businessmirror january 13, 2016

12
B B C T HE government allowed the 10-year Treasury bench- mark to move higher by 59.3 basis points to 4.218 percent at a bond sale on Tuesday, met by offers from a market hounded by external volatilities.  The Bureau of the Treasury (BTr) sold only P22.18 billion of the P25 billion the government intended to raise, an indication of its willingness to allow the 10-year rate to move up but by only so much.  Four months earlier, the gov- ernment thumbed down all bids tendered for the reissued T-bonds that would have generated P25 bil- lion because the market at that time wanted unreasonably high interest rates for the IOUs. The domestic bond market is comfortably liquid based on offers from the various government se- curities dealers that put forth bids aggregating P28.08 billion at Tues- day’s auction. The Treasury allowed the rate to climb to signal to the market the government is now willing to Yes, contrary to what the govern- ment and other experts have been claiming, the Philippines is actually decades away from enjoying the de- mographic dividend. A temporary restraining order (TRO), issued by the Supreme Court (SC) on Implanon in June 2015, has pre- vented the government from admin- istering the implants to poor women nationwide. While the SC has yet to decide on the fate of Implanon, the implants are currently stored in government ware- houses and could stay there until its expiration date in 2019. “Conservative groups backed by the Catholic Church have charged B M R M Conclusion M ANILABASED albularyo Tata Omeng thumbed down the plan of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) and the Philippine Institute of Traditional and Health Care (PITAHC) to recognize local healers. “Local healers do not need [certification]. I believe we’re doing a good job and we do not need the government’s inter- vention,” he said. already and we are already feeling the drop in production in various mill districts,” Varua said in a phone in- terview. The country’s sugar produc- tion season starts from September to August every year. Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) Administrator Ma. Regina Bautista-Martin earlier said the latest estimates of the agency, as of October 2015, revealed that the country’s sugar output for CY 2015 to 2016 may only reach 2.228 million metric tons (MMT), 3.55 percent lower than last crop year’s total production of 2.31 MMT. The SRA attributed the expected decline to B M G P T HE country’s sugar farmers and millers are now feeling the drop in their sugar produc- tion, as El Niño continues to linger in the Philippines, an industry group said on Tuesday. Philippine Sugar Millers Associa- tion (PSMA) President Francisco D. Varua told the BM that sugar farmers and millers in the coun- try are already seeing lower yields only about four months into the current crop year (CY). “[The decline in sugar production due to El Niño] has already been veri- fied as we go along. Milling has started PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 47.2710 n JAPAN 0.4016 n UK 68.7273 n HK 6.0903 n CHINA 7.1955 n SINGAPORE 32.9484 n AUSTRALIA 33.0335 n EU 51.3316 n SAUDI ARABIA 12.5938 Source: BSP (12 January 2016 ) www.businessmirror.com.ph n Monday 18, 2014 Vol. 10 No. 40 P. | | 7 DAYS A WEEK n Wednesday, January 13, 2016 Vol. 11 No. 97 A broader look at today’s business BusinessMirror MEDIA PARTNER OF THE YEAR 2015 ENVIRONMENTAL LEADERSHIP AWARD UNITED NATIONS MEDIA AWARD 2008 Milling has started already and we are already feeling the drop in production in various mill districts.” —Varua Now in the Philippines Out in January | Free to BusinessMirror subscribers C A 200 Maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in the Philippines C A C A INSIDE emplified in the French Mediterra- nean style of houses, which is known In the Philippines homebuyers can finally enjoy such luxury right Alabang. Versailles, a 75-hectare master-planned subdivision de- the traditional Filipino family. With French Mediterranean as and a townhouse for buyers to choose from. Five of the houses design firm with over 40 years of extensive experience in architec- ture, interior design and project management. “Versailles gains distinction from other premier villages in Mercado, principal architect and founder of the firm. “It’s like com- ing home to another country. For this, we matched the model houses with the overall European stateli- right at the beginning when one en- ters the grand gates.” e RMDA-designed model hous- that is, at the same time, simpli- fied and incorporated with design considerations to suit the Philip- pine setting. “We made a Mediterranean- tropical rendition. e windows, in. We also took into mind the posi- tion of the sun throughout different and activities are usually held in the afternoon. For this, the living Aside from sunlight and ventila- tion, the wellbeing of residents is further enhanced through stream- high ceilings. Areas such as the liv- ing room, dining room and kitchen can be interconnected to encourage comfortable interactions between family members and their guests. e development’s distinction as a French Mediterranean-in- spired community does not stop cent dancing fountain that add European sophistication. Other the ambiance of elegance, such as the Versailles Palace—the village’s centerpiece clubhouse, original Palace of Versailles in France. Indoor and outdoor ame- ing swimming pool complex, ideal for leisure and exercise. in the Philippines is a destination itself—with all the comforts and distinction reminiscent of classic relaxed life away from the bustling cities of Metro Manila. Redefining French luxury for Filipinos B R S S recently completed and turned over Anala—its first tandem building, which is inside Anuva Residences. Anuva is a residential resort community, which offers spacious condo living with modern amenities. It has 515 units and fea- Ready for occupancy, Anala fea- tures studio, one- and two-bedroom units in every floor. Each floor only has an approximate of 20 units, and each unit has a kitchen, a toilet and bath, and a laundry area. One- and two- bedroom units will have a balcony. “When we developed Anuva, we focused on low-density living to make sure that our residents have a home that truly feels like one,” said John Paul G. Reyes, SOC Land Devel- opment Corp. president. “We believe that sustainable living is possible even in a condo-living setup. We pride our- selves in providing homes that work with nature, not against it.” To help bring the distinct con- the country’s leading broadband and multimedia services provider, PLDT Home, for the installation of PLDT Home Fibr in all of Anala’s new units. PLDT Home Fibr is PLDT with speeds of up to 100 megabits per second. “Our residents deserve nothing and we definitely think that PLDT Home Fibr will be able to provide the most powerful broadband at home. eir service will fit in right with our own suite of world-class amenities,” Reyes added. Residents also enjoy the protection and convenience of a 24-hour secu- rity service, fire-detection and alarm system, and centralized garbage-col- lection system. and Alabang in Muntinlupa, Anuva 80 percent of the development’s land area is dedicated to world-class ame- tennis court, an amphitheater, yoga deck, meditation area, nature trail and a jogging path, among others. A perimeter road was also constructed to allow for safe movement of resi- dents, particularly children, in be- tween units and amenity areas. www.socland.com.ph FELIMON G. YEE JR (from left), SOC Land general manager; Justine Anne Mercado, SOC Land director; Rufina Goh, one of the first unit buyers of Anala; Farah Denise Castro, SOC Land director; and John Paul G. Reyes, president of SOC Land ANUVA TURNS OVER FIRST TANDEM BUILDING C Nale, Sandari Batulao. e awarding took place recently at the sales and marketing pavilion. its backdrop. Sandari Batulao is 10 minutes away from Metro Tagaytay and 15 minutes away from the beaches of Nasugbu, Batangas. Visit www.sandaribatulao.com for more information. F OR many pleasure seekers, living in the south of France is a dream. Aside from the sights and flavors of the countryside, people retreat to famous spots, like the Riviera, to relax and rejuvenate in style and elegance. Dumlao receives land title C PROPERTY E1 MISTER MESSI Govt tempers rise in rates of 10-year T-bonds Philippines still decades away from demographic sweet spot LIFE D1 Millers report drop in sugar output MISTER MESS Zidane’s entry breathes new life into Real Madrid B G D e Associated Press Z URICH—Now score is Lionel Messi 5, 2015, ending Cristiano Ronaldo’s two- year hold on soccer’s top individual honor. who won four straight International Football Federation (Fifa) awards from 2009 to 2012. being runner-up to his great rival for the past two years. back here on the stage,” Messi said in Spanish in his acceptance speech, “after being there in the leaving none for Ronaldo’s Real Madrid— Messi got 41.33 percent of total voting points in a 23-candidate ballot. Ronaldo received Barcelona teammate from Brazil, got 7.86 percent. Voting was by national team captains and coaches, plus invited journalists, from Fifa member-countries. As usual, Argentina captain Messi and on their own ballot papers. Messi voted for three Barcelona teammates and Ronaldo Portugal Coach Fernando Santos did put Messi second to Ronaldo. Luis Enrique was named best coach after guiding Barcelona to win the Champions League, Spain’s La Liga, Union of European Football Associaiton (UEFA) Super Cup and Club World Cup. Lloyd stood out by scoring six World Cup goals, including a stunning hat trick in the opening 16 minutes of a 5-2 rout of Japan in the final. At first unable to speak with emotion, Lloyd was loudly applauded as she prepared to begin her acceptance speech. “I honestly wouldn’t be sitting up here, player short list for the first time at age 33. 12.6 percent. Third-place Aya Miyama of Japan got 9.88 percent. Sasic also scored six goals in Canada to win the tournament Golden Boot, then retired aged just 27. Ellis won the coaching award in women’s Sasaki and Mark Sampson, who led England to third place at the World Cup. win. She scored 42.98 percent, ahead of Sasaki on 17.79 percent and Sampson’s 10.68 percent. forward Abby Wambach and Swedish Coach Pia Sundhage were rewarded. Barcelona also swept the 2011 men’s awards when Messi and then-Coach Pep Guardiola won following the club’s previous Guardiola, now coaching Bayern Munich, placed second to his former teammate on percent for Luis Enrique. Neither could attend due to team commitments. Jorge Sa placed t to a first America Me lost out the Pus Award for most beautif bicycle logged votes. Fifa to f crisis an soccer h Still, Fifa withheld the Blatter was absent on Monday due to this eight-year ban imposed by the Fifa ethics committee last month. Four of the five candidates competing to succeed Blatter in the February 26 election Jerome Champagne, Gianni Infantino and Tokyo Sexwale. Only Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim al Khalifa skipped the event. In Blatter’s absence, acting Fifa President Issa Hayatou of Cameroon made the formal also vote on restructuring and modernizing the T and Iran may filter onto the soccer pitch in the coming weeks with teams from the Champions League and the Asian Under-23 Championships. deteriorated sharply in early January when Saudi Arabia executed a prominent Shiite cleric another city. Riyadh then broke off diplomatic relations with Tehran. between the countries in the group stage of the continent’s biggest club competition and, could be as many as eight. That leaves plenty of opportunity for tensions to spill over on the field, East soccer politics at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University. with regard to international matches, particularly in countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran where political control of the sport is tight,” Dorsey told was “monitoring the situation” in both countries, but has not commented further. Saudi Arabia and Iran’s under-23 teams could competitions. And hopefully, Qatar will reach a very good level before the World Cup in 2022.” M ADRID—There is definitely something Obviously, it’s still too early to know whether he’ll succeed in his first head- coaching job, but it’s already clear that his arrival has breathed new life into the Spanish giant. the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium. Players seem to have a new attitude. Critics have stopped apparently has produced the right result. new coach. Although there was nothing unusual about the victory—anything other that the atmosphere at the Bernabeu had changed. only be happy,” Zidane said. “I am happy with our first game and with the three or four days that we had of training sessions. What I liked most was the team’s attitude.” The doubts that hung over the team when was a sense that things had improved. The confidence was back. Fans were smiling again. it was clear that they were right behind the team from beginning to end,” Zidane said. “There was a good atmosphere.” Nearly two months after an embarrassing 4-0 loss to Barcelona at the Bernabeu, spirits Florentino Perez had a peaceful night at his Benitez, who struggled to get the team back on track following the defeat to Barcelona and del Rey for using an illegible player. He was being jeered at nearly every game at home, important league games eventually led to his firing after only seven months in the job. as a manager,” said forward Gareth Bale, “We’ve only trained a few times but we are professionals and we work hard to try to win games and to carry on before.” Althou route and Zidane, the a decade a assistant w coaching e to Madrid’s third divisi “I am because th another ch 43-year-o Zidane sai manager a to do is en it.” He wil have a wee before Mad gets back against Sporting league, ag points off provisiona league lea Barcelona. game was good but i “Real Mad lot of thin do it. We h we are goi convinced SA U DI IRAN TENSIONS can now focus fully on the main mission that A players’ vote organized by international union FIFPro gave a World XI of: Manuel (Brazil, Barcelona); Sergio Ramos (Spain, Real Madrid); Thiago Silva (Brazil, Paris Saint- Germain); Marcelo (Brazil, Real Madrid); Andres Iniesta (Spain, Barcelona); Luka Modric (Croatia, Real Madrid); Paul Pogba (France, Fifa dedicated its Fair Play Award to “clubs and associations helping refugees.” SPORTS C1 BMReports GOVT TO RECOGNIZE LOCAL HEALERS AS SAFE B C U. O T HE court case involving P400 mil- lion worth of contraceptive im- plants, which will expire in 2019, is the latest addition to the list of influences seen delaying the country’s entry into the so-called demographic sweet spot. EXPERTS said the temporary restraining order slapped by the Supreme Court on the distribution of implants could impede efforts by the government to slash fertility rate and fast-track its entry into the so-called demographic sweet spot, a high-growth period when employment would be easier to find for people seeking jobs, as shown in this file photo . NONIE REYES C A A BETTER IPHONE EXPERIENCE REDEFINING FRENCH LUXURY FOR FILIPINOS

Upload: businessmirror

Post on 25-Jul-2016

248 views

Category:

Documents


0 download

DESCRIPTION

 

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: BusinessMirror January 13, 2016

B B C

THE government allowed the 10 -year Treasur y bench-mark to move higher by

59.3 basis points to 4.218 percent at a bond sale on Tuesday, met by offers from a market hounded by

external volatilities.   The Bureau of the Treasury (BTr) sold only P22.18 billion of the P25 billion the government intended to raise, an indication of its willingness to allow the 10-year rate to move up but by only so much.   Four months earlier, the gov-

ernment thumbed down all bids tendered for the reissued T-bonds that would have generated P25 bil-lion because the market at that time wanted unreasonably high interest rates for the IOUs.

The domestic bond market is comfortably liquid based on offers

from the various government se-curities dealers that put forth bids aggregating P28.08 billion at Tues-day’s auction.

The Treasury allowed the rate to climb to signal to the market the government is now willing to

Yes, contrary to what the govern-ment and other experts have been claiming, the Philippines is actually decades away from enjoying the de-mographic dividend.

A temporary restraining order (TRO), issued by the Supreme Court (SC) on Implanon in June 2015, has pre-vented the government from admin-istering the implants to poor women nationwide. 

While the SC has yet to decide on the fate of Implanon, the implants are currently stored in government ware-houses and could stay there until its expiration date in 2019. “Conservative groups backed by the Catholic Church have charged

B M R M

Conclusion

MANILABASED albularyo Tata Omeng thumbed down the plan of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) and the Philippine Institute of Traditional and

Health Care (PITAHC) to recognize local healers. “Local healers do not need [certification]. I believe we’re doing a good job and we do not need the government’s inter-vention,” he said.

already and we are already feeling the drop in production in various mill districts,” Varua said in a phone in-terview. The country’s sugar produc-tion season starts from September to August every year. Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) Administrator Ma. Regina Bautista-Martin earlier said the

latest estimates of the agency, as of October 2015, revealed that the country’s sugar output for CY 2015 to 2016 may only reach 2.228 million metric tons (MMT), 3.55 percent lower than last crop year’s total production of 2.31 MMT. The SRA attributed the expected decline to

B M G P

THE country’s sugar farmers and millers are now feeling the drop in their sugar produc-

tion, as El Niño continues to linger in the Philippines, an industry group said on Tuesday.

Philippine Sugar Millers Associa-tion (PSMA) President Francisco D. Varua told the BM that sugar farmers and millers in the coun-try are already seeing lower yields only about four months into the current crop year (CY). “[The decline in sugar production due to El Niño] has already been veri-fied as we go along. Milling has started

PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 47.2710 n JAPAN 0.4016 n UK 68.7273 n HK 6.0903 n CHINA 7.1955 n SINGAPORE 32.9484 n AUSTRALIA 33.0335 n EU 51.3316 n SAUDI ARABIA 12.5938 Source: BSP (12 January 2016 )

www.businessmirror.com.ph n Monday 18, 2014 Vol. 10 No. 40 P. | | 7 DAYS A WEEKn Wednesday, January 13, 2016 Vol. 11 No. 97

A broader look at today’s businessBusinessMirrorBusinessMirrorMEDIA PARTNER OF THE YEAR

2015 ENVIRONMENTAL LEADERSHIP AWARD

UNITED NATIONSMEDIA AWARD 2008

Milling has started already and we are already feeling the drop in

production in various mill districts.” —Varua

Now in the Philippines

BusinessMirrorOut in January | Free to BusinessMirror subscribers

C A

200Maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in the PhilippinesC A

C A

INSIDE

� e enviable lifestyle in this famed travel destination is best ex-empli� ed in the French Mediterra-nean style of houses, which is known all over the world for its timeless and classic architectural design.

In the Philippines homebuyers can � nally enjoy such luxury right in the south of Metro Manila, in the well-regarded neighborhood of Alabang. Versailles, a 75-hectare master-planned subdivision de-veloped by State Properties Corp., reinvents the charmed, suburban way of life in southern France for the traditional Filipino family.

With French Mediterranean as

the design inspiration, the devel-opment features 10 model houses and a townhouse for buyers to choose from. Five of the houses were designed by Rolando Merca-do Design Associates (RMDA), a design � rm with over 40 years of extensive experience in architec-ture, interior design and project management.

“Versailles gains distinction from other premier villages in Alabang because of its unique character,” observed Rolando B. Mercado, principal architect and founder of the � rm. “It’s like com-ing home to another country. For

this, we matched the model houses with the overall European stateli-ness of the village that can be felt right at the beginning when one en-ters the grand gates.”

� e RMDA-designed model hous-es—namely, Adelaide, Antoinette, � erese, Graciela and Ysabel—all possess an intricacy of details that is, at the same time, simpli-� ed and incorporated with design considerations to suit the Philip-pine setting.

“We made a Mediterranean-tropical rendition. � e windows, for one, are large enough to let lots of natural light and breeze to come in. We also took into mind the posi-tion of the sun throughout di� erent parts of the day in the space plan-ning. For instance, indoor games and activities are usually held in the afternoon. For this, the living room is strategically placed to avoid the heat,” Mercado explained.

Aside from sunlight and ventila-tion, the wellbeing of residents is further enhanced through stream-lined living spaces. Each house boasts of spacious interiors and high ceilings. Areas such as the liv-ing room, dining room and kitchen

can be interconnected to encourage comfortable interactions between family members and their guests.

� e development’s distinction as a French Mediterranean-in-spired community does not stop at the houses. A fully landscaped grand entrance is paired with a lighted colonnade and magni� -cent dancing fountain that add European sophistication. Other features and facilities complete the ambiance of elegance, such as the Versailles Palace—the village’s centerpiece clubhouse, which is a fully functional events venue that takes after the original Palace of Versailles in France. Indoor and outdoor ame-nities include a fully equipped gym and spa, as well as a sprawl-ing swimming pool complex, ideal for leisure and exercise.

In its own right, the Versailles exclusive residential community in the Philippines is a destination itself—with all the comforts and distinction reminiscent of classic French architectural re� nements, where Filipino families can lead a relaxed life away from the bustling cities of Metro Manila.

Redefining French luxury for Filipinos

B R S

SOC Land Development Corp. recently completed and turned over Anala—its � rst tandem

building, which is inside Anuva Residences. Anuva is a residential resort community, which o� ers spacious condo living with modern amenities. It has 515 units and fea-tures elaborate outdoor amenities.

Ready for occupancy, Anala fea-tures studio, one- and two-bedroom units in every � oor. Each � oor only has an approximate of 20 units, and each unit has a kitchen, a toilet and bath, and a laundry area. One- and two-bedroom units will have a balcony.

“When we developed Anuva, we focused on low-density living to make sure that our residents have a home that truly feels like one,” said John Paul G. Reyes, SOC Land Devel-opment Corp. president. “We believe that sustainable living is possible even in a condo-living setup. We pride our-selves in providing homes that work with nature, not against it.”

To help bring the distinct con-do-living experience to its resi-dents, SOC Land teamed up with the country’s leading broadband and multimedia services provider, PLDT Home, for the installation of PLDT Home Fibr in all of Anala’s

new units. PLDT Home Fibr is PLDT Home’s most powerful broadband with speeds of up to 100 megabits per second.

“Our residents deserve nothing less than the best-in-class services, and we de� nitely think that PLDT

Home Fibr will be able to provide the most powerful broadband at home. � eir service will � t in right with our own suite of world-class amenities,” Reyes added.

� ree high-speed elevators and staircases serve the Anuva building. Residents also enjoy the protection and convenience of a 24-hour secu-rity service, � re-detection and alarm system, and centralized garbage-col-lection system.

Strategically located between Sucat and Alabang in Muntinlupa, Anuva Residences prides itself in providing ample space inside and out. A total of 80 percent of the development’s land area is dedicated to world-class ame-nities, including swimming pools, clubhouse and a basketball court, a tennis court, an amphitheater, yoga deck, meditation area, nature trail and a jogging path, among others. A perimeter road was also constructed to allow for safe movement of resi-dents, particularly children, in be-tween units and amenity areas.

www.socland.com.ph

FELIMON G. YEE JR (from left), SOC Land general manager; Justine Anne Mercado, SOC Land director; Rufina Goh, one of the first unit buyers of Anala; Farah Denise Castro, SOC Land director; and John Paul G. Reyes, president of SOC Land

BusinessMirror

E1 | Wednesday, January 13, 2016 Editor: Tet Andolong

ANUVA TURNS OVER FIRST TANDEM BUILDING

CITYSTATE Properties and Management Corp. (CPMC) awarded Mela-ni e Dumlao her transfer certi� cate of title for a lot she purchased at Nale, Sandari Batulao. � e awarding took place recently at the sales

and marketing pavilion.CPMC is the developer of Sandari Batulao, a luxurious ecocentric moun-

tainside residential and leisure development with majestic Mount Batulao as its backdrop. Sandari Batulao is 10 minutes away from Metro Tagaytay and 15 minutes away from the beaches of Nasugbu, Batangas.

Visit www.sandaribatulao.com for more information.

FOR many pleasure seekers, living in the south of France is a dream. Aside from the

sights and fl avors of the countryside, people retreat to famous spots, like the Riviera, to relax and rejuvenate in style and elegance.

Dumlao receives land title

MELANIE DUMLAO (left), lot owner, and Maureen Azarcon, VP for Sales of Citystate Properties and Management Corp.

PROPERTY E1

MISTER MESSI

Govt tempers rise in rates of 10-year T-bonds

Philippines still decades awayfrom demographic sweet spot

LIFE D1

Millers report drop in sugar output

MISTER MESSI

Zidane’s entrybreathes new lifeinto Real Madrid SportsSportsSportsBusinessMirrorSportsSportsBusinessMirrorSports

B G D�e Associated Press

ZURICH—Now score is Lionel Messi 5, Cristiano Ronaldo 3. Messi won the Ballon d’Or trophy on Monday as the world’s best player in 2015, ending Cristiano Ronaldo’s two-

year hold on soccer’s top individual honor.“It’s incredible that it’s my fifth,” said the

28-year-old Barcelona and Argentina forward, who won four straight International Football Federation (Fifa) awards from 2009 to 2012.

Messi earned his record-extending fifth after being runner-up to his great rival for the past two years.

“It’s a very special moment for me to be back here on the stage,” Messi said in Spanish in his acceptance speech, “after being there in the audience watching Cristiano win.”

Five major titles for Barcelona last year—leaving none for Ronaldo’s Real Madrid—brought the golden ball back into Messi’s hands. It was not even close.

Messi got 41.33 percent of total voting points in a 23-candidate ballot. Ronaldo received 27.76 percent and third-place Neymar, Messi’s Barcelona teammate from Brazil, got 7.86 percent. Voting was by national team captains and coaches, plus invited journalists, from Fifa member-countries.

As usual, Argentina captain Messi and Portugal captain Ronaldo ignored each other on their own ballot papers. Messi voted for three Barcelona teammates and Ronaldo listed three Madrid colleagues. However, Portugal Coach Fernando Santos did put Messi second to Ronaldo.

It was a stellar night for Barcelona and the World Cup-winning United States women’s team.

Luis Enrique was named best coach after guiding Barcelona to win the Champions

League, Spain’s La Liga, Union of European Football Associaiton (UEFA) Super Cup and Club World Cup.

The women’s awards were won by US captain Carli Lloyd and Coach Jill Ellis.

Lloyd stood out by scoring six World Cup goals, including a stunning hat trick in the opening 16 minutes of a 5-2 rout of Japan in the final.

At first unable to speak with emotion, Lloyd was loudly applauded as she prepared to begin her acceptance speech.

“I honestly wouldn’t be sitting up here, standing up here, without my incredible teammates,” said Lloyd, who made the three-player short list for the first time at age 33.

Lloyd got 35.28 percent of the voting points, ahead of Germany’s Celia Sasic with 12.6 percent. Third-place Aya Miyama of Japan got 9.88 percent. Sasic also scored six goals in Canada to win the tournament Golden Boot, then retired aged just 27.

Ellis won the coaching award in women’s football ahead of two men: Japan Coach Norio Sasaki and Mark Sampson, who led England to third place at the World Cup.

English-born Ellis got the most dominating win. She scored 42.98 percent, ahead of Sasaki on 17.79 percent and Sampson’s 10.68 percent.

The Americans last swept the women’s awards after its 2012 Olympic title, when forward Abby Wambach and Swedish Coach Pia Sundhage were rewarded.

Barcelona also swept the 2011 men’s awards when Messi and then-Coach Pep Guardiola won following the club’s previous Champions League title.

Guardiola, now coaching Bayern Munich, placed second to his former teammate on Monday, getting 22.97 percent against for 31.08 percent for Luis Enrique. Neither could attend due to team commitments.

Chile Coach Jorge Sampaoli placed third, on 9.47 percent, for guiding the host to a first Copa America title.

Messi lost out in the Puskas Award for most beautiful goal to Wendell Lira of Brazil. Lira’s bicycle kick for Goianesia against Atletico-GO in a league game topped an online poll that logged more than 1.6 million votes.

The gala night allowed Fifa to forget its corruption crisis and many legal problems in 2015 to focus on soccer highlights.

Still, Fifa withheld the Presidential Award that Sepp Blatter would traditionally pick and present. The outgoing Blatter was absent on Monday due to this eight-year ban imposed by the Fifa ethics committee last month.

Four of the five candidates competing to succeed Blatter in the February 26 election attended on Monday: Prince Ali bin al-Hussein, Jerome Champagne, Gianni Infantino and Tokyo Sexwale. Only Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim al Khalifa skipped the event.

In Blatter’s absence, acting Fifa President Issa Hayatou of Cameroon made the formal opening speech. He noted the election meeting in Zurich where 209 member-federations will also vote on restructuring and modernizing the

THE political tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran may filter onto the soccer pitch in the coming weeks with teams from the

two nations due to play each other in the Asian Champions League and the Asian Under-23 Championships.

Relations between the countries deteriorated sharply in early January when Saudi Arabia executed a prominent Shiite cleric and Iranian protesters responded by attacking the Saudi embassy in Tehran and a consulate in another city. Riyadh then broke off diplomatic relations with Tehran.

There are already six games scheduled between the countries in the group stage of the continent’s biggest club competition and, depending on preliminary playoff results, there could be as many as eight. That leaves plenty of opportunity for tensions to spill over on the field, according to James Dorsey, an expert in Middle East soccer politics at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.

“Football is politics and that is certainly true with regard to international matches, particularly in countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran where political control of the sport is tight,” Dorsey told

and Iraq during the 2018 World Cup qualifying campaign due to instability in both of those countries.

“Iran is a safe country and if the Saudi Arabian football officials don’t agree with it, [they] must give evidence,” Kafashian was quoted as saying by the Tehran Times. “Saudi Arabia barred its citizens from traveling to Iran, but sport has nothing to do with politics.”

The AFC said in a statement last week that it was “monitoring the situation” in both countries, but has not commented further.

Saudi Arabia and Iran’s under-23 teams could

The host, Qatar, is hoping for big things from its young players as it gears up to host the 2022 World Cup. Under-23 stars Mohammed Muntari and Abdelkarim Hassan have already appeared for the senior team, giving them confidence they can add the U-23 Asian title to Qatar’s under-19 crown in 2014.

“Qatar is putting in a lot of effort and they are investing a lot in youth development,” said the under-23 team coach, Felix Sanchez of Spain. “The players will learn a lot from these competitions. And hopefully, Qatar will reach a very good level before the World Cup in 2022.”

MISTER MESSI Chile Coach

Jorge Sampaoli placed third, on 9.47 percent, for guiding the host to a first Copa America title.

Messi lost out in the Puskas

for most beautiful goal to Wendell Lira of Brazil. Lira’s bicycle kick for Goianesia against Atletico-GO in a league game topped an online poll that logged more than 1.6 million

The gala night allowed Fifa to forget its corruption crisis and many legal problems in 2015 to focus on soccer highlights.

Still, Fifa withheld the

ARGENTINE BAGS BALLON D’OALLON D’OALLON D’ R TROPHY FOR 5TH TIMER TROPHY FOR 5TH TIME

MADRID—There is definitely something different about Real Madrid since Zinedine Zidane took over.

Obviously, it’s still too early to know whether he’ll succeed in his first head-coaching job, but it’s already clear that his arrival has breathed new life into the Spanish giant.

Just like that, there’s no more jeering at the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium. Players seem to have a new attitude. Critics have stopped talking about a crisis.

Putting a former club idol in charge apparently has produced the right result.

Real Madrid routed Deportivo La Coruna 5-0 on Saturday in its first game under the new coach. Although there was nothing unusual about the victory—anything other than a win wasn’t expected—it was obvious that the atmosphere at the Bernabeu had changed.

“When a game is won the manager can only be happy,” Zidane said. “I am happy with our first game and with the three or four days that we had of training sessions. What I liked most was the team’s attitude.”

The doubts that hung over the team when Rafa Benitez was in command were not there anymore. Even before the game started, there was a sense that things had improved. The confidence was back. Fans were smiling again.

“I was absolutely delighted with the fans, it was clear that they were right behind the team from beginning to end,” Zidane said. “There was a good atmosphere.”

Nearly two months after an embarrassing 4-0 loss to Barcelona at the Bernabeu, spirits were finally high again at the club that calls itself the best in the world. For a change, Florentino Perez had a peaceful night at his presidential suite.

Real Madrid was inconsistent under Benitez, who struggled to get the team back on track following the defeat to Barcelona and the embarrassing elimination from the Copa del Rey for using an illegible player. He was being jeered at nearly every game at home, even in 8-0 and 10-2 wins, and setbacks in important league games eventually led to his firing after only seven months in the job.

“Everybody knows that Zidane was a great player and I’m sure he’ll be the same as a manager,” said forward Gareth Bale, who scored a hat trick against Deportivo. “We’ve only trained a few times but we are professionals and we work hard to try to win professionals and we work hard to try to win games and all of the titles available. We have games and all of the titles available. We have to carry on the same way, like we were doing to carry on the same way, like we were doing before.”

Although the tested Jose Mourinho was Although the tested Jose Mourinho was on the market, Perez took the popular on the market, Perez took the popular route and hired the largely inexperienced route and hired the largely inexperienced Zidane, the former France great who Zidane, the former France great who thrived with the club as a player more than thrived with the club as a player more than a decade ago. He was Carlos Ancelotti’s a decade ago. He was Carlos Ancelotti’s assistant when the club won its 10th assistant when the club won its 10th Champions League, but his head-Champions League, but his head-coaching experience was limited coaching experience was limited to Madrid’s B team in the to Madrid’s B team in the third division.third division.

“I am happy “I am happy because this is because this is another challenge another challenge for me,” the for me,” the 43-year-old 43-year-old Zidane said. “It Zidane said. “It is important to is important to be here as a be here as a manager and manager and what I want what I want to do is enjoy to do is enjoy it.”

He will He will have a week have a week before Madrid before Madrid gets back on the field, on the field, against Sporting Gijon in the Gijon in the Spanish league, again league, again at home. The at home. The team is two team is two points off provisional provisional Spanish league leader league leader Barcelona.Barcelona.

“The first “The first game was really game was really good but it is the good but it is the start and we have start and we have to keep going,” Zidane said. to keep going,” Zidane said. “Real Madrid always needs “Real Madrid always needs to win and we have to keep to win and we have to keep winning. We have to improve a winning. We have to improve a lot of things and we are going to lot of things and we are going to do it. We have weeks to work and do it. We have weeks to work and we are going to improve, I am we are going to improve, I am convinced of that.” convinced of that.” AP

C1 | WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2016ANUARY 13, 2016ANUARY

[email protected]@businessmirror.com.phEditor: Jun LomibaoAsst. Editor: Joel Orellana

SAUDI-IRAN TENSIONS MAY FILTER ONTO PITCPITCPIT H

THE International Football Federation (Fifa)/FIFPro World XI Team 2015 with Team 2015 with T Brazil’s Thiago Silva (from left), Croatia’s Luka Modric, Brazil’s Marcelo, France’s Paul Pogba, Spain’s Sergio Ramos, Brazil’s Neymar, Brazil’s Dani Alves, Argentina’s Lionel Messi, Spain’s Andres Iniesta and Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo poses with their trophies during the Fifa Ballon d’Or awarding ceremony at the Kongresshaus in Zurich, Switzerland. AP

ARGENTINA’S Lionel Messi poses with histrophy after winning the Ballon d’Or award. AP

embattled soccer body.“After these last few difficult months we

can now focus fully on the main mission that is Fifa’s,” Hayatou said in French, referring to developing the game worldwide.

A players’ vote organized by international union FIFPro gave a World XI of: Manuel Neuer (Germany, Bayern Munich); Dani Alves (Brazil, Barcelona); Sergio Ramos (Spain, Real Madrid); Thiago Silva (Brazil, Paris Saint-Germain); Marcelo (Brazil, Real Madrid); Andres Iniesta (Spain, Barcelona); Luka Modric (Croatia, Real Madrid); Paul Pogba (France, Juventus); Messi, Neymar and Ronaldo.

Fifa dedicated its Fair Play Award to “clubs and associations helping refugees.”

SPORTS C1

BMReportsGOVT TO RECOGNIZE LOCAL HEALERS AS SAFE

B C U. O

THE court case involving P400 mil-lion worth of contraceptive im-plants, which will expire in 2019, is

the latest addition to the list of influences seen delaying the country’s entry into the so-called demographic sweet spot.

EXPERTS said the temporary restraining order slapped by the Supreme Court on the distribution of implants could impede efforts by the government to slash fertility rate and fast-track its entry into the so-called demographic sweet spot, a high-growth period when employment would be easier to find for people seeking jobs, as shown in this file photo . NONIE REYES

C A

A BETTER IPHONEEXPERIENCE

REDEFINING FRENCH LUXURYFOR FILIPINOS

Page 2: BusinessMirror January 13, 2016

that the implants are abortifacient. Some of the implants have

already expired. It’s a terrible situation,” University of the Philippines economist Ernesto M. Pernia told the BM. 

Population Commission Executive Director Juan Antonio Perez III said, however, the implants are still in good condition and will be ready for immediate distribution once the TRO is lifted. 

Perez sa id the Depar tment of Hea lth (DOH) was able to d istr ibute the implants to var ious reg ions nat ionw ide bet ween Apr i l and May last year. But the DOH was forced to suspend its d istr ibut ion to women in other par ts of the countr y because of the TRO.

The DOH bought a total of

600,000 implants, according to previous reports. Implanon is included in the list of temporary contraceptives being distributed by the national government in accordance with the provisions of the reproductive health (RH) law. “The implants are still viable and these would be kept in good condition. That can be made available immediately if the TRO is lifted, so it would be good if the Supreme Court can decide on this issue favorably,” Perez said. 

He said this and the confirmation of Health Secretary Janette Garin that the RH budget for 2016 was scrapped made the population conundrum a difficult one to resolve. 

The DOH and even civil-society groups lamented the removal of the P1-billion budget to provide free condoms,

IUDs and birth-control pills nationwide. 

While the RH program still has some stock of contraceptives left over from the 2015 allocation, these are only enough to cover the requirements up to the second quarter of this year. There could be a shortage toward the second half of the 2016, according to Perez.  “[The supply] might get deteriorate toward the second half of the year. The demand is high for pills, for injectables,” Perez said.  “We hope that the cut in the budget will be mitigated somehow. Hopefully this year, otherwise our momentum will be lost or [the program] might be compromised,” he added. The lack of budget for RH and the TRO could cause the nationwide contraception use rate to drop to 23 percent from the current 46 percent, an

increase in fertility rate to above 3 percent, and more maternal deaths. Currently, Perez said the maternal death rate is at 200 deaths per 100,000 live births. An additional 50,000 births this year could mean 100 more women dying due to childbirth.

Perez said these are the consequences of the additional costs that would have to be shouldered by poor women in far-flung areas of the country. Women living in far-flung areas have little or no access to contraceptives and are forced to dig into their own pockets if they want to plan their family through artificial means. He said a month’s supply of pills costs anywhere from P40 to P400, while injectables cost P100 to several hundred pesos. Condoms are the cheapest, at less

than P20 each.  These items become more expensive in the provinces as traders have to pass on logistics cost to consumers. End-users also incur more expenses as they would have to travel to cities to buy contraceptives.

“If contraceptives are no longer available at the barangay level, buyers would have to go to town to buy what they need at higher prices. In the end, the cost to households may be higher than the real value of the contraceptives,” Perez said.

The problem with the increase in fertility is that it serves as a major hurdle to allowing the Philippines to reap the so-called demographic dividend. Contrary to the belief of some groups and individuals, the Philippines is far from being in a demographic sweet spot.  Even Economic Planning

Secretary Arsenio M. Balisacan said it will take the Philippines no less than 30 years to start reaping the demographic dividend.

Balisacan said this is mainly due to the high fertility rate in the Philippines. Fertility rate, he explained, is the number of children a woman can give birth to in her lifetime. 

Other countries, including Korea, Thailand, Indonesia and Taiwan, were able to increase investments in health and education because of the significant decline in their total fertility rate (TFR). These countries attribute the cut in fertility rate to aggressive family planning programs.

Pernia said the decline in TFR will also allow households to increase their spending for health and education. Also, the government will no longer need huge budgets for social spending

PITAHC hopes to roll out its certifica-tion program for albularyo, hilot and other types of local healers in the Philippines this year. The government-owned and -controlled corporation (GOCC) said this will ensure the safety of Filipinos who seek their help despite the lack of scien-tific basis to prove the efficacy of chants and prayers in treating diseases. “The goal is to promote the practice of traditional medicine and the use of tradi-tional products which are safe,” said Dr. Isidro Sia, executive director of PITAHC. Of the 30 PITAHC employees, three are devoted to helping groups, such as the As-sociation of Traditional Health Aid Giv-ers (ATHAG), Alyansa ng mga Manghihi-lot at Albularyo (AMA) and Hilot Pinoy. The GOCC aims to gather as many local

healers as possible for its certification pro-gram. Through these big groups, PITAHC hopes it could reach out to smaller groups of healers in the countryside. “In Tayabas, which is my hometown, there is a group of healers there. You can also find healers in Bicol, in Legazpi City. The country has many of these village healers,” Sia said.

Francisca R. Solmerano, a hilot from Imus City, said she’s quite apprehensive about reports that healers will have to secure cer-tification from the government. For almost 60 years, Solmerano has been using sam-paguita oil and prayers to help her patients.

“I could secure certification if it would be required by the government, I’m just not sure if it’s something I need. As for me, I rely on oil and faith,” Solmerano said.

For his part, Tata Omeng said he is not keen on securing government certification. “I will not lose patients if I won’t apply for it.”

PITAHC, however, clarified that it will not require healers to apply for certifica-tion. The GOCC said the certification is aimed at giving their patrons more confi-dence that the processes used by healers are not harmful. It will also not require healers to change their practice. “Traditional medicine has an important role in the health-care delivery system and it could help in achieving our ultimate goal of universal health care. We want to achieve all these, but we want to make sure that we have control,” Sia said. PITAHC said it is now organizing a na-tional committee for local healers with ATHAG, AMA and Hilot Pinoy. The three groups are also involved in the crafting of a code of ethics for hilot. Sia hopes that the program for local healers could be rolled out by 2016.

“We want guidelines for the practice of

hilot and for healers to undergo training. We want hilot to be on equal footing with other traditional healers who are into acu-puncture and naturopathy,” Sia said.

Hilot and albularyo patron Nenita Cruz said she was “thrilled” when she found out that certifications will be provided for local healers. The news prompted her to recom-mend her friends to a hilot who prepares a special treatment to sooth her aching joints.

“There are those who don’t believe in hilot. With the certification in place, they will no longer doubt the efficacy of their methods. This will also help those who cannot afford to go to hospitals or see a doctor,” Cruz said.

The certification, she added, would also help pinpoint areas where there are local healers.

PITAHC said it intends to preserve tra-ditional, natural and cultural heritage, es-pecially a community’s medical practices

and medicinal plants it uses. It also aims to come up with a fitting classification for local healers. “We will have to find a generic term. [But] manghihilom is a nice term,” Sia said. PITAHC hopes that the certification will make it easier for people to trust them. The GOCC has yet to finalize the requirements for certification, but it vowed to publish these, as well as the list of certified heal-ers on its web site. Sia, however, cautioned that the cer-tification process could be long and ar-duous. This is because the government wants to ensure that the process would be mindful of the beliefs of people who patronize local healers. “We don’t want to just dismiss supernatural beliefs. These beliefs are part of Filipino culture. We just want to make sure that these would not cause harm to people,” Sia said.

C A

C A

Govt to recognize local healers as safeBusinessMirror www.businessmirror.com.ph Wednesday, January 13, 2016A2

BMReports

Philippines still decades away from demographic sweet spot

accept higher bids, according to an economist at a local bank.

“The BTr partially awarded the 10-year paper at its auction today, careful to not let rates rise too quickly. The BTr has finally come to terms with the rising interest-rate environment but was not willing to let yields float all the way to 4.3 percent, which is the rate at which the auction would have been fully awarded,” Bank of the Philippines research officer Nicholas Antonio Mapa said.

“The market will take this as a signal that the BTr is willing to accept higher bids but that the rise in yields will be graduated, to keep borrowing costs for the government at a minimum,” he added. 

Govt tempers rise in rates of 10-year T-bonds

C A

and could use these funds instead to construct more public infrastructure. More investments in infrastructure would bring the Philippines closer to enjoying the demographic dividend—the accelerated economic growth that may result from a rapid decline in a country’s fertility and the subsequent change in the population age structure.

“The pattern of fertility rate now [in the Philippines], it’s declining but at a very slow rate of decline compared to what happened to our neighbors. That window of opportunity [demographic dividend] will not happen soon,” Balisacan said. 

Page 3: BusinessMirror January 13, 2016

BusinessMirror Wednesday, January 13, [email protected]

BMReportsNext administration must cut power rates to attract manufacturers to locate in PHLBRINGING down the cost of

power should be on the agenda of the next administration to

give the country a chance to stand toe-to-toe against our regional competitors in attracting investors in the manufacturing sector, said Rick Santos, newly installed president of the American Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines (AmCham).

Santos said that, while the Phil-ippines is expected to sustain its growth momentum, even with the foreseeable cooling of China’s economy, it should be wary of its ri-vals; particularly Vietnam, whose exports growth bucked the slow-down in neighboring economies.

“I don’t see Vietnam as a direct competitor of the Philippines on the business-process outsourcing side but on the side of manufactur-ing,” Santos said in an interview on Tuesday.

“For the next administration, the high cost of power needs to be addressed, as our rates remain one of the highest in Southeast Asia,” he added.

This is key for the Philippines to benefit from the slowdown of the world’s second-biggest economy, effectively sending a good signal to manufacturing firms looking for alternative sites of production, Santos said.

Ramping up the manufacturing sector has been the cornerstone of the Department of Trade and Industry’s (DTI) industry-devel-opment thrust.

The DTI recently boosted its budget for its Manufacturing Re-surgence Program to P289 billion for 2016.

The need to get an edge over Vietnam is underlined further by the fact that the East Asian nation

is included in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, and has been aggressive in concluding free-trade agreements with coun-tries that are also the Philippines’s top trading partners.

Economists said Vietnam’s inclusion in the TPP serves as a catalyst to attract more foreign investments to Vietnam, espe-cially in garments and textile manufacturing.

Vietnam’s 10.3-percent growth in manufacturing in the fourth quarter of 2015 dwarfs the 1.0-per-cent growth in the Philippines’s value of production index recorded last November.

Santos said the other initia-tives that the next administration should tackle include quicker in-frastructure rollout, reforms in the judicial branch and transparency in governance. Catherine N. Pillas

31.79%Drop in raw-sugar production from September 1 to December 13

PHILIPPINE Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) President George Barcelon (left) briefs Martin Tlapa, deputy minister of Foreign Affairs for Economic Relations of the Czech Republic, on the various investment opportunities in the country, including opportunities in the manufacturing sector, at the PCCI office in McKinley, Taguig City. ROY DOMINGOFor the next administration, the

high cost of power needs to be addressed as our rates remain one of the highest in Southeast Asia.”—Santos

for 38.3 percent among elec-tronic products. It amounted to $1.961 billion in November 2015, higher than the $1.855 billion in November 2014.

“The country’s positive per-formance in the sales of semicon-ductors bucked the international trend, as worldwide sales were down in November 2015. Thus, the modest growth in exports of goods from the electronics and semiconductors segment is expected to continue propping up total merchandise exports,” Balisacan siad.

The country’s total export receipts from its top-10 market destinations for the month of November 2015 was valued at $4.340 billion, or 84.8 percent, of the total.

Japan, including Okinawa, remained as the country’s top export destination with revenue amounting to $1.091 bi l l ion, comprising a 21.3-percent share to total exports for November 2015. However, this was a 1.8-per-cent decrease from $1.112 bil-lion recorded in the same month a year ago.

The United States ranked sec-ond, accounting for 14 percent of total exports, with export receipts valued at $716.73 million in No-vember 2015. It recorded an in-crease of 5.1 percent from $682.11 million in same month last year.

Hong Kong ranked third with $557.71 million, or a 10.9-percent share in the total exports. It grew by 21.3 percent from $459.89 m i l l ion i n t he sa me mont h a year ago.

A3

the “unfavorable” weather conditions and reduction of sugarcane areas.

Furthermore, data from the SRA showed that raw-sugar production from September 1 to December 13 declined by 31.79 percent to 511,885 metric tons (MT), as compared to 750,488 MT reported in the same period last year.

To combat the impacts of the prolonged dry spell, Varua said the PSMA is making arrangements with the Department of Agriculture (DA) to conduct cloud-seeding operations in different parts of the country.

The SRA, for its part, assured that it will closely monitor sugar production in 2016 and will be ready to “ensure stable and sufficient supply of sugar, notwithstanding severe droughts caused by El Niño.”

Varua said the sugar farmers and millers are also expressing their worries over the lingering dry spell ’s effect to the next cropping season.

“Hopefully, it will not drastically affect the production in the next crop year. If the El Niño persists, then even the next crop year will also be affected,” he said.

Meanwhile, the industry leader said based on initial estimates, at least 130,000 MT of raw sugar will be shipped to the US to fill up the country’s quota.

“The initial report is the whole quota of 130,000 to the US will be shipped out. That’s

Risks are skewed toward the downside, as a more protracted

slowdown across emerging economies could have substantial spillovers to other developing economies.”—Balisacan

B CAI U. ORDINARIO

THE country’s lackluster export performance is expected to continue

this year on the back of weak global economic growth, ac-cording to the National Eco-nomic and Development Au-thority (Neda). 

In a statement, Economic Planning Secretary Arsenio M. Balisacan said that while the country’s export earnings may post a “slight uptick” this year, external factors, such as weak global demand will paint a grim picture in export performance.   

“Although a slight uptick is anticipated in 2016 for exports, risks are skewed to-ward the downside, as a more protracted slowdown across emerging economies could have substantial spillovers to other developing econo-mies and eventual ly hold back recovery in advanced economies,” Balisacan said.

To minimize the country’s export losses, Balisacan urged the government to improve the competitiveness of local industries, especially in the light of the Asean economic integration, which took effect on January 1, 2016.

Balisacan said the govern-ment can do this by encouraging local businesses to diversify their products and expand their export market.

The country, he said, can also maximize the Asean single

market, and trade with nontradi-tional export markets in the region.

“ The government needs to continue to strengthen efforts to improve competitiveness of our local industries as the other Asean member-states continue to improve theirs. A well-organized and coordinated mechanism that can provide negotiating experi-ence, policy research and analyti-cal preparation support, as well as physical and financial resources, will need to be institutionalized,” Balisacan said.

In November 2015 the Philip-pine Statistics Authority (PSA) disclosed that export earnings posted a contraction of 1.1 percent to $5.12 billion.

Merchandise exports for the Januar y-to-November per iod posted a contraction of 5.8 per-cent to $53.988 bi l l ion from $57.299 billion in the same pe-riod in 2014.

This lackluster performance will cost the country to miss its export-growth target of 5 percent in 2015. The country’s export per-formance has been in the red for the first 11 months of 2015 except for March, when exports posted a 2-percent growth. 

“In order to achieve the full-year target for 2015, merchandise exports in December 2015 would have to register a total of $11 bil-lion, equivalent to a growth of 129 percent,” Balisacan said.

Still, Balisacan said the Phil-ippines recorded the least export decline among the monitored economies in East and Southeast Asia for November 2015. Except for Vietnam, most economies in the region posted slower growth in merchandise exports.

He added that all key com-modities registered double-digit declines, except for manufactured goods, which posted a 3.6-percent year-on-year increase, as ship-ments of electronic products con-tinued to recover.

The country’s top export, elec-tronic products, booked $2.774 billion worth of earnings. This represented 54.2 percent of the tota l exports revenue in November 2015. 

It increased by 9.3 percent from $2.539 billion registered in November 2014. The increase was largely due to the 5.7-percent growth in Components/Devices (Semiconductors). 

Semiconductors accounted

Exporters to continue seeing drop in sales as weak demand to persist

Millers report drop in sugar output

C A

the estimate that I’m getting from all the traders that I have contacted,” Varua said.

The SRA recently released Sugar Order 4, authorizing the export of 135,508 MT of sugar to the US under the tariff quota scheme.

“All ‘A’ or US quota sugar quedan-permits issued in previous crop years are eligible for shipment...provided that the ‘A’ or US Sugar quota sugar quedan-permits are verif ied and reinstated,” the SO read.

“In the event the volume of reinstated ‘A’ sugar is not sufficient to fil l up the allocation to the Philippines, locally produced, original ‘B’ or domestic market sugar/quedans for CY 2015 to 2016 and for two previous crop years shall be eligible for shipment to the US,” it added.

The SRA said those who will export to the US using domestic sugar may replace the volume by importing raw or refined sugar from the world market, keeping in mind the volume needed to balance supply and demand in the local market.

Page 4: BusinessMirror January 13, 2016

BusinessMirror [email protected] A4

B VG C D C

B J L. M

ENVIRONMENT Secretary Ramon J.P. Paje on Tuesday said that maintaining

the twin policies of imposing a nationwide total log ban and reforestation are a must to sustain gains achieved by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) in the forestry sector.

The next administration, he said, should not lift the logging ban or slow down reforestation activities.

Paje also stressed the need to continue forest-recovery efforts as mandated under Executive Order (EO) 23 signed by President Aquino in February 1, 2011, declaring a moratorium on the cutting and harvesting of timber in natural and residual forests; and EO 26 signed on February 24, 2011, establishing the National Greening Program (NGP).

The DENR chief said preventing deforestation while implementing massive reforestation activities are essential measures in building the country’s resilience to natural calamities, and as a strategy to fulfill its international commitment to reduce the country’s carbon emission by 70 percent from 2020 to 2030. Because of the successful implementation of the twin policies, Paje said the country gained international recognition of its reforestation program.

The 2015 Global Forest Resources Assessment 2015 report of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

ranked the Philippines as the fifth among countries reporting greatest annual forest area gained from 2010 to 2015, with a total of 2.4 million hectares, or an average of 350,000 hectares per year. “Sana kahit iba na ang DENR secretary, hindi ma-lift ang total log ban,” Paje said.

He added that the successful implementation of the total log ban and the massive reforestation is something the Aquino administration can truly be proud of.

The number of illegal logging hot spots in the country further went down from 31 in 2014 to 23 by the end of 2015, Paje said. Before President Aquino took over in June 2010, there were a total of 197 illegal-logging hot spots. This year, Paje said, the target is to neutralize illegal-logging syndicates operating in the remaining illegal-logging hot spots before Mr. Aquino’s Palace term ends in June 2015. The anti-illegal logging campaign, Paje said, led to the confiscation of over 30 million board feet of illegally cut and processed logs that were used to manufacture a total of 146,471 school armchairs and furniture and repair 388 school buildings. Confiscated forest products donated to other government agencies, meanwhile, were converted to 1,820 chairs, 105 double-deck beds, 110 hospital

beds, and partly used for repairs of 102 core shelters and 18 buildings. The NGP, on other hand, has so far generated close to 2.9 million jobs and employed 413,362 people. “Ito iyong mga programs na hindi na-implement ng maayos before,” Paje, who started his career in the DENR as a forester, said.

He added that the next DENR chief should also be able to maintain the balance between protecting the environment and exploiting the country’s natural resources to ensure sustainable development which, he said, marks his accomplishment as the country’s chief steward of the environment and natural resources for nearly six years. “We were able to somehow maintain the balance. The biggest challenge to this department is to maintain the balance to sustain development,” Paje said.

“You cannot be 100-percent pro-environment or 100-percent pro-industry. Dapat balanced,” he added.

Director Ricardo Calderon of the DENR’s Forest Management Bureau said lifting the total log ban will revert back to the situation before the NGP was implemented, wherein the country is losing at least 110 hectares of forest every year.

“The next administration will have to think twice before lifting the total log ban. The people will not let that happen because they are very much aware of the importance of the forest because of the impact of climate change.”

Wednesday, January 13, 2016

BMReports

At least six firms have repur-chased their own shares following the successive drop in their shares prices; drops that began on the first trading day of the year.

The bearishness of the market has been pinned on worries on Chi-na’s economy. These worries wiped out some P700 billion in value of the combined market capitaliza-tion of listed firms as foreign funds dumped Philippine shares.

But Communications Secretary Herminio B. Coloma Jr. presented a rather optimistic face in a news conference on Tuesday. Coloma said the Aquino administration considers investor sentiments driving share prices downward are contrary to the outlook on the Philippine economy as issued by ratings agencies.

Coloma explained in Tagalog the market is participated into by foreign companies with global or regional operations.

Every move they make, their busi-ness decisions, are affected by devel-opments in other economies, he said, adding “this is part of the dynamics of an active market.”

“’Yung tinatawag na bear mar-ket ay maaari din ’yang magbago sa darating na panahon at maging bull market naman.”

RecoverySHARE prices recovered on Tues-day, gaining 42.29 points as the Philippine Stock Exchange in-dex (PSEi) clawed its way back at 6,330.55 points.

The main index was up all day on January 12, even reaching as high

Palace sees short slump as firms buy back shares

PUBLICLY listed companies took advantage of the slump on Tuesday and initiated share buybacks, which

Malacañang sees as market forces at work.

as 6,433.75 during the morning trade. Traders said investors decided to sell during the afternoon trade, paring gains.

Nonetheless, other subindices were mostly up.

The broader All Shares index gained 17.49 to 3,645.46; the Finan-cials index rose 17.14 to 1,453.43; the Holding Firms index dropped 0.16 to 6,012.61; the Services in-dex was up 6.98 to 1,390.66; the Mining and Oil index fell 59.44 to 9,189.98; and the Property index climbed 28.40 to 2,573.92.

Value of trade, however, was still thin at P4.69 billion. Gainers led losers 96 to 77 and 45 shares were unchanged.

Most of the day’s top traded were up. Ayala Land Inc. was un-changed at P30; SM Prime Hold-ings Inc. rose 0.62 to P19.82; Ayala Corp., dropped P5 to P660; Met-ropolitan Bank and Trust Co. rose P0.95 to P69.95; Megaworld Corp. increased P0.06 to P3.58; and Bank of the Philippine Islands climbed P1.85 to P83.10.

“The [market] recovery is nor-mal following the steep sell-off. The market bounced today as there are no fundamental factors that would

Paje to next DENR chief: Pursue total log ban, sustain reforestation program

prevent it from recovering,” said April Lynn Tan, head of research at COL Financial Group Inc.

BuybackCOL Financial Group’s Tan also sees the buyback tack of listed firms on Tuesday in a positive lens.

“This development indicates their respective share prices have become attractive given the steep sell-off in the past week, including last Monday.”

The firms that initiated a buy-back program on Tuesday include the Lopez-led Energy Development Corp. (EDC), port operator Interna-

tional Container Terminal Services Inc. (ICTSI), property firm Terminal Belle Corp., casino operator Bloom-berry Resorts Corp., construction firm Phinma Corp. and consumer goods maker Splash Corp.

A share buyback is usually good for a company if it plans to reduce the number of its shares on the market, thereby increas-ing value and solidifying control of the firm.

Lexter Azurin, analyst at Uni-capital Securities Inc., explained that a buyback program is a reme-dial measure to support the value of these companies’ shares, as well as

to take advantage of the resulting low prices of the shares.

Astro del Castillo, president and managing director of First Grade Finance Inc., said the companies are taking advantage of the situation to boost the confidence of the investors and the shareholders to the company.

“It’s a good investment, as well, given the prospects that it may reap in the future,” del Castillo said.

The EDC has earmarked P4 bil-lion for its buyback program, and has bought some 900,000 shares, with price starting at 5.53 a share.

ICTSI, on the other hand, has repurchased 550,000 shares

The number of listed firms that began buying back shares on January 12

6

at P58 per share, equivalent to P337.83 million.

Belle, likewise, bought back 839,000 shares with prices ranging from P2.40 to P2.54 a share in the amount of P141.67 million.

Meanwhile, Phinma and Splash also repurchased their own shares with P14.03 million and P1.88 mil-lion, respectively.

OutlookCOLOMA said that, aside from mar-ket forces, the outlook by investors on the Philippine economy should also affect the prices of stocks.

The latest outlook by global credit-rating agencies show their satisfaction on our economic performance, Coloma said in Tagalog during a briefing for Palace reporters.

He also cited past achieve-ments by President Aquino, such as getting praise from foreign leaders and a thick schedule of meetings with foreign business-men and investors.

These, he claims, show the latter’s trust in the vitality and stability of the Philippine economy.

Credit-rating agency Moody’s Investors Service has retained last December the Philippines’s credit rating at Baa2, or one notch above the minimum investment grade, with a stable outlook. Standard & Poor’s also has the same credit rating for the Phil-ippine government—one notch above the minimum investment grade—while Fitch Ratings rates the Philippines at the minimum investment grade.

It was only during this admin-istration that the Philippines had achieved investment grade status from the three most reputable credit- ratings agencies, although the invest-ment grade status refers mostly to the government’s risk of defaulting on its debt, not in the country’s eco-nomic growth outlook.

THIS file photo shows a trader looking at a tearsheet paper at the Philippine Stock Exchange Trading floor in Makati City, on September 17, 2007. Listed firms began buying back shares on January 12 at the onset of bearish trading, which Communications Secretary Herminio B. Coloma Jr. described as temporary. NONIE REYES

Size of forest area gained annually from 2010 to 2015

350,000 ha

Page 5: BusinessMirror January 13, 2016

[email protected] Wednesday, January 13, 2016 A5

AseanWednesday

7.5%

500,000

Indonesia rate forecasts divided as China shatters post-Fed calmJUST as slowing inflation seemed

to have opened the door for Bank Indonesia to cut interest rates, the

tumultuous start to the year in China may make policy-makers think twice.

Central bank Governor Agus Mar-towardojo told reporters in Jakarta on Friday that he would prioritize stability, a shift in tone from Bank In-donesia’s December statement that the room to loosen was “getting big-ger.” Even so, nine of 15 economists surveyed by Bloomberg forecast benchmark borrowing costs will be lowered to 7.25 percent on Thursday, with the rest expecting them to be held at 7.5 percent. A premature cut could weaken the rupiah, which has fallen 0.5 percent this year, following a 10-percent drop in 2015.

“They would be advised, for the protection of the currency, to wait a little bit longer,” said Ray Farris, head of Asia macro strategy at Cred-it Suisse Group AG in Singapore. “It would be very useful to have a couple of months of data that say the economy is beginning to pick up and, potentially, to get some equity inf lows associated with

Current Bank Indonesia benchmark interest rate

The number of online merchants in Thailand

and has raised concern Asia’s larg-est economy may be in worse shape than previously thought.

Coordinating Minister for Eco-nomic Affairs Darmin Nasution, a former central bank governor, has been invited to attend the two-day policy meeting that starts on Wednesday, the monetary author-ity said in a statement. Such a move is allowed by law, but the minister won’t have any voting rights.

The yuan has fallen 1.2 percent this year as China’s central bank weakened its daily fixings, provid-ing a fresh headwind for Asian ex-change rates that rallied after the Federal Reserve (the Fed) promised last month to tighten only gradually when it raised rates for the first time in almost a decade.

The calm that prevailed following the Fed’s move has been shattered by China, said Wellian Wiranto, an economist at Oversea-Chinese Bank-ing Corp. in Singapore. There is still some hope that the market will start to stabilize this week, he said.

Sacrificing growthTHE economy probably expanded 4.73 percent in 2015, missing the 5.7- percent budget target, the Finance Ministry said this month. Growth of 5.2 percent is forecast for this year, according to a Bloomberg survey.

Inflation slowed to 3.35 percent last December, from 4.89 percent last November, after exceeding the central bank’s 3-percent to 5-percent target range since October 2014.

The rupiah has strengthened 0.7 percent against the dollar last month in the best performance in emerging-market Asia. That’s a re-versal of fortune for a currency that dropped 34 percent over the four years through 2015.

Indonesia’s central bank will cut on Thursday as it has been sacrific-ing growth for rupiah stability, which has made the country’s government bonds Asia’s most attractive carry trade, Tim Condon, head of research at ING Groep NV in Singapore, wrote in a research note on Monday. The Dutch lender sees the key rate at 6.5 percent by year-end.

Bank Indonesia will be one of the first regional authorities to lower borrowing costs this year and will move in either January or Febru-ary, according to an Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. research note released on January 8 by Glenn Maguire, chief economist for Asia Pacific in Singapore. An in-dex of rupiah sovereign bonds, which jumped the most in 10 weeks on the day of the monetary authority’s statement last December, rose 0.9 percent over the last three months.

Rupiah stabilityTHERE is no urgent need to cut rates and a stable rupiah is argu-ably more important for growth, according to a DBS Bank Ltd. re-search note on Monday by ana-lysts including Gundy Cahyadi in Singapore. At a time when there is talk of a currency war cutting bor-rowing costs may send the wrong signal, he wrote.

Bank Indonesia has held its benchmark interest rate at 7.5 per-cent since lowering it from 7.75 per-cent last February. The economy is dependent on inflows to finance a persistent current account deficit and reductions in borrowing costs could weaken the rupiah and reduce the allure of local currency sover-eign bonds that attracted 97.2 tril-lion rupiah ($7 billion) of inflows last year. That offset a $1.6-billion outflow from equities.

“While the latest inflation and external balance data indicate that the time is ripe for monetary easing, the rupiah’s stability could be the last piece of the puzzle,” said Taka-hide Irimura, a senior economist at Mitsubishi UFJ Kokusai Asset Management Co. in Tokyo. “Given the volatility triggered by China, there’s a higher possibility Bank Indonesia will stay on hold again.”

Bloomberg News

some positive surprises.”Indonesia’s central bank is com-

ing under political pressure to cut borrowing costs to stimulate an economy that is forecast to have grown at the weakest rate since 2009 last year. While inflation was the slowest since at least 2010 last December, last week’s plunge in Chi-nese stocks and the yuan threatens to ignite a regional currency war

SINGAPORE’S bond market may see its second default in as many months after credi-

tors said Pacific Andes Resources Development Ltd. hasn’t honored some obligations on S$200 million ($139 million) of notes.

The Hong Kong-based firm said it received a letter from bond trustee HSBC Holdings Plc. alleg-ing breaches on the 2017 secu-rities in a Singapore exchange filing on January 10. Investors can request full immediate re-payment if the company’s shares are suspended, according to the bond’s terms. Pacific Andes has halted trading in Singapore since November 25.

The HSBC letter adds a new twist to skirmishes at the trou-bled fishery group amid court battles and regulatory probes in Singapore and Hong Kong into its business transactions. Last No-vember Singapore’s bond market had its first default since 2009, when Indonesian phone retailer PT Trikomsel Oke missed coupon payments on its debt.

“This situation is opening a can of worms in Singapore,” said Raymond Chia, head of credit research for Asia ex-Japan in Singapore at Schroder Invest-ment Management. “Very few local corporate bonds are rated, and a number of issuers have weak credit profiles or challeng-ing business dynamics, and that’s starting to show.”

Singapore investors have turned to high yielding bonds in the past seven years after inter-est rates hit a record low in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. The number of notes with coupons of more than 6 percent, a level associated with speculative grade in the local market, jumped from one in 2010 to 24 in 2014, before falling to 13 last year.

Notes issued by Pacific Andes and its unit China Fishery Group Ltd. are mired in distressed lev-els. The 8.5 percent bonds due July 2017 were last quoted at 20.5 cents on the dollar on January 11, according to prices compiled by Bloomberg.

The securities fell 34 cents last December, capping a 73-cent plunge for the year.

Hong Kong-listed Pacific Andes International Holdings Ltd. owns about 66 percent of Pacific Andes Resources Development, which, in turn, controls 69.7 percent of China Fishery Group, according to company filings.

Both China Fishery and Pacific Andes have to make semi-annual coupon payments on January 30.

The Pacific Andes group is seeking to sell its Peru business while it fights some creditors to dismiss winding-up petitions and provisional liquidators in Hong Kong and Cayman Islands.

Geoffrey Walsh, a Hong Kong-based spokesman for Pacific Andes, declined to comment on the HSBC notice. The company is seeking legal advice on the mat-ter and is “in an active dialogue with a substantial holder of the bonds with a view to establishing a transparent process for discus-sions” with other debt holders, it said in the filing.

“There hadn’t been a default in the Singapore dollar market in so many years that investors weren’t vigilant enough and a certain complacency had set in,” said Todd Schubert, the head of fixed-income research at Bank of Sin-gapore, Oversea-Chinese Bank-ing Corp.’s private banking unit. “Over the years, as the number of outside, nongovernment-related issuers increased, so did the potential for a default.”

Bloomberg News

THIS year will be the tipping point for Thailand’s mobile payment and digital wallet

system, which could become a viable everyday payment tool over the next few years, industry veterans say.

This will be fueled by the prolif-eration of smartphones, the growing adoption of a digital lifestyle, a solid telecommunication infrastructure and a greater variety of service pro-viders, as well as the government’s policy to promote national electronic payment (e-payment).

Apart from mobile operators—Advanced Info Service (AIS) through its mPay service, DTAC’s PaysBuy and True Move’s TrueMoney—several new players are entering the market.

They are Omise Co., 2C2P (Thai-land), Line’s Line Pay, Pay Solution’s Pay Social, LnwShop’s Lnw Pay and PayAll, owned by popular actor Rat-tapoom “Film” Tokongsap.

Lazada (Thailand)’s helloPay and IP Payment Solution Co.’s PayforU are expected to join the mobile pay-ment and e-payment gateway busi-ness this year.

In late December, the cabinet approved the Finance Ministry’s national e-payment master plan to promote electronic payment across the board with a view to creating a cashless society.

The e-payment master plan is ex-pected to save the country 75 billion baht. Of the total, 30 billion baht would come from reducing the use of cash and checks, and the remain-ing 45 billion from the decline in traditional paper-based billing and statements.

The government’s Any ID scheme —which will enable anyone to trans-fer money and make financial trans-actions using their ID card, mobile number or e-mail address—and the expansion of electronic data capture will be completed by this June.

E-payment is aimed at allowing people to access money-transfer services even if they do not have a bank account, serving e-commerce, plugging loopholes in the tax sys-tem and directing subsidies to the underprivileged.

Last year’s mobile payment and e-wallet transactions on the three major mobile networks—AIS, DTAC and True Move—are expected to be worth 90 billion baht.

Singapore’s next bond default looms in Pacific Andes tussle

Korkit Danchaivichit, deputy secretary-general of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunica-tions Commission, says the regula-tor and the Bank of Thailand will discuss how to regulate the mobile money market, expected to gain mo-mentum in the year ahead.

The full commercial launch of fourth-generation (4G) wireless broadband service, plus the greater availability of affordable 4G-en-abled handsets, are also expected to boost the number of mobile In-ternet users, eventually leading to increasing use of mobile payment and digital wallets.

“This year we’ll see changes in consumer demographics, which will drive the adoption of mobile payment and trends in the utilization of mo-bile banking,” Korkit says.

The top-up prepaid mobile-phone market is expected to be worth 5 bil-lion baht per year, with mobile op-erators earning 20 million baht to 30 million baht in interest.

The mobile wallet and payment system will enable consumers to pay the actual cost of goods and services on a satang basis rather than be-ing rounded up to the nearest baht, Korkit says. The current system al-lows cash payments in 25, 50 and 75 satang to 1 baht.

“We expect mobile-payment transactions to surge by 1,000 per-cent this year.”

At least 30 million people in Thai-land have never utilized mobile pay-ment, representing a vast opportu-nity for the sector, says Punnamas Vichitkulwongsa, chief executive of Ascend Group, the parent firm of TrueMoney.

Target customers for mobile pay-ment are credit-card users aged 15 to 40 who are willing to pay for online services, and nonbank users.

So far, 16 million customers

have downloaded mobile-wallet apps from the three major mobile operators, but fewer that 3 million are active users.

Punnamas, who is also chairman of the Thailand E-payment Associa-tion, says the national e-payment system requires a clear and concrete policy regarding the amount of mo-bile numbers and e-mail addresses allowed to conduct payment trans-actions per user.

Strict rules governing digital money transfers are essential, as money transfers account for 70 per-cent of overall mobile transactions.

In order to strengthen the mo-bile payment and mobile money ecosystem, Punnamas says policy-makers need to allow neutral and independent clearing houses to provide the infrastructure for the automated processing and settle-ment of transactions to nonbank service providers.

In addition, he says a pooled mobile-payment infrastructure is needed to reduce the investment costs and cut the operating costs of payment service providers.

TrueMoney aims to become Asean’s leading player over the next few years, Punnamas says. Last year the company spent 1 billion baht in

the six countries where it has op-erations to cash in on the growth of e-payment.

“Mobile payment in Thailand will take time to fully take off since the banking system and facilities are behind those of Singapore,” says Su-preecha Limpikanjanakowit, manag-ing director of Advanced mPay, the mobile payment arm of AIS.

He urges the government to speed up the development of a digi-tal economy with the implementa-tion of security standards for digi-tal payments, including an e-tax invoice system.

“Encouraging consumers to use social commerce technologies will spur the use of mobile payment,” says Pawoot Pongwittayapanu, chief executive of efrastructure Inc., the parent company of Pay Solutions, a Bangkok-based social-media pay-ment service provider under the Pay Social brand.

There are around 500,000 online merchants in Thailand, 10,515 of which are online stores on Facebook and 11,213 on Instagram.

As of August 31, 2015, there were 37 million Facebook users and 7.8 million Instagram users in Thailand.

Pawoot adds that transport ser-vices, including the skytrain, subway

and airport rail links, will be another key area driving the mass adoption of mobile payment.

Kanokwan Wongwatanasin, chief executive of IP Payment Solution, says the company foresees significant opportunities to accelerate mobile payment and digital wallet services, thanks to the greater network cov-erage of the telecom infrastructure and increasing consumer awareness.

The company is spending 200 mil-lion baht developing its own mobile- payment gateway and services to capitalize on growing opportunities.

IP Payment Solution also provides a mobile-payment gateway and e-money system to organizations who want to provide e-payment services without investing in the necessary infrastructure.

“Thailand’s e-payment market is the fourth fastest growing in Asia,” says Michael Yeo, research manager of IDC Financial Insights, adding that Thailand is one of the most promising markets for mobile pay-ments in Asia.

Thailand’s cashless payments grew by 20 percent on average dur-ing 2010 to 2015, the fourth fastest growth behind China, India and In-donesia and ahead of Malaysia and Singapore, both at 9 percent. MCT

Thailand transitioning into cashless society via e-payment plan

WHILE Thailand moves to progress into a cashless society through its national e-payment master plan, it remains vulnerable to hacking, as what happened recently, hackers took over several police web sites in Thailand, replacing the home pages with a message saying, “Failed law. We want justice!” The police on Tuesday said they were investigating if the hack was in response to a Thai court decision that has been widely protested in neighboring Myanmar. AP

Page 6: BusinessMirror January 13, 2016

The WorldWednesday, January 13, 2016 | Editor: Lyn Resurreccion BusinessMirrorA6

Food, supplies reach besieged Syrian towns

The aid shipments, which were organized by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Syrian Red Crescent and the United Nations, arrived late on Monday in Madaya, an opposition-held town northwest of Damascus that has been besieged by progov-ernment forces for months, amid reports of starvation.

As many as 42,000 inhabitants of Madaya have been trapped with limited access to food and medi-cine, according to humanitarian groups, leading to elevated levels of malnutrition.

Reports from local aid agen-cies have indicated that at least 50 people have died from starvation and a lack of medical care in Ma-daya, according to a statement on Monday from eight international humanitarian organizations.

T he assistance to Madaya marked the culmination of com-plex negotiations that also al-lowed aid convoys on Monday to enter Fouaa and K afraya, progovernment towns in Idlib province, some 180 miles north of Damascus, the capital.

The two northern towns, home to more than 20,000 people, predominantly Shiite Muslims, have been cut off for more than two years by armed opposition g roups, inc luding the Nusra

Front, the official al-Qaeda af-filiate in Syria. Shiites are viewed as apostates by al-Qaeda and other Sunni Islamist factions that dominate the armed oppo-sition in Syria.

Four trucks bearing aid had cleared the last government check-point outside Madaya and were in the town on Monday, Pawel Krzysiek, spokesman for the Syr-ian delegation of the ICRC, said in a phone interview from the outskirts of Madaya.

An additional 40 trucks were slated to go in, the spokesman said, adding that off-loading op-erations of 21 trucks had already begun in the northern towns of Fouaa and Kafraya.

“It’s a matter of coordination and synchronization among the differ-ent groups,” Krzysiek said, stress-ing the complexity of an operation that crosses government and rebel lines and involves negotiations with various warring factions.

Apart from food and water, the aid trucks are delivering infant for-mula, blankets, medicine and surgi-cal equipment to the towns, which are also dealing with cold winter weather, officials said.

The supplies entering the towns are sufficient to feed 60,000 people for one month, the World Food Pro-gram said—for 40,000 in Madaya

and 20,000 in Fouaa and Kafraya.In a telephone interview, a mem-

ber of the pro-opposition local coun-cil in Madaya confirmed the entry of the aid convoy.

“I’m now inside the Jeep accom-panying the first four trucks,” said the opposition official, who goes by a nickname, Ghadeer Zabadani, for security reasons. “People are so happy. It’s as if it’s the last day of Ramadan, [the Islamic month of fasting], and now it’s the time for Eid al-Fitr, [the festival marking the end

of Ramadan].” The trucks, he said, would be off-loaded in warehouses in the area and the goods would be distributed by the local council.

Madaya, a former resort town once famous for its spring water and vibrant market, has been the target of an offensive by the Syrian army and its ally, Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite group, aimed at pushing the rebels away from Damascus.

In the last week, however, Madaya has also become a focal point of the fierce information war that has long run parallel to the armed conflict in Syria. Us-ing social media, pro-opposition activists have circulated images of gaunt individuals identified as starving Madaya residents, said to be subsisting on water, grass and even the meat of slaughtered cats.

There was no independent con-firmation of the authenticity of the images, which received global media attention. Independent

journalists and monitors gener-ally do not have access to Madaya or other besieged areas. Still, the images from Madaya led to wide-spread condemnation of Hezbol-lah, which was accused of enforc-ing the siege on Madaya in sup-port of the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Hezbollah and its supporters, however, blamed the rebels for Madaya’s plight, contending that opposition gunmen had effectively held the town hostage, barring any resident from leaving, and hoard-ing supplies from last October, when the last aid shipment en-tered Madaya. Hezbollah and other progovernment groups and media outlets also denounced some of the images of supposedly starving resi-dents of Madaya as fabrications.

The Syrian conflict, now in its fifth year, has seen widespread use of siege tactics by both government and opposition forces. Troops and

militiamen from both sides have surrounded, sealed off and bom-barded towns, villages and neigh-borhoods in a bid to force fighters in those areas to capitulate.

Across Syria, according to inter-national aid groups, more than a dozen areas remain in crisis  with inhabitants barred from leaving and aid workers blocked from delivering food, medicine, fuel and other essen-tial supplies. Prices for foodstuffs inevitably soar inside those areas, creating a black market for staples.

More than 4.5 million people in Syria now live in such severely trou-bled or hard-to-reach areas, which face periodic shortages of food and other vital supplies, according to international aid agencies.

On Monday, eight international aid agencies called for all parties in the Syrian conflict to end the sieges of civilian areas and ensure permanent access to humanitarian supplies.

Los Angeles Times/TNS

BEIRUT—Trucks carrying food and other desperately needed supplies began entering a trio

of besieged Syrian towns on Monday, averting what aid officials had warned was a looming humanitarian disaster.

THIS picture provided by the International Committee of the Red Cross, working alongside the Syrian Arab Red Crescent and the United Nations, shows a convoy containing food, medical items, blankets and other materials being delivered to the town of Madaya in Syria on Monday. The town, about 24 kilometers northwest of Damascus, has been blockaded for months by government troops and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Opposition activists and aid groups have reported several deaths from starvation in recent weeks. ICRC VIA AP

PROGOVERNMENT Syrian student Hani Ali Hassan (left), 19, and his mother Khadijah Sheikh Haidar, who were evacuated from the besieged Syrian village of Foua, speak during an interview with the Associated Press in a hospital, south of Beirut, run by the militant Hezbollah group. Progovernment Syrian �ghters who were recently evacuated from two besieged Shiite villages in northern Syria say residents there live under harsh human conditions where people can hardly �nd medicine or even food to eat, making some rely on grass in order to survive.

AP/HASSAN AMMAR

42,000residents of Madaya town trapped with

limited access to food and medicine

DAMASCUS,  Syria—The Syrian government an-nounced on Saturday it is

ready to attend peace talks later this month with the opposition in Geneva, as a new airstrike in north-ern Syria killed and wounded scores of people, including many militants.

But Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said Damascus also wants to see lists of the opposi-tion groups who will attend and ensure that “terrorist” groups will not be represented. State news agency Sana said al-Moallem made his comments on Saturday while meeting in Damascus with UN envoy Staffan de Mistura. Al-Moallem’s comments came shortly before opposition activists said an airstrike had killed at least 39 and wounded dozens of others.

The Britain-based Syrian Obser-vatory for Human Rights said 39 people were killed, including many fighters from al-Qaida’s affiliate in Syria, the Nusra Front, as well as detainees in the northwestern town of Maaret al-Numan. It said the targeted area included a jail and a courthouse run by Nusra Front.

The Nusra Front is one of the country’s most powerful factions and is opposed to peace talks with the government, saying its aim is to step up an Islamic State (IS) in Syria.

The group is fighting against government forces, the IS group as well as some US-backed rebel factions. Much like its rival, the IS group, the Nusra Front imposes its own vision of Islamic Shariah law in territories it controls—including Islamic courts and prisons.

The Syrian government has been carrying out air strikes for years, which activists say have killed thousands of people. Russia began its own air campaign last Septem-ber 30 saying its air strikes are meant to weaken the IS and other “terrorists” in Syria.

The Local Coordination Com-mittees, another activist group, said the airstrike killed 51. The group posted a photo on its Face-book page showing several bodies covered with blankets and lined on a pavement. Another showed two dead bearded young men being loaded into an ambulance.

Syria-based activist Hadi Ab-dallah wrote on his Twitter ac-count that the air raid killed 43 and wounded more than 100, claiming it was carried out by Russian aircraft. The “terrifying massacres was carried out by Rus-sian warplanes,” Abdallah wrote, without saying why he believed they were Russian.

Conf licting casualty figures

are common in the aftermath of air strikes in Syria. The Observa-tory said the warplanes fired four missiles that hit the Islamic court, which includes a jail, as well as a nearby road linking the court with a market.

De Mistura arrived in Beirut later on Saturday and boarded a plane heading to Qatar, airport officials said in Beirut on condition of ano-nymity in line with regulations. He arrived in Syria on Friday and earlier this week, he met Syrian opposition officials in Saudi Arabia—a main backer of some of the rebel groups trying to remove President Bashar Assad from power.

A statement on Saturday from De Mistura’s office described his meeting with al-Moallem as “use-ful” and said the UN envoy is “look-ing forward to the active participa-tion of all relevant parties” in the upcoming talks. The Syrian govern-ment refers to all those battling to overthrow Assad as terrorists and has said the talks should focus on battling terrorism.

The opposition wants Assad to step down as part of any peace deal.The UN is urging the two sides to meet on January 25 in an effort to end the conflict, which has killed more than 250,000 people and caused a massive refugee crisis. AP

Syrian govt ready to attend peace talks in Geneva

SYRIANS are trying to extinguish �re that was caused by Syrian government aerial bombardment on the Damascus suburb of Douma, Syria, on December 13, 2015. Syrian government helicopter gunships have struck a suburb of the capital, Damascus, a day after air strikes on nearby areas killed more than 40 people, opposition activists said. DOUMA REVOLUTION VIA AP

Page 7: BusinessMirror January 13, 2016

The WorldBusinessMirror [email protected] | Wednesday, January 13, 2016

China’s resilient shoppers face fresh test from market headwinds

The willingness of shoppers to keep opening their wallets through the market’s ups and downs—as they did in 2015—will be key to whether the world’s second-largest economy avoids the kind of hard-landing scenario keeping global markets on edge.

Supporting China’s consump-tion story: it’s a too-big-to-fail pillar in President Xi Jinping’s remodeling of the economy away from over-reliance on exports and investment, prompting poli-cies to boost spending. With the market hiccup set to drag on the financial sector’s contribution to growth and traditional indus-tries f lagging, the importance of China’s famously frugal con-sumers to the nation’s growth outlook is on the rise.

“The bottom line is that it can shake off this episode,” said An-drew Polk, an economist with the Conference Board in Beijing. “In an era of economic volatility, it’s likely that with an already high-savings rate China’s consumers are going to be relatively more even keeled than other parts of the economy because they have that large cushion.”

Their importance is already on the rise: The contribution of total consumer spending to GDP rose to 58.4 percent in the first three quarters of last year, up from 50.2 percent in 2014, according to IHS Global Insight. China is poised to add 27 trillion yuan ($4.1 trillion) in new consumption over the next decade, exceeding the 23 trillion yuan added in the previous 25 years, even as economic growth averages only 4 percent annually, Polk said. Stocks slumpTHE Shanghai Composite Index has declined 15 percent so far this year. It slumped 7.3 percent in June; 14 percent in July; 12 per-cent in August; and another 4.8 percent in September, yet retail sales growth actually quickened in the second half of last year.

One reason for optimism con-sumption will again shrug off the stock market’s early 2016 slide is the room for policy action to boost spending. High-import tariffs on foreign goods, a value added tax and capped rates on savings de-posit all have repressed consump-tion, while rudimentary pension

and health-care coverage force precautionary savings for old age. Policy action on such fronts is changing that.

Lagging consumptionEVEN after rapid expansion in the past decade, average Chinese household consumption is still low-er than in Thailand and Malaysia, and far behind South Korea, accord-ing to Alicia Garcia Herrero, chief Asia Pacific economist at Natixis SA in Hong Kong.

“This is due to financial repres-sion through a capped deposit rate, high value-added tax and import tariffs for consumer goods,” she said in a December report. “These variables have now changed.”

Tax cuts, deregulation of service sectors, price reforms in utilities, the streamlining of administra-tive approvals for business and increased coverage and spending on the social safety net will all help boost consumption growth, said Wang Tao, chief China economist at UBS Group AG in Hong Kong. Relaxation of the one-child policy and loosening the household-reg-istration system that limits worker movement and the social benefits they receive will provide further

boosts, she says.  China also has lowered sales tax on small cars, which may spur faster growth in retail sales, according to a report by Bloomberg Intelligence. Millennial spendingCHINA’S millennial consumers, ranging from age 15 to 35, are an-other source of potential, their con-sumption habits far removed from that of their more frugal parents and grandparents.

“ The real balance between spending and saving will be shaped by China’s 414 million millenni-als,” said Stephen Roach, a senior fellow at Yale University and for-mer Morgan Stanley nonexecutive chairman in Asia, in a Bloomberg television interview last month. “To the extent that they are going to be shaping the consumption, savings decisions in the next China, watch out! Because again they are nonconforming, they are breaking the mold right now.”

With Xi vowing to step up efforts to rein in excess industrial capacity, the risk is that a prolonged stock market rout weighs on consump-tion. And unless policy-makers can then find ways to prompt China’s shoppers to keep opening their wallets wider, Xi’s target of at least 6.5-percent annual average growth through 2020 may be jeopardized.

“Any significant slowdown in consumption growth would act as a further drag on the pace of Chinese GDP growth and could risk pushing China into a hard landing,” said Rajiv Biswas, Asia-Pacific chief economist at IHS in Singapore. Bloomberg News

A MAN takes a nap at a quiet trading hall of a brokerage house in Beijing on Tuesday. Chinese stocks seesawed as worries lingered over the country’s �nancial markets and economic outlook, fueling volatility in other Asian benchmarks. AP/ANDY WONG

58.4%increase of total consumer spending to GDP in 2015

PA LM A DE M A LLORC A , Spain—Spain’s Pr incess Cristina spent 12 hours in

court on Monday at the start of her landmark criminal case, con-fronting accusations of bankroll-ing a lavish lifestyle with funds her husband received from an alleged scheme to embezzle millions from public contracts for conferences and sporting events.

Cristina and her husband, Inaki Urdangarin, said nothing during the opening of their trial as their lawyers and attorneys for 16 ad-ditional defendants argued why their clients should have the charg-es dropped and made requests about evidence and witnesses for a trial expected to last six months.

One defense lawyer asked to call Spain’s current and former kings as witnesses, and a prosecu-tor accused him of trying to turn the trial into a reality show. The lead judge in the case ended the proceedings by saying the trial would resume in February—when a final decision will be made as to whether Cristina will remain among the defendants.

The 50-year-old Cristina is the sister of King Felipe VI and faces two counts of tax fraud, carrying a maximum prison sentence of eight years, for allegedly failing to declare taxes on personal expenses paid by a real-estate company she owned with Urdangarin, an Olympic hand-ball medalist turned businessman.

Her lawyer, Jesus Maria Silva, was joined by a prosecutor and a state attorney representing Span-ish tax authorities in saying the charges against Cristina should be thrown out because government of-ficials agreed she had committed no crimes and should face at most an administrative fine for tax evasion.

A three-member panel of judges will decide in coming weeks whether to side with Cristina’s supporters or an investigative judge who spent four years probing the case and ruled it could go forward because of evidence presented by a private anticorruption group.

The judges will have to weigh whether the couple criminally abused the Aizoon real-estate con-sulting firm described in court docu-ments as a “front company” to fund luxury vacations, throw parties at their modernist Barcelona mansion and pay for salsa dancing classes.

Under Spanish law, groups like the Manos Limpias (Clean Hands) organization involved in the princess’s trial can pursue criminal charges against people when authorities decide against doing so. The trial marks the first time that a member of Spain’s royal family has faced criminal charges since the monarchy was restored in 1975. Urdangarin and others face charges of embezzling up to €6.2 million ($6.8 million) from contracts which were alleg-edly inflated or never performed. The princess’s husband, formerly

the Duke of Palma, is accused of using his title to land the deals for the Noos Institute he ran with busi-ness partner Diego Torres.

Torres’s lawyer, Manuel Gonza-lez, renewed a request to call former Spanish King Juan Carlos and his son, King Felipe, as witnesses—pre-sumably to elicit testimony suggest-ing the business dealings of Noos were condoned or approved by the royal family while Juan Carlos was king until 2014.

The requests for them and other witnesses prompted Pedro Horrach, the prosecutor who wants Cristina fined but cleared of criminal wrong-doing, to accuse Gonzalez of “trying to turn the trial into a reality show.”

Cristina and her husband were stoic as they sat grouped with the other defendants and watched the lengthy exchanges between law-yers and judges. The couple entered court without speaking to report-ers under tight security after au-thorities detained a protester found nearby with an antimonarchy flag. They left hours after sunset, with the princess appearing to give a slight smile as she departed.

A small group was allowed to protest nearby after the proceed-ings began—in sharp contrast to the thousands of raucous antimon-archy protesters who tried to make enough noise outside a courthouse to drown out Cristina’s testimony behind closed doors in 2014 for the investigative judge. For Monday’s proceedings, there were so many defendants, lawyers and reporters that judicial officials moved the trial from a courthouse to a sprawling complex on the outskirts of Palma de Mallorca normally used for public servant training courses.

The case is being heard in the regional capital of Spain’s Balearic Islands, because many of Urdan-garin’s business  deals under in-vestigation were for the islands. Cristina denied knowledge of her husband’s activities during the 2014 closed-door court appear-ance, but the investigative judge decided she could be tried for tax fraud in 2007 and 2008.

Details about the couple’s regal lifestyle that emerged from the pretrial investigation from 2011 to 2014 outraged Spaniards, as the country teetered on the edge of an economic crisis and the unemploy-ment rate hit 27 percent. The case deeply damaged the reputation of Juan Carlos—already smarting from a backlash after he broke his hip during a 2012 elephant-hunting trip seen as an extreme example of royal excess. He abdi-cated in 2014, saying Spain needed fresh-royal blood. On taking the throne, Felipe pledged to restore public trust in Spain’s monarchy. He later stripped Cristina and her older sister Princess Elena of their roles as official members of the royal family though they have not given up their slots of succession in line for the throne. AP

Landmark fraud trial starts for Spain’s Princess Cristina 

SPAIN’S Princess Cristina and her husband Inaki Urdangarin leave a makeshift courtroom on the �rst day of a corruption trial in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, on Monday. AP/EMILIO MORENATTI

AREINHA, Brazil—Far into the heart of Brazil’s Minas Gerais state, rural miners explore the massive craters

left behind by giant mining companies in search of diamonds. Associated Press p h o to g ra p h e r Fe l i p e D a n a c re ate d a collection of images about the artisanal miners and their craft as a work project for the 2015 World Press Photo Latin America masterclass held in Mexico City last December.

The area that Dana documented has been explored for the precious stone since the time of slavery. Up to a few years ago, multinational mining companies extracted the stone without concern for the land or the Jequitinhonha River crossing the region. Today the devastated area known as Areinha is a no man’s land where small groups of rural miners try their luck with

artisan techniques, using wooden knives, metal pans, large water pumps and no infrastructure. In hopes of sparing the river any more damage, men and women searching for diamonds work around the riverbed as they try to legalize their mining activities with authorities. Locals estimate there are hundreds of people across the region digging for diamonds in groups of 10 or less. They live in wooden huts without electricity and bathe with water in buckets, barely surviving without a stable income but on rare occasions enjoying a windfall of tens of thousands of dollars.

During the weeks-long mining process, the group excavates the soil down to a layer of gravel of up to 50 meters deep. Rocks are extracted with the help of small pumps powered by old-truck engines. The miners then use their hands to go through the rocks. AP

Brazil’s artisanal miners seek diamonds at abandoned mine

ARTISANAL miners separate gravel with sieves as they search for diamonds at an abandoned mine in Areinha, Minas Gerais state, Brazil. During the weeks-long mining process, the group excavates the soil down to a layer of gravel of up to 50 meters deep. AP/FELIPE DANA

CHINA’S consumers, having shrugged off stock-market turmoil last year, face fresh

headwinds as shares sink anew, the yuan weakens and the economy grinds lower.

Page 8: BusinessMirror January 13, 2016

The WorldBusinessMirrorA8 Editor: Lyn Resurreccion •[email protected]

Lawmakers are scheduled to vote on Tuesday on the North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act, which proposes to deny North Korea the hard currency they say it needs for its weapons programs. Holding the vote on Tuesday puts it on the same day as President Barack Obama’s � -nal State of the Union address.

But former State Department of-� cials said any new sanctions won’t have teeth unless China makes a major shift in policy toward its re-bellious ally.

Separately, a panel of experts on North Korea said existing United Nations sanctions against the reclu-sive country are going unenforced.

� e House bill is sponsored by Rep. Ed Royce, the Republi-can chairman of the House For-eign A� airs Committee. � e new sanctions would put “targeted economic � nancial pressure” on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Royce said on Monday ahead of the vote, arguing that a failure to respond aggressively will em-bolden Pyongyang.

Rep. Eliot Engel, the commit-tee’s top Democrat, said Kim is on a “dangerous, destabilizing course” and the US needs to act unilaterally to show the North

Koreans that “there are conse-quences for their actions.”

Royce’s committee unanimously approved the measure in February 2015 and it remained there until last week when North Korea an-nounced it had conducted a fourth nuclear test—this one detonating a thermonuclear device with mas-sive destructive power.

� e announcement was met with doubt that North Korea had set o� a hydrogen bomb, which would mark a major technological advance for Pyongyang’s limited nuclear arsenal. But it could take weeks or even lon-ger to con� rm or refute the claim. Yet, lawmakers are pushing ahead.

In the wake of the announcement, Republicans derided the Obama ad-ministration for not being more forceful in its policy toward North Korea. Royce said the administra-tion’s approach of “strategic pa-tience” toward North Korea has

failed to stop its nuclear program.It’s uncertain what the bill’s pros-

pects will be in the Senate if it’s passed by the House.

But Sen. Bob Corker, the Repub-lican chairman of the Senate For-eign Relations Committee, said he wants the US and its allies “to take a more assertive role in addressing North Korea’s provocation.”

A central part of Royce’s legisla-tion is to make so-called blocking sanctions mandatory rather than discretionary as currently permit-ted through existing regulations.

� e sanctions are mandated against any country, business or in-dividual, that materially contributes to North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile development, imports luxury goods into North Korea, or engages with Pyongyang in money launder-ing, the manufacture of counterfeit goods, or narcotics tra� cking, ac-cording to the legislation.

A similar tactic was used by the Treasury Department a decade ago, Royce said, and it drained North Korea of the hard currency essential for buying the parts and

supplies necessary for weapons development and missile produc-tion. Nor did Pyongyang have enough money to pay its army or police forces.

But Joseph De� omas, a former senior State Department o� cial who advised on Iran and North Korea sanc-tions policy until February 2013, said new sanctions wouldn’t force change in Pyongyang, unless Chi-na is convinced of the strategic consequence of North Korea hav-ing nuclear weapons that could threaten America. AP

AFTER BOMB TEST

House moves on NoKor sanctions bill

WATERLOO, Iowa—Hillary Clinton has spent much of her presidential campaign

looking past Democratic rival Bernie Sanders, focusing instead on Repub-licans and the November general election. No longer.

� ree weeks before the lead-o� Iowa caucuses on February 1 and with polls suggesting a tightening race, she is now confronting the Vermont senator more directly, at-tempting to undermine his liberal credentials on gun control, health care and even the Wall Street regula-tions that have been the core of his insurgent campaign.

“It’s time for us to have the kind of spirited debate that you deserve us to have,” Clinton told voters on Monday. “We do have di� erences.”

After months with a comfortable edge in most Iowa polls, the former secretary of state � nds herself bat-tling an underdog rival in a state that has a history of rewarding anti-establishment campaigns—a situa-tion that brings back echoes of her 2008 loss to Barack Obama in the Midwestern state.

At a forum aimed at young and minority voters on Monday night, the candidates found themselves defending their positions on immi-gration, criminal justice, gun control and abortion—along with tackling questions about sel� es, white privi-lege and recently deceased rock star David Bowie.

“� e inevitable candidate for the Democratic nomination may not be so inevitable today,” Sanders said, when asked about his standing in Iowa.

While Clinton has locked up the vast majority of support from party leaders and large donors, Sanders has captured the hearts of many in the Democratic base with his unapologetically liberal economic message.

An NBC/Wall Street Journal/

Marist poll released on Sunday found Clinton with 48 percent and Sanders with 45 percent of likely Iowa caucus goers, representing a closer margin than past polls have indicated.

Sanders has maintained an edge in New Hampshire, which neighbors his home state of Vermont, making Iowa even more important for Clin-ton. � e NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll showed Sanders with 50 percent and Clinton with 46 percent in that primary which takes place on February 9.

Clinton still holds a strong advan-tage among black and Latino voters who play a bigger role in the prima-ries in late February and March. But even if Clinton pulls out a win in Iowa, a narrow victory could set o� alarms among Democrats about her strength against Sanders, who start-ed the campaign as an obscure sena-tor polling in the single digits.

Until now, Clinton has rarely mentioned Sanders by name at her campaign events, choosing instead to warn voters about the risks of electing a Republican. She has pointed

to e� orts by Republicans to repeal Obama’s signature health-care law—the president vetoed the most recent try—as a sign of what could come if Democrats lose the White House.

But on Monday she widened her health-care critique to include Sand-ers, saying he would “rip up” the law and put power in the hands of states.

Sanders said during a town hall meeting in Perry, Iowa, that many people have inadequate coverage and must pay large fees to cover medi-cal expenses before payments from private insurers kick in. Sanders ad-vocates a system in which medical claims would be paid out by the gov-ernment as it does with the Medicare program covering seniors.

Clinton also announced a new plan that would impose a 4-percent fee on taxpayers making more than $5 million—an e� ort to match Sanders’s focus on income inequal-ity—even as she charged him with plans to raise taxes on middle-class Americans. She joined her rivals in denouncing the Obama administra-tion’s recent deportation raids targeting

Central Americans who had entered the country illegally.

And she talked about guns.When Obama said last week he

would not support a Democratic nominee who didn’t support “com-mon-sense gun reform,” Clinton’s team quickly sought to turn it to their advantage, reminding voters that Sanders had backed legislation in 2005 that protected gun makers from lawsuits.

Clinton—who’s done only a select few national interviews since an-nouncing her campaign in April—called in to MSNBC’s Hardball on Friday night, invoking Sanders name six times during a short interview to criticize his vote on liability for gun-makers and his past opposition to other gun control legislation.

Sanders, during a town hall meet-ing in Des Moines, expressed his own support for Obama’s use of ex-ecutive actions to curb gun violence, suggesting little daylight between him and the president.

Sanders has long targeted Iowa and New Hampshire as places where he could trip up Clinton, who started the campaign with a command-ing lead in national polls but has watched her advantage in the early voting states diminish. � e sena-tor has also pointed to favorable polls showing him outperforming Clinton in hypothetical matchups against Republicans like billionaire Donald Trump.

Sanders has held multiple events in the state since Friday. Clinton was back in Iowa after a two-day trip to the state last week, but has also held fundraisers in California and plans to keep a lower pro� le later this week with closed fundraisers in Washing-ton and New York.

Former President Bill Clinton returns this week, accompanied on Saturday by the couple’s daughter, Chelsea. AP

Nuclear tests conducted by North Korea, the latest was hydrogen bomb

4

DEMOCRATIC presidential candidate Hillary Clinton reaches for a smartphone for a sel� e with a supporter after a campaign rally on Monday in Waterloo, Iowa. AP/JAE C. HONG

Clinton, Sanders in tight race in Iowa NORTH Korea claims it is holding a

naturalized US citizen on suspicion of spying for South Korea, CNN re-

ported on Monday.If con� rmed, the man would be one

of several Americans detained in recent years by the reclusive communist state. The State Department declined to com-ment on the report, explaining in an e-mail that “speaking publicly about speci� c pur-ported cases of detained Americans can complicate our tireless e� orts to secure their freedom.”

The news comes at a time of height-ened tension on the Korean peninsula and appeared designed to put pressure on the United States and its allies, which are seek-ing to increase international sanctions on the government of Kim Jong Un over its claims to have carried out its fourth nuclear test last week.

North Korean authorities allowed a CNN reporter to interview the purported American detainee, identi� ed as Kim Dong-chul, 62, at a hotel in the capital, Pyongyang. O� cials insisted that the con-versation take place in Korean, through an o� cial interpreter, but the network said it later veri� ed the translation.

Kim told the network that he lived in Fairfax, Virginia, but moved in 2001 to the Chinese city of Yanji, near North Ko-rea. From there, he said he would com-mute daily to a special economic zone in the North Korean city of Rason, where he established a company dealing in interna-tional trade and hotel services.

Kim said he started spying in 2013 on behalf of “South Korean conservative ele-ments” who “injected me with a hatred toward North Korea.”

Asked to describe how that worked, he said he bribed a local resident to collect sensitive information about the country’s military and nuclear program, and then smuggled it in his car to China or South Korea.

Kim said he was arrested last October while meeting a former North Korean sol-dier to collect a USB memory stick and a

camera used to gather military secrets. The former soldier was also detained, he said, but Kim did not know his fate.

“I’m asking the US or South Korean government to rescue me,” he told CNN.

The network said it was shown what appeared to be an American passport is-sued in Kim’s name and published a pho-tograph of the document.

Kim told CNN that he has a wife and two daughters in China. But attempts to reach them using a phone number he pro-vided were unsuccessful, the network said.

The last two Americans known to have been detained in North Korea were re-leased in November 2014 after the Obama administration sent the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper, on a secret mission to the country.

Matthew Todd Miller, a Californian from Bakers� eld, was arrested in April that year and sentenced to six years of hard labor on charges of entering the country illegally and trying to commit an act of espionage.

Kenneth Bae, an evangelist from Lyn-nwood, Washington, had been in cus-tody since 2012 and was serving 15 years with hard labor for “hostile acts against the state.”

CNN was also given access to a South Korean-born Canadian pastor, the Rev. Lim Hyeon-soo, who was sentenced last De-cember to life in prison with hard labor on charges of using religion to try to destroy the North Korean system of government.

“I used to think they dei� ed their lead-ers too much, but as I read the memoirs of both Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-Il, they never called themselves gods,” Lim told CNN on Saturday.

Family members and colleagues have said that Lim traveled frequently to North Korea, where he supported a nursing home, nursery and orphanage. But they said the trips did not have a political objective.

Lim told CNN that he was being held at a labor camp, where he works alone eight hours a day, six days a week, digging holes to plant apple trees. Los Angeles Times/TNS

N. KOREA HOLDING AMERICAN ON ESPIONAGE CHARGES

HOUSE Foreign A� airs Committee Chairman Rep. Ed Royce (left), Republican-California, talks with the committee’s ranking member Rep. Eliot Engel, Democrat-New York, on Capitol Hill in Washington. The House is poised to pass legislation that seeks to expand sanctions on North Korea. AP/MANUEL BALCE CENETA

WASHINGTON—� e US House of Representatives pushed ahead on legis-

lation that seeks to punish North Korea for its latest nuclear test by expanding sanctions on Pyong-yang, a move with strong biparti-san support despite questions over how eff ective the new restrictions can be.

Page 9: BusinessMirror January 13, 2016

A9

The [email protected] Wednesday, January 13, 2016

SANCTIONS against Iran will end in “days,” and the coming year will be one of “economic

revival,” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said.

“In a few days, we will see the end of the cruel sanctions against Iran,” Rouhani said on Monday in a speech to open natural-gas facilities in the south of the country. “When sanctions end, I will explain to peo-ple how great of an accomplishment this is.”

Iran secured a nuclear deal with world powers last July to end the country’s political and economic isolation. � e formal implementa-tion of the accord will lift � nancial and oil sanctions and allow the re-turn of foreign investors, provid-ing Rouhani’s government with an opportunity to stimulate a turn-around at a time when state revenue has been hit by low crude prices.

� e nuclear accord is “days away from implementation,” US Secre-tary of State John Kerry said on January 7. Speaking at a news confer-ence in Prague on Monday, the Euro-pean Union’s (EU) foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said she expects “the day to come rather soon.”

EU, US, and United Nations sanc-tions on Iran are scheduled to be lifted as soon as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) veri-� es that Iran has met the terms of the accord. Four IAEA envoys said last December that may happen around the middle of this month.

Meeting one of its obligations under the agreement, Iran has re-moved the core of the Arak nuclear reactor and � lled it with cement on Monday, an unidenti� ed Iranian of-� cial was cited as saying by the Fars News Agency.

� e IAEA, the United Nations nuclear watchdog, will con� rm the action in a report in the next few

days, it said.Iranian Foreign Minister Moham-

mad Javad Zarif and Mogherini will issue a joint statement once the IAEA’s con� rms Iran’s full compli-ance with the deal, the person told Fars without specifying a date.

Rouhani has focused his presi-dency, which began in 2013, on ending a more than decade-long nuclear stando� with the West and on creating jobs for young Iranians. � e government will keep its promises even with oil prices falling to as low as $30 a barrel and despite the existence of “plots,” he said in the speech, without elaborating.

“Even in these circumstances, we have managed to control in� a-tion and despite all di� culties we will have economic growth this year,” Rouhani said. “Next year will

be the year of economic revival,” he said, referring to the Iranian New Year which begins on March 21.

Meanwhile, Iran has rejected an assessment by the UN nuclear agen-cy that it did past work on nuclear arms but is praising some aspects of the agency’s investigation of the issue, re� ecting satisfaction that the more than decade-long probe has ended.

Closure of the � le means that some questions about the alleged weapons work may never be re-solved. Before the 35-nation board of the UN’s IAEA adopted a resolu-tion last month ending the inves-tigation, IAEA chief Yukiya Amano told the meeting that his investi-gation couldn’t “reconstruct all the details of activities conducted by Iran in the past.”

But both  Iran  and the interna-tional community are eager to put the issue behind them, in order to

be able to implement a landmark nuclear deal that commits Tehran to signi� cant limits on its nuclear activities for over a decade, in ex-change for relief from crippling eco-nomic sanctions.

A probe had to be formally end-ed as part of the July 14 nuclear agreement. � e IAEA board closed the books on the investigation last month, even though Amano repeated an assessment he made in his � nal report on the issue last November that  Iran  worked on “a range of activities relevant” to making nuclear weapons, with coordinated e� orts up to 2003 ta-pering o� into scattered activities into 2009.

Iran’s rejoinder, dated January 7 and posted on the IAEA’s web site, will neither a� ect Amano’s � nding nor delay implementation of the deal, but its low-key lan-guage in disagreement with the

agency assessment is in contrast to past bitter recriminations both against the IAEA and against the US, which has been among Teh-ran’s most vehement critics for its alleged past weapons work.

� e Iranian note rejected Amano’s assessment that an “or-ganizational structure” worked on nuclear arms. It also said that any Iranian interest in “dual-use technologies have always been for peaceful civilian or conventional military uses” and not to develop an atomic bomb.

� e communication repeat-ed arguments  Iran  has used for years—that documents playing a role in the agency’s conclusions were forged by Iran’s adversaries.

At the same time, it praised the “tremendous work” not only by Ira-nian and but also agency o� cials that led to the IAEA � nal report and an end to the probe. Bloomberg News/AP

Iran expects end of sanctions in days

IRAN’S Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Reza Naja� waits for the start of the IAEA board of governors meeting at the International Center in Vienna, Austria, last December 15. AP/RONALD ZAK

NEW ORLEANS—� e � rst-ever federal regulations for large-scale � sh farming in

the ocean were issued on Monday, opening a new frontier in the har-vesting of popular seafood species, such as red drum, tuna and red snapper.

� e new rules allow the farm-ing of fish in federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The rules—in the making for years—were announced in New Orleans by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric

Administration (NOAA).NOAA Administrator Kathryn

Sullivan said the Gulf rules could spur similar rules in other US wa-ters. She said it was time for the United States to open up this new market, which, she said, could help the US meet its seafood demands.

Fish farming is contentious, with � shermen and environmentalists warning it could harm the marine environment and put � shermen out of work.

Typically, o� shore farming is

done by breeding � sh in large semi-submersible pens moored to the sea� oor. � e practice is common in many parts of the world, and Sulli-van said the United States has fallen behind. About 90 percent of the sea-food consumed in the United States is imported and more than half of that is farmed, she noted.

She said expanding � sh farming has numerous bene� ts.

“It’s good for the balance of trade, it’s good for the food security of the country,” she said. She added

that it could create jobs, too.� e new rules allow up to 20

� sh farms to open in the Gulf and produce 64 million pounds of � sh a year. � e farms can start applying for 10-year permits starting in Feb-ruary, she said.

Sullivan said the � sh farms would be kept away from sensitive habitats and � shermen would be al-lowed to � sh near them. She envi-sioned little competition between the farms and � shermen.

Neil Sims, the president of the

Ocean Stewards Institute, an o� -shore industry group, said the rules were groundbreaking. “It’s a huge step,” Sims said. “It’s the federal government recognizing we must move forward here.”

He said concerns about � sh farming causing environmental problems are unfounded. “� e beau-ty of open ocean aquaculture is that you are in deep water far o� shore,” he said. “It’s more akin to a Colorado cattle range than a feedlot.”

Rather than import farmed sea-food, he said, the nation would be better o� producing more of its own.

“We have no idea how it [im-ported seafood] is farmed, what the environmental standards are, what the animal welfare standards,” Sims said about imports.

Marianne Cufone, executive di-rector of the New Orleans-based Recirculating Farms Coalition and longtime critic of o� shore � sh farming, warned of polluting the Gulf and hurting wild stocks.

A concern is that domesticated � sh—bred to be larger—will escape their pens and outcompete wild � sh for habitat and food, she said.

Sims dismissed that argument. “Over time, we will indeed select for fatter, slower, more docile indi-viduals,” Sims said. “But then that domesticated animal is going to be hopeless in the wild. A fat, slow, docile, � sh outside of a net pen is called bait.”

Sullivan said concerns about escaped farmed � sh are real, but she added that the rules require growers to breed � sh with the same genetics as local stocks.

Glen Brooks, the president of the Gulf Fishermen’s Association, a group of commercial � shermen, said � shermen fought against � sh farming. He said � shermen worry about losing � shing grounds and the potential for farmed fish to escape and hurt wild stocks or cause out-breaks of disease. AP

FIRST FEDERAL RULES FOR OFFSHORE FISH FARMING ISSUED

briefs CLINTON URGES

WHITE HOUSE: STOP DEPORTATION RAIDS

FORMER CHINESE VICE MINISTER JAILED FOR 15 YRS FOR BRIBERY

PUTIN: TOO EARLY TO SPEAK ABOUT ASYLUM FOR ASSAD IN RUSSIA

INDIA SENTENCES CREW OF U.S.OWNED SHIP TO 5 YEARS IN JAILNEW DELHI—A news report says an Indian court has sentenced the crew of an American-owned ship to � ve years in prison for illegally entering Indian waters while carrying weapons and ammunition.

In its report late on Monday, the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency said the 35-member crew includes British, Ukrainian and Estonian nation-als, as well as 12 Indians.

The MV Seaman Guard Ohio was intercepted in October 2013 by India’s coast guard o� the southern state of Tamil Nadu, and the crew was arrested. PTI said the crew has been out on bail since March 2014. The men can appeal the sentence.

The ship is owned by Virginia-based security company AdvanFort, but is reg-istered in Sierra Leone. AdvanFort de-nies the charges. AP

DES MOINES, Iowa—Hillary Clinton is calling on the Obama administration to end raids aimed at deporting Central Americans who entered the United States illegally.

Clinton says the holiday-season roundups were “mass deportations” that are sowing “division and fear.” She says she would ensure government lawyers for all unaccompanied minors and in-crease funding for immigration courts.

Clinton is promising to “do everything possible to provide due process.” She was speaking at a Democratic forum aimed at young and minority voters.

Latino leaders, along with Clinton’s primary rivals, have criticized the admin-istration, calling on the president to immediately stop the operations. The White House says the raids re� ected the administration’s top priorities for deportation—people with criminal convictions and people caught crossing the border illegally. AP

BEIJING—A court in northern China sen-tenced a former vice minister of public security to 15 years in jail on Tuesday for accepting bribes, state media reported.

Li Dongsheng is the latest senior � g-ure to fall in President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption crackdown that has targeted scores of high-level o� cials, including � gures linked to China’s former state se-curity chief, Zhou Yongkang. Zhou, the biggest tiger to fall, was once seen as a potent rival of Xi and was at the cen-ter of a vast patronage system from his various positions of power.

Li was sentenced by a court in Tianjin city, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. Calls to the court rang unanswered.

Li helped others get bene� ts from 1996 to 2013 when he held positions including the vice minister in the Min-istry of Public Security and the deputy head of state broadcaster China Cen-tral Television, Xinhua said. He also de-manded and received bribes worth 22 million yuan ($3.4 million) from 2008 to 2013, Xinhua said. AP

MOSCOW—Russian President Vladimir Putin says it is too early to speak about granting political asylum to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a Putin ally and arguably the main obstacle in the Syrian peace process.

Russia began carrying out air strikes on the positions of Islamic State fighters last September in sup-port of Assad’s army.

Putin said in an interview with the German daily Bild published on Tues-day that Moscow is advocating for a constitutional reform in Syria and if the next election is democratic, “Assad won’t have to go anywhere,” even if he does not win it.

Russia, the United States and the Middle East nations are promoting talks between the Syrian government and opposition, and Assad has been seen as a highly divisive � gure. AP

BIGEYE tuna line the � oor of the United Fishing Agency’s auction house in Honolulu. AP/EUGENE TANNER

Price of a barrel of oil

$30

Page 10: BusinessMirror January 13, 2016

Wednesday, January 13, 2016 •Editor: Angel R. Calso

OpinionBusinessMirrorA10

Thoughts on the entertainment industry

editorial

AS we sympathize with those left behind by the entertainment master German “Kuya Germs” Moreno, we cannot help wondering how life is with the rest of the Philippine motion picture

and television world.

We are not referring to the stars and superstars: they are making the big-gest money in Philippine society. Rather, we are referring to the rest of them, from the supporting actors and actresses to those handling the lights, cables and microphones, the rank and file, who, we understand, are surviving on slightly more than the minimum wage.

We begin by endorsing the idea that the Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) executive committee makes an accounting of the financial results of the activ-ity. They owe it to the Metro Manila governments who supported the festival and the people who patronized it. Observers say that the festival grossed more than a billion pesos. The MMFF can begin telling us what exactly they intend to do with the money they have earned.

There is currently an existing a Movie Workers Welfare Foundation Inc. (Mowelfund) Welfare Fund, a private-sector initiative of some of the leading personalities and companies of the business. From what is known about it, the Mowelfund extends assistance to those of the industry who are in dire need, as in terminal illnesses. But the support is inadequate, barely able to meet minimum obligations.

To the MMFF, what about starting a new program with expanded objec-tives, like providing in-between-jobs assistance, or short-term unemployment benefits, or training sustenance to low-level people of the industry? The idea is not to substitute for employment, but to fill a gap in employment or improve productivity through upgrading of existing skills or acquisition of new ones.

Another activity will be the modernization of the industry, from the estab-lishment of a new culture to the purchase of high-tech equipment. Establish-ing a new culture will involve such things as paying well for intelligent stories and scripts instead of relying on improvisations; improving the acting through specialized training; and getting rid of slapstick and facial contortions that substitute for jokes. In a word, it will involve raising the level of literacy of our motion pictures.

The purchase of new equipment to replace the current paraphernalia of vintage biblical times is an absolute necessity. The lights and sounds equip-ment being used are so obsolete they hurt the eyes and ears of viewers. Now that a comparison of Philippine movies with movies of various foreign coun-tries shown on Philippine television has become possible, we can see the em-barrassing and shameful technical inferiority of Philippine movies. Are we wondering why even Korean movies and telenovelas have become popular with Philippine audiences?

Let’s convert this mourning for an adored and respected entertainment master into a commitment to improved levels of welfare for the rank and file in the industry, to superior dramatic performance, and to the technological advancement of the industry. Let’s make this an opportunity to transform the entertainment industry into one we can be proud of.

IT’S hard to argue with any process that led to the capture—re-capture, that is—of a billionaire drug lord who has the blood of thousands on his hands. The fact that Joaquin “El Chapo” Guz-

man is back behind bars, possibly because an actor-playing-journalist led police to his hideout, is an essential first step toward reversing Mexico’s tattered reputation for lawlessness and rampant criminality.

‘Rolling Stone’s exclusive interview comes at too high a price

Guzman, a two-time prison es-capee, openly mocks the concept of Mexican justice. It’s time for Mexico to swallow its pride and accede to US extradition requests instead of al-lowing him to continue bribing his way to freedom.

Actor Sean Penn did the quest for justice no favors by employing elaborate evasion techniques to elude authorities and conduct a seven-hour interview with Guzman. Rolling Stone magazine, which published the in-terview on Saturday, deserves public scorn and outrage for contributing to Guzman’s aggrandizement.

Rolling Stone made a deal with the devil. Editors granted Guzman the right to review and approve the 10,000-word article before it went to press. Reputable journalists simply do not cross this inviolable line, re-gardless of the justification. The pub-lic’s trust is paramount, and readers everywhere must know that they’re receiving an accurate and truthful account of news events.

Of course, Guzman—along with President Barack Obama, Russian President Vladimir Putin and the leader of the Islamic State—would love to have the right to review their quotes and characterizations before articles are published. But the game simply does not, and must not, work that way.

If Penn wants to play journalist, that’s his business. He might consider a few college journalism courses first, particularly one devoted to journal-ism ethics.

Penn writes that Mexico has “two presidents”—the elected one, Enrique Peña Nieto, and Guzman, the criminal who rules the Mexican countryside by terror. Penn likens him to Robin Hood. The actor offers a few short sentences acknowledg-ing the 27,000 deaths from the war between Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel and rival groups to control Mex-ico’s northern smuggling routes into the US.

The writer also chides Americans

for providing the drug demand and dollars that feed cartel violence. But he is shockingly uncritical of Guz-man, describing him as a “simple man from a simple place” and a doting father who avoids alcohol and never uses the poison he pushes.

Since neither Penn nor Rolling Stone wanted to upset their inter-view subject with overly harsh words, perhaps we should do it for them: Joaquin Guzman is a mass murderer who would not hesitate to behead law-enforcement officers, torture journalists and use vats of acid to

“disappear” anyone who interferes with his insatiable quest for en-richment. This “simple man” would gladly destroy children’s lives and invoke Mafia-style rule if given the opportunity.

Penn’s sympathetic appraisal re-calls his support in previous years of the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. Real journalists don’t downplay ugly and inconvenient facts. He and Rolling Stone were played, and paid too high a price to secure a sensational, exclusive interview. TNS

THE onset of a new year is a time of fresh beginnings, with a clean slate waiting to be filled with exciting feats and personal milestones for the next 12 months. New—or admittedly ne-

glected, but now renewed—commitments to lose weight, quit smok-ing, sleep early, go to the gym, spend more time with family, learn a new skill and travel more are often just some of the usual resolutions that are prompted by the start of another year.

New Year’s resolutions

Saving more and paying off debts, which are also among the classic ex-amples New Year’s resolutions, would be ideal for Social Security System (SSS) members to give them and their loved ones peace of mind and financial support over the long term.

Save moreEMPLOYEES, self-employed indi-viduals and voluntary members, including overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) are encouraged to build up their savings for retirement and fu-ture contingencies through an active SSS membership.

On top of their regular remit-tances for SSS contributions, mem-bers are urged to further expand their savings by enrolling in the

SSS Personal Equity Savings Option (Peso) Fund, a voluntary provident fund and pension plan introduced by the SSS last year. OFW members have their own version of this sav-ings facility called the SSS Flexi-Fund Program. It was launched back in 2001 and its success—with over half-a-billion pesos in members’ equity and over 46,000 OFW par-ticipants at present—had paved the way for the creation of the SSS Peso Fund Program that caters to local SSS members.

Both SSS programs provide en-rolled members a safe haven for their hard-earned income. Their SSS savings generate guaranteed and tax-free earnings, on top of Annual Incentive Benefits that are granted

as a reward for members who main-tain their investments under these two SSS programs. Their SSS sav-ings can be released in lump sum or as monthly pension, depending on the members’ preference, at the end of their working years. Part of their funds can also be tapped for other purposes such as medical emergen-cies, payment of children’s tuition, and as capital for jump-starting their own business.

Pay off debtsSSS loans are offered as a privi-lege of actively paying members. However, there are borrowers who are granted this privilege but then abandon their obligation to promptly pay their SSS loans. Members who fail to pay their loan amortizations on time are charged monthly penalties, as well as con-tinuing interest, and this only leads to ballooning loan obligations as the years roll by.

Members can mistakenly assume that they can get away with pay-ing their delinquent SSS loans, but this would eventually catch up with them by the time they would need to avail themselves of final benefit claims such as retirement and total disability. For example, a member with unpaid loan obligations would have to wait longer before receiv-ing his retirement benefits, as his

monthly SSS pension would be first used for payment of his outstanding loan balance.

Shirking one’s loan obligations can also affect the benefits for the eligible beneficiaries of delinquent SSS loan borrowers, for the SSS also has the option to deduct the overdue loan payments from SSS death and funeral benefits. This 2016 is the per-fect time to commit to finally paying that overdue SSS loan.

Borrowers with unpaid amorti-zations under the SSS Stock Invest-ment Loan Program (SILP) and the Privatization Fund Loan Program (PFLP) are offered the Option to Sell Shares Program. Under this ongoing program, delinquent borrowers can authorize the SSS to sell the mem-ber’s shares of stocks that were ac-quired through the SILP or the PFLP at the prevailing market price. The net proceeds from the sale of shares would then be used as payment for the overdue SSS loan.

For more details on SSS programs, members can drop by the nearest SSS branch, visit the SSS web site (www.sss.gov.ph), or contact the SSS Call Center at 920-6446 to 55 which accepts calls from 7 a.m. on Mondays all the way to 7 a.m. on Saturdays.

Susie G. Bugante is the vice president for public affairs and special events of the SSS. Send comments about this column to [email protected].

All About Social SecuritySusie G. Bugante

PENN

Page 11: BusinessMirror January 13, 2016

Wednesday, January 13, 2016

[email protected]

AMERICANS held hostage in Iran have won compensation 36 years later, says The New York Times. The American hostages at the US Embassy in Tehran, taken after the US-

backed Shah fell, spent 444 days in captivity—and 30 years seeking restitution from their government.

Keeping upnamed “Sicmann,” observed that “it has been 36 years, one month, 14 days, until President Obama.” President Obama is the only American president who got some-thing undeniably good done after the young Bush whupped Afghanistan for 9/11. Obama killed bin Laden instead of just talking about get-ting it done, like plagiarizing Oliver Stone’s line in his movie Alexander the Great, “You can run but you can’t hide,” which the young Bush did. The hostages’ legal claims were repeatedly blocked in US courts, in-cluding an appeal denied by the US Supreme Court. The US Congress tried but failed to pass laws grant-ing relief. Why? Hostages are embar-

rassing to their government. Every hostage situation, a Filipino general explained during martial law, has two elements: hostages and hostage-takers. You can’t have one without the other, he stressed. So kill ’em all, he concluded. The Philippine government had the same mind-set in Luneta when hostages and hostage-taker were killed together and when it refused to compensate the families of the SAF 44 because they showed grief instead of relief at the deaths of their hus-bands and fathers and wouldn’t say thank you to an embarrassed peace panel, which includes a Malaysian national. See, we are just keeping up with the Joneses.

State of Obama’s Union is booming

B M A. W | Bloomberg View

WHEN President Barack Obama was elected in Novem-ber 2008, the US economy was shrinking at a rate un-matched since World War II. In the seven years between

then and his final State of the Union address on Tuesday night, global investors have enjoyed stellar results from the rapidly ex-panding Obama economy.

Market prosperity has been built on a solid economic foundation. The un-employment rate has declined the most in any five-year period since 1989, from its 10-percent peak in October 2009 to 5 percent last December. The budget deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product has plummeted 7.7 percentage points from a high of 10.1 percent in 2010, the biggest favorable reversal in at least 50 years. 

That’s helped propel the value of US companies to half the world’s publicly traded equity for the first time since 2001. The 10 companies with the high-est market capitalization are American—the first time that’s happened since Ronald Reagan was president.

World’s biggest companies by market cap

Source: Bloomberg

US politics remains as politically divided as ever, but the recovery has proved bipartisan. Many states led by Republican governors and legislatures have shown big increases in prosperity measured by job growth, personal income, mortgage delinquencies, tax revenues, home prices and corporate equity, ac-cording to data compiled by Bloomberg.

When Obama was elected, the US was losing almost 9 percent of its GDP, the biggest quarterly contraction in well over half a century. The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers a month earlier pushed the global financial industry into paralysis and General Motors and Chrysler to the brink of insolvency.

Only five US firms were among the world’s 10 largest by market cap, down from nine in 2001. Stocks of American companies made up less than 40 per-cent of the value of the top 500 global equities, the smallest share in decades, according to Bloomberg data. The US budget deficit exploded from 4.7 percent at the end of 2008 to 10.1 percent of GDP over the next 12 months.

The stock market bottomed in April 2009, when the government was start-ing to restructure the US auto industry and administer stress tests to deter-mine whether banks could survive another crisis. The ensuing rally added the most points to the Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 Index since at least 1927, when Bloomberg started compiling such data. On a percentage basis, the stock market is up 178 percent since March of 2009, the biggest seven-year increase since a comparable rally ended in April 2001.

Obama’s critics are correct to point out that the expansion has been halt-ing and uneven, accompanied by rising inequality, anemic wage growth and underemployment. Growth has been slower than after many previous reces-sions. It’s significant, though, that the three best-performing industries since March 2009 are consumer discretionary, financial and technology, showing that Americans are borrowing again and have enough spare cash to make Ama-zon, Alphabet, Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, Facebook, Home Depot, JPMorgan Chase, Walt Disney and Wells Fargo winning investments.

Big and small companies, as measured by the Russell 3000 Index, are grow-ing at an annual rate of 15.5 percent since March 2009 and outperforming the rest of the world by 7.4 percent, according to Bloomberg data. During the 20 years prior to Obama’s presidency, the Russell’s yearly gain was 4.5 percent and it outperformed the rest of the world by 3.9 percent each year.

What’s especially compelling is that US firms are investing in their growth at a record pace. Capital expenditures of the S&P 500 are the most since at least 1990, when Bloomberg began compiling such data, and increased 68 percent since 2010. The only comparable investment spree occurred between 1995 and 2000, when the Internet began transforming US commerce. 

American companies also are healthier than they have ever been. The ratio of net debt to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of the S&P 500—the most widely used measure of corporate well-being—improved the most during the Obama presidency and hovers at all-time lows, according to Bloomberg data. The profitability of these companies, measured by trailing 12-month gross margins that show how well they can turn revenue into profit, is rising at the fastest rate compared to global peers since 2006, and they are outperforming their non-US competitors the most since 2001.

Auto sales climbed to a record in 2015, and GM, Ford and Fiat Chrysler are selling more vehicles, are more profitable than their global peers and return-ing more to their shareholders than they did in 1994, when they had twice their current share of the US market. 

The investment boom continues unabated after an estimated 17.6 mil-lion Americans gained some form of health-insurance  coverage following enactment of the Affordable Care Act in March 2010. Instead of being the economic catastrophe predicted by congressional Republicans, all of whom voted against it, Obamacare proved benign for US business and health-care companies delivered the best total return (income and appreciation) of any industry since October 2013, when the law took effect for most people, ac-cording to Bloomberg data. 

While their voters remain opposed to Obamacare along with most of the president’s policies, many Republican-dominated states have benefited sig-nificantly from the recovery, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. North Dakota, Indiana, Tennessee, Iowa and Utah are among the 14 most-improved states for economic health since 2009. Arizona was the biggest beneficiary of declining mortgage delinquencies while North Dakota, with its shale-oil boom, experienced the biggest increase in home prices and personal income, according to Bloomberg data.

American companies, helped in part by the strongest dollar and the weak-est oil prices since the 1990s, were more active as acquirers and sellers of each other in 2015 than at any point during the past decade; $3.2 trillion changed hands, the most mergers and acquisitions since at least 2003, when Bloom-berg began compiling such data. At the same time, there were only $33.8 bil-lion of initial public offerings pending, priced or trading last year, the lowest amount since 2009. That may be a sign of untapped potential. If so, the Obama rebound isn’t over just yet. 

TEN years ago, Jack Shafer described the life cycle of the new magazine owner, from the birth of a media mogul, shining with hope, through the penny-pinching decline,

to the regretful decision to sell the publication to a new sucker, er, aspiring media mogul. Four years ago, Facebook billionaire Chris Hughes bought the New Republic, and gave Shafer a perfect textbook example. Like one of those glorious butterflies that lives only for a day, Hughes dreamed, expanded,contracted and  announced the sale in what may be record speed.

Next owner of the ‘New Republic’ needs a better vision

FREE FIRETeddy Locsin Jr.

Unfortunately, the end of Hughes as media mogul will not simply mean a quietly tasteful memorial service at his fabulous farmhouse. During his brief tenure, the magazine lost most of its old staff, half its Web traffic, and much of what might have interested a potential buyer. Perhaps Hughes has a buyer ready to sign on the dotted line, which would be great news for the staff and for those of us who have read and loved this sto-ried stalwart for decades. But it’s hard to argue that his actions over the last few years have made that outcome likely.

What, after all, is a magazine? It doesn’t own its own printing presses, it has little in the way of marketable in-tellectual property, and the barriers to entry into our industry are laughably low. In the end, when you buy a maga-zine, you have a brand, invested with the history and associations of all your years of operation; you have some edi-tors and writers, who may leave at any time; you have an audience that may flee at any time; and you have a culture, cre-ated by all the people, past and present, who have worked there over the years.

Hughes effectively destroyed the culture with his abrupt termination-by-

rumor-item of much-loved editor Frank-lin Foer, which caused a mass exodus of employees. The brand was, to say the least, not enhanced when many of its star alumni severed their contributing editor ties in solidarity. These things caused the audience to fall precipitously. What he has now is essentially a year-old start-up progressive magazine with middling Web traffic.

To be fair to Hughes, it’s not as if the New Republic’s problems started with him. The magazine, on the losing side of the left’s battles over the Iraq war, had been teetering on the edge for years. Hughes certainly intended to extend its life; whether he had the opposite effect, we’ll never know.

I’m sure he wanted to make the magazine into something great. But “be something great” is not a sufficient guideline for growing or running a me-dia property. From the outside (I recall), journalism looks dead easy: Just find great stories, write them up, and collect the accolades while sipping fancy cock-tails with famous people. From the in-side, it turns out to be horribly difficult to acquire a decent audience, much less make money off of them—and often, the

amount of accolade-winning content is inversely proportional to the amount of cash you’ll take in.

As I wrote last year, when the conga line of employees was snaking out the door toward other publications, it was not crazy for Hughes to think that he could develop the magazine into some-thing like The New Yorker for Washington. It was, however, crazy to think that any-one could make money doing so. And it was even crazier to think that vague vi-sions like The New Yorker for Washington was sufficient guideline for turning the New Republic around.

What Hughes needed was a coherent vision of The-New-Republic-But-a-Lit-tle-Different, based on an understanding of the challenges and joys of this indus-try. And yet in past interviews, he sounds more like someone unconnected with the business, describing a hypothetical publication he might like to subscribe to. His management of the business, run-ning through three editors in less than four years, doesn’t suggest that there was some sort of deeper, unspoken plan.

It seems, perhaps, he was trying to run a start-up, instead of navigate a turnaround.

A lot of people make this very mis-take. Perhaps the most vivid example is then-new President Obama asking why ailing automakers “can’t make a Corolla?” There’s nothing wrong with that ques-tion as a starting point for understanding the differences between US and Japanese automakers. But that’s not how such questions usually get asked. Instead, like The New Yorker for Washington, they usu-ally embed an assumption that an exist-ing firm is one good manager away from turning into a completely different and much more successful entity.

The answer to questions like this is “because they’re not Toyota” (or The New Yorker, or whatever other successful firm you’d like to turn your industry laggard into). The company you’re working with has its own history, its own facilities,

its own people and cultures. And these things tend to be optimized to whatever they’ve been doing, not whatever you think they should have been doing. The offices and plant were built to spec, the people hired and retained to suit prior requirements, the processes customized to the people and plant the company had available. You can no more wave your hand and command them to transform into a different firm than an alchemist could transform lead into gold.

Am I saying that companies can’t bounce back from the brink of extinc-tion? Not at all! Look at something like  the incredible turnaround at Porsche, which came close to being sold off for the value of its logo, and came back to be one of the world’s most prof-itable car companies by implementing lean production models and streamlin-ing its product offerings. But note that Porsche did not start producing Corol-las. What it did was get better at what it was already doing: making high-quality, low-production luxury vehicles.

Any turnaround has to start with the assets the company has, and build on them. Otherwise, why go into a turn-around? Just start a new company, where you won’t have to hassle with the old em-ployees, the old ways of doing things, and the old brand associations. A turnaround doesn’t have to keep all of that, by any means—many turnarounds sadly start with mass firings. But there needs to be something that you want to grow, even as you trim away the deadwood and the choking vines.

Hughes seems to have understood this, at first; his early moves were toward a bigger, better version of what the New Republic had been able to put out as its subscribers declined. But at some point —one can only imagine it was when he realized that little political magazines don’t make money—he seems to have decided that he’d rather be running a startup, where there might be more scope for action and profits.

But last year, buried in the huge spending bill signed into law last Christmas are provisions that give each of the 53 hostages or their

estates (meaning they are dead) up to $4.4 million. Victims of other state-sponsored terrorist attacks are also eligible. A Marine sergeant, aptly

BLOOMBERG VIEWMegan McArdle

Page 12: BusinessMirror January 13, 2016

and Estela Perlas Bernabe, while As-sociate Justice Francis Jardeleza took no part.

The SC pointed out that it cannot bar the President from choosing an executive agreement over a treaty. “The President’s choice of an executive agreement to contain the Edca places the burden on re-spondents to show that it is mere implementation of existing laws and treaties concurred in by the Senate. On this, the Court found that the burden had been discharged by the respondents,” it added.

The Court junked the two peti-tions filed by former Senators Rene Saguisag and Wigberto Tañada, and Party-list Reps. Neri Colmenares

and Carlos Zarate of Bayan Muna questioning the legality of Edca. The petitioners alleged that the administration  committed a grave abuse of discretion when it entered into the Edca, as it consti-tutes a derogation of the country’s dignity and an unconscionable sellout of sovereignty, and that it contravenes the country’s national interests as it is “primarily moti-vated by the US strategic rebalanc-ing toward Asia and is, therefore, in the service of US security and economic interests.”

They added that contrary to the claim of the respondents, the Edca is “not in implementation or furtherance of the 1951 Mu-

A12

2ndFront PageBusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

2Wednesday, January 13, 2016

�e Edca provides for arrangements to implement

the existing treaty allowing entry of foreign military troops.”—Sereno

Supreme Court: Edca constitutionalB J R. S J

THE Supreme Court (SC) on Tuesday voted to uphold the constitutionality of the Enhanced

Defense Cooperation Agreement (Edca) between the Philippines and the US governments that was signed in April 2014.

SC Spokesman Theodore Te said 10 ofthe justices declared the agreement constitutional on the ground that Article XVIII, Section 25 of the 1987 Constitution allows the President to enter into an ex-ecutive agreement on foreign mili-tary bases, troops, or facilities as long as it merely intends to imple-ment an existing law or treaty, such as the Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) and the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA).

The SC held that,  contrary to the claims of the petitioners, Edca is an executive agreement that does not require concurrence of the Senate.

The Court pointed out that the President’s power to enter into ex-ecutive agreements (different from treaties) not requiring Senate con-currence has been well-recognized

and long upheld by the tribunal.“The Court ruled that the Edca

is not the instrument that allows US ‘troops or facilities’ to enter, as the Visiting Forces Agreement already has done that.... The Edca provides for arrangements to implement the existing treaty al-lowing entry of foreign military troops of facilities under the VFA and MDT, and, thus, may be in the form of an executive agree-ment solely within the powers of the President and not requiring Senate concurrence under Article XVIII, Section 25,” the SC said in a ruling penned by Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno. Those who dissented from the majority opinion were Associate Justices Teresita Leonardo de Cas-tro, Arturo Brion, Marvic Leonen

tual Defense Treaty between the two countries and the VFA, and that the country might once again become a staging ground for the deployment of US ships, aircraft and even missile systems over-seas because of the prepositioning and the deployment of materiel allowed under the Edca. The petitioners also said the re-spondents yielded to the US forces the operational control of agreed lo-cation for construction activities and the operational control and defense of these agreed locations. The government, on the other hand, insisted that the agreement is a valid executive agreement that could stand, even without the con-currence of the Senate.

Under the Edca, the US will be allowed to build structures; store—as well as preposition—weapons, defense supplies and materiel; sta-tion troops; civilian personnel and defense contractors; transit and sta-tion vehicles, vessels and aircraft for a period of 10 years.

IN this file photo, USS Boxer (LHD-4), a Wasp-class amphibious assault ship, arrives in Subic Bay to participate in the Philippine-US Bilateral Amphibious Landing Exercise at the Leovigildo Gantioqui Naval Station in San Antonio, Zambales. The ship, which has 1,894 Marines aboard and a complement of 73 offers and 1,009 enlisted men, also carries CH-53 and V-22 Osprey aircraft and is armed with Sea Sparrow missiles and Phalanx close-in weapons system. HENRY EMPEÑO

B M T. C  Mindanao Bureau Chief           

 

DAVAO CITY—The Philip-pines has aspired to be listed in the travel index

among Muslim travelers to capture a sizable slice of the rich multitrillion-dollar halal market, a Muslim busi-ness leader here said.  Those listed in the Global Mus-lim Travel Index, the world’s leading authority in preferred travel desti-nations among Muslim tourists, are accorded the “CrescentRating,” an approval mark for a country or place of destination.

The index includes valuations of the halal-certified establish-ments and accommodations, as well as a conducive environment for Muslim travelers. Marilou Ampuan, a member of the board of trustees of the Phil-ippine Tourism Congress and the chairman of the halal promotion project here, said being cited in the index would be a crucial achievement for the country. But being specifically mentioned as a preferred destination in the Philippines would mean a bet-ter position for this city, she added. A mpuan sa id the countr y may aspire to take a slice of the

$3.2-trillion global halal market from its Asian neighbors with sizable Muslim population.

The Department of Tourism (DOT) has set a target of 50 estab-lishments spread in Luzon (20), Bo-racay (10), rest of the Visayas (10) and Davao City (10) to be certified soon as halal establishments.

The problem is that its halal cer-tification remains a long shot from being recognized globally, she said, citing problems with assurance of a certified halal practice “from farm to plate.”  “There are halal-certified  producers of livestock, food and non-food items, but there are more producers that are not halal-certified,” she told a business forum at the SM City mall here. Aside from the problem with clear sources of raw items for food, certifying bodies in the Philip-pines also encounter problems with contamination of food with pork and other haram, or prohibited Islamic preparations.

The National Commission on Muslim Filipinos already granted authority to three organizations to be the recognized and accred-ited halal-certifying body, respec-tively, for Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao. For Mindanao, the of-

fice is in Cotabato City.Ampuan said the Mindanao

cert if y ing body has a lready granted certifications to several busi-ness establishments in and around Cotabato City. The DOT here has so far promoted this city as “halal-friendly.”  “But there are already some which are ready to be certi-fied here,” she said. To gain more adherence and following to halal-certification, Ampuan has formed the Davao City Halal Development Council to promote its adoption by ac-commodation and food establish-ments, even among fashion and other business ventures. The council has gathered local and national government agencies to spur wider adoption of the halal practices to help bring in the Muslim tourists here.

“Aside from food and accommo-dation, we hope that these agen-cies would be conscious that they should also check on the cosmet-ics, for example, that they should not contain anything coming from pork,” she added. The council is chaired by the Mindanao Islamic Chamber of Com-merce, a recognized Philippine entity in the Islamic world.

PHL needs ‘CrescentRating’ to lure more Muslim tourists