2

News

The dollar rose to its highest level in more than five years, while US and european stock-

index futures advanced before the release of American factory data. Oil gained following an annual loss and silver rallied.

Dollar rises to five-year high; US, Europe index futures gain

The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index strengthened 0.4 percent at 7:10 a.m. in London. The yen retreated 0.6 percent and the euro touched its lowest level since June 2010. Fu-tures on the Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 Index and the Euro Stoxx 50 In-dex rose 0.6 percent. Bonds of Kaisa Group Holdings Ltd. slid to record lows after the Chinese developer defaulted on a loan. Crude in New York advanced 1 percent and silver

gained 1.8 percent. The dollar is extending gains after its best year since at least 2005, while the S&P 500 climbed 11 percent in 2014 and Treasuries returned the most in three years. Investors piled into US assets as the Federal Reserve (the Fed) pledged patience in raising inter-est rates and economic growth ac-celerated. European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi told

Handelsblatt borrowing costs will stay low for some time. A US fac-tory index maintained expansion in December, economists project. “While the Fed is not going to rush into any action, rates will go up,” said Thomas Averill, a manag-ing director in Sydney at Rochford Capital, a currency and rates risk-management company. “The mar-ket is very long the dollar against the yen and the euro, and across the board.” The Bloomberg dollar gauge is poised for its highest close since March 2009. The yen retreated to 120.49 against the US currency. The euro dropped 0.5 percent to $1.2041, extending its worst annual loss since 2005. Strategists, who were too timid with their call for a decline in 2014 to $1.28, now see a drop to $1.18 by the end of this year. The ECB is keeping rates low to stimulate economy, and “that will continue for another while,” Ger-

man newspaper Handelsblatt quoted Draghi as saying. The Markit Economics index of US manufacturing probably rose to 54 from a preliminary 53.7 reading, according to economists polled by Bloomberg. The Australian dollar declined 0.6 percent to 81.34 US cents. A Chi-nese factory gauge slipped to the low-est level in 18 months, data released on Thursday showed, adding pres-sure on policy-makers to do more to support growth in the world’s second-biggest economy. Indonesia’s rupiah depreciated 1 percent, poised for its biggest loss since December 15, and Malaysia’s ringgit weakened 0.6 percent. The Swiss franc dropped 0.5 percent. Equity markets in Japan, China, Taiwan, New Zealand, Thailand and the Philippines were closed on Friday. The dollar-denominated MSCI Asia Pacific, excluding Japan Index, added 0.3 percent. The Hang Seng

Index gained 0.8 percent, while the Hang Seng China Enterprises Index of mainland companies traded in Hong Kong rallied 2.2 percent, as financial shares jumped. Nikkei 225 Stock Average futures traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange rose 1.1 percent to 17,595. China Vanke Co. surged 11 per-cent and People’s Insurance Co. (Group) of China Ltd. advanced 4.4 percent amid optimism the government will ease monetary policy to bolster growth in the world’s second-largest economy. Galaxy Entertainment Group Ltd. led declines by casino companies, after Macau gambling revenue fell 2.6 percent last year. K a i s a ’s $ 8 0 0 m i l l ion of 8.875-percent notes due 2018 and sold to investors at par in March 2013 tumbled to 43.087 cents on the dollar, sending yields to 43.3 percent. Automatic repayment of a HK$400-million ($51.6-million)

loan from HSBC Holdings Plc. was triggered when its chairman re-signed on December 31, the com-pany said. Trading in Kaisa’s shares are suspended. Malaysia’s benchmark stock gauge slid 0.5 percent, extending last year’s 5.7-percent decline. Korea’s Kospi advanced 0.6 percent. West Texas Intermediate crude rose 55 cents to $53.82 a barrel. Silver futures for March delivery climbed to $15.87 an ounce, after tumbling 4.2 percent on the last day of the year. Copper headed for its lowest close since June 2010. Tin extended last year’s 13-percent slump. China’s Purchasing Managers’ Index fell to 50.1 in December from 50.3 in November. That compared with a median estimate of 50 in a Bloomberg News survey of ana-lysts. A separate manufacturing index by HSBC Holdings Plc. and Markit Economics also declined.

Bloomberg News

largest proportion in, with P621.1 billion. This was followed by the wholesale of household goods and the retail sale of other goods in specialized stores, with P444.1 billion and P440.9 bil-lion, respectively. “Retail trade not in stores, stalls or markets incurred the low-est expense of P3.8 billion,” the PSA said. By region, NCR establishments earned nearly half, or 49.7 per-cent, of the total income of the sector, amounting to P1.9 trillion. Some of the high-income regions include the Calabarzon, with P436.1 billion; Central Luzon, with P321.3 billion; and Central Visayas, with P238 billion, in 2012. However, the NCR incurred the highest expense, amounting to P1.8 trillion, or almost half, at 49.8 percent of the total ex-penses for the sector. Other regions proving the biggest spend-ers include Calabarzon, with P411.2 billion; Central Luzon, with

P311.6 billion; and Central Visayas, with P225.1 billion, in 2012. The PSA said data collected from the census will provide in-formation on the level, structure, performance and trends of economic activities of the formal sector of the economy for the 2012 reference period. The results will also serve as benchmark information in the measurement and comparison of national and regional economic growth. Total response rate for the wholesale and retail trade; re-pair of motor vehicles and motorcycles sector was 94.0 percent (14,876 out of 15,821 establishments). This included receipts of “good” questionnaires, partially accomplished questionnaires, reports of closed, moved out, or out-of-scope establishments. Of the total responses, 119 establishments responded online, and eight establishments submitted through e-mail.

Macau suffers worst year for casinos amid China graft probes

MaCau’s casinos recorded their worst year, ending a decade of expansion that turned the

former Portuguese enclave into the world’s biggest gambling hub. More tough times are ahead. Casino revenue in the city fell 2.6 percent to 351.5 billion patacas ($44 billion) in 2014, after a record 30.4-percent monthly drop in December, according to figures from Macau’s Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau on Friday. analysts projected a 2-percent annual decline, based on the median of nine estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s bid to

catch “tigers and flies” in an anticorruption drive and weaker economic growth means Macau may face shrinking revenue until at least mid-2015, when new resorts open. The crackdown has deterred high rollers who account for two-thirds of Macau’s casino receipts, and wiped out about $73 billion in market value of companies including Wynn Macau Ltd. and sJM Holdings Ltd. last year. “The VIP heyday is over,” said Philip Tulk, an analyst at standard Chartered Plc. in Hong Kong. “The anticorruption crackdown doesn’t look to be a short-term phenomenon,” with funds flows between the mainland and Macau being

much more closely scrutinized, he said. Xi has urged the city to diversify its economy and transform into a global tourism and leisure center. Macau’s casino takings are seven times that of the Las Vegas strip and contributed more than 80 percent of the government’s annual revenue last year. sands China Ltd. and Galaxy Enter-tainment Group Ltd. were the second- and third-worst performers on Hong Kong’s Hang seng Index last year. Wynn Macau fell 3.6 percent as of 2:20 p.m. in Hong Kong trading, while Galaxy dropped 2.6 percent and sands China lost 1.8 percent. The Hang seng index gained 0.7 percent. Bloomberg News

“UL Bulk and Mindanao Coal are slated for next year’s privatization plan,” PSALM President and CEO Emmanuel Ledesma Jr. said in a text message.

The state firm will auction in the second quarter of this year the selection and appointment of an independent power producer admin-istrator (Ippa) for the output of the Mindanao coal-fired power plant in Misamis Oriental.

The power facility is made up of two units with a generating capacity

of 105 MW each. It is currently being operated by Steag State Power Inc. of Germany under a build-operate-transfer agreement with the gov-ernment. It accounts for about 20 percent of Mindanao’s total power supply.

Abotiz Power Corp. had already expressed interest to bid for the privatization of the power-supply contract of the power facility.

“Part of the schedule of PSALM is also to do the Steag Ippa. We will look into that also,” compa-

[email protected] Editor: Dionisio L. Pelayo • Saturday, January 3, 2015 A3BusinessMirrorNews

ny President and CEO Erramon Aboitiz said.

Meanwhile, PSALM said it will auction in the first quarter of the year ULGPP’s bulk output.

ULGPP consists of the 125-MW Upper Mahiao, the 232.5-MW Ma-litbog, the 180-MW Mahanagdong and the 51-MW Optimization plants.

PSALM is the agency mandated by Republic Act 9136, or the Electric Power Industry Reform Act of 2001, to handle the sale of the remaining state power assets and financial ob-ligations of the National Power Corp.

In November last year data from the Department of Energy showed that proceeds from the sale of state-owned power assets reached $19.4 billion.

Actual collection stood at $8.5 billion as of April 2014. This means that $10.9 billion has yet to be col-lected from the privatization of these assets.

Of the $8.5-billion collection, $951 million was placed in tempo-rary investments while awaiting utilization.

The remaining $7.368 billion was used for the liquidation of financial obligations.

PSALM to sell supply contracts for UL Bulk and United LeyteBy Lenie Lectura

THE Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management (PSALM) Corp. has lined up in

the first six months of the year the sale of supply contracts for the output of the Unified Leyte Geothermal Power Plants (ULGPP) and the 210-megawatt (MW) Mindanao coal-fired plant.

THE Department of Agricul-ture (DA) Gender and De-velopment (GAD) Program

in the Davao Region spearheaded the soft launching and ceremonial cacao and coffee planting of more than 1,000 seedlings to the Indige-nous Peoples (IP) Women’s Organic Village in Malamboon Elementary School at Sitio Malamboon, Baran-gay Malabog, Davao City.

More than 300 persons from the Ata-Manobo tribe benefited from the program where 1,000 hills were prepared to be planted with seedlings of the Café Ara-bica variety.

Undersecretary for Special Con-cerns and Director for DA’s GAD Bernadette Romulo-Puyat inaugu-rated the Soft Launching Ceremo-

nial Planting together with Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte.

Puyat told the IPs they will continue to monitor the projects in the area, as well as provide in-terventions for the village.

“Babalik at babalik po kami para masigurado naming naimplemento

natin ’yung mga proyekto,” Puyat said.Meanwhile, Duterte promised

to allocate P10 million for cof-fee plantation and production in Barangay Malabog for the year 2015.

DA Davao Regional Coordina-tor for GAD Bong Año said the event was a jump-start for sev-eral projects from the agricul-ture sector including the plan for inland aquaculture and es-tablishment of demo farm in Barangay Malabog.

Datu Generoso Baon, an IP’s mandatory representative and one of the beneficiaries, said they are thankful this government service reached their area.

He also swore to take good care of the interventions given by the

agriculture sector to them.The IP Women’s Organic Vil-

lage Project is a typical rural de-velopment initiative spearheaded by the DA Davao GAD Focal Sys-tem to help raise the capacities of women in agriculture, especially in far- flung areas.

In this project, women are tak-ing the lead by allowing them to partake in the entire process of hu-man and community development which includes cacao production.

The project also promoted an ecologically sound and balance biodiversif ied and integrated farming system with preference on organic cacao production, vege-table natural farming production, livestock production and in-land fish farming.

DA plants cacao, coffee in IP Women’s Organic VillageBy Rene Acosta

A BIG area of the Visayas and at least two provinces in Min-danao are still reeling from

the effects of storm Seniang, which already exited the country on Friday, as power and traffic still need to be restored in the affected areas.

In some of the villages inundated by floods, residents were still strug-gling to cope with the combination of flood, destroyed houses, landslides and an interrupted water supply.

The National Disaster Risk Re-duction and Management Council (NDRRMC) said power interruptions are still being experienced in Negros Occidental, Bohol, Samar, Eastern Samar and Northern Samar in the Visayas, and Agusan del Sur and Su-rigao del Norte in Mindanao.

However, power has already been restored in the provinces of Negros Oriental and Leyte, hours before the storm had degraded into a low-pres-sure area before it completely veered out of the country at 1 a.m. on Friday.

Aside from power interruptions, the NDRRMC said more than 70 ba-rangays and municipalities in Central,

Western and Eastern Visayas, North-ern Mindanao and Caraga were still flooded, sparing not even rice fields and other types of agricultural lands.

These barangays and municipali-ties are in the provinces of Capiz, Negros Occidental, Bohol, Negros Oriental, Southern Leyte, Samar, Bukidnon, Misamis Oriental, Agu-san del Sur, Agusan del Norte and Lanao del Sur.

Landslides were also recorded in Atimonan, Quezon; Bulusan, Sor-sogon; Leyte, Southern Leyte, Sa-mar, Compostela Valley and Surigao del Sur.

As a result, at least 24 roads and 23 bridges in the Visayas and Mindanao remained impassable, either due to floodings or landslides.

The NDRRMC said the storm af-fected a total of at least 105,233 fami-lies, or 486,894 persons in 931 baran-gays in 18 cities and 134 municipalities in Mimaropa, and Eastern, Western and Central Visayas, Northern Mind-anao, Davao and Caraga, and damaged or destroyed at least 1,583 houses.

The storm also damaged almost P5 million worth of agriculture products.

Seniang devastates Visayas, Mindanao; destroys P5-million agricultural crops

By Butch Fernandez

PRESIDENT Aquino remains unswayed by fresh efforts of his allies in the House of Representatives to tinker with the 1987 Constitution and push approval by June

2015 of a Charter amendment relaxing the 60-40 percent limit of foreign ownership in certain industries.

Communications Secretary Herminio B. Coloma Jr. said he has yet to see a signal that Mr. Aquino had relented on his firm belief there is no need to amend this restriction as foreign investors have been coming in notwithstanding the existing limitation.

“No info on any change in the President’s position,” Coloma told the BusinessMirror on Friday.

With the Palace steadfast in rejecting any moves to tinker with the Charter, the House Cha-cha effort is seen to be an exercise in futility as the Senate is likely to side with Presi-dent Aquino on the issue. The Senate has shown sensitivity to public apprehensions that opening the Constitution, ratified during the term of the incumbent’s mother, then-President Corazon Aquino, could open the floodgates to revisions of other existing provisions, including the lifting of term limits.

Also called the “Cory Constitution,” the 1987 Charter’s Article XII prohibits foreigners from owning more than 40 percent of businesses and real property, and are restricted from exploiting natural resources, as well as owning local media firms.

President Aquino has always contended that since invest-ments are coming in even without constitutional changes, there is no need to go through the exercise. But administration lawmakers dominating the House of Representatives seemed impervious and have vowed to pass the controversial amend-ment before the House sine die adjournment by June 2015.

Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. argues that the proposed amendment, limited only to its economic provision, could pro-pel growth as this is likely to lure more foreign-direct invest-ments in the country, once the ownership restriction is lifted.

His proposal, embodied in Resolution of Both Houses No. 1 and co-authored by Sen. Ralph Recto in the Senate, seeks to adopt a new catch-all phrase “unless provided by law” to be added in the provision on foreign-investment restriction which covers land ownership, public utilities, natural resources, media and advertising.

THE pilot of AirAsia Flight QZ8501 that disappeared last week after leaving Surabaya, Indonesia, on

its way to Singapore asked Indonesian air controllers permission to climb to a higher altitude 38 minutes into its scheduled flight.

The plane was at 32,000 feet alti-tude, and the pilot requested to climb to 38,000 feet to avoid storm clouds.

If the Indonesian air controllers de-nied his request, what other options were left for him to take? The area at this time of the year is described as experiencing “seasonal bad weather”, according to news reports.

However, Indonesia air controllers rejected the pilot’s request because six other aircraft were above him.

Arminda Mendador, a retired chief of Area Control Center (ACC) of the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines, said unless the pilot had informed controllers the nature of his request, his request would have been denied.

“The pilot could have told air controllers that he is expecting bad weather along his route so that his request would have been given pri-ority,” said Mendador, who was air controller for 26 years and chief of ACC for nine years.

“If he is already experiencing tur-bulence, the pilot’s voice could have indicated that he is in ‘survival mode’.”

In such a situation, the pilot could have relayed that he is experiencing turbulence and there is an urgent need for change of altitude.

Mendador said that in such a situ-ation, the air controllers would have given him priority; clear the vicinity of air traffic; and give him clearance to ascend to higher altitude.

The last message Indonesian air controllers received from the pilot was to request to climb to a higher altitude. After that, there was radio silence from Flight QZ8501. The other option was for the pilot “to make a 180-degree turn,” Mendador said, meaning the pilot could have made a U-turn back to the airport where he came from.

However, she said the pilot should have adviced air controllers of his inten-tion before making such a maneuver.

She said it was also possible for the pilot to make a left or right turn, a lateral movement, or maintaining the same altitude, that would have brought the airplane away from its assigned “air-way” but evading the storm clouds. Once cleared of the danger, the pilot could have requested to be returned to his assigned airway. Recto Mercene

Aquino unmoved by fresh House bid to approve Charter change by June

Pilot of missing AirAsia plane requested Indon air controllers permit to climb to higher altitude

2015 is the year of the goat a sales clerk of Namaste arts and stones in a mall in Baguio City shows a lucky stone in 2015, the year of the wooden sheep (or goat). the pig and the rabbit are allies of the goat. this year’s lucky stones are agate, clear quartz, peridot, tauridine and jet. a bracelet like the one the sales lady is holding costs between P1,000 and P1,600, depending on the size of the bracelet and the stones used. MAU VICTA

BusinessMirror [email protected] A4

News

By Rene Acosta

FOUR policemen were arrested for allegedly firing their guns in celebration of

the new year, despite an earlier warning by Philippine National Police (PNP) Officer in Charge Leonardo Espina against the illegal discharge of firearms by police personnel.

PNP Deputy Director General Espina said the four policemen will be investigated on criminal and administrative charges and would be meted the stiffest penalty should they be found guilty.

“They will be charged with administrative and criminal charges. If found guilty, they will be dismissed from the service,” said Espina, who was given a copy of the report on Friday.

However, Espina did not identify the policemen.

The PNP had earlier warned its personnel from illegally firing their guns in a gesture of

welcoming the new year, saying it is highly illegal and strictly prohibited, other than it could even kill innocent civilians.

Espina issued the order as a number of civi l ians were kil led or injured by stray bullets coming from guns fired during the New Year’s Eve revelry.

Upon Espina’s orders, PNP officials sealed last December 22 the muzzles of guns of policemen to ensure these would not be illegally discharged in the run up to the New Year’s celebration.

PNP Spokesman Chief Supt. Wilben Mayor said the four policemen have been disarmed and relieved from their posts.

“They were relieved their posts. Their firearms were confiscated,” he said.

Reports said there were at least 31 victims of stray bullets during New Year’s celebration. One of the victims, a girl from the province of Abra, died.

reform program. This will change the bus service because, in this way, the government will pay the bus compa-ny on a bus-kilometer basis,” he said.

The transport chief explained that the government will shoulder the market risk or the cost of the bus tickets, regardless if the unit is operating at full or its least capacity.

“As long as the bus will operate as scheduled, the bus driver gets paid in a uniform rate. The basis for driv-ing recklessly will be eliminated,” he said, referring to the need of the bus driver and his assistant to meet a certain amount before they could earn their wages.

Hence, the agency is moving toward amending the route struc-tures of current bus services to meet the demand for traffic in densely populated areas.

The transportation agency has identified around 16 primary routes and 59 secondary routes, where it can provide mass-trans-portation services.

This is just one of the measures that the transportation department is looking at deploying to arrest the

traffic congestion in major arteries around the Philippines.

The government is currently rolling out a transportation dream plan that costs about P4.76 trillion through 2030. The road map was laid out by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica), which said around P539 billion must be invested in traffic infrastructure beginning 2014 up to 2016, and an-other P1.52 trillion must be invest-ed from 2017 to 2022. The biggest investment requirement was seen in the period 2023 to 2030, costing at least P2.69 trillion.

The Jica said these investments will translate to a reduction in trans-port fares and reduced travel time, resulting to gains and savings.

If the measures laid out by the Japanese consultants were not real-ized, the country is set to lose some P6 billion a day in traffic costs, docu-ments from Abaya’s office said.

Currently, the Philippines is said to be losing some P2.4 billion dai-ly, due to the gridlock around the country’s major roads, the docu-ments said.

Transportation Secretary Joseph Emilio A. Abaya said Kwang Sik-Kim, who initiated the adjustment in the transport systems in metro-politan Seoul, is aiding the agency into reforming the bus operations in Metro Manila.

“Dr. Kim, the father of the bus-reform program in Seoul, is now with us and we are carefully listening to his advice as to the bus system. Soon, we’ll do a high-capacity bus system in C5 Road as to pilot-test it. We’ll see how that develops. We’ll also do an experiment on Ortigas,” Abaya said in an interview.

The Seoul Metropolitan Govern-ment introduced in 2004 an adjusted public transportation system, which provided for simpler bus routes and the categorization of bus units.

A satellite communications system was also introduced to enable passen-gers to check bus arrival times using mobile devices.

In the Philippines, Abaya said the government will be implementing a similar reform program in order to alleviate, if not eradicate, the chronic congestion in major thoroughfares.

“We will bid out the routes, or service contracts, as part of our bus-

Saturday, January 3, 2015 • Editors: Vittorio V. Vitug and Max V. de Leon

DOTC exec hires S. Korean for Manila bus operations

By Lorenz S. Marasigan

THE mind behind South Korea’s successful bus-reform program is currently

working with the Philippine government to address the traffic woes in Metro Manila.

Four cops nabbed for firing guns on New Year’s Eve

THE World Trade Organization (WTO) has marked its 20th year this 2015 of liberalizing global trade and helping the world economy expand.

“Over the past 20 years, this organization has, on balance, made an important contribution to the global economy and to smoother trading relations between nations,” WTO Director General Roberto Azevêdo stat-ed for the 20th anniversary of the WTO on New Year.

“Over the years the WTO has helped boost trade growth, resolve numerous trade disputes and support developing countries to integrate into the trading sys-tem,” Azevêdo added.

He stressed that the WTO has also implemented measures to fight against trade protectionism and promote global trade liberalization.

The WTO evolved from a multilateral trade pact

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade established in 1948, after members signed the Marrakesh Agreement, which officially formed the WTO on January 1, 1995.

To date, the WTO has 160 member-countries, rang-ing from some of the world’s largest and least developed economies. Its members also now comprise 98 percent of global trade.

“So as we look to the year ahead there is a lot of work to do—and many challenges to meet. While we have delivered in many areas, and despite the success of Bali, the pace of negotiations remains a source of frustra-tion. In future we know that we need to deliver more outcomes, more quickly,” the WTO chief said.

“In addition, we know that our poorest members are still not adequately integrated into the trading system, so again we need to do more to help them reap

the benefits that the system can offer,” he stressed.

The Philippines is one of the founding members of WTO.

WTO data showed that the Philip-pines ranked 56th largest exporting country and 46th in terms of imports in the global trade. PNA

WTO marks 20th yr of liberalizing global trade, helping world economy grow

ROLLBACK Workers unload liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) tanks from a truck at a gas station in Makati City. Petron Corp. announced it rolled back prices of LPG by P5.50 per kilogram on Friday to reflect the drop of price in the international contract prices of LPG. AlysA sAlen

THE Electric Vehicle Association of the Philippines (Evap) lauded the initiatives of the Ateneo de Manila University for its in-campus Ateneo e-Jeep shuttle

system launched last month.“More and more private institutions are now introducing

their own eco-friendly transport systems to transform their establishments into green establishments,” EVAP President Rommel Juan was quoted in a statement as saying.

Ateneo is the first educational institution to introduce an in-campus electric jeepney shuttle transport system, which they have called “Ateneo e-Jeep.”

Ateneo’s system came a month after Filinvest Alabang launched its own shuttle system, which also utilizes e-Jeepneys.

According to Juan, the Ateneo e-Jeep system boasts of an initial four units of 14-seater e-Jeeps, which run all throughout the sprawling 86-hectare Ateneo campus

grounds. It currently has 11 stops and has a wait time of about ten minutes per eJeep.

Ateneo introduced this as a free shuttle service to the Ateneo community. It services the high school and college students, as well as the faculty and staff of Ateneo, which comprise about 17,000 people. The system is operated by Meralco Energy Inc. (MServ), a subsidiary of the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco).

Meralco helped to design and set up a very vital in-frastructure–a power-charging station, which it calls the Meralco e-Vehicle Power Station. It has four bays and is capable of charging the eJeepneys overnight and can then have them running the next day for about 100 kilometers during the morning rush hour inside the Ateneo campus. Topping off the charge can be done during the lean hours.

Juan explained that electric jeeps are now gaining popu-larity, as the quality of air in Metro Manila continues to deteriorate.

“About 80 percent of air pollution is at-tributed to the old, dilapidated and smoke-belching public utility Jeepneys and buses. e-Jeepneys are, therefore, seen as the logi-cal replacement for these relics on the road.”

Juan said that not only are e-Jeepneys easier to maintain, but they are also more economical to run.

An e-Jeepney costs only P4.60 per kilome-ter to operate, as compared to a conventional diesel-powered jeepney, which costs P6.70 per kilometer to operate, Juan added. The blue and white Ateneo e-Jeep units were supplied by PhUV Inc., the pioneer in electric vehicle assembly in the Philippines.

“Evap hopes that many other commercial and even industrial establishments will soon follow suit in operating their own environ-ment-friendly transport solutions.”

Republic of the Philippines

CITY GOVERNMENT OF NAVOTAS BIDS AND AWARDS COMMITTEE

1052 Mariano Naval Street, Sipac Almacen, Navotas City 1485 Contact Number (02) 281 4080 local 342

http://www.navotas.gov.ph

!

INVITATION TO BID FOR THE PROCUREMENT OF PROFESSIONAL & PRODUCTION SERVICES FOR THE 109TH NAVOTAS DAY CELEBRATION 2015

The City Government of Navotas through its Bids and Awards Committee will hold a Public Bidding for the following project, to wit:

PROCUREMENT OF PROFESSIONAL AND PRODUCTION SERVICES FOR THE 109TH NAVOTAS DAY CELEBRATION 2015

1 LOT: PROFESSIONAL AND PRODUCTION SERVICES FOR THE 109TH NAVOTAS DAY CELEBRATION

* FOR MUTYA NG NAVOTAS GRAND CORONATION NIGHT (JANUARY 14, 2015) • MALE SINGER WITH ABILITY TO HOST FOR THE MUTYA NG NAVOTAS SUCH AS MARKI STROEM, ROCO NACINO, MARLO MORTEL, MIKE TAN

• PRODUCTION AND TECHNICAL STAFF AND WHO HAVE EXPERIENCE IN HOSTING AND MANAGING MAJOR CONCERTS AND EVENTS: (1) DIRECTOR (1) FLOOR DIRECTOR (1) CHOREOGRAPHER

(4) PROD. ASSISTANTS

(1) WRITER (1) VOICE OVER TALENT (1) VIDEOGRAPHER

(1) GROUP OF DANCERS WITH COSTUME WITH 8-10 PERSONS

(10) MAKE-UP ARTISTS

* FOR VARIETY SHOW (JANUARY 15, 2015) • EMCEE WITH HOSTING EXPERIENCE IN COMEDY BARS AND HAS APPEARED IN MAJOR TV SHOWS AND MOVIES SUCH AS MELVIN

CALAQUIAN, REGINALD MARQUEZ, RODELIO SOLANA, CHUBY, TETA, IAN RED

• CHILD STAR WITH ABILITY TO SING AND DANCE AND HAS STARRED AS A LEADING CHILD ACTOR/ACTRESS IN TELESERYES AND MOVIES SUCH AS JOHN STEVE DE GUZMAN, JANA CASANDRA AGONCILLO, BUGOY CARINO, CLARENCE DELGADA, CHA CHA CENETE, BEA BASA

• LOVE TEAM WITH ABILITY TO PERFORM, WITH PLEASING PERSONALITY AND AFFILIATED WITH AND PLAYED LEAD LOVETEAM ROLES IN TELESERYES AND MOVIES OF ANY MAJOR TV NETWORKS SUCH AS JAMES REID & NADINE LUSTRE, JANELLA SALVADOR & MARLO MORTEL, NASH AGUAS & ALEXA ILACAD

• BAND WHO CAN HAS EXPERIENCE IN MUSICAL PERFORMANCES IN VARIOUS MAJOR CONCERTS SUCH AS ABRA, KAMIKAZEE, PAROKYA NI EDGAR, ITCHYWORMS, SPONGECOLA, SUGARFREE, CUESHE, ROCKSTEADY

• SINGERS WHO EITHER LAUNCHED SUCCESSFUL ALBUMS WITH VARIOUS ALBUM RECORDS AND/OR TOPPED THE CHARTS, AND WON PRESTIGIOUS SINGING COMPETITIONS SUCH AS RICHARD YAP, YENG CONSTANTINO, KARYLLE, KYLA, JURIZ, SITTI, EDRAY TEODORO, JOEY G., JANELLA SALVADOR, ERIC SANTOS, CHRISTIAN BAUTISTA

• GROUP DANCERS WHO HAVE EXPERIENCE IN PERFORMING IN TV SHOWS, VARIOUS CONCERTS AND OTHER MAJOR EVENTS SUCH AS SASSY GIRLS, SHOWTIME DANCERS, EB BABES, NAVOTAS ALL STAR DANCERS (LOCAL PERFORMANCES)

• PRODUCTION AND TECHNICAL STAFF AND WHO HAVE EXPERIENCE IN HOSTING AND MANAGING MAJOR CONCERTS AND EVENTS: (1) DIRECTOR (1) WRITER (1) PRODUCTION MANAGER (1) ASST. PROD. MANAGER (3) ASST. STAGE MANAGERS

(1) TECHNICAL DIRECTOR (1) TALENT COORDINATOR (4) PRODUCTION ASSISTANTS (1) SPINNER (25) MARSHALLS

(1) PRODUCER (4) PRODUCTION STAFF WRITER (1) VOICE OVER TALENT (1) UTILITY MESSENGER (3) SERVICE VEHICLE DRIVER

FOR GRAND PARADE (JANUARY 16, 2015) • FEMALE ARTISTS WHO HAD LEAD ROLES IN TELESERYES AND MOVIES AND/OR WON BEAUTY PAGEANTS SUCH AS

DENISE LAUREL, KIM CHU, KC CONCEPCION, ALEX GONZAGA, SOLENN HEUSAFF, ELLEN ADARNA, JASMIN CURTIS, MEGAN YOUNG, MAJA SALVADOR, ERICH GONZALES, JESSY MENDIOLA, ANN CURTIS, KARYLLE, JULIA BARRETO, JUDY ANN SANTOS, SARAH GERONIMO, BEA ALONZO, ANGEL LOCSIN, KATHRYN BERNARDO

TOTAL ABC PHP. 3,835,000.00

PESOS: THREE MILLION EIGHT HUNDRED THRITY-FIVE THOUSAND PESOS

SCHEDULE AND TIME TABLE Pre-Bidding Conference December 23, 2014 at 2:00 in the Afternoon Submission of Bid January 05, 2015 on or before 12:00 noon Opening of Bid January 05, 2015 at 2:00 in the Afternoon

All procurement schedule will held at the Mayor’s Conference Room at the Fourth Floor, Navotas Cityhall Building, Mariano Naval Street, Navotas City.

Bids received in excess of the ABC shall be automatically rejected at bid opening. Excess in ABC shall cover all the financial component of the above procurement including but not limited to the ABC per unit/item/goods as stated in the list of technical specifications and purchase request.

Bidders should have completed, within TWO (2) YEARS from the date of submission and receipt of bids, a contract similar to the Project. The description of an eligible bidder is contained in the Bidding Documents, particularly, in Section II. Instructions to Bidders.

Bidding will be conducted through open competitive bidding procedures using a non-discretionary “pass/fail” criterion as specified in the Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRR) of Republic Act (RA) 9184, otherwise known as the “Government Procurement Reform Act”. All documents submitted must be sufficient as to form and substance to be considered complete.

Bidding is open to all interested bidders, whether local or foreign, subject to the conditions for eligibility provided in the IRR of RA 9184. Interested bidders may obtain further information from City Government of Navotas - Bids and Awards Committee and inspect the Bidding Documents at the address given below during 8:00 Am to 5:00 PM – Monday to Friday. A complete set of Bidding Documents may be purchased by interested Bidders upon payment of a non refundable fee for the Bidding Documents in the amount prescribed by the GPPB Guidelines. All Interested bidderS should submit upon request of the Bidding Documents, (a) Letter of Intent; (b) Certified Photocopy of the Official Receipt for the payment of the Bidding Documents Fee.

The City Government of Navotas – Bids and Awards Committee reserves the right to accept or reject any bid, to annul the bidding process, and to reject all bids at any time prior to contract award, without thereby incurring any liability to the affected bidder or bidders.

For further information, please refer to: MS. EVANGELINE P. CRUZ, CPA Head, BAC Secretariat

and/or

MR. JOEY DC TENGSON Member, BAC Secretariat Office of the BAC Secretariat (Office of the City Accountant) Third Floor,City Government of Navotas Building 1052 Mariano Naval Street, Navotas City

Approved by the Committee:

Approved by the Committee:

(ORIGINAL SIGNED)

ARCH. JERRY MAGPAYO BAC Chairperson

!

Firm hails Ateneo in-campus electric-jeep system

THRee cities in the Philippines moved up several notches in the latest ranking of business-process outsourcing (BPO) destinations by con-sultancy firm Tholons Inc.

The cities of Bacolod, Baguio and Iloilo rose seven, four and four notches, respectively, in the Tholons’s Top 100 Outsourcing Destinations report.

From 93 in 2014, Bacolod rose to 86 in the ranking that Tholons began in 2006. From 99, Baguio City is now ranked 95, while Iloilo City rose to 91 from 95 in the 2014 ranking.

Paraguay’s city of Asuncion rose to the 2014 ranking on Bacolod for 2015, while Panama City moved up to 99 from 112 in 2014. Iloilo City edged out the Russian city of novosibirsk, which moved one notch down to 92.

According to Tholons Managing Director Ankita Vashistha, “the overall Top 10 emerged Destinations saw some significant move-ments this year.”

Ireland’s city of Dublin dropped from the Top 10 to the 12th position, overtaken by cities continuously developing information technology-busi-ness process management (IT-BPM) capabilities in shanghai and san Jose.

“The rise of shanghai to the 10th rank and san Jose on its heels at 11th will be an interesting play in the following years, as both latin American and China markets grow abound simultaneously,” Vashistha said.

“While each regional market does have its own systemic problems, each one has the potential to drive the growth of its cities toward greater heights in the Top 10 emerged Destinations,” she added.

Vashistha explained that they see the Asia Pacific and latin Ameri-can markets showing “very positive development on a regional per-spective, with an overall upward trajectory in the rankings, especially true for Tier 2 cities”

“Meanwhile, issues in europe, the Middle east and the African regions continue to affect specific outsourcing destinations. sociopolitical crises of various forms remain significant as deterrents toward further IT-BPM growth.” The cities of Manila and Cebu, to note, maintained their ranking at the Top 10 outsourcing destination. Manila stayed second from Bangalore, India, while Cebu was maintained at its 2014 rank of Top 8.

The cities of Davao and santa Rosa also was maintained at 69 and 82, respectively, bringing all eight Philippine cities in Tholons’s Top 100 des-tinations for the worldwide BPO industry. Dennis D. Estopace

Three PHL cities rise in Tholons’s BPO ranking

BusinessMirror

NewsSaturday, January 3, 2015 [email protected]

This was the warning issued by Spanish firm Indra Sistemas SA, the only technology provider com-peting with Smartmatic for Com-elec’s P2-billion supply contract.

“This is one possibility that we want to prevent from happening. We want to help Comelec and the coun-try avoid any and all doubts about our electoral process,” Archibald de

Mata, legal counsel of Indra Siste-mas SA, said.

De Mata was referring to the unsettled question on the owner-ship of the technology being used by Smartmatic in the Precint Count Optical Scan (PCOS) units it is of-fering the Comelec to augment the 82,000 machines bought by the poll body in 2012.

During the end-to-end demon-stration of the machine conducted by the Comelec’s bids and awards committee (BAC), he said the BAC was asked to secure a categorical reply from Smartmatic on the own-ership of the technology, in confor-mity with its own bidding rules.

The BAC refused to compel Smartmatic, to the disappointment of Indra’s legal counsel.

“We deem such confirmation is of utmost importance to avoid any violation of the provisions in the bidding documents,” de Mata said.

“The BAC should be advised or informed whether the Smartmatic joint venture, or any member there-of, owns and/or has developed the machines that it intends to provide to this honorable commission. We respectfully submit that this may be done only through a categorical confirmation from Smartmatic,” he added.

De Mata pleaded to the Comelec not to allow the issue to go unset-tled while the bidding is underway.

“Should Smartmatic win the bid and then be found not owning the PCOS technology, then they may be in violation of the very same rules they had set out,” de Mata said.

He warned that such infraction may trigger suits questioning the validity of the bidding process and delay preparations for 2016.

“We are hopeful that the BAC will consider our sentiment and serve us a copy of the Smartmatic’s

reply to the issue on their owner-ship of the machines and software that they intend to supply the com-mission for the 2016 national and local elections,” the Indras counsel said in a letter to the Comelec.

IT experts and concerned groups have already raised the issue of ownership against Smartmatic in the past, calling the company a mere “reseller” and “middleman” for the PCOS technology.

Earlier, election watchdog group Citizens for Clean and Credible Elections (C3E) raised the own-ership issue before the Comelec, asking the commission to disallow Smartmatic from participating in the bidding.

“For the past two elections, we’ve been made fools by Smart-matic. We ask the Comelec to recon-sider its stance on the blacklisting of Smartmatic,” C3E spokesman Dave Diwa said.

‘Comelec to face prolonged legal battle if Smartmatic wins supply contract’

By Joel R. San Juan

THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) should expect a pro-longed legal battle, which could

derail its preparations for the 2016 elections, should it favor Smartmatic-Total Information Management (TIM) Corp. in the bidding for additional counting machines.

A lawmaker has filed a bill establishing the Palm Oil Research, Development and Extension Center that will help

improve the palm-oil industry in the country.Rep. Rogelio Neil Pepito Roque (Fourth

District, Bukidnon) said the Palm Oil Re-search, Development and Extension Cen-ter being proposed under House Bill (HB) 5211, which will be established at the Cen-tral Mindanao University, will further boost the farmers’ socioeconomic life and liveli-hood conditions in the region. Roque said palm oil is being used as an ingredient in many household products, like cooking oil, baked goods, confectionery, canned goods, nondairy creamers, shampoos, cosmetics, cleaning agents and washing detergents.

“The country shows an increasing trend in palm-oil production volume and the estab-lishment of the center will help improve the palm-oil industry in the country, especially so that Mindanao is accounted for 90 per-cent of the country’s palm-oil production,”

he said. Roque said the center would foster the knowledge of farmers, develop technol-ogy and increase the country’s production of palm oil.

“It will provide assistance on the pro-cessing and marketing of palm oil and its by-products,” he added.

Under the measure, the center will coor-dinate with the Department of Agriculture (DA) through the Bureau of Agricultural Research, Department of Science and Tech-nology, Department of Trade and Industry, the National Economic and Development Authority and the Philippine Council for Agricultural Research and Resources Devel-opment in training stakeholders, conduct-ing researches, extending technologies and analyzing the demand and supply of palm oil in the domestic and international market.

It will conduct agricultural, industrial and economic research and development of the palm-oil industry for the benefit of the Filipino palm-tree farmers.

The center will also train professionals, students and palm-tree farmers and their children on various disciplines related to palm-oil production, utilization and market-ing. Under the proposed measure, the center will design and implement local and foreign scholarships and fellowship programs that will enhance palm-oil development.

It is also tasked to organize and hold lo-cal, regional or international conferences, gatherings, forums and seminars on the current trends and developments of the palm-oil industry.

Roque wants the center to consolidate all research studies by other institutions, as well as to establish, maintain and operate an information and library center, design and implement a farm extension program to ef-fectively transfer modern farm technology to palm-oil farmers.

It will publish and disseminate research finds and make appropriate recommenda-tions to interested parties. PNA

THE Department of Ag-riculture (DA) planted more than 1,000 cacao

and coffee seedlings in an or-ganic village run by women from indigenous groups in Davao City.

The DA’s Gender and Devel-opment Program in Region 11 spearheaded the soft launching and ceremonial planting of the seedlings in the Indigenous Peoples (IP) Women’s Organic Village in Malamboon Elemen-tary School at Sitio Malam-boon, Barangay Malabog vil-lage in Davao City. The DA said more than 300 persons from the Ata-Manobo tribe benefit-ed from the program wherein 1,000 hills were prepared to be planted with seedlings of cafe Arabica variety. Agriculture Undersecretary Bernadette Romulo-Puyat and Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte led the soft launching and ceremonial planting. Puyat said the DA will continue to monitor the proj-ects in the area and provide interventions for the organic village. Duterte, for his part, vowed to allocate P10 million for coffee plantation and pro-duction in Barangay. Malabog.

Datu Generoso Baon, IP’s mandatory representative and one of the beneficiaries, vowed to take good care of the project.

The IP Women Organic Vil-lage Project is a typical rural-development initiative spear-headed by the DA’s regional of-fice to help raise the capacities of women in agriculture in far-flung areas. Under this project, women are taking the lead by allowing them to partake in the entire process of human and community development which include cacao produc-tion. The project is also pro-moting an ecologically sound and balance bio-diversified and integrated farming sys-tem with preference on organic cacao production, vegetable natural farming production, livestock production and in-land fish farming.

Cacao, coffee planted in IP women’s organic village

By VG Cabuag

A UNIT of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has recommended the lifting of the name revocation of the

Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), the body that represents the Roman Catholic Church in the country. The SEC’s company registration and monitor-ing department (CRMD) gave the CBCP leeway even if it failed to file the necessary documents within the deadline set by the agency.

The CRMD said it found that it was “reason-able” to grant CBCP’s request to reinstate its name.

In September 2013, the commission en banc already denied the request of the CBCP to re-instate its name status from “revoked” to “reg-istered,” after it failed to submit the necessary documents.

The agency’s commissioners, however, gave the CBCP leeway and asked the CRMD to advise the body to file a petition until December 31, 2013 to reinstate its name and pay the neces-sary fines.

The CBCP, however, still failed to file the peti-tion, saying its legal counsel, Sabino Padilla Jr., was unable to file the petition due to his “life-threatening pneumonia,” while his assistant was battling dengue, the Padilla Law Office said in its letter to the SEC in March 2014.

The law office then requested the agency to file the petition beyond the December 31, 2013 deadline.

The SEC said it considered the circumstances and allowed the CBCP to file the petition beyond the date required.

Malacanañg on Friday indicated its readiness to work with congress in coming up with a law that will effectively address problems posed by the use of firecrackers, especially during new Year celebrations.

The Department of Health (DOH) has expressed concern that, despite a drop in the total number of firecracker-related injuries, the number of those injured remains high, and the number of amputations, especially among children, has increased.

according to initial figures from the department and the police, three were killed and 354 were injured during the new Year revelry.

The DOH has said it wants to ask the President to prioritize the pas-sage of a bill imposing a total ban on the use of firecrackers in the country.

In a telephone interview, communications Secretary Herminio B. coloma Jr., however, said the DOH’s proposal must be thoroughly studied because there are laws that regulate the use of firecrackers.

“We need to carefully study possible measures or interventions to re-duce the number of people who are injured by illegal firecrackers,” coloma said in the vernacular.

The current thrust of the government is to make new Year celebrations safe, coloma said, noting that the people’s cooperation and discipline are necessary to avoid injuries.

The people, the local and national governments must work together to make communities safe during new Year celebrations, he added. coloma explained that simply proposing a total ban would not solve the problem, unless the people and the government work together.

“It’s easy to say ‘let’s impose a total ban,’ but we need discipline and to work together to reduce the number of injuries,” he said in the vernacular.

The Palace official, nonetheless, commended the campaign against the use of firecrackers that resulted in fewer injuries during the new Year celebration. PNA

Malacanañg to work with Congress to address firecracker-related injuries

Lawmaker pushes for creation of palm-oil center

SEC to grant CBCP’s request to retain name

YEAR OF THE SHEEP These sheep graze under a mango tree at the Benito Integrated Farm in San Placido, Roxas, in Isabela province. According to Chinese astrology, 2015 is the year of the Wooden Sheep. lEOnaRDO PERanTE II

Editor: Alvin I. DacanaySaturday, January 3, 2015

OpinionBusinessMirrorA6

Seniang: Did the government fail?

editorial

THE last major storm to hit the Philippines in 2014, Tropical Storm Seniang (international code name Jangmi), ended the year on a tragic and disappointing note. At least 50 people were

killed and tens of thousands were displaced by the heavy rains, floods and landslides that Seniang unleashed.

After the impressive gains it made after Typhoon Ruby (international code name Hagupit) struck the country early last month, the government is now taking a lot of heat over its response to Seniang.

Government officials, just like everyone else, were focused on celebrat-ing the holidays. Government agencies were more concentrated on taking care of all the necessary public-service duties that had to be done for the holiday celebrations. Filipinos do not make things easy when you consider that, once again, the New Year saw hundreds of people needlessly injured from lighting firecrackers.

But it is still the job of the government to do whatever it can to prepare for a major storm.

That scores of people were killed during Seniang’s onslaught raises several questions, one of which is this: Did the government have an ad-equate and well-thought-out plan that can be applied to situations like this? The government insists that its disaster-preparedness plan is in place, and is both viable and effective. This returns us to something we talked about in the wake of Ruby: There must be a sound system ready for implementation.

However, the implementation may have been a problem in this case. One hard-hit area was Samar province, specifically Catbalogan City. Stephany Uy-Tan, its mayor, told an AM station that some residents in vulnerable areas had ignored evacuation warnings.

No matter how well-planned the response is, it’s useless if people do not follow the plan. We also spoke about how ordinary Filipinos seemed to be tak-ing much more personal responsibility during Ruby, rather than waiting for the government to come in.

One resident in an affected area south of Cebu City was quoted as saying that, though his family had prepared for Ruby, they did not expect Seniang to be more devastating, because it only brought rains and there was no strong wind. Sadly, several members of his family were lost to the floods.

Perhaps, the most important question is whether or not there is close co-ordination between the national government and local government units (LGUs). If so, are the LGUs doing the best job they can? For example, do they need additional resources?

Storms like Seniang will always come to our shores, and with each of them we must also learn and increase our level of preparedness.

IN literature, “a turning point” is defined as the point where the drama or tension in a story reaches its peak, where the story’s climax begins to unfold. That is what the world—and

the Philippines—faces in 2015.

Philippines 2015: A turning point

It is an interesting coincidence that, as global events come together for this turning point, the Philip-pines will enter its presidential-elec-tion season later this year. The year 2015 will be a time of persistently high tension and drama.

Two events occurred in the fi-nancial markets as we closed 2014: The spot price of Brent crude oil hit its lowest since May 2009; and the United States dollar index, which measures the exchange rate for the US dollar against a basket of cur-rencies, reached its highest level— 90.64—since December 2008.

While we are all looking at the price of crude oil as it affects local gasoline prices, the bigger picture is the general price of most com-modities. Virtually every index that measures a broad basket of global commodity prices is trading at or near its 2009 level.

To have this situation can only

mean one thing: The global econ-omy is in such a bad shape that demand is falling rapidly. If it were only crude-oil prices falling, then we might be able to argue that this was being caused by increased sup-ply. But it is across the board for other critical commodities.

Commodity-exporting coun-tries, like Australia, Malaysia and Mexico, are going to see their econo-mies hurt by a decrease in income. Of course, oil producers are in the same situation. Saudi Arabia is facing its worst budget deficit in its history.

The decrease in export income is having a negative effect on those nations’ currencies: The Malay-sian ringgit fell significantly in the fourth quarter; the Mexican peso is back to levels not seen since it hit the bottom in 2009.

The US dollar is appreciating, in part, as these and other currencies fall in value. More important, the

dollar is appreciating because there are problems with the Japanese yen and euro, the only major alterna-tives to the US currency. It is dif-ficult to buy the yen when it is the stated policy of the government to depreciate the currency. The euro is faced with extreme uncertainty as the German economy, in particular, is hurting badly from the economic sanctions placed on Russia. In the last five years Germany supported its economy with exports to Russia that have now disappeared.

The turning point for the globe is twofold. The first is uncover-ing how bad the global economy really is as commodity prices fall; and the second is how much of the “emerging economies”, like Brazil, have been dependent on dollars flowing out of the US and into their countries.

The same thing happened dur-ing the 1997 Asian financial crisis, but the major emerging countries did not account for 50 percent of the global economy, like they do now.

The “gloom-and-doomers” have been saying the Philippine econo-my is in a bubble and it only grew in the last five years because for-eign money supported it. I do not believe that. Foreign money, as investment coming into this coun-try, has been dismal. Remittances from overseas Filipino workers and business-process outsourc-ing companies are significant. But

with domestic sources accounting for 90 percent of all new invest-ments, we are not dependent on foreigners and their money.

But in the next 12 months we are going to resolve the question of whether the Philippines is in a bubble, of whether we have finally achieved a growing, self-sustaining economy that can handle global economic shocks. I believe we have.

If the Phi l ippine peso can maintain is relative strength and narrow-sideways movement in the face of the appreciating dollar, it means that we have finally reached economic maturity. If the interest rate that top corporations must pay on the debt does not widen in relation to the US corporate bor-rowing rate, it means that we are in great shape.

For stock-market watchers, cau-tion is still the strategy. Either we will see a move on the Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi) above 8,500, or see 2015 take the PSEi to below 5,500.

This year will bring new meaning to “It’s more fun in the Philippines”. I’m looking forward to it.

Send me an e-mail at [email protected]. Visit my website at www.mangunonmarkets.com. Fol-low me on Twitter at @mangunon-markets. PSE stock-market informa-tion and technical analysis tools pro-vided by the COL Financial Group Inc.

OUTSIDE THE BOXJohn Mangun

THERE’S still no definitive explanation of what caused Wednesday’s New Year’s Eve stampede that left at least 36 dead and 47 injured. Perhaps, as some have suggested, the

crowd of 300,000 lost control when someone dumped leaflets that resemble $100 bills from a nightclub. Or, more likely, there were simply too many people on the Bund, the city’s signature riverside promenade, for too few reserved spaces (some are reporting 2,000 reserved spots) from which spectators could watch a free laser light show.

Shanghai’s anxieties result in tragedy

What is certain, however, is that such an accident was long overdue in a city that takes particular, often-times reckless pride, in staging large spectacles, which draw big crowds that underscore the worthiness of the expense. In part, the problem is a kind of second-city syndrome, whereby Shanghai—China’s most important commercial and financial hub—seems determined to prove that it’s just as relevant, and even grander, than Beijing, the coun-try’s political capital and cultural

powerhouse. Big crowds for big events are a great way to make that happen—and a great reason for an image-conscious, insecure local gov-ernment to ignore safety.

As an example, I’d cite the evening of October 1, 2002. It was China’s National Day, and—like hundreds of thousands of other Shanghai residents—I wanted to see the prom-ised fireworks display on the Bund. To get there, I started walking down Nanjing East Road, a roughly 1-mile shopping street that, on a good day,

attracts more than a million people. During 2013’s three-day National Day holiday, it attracted 5.8 million shoppers, according to local media. On October 1, 2002, the crowd was huge, and as we proceeded to the Bund, it thickened such that it was more like a current—if you stopped, it pushed you along forcefully, press-ing toward the crowded Bund. Final-ly, about half the way down the road, I managed to jump out of the surging current, exhausted and terrified, and onto the steps of the Sofitel, where I watched the dangerous crowd, vow-ing never to return for another holi-day celebration on the Bund.

That was not the lesson taken by the city of Shanghai. In fact, it has continued to hold annual holiday-themed events on the Bund (in par-ticular, for National Day and New Year’s Eve) that draw even greater

crowds than what I witnessed in 2002. (In part, this is due to Shang-hai’s massive new subway system, which gives the city’s outlying sub-urbs easy access to the center of the city.) Typically, the next day’s papers include coverage of the crowds, along with proud mentions of their size.

In fairness, China has a lot of people, and it’s not hard to draw a big crowd. But drawing a crowd and drawing a crowd safely are two dif-ferent things. For too long Shanghai has emphasized the former, while ignoring the latter.

If this year’s tragedy accom-plishes anything, it’s likely to be the end of badly managed free en-tertainment on the Bund and in other prominent city venues. In the hours since the stampede, Chi-nese media shifted from covering President Xi Jinping’s politically important New Year message, to covering the stampede—and Xi’s reminder that a “profound lesson” should be learned from it. Mean-while, Shanghai’s longtime mayor, Han Zeng, demanded that the city’s districts and counties take steps to “prevent similar tragedies.” Alas, the real tragedy is that the mayor didn’t send the message a decade ago.

HOM

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nDYQN -89dot5 HOME RADIO ILOILO STATION MANAGER: MARIPAZ U. SONG E-MAIL ADDRESS: [email protected] ADDRESS: 3rd Floor, Eternal Plans Building,

Ortiz Street, Iloilo City CONTACT NOs.: (033) 337-2698/ 508-8102/ 0922-811-3995

nDWQA -92dot3 HOME RADIO LEGAZPI STATION MANAGER: CLETO PIO D. ABOGADO E-MAIL ADDRESS: homeradiolegazpi@ yahoo.com ADDRESS: 4th Floor, Fortune Building, Rizal St., Brgy. Pigcale, Legazpi City CONTACT NOs.: (052) 480-4858/ 820-6880/ 0922-811-3992

nDWQJ -95dot1 HOME RADIO NAGA STATION MANAGER: JUSTO MANUEL P. VILLANTE JR. EMAIL ADDRESS: [email protected] ADDRESS: Eternal Garden Compound, Balatas Road, Naga City CONTACT NOs.: (054) 473-3818/ 811-2951/ 0922-811-3993

BLOOMBERG VIEWAdam Minter

In fairness, China has a lot of people, and it’s not hard to draw a big crowd. But drawing a crowd and drawing a crowd safely are two different things. For too long Shanghai has emphasized the former, while ignoring the latter.

Saturday, January 3, 2015

[email protected]

Evangelii Gaudium

45th part

The economy and the distribution of income

THE need to resolve the structural causes of poverty cannot be delayed, not only for the pragmatic reason of its urgency for the good order of society, but because society needs to be

cured of a sickness that is weakening and frustrating it, and that can only lead to new crises. Welfare projects, which meet certain urgent needs, should be considered as merely temporary responses. As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation, and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems or, for that matter, to any problem. Inequality is the root of social ills.

The dignity of each human person and the pursuit of the common good are concerns that ought to shape all economic policies. At times, however, they seem to be a mere addendum imported from without in order to fill out a political discourse lacking in perspectives or plans for true and integral development. How many words prove irksome to this system! It is irksome when the question of ethics is raised, when global solidar-ity is invoked, when the distribution of goods is mentioned, when refer-ence is made to protecting labor and defending the dignity of the pow-erless, when allusion is made to a God who demands a commitment to justice.

At other times these issues are exploited by a rhetoric that cheapens them. Casual indifference in the face

of such questions empties our lives and our words of all meaning. Busi-ness is a noble vocation, provided that those engaged in it see themselves challenged by a greater meaning in life. This will enable them truly to serve the common good by striving to increase the goods of this world and to make them more accessible to all.

We can no longer trust in the un-seen forces and the invisible hand of the market. Growth in justice re-quires more than economic growth, while presupposing such growth: It requires decisions, programs, mechanisms and processes specifi-cally geared to a better distribution of income, the creation of sources of employment and an integral promo-tion of the poor that goes beyond a simple welfare mentality. I am far from proposing an irresponsible

populism, but the economy can no longer turn to remedies that are a new poison, such as attempting to increase profits by reducing the workforce and, thereby, adding to the ranks of the excluded.

I ask God to give us more politi-cians capable of sincere and effective dialogue aimed at healing the deep-est roots—and not simply the ap-pearances—of the evils in our world! Politics, though often denigrated, remains a lofty vocation and one of the highest forms of charity, inas-much as it seeks the common good. We need to be convinced that charity is the principle not only of microrela-tionships (with friends, with family members or within small groups) but also of macrorelationships (social, economic and political ones).

I beg the Lord to grant us more politicians who are genuinely dis-turbed by the state of society, the people, the lives of the poor! It is vi-tal that government and financial leaders take heed and broaden their horizons, working to ensure that all citizens have dignified work, educa-tion and health care. Why not turn to God and ask Him to inspire their plans? I am firmly convinced that openness to the transcendent can bring about a new political and eco-nomic mindset that would help to break down the wall of separation between the economy and the com-mon good of society.

Economy, as the very word indi-cates, should be the art of achieving a fitting management of our com-mon home, which is the world as a whole. Each meaningful economic decision made in one part of the world has repercussions everywhere else; consequently, no government can act without regard for shared re-sponsibility. Indeed, it is becoming

increasingly difficult to find local solutions for enormous global prob-lems, which overwhelm local poli-tics with difficulties to resolve. If we really want to achieve a healthy world economy, what is needed at this juncture of history is a more efficient way of interacting that, with due regard for the sovereignty of each nation, ensures the eco-nomic well-being of all countries, not just of a few.

Any Church community, if it thinks it can comfortably go its own way without creative concern and effective cooperation in helping the poor to live with dignity and reach-ing out to everyone, will also risk breaking down, however much it may talk about social issues or criticize governments. It will easily drift into a spiritual worldliness camouflaged by religious practices, unproductive meetings and empty talk.

If anyone feels offended by my words, I would respond that I speak them with affection and with the best of intentions, quite apart from any personal interest or political ideology. My words are not those of a foe or an opponent. I am interested only in helping those who are in thrall to an individual-istic, indifferent and self-centered mentality to be freed from those unworthy chains and to attain a way of living and thinking that is more humane, noble and fruitful, and that will bring dignity to their presence on this earth.

To be continued

For comments, send an e-mail to [email protected]. For do-nations to Caritas Manila, call (632) 563-9311. For inquiries, call (632) 563- 9308 or 563-9298, or fax 563-9306.

CLIMATE warming is indisputable, and many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has

revealed in its 2014 report.

Climate warming is indisputable

The IPCC, one of the United Na-tions’s authoritative voices on weather, climate and water, said atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, and sea levels have risen.

Its report said anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions have in-creased since the preindustrial era, driven largely by economic and pop-ulation growth, and are now higher than ever, leading to atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide that are unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years.

“Their effects, together with those of other anthropogenic drivers, have been detected throughout the climate system and are extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century,” the IPCC report said.

The report pointed out that chang-es in climate have caused impacts on natural and human systems on all con-tinents and across the oceans. Impacts are due to observed climate change, irrespective of its cause, indicating the sensitivity of natural and human systems to the changing climate.

“Changes in many extreme weather and climate events have been observed since about 1950. Some of these chang-es have been linked to human influ-ences, including a decrease in cold-temperature extremes, an increase in warm-temperature extremes, an increase in extreme high sea levels and an increase in the number of heavy precipitation events in a number of regions,” the report said.

The report further stated: “It is very likely that heat waves will occur more often and last longer, and that extreme precipitation events will be-come more intense and frequent in many regions. The ocean will continue to warm and acidify, and global mean sea level to rise.

“Climate change will amplify ex-isting risks and create new risks for natural and human systems. Risks are unevenly distributed, and are generally greater for disadvantaged people and communities in countries at all levels of development.

“Many aspects of climate change and [its] associated impacts will con-tinue for centuries, even if anthropo-genic emissions of greenhouse gases are stopped. The risks of abrupt or irreversible changes increase as the magnitude of the warming increases.”

Widespread impactsHUMAN influence on the climate sys-tem is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history. Recent climate changes have had widespread impacts on human and natural systems.

The continued emission of green-house gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all compo-nents of the climate system, increas-ing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts on people and ecosystems. Limiting climate change would require substantial and sus-tained reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions, which, together with adap-tation, can limit climate-change risks.

Adaptation and mitigation are complementary strategies for reduc-ing and managing the risks of climate change. Substantial emission reduc-tions over the next few decades can reduce climate risks in the 21st cen-tury and beyond, increase prospects for effective adaptation, reduce the costs and challenges of mitigation in the longer term, and contribute to climate-resilient pathways for sustain-able development.

Effective decision-making to limit

climate change and its effects can be informed by a wide range of analyti-cal approaches for evaluating expected risks and benefits, recognizing the importance of governance, ethical dimensions, equity, value judgments, economic assessments, and diverse perceptions of and responses to risk and uncertainty.

Without additional mitigation ef-forts beyond those in place today, and even with adaptation, warming by the end of the 21st century will lead to high to very high risk of severe, widespread and irreversible impacts globally (high confidence). Mitigation involves some level of co-benefits and of risks due to adverse side-effects, but these risks do not involve the same possibility of severe, widespread and irreversible impacts as risks from climate change, increasing the benefits from near-term mitigation efforts.

Adaptation can reduce the risks of climate-change impacts, but there are limits to its effectiveness, especially with greater magnitudes and rates of climate change. Taking a longer-term perspective, in the context of sustain-able development, increases the likeli-hood that more immediate adaptation actions will also enhance future op-tions and preparedness.

Mitigation pathwaysTHE IPCC panel of experts said there are multiple mitigation pathways that are likely to limit warming to below 2°C, relative to preindustrial levels. These pathways would require sub-stantial emission reductions over the next few decades and near-zero emis-sions of carbon dioxide and other long-lived greenhouse gases by the end of the century.

“Implementing such reductions poses substantial technological, eco-nomic, social and institutional chal-lenges, which increase with delays in additional mitigation and if key technologies are not available. Limit-ing warming to lower or higher levels involves similar challenges, but on different timescales,” the experts said, adding that:

“Adaptation and mitigation re-sponses are underpinned by com-mon enabling factors. These include effective institutions and gover-nance, innovation and investments in environmentally sound technolo-gies and infrastructure, sustainable livelihoods, and behavioral and life-style choices.

“Adaptation options exist in all sec-tors, but their context for implementa-tion and potential to reduce climate-related risks differs across sectors and regions. Some adaptation responses involve significant cobenefits, syner-gies and trade-offs. Increasing climate change will increase challenges for many adaptation options.”

Mitigation options are available in every major sector, and it can be more cost-effective if it uses an integrated approach that combines measures to reduce energy use and the greenhouse-gas intensity of end-use sectors, de-carbonize energy supply, reduce net emissions and enhance carbon sinks in land-based sectors.

“Effective adaptation and mitiga-tion responses will depend on policies and measures across multiple scales: international, regional, national and subnational. Policies across all scales supporting technology development, diffusion and transfer, as well as fi-nance for responses to climate change, can complement and enhance the ef-fectiveness of policies that directly promote adaptation and mitigation,” the experts stressed.

E-mail: [email protected].

SERVANT LEADERRev. Fr. Antonio Cecilio T. Pascual

DATAbASECecilio T. Arillo

We have so much to learn from Cuba

WHITE PLAINS, New York—Last month United States President Barack Obama announced efforts to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba after more than five

decades of a misguided policy that my uncle, John F. Kennedy, and my father, Robert F. Kennedy, had been responsible for enforcing after the US embargo against the country was first implemented in October 1960 by the Eisenhower administration.

very same politicians who argued that we should punish Castro for curtailing human rights and mistreating prisoners in Cuban jails elsewhere contend that the US is justified in mistreating our own prisoners in Cuban jails.

Imagine a US president faced, as Castro was, with over 400 assassination attempts, thousands of episodes of for-eign-sponsored sabotage directed at our nation’s people, factories and bridges, a foreign-sponsored invasion and 50 years of economic warfare that has effectively deprived our citizens of basic necessities and strangled our economy.

The Cuban leadership has pointed to the embargo with abundant justifica-tion as the reason for economic depri-vation in Cuba. The embargo allows the regime to portray the US as a bully and itself as the personification of courage, standing up to threats, intimidation and economic warfare by history’s greatest military superpower.

It perpetually reminds the proud Cuban people that our powerful nation, which has staged invasions of their island and plotted for decades to assassinate their leaders and sabotaged their indus-try, continues an aggressive campaign to ruin their economy.

Perhaps, the best argument for lift-ing the embargo is that it does not work. Our 60-plus-year embargo against Cuba is the longest in history and, yet, the Castro regime has remained in power during the entire time.

Instead of lifting the embargo, dif-ferent US administrations, including the Kennedy administration, have strength-ened it without result. It seems silly to pursue a US foreign policy by repeating a strategy that has proved a monumental failure for six decades. The definition of insanity is repeating the same action over and over expecting different results. In this sense, the embargo is insane.

The embargo clearly discredits US foreign policy, not only across Latin America, but also with Europe and other regions.

Calls to lift the embargoFOR more than 20 years, the United Nations General Assembly has called for lifting the embargo. Last year the vote was 188 in favor and two against (the US and Israel). Both the Inter American Commission on Human Rights (the main human-rights bodies of the Americas) and the African Union have also called for lifting the embargo.

One reason that it diminishes our

global prestige and moral authority is that the embargo only emphasizes our distorted relationship with Cuba. That relationship is historically freighted with powerful ironies that make the US look hypocritical to the rest of the world.

Most recently, while we fault Cuba for jailing and mistreating political prisoners, we have simultaneously been subjecting prisoners, many of them in-nocent by the Pentagon’s own admis-sion, to torture, including waterboarding and illegal detention and imprisonment without trial in Cuban prison cells in Guantánamo Bay.

While we blame Cuba for not allowing its citizens to travel freely to the US, we restrict our own citizens from traveling freely to Cuba. In that sense, the embargo seems particularly anti-American. Why does my passport say that I can’t visit Cuba? Why can’t I go where I want to go?

I have been a fortunate American. I have been able to visit Cuba and that was a wonderful education because it gave me the opportunity to see Com-munism with all its warts and faults up close. Why doesn’t our government trust Americans to see for themselves the rav-ages of dictatorship?

Had President Kennedy survived to win a second term, the embargo would have been lifted half a century ago.

President Kennedy told Castro, through intermediaries, that the US would end the embargo when Cuba stopped exporting violent revolutionists to Latin America’s Alliance for Progress nations—a policy that mainly ended with Che Guevara’s death in 1967 and when Castro stopped allowing the Soviets to use the island as a base for the expan-sion of Soviet power in the hemisphere.

Well, the Soviets have been gone since 1991—more than 20 years ago—but the US-led embargo continues to choke Cuba’s economy. If the objective of our foreign policy in Cuba is to promote free-dom for its subdued citizens, we should be opening ourselves up to them, not shutting them out.

We have so much to learn from Cuba—from its successes in some areas and failures in others.

As I walked through the streets of Havana, Model-Ts chugged by, Guevara’s soaring effigy hung in wrought iron above the street, and a bronze statue of Abraham Lincoln stood in a garden on a tree-lined avenue.

I could feel the weight of 60 years of Cuban history, a history so deeply in-tertwined with that of my own country.

The move has raised hopes in many quarters—not only in the US, but around the world—that the embargo itself is now destined to disappear.

This does not detract from the fact that Cuba is still a dictatorship. The Cuban government restricts basic free-doms, like the freedoms of speech and assembly, and it owns the media.

Elections, as in most old-school Com-munist countries, offer limited options and, during periodic crackdowns, the Cuban government fills its jails with political prisoners.

However, there are real tyrants in the world with whom the US has become a close ally and many governments with much worse human rights records than Cuba—Azerbaijan, for example, whose president, Ilham Aliyev, boils his oppo-nents in oil; Saudi Arabia; Jordan; China; Bahrain; Tajikistan; Uzbekistan; and many others where torture, enforced disappearances, religious intolerance, suppression of speech and assembly, mediaeval oppression of women, sham elections and nonjudicial executions are all government practices.

Despite its poverty, Cuba has man-aged some impressive accomplishments. Cuba’s government boasts of the highest literacy rates for its population of any nation in the hemisphere. Cuba claims that its citizens enjoy universal access to health care and more doctors per capita than any other nation in the Americas. Cuba’s doctors, reportedly, have high- quality medical training.

Unlike other Caribbean islands where poverty means starvation, all Cubans receive a monthly food-ration book that provides for their basic necessities.

Even Cuban government officials ad-mit that the economy is smothered by the inefficiencies of Marxism, although they

also argue that the principal cause of the island’s economic woes is the strangling impact of the 60-year-old trade embar-go—and it is clear to everyone that the embargo first implemented during the Eisenhower administration in October 1960 unfairly punishes ordinary Cubans.

Expensive and difficultTHE embargo impedes economic devel-opment by making virtually every com-modity and every species of equipment both astronomically expensive and dif-ficult to obtain.

Worst of all, instead of punishing the regime for its human-rights restrictions, the embargo has fortified the dictator-ship by justifying oppression. It provides every Cuban with visible evidence of the bogeyman that every dictator requires—an outside enemy to justify an authori-tarian national security state.

The embargo has also given Cuban leaders a plausible monster on which to blame Cuba’s poverty by lending cre-dence to their argument that the US, not Marxism, has caused the island’s economic distress. The embargo has al-most certainly helped keep the Castro brothers (Fidel and Raul) in power for the last five decades.

It has justified the Cuban govern-ment’s oppressive measures against po-litical dissent in the same way that US na-tional security concerns have been used by some American politicians to justify incursions against our bill of rights, in-cluding the constitutional rights to jury trial, habeas corpus, effective counsel and freedom from unwarranted search and seizure, eavesdropping, cruel and unusual punishment, torturing of pris-oners, extraordinary renditions, and the freedom to travel, to name just a few.

It is almost beyond irony that the

INTER PRESS SERVICERobert F. Kennedy Jr.

A8

2ndFront PageBusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.phSaturday, January 3, 2015

8990 Holdings to launcH fewer Housing projects in 2015

By VG Cabuag

Low-cost housing developer 8990 Holdings Inc. will launch fewer projects this year, but the company will have

more available units for sale as it ramps up its medium- and high-rise developments. Based on the company’s plan, 8990 Hold-ings will have only eight project launches in 2015, down from 12 last year. However, avail-able units for sale will reach 14,010 units, up from last year’s 11,574. Most of its projects are in the key cit-ies outside Metro Manila, the company’s plan showed. Among the housing projects, which may be launched as early as this month, include the four-hectare Deca Homes in tanza, cavite; an 11.7-hectare project in catalunan Grande in Davao; and a 25-hectare horizontal project in san Lorenzo, also in Davao. these projects will be followed by the roll out of medium-rise projects in Muntinlupa by April, and in Quirino, Davao, by June. By october it will launch its 31.2-hectare development in san Mateo, Rizal. Another project will be rolled out in talisay, cebu, by December. the company’s last project for 2015 will be the Urban tower in Yakal street in Makati. the san Mateo project will have the big-gest number of units available for sale at 3,600; followed by the Muntinlupa develop-ment at 3,240; and san Lorenzo, Davao, at 3,125 units. In total, these nine projects will eat up 79.4 hectares of the company’s 335 hectares

of land bank as of september 2014. Last year 8990 Holdings used up some 105 hectares of its land bank for its project launches. Januario Jesus Atencio III, the company’s president and cEo, said the company may float at least P5 billion of either corporate bonds or secure bank credits during the first half of the year to increase its engineering capacity to build more houses. other proceeds of the float will be used for its land bank and development of proj-ects and to retire some of its higher interest-bearing loans. “we want to expand our engineering capacity. that’s one of the things we want to spend on. Right now, I’m good for 10,000 units a year,” Atencio said. He added that the company has the “habit” of accelerating project launches and the it can only do that if it has increased the capacity of its engineering by about 50 percent. Most of its housing projects involve using precast materials, which, the company claimed, can build a housing unit in just eight to 10 days, much faster than the traditional building of a house brick-by-brick, which can take months. “I’ve already increased the capacity by 33 percent in the third quarter [of 2014] from 8,000 units to 10,500 units. I need to increase to 15,000 units to be safe,” he said. “I’m trying to hit it by the first quarter of next year. If not, at least I’m on my way,” he added. By the end of 2014, the company would have at least 7,500 units built, sold and delivered to buyers, roughly equivalent to P8 billion in sales.

Kim jacinto-Henares said in a recent circular that

charitable contributions may be subject to

examination to determine their compliance with the conditions for which they

have been granted tax exemptions or incentives.

Food, beverages, tobacco got ₧8B in govt subsidies in 2012

profiteers should not exploit papal visit–cBcp

reaDY For tHe PoPe concrete barriers are being lined up along the stretch of roxas Boulevard in manila by Department of Public Works and Highways workers in preparation for the papal visit on january 15. NONIE REYES

BIR clarifies rules for tax deduction claims from donations

By David Cagahastian

The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) clarified that donations or gifts be-ing claimed as deductions from the

gross income of a taxpayer are subject to the bureau’s confirmation. BIR Commissioner Kim Jacinto-henares said in a recent circular that charitable con-tributions may be subject to examination to determine their compliance with the condi-tions for which they have been granted tax exemptions or incentives. henares issued Revenue Memorandum Circular 86-2014 to clarify the substantia-tion requirements needed to justify claims of charitable contributions as deductions to the gross income of a taxpayer. The circular said donors claiming charita-ble contributions as deductions must submit a Certificate of Donation (BIR Form 2322), which contains a donee certification and a donor’s statement of values. The donee certification indicates that the donee has received on the date indicated the subject donation, whether cash or property, and provides a description of the properties donated. It must be signed by an authorized representative of the donee organization. The donor’s statement of values requires the donor to execute a statement, which provides descriptions, acquisition costs, and net book values of the properties donated, as reflected in the financial statements of the do-nor. It must also be accompanied by a deed of sale to prove the acquisition cost of the prop-erties, which will be subject to confirmation by the BIR as to its correctness and accuracy. henares also said donee organizations, such as accredited nonstock and nonprofit organizations, charitable contributions which can be claimed as deductions to the gross income of the donor are still subject to examination by the BIR. “Under Section 235 of the National Internal Revenue Code of 1997 [Tax Code], the books of accounts and other pertinent records of tax-exempt organizations or grantees of tax incentives shall be subject to the examination by the bureau for purposes of ascertaining compliance with the conditions under which they have been granted exemptions or tax incentives, and their tax liability, if any,” the Circular said. Under the Tax Code, charitable contribu-tions to nonstock, nonprofit organizations, which are accredited by official accrediting entities as donee-institutions, are subject to limited or full deductibility from the gross income of the donor-taxpayer to determine his taxable income, subject to certain condi-tions. Such contributions may also be exempt from the donor’s tax, which is also subject to certain conditions laid down by the Tax Code and pertinent BIR regulations.

By Catherine N. Pillas

The scheduled visit of Pope Francis later this month is focused on the spiritual theme of mercy and com-

passion and Filipinos are urged to refrain from exploiting the event as an opportu-nity for profit-making, according to the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philip-pines (CBCP). “The visit has its own purpose. This is not a time for commerce and trade, although we cannot avoid certain activities for busi-ness. As much as possible, let us not use this opportunity to gain more profit,” Fr. Marvin Mejia, secretary-general of the CBCP, said of people and businesses likely to take advan-tage of tourists and the faithful to increase their business. Mejia, however, said the government has taken steps to oversee business activities that may be disadvantageous to consumers and tourists. The church official also said the CBCP, in tandem with the government, aims to ensure that the papal visit is conducted in a modest manner and that no unwarranted commercialization of the event takes place. “We don’t want this to be a reason for public fund-raising as much as possible. We are still open to donations from private groups, of course, as we cannot avoid [incur-ring] costs. But the event does not have to be extravagant. We want to provide a digni-fied welcome to the holy Father, a welcome worthy of a pope and head of state. But this is not a fund-raising event. This is purely on a voluntary basis,” Mejia emphasized. he quickly added that the CBCP finance committee has drawn up a budget for the four-day papal visit, whose specifics were not immediately available. Mejia gave assurance that the CBCP and the government have completed prepara-tions for the visit, which is scheduled to last from January 15 to 19, with emphasis on the pope’s security. “We have representatives working with groups responsible for the security, such as the Philippine National Police, the Presiden-tial Security Group and, of course, the Swiss Guards to ensure his safety,” Mejia added. “By the time the holy Father comes, ev-erything will be ready,” Mejia said.

See “Subsidies,” A2

differential versus the US that continues to be in our favor, should give us flexibility to keep rates steady or, if needed to support growth, even to cut rates,” Tetangco said. In 2014 the central bank made full use of SDA interest rates, the deposit reserve ratio, as well as its overnight policy rates, to help moderate liquidity, or M3, growth to a “more normalized” level, and keep inflation within target for the year. Inflation peaked at 4.9 percent in 2014, or just a shade lower than the target ceiling of 5 percent for the period. With the tightening measures in place, inflation moderated to 3.7 percent in Novem-ber, but is expected to decelerate further in December 2014, according to various fore-casts, including that of Tetangco himself.

BSP. . . Continued from A1

By Cai U. Ordinario

Millions of taxpayers effectively funded the financial assistance, tax privileges and tax exemptions

aggregating P8 billion extended by the government to the wholesale food, bever-ages and tobacco industry in 2012, accord-ing to the data released by the Philippine statistics Authority (PsA).

T h is deve lopment wa s extracted from the final re-sults of the PSA’s 2012 Cen-sus of Philippine Business and Industry-Wholesale and Retail Trade; Repair of Motor

Vehicles and Motorcycles. “Wholesale of food, beverages and tobacco industry located in NCR [National Capital Region] received the highest subsidies of P8 billion from the government,”

the PSA said. The PSA explained that the subsidies consist of financial assistance, or tax exemption or tax privilege, given by the government to aid and develop the industry. The wholesale food, bever-ages and tobacco industry was among the most profitable in the sector in 2012. The subsidy they collectively received also comes in the wake of another legislative proposal for a hike in the mini-mum corporate income tax of just 2 percent to 5 percent, and for personal income tax to be re-duced further to just 25 percent from the current 30 percent. Data show that this account-ed for P343.3 billion of the total

income of the wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor ve-hicles and motorcycles sector at P3.8 trillion in 2012. The PSA said the retail sales in nonspecialized stores earned the highest income of P642.5 billion, followed by the whole-sale of household goods, with P487.4 billion. Further, the retail sale of other goods in specialized stores ranked third, with P456.5 billion in 2012. however, the industry’s total expense disbursed in 2012 amounted to P3.6 trillion. Being the major contributor to income, retail sale in non-specialized stores had also the