P25 IN METRO MANILA,

PHILIPPINES

T H U R S DAY • JA N UA RY 1 4 , 2 01 6 • www. bwo r l d o n l i n e.co m S1/1-12 • 4 SECTIONS, 28 PAGES

San Miguel brewing up beer deal

San Miguel, S1/2

State spending, S1/2BSP, S1/2

By Krista A. M. MontealegreSenior Reporter

By Keith Richard D. Mariano

By Melissa Luz T. Lopez Reporter

VOL. XXIX • ISSUE 119

BUSINESSNEWSPAPER OF 2014 AND 2015

ROTARY CLUB OFMANILA

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DIVERSIFIED conglomerate San Miguel Corp. (SMC) has ex-pressed interest to acquire SAB-Miller PLC’s Grolsch and Peroni beer brands — a move analysts saw as a bid to tap new growth drivers beyond an already-satu-rated domestic market.

Anheuser Busch InBev SA, which agreed to buy SABMiller PLC for $100 billion plus, has been seeking potential bidders for Grolsch and Peroni, sources close to the process told Reuters last month.

The two foreign firms are sell-ing the popular beer brands to win clearance for the merger of Anheuser-Busch and SABMiller, according to reports.

“Yes, [we will] join [the] bid,” SMC President and Chief Operat-ing Officer Ramon S. Ang said in a mobile phone message yesterday.

Shares in SMC — the parent firm of San Miguel Brewery, Inc. (SMB) — added P8 or 15.38% to close at P60 each on Wednesday.

San Miguel will go up against other foreign suitors, including Asian brewers Asahi Group Hold-ings Ltd. of Japan and Thai Bever-age PCL of Thailand, for the beer brands, according to foreign me-dia reports citing people familiar with the situation.

“REACHED ITS PEAK”A dominant force in the local beer market, SMC is moving to buy the well-known beer brands at a time when the country’s biggest brewer is seeking new sources of growth.

“San Miguel is on expansion mode and that makes sense because it has reached its peak domesti-cally,” Astro C. del Castillo, manag-ing director at First Grade Finance, Inc., said in a telephone interview.

SMB controls roughly 90% of the beer market, said Luis A. Lim-lingan, business development head at Regina Capital Develop-ment Corp, but noted that con-sumer preferences are changing.

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Economy to get a kick as state spending rises 16% in Q4 — Abad

Time runs out for BSP charter bill

STATE SPENDING likely grew at an annual-ized clip of 16% at best in the fourth quarter of 2015, bolstering chances the economy clocked a growth rate of 6% for the year, the country’s budget chief said.

“That is highlighted by easily about 13% increase in infrastructure spending over the fourth quarter of 2014,” Budget Secretary Florencio B. Abad told reporters late Tuesday.

The budget chief offered a growth range of 10-16% in disbursements for the October to December 2015 period from the P525.54 bil-lion during the comparable 2014 period.

That pace meant the government had been sustaining the mid-teens clip in spending

growth in the two quarters before that — an average 12.5% in the second quarter and 19% in the third quarter, according to data from the Bureau of the Treasury.

In the first quarter — when gross domestic product (GDP) growth logged a slower-than-expected 5% — government expenditures grew by just 4.5% to P504.05 billion.

Last week, the government reported state spending rose by an annual 13% to P1.992 trillion in the eleven months ended November last year but below a P2.335-trillion goal.

The latest spending data translated to a narrower year-to-date deficit of P46.545 bil-lion, retreating further from the P283.69-billion ceiling designed to spur a 7-8% GDP growth — the official goal — in 2015.

“Traditionally everybody rushes to close their books so [they] spend as much at the end of the year. Especially since next year is [an] election year and [given the] March 25 election ban, they all want to avoid that,” Mr. Abad said.

The fourth-quarter disbursement repre-sents a “very small part” of the economy’s overall growth, Mr. Abad said. “But if it were to depend on public spending, then we can project that robust increase.”

$20 oil no longer a mirage as world confronts 12-year lowTHE WORLD mostly ignored Ed Morse 11 months ago when the head of commodities research at Citigroup said oil could drop as low as $20.

It’s paying attention now that crude has tipped below $30.

Crude futures in the U.S. sank into the $20s for the first time in more than 12 years on Tuesday, hours after BP Plc said it would slash an additional 4,000 jobs, Petroleo Brasileiro SA cut its spending plan and Petroliam Na-sional Bhd. warned that it faces several tough years. Morse, who wrote in a Feb. 9 research note that oil could fall “perhaps as low as the $20 range for a while,” said

The call for oil in the $20s has grown louder. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. gave a 50 percent chance of oil falling to $20 in September and Morgan Stan-ley said Monday that a strong dollar could drop oil below $30. Morse was first with the $20 call, although he said last February that it could happen in the first half of last year followed by the market balancing.

“Right now the real driving factor is access to capital mar-kets,” Sadeghian said by phone from Chicago. “$20 oil just digs an even deeper hole from where you need to be before the markets open up again.” — Bloomberg

in Calgary Tuesday that the world is now confronting $20 oil.

“The $20 number is something you have to talk about,” Morse said. “When you’ve seen a $10 price slide and WTI is trading just slightly above $30, the likelihood is fairly great. Clearly oil markets cannot maintain a price at below the $30 level for very long. The question is how much longer.”

West Texas Intermediate fell as low as $29.93 a barrel before set-tling at $30.44 Tuesday, the lowest level since December 2003.

FINANCING CHALLENGESLow prices could cause problems for U.S. oil companies with cov-

enants that specify certain debt-to-earnings ratios or interest coverage, and will make it even harder for them to obtain financ-ing to continue operating, said Mark Sadeghian, a senior director for the energy and commodities group at Fitch Ratings Ltd.

The Bloomberg Commodities Index fell to the lowest level since at least 1991 as demand from slowing emerging-market economies fails to keep pace with a flood of supply from investments made during the price boom of a half-decade ago.

Malaysia stands to lose 300 million ringgit ($68 million) for every $1-a-barrel decline in crude, according to government

estimates. ConocoPhillips is los-ing $1.79 billion in net income each quarter for every $10 drop in prices, according to analysts at Barclays Plc.

Petrobras, as Brazil’s state-controlled oil producer is known, cut its five-year business plan to $98.4 billion, the latest adjust-ment to the original $130 billion announced last year.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration reduced its fore-cast for WTI prices for 2016 by 24 percent to $38.54 a barrel. In its monthly Short-Term Energy Outlook, the agency said the oil market would come back into bal-ance in 2017.

D E T R O I T Auto industry’s green push challenged by low gas pricesBeneath the hoods of the cars showing in Detroit this week lie engines that are as powerful as ever, but are smaller and, helped by direct injection, guzzle less gas. Auto-makers have subbed out stain-less steel for aluminum and other lighter-weight materials, and added more gears to let engines run in “sweet spot” mode more often. S3/3

S A N F R A N C I S C O Personal computer shipments plunge but Apple bucks trend Last year ended with a record-setting

drop in personal computer shipments, with Apple bucking the trend, a report found on Tuesday. The International Data Corp. (IDC) calculated that some 71.9 million

personal computers (PCs) were shipped worldwide in the final quarter of

2015, a 10.6% drop from the same period a year earlier. S3/3

N E W Y O R KEnergy, biotech stocks help lift Wall St. to second day of gainsA late rebound in energy and biotech shares helped push the S&P 500 to a sec-ond straight day of gains on Tuesday, while Apple and other technology shares also boosted the market. The Nasdaq snapped an eight-session losing streak, with the Nasdaq Biotech Index rebounding late, also breaking an eight-day run of losses. The biotech index, among the hardest-hit in this year’s selloff, ended up 1.5%. S3/4

AROUND THE WORLD

THE CHANCES of Senate action on a priority legislation to infuse more funds and give additional powers to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) are dimming, lawmakers said.

With barely six weeks’ worth of legislative sessions left, lawmak-ers have yet to come up with a final proposal to fortify the current BSP charter.

Proposed changes include hiking the BSP’s authorized capital to P200 billion from the current P50 billion, the expansion of the authority of the central bank to obtain data from pri-vate entities “for statistical and policy development,” and the power to issue its own debt securities.

Those provisions are seen to im-prove the central bank’s financial sustainability by updating the New Central Bank Act of 1993, which has been in place for over 20 years.

The House of Representatives has passed its version of the bill on Oct.

9 as House Bill 5875 just before Con-gress took a three-week break to give way to the filing of candidacies for the May 9, 2016 national polls.

Senate officials, however, said the bill is facing rough sailing.

STUCK IN COMMITTEEAsked about the bill’s chances of see-ing approval, Sen. Sergio R. Osmeña, III, chairman of the Senate Com-mittee on Banks, Financial Institu-tions, and Currencies, said via text: “Not enough time.”

30 DAYS TO JANUARY 13, 2016

Dow Jones 16,516.22 117.65nAsDAQ 4,685.919 47.930s&P 500 1,938.68 15.01FTse 100 5,929.240 57.410euro sToxx50 2,902.340 25.750

JAPAn (nikkei 225) 17,715.63 496.67 2.88Hong kong (HAng seng) 19,934.88 223.12 1.13TAiwAn (weigHTeD) 7,824.61 56.16 0.72THAilAnD (seT inDex) 1,278.61 23.31 1.86s.koreA (kse ComPosiTe) 1,916.28 25.42 1.34singAPore (sTrAiTs Times) 2696.5 4.72 0.18syDney (All orDinAries) 4,987.44 62.31 1.27mAlAysiA (klse ComPosiTe) 1,642.54 1.17 0.07

STO C K M A R K E T

JAPAn (yen) 118.280 117.720Hong kong (Hk DollAr) 7.760 7.758TAiwAn (nT DollAr) 33.345 33.452THAilAnD (bAHT) 36.230 36.310s. koreA (won) 1,201.940 1,209.740singAPore (DollAr) 1.433 1.438inDonesiA (ruPiAH) 13,820 13,905mAlAysiA (ringgiT) 4.375 4.409

$/uk PounD 1.4461 1.4492$/euro 1.0809 1.0858$/AusT DollAr 0.7034 0.6985CAnADA DollAr/us$ 1.4194 1.4227swiss FrAnC/us$ 1.0071 0.9997

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INDEXoPen: 6,371.94HigH: 6,506.91low: 6,371.94Close: 6,494.13Vol.: 0.644 bVAl(P): 6.224 b

FXoPen P47.350HigH P47.350low P47.550Close P47.545w. AVe. P47.457Vol. $858.80 m

LATEST BID (0900GMT) PREVIOUS CLOSE NET % CLOSE NET CLOSE PREVIOUS

163.58 PTs.2.58%

COMPOSITE

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A S I A N M A R K E T S WO R L D M A R K E T S P E S O - D O L L A R R AT E S

30 DAYS TO JANUARY 13, 2016

A S I A N C U R R E N C I E S WO R L D C U R R E N C I E S

13.2 CTVS.

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DUBAI 26.50 28.10WTI 30.44 31.41BRENT 30.86 31.55

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E V E N T S C A L E N D A RDecember hot money dataPHL banks’ real estate exposurehttp://goo.gl/9qRlCS

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90THE downtrend in world oil prices shows no signs of stopping as Dubai crude, the benchmark for local fuel prices, averaged $29.45 per barrel so far this year — an amount not reached since $26.42 at end-2003. This roughly translates to a pump price of P36.775 per liter of gasoline. How does this compare with prices of select consumer goods that can also be measured per liter? — Leo Jaymar G. Uy

BY THE LITER: HOW CHEAP IS GASOLINE?

BUSINESSWORLD GRAPHICS: BONG R. FORTIN

PREMIUMBRAND

FRESH MILK

GASOLINE

DISTILLEDWATER

MASS-MARKETBEER

READY-TO-DRINKICED TEA

1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

24.725 19.375 16.95 14.525 14.35 16.325 19.075 18.9212.315 16.945

26.125 21.74 23.045 26.4234.37

47.21

63.42569.36

86.815

58.925

80.21

105.115106.765

105.15

81.89

48.95

29.45

NOTES: The price of gasoline was obtained by subtracting P0.15 (the average of the P0.1-P0.2 per liter increase in prices last Monday) from P39.125 (the average of the P33.2-P40.65 per liter price range prevailing in Metro Manila).

Additional information provided by Timothy Roy C. Medina and Dindo F. Paragas

ANNUAL AVERAGE PRICEOF DUBAI CRUDE(in USD/barrel)

P36.775 P104.55 P288.14P84.50P23.95 P28.80

CHAIN STORECOFFEE

Sn Miguel,from S1/ 1

State spending,from S1/ 1

BSP,from S1/ 1

GDP growth had so far been below goal — averaging 5.6% in the three quarters ended Septem-ber — but while the Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC) is retaining its targets, So-cioeconomic Planning Secretary Arsenio M. Balisacan earlier said a 6% growth was more realistic.

To realize a slower 6% an-nual growth, the country’s output should have increased 6.9% dur-ing the three months to December — the fastest since the 7% record-ed in the third quarter of 2013.

BULLISH Q4 BETMr. Abad, who heads the inter-agency DBCC, expects the econo-my to have exhibited a “definitely better” performance in the Octo-ber-December period than what’s seen in the preceding quarter.

When asked about the likeli-hood that the economy expanded by 6.9% in the fourth quarter, Mr. Abad said: “May laban (there is a chance). If I were just to base it on public spending, I will be more confident.”

An expected surge in private consumption during the Christ-mas season and in the run-up to the May 9 national elections should be key growth drivers, he said.

“The last-quarter hunger is best in 11 years so people spend more money on food [and un-employment] even went further down,” Mr. Abad said.

In a recent report, the Social Weather Stations said invol-untary hunger eased in the last quarter and helped bring the full-year result to the lowest level in 11 years.

“The domestic market is get-ting more sophisticated,” Mr. Limlingan said in a mobile phone message.

“We are seeing a change in preferences and the market is looking for other options.”

San Miguel’s plan to bid to buy “established” beer brands is “no longer surprising” since that will accelerate its expansion.

Mr. del Castillo said: “You now have companies like Emperador, Inc. of Andrew Tan buying for-eign companies overseas. That was a bit surprising because ma-bilis (it was done in haste).”

“With San Miguel, this is not surprising since it has long been expanding globally,” he added.

SMB is adopting a multi-beverage strategy to capitalize on the faster growth pace of the non-alcoholic beverage segment that will add 30% to revenues in

the next five years, Mr. Ang had said in May last year.

SMB is partnering with its key shareholder Kirin Holdings Co. Ltd. of Japan to introduce new non-alcoholic beverage products — including soft drinks — in the Philippines. It has acquired nearly P400 million worth of assets non-alcoholic beverage assets of sister firm Ginebra San Miguel, Inc.

SMB’s net profit grew by an an-nual 6% to P9.97 billion in the nine-months through September. Con-solidated revenues rose 4% to P58.8 billion on higher domestic beer sales.

Led by Mr. Ang, the country’s largest food and beverage compa-ny started an aggressive diversifi-cation program in 2007 that saw the conglomerate make a series of acquisitions in attractive growth sectors such as infrastructure, fuel and oil, energy, telecommu-nications and banking.

Foray into spacePHOTOGRAPHERS take pictures of DIWATA-1, Philippines' first micro satellite for multi spectral high precision earth observation, during a media tour at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Tsukuba Space Center in Tsukuba, north of Tokyo, Japan, Jan. 13.

REUTERS

“There are significant objec-tions. It will take time to address and understand the issues,” Mr. Osmeña said.

During the House hearings on the measure, committee chairman Batangas Rep. Nelson P. Collantes (3rd district) said some lawmakers were initially apprehensive about provisions that they deem could accord cen-tral bank officials with too much power.

At the Senate, Mr. Osmeña’s committee has not resumed dis-cussions on the measure with Congressional sessions set for Jan. 19, coming from a month-long Christmas break. They will again adjourn on Feb. 5 as the of-ficial election campaign period starts.

Legislators get back to work on May 23 through June 10 to formally close the 16th Congress.

By July, under the helm of a new president, a fresh set of law-makers will make the 17th Con-gress, where all bills -- regardless

of how close they were to enact-ment in the previous Congress -- will have to start from scratch and must be refiled.

Senate President Franklin M. Drilon also said the BSP’s pro-posal still is far from securing the Senate’s full vote.

“The bill is still pending in the Committee on Banks. We cannot take it up in plenary unless the Committee submits its report,” Mr. Drilon said separately.

Should the BSP’s charter change bill fail to clear the Sen-ate, it would have to go back to refiling in both chambers and again fight its way up to clinch the go-ahead at the committee level and on separate second and third readings in both the House and Senate, plus a possible bicameral conference before it can be en-dorsed for the President’s signing into law.

Efforts to fortify the BSP’s powers as the country’s monetary authority date back to previous Congresses, but to no avail.

“No bill is ever dead. It can be taken up in the next session in July. Important bills take many Congresses to pass,” Mr. Osmeña added.

“HOPEFUL”Central bank officials, however, believe that there is still space for Congress to pass the measure.

BSP Governor Amando M. Tet-angco, Jr. said via e-mail: “We will continue to work with the Senate for the passage of the bill.”

BSP Deputy Governor Diwa C. Guinigundo also said on Mon-day that the BSP is still “hopeful” about the bill’s passage.

“ T h e Ho u s e h a s a l r e a d y completed its own version. We expect an upward adjustment on the capitalization of the BSP from P50 billion to P200 billion, also the authority of the BSP to issue its own debt securities - that’s also another important amendment to the charter. But we are waiting for the Senate version,” Mr. Guinigundo told

reporters on the sidelines of a press forum.

“This is an election year, peo-ple are busy, Congress and the Senate are also busy so we are keeping our fingers crossed.”

“You need a law - otherwise there is no authority for the na-tional government, particularly For the Department of Budget and Management to give us be-yond what is provided for under the law.”

The central bank has remained in the red for the past five years, though it has narrowed its losses to P3.77 billion as of end-Novem-ber against the end-2010 level of a P59.04-billion loss.

The BSP charter amendments form part of the priority reforms sought by Malacañang, Congress, and business groups. The pro-posed legislation is also one of three reforms earlier named by credit rater Moody’s Investors Service to ensure creditworthi-ness of the Philippines beyond 2016.

2/S1 THURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 2016

By Krista A. M. MontealegreSenior Reporter

EDITOR CATHY ROSE A. GARCIA

More listed companies rush to buy back shares

CORPORATES are rushing to the stock market to stop the bleeding of their share prices amid a global sell-o� that has dragged the Phil-ippine stock market to a bear ter-ritory.

Filings to the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) showed compa-nies in the main index such as En-rique K. Razon-led Bloomberry Resorts Corp. and International Container Terminal Services, Inc. as well as Lopez-led Energy

Development Corp. have been buying back their shares of stocks from the open market since Mon-day when the benchmark gauge fell to a nearly two-year low.

Other companies that have been repurchasing their shares were Belle Corp., Phinma Corp. and Splash Corp., according to regulatory fi lings.

“These companies in a way think their shares may be at oversold levels. They think their shares are undervalued so they have been buying their shares to support prices amid the sell-off,” Lexter L. Azurin, head of research at Unicapital

Securities, Inc., said in a phone interview.

The share buybacks “added to the rise in the past two days,” Mr. Azurin said, as the Philippine stock market recovered from a rout triggered by volatility in Chi-nese equities amid concerns of a deep slowdown in the world’s second-biggest economy.

Yesterday, the 30-company P S E i n d e x ( P S E i ) s h o t u p 163.58 points or 2.58% to end at 6,494.13, its biggest one-day point and percentage increase since Oct. 2, 2013 when the lo-cal barometer climbed 164.42 points or 2.7%.

Despite the two-day rebound, the PSEi is still in a bear mar-ket, down 20.1% from its peak of 8,127.48 in April 10, 2015.

Local stocks are currently trading at a price to earnings mul-tiple of 15.3 times 2016 earnings — below the fi ve-year average of 17 times, Mr. Azurin said.

“Some stocks have become at-tractive with the recent sell-o� . If the market falls, companies are the fi rst one to provide support for the stocks because they think it has become cheap,” Luis A. Limlingan, business development head at Re-gina Capital Development Corp., said in a mobile phone message.

PSE receives garnishment order on Araneta’s LBC

Vista Land mulls US dollar note issuance

THE Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) on Wednesday said it received a garnish-ment order on assets of LBC Express Holdings, Inc. under the exchange’s control, as part of the P1.8 billion collec-tion case fi led by the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp. (PDIC) on behalf of the shuttered LBC Development Bank, Inc.

“Please be advised that on January 11, 2016, the Exchange received a Notice of Garnishment issued on January 8, 2015 [sic] by the Regional Trial Court (RTC), Branch 143, Makati City,” PSE President and Chief Executive O� cer (CEO) Hans B. Sicat said in a Jan. 12 memorandum.

“The Notice of Garnishment e� ects garnishment upon all goods, effects, stocks, interests in stocks and shares, and any other personal properties of the Defendants in the possession of the Exchange or under the Exchange’s control su� cient to cover the amount of P1,824,686,444,” he added.

Mr. Sicat said the notice also instructed the PSE “not to deliver, transfer or oth-erwise dispose of such property to any person or entity other than the Deputy Sheri� of RTC Makati Branch 143.”

The PDIC, acting as liquidator of LBC Bank, is running after the LBC group on allegations that the company owes its sister bank P1.8 billion worth of “unpaid service fees.”

The Makati court had earlier issued a writ of preliminary attachment on LBC Express last Dec. 28, 2015. A writ of attachment is a court order for the attachment or seizure of a property, and is generally used to freeze the assets of a defendant while awaiting the results of a legal action to satisfy the plainti� ’s claim and costs of suit.

The defendants in the case include LBC Development Corp. and LBC Ex-

press, Inc. — the listed firm’s parent and subsidiary, respectively, as well as company o� cials.

LBC Express Chairman, President and CEO Miguel Angel A. Camahort said on Jan. 7 that “whether or not the claims against LBC Express are success-fully proven, there can be no assurance that these claims will not cause business interruptions or reputational harm to LBC Express Holdings, Inc. and may ultimately have a material adverse ef-fect on its financial performance and prospects.”

“[T]he writ (of preliminary attatch-ment) is a provisional remedy and the assets or cash of LBC Express shall be made to answer only upon final judg-ment being rendered against LBC Ex-press,” Mr. Camahort earlier said.

Shares in listed LBC Express Hold-ings, Inc. lost 10 centavos or 1.15% to end yesterday’s trading at P8.60 apiece.

Sought for comment, PSE Chief Op-erating O� cer Roel A. Refran said in a mobile phone reply: “It will be the mar-ket sentiments on these developments that will weigh on the price.”

Meanwhile, Araneta Properties Inc. (ARA) said it has not received any notice of garnishment from the court relating to its shares owned by LBC Express.

“In the event that we receive a notice of garnishment, said garnishment will have no material e� ect on ARA’s busi-ness, operations and financial condi-tion. There will only be an e� ect if such garnishment results in the legal transfer of the concerned ARA shares from LBC to another party. In such event, there may be a change in the list of stockhold-ers of ARA,” the company told the stock exchange on Wednesday. — Daphne J. Magturo

VISTA LAND & Lifescapes, Inc. may issue another tranche of its dollar-denominated notes under the company’s $1-billion medium-term note program.

VLL International, Inc. (VLLI), a wholly owned subsidiary of the property fi rm of billionaire and for-mer Senator Manuel B. Villar, Jr., is considering the o� ering of U.S. dollar-denominated notes, subject to favorable market conditions, the listed fi rm said in a disclosure to the stock exchange yesterday.

The management of Vista Land and VLLI has yet to deter-mine the terms and conditions of the o� er, the country’s largest homebuilder said.

Last June, VLLI raised $300 million from the sale of senior unsecured notes due 2022, the first seven-year tenor notes is-sued by the company under its debt program.

Order book for the debt securi-ties, which were priced at 7.375%, reached a record $1 billion, Vista Land had said.

The new notes were issued as part of the company’s liability management exercise aimed at lengthening the maturity of some $450 million worth of debt.

DBS Bank Ltd. and HSBC acted as joint global coordinators, joint lead managers and joint bookrun-ners for the $300-million notes

issuance, while BDO Capital & In-vestment Corp. and China Bank-ing Corp. acted as joint domestic lead managers.

Mr. Villar is consolidating his residential and commercial leas-ing businesses under Vista Land in a deal valued at P33 billion, ac-celerating its transformation into one of the Philippines’ biggest integrated property developers.

Vista Land grew its nine-month earnings by 18% to P5 bil-lion from P4.25 billion on higher sales.

Shares in Vista Land lost fi ve centavos or 1.10% to close at P4.50 each on Wednesday. — Krista A. M. Montealegre

BRIEFSVictorias Milling profi t rises nearly 10% in Q1VICTORIAS Milling Co., Inc. (VMC) saw its fi rst-quarter profi t increase by 9.73% from the previous year.

In a report to the Philippine Stock Exchange, the sugar producer said it earned P292.19 million in the three months ended November 2015, up from the P266.83 million in the same three months of 2014.

The September-November period is the company’s fi rst quarter since its fi scal year ends in August.

The increase in its fi rst-quarter profi t stems from a nearly 2.7% increase in operating revenue to P1.388 billion in the current year from P1.352 billion in the previous year.

Total expenses rose at a slower rate of 1.95% to P989.82 million in the current year from P970.86 million in the previous year.

VMC said it had paid all its restruc-tured loans in 2013, and redeemed all its convertible notes “except those subject to mandatory conversion to common shares amounting to P404.7 million.” — Janina C. Lim

Manila Water to provide services for ALI projectsMANILA WATER Co., Inc. yesterday said its subsidiary has signed a memorandum of agreement with property developer Ayala Land, Inc. (ALI) and the latter’s subsidiaries and a� liates to provide water and used water services and facilities to all their projects nationwide.

In a disclosure to the stock exchange, the company said the objective of the agreement signed by its unit Manila Water Philippine Ventures, Inc. was “to leverage on the respective expertise” of the parties “in order to provide optimum services and facilities for their customers and clients.”

It added that the Ayala Land group previously provided in-house water and used water services and facilities in their property development projects.

Among the Ayala Land units in-volved in the deal are AyalaLand Hotels and Resorts Corp., Alveo Land Corp., Avida Land Corp., Amaia Land Corp., and Bellavita Land Corp.

Both Ayala Land and Manila Water are part of Ayala Corp. — Victor V. Saulon

Lucio Co taps banker Dispo as adviserSEASONED investment banker Roberto Juanchito T. Dispo has joined the board of two companies owned by Philippine billionaire Lucio L. Co.

Mr. Dispo will join the board of Cosco Capital, Inc. — the holding fi rm for Mr. Co’s consumer-centric businesses — as adviser, e� ective Jan. 18, the listed fi rm told the stock exchange yesterday.

“Cosco Capital, Inc. believes that Mr. Dispo’s broad experience in invest-ments, strategic acquisition and man-agement including his previous position as Deputy Treasurer of the Philippines could provide the board with expert guidance to be a more competitive conglomerate in the Philippine market,” the listed holding fi rm said.

Mr. Dispo, in a mobile phone message, confi rmed he is also set to be named as adviser to the board of Philippine Bank of Communications, a commercial bank controlled by Mr. Co.

Mr. Dispo, who recently retired from First Metro Investment Corp., has over 17 years of experience in capital raising, investments, strategic acquisition and asset management.

His move to Cosco happens more than a week after he joined the board of Cirtek Holdings Philippines Corp. as its adviser and president. — Krista Angela M. Montealegre

Turkish airport operator TAV eyesinvestments in Philippines, BelgradeTAV Havalimanlari Holding AS, the operator of Turkey’s busiest airport, is in talks over plans to invest in projects in the Philip-pines and Belgrade, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

TAV, whose biggest owner is Aeroports de Paris with a 38% stake, is looking at committing to two airport deals coming up for bid next month, said the people, who asked not to be named be-cause the plans are confi dential.

While TAV may seek opera-tional rights, it may also opt for an asset acquisition, said one of the people. The airport in the Phil-ippines would be one of five for

which TAV and partners won pre-qualifi cation status last year, the person said, declining to specify a location.

TAV runs Istanbul’s Ataturk airport and 13 other sites in coun-tries including Georgia, Macedo-nia and Tunisia. It’s been seeking to expand with work abroad after a competing local group won a Turkish government contract in 2013 to develop a new, 150-mil-lion-passenger airport in Istan-bul and run it for 25 years. TAV also o� ers duty-free retail, infor-mation technology and ground handling at about 70 airports in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the US.

While Belgrade’s Nikola Tesla Airport hasn’t released any bid documents, Serbia’s government said in an International Monetary Organization filing in December that it has hired advisers to develop long-term management contracts. The Serbian Economy Ministry’s press office declined immediately to comment on Tuesday.

A TAV o� cial, who asked not to be named because of company policy, declined to comment on the airport operator’s plans.

The company is chasing two airports for investment, Haber-turk reported on Tuesday, citing TAV Chief Executive O� cer Sani Sener. — Bloomberg

Singapore’s Tallest Building A view of Singapore’s tallest building at Tanjong Pagar Centre is seen on Jan. 13. At 290 meters, the $2.23-billion mixed-use development by GuocoLand will be completed in mid-2016. Architectural fi rm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill designed the skyscraper.

AFP

A TRADER talks on the phone at the Philippine Stock Exchange in this Jan. 2, 2014 fi le photo.

AFP

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Corporate NewsTHURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 2016 S1/3

4/S1TheEconomy THURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 2016

By Victor V. Saulon

EDITOR TIMOTHY ROY MEDINA

It’s business permit renewal period once again. While some may as-sume that this annual process is a

clear-cut routine devoid of uncertain-ties, still some Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA)-registered fi rms could be uncertain whether they are re-quired by law to secure a mayor’s permit from the local government unit (LGU) or to pay local business taxes (LBT).

To provide a backdrop for the issue, we combed through the history of policy posi-tions on the matter and found that PEZA long ago clarifi ed the question on liability for LBT under its Memorandum Circular (MC) No. 2004-024 dated 24 September 2004. The rule covers all PEZA-regis-tered entities, whether enjoying income tax holiday (ITH) or the 5% gross in-come tax (GIT) regime, except those who opted to be taxed under the 30% regular corporate income tax regime. This exception also includes those reg-istered as Logistics Services Enterprises (formerly classified as Warehousing/Logistics Facilities Enterprises) which are now subjected to the 30% regular corporate income tax.

Notably, MC 2004-024 is clear with regard to the exemptions from mayor’s permit and LBT under these conditions:

• All PEZA-registered enterprises entitled to ITH, 5% GIT and tax and duty-free importation, including Logis-tics Services Enterprises, are exempted from securing a mayor’s permit from the LGU concerned;

• PEZA-registered enterprises avail-ing of ITH are exempted from the pay-ment of all local taxes, licenses, imposts and fees, including LBT; and

• PEZA-registered enterprises availing of the 5% GIT incentive are exempted from the payment of all national and local taxes, including LBT.

By local taxes, we re-fer to all taxes, fees and

charges imposed by LGUs pursuant to the Local Government Code of 1991, including LBT.

From the foregoing, all PEZA-regis-tered entities, either under ITH or 5% GIT, are exempted from securing a may-or’s permit and from payment of LBT.

But what about PEZA-registered enti-ties currently under or opting to be under the 30% regular corporate income tax and Logistics Services Enterprises? Are they also exempted from securing a may-or’s permit and from payment of LBT?

On the requirement to secure a may-or’s permit, since MC 2004-024 made no exclusions, we gather that all PEZA-

registered entities, including those cur-rently under or opting to be under the 30% regular corporate income tax and Logistics Services Enterprises are also covered by the exemption.

As to the payment of LBT, Section 23 of Republic Act (RA) No. 7916 (or the PEZA Law) provides the exemption by stating that “business establishments operating within the ecozones shall be entitled to the fiscal incentives as provided for under P.D. No. 66 or those provided under Book VI of Executive Order No. 226, otherwise known as the Omnibus Investment Code of 1987”.

Section 18 of Presidential Decree No. 66 (the law creating the Export Pro-cessing Zone Authority) provides that any business enterprise engaged in the production, processing, packaging, or manipulation of export products shall, to the extent of their construction, op-eration or production inside the zone, be exempt from the payment of any and all local government imposts, fees, licenses or taxes except real estate taxes.

Similarly, Article 78 of Executive Or-der 226 provides that zone registered enterprises shall, to the extent of their construction, operation or production inside the zone be exempt from the pay-ment of any and all local government imposts, fees, licenses or taxes except real estate taxes.

You may be asking — If the PEZA and related laws, as well as MC 2004-024 , are explicit in granting PEZA-registered enterprises exemptions from mayor’s permit and LBT, why the uncertainty in its implementation?

To date, there have been no PEZA Board resolutions or issuances specifi -cally exempting the payment of LBT by PEZA-registered entities under the 30% regular corporate income tax including Logistics Services Enterprises, thus, the confusion.

In addition, some LGUs have ex-isting Memorandums of Agreement (MoA) with PEZA requiring registered enterprises within the jurisdiction of the LGU to pay regulatory fees. For instance, the City Treasurers of Makati and Taguig are authorized to collect mayor’s permit fees, garbage fees, health certificate fees and sanitation inspection fees from PEZA-registered enterprises. The authority of PEZA to enter into such agreement with LGUs is based on Section 13 of RA 7916 which expressly vests PEZA with the power to “operate, administer, manage and develop the ecozone” and “register, regulate, and supervise the enterprises in the ecozone in an e� cient and de-centralized manner”.

By implication, the MoA modifi ed or amended MC 2004-024 by providing

exceptions to PEZA incentives. It also created a distinction between PEZA-registered enterprises located in LGUs with and without MoAs — the latter enjoying more favorable conditions.

Unless and until PEZA clarifi es the matter through a formal Board resolu-tion or issuance rationalizing the MoAs, the issue on the legality of imposing fees in connection with the mayor’s permit and imposing LBT on PEZA-registered enterprises remains.

The continued viability of PEZA de-pends on the influx of investors who place their trust in the hands of this government and its systems. We owe our investors transparency in informing them at the onset of available incentives and hidden costs of doing business in the country.

The views or opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Isla Lipana & Co. The fi rm will not accept any liability arising from the article.

PEZA-registered firms and local business taxesO P I N I O N

JOHN PAUL M. VARGAS is a manager at the Tax Services Department of Isla Lipana & Co.,the Philippine member fi rmof the PwC network. (02) 845-2728john.paul.m.vargas@ph.pwc.com

TAXWISE OROTHERWISEJOHN PAUL M. VARGAS

THE HEAD of the Asian Develop-ment Bank (ADB) on Wednesday said its Board will soon green-light an additional $400 million for the Philippines’ conditional cash transfer (CCT) program.

“Based on the positive out-comes of the CCT program, I’m now recommending to the ADB Board additional $400 million of fi nancing which is expected to be approved by the board of ADB soon,” Takehiko Nakao said in his welcome remarks at the confer-ence on sustaining the gains of the CCT at the ADB Headquarters.

Mr. Nakao said the ADB ap-proved in 2010 the social protec-tion support project amounting to $400 million which supported the government’s CCT program as well.

He said the Pantawid Pamily-ang Pilipino Program “is helping to bring about lasting change” by maintaining children’s health and ensuring their completion of basic and secondary education.

“The goal is to break a vicious cycle that has trapped millions of Filipino families in poverty,” Mr. Nakao said.

He said the Department of So-cial Welfare and Development is a “pioneer of CCT in Asia under President [Benigno S. C.] Aquino [III]’s leadership,” adding that the program is a model for developing countries.

Social Welfare Secretary Cora-zon J. Soliman said the $400 mil-lion will take the form of a program loan payable over 25 years, and managed by the government to ensure continued support for 4.6 million benefi ciary households.

According to Mr. Aquino: “The preliminary result of the

latest round of assessments conducted by our National Household Targeting System reports that almost 1.55 million CCT families, or over 7.7 million of our countrymen, have been lifted out of poverty.”

“Given such a development, our National Economic and De-velopment Authority projects the sustained reduction in our poverty incidence in terms of population: from what used to be 26.3% in 2009, to anywhere between 18% to 20% for 2016,” he added.

The budget of the CCT Pro-gram increased to P62 billion in 2015, from P10 billion in 2010.

“This has allowed us to in-crease the beneficiaries from some 786,000 poor households when we assumed o� ce, to close to 4.4 million poor households and homeless families empowered by the program nationwide,in five years,” he said.

In 2016, the CCT program has an allocation of P62.7 billion to cover 4.6 million households.

“There is also the possibility that my successor will opt to put a stop

to the CCT, leaving the fate of mil-lions of our countrymen in limbo. If this were to happen, the Philip-pines would defi nitely lose its hard-earned momentum,” he added.

“It is my deepest hope that, coming into the elections, our people have realized that they can demand for more good gover-nance, and I believe that they will choose the right leader — one who has integrity and experience, who will sustain our gains, and who will defi nitely put country above self,” Mr. Aquino said. — Kathryn Mae P. Tubadeza

FIFTEEN YEARS ON, the deregulation of the power sector appears to have failed in its promise to bring down the cost of electricity in the country, speakers at a two-day energy conference said.

During their presentations, they highlighted a comparison of the price of electricity in the Philippines and those of its neighbors in the region. They presented the country as the least attractive for investors as far as power costs, and the most punishing for retail consumers.

“Philippines’ electricity price is almost twice of the average price of the region,” said Rowaldo R. Del Mundo, associate professor at the Electrical and Electronics Engineering Institute of the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman.

The conference was organized by the Energy Policy and Development Program, a four-pronged program for research, policy development and advi-sory, capacity building, and communica-tion launched in November 2014.

Mr. Del Mundo, who also authored the Philippine Grid and Distribution Codes, compared the price of electricity for the country’s residential, commercial and industrial users, and in all these categories the Philippines topped the charges set in Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

The UP professor’s codes were promulgated by the Energy Regulatory Commission as part of the technical implementing rules and regulations of Republic Act 9136 or the Electric Power Industry Reform Act of 2001 (EPIRA).

“The price of electricity has been and continues to be recurring consumer complaint. Consumers were made to believe that with EPIRA, a decrease in the price of electricity will occur. The op-posite happened,” said Reynaldo Umali, who is serving his second term at the House of Representatives.

Mr. Umali currently serves as chairperson of the House Committee

on Energy, co-chairperson of the Joint Congressional Power Commission and the Joint Congressional Oversight Com-mittee on Biofuels.

He said EPIRA over time should have resulted in real competition among industry participants, which would have brought down the price of electricity.

“Who was at fault?” he said, asking whether it was the private sector, the regulators or lawmakers. He added that fi nger-pointing at this time would be counter-productive.

For his part, Economic Planning Secretary Arsenio M. Balisan said: “the poor pay a high price to meet their needs for energy.”

“The cost of energy must fall,” he added.

Mr. Balisacan, who has been director-general of the National Economic and Development Authority since May 2012, said the sector’s regulators the Depart-ment of Energy and Energy Regulatory Commission should sit down more often do determine what measures are good for consumers.

He noted that transmission is in the hands of the private sector when it should be a good fi t for the public sector.

The Energy department is coming up with a new development plan for the industry that would serve as guide for the next administration.

“The economy should lead the direction of power, not the other way around,” Mr. Balisacan said.

Energy Secretary Zenaida Y. Monsada said the industry was facing various challenges including problems in electricity transmission in Mindanao, which could become a national security concern.

A task force has been created to respond to the matter.

Aboitiz Power Corp. launched last week a 300-megawatt baseload power plant in Davao City that it expects to contribute to solving the power supply problem in Mindanao.

Ms. Monsada said the new plant somehow eases worries about supply in the area.

THE PHILIPPINES is ready to compete in the aviation products and services market, the Trade department said in announcing the country’s participation in a regional aerospace trade event next month.

“ T h e s e i n d u s t r i e s h a v e charted significant growth and we see these maturing industries ready to compete in the global market,” said Ceferino S. Rodolfo, Department of Trade and Indus-try undersecretary for industry development.

The local aerospace industry is expected to generate export revenue of up to $1.5 billion in the next 10 years, the department said.

As of the third quarter of 2015, the industry reported export gains of $309 million, exceeding 2014’s $226 million.

“Our participation in the Sin-gapore Airshow a� rms the confi -dence and competitiveness of the local aerospace manufacturing and aviation industries,” said Mr. Rodolfo, who is also managing head of the Board of Investment

(BoI), the department’s industry development and investment promotion arm.

The Singapore trade event takes place on Feb. 16-21 and is considered the premier showcase for the sector in the Associa-tion of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Aviation parts and compo-nents manufacturers, main-tenance, repair and overhaul providers, airlines, and aviation training organizations from the Philippines will participate, the department said.

Mr. Rodolfo said such a broad-ening of exposure implements strategic initiatives outlined in the aerospace industry road map, which outlines the interventions needed for global competitiveness. The BoI and other government agencies have guided industries in drafting their respective road maps.

He said the department will take advantage of the event and similar fairs “as an opportunity to create traction for our position-ing to be the aerospace manufac-turing hub for ASEAN.”

“The growth of the aero-space and aviation industry will mean more export earnings for the country and more quality jobs for Filipinos particularly for the country’s graduates of aviation-related courses,” he said.

The department cited fi gures from the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) showing a rise in the number of graduates of aviation courses. In 2013, CHEd tallied 9,453 graduates, up from 6,894 in 2009.

Aerospace parts are made in Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal and Quezon, or the Calabarzon area. Baguio City also has its share. Maintenance, repair and overhaul providers are in Clark, Pampanga while aviation train-ing is clustered around Central Luzon.

The Trade department said the country’s participation in Sin-gapore was organized by the BoI together with the Foreign Trade Service Corps and the Civil Avia-tion Authority of the Philippines. — Victor V. Saulon

LOCAL GOVERNMENT UNITS (LGUs) will get a 10% year-on-year raise in their aggregate in-ternal revenue allocation (IRA) this year, according to the De-partment of Budget and Manage-ment (DBM).

The share of 43,593 LGUs increased to P428.62 billion from P389.86 billion last year, following an improvement in revenue collection, Budget Sec-retary Florencio B. Abad said in a statement.

“Efficient tax collection and our policy of building the capacity of LGUs to serve as partners of the national government in the implementation of projects have made this possible.”

The IRA accounts for 14.28% of the government’s comprehen-sive budget amounting to P3.002 trillion, as outlined under the 2016 General Appropriations Act.

The allocation has grown steadily from P265.80 billion in 2010 to P286.94 billion in 2011, P273.31 billion in 2012, P302.30 billion in 2013, P341.55 billion in 2014 and P389.86 billion in 2015.

The Local Government Code of 1991 stipulates that LGUs share the equivalent of 40% of the na-tional internal revenue taxes col-lected three years earlier.

While the law provides for the quarterly release of the IRA, the DBM has automatically and com-prehensively released the funds at the start of the every year since 2012.

The DBM and the Department of Finance have also adopted a policy to release the IRA directly from the Bureau of the Treasury to the bank accounts of LGUs.

“The increase in IRA can only mean more capacity for LGUs to provide social services and local infrastructure projects for local communities,” Mr. Abad said.

ADB $400-M loan signals sustained CCT e� ort

Promise of cheap power unfulfilled, experts say

PHL aerospace firms hopingto make a splash in Singapore

Local gov’t IRA up 10% this year

MOST PHILIPPINE cities largely depended on their internal revenue allotment (IRA) to fund public services and other pro-grams in 2014, the Department of Finance (DoF) said yesterday. — Keith Richard D. Mariano

GROWTH IN ELECTRONICS exports for the 11 months to November came in at 8.1%, running well ahead of the industry’s estimates for the full year of 2015, the Semiconductor & Electronics Industries in the Phil-ippines, Inc. (SEIPI) said.

Electronics exports set to beat target after 8.1% rise in 11 months

DoF calls out towns with weak locally sourced income

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Agribusiness

By Carmencita A. CarilloCorrespondent

By Louine Hope U. ConservaCorrespondent

W. Visayas bracing for 40% drop in rice yield

S1/5THURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 2016EDITOR KATRINA PAOLA B. ALVAREZ

Xinjiang cotton, would-be textile hub at crossroads of China’s new Silk RoadAKSU, CHINA — The Youngor cotton spinning factory is one of the biggest employers in Aksu, an agricultural town on the edge of the Taklamakan desert in China’s restive Xinjiang region.

Youngor, one of China’s largest shirt-makers, opened the plant in 2011 to be closer to the main cot-ton-growing region in Xinjiang. Soon, it will be joined by others: Beijing wants to create 1 million textile jobs in Xinjiang by 2023.

Xinjiang fits into Beijing ’s larger vision of shifting labor-in-tensive industries such as textiles out of the Pearl River Delta and into the interior. China is putting less value on being “the world’s workshop” amid labor shortages and competitive pressures from Southeast Asia.

The textile hub is also a key initiative in President Xi Jin-ping ’s “one belt, one road” ini-tiative, the new Silk Road and economic belt spreading from Western China to Central Asia and onwards to Europe.

More immediately, Beijing is offering the carrot of jobs and development, even as it wields a harsh stick against Uighur separatism.

“We must promote employ-ment as a permanent cure to maintain social stability and achieve long-lasting peace, and particularly solve the unemploy-ment problem for peoples in southern Xinjiang,” a 2014 o� cial document stated in outlining a massive expansion of Xinjiang’s textile industry.

China says it is fighting an Islamist insurgency in the des-erts, mountains, and forests of energy-rich Xinjiang. Critics say the unrest largely stems from re-pressive Chinese policies against the Uighurs, a minority Muslim people who speak a Turkic lan-guage and have di� erent customs from Han Chinese.

MIGRATING TO CITIESMost Uighurs live in towns and cities such as Aksu in the poor-er southern part of Xinjiang, where much of the violence has unfolded.

Thailand government promises help for rubber farmers hit by falling pricesBANGKOK — Thailand’s prime minister on Monday promised help for farmers in the world’s top rubber producer and exporter, amid threats by farmers to protest if their demands for a guaran-teed selling price are not met.

Prices have plummeted to a seven-year low amid a global commodities slump, testing the traditional support from rubber farmers in the south for the conservative royalist establishment championed by the generals who seized power in 2014.

Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said the government would buy rubber at higher-than-market prices, adding that the state was considering using rubber for infrastructure projects such as building roads.

“It’s not easy, but we’ll try to hurry up the process,” Mr. Prayuth told report-ers, adding that farmers who want to

protest could go ahead, despite a ban on public gatherings.

“If you want to demonstrate, you can demonstrate but don’t cause trouble for the authorities,” he said.

The government has already rolled out several measures to support farm-ers, but some say the measures are not enough, with one group threatening to go on a hunger strike.

Agriculture Minister Chatchai Sarikalya met with representatives from around 10 rubber farmer groups on Mon-day and said the state would buy rubber directly from farmers by next week. This should help raise market prices within one to two months, he said.

Thailand’s benchmark unsmoked rubber sheet (USS3) was quoted at 33.57 baht ($0.9250) per kilogram on Monday, the lowest since dropping to 32.7 baht ($0.90) on Dec. 17, 2008,

according to data from the Rubber Authority of Thailand.

In November, the government ap-proved measures worth $365 million to help rubber farmers, paying a direct sub-sidy of 1,500 baht ($41.36) per rai (0.17 hectares) for up to 15 rai per household.

Last week, the government asked rubber traders to buy rubber at a rate of 33 to 34 baht/kg. and not drive down prices to export at a profi t, threatening to cut export quotas for industry players who failed to cooperate.

But, farmers say those e� orts are not enough.

Saksarit Sriprasart, leader of a group of rubber farmers in Thailand’s south, the main rubber-growing region, said the group will stage a hunger strike this week.

“If the government responds well, we will end the strike,” said Mr. Saksarit. “If not, we will keep going.” — Reuters

There, in one of its first serious attempts to address the economic factor in Xinjiang’s unrest, Bei-jing is making a clear e� ort to cre-ate more jobs for Uighurs.

Almost all of the 520 employees at the Youngor factory are Uighurs. The average factory floor salary is around 3,000 yuan ($463.18) a month and comes with food and lodging — compared with roughly 4,000 yuan for textile workers in the southern China factory belt.

“There are still a lot of people to come out of [Xinjiang’s] coun-tryside,” said Xu Zhiwu, general manager at Youngor’s Aksu fac-tory, referring to government data that show 2.6 million rural residents sought work in Xinji-ang’s cities in 2014.

Xinjiang Youngor Cotton Spin-ning Co. Ltd., a unit of Youngor Group, is planning to expand its factory, built among apple orchards on Aksu’s outskirts, Mr. Xu said.

Yarn maker Huafu Top Dyed Melange Yarn is already at work on a 5-billion yuan plant outside Aksu, undeterred by September’s attack on a coalmine near the city.

Texhong Textile Group Ltd., one of China’s top spinners, is tar-geting a 1-million-spindle project in the region.

“The scale of the project has to be big to ask for more favorable policy support from municipal governments,” Texhong said in a stock exchange statement, refer-ring to subsidies Beijing o� ers to lure fi rms to the region.

COTTON TO GARMENTSMore than 60% of China’s cotton crop is grown in Xinjiang. It’s a major advantage for companies that process the fl u� y material into cotton thread to be close to supplies. Their automated spin-ning factories also benefi t from electricity prices around half those in coastal provinces.

Spinning needs relatively few workers. Creating 1 million tex-tile jobs will require a build-out of the entire industry chain, from dyeing and weaving to garment production. And that poses a far greater challenge than attracting more spinners.

Dyeing, bleaching, and wash-ing fabric would demand substan-tial supplies of water in the arid region. Much of Xinjiang, includ-ing Aksu, is classified as “high risk” for water stress by the non-profit World Resources Institute. The WRI has designated Shihezi and Korla, two cities also targeted for major textile expansion, as “extremely high risk.”

Aksu is consulting with tex-tile companies on plans to build a 50,000-metric-ton waste water treatment facility to handle dis-charge from future dyeing opera-tions, said Youngor’s Mr. Xu, who has attended recent government meetings on the issue.

A similar facility is also un-der discussion for Shihezi, near Urumqi, but some firms are wary of proceeding with dyeing in the area.

“We are not sure whether the capacity of the facility could meet all the demand and protect the environment from damage,” said Zhao Yang, general manager of three Xinjiang spinning factories owned by Hong Kong-based shirt maker Esquel.

“Compared with Guangdong, where our fabric mill sites are, Xinjiang’s water is very scarce,” he said.

Xinjiang’s location, more than 4,000 kilometers from Shanghai in the east or Guangzhou to the south, is also a hurdle for companies rush-ing to meet tight deadlines for over-seas clients, said Mr. Xu.

Like Youngor, Esquel, maker of men’s shirts for brands like Lacoste, Tommy Hilfiger, and Ralph Lauren, also has no plans for downstream operations in Xinjiang, Mr. Zhao said.

Officials in Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi did not respond to a fax seeking comment.

President Xi Jinping ’s “One Belt, One Road” plan, announced in late 2013, aims to restore China’s old maritime and over-land trade routes. Mr. Xi has said he hopes to increase trade with over 40 countries to $2.5 trillion within a decade. Xinjiang is at the “heart” of the “new Silk Road” into Central Asia. — Reuters

DAVAO CITY — The Depart-ment of Tourism (DoT), on a tight schedule to get establishments in four pilot areas halal-certified in time for the Madrid Fusion event that the Philippines is hosting in April, is dangling several incen-tives under the Philippine Halal Tourism Project.

The four pilot areas are Met-ro Manila, Cebu, Boracay, and Davao City.

Among the incentives lined up are halal certification to be paid for under the project fund, inclu-sion in an information campaign, and participation in trade fairs that will help position the estab-lishments in the global halal mar-ket, which is projected to grow to $6.4 trillion by 2018.

“We will be providing incen-tives such as covering all halal certification fees for a year of those establishments who will commit to be halal-certified with-in 100 days,” said DoT Assistant Secretary Arturo P. Boncato, Jr., during the first leg of the Philip-pine Halal Tourism Project orien-tation held here Tuesday.

The orientation will also be conducted in Manila, Boracay and Cebu within the week.

Mr. Boncato said that by the end of the road show, the DoT will have made its pitch to at least 50 tourism-related establishments, and they are optimistic that most of these will join the project.

The establishments include tour operators, hotels, resorts, res-taurants, and other facilities such as those involved in meetings, incentives, conference and events.

The goal, he added, is to make the Philippines a Muslim-friendly place by improving halal facilities across the country and make halal services available in tourist destinations.

By the end of the month, the DoT aims to have the confirma-

ILOILO CITY — Western Visayas, one of the country’s top four rice-producing regions, is looking at a worst-case scenario of a 40% de-crease in rice output this year due to the dry spell brought about by El Niño.

Department of Agriculture — Region 6 (DA-6) Officer-in-Charge and Director Roy M. Aba-ya said this projected decrease is due to the delay in the scheduled planting for the cropping season from November last year to April this year.

TAGUM CITY — Travelers enter-ing Tagum City from Davao City, about 45 kilometers to the south-west, are greeted by a massive bronze-colored statue of a tradi-tional bangka boat with fi sherfolk aboard: a symbol of Tagum’s com-mitment to develop the aquacul-ture industry, even as it advances as the second urban hub in the Davao Region.

One of the main products being fostered in the city, the capital of Davao del Norte, is the high-value soft-shell mud crab, found both in crab farms and in the Tagum’s protected mangroves.

Last week, the city government and the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources — Region 11 (BFAR-11) released more than 500 mud crablets in the mangrove re-forestation area of Tancuan Creek, in the first Crab Seeding Ceremony.

“The newly released crab-lets were hatched from the P2-million Multi-Species Hatchery in Barangay Liboganon, which was inaugurated in September last year,” said BFAR-11 Director Fatma M. Idris during the event.

The hatchery, capable of pro-ducing up to 76,800 crablets per quarter, was funded by BFAR and is managed by the city gov-ernment, which also donated the land as its counterpart for the project.

Davao del Norte Governor Rodolfo P. del Rosario said at the ceremony that mud crabs, also known as mangrove crabs, are intended as a major income-generating product through both local and export sales.

“The fingerlings from the hatchery will be distributed to the fi sherfolk so that we will have sufficient supply of crabs in the future,” Mr. del Rosario said.

Harold S. Dawa, city agricul-turist, said some crablets from the hatchery will also be released into the wild every production season, to give fi sherfolk along the creek leading to the Davao Gulf an in-come opportunity.

Mr. del Rosario noted that soft-shell crabs, which grow fast and year-round, are in high de-mand at local restaurants and in the international market.

Among the countries already importing the crabs are Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States, as well as countries in Europe.

Mr. Dawa said in just seven months, the crabs can already weigh 1.5 to 2 kilograms and can already be sold at P400-P600/kg.

The propagation of soft-shell crabs in the province was pio-neered by the privately owned AB Maningo Farm, one of the stops in the Tagum City River Cruise, an eco-tourism project led by the local government.

Mr. Dawa said the hatchery — equipped with a larval tank, algal tank, a reservoir, its own power supply system, and a nursery — will also eventually be used to develop fish species.

Tagum City Mayor Alan L. Rellon said the ceremonial re-lease signals the beginning of the envisioned large-scale pro-duction of mud crabs and the city’s goal of becoming the “crab capital” in southern Mindanao. — Carmencita A. Carillo

“We advised our farmers to de-lay their planting to cope with the lack of irrigation and water supply. The 40% reduction is the worst scenario if our farmers will not plant rice. But knowing our farm-ers, they will still try to look for ways to continue with the planting. Only that they should not expect it to have a good yield,” he said.

Based on the forecast of the Philippine weather agency, West-ern Visayas will be among the areas that will experience below normal rainfall in the coming months until June.

The region has an estimated an-nual yield of 3.6-3.7 metric tons per hectare (MT/ha), less than the na-tional average of roughly 3.9 MT/ha.

Mr. Abaya said the regular 100 cavans/ha yield could be reduced to 60-70 cavans/ha.

Meanwhile, the o� cial said the department is now waiting for the release of the P187-million additional budget allocated to Western Visayas to mitigate the effects of El Niño.

This fund is on top of DA-6’s P1.6-billion budget.

“The additional budget will be used for El Niño alone. It will be spent on our mitigating measures such as cloudseed-ing, water management, small irrigation facilities, provision of seeds, and provision of crop insurance, among others,” Mr. Abaya said.

Ahead of Madrid Fusion, DoT hopes perks will push halal certification

USTADZ ALEX M. SULTAN, president of the Halal International Chamber of Commerce and Industries in the Philippines, discusses the potential of the local and international halal tourism market at an orientation in Davao City on Jan. 12.

CARMENCITA A. CARILLO

CARMENCITA A. CARILLO

tion of official partners in halal certifi cation and global promotion, consolidate and approve the total project cost, and finalize the list of participating establishments.

The halal certification process in all pilot areas is targeted be-tween February and April, includ-ing the final inspection of all o� -cially selected establishments, in time for Madrid Fusion, a major culinary event that the Philip-pines is hosting for the second time this April 7-9.

Mr. Boncato said DoT Secre-tary Ramon R. Jimenez, Jr. has agreed to launch a halal food sec-tion in this year’s Madrid Fusion as part of the promotional efforts for the local industry.

The Global Muslim Travel In-dex for 2015, which monitors the overall performance of the Muslim travel market, has ranked the Phil-ippines No. 47 based on suitabil-ity as a holiday destination, family friendliness and safety, availability of Muslim-friendly services and facilities, and halal-awareness and outreach to Muslims.

The global Muslim consumer population is estimated at 1.8 billion and this is expected to in-crease to 2.6 billion by 2050.

“The potential for the halal in-dustry is great, even in the Philip-pines alone, where at least 10% of the more than 100 million people are Muslims,” said Ustadz Alex M. Sultan, president of the Halal International Chamber of Com-

merce and Industries in the Phil-ippines, during the orientation.

MUSLIM MINDANAOMr. Boncato acknowledged that Mindanao, home of the major-ity of Muslim Filipinos, needs an extra push in terms of be-ing promoted as a halal hub and preferred destination in the Philippines because of the “Mindanao stigma,” conjuring images of instability and con-nectivity problems.

As one of the pilot areas of the Philippine Halal Tourism Project, Davao City already has its 2010 Halal Ordinance.

However, the Mindanao Is-lamic Chamber of Commerce (MICC) believes the city should further strengthen its position as a halal-friendly city, through an executive order (EO) creat-ing the Davao City Halal Industry Development Council to oversee the sector.

Marilou W. Ampuan, founder of MICC and a member of the board of trustees of the Philippine Tourism Congress, said the EO is expected to be signed by Mayor Rodrigo R. Duterte this week.

The Halal Industry Develop-ment Council will be tasked to set up and manage a unified system of production, certification and marketing in coordination with the Departments of Agriculture, Science and Technology, Trade and Industry, and Tourism.

MUD CRABLETS wil be regularly released into this creek behind the Multi-Species Hatchery of Tagum City.

Crablets released as Tagum boosts soft-shell crab production, aquaculture

In September 2014, more than two years ago, I started look-ing for a major hat trick from

the camp of Vice-President Jejo-mar C. Binay, Sr. This was after the Senate started its investigation on the corruption allegations versus him and other members of his family, and his alleged wrongdo-ings while mayor of Makati City.

This was also after the Pulse Asia survey on presidential candidates in Sept. 8-15 in 2014 showed Binay’s vulnerability, as he dropped 10 points in the polls to 31% in a span of about 10 weeks between surveys.

Since then, in fact, Binay’s rat-ing continued to drop all the way down to 19% by September 2015. But it seems he was back in the game by last December, with 33%.

I remain unclear as to how he actually managed that comeback from a skidding trend in over a two-year period. But one should give him and his team some credit for having pulled off a political hat trick. Although truth be told, this is not the fi rst time for Binay and his camp to stage a polling coup. He is no stranger to upsets, for sure.

Recall that in October 2009, in a poll for the 2010 presidential election, then Senator Benigno S. C. Aquino III polled at 44%, while Senator Manny B. Villar, Jr. came in second at 19%, and former President Joseph E. Estrada was third at 11%. By election day May 2010, however, Aquino won with 42% of the votes. Estrada upstaged Villar and came in 2nd with 26%, and Villar was 3rd with 15%.

Also in October 2009, in the vice-presidential poll, then Senator Manuel A. Roxas II was ahead, poll-ing at 37%. Makati Mayor Binay

was only third at 13%, following Senator Loren B. Legarda’s 23%. But Binay staged a major upset and eventually won the vice-presiden-cy with almost 42% of the votes, fol-lowed by Roxas with almost 40%, and then Legarda with over 12%.

Both Estrada and Binay had surged from October 2009 to May 2010, by 15 and 29 percent-age points, respectively. Binay, in particular, managed a win even against one who was perceived as a stronger contender.

And in terms of popular-ity, President Aquino got just 600,000 more votes than Binay, who won over Roxas by a rela-tively small margin of 700,000 votes.

I surmise that many — includ-ing myself — have begun to think that with the corruption investiga-tion in the last two years, Binay will fi nd it very di� cult to climb back up. He has just proved us wrong.

In September 2014, I reckoned he needed to sustain if not im-prove on his 31%, despite the pos-

sible filing of charges in court, if he wanted to win the presidency.

This is given the fact that in 1992, Fidel Ramos needed just 23.58% or 5.3 million votes to become presi-dent, and that in 1998, Joseph Es-trada needed just 10.7 million votes to get himself into Malacañang.

At Binay’s present 33%, consid-ering 55 million voters and 80% turnout, he is already looking at getting 15 million votes in May. In 2010, Aquino won with 15.2 million votes, and Binay with 14.6 million.

There are lessons to be learned from Binay’s surge by 29 percent-age points from October 2009 to May 2010, from 13% to 42%.

Similar lessons perhaps can be seen from his climb back to 33% last December from 19% in just over two months. The remaining question is if he can sustain this 33% or further boost this back to his 41% (as in early 2014) come this May 2016.

I still believe that Binay, to win, must continue focusing on his po-litical roots. He needs to keep his core supporters. The survey results in December 2015 show him lead-ing in Metro Manila, Luzon, and the Visayas. He comes second only to Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte in Mindanao. He also continues to lead in the D and E classes, while Duterte leads in the ABC class.

It can very well be a case of the one-eyed being chosen to lead the blind. After all, with legal ques-tions arising out of the candidacies of Duterte and Senator Grace Poe, perhaps some are now switching candidates, to Binay’s benefit. Vali-dation of this may become more evident in the next two surveys, and as the Duterte and Poe issues prog-ress at Comelec or in court.

In short, is Binay’s surge in the polls from September to Decem-ber really the result of hard work by his camp, or simply a natural consequence of present political developments? Is he the natu-ral beneficiary of the ongoing process of political elimination, perhaps to the frustration of his fellow candidates Mar Roxas and Miriam Defensor Santiago?

Or, it may be that Binay is rela-tively short in height, or that he is dark-skinned, or that he came from very modest beginnings. And that the poor can identify with him: the seeming underdog. Or, that people from the D and E classes, particu-larly from his political bailiwicks of Makati City, Batangas (his father side), and Isabela (his mother side) may speak well of him.

The poor, the underprivileged, and the marginalized continue to account for most of the votes in any election. Candidates who manage to secure this sector’s loyalty and support are more likely to win than those who ap-peal mainly to the rich, the youth, or even the middle class. This, to me, is the key to Binay’s success.

Meantime, Binay still has much to account for.

The question of whether or not he stole from public coffers, or had used his position as a public official to benefit himself or his family or associates, must be re-solved even before election day. At the very least, he should get his day in court to show some proof of his probable innocence.

In the same manner, his detrac-tors should prove their case against him. It is time for everybody con-cerned to finally put up, or to shut up. And if there will be attempts to jail Binay before the elections, just go ahead and please be done with it. And then, let the Filipino people decide from there. Only after all these come to pass that he can get a truly deserved mandate. �

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EDITOR ROBERT J.A. BASILIO, JR.

THE VIEW FROM TAFTBENITO L. TEEHANKEE

Scripts are automatic ways by which managers think about and decide on every day. While they make work more e� cient in general cases, scripts can cause managers to be insensitive to the demands of a specifi c case.

Problem-solving does not always entail facing the prickly issue. Why not just sidestep reality and get on with

other unimportant things that are easier to deal with? Is denial an undiscovered coping mechanism? Those who hang on to losing stocks through a volatile market do not want to recognize the loss right away, preferring to postpone the inevitable by just putting off the crucial decision of selling and taking the hit. Economists call this bias for inaction as loss aversion, a penchant to avoid a sure (even if smaller loss) for an uncertain prospect, pos-sibly a bigger loss.

Denial can take other forms too. Sidestep-ping blame for a debacle is achieved by deny-ing responsibility through simple omission — oh did I forget a candle burning when I left the house? What razed neighborhood are you talking about?

Denial as rationalization, for example, requires an overly elaborate thinking process

to explain an insane move as per-fectly rational. Shouting at the boss when he is cor-recting your grammar in a report is not considered disrespectful. It is just a

linguistic argument which has nothing to do with the sudden dip in your career prospects in the company? What’s the connection?

Denial derives from Latin de and negare, meaning, to say no. The act of denial can entail mentally saying no to a di� cult reality.

In John Lanchester’s novel, Mr. Phillips(2000) the eponymous protagonist, Viktor Phillips is an accountant who has worked 27 years in his company and is inexplicably “redundated,” declared in excess and let go. This is a common enough experience now that has nothing to do with corporate loyalty, and everything to do with the bot-tom line. Mr. Phillips does not accept his current unemployed status and pretends he is still following his old work schedule, waking up early to get dressed for work, commuting on the same route, filling up his now empty days with visits to an art gallery, a bank, tennis court, sometimes sitting on a park bench with pornographic fantasies. This sad tale of self-delusion makes this meandering novel and its main character truly engaging.

Why do we need to embrace reality if we can avoid its destructive consequences by denying its existence? Perhaps, denial is the best way of moving on without getting stuck in a state of unyielding depression. There are proven techniques that help in psychologically shutting out painful reality.

Financial losses bring in an opportunity for exercising denial options. I get this monthly statement on my investment complete with pie charts and colors, mostly in red. Do I need to read it carefully and compute how many new cars the losses are now equivalent to? Is this kind of worrying and fretting a productive exercise in creativity?

Instead, when the subject of bad invest-ments comes up, I change the topic and talk about new restaurants and totally irrelevant subjects like the composition of a possible president’s cabinet. These soothingly trivial pursuits allow me to avoid the issue of losses, whether real or just paper ones (which are also real).

In conversations with strangers, the topics of choice include debates on whether automated elections are tainted by missing source codes, and what improvements can be made in time, excluding going back to the fully manual option with chalk and black-board. Why even get into an argument when you can just avoid the whole conversation, or at least not get emotionally entangled in a useless confrontation?

Avoiding the reality of any kind of loss whether of health, wealth, or a loving rela-tionship fraught with arguments is a form of detachment. It allows one to be optimistic even with little or no basis for a rosy outlook. One can dispense with troubling reality to wish for a happy ending.

Still, avoiding painful issues can wreak havoc on those around a person who holds such a deluded view of the world. Dismiss-ing the existence of a problem lets it linger unattended, like a bad tooth that just ratchets up the pain each day. Shunning reality, and its painful consequences, only means that some-body else has to worry about it… too often with an exasperated sigh. �

Avoiding the issue

FENCESITTERA. R. SAMSON

Why do we need to embrace reality if we can avoid its destructive consequences by denying its existence?

STATICMARVIN A. TORT

The poor, the underprivileged, and the marginalized continue to account for most of the votes in any election. Candidates who manage to secure this sector’s loyalty and support are more likely to win than those who appeal mainly to the rich, the youth, or even the middle class.

The White House @WhiteHouse“We’re in the middle of the longest streak of private-sector job creation in history.” — @POTUS #SOTU

BusinessWorld @bworldphPhilippine-made mitts for the stars of winter sports (and Putin too) i via @cathyrosegarcia goo.gl/uYR6Qc

Jonathan Ravelas @ravelasjThat’s why I stand here confi dent that the State of our Union is strong. — ObamaSo expect more rate hikes! #SOTU

Keith McCullough @KeithMcCullough96 million don’t have a job46 million are on food stampsManufacturing is in a #Recession#SOTU non-fi ction

Nicholas Kristof @NickKristofFair for @POTUS to brag a bit domestically. Unemployment down by half. Defi cits by two-thirds. 18 million have gotten health insurance.

The White House @WhiteHouse“That’s the America I know.That’s the country we love.Clear-eyed.Big-hearted”— @POTUS #SOTU

Bill Watson @kw_watsonThe #TPP will cut 18,000 taxes on US-made products. Even better, it will cut US taxes on foreign goods. http://goo.gl/HrY3tp

Harvard Biz Review @tHarvardBizThe benefi ts of having a culture where employees speak up s.hbr.org/1ZSGqUi

Bloomberg Markets @marketsChina’s exports unexpectedly rebound as yuan weakness kicks in bloom.bg/1mU2dws

World Economic Forum @wef3 great forces changing #China’s consumer market wef.ch/1SE7IRN #economics

BusinessWorld @bworldphPhilippine-made mitts for the stars of winter sports (and Putin too) l via @cathyrosegarcia goo.gl/uYR6Qc

#bworldfeed

By Matthew A. Winkler

WHEN PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA was elected in November 2008, the US economy was shrinking at a rate unmatched since World War II. In the seven years between then and his final State of the Union address Tuesday night, global investors have enjoyed stel-lar results from the rapidly expanding Obama economy.

Market prosperity has been built on a solid economic foundation. The unemployment rate has declined the most in any five-year period since 1989, from its 10% peak in October 2009 to 5% last December. The budget deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product has plummeted 7.7 percentage points from a high of 10.1% 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 fi rst time since 2001. The 10 companies with the highest market capitalization are American — the first time that’s happened since Ronald Reagan was president.

US politics remains as politically divided as ever, but the recov-ery 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, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

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

Only fi ve US fi rms were among the world’s 10 largest by market cap, down from nine in 2001. Stocks of American companies made up less than 40% of the value of the top 500 global equities, the smallest share in decades, according to Bloomberg data. The US budget defi cit exploded from 4.7% at the end of 2008 to 10.1% of gross domestic product over the next 12 months.

The stock market bottomed in April 2009, when the government was starting to restructure the US auto industry and administer stress tests to determine whether banks could survive another crisis. The ensuing rally added the most points to the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index since at least 1927, when Bloomberg started compiling such data. On a percentage basis, the stock market is up 178% 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 halting and uneven, accompanied by rising inequality, ane-mic wage growth and underemployment. Growth has been slower than after many previous recessions. 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 Amazon, Alphabet, Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, Facebook, Home Depot, JPMorgan Chase, Walt Disney and Wells Fargo win-ning investments.

Big and small companies, as measured by the Russell 3000 Index, are growing at an annual rate of 15.5% since March 2009 and outperforming the rest of the world by 7.4%, according to Bloomberg data. During the 20 years prior to Obama’s presidency, the Russell’s yearly gain was 4.5% and it outperformed the rest of the world by 3.9% 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% 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 Ebitda (earnings before interest, taxes, depre-ciation and amortization) of the S&P 500 — the most widely-used mea-sure 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 returning 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 million 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 congres-sional 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 e� ect for most people, according to Bloomberg data.

While their voters remain opposed to Obamacare along with most of the president’s policies, many Republican-dominated states have benefi ted significantly 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 benefi ciary of declining mortgage delinquen-cies 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 weakest oil prices since the 1990s, were more active as acquirers and sellers of each other in 2015 than at any point during the past de-cade; $3.2 trillion changed hands, the most mergers and acquisitions since at least 2003, when Bloomberg began compiling such data. At the same time, there were only $33.8 billion of initial public o� erings 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. �

BLOOMBERG (With assistance from Shin Pei)

Before 2015 ended, the in-cidents of alleged sudden unintended acceleration

(SUA) related to the Mitsubishi Montero received a lot of media attention. The large number of reported cases prompted com-plainants to demand a recall of the popular SUV.

The leading car companies in the country, including Mitsubishi, have recalled their vehicles before. These recalls were all voluntary, though, and no accidents or un-toward incidents triggered them.

The latest high-profile issue is unique because of the large num-ber of incidents reported all over the Internet and the more serious stakes involved. For the company: reputation, investor returns, and jobs. For consumers and other people on the road: physical safe-ty, psychological well-being, and, sadly, even human lives.

The company has reported the results of its investigations into the complaints, bought back several of the vehicles, and settled with the owners involved and made public assurances that based on its investigations, the SUA incidents were not caused by defects in the vehicle itself. It has also intensified the offering of safety-oriented ser-vices for its customers.

The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) did not find su� cient basis to order a recall. Instead, it recommended a third-party investigation into the com-plaints to determine more clearly whether a recall is necessary.

While Mitsubishi is not legally compelled to recall the Mon-tero pending the results of the third-party investigation, it must

consider whether it should do so voluntarily for ethical reasons and to protect its reputation as a provider of safe vehicles.

Notable companies have dealt with recall decisions in di� erent ways with corresponding e� ects on their reputations as a result. Handling recalls is never easy, and the decision to voluntarily re-call or not falls on the shoulders of responsible managers with input from technical sta� .

In the early 80’s, a number of people in the Chicago area died from taking Tylenol capsules that had been laced with cyanide. Johnson & Johnson, makers of Tylenol, became the gold stan-dard for recalls when it pulled out all the market-leading Tylenol from the US market even though the tampering had been done af-ter the capsules had left the com-pany’s factories.

Other companies’ responses have been less than stellar. The Ford Pinto case in the 70’s in the US is perhaps the most discussed ethics case in business schools around the world. In 1972, Lily Gray was driving a Pinto with passenger Richard Grimshaw, a 13-year-old, when they were rear-ended by another car. Gray was killed in the resulting fire, and Grimshaw su� ered horrible injuries. In the suit against Ford,

the courts eventually awarded Grimshaw $3.5 million in puni-tive damages.

Dennis Gioia, then the Ford recall coordinator for the Pinto, and now a noted management scholar based at Pennsylvania State University, explained his decision not to order the recall at the time, even after several incidents of rear-end collisions involving Pintos resulted in dead-ly fi res: “After I left Ford, I now argue and teach that Ford had an ethical obligation to recall. But, while I was there, I perceived no obligation to recall, and I remem-ber no strong ethical overtones to the case whatsoever. It was a very straightforward decision, driven by dominant scripts for the time, place, and context.”

Scripts, according to Gioia, are automatic ways by which man-agers think about and decide on every day. While they make work more efficient in general cases, scripts can cause managers to be insensitive to the demands of a specifi c case.

After growing media cover-age and increasing complaints, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration eventu-ally ordered Ford to recall the Pinto, reversing its initial find-ing that there was no sufficient basis for a recall.

Most people have come to be-lieve that the Pinto had a major design flaw that made it unsafe and that Ford had knowingly released the car thinking that it would be more costly to fix the fl aw than to pay for compensating possible accident victims. But not everyone agrees with this inter-pretation. Gary Schwartz, a law professor from UCLA, has point-ed out that most of the public’s views on the Pinto case are myths.

And this is what makes the re-cent case infinitely more delicate than the Pinto case. Social media has become a real game-changer. The saying that “perception is reality” has never been truer than today, especially among media-hungry Filipinos. The ever-grow-ing number of damning blog posts and YouTube uploads related to Montero SUAs cannot be ignored.

I expect the independent third-party investigation to shed light on what caused the SUAs. We cannot know if the investigation will show basis for legal liability of the company, but it must prepare for such a possibility. Meanwhile, the company’s continuing ethi-cal duty to protect and inform its consumers against harm is vital. Its managers cannot depend on scripts to deal with this issue given the importance of preserving the public’s trust. Today’s social media world can be very unforgiving. �

Ethics, product recalls, and public opinion

A major hat trick or a political consequence?

Consumer DiscretionaryFinancialsInfo Tech

IndustrialsHealth Care

Consumer StaplesMaterials

UtilitiesTelecom Services

Energy

BEST-PERFORMING INDUSTRIESS&P 500 Indices, by sector (Total return since 3/6/09)

0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400

in %

SOURCE: BLOOMBERG

State of Obama’s Union is booming

US PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA

gives his fi nal State of the Union address on Jan. 12

at the US Capitol in Washington, DC.

AFP

BENITO L. TEEHANKEE is associate professor at De La Salle University.He is also Vice-Chairmanof the CSR Committeeof the ManagementAssociation of the Philippines.benito.teehankee@dlsu.edu.ph

MARVIN A. TORT is a former managing editor ofBusinessWorld, and aformer chairmanof the Philippines Press Councilmatort@yahoo.com

A.R. SAMSON is chair and CEO of Touch DDB. ar.samson@yahoo.com

EDITOR KATRINA PAOLA B. ALVAREZ

‘Like jail’: NY homeless say shelters not the answerNEW YORK — Life on the streets of New York may be miserable for the thousands of homeless who sleep rough, but many are disil-lusioned by stepped-up e� orts to eradicate a modern-day crisis.

America’s biggest and wealthi-est city is a beacon across the world for fi nancial success and entertain-ment — one of the biggest tourist draws on the planet, welcoming 56 million visitors last year. It has more billionaires than any other city in the world, says Forbes.

And yet 75,000 people are homeless, according to US gov-ernment figures — the mentally ill, those who lost jobs in the 2008 global fi nancial crash, employees who cannot afford skyrocketing rents, families, and children.

Dozing on benches in Penn Station, begging on the street or curled up at the bottom of subway stairwells, the plight of the city’s homeless is clear for all to see.

The Coalition for the Home-less nonprofi t says nearly 60,000 people are in shelters each night and that, in recent years, home-lessness in the city has hit highs not seen since the 1930s Great Depression.

The statistics are an embar-rassment for Mayor Bill de Blasio, a progressive Democrat two years on the job who campaigned to re-dress the city’s colossal inequality after two decades under Republi-can mayor Rudolph Giuliani and billionaire Michael Bloomberg.

His office marked the New Year by announcing a slew of ini-tiatives, upping the number of personnel taking people off the streets when temperatures drop, increasing the number of beds for homeless youth, and promising to double the number of city-funded drop-in centers.

“I am taking the gloves o� on this issue; we are going at this with everything we’ve got. We will turn the tide,” Mr. de Blasio promised.

‘LIKE PRISON’But, it’s not a problem going away overnight. Outreach teams took

HK to lift public housing as prices still too highHONG KONG Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying said the gov-ernment raised its target for new housing supply, dismissing calls from developers to lift property curbs as prices are still too high.

“We should continue to tackle the housing problem head-on and must not concede,” Mr. Leung said in his annual policy speech to lawmakers on Wednesday. Prices and rentals are “still beyond what people can a� ord,” he said.

He pledged a higher number of public housing units, revising the forecast to 97,100 in the next fi ve years, up from a previous esti-mate of 77,100 units, while private developers may o� er 87,000 new units in the next three to four years, the most since data were fi rst complied in 2004.

In the past three years, the Hong Kong government has tight-ened mortgage requirements at

97 people to shelters during one particularly cold night last week, out of an estimated 3,000-4,000 believed to sleep rough.

“Woah, there’s a lot of people don’t like shelters,” Eddie, 61, told AFP as he shuffled down Ninth Avenue with a walking stick.

“When you go in, they’re gonna screen you like you’re in prison; they’re gonna pat you down.”

Last month, New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer issued a stinging report about “night-mare conditions” endured by children in family shelters run by the department of homeless services.

“What they gotta do is, instead of building all these goddam hotels for the tourists, all these abandoned buildings should get the homeless,” said Eddie, gestur-ing at nearby skyscrapers.

Some of those most hardened to life on the streets say they loathe shelters, claiming they are dirty and violent.

Troy, a 48-year-old grandfather and military veteran, says he hasn’t slept in a shelter for nearly a year.

Sitting on a crate on top of a piping-hot air vent on a bitterly

cold afternoon in Manhattan, he compares shelters to “being in jail” and prefers life on the streets.

“Oh, it depends where you at! You see where I’m at, I’ve got many locations like that,” he said, warming his hands over the hot air.

“The time I go and see my buddy is when I can take a shower or I go to the community center and take me a shower.”

Asked what the solution is, he waved towards a vacant-looking building — prime real estate — saying the city should renovate it and turn it over to the homeless.

‘NOT THE MAYOR’S FAULT’On Monday, Mr. de Blasio an-nounced $8.5 million a year to fi nance drop-in centers, which o� er food, showers, medical care, and advice, acknowledging that many street homeless dislike tra-ditional shelters.

It is the latest in a series of re-forms following a 90-day review, including 15,000 new supportive housing units.

“I got into an argument with somebody, and they swung at me, and I got beat up,” said Dashaun

Brown, 38, from Georgia, shelter-ing in Penn Station for warmth and remembering his worst shel-ter experience.

Tall and lanky, and self-con-scious about his heavily decayed front teeth, he says he last had a job as a teenager, fl ipping burgers.

The city says it has helped more than 22,000 people leave shelters, and expanded homeless-ness prevention programs and services to support over 91,000 New Yorkers since July 2014.

Supporters say it is unfair to blame Mr. de Blasio.

“This administration is step-ping up to the plate,” Democrat city council member Corey John-son told reporters last week.

“The homeless crisis is not of the mayor’s making,” he said. “This administration inherited a goddamn mess.”

But, Troy’s fed up. He wants to go home to Chicago where he has family, and a friend has o� ered to pay the ticket.

“The cost of living out here is too expensive. I need to be mak-ing at least $20 an hour if I’m working for someone just to pay the rent.” — AFP

A HOMELESS man looking for money for a room sits on 5th

Avenue near 42nd Street in New York on Jan. 4 as he tries to stay warm in the cold temperatures.

AFP

banks and doubled stamp duties, and it introduced a special tax on non-resident buyers after prop-erty prices soared. Prices peaked in September last year, up 160% from December 2008, making the city in the world’s most expensive place to own a home.

PRICE WARPrices started falling in the fourth quarter of 2015, when they dropped 7.5%, as a slowing econo-my and concerns of rising interest

rates sapped demand. The price decline will accelerate to 8% this quarter as developers engage in a price war, said Nicole Wong, head of property research at CLSA Ltd.

Ms. Wong discounted Mr. Leung’s comments about leaving property curbs in place, saying he may change policy in six months should prices plunge 15%, leav-ing the possibility of negative equity for homeowners who have borrowed as much as 90% of property prices by taking second mortgages o� ered by developers.

“Any correction should not destabilize society,” she said. “If prices fall 15% in six months the government would have to start a policy action.”

The Hang Seng Properties Index, which tracks the perfor-mance of 10 real estate compa-nies, has fallen 8.3% this year to date. — Bloomberg

LEUNG CHUN-YING

BLOO

MBE

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Singapore’s CapitaLand Trust said seeking sale of CBD tower

CAPITALAND Commercial Trust, Singapore’s largest o� ce real estate investment trust by value, is selling an o� ce tower in the city-state’s central business district (CBD), according to a per-son familiar with the transaction.

CapitaLand Commercial is seeking to sell the 23-storey One George Street building in the Raf-fl es Place o� ce district, the per-son said, asking not to be named as the information is private. The building, whose tenants include Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc. and Diageo Singapore Pte., has 41,564 square meters of lease area, according to the trust’s Web site. The tower, bought in 2008 for S$1.17 billion ($816 million), was valued at S$975 million as

of Dec. 31, 2014, the Web site showed.

CapitaLand Commercial Trust Management Ltd., the manager of CapitaLand Commercial Trust, didn’t comment on its plans for One George Street beyond saying it “adopts an active portfolio man-agement strategy to evaluate plans for CCT’s properties from time to time,” according to an e-mailed statement in response to a query.

The proposed sale comes as another prime o� ce tower, Asia Square Tower 1, has been put up for sale by BlackRock, Inc., in a deal that, when concluded, could make it the biggest o� ce transac-tion in Singapore. The value of office buildings in the city-state fell 0.1% in the quarter ending

Sept. 30 from the previous three months while shops declined 0.3%, according to the Urban Re-development Authority.

Rents in the central business district fell 4.5% in the three months ended Sept. 30 from the previous quarter, according to Jones Lang LaSalle, Inc. Rents will trend lower this year as about 3.07 million square feet of o� ce supply will be completed, it said.

The vacancy rate in the CBD increased to 6.1% in the three months to September. Vacancies are expected to rise gradually over the next few quarters as some oc-cupiers, mainly from the fi nancial sector, give up space, Jones Lang LaSalle said. — Bloomberg

AFP

8/S1 Property&Infrastructure THURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 2016

Project Road Upgrading (gravel to concrete) of Aramaywan-Berong-Puerto Princesa Road, K0213+130 - K0213+1000 at Aborlan, Palawan

1. General requirements 2. DPWH contractor’s registration documentsProponent DPWH-Palawan 3rd District Engineering O� ce, Puerto Princesa CityApproved Budget P21.63 millionProject Duration 145 calendar daysImportant Dates 1. Issuance of Bidding Documents is on January 11, 2016 to February 1, 2016. 2. Pre-bid Conference is on January 20, 2016 at 10:00 a.m. 3. Dropping/Receipt of Bids is until February 1, 2016 at 10:00 a.m. 4. Opening of Bids is on February 1, 2016 at 2:00 p.m.Important Notes 1. Interested bidders may obtain further information from DPWH-Palawan

3rd District Engineering O� ce, Puerto Princesa City and inspect the Bidding Documents from Monday to Friday from 8:00 a.m to 5:00 p.m.

2. A complete set of Bid Documents may be acquired by interested bidders from the address below, and upon payment of non-refundable fee of FIVE THOUSAND PESOS (P5,000.00). The Bidding Documents shall be received personally by the prospective bidder or his authorized representative indicated in the Contractors information.

3. It may also be downloaded free of charge from the Web site of the Philippine Government Electronic Procurement System (PhilGEPS) and the Web site of the Procuring Entity provided that the bidders shall pay the fee for the Bidding Documents not later than the submission of their bids.

4. The DPWH-Palawan 3rd District Engineering O� ce, Puerto Princesa City reserves the right to accept or reject any bids, annul the bidding process anytime before Contract Award, without incurring any liability to the a� ected bidders.

Project Widening of National Road along BCIR w/ Drainage Improvement, Villanueva Section, Misamis Oriental (K1412+00 - K1414+360), at Villanueva, Misamis Oriental

1. General requirements 2. DPWH contractor’s registration documentsProponent DPWH Misamis Oriental 2nd Engineering District, Balase Street, El

Salvador City, Misamis OrientalApproved Budget P24.50 million Project Duration 131 calendar daysImportant Dates 1. Issuance of Bidding Documents is on January 14-29, 2016. 2. Pre-bid Conference is on January 15, 2016 at 2:00 p.m. 3. Dropping/Receipt of Bids is until January 29, 2016 at 12:00 noon. 4. Opening of Bids is on January 29, 2016 at 2:00 p.m.Important Notes 1. Interested bidders may obtain further information from DPWH

and inspect the Bidding Documents at the address below from Monday to Friday from 7:00 a.m to 4:00 p.m.

2. A complete set of Bid Documents may be acquired by interested bidders from the address below, and upon payment of non-refundable fee of TEN THOUSAND PESOS (P10,000.00). The Bidding Documents shall be received personally by the prospective bidder or his authorized representative indicated in the Contractors information.

3. It may also be downloaded free of charge from the Web site of the Philippine Government Electronic Procurement System (PhilGEPS) and the Web site of the Procuring Entity provided that the bidders shall pay the fee for the Bidding Documents not later than the submission of their bids.

4. The DPWH Misamis Oriental 2nd Engineering District, Balase Street, El Salvador City, Misamis Oriental reserves the right to accept or reject any bids, annul the bidding process anytime before Contract Award, without incurring any liability to the a� ected bidders.

Project Construction of Flood Control System, Buntun Bridge (Tuguegarao Side), Buntun, Tuguegarao City, (Sta. 0+(-020) to Sta. 0+178

Requirements 1. General requirements 2. DPWH contractor’s registration documentsProponent DPWH Cagayan 3rd District Engineering O� ce, Tuguegarao City,

CagayanApproved Budget P48.017 millionProject Duration 240 calendar days Important Dates 1. Issuance of Bidding Documents is on January 12-29, 2016. 2. Pre-bid Conference is on January 19, 2016 at 10:00 a.m. 3. Receipt of Bids is until January 29, 2016 at 10:00 a.m. 4. Opening of Bids is on January 29, 2016 at 10:30 a.m.Important Notes 1. The BAC will conduct the procurement process in accordance

with the Revised IRR of RA 9184. Bids received in excess of the ABC shall be automatically rejected at the opening of bid. To bid for this contract, a contractor must purchase bid documents and must meet the following major criteria: (a) prior registration with DPWH, (b) a Filipino citizen or 75% Filipino-owned partnership, corporation, cooperative or joint venture; (c) with PCAB License applicable to type and cost of contract; (d) completion of a similar contract costing at least 50% of the ABC within a period of 10 years, and (e) Net Financial Contracting Capacity at least equal to ABC. The BAC will use non-discretionary pass/fail criteria in the eligibility check and preliminary examination of bids.

2. A complete set of Bid Documents may be acquired by interested bidders from the address below, and upon payment of non-refundable fee of TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND PESOS (P25,000.00). The Bidding Documents shall be received personally by the prospective bidder or his authorized representative indicated in the Contractors information.

3. It may also be downloaded free of charge from the Web site of the Philippine Government Electronic Procurement System (PhilGEPS) and the Web site of the Procuring Entity provided that the bidders shall pay the fee for the Bidding Documents not later than the submission of their bids.

4. The DPWH, Cagayan 3rd District Engineering O� ce, Tuguegarao City, Cagayan, reserves the right to accept or reject any bids, annul the bidding process anytime before Contract Award, without incurring any liability to the a� ected bidders.

BIDDING SCHEDULE

HOLCIM Philippines, Inc. said on Wednesday it had launched “fi rst-in-the-country technical services and training in the local construction industry to equip its customers with knowledge and facilities to further grow their businesses this 2016.”

The company said in a press release that customers can now use the company’s laboratories to do product testing for aggre-gates and admixtures for concrete production instead of having it done in the United States and Singapore. The facilities can ana-lyze concrete performance even in projects like dams and power plants, Holcim noted.

The company is also now of-fering training programs ranging from basic concrete courses to topics like concrete placement,

batching plant operations, and design optimization.

“To support our customers’ business success, we developed training programs and testing and consultancy services to equip them for business growth and expansion as construction proj-ects become more sophisticated in the past two years,” Holcim Philippines Technical Services Manager Althea Caballero was quoted saying.

The training to set up and op-erate a concrete batching plant includes basic cement and con-crete technology, quality control, health and safety, batch plant op-eration, concrete mix design, fl eet management, and aggregates.

“This training is beneficial to cement and hardware store owners or contractors expand-

ing their business into ready-mix (RMX) concrete manufacturing and in improving their know-how of Holcim’s concrete producer partners,” Holcim Philippines Technical Services and Product Development Manager Edwin Mendoza was quoted saying. “It will help realize the business goals early, eliminating trial and error in the fi rst stages of opera-tion.”

“One of the highlights is the RMX distribution training, the delivery of concrete to custom-ers,” Mr. Mendoza further said. “The quality of concrete is not only a function of mixing the right ingredient, but also the e� cient transport to the site knowing that the product hardens over time. E� cient distribution means the customer receives good quality

concrete with less wastage due to rejected deliveries.”

As part of this service, there will be monthly follow-up visits after the training, Holcim noted.

“Whereas before, we only had training on product know-how and application to support prod-uct lines and channels, now, we have training courses on durable concrete subjects for contractors and specifi ers or designers,” Mr. Mendoza said in the statement.

“The culture of safety and product quality imparted by the training will help them get sus-tainable returns. Holcim Philip-pines’ new products, services and trainings are part of its ongoing commitment to ensure safety and success of its customers by giv-ing them ease of mind in their construction projects,” he added.

Holcim announces new services, training programs

S1/9TheWorldTHURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 2016EDITOR KATRINA PAOLA B. ALVAREZ

German minister says deportations will increaseBERLIN — German Justice Min-ister Heiko Maas said on Wednes-day more foreign criminals would be expelled once new restrictions are rolled out in the wake of sex-ual attacks on women blamed on migrants in Cologne.

Mr. Maas and Interior Minis-ter Thomas de Maiziere outlined plans on Tuesday to speed up the deportation of foreigners who

commit physical and sexual as-saults, resist police, or damage property — crimes which mostly carry probationary sentences but do not trigger expulsion under current law.

“There will certainly be more deportation orders as a result of changes to the law because we are lowering the requirements for a deportation,” Mr. Maas

told German television channel ARD.

Germany would still not de-port people who come from coun-tries where war is raging or where they could face the death penalty or torture, he added.

More than 600 women have complained of being attacked on New Year’s Eve in Cologne and other German cities. The com-

plaints range from sexual moles-tation to theft, and police have said their investigations are focused on illegal migrants from north Africa as well as asylum seekers.

The German cabinet still needs to back the proposed de-portation plans before a draft law it drawn up to go through the Bundestag lower house of parlia-ment. — Reuters

Search for MH370 yieldsanother old shipwreckSYDNEY — The search for a miss-ing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 in the Indian Ocean has turned up the second centuries-old shipwreck but no sign of the aircraft that dis-appeared with 239 passengers and crew nearly two years ago, search-ers said on Wednesday.

Flight MH370 went missing during a fl ight from Kuala Lum-pur to Beijing on March 8, 2014.

The Australian-led underwater search, the most expensive ever conducted, is expected to be com-pleted by the middle of 2016, having scoured more than half of a planned 120,000 square kilometers of sea-fl oor, the agency overseeing the ef-fort said, ruling out any expansion of the search without new leads.

“In the absence of credible new information that leads to the identification of a specific loca-tion of the aircraft, governments

have agreed that there will be no further expansion of the search area,” Australia’s Joint Agency Coordination Center (JACC), which is overseeing international search e� orts, said in a statement.

The search has focused on a remote part of southern Indian Ocean, where the plane is widely believed to have gone down.

A piece of the plane found washed up on the French island of Reunion in July 2015 provided the fi rst direct evidence that the plane had crashed into the sea. No further trace has been found.

Last May, searchers found the wreckage of what was believed to be a 19th-century cargo ship, and now sonar imagery has identifi ed what is likely to be a second ship-wreck, a steel/iron vessel dating from the turn of the 19th century, according to JACC. — Reuters

Flooding fears block Ganges dam projectDHAKA — Bangladesh’s plan to build a dam on the Ganges River to ease water shortages in its southwest coastal region hangs in the balance as neighboring India has yet to accept the plan.

Bangladesh started work on the proposed Ganges Barrage Project during the tenure of the previous ruling Awami League government in the late 1990s.

The country has already completed a feasibility study and the design for the proposed 2.1-kilometer-long dam, due to be constructed at Pangsha in Rajbari district, about 100 kilometers downstream from the Farakka Bar-rage in India’s West Bengal state.

The Ganges, known as the Padma River in Bangladesh, is one of the major sources of sur-face water in the southwest of the country.

Water scarcity and water sa-linity — made worse by climate change — are common problems in the region, which is why Ban-gladesh has given the barrage project top priority.

Experts say salinity is on the rise in the southwest due to sea-level rise from global warning. The proposed dam would release water through river channels to help dilute the salt levels.

However, experts say it will be di� cult to push forward with the project in the absence of support from India.

INDIAN OBJECTIONSNew Delhi sent a letter to the Bangladesh government in early 2015, saying Indian technical ex-perts had evaluated project docu-ments sent by Dhaka and were concerned the dam could cause fl ooding in India.

The Ganges fl ows out of India on flat terrain from West Ben-gal. India, in the letter, predicted that even a slight increase in the river’s water level would cause huge submergence in areas of In-dia bordering Bangladesh.

New Delhi asked Dhaka to send the full feasibility study, including scientifi c modelling, so it could be sure there would be no increase in water levels on Indian territory.

Bangladesh Water Resources Minister Anisul Islam Mahmud told the Thomson Reuters Foun-dation all the documents request-ed by India were sent last April, but New Delhi had yet to respond.

During a visit to India in No-vember, Mr. Mahmud met his Indi-an counterpart, Uma Bharati, who assured him of a response soon.

It will be a hard task for Bangla-desh to implement the large dam alone, which is why it has sought co-operation from India, experts say.

The two countries are current-ly locked in a range of political squabbles over water, including over how to share the waters of the Teesta, another cross-bound-ary river. — Reuters

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards question 10 US sailorsDUBAI — Iran’s Islamic Revolu-tionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said on Wednesday it was interrogat-ing 10 American sailors it had de-tained a day earlier and dismissed talk of their prompt release.

Iran detained the sailors who were aboard two US navy boats in the Gulf in an incident that rattled nerves days ahead of the expected implementation of a landmark nuclear accord.

“If, during the interrogation, we fi nd out that they were on an intelligence gathering mission,

we will treat them differently,” Guards spokesman Ramazan Sharif said in an interview with Tasnim news agency.

Late on Tuesday, a US defense official had said plans were in place for Iran to return the sailors early on Wednesday to a US Navy vessel in international waters.

But, Mr. Sharif said that was speculation.

“What others say about the sailors’ prompt release is their speculation, and I don’t confi rm or deny it,” he told Tasnim.

IRGC Naval Commander Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi told state television in an interview that a US aircraft carrier in the Gulf had acted “provocatively and un-professionally” for 40 minutes by carrying out air and sea ma-neuvers after Iran arrested the American sailors.

He said the sailors were trans-ferred to Farsi island, near where they had been seized.

Tehran had asked Washington for an apology for “violating” Iran’s territorial waters, Mr. Fadavi added.

“Iran’s Foreign Minister Mo-hammad Javad Zarif was in touch with US Secretary of State [John] Kerry; Zarif took a fi rm stance as the sailors had violated Iran’s territorial waters and asked the United States for an apology,” Mr. Fadavi said.

Both US and Iranian officials have described the sailors, whose boats may have inadvertently drifted into Iranian waters, as safe and well-treated. US defense officials said nine men and one woman were aboard the two ves-sels seized. — Reuters

THE WORLD Health Organiza-tion (WHO) is due to announce the end of the two-year Ebola out-break on Thursday, when Liberia is expected to get the all clear.

The announcement in Geneva will “mark 42 days since the last Ebola cases in Liberia were tested

negative,” the United Nations agency said in a statement, after Guinea and Sierra Leone were pre-viously declared free of the virus.

The announcement was previ-ously scheduled for Friday, and no reason was given for the change. — AFP

Embrace change, Obama tells USWASHINGTON — President Barack Obama told Americans nervous about terror and a chang-ing economy that they should not fear the future, in a farewell State of the Union address on Tuesday that drew sharp contrast with Re-publicans.

In a primetime address that bubbled with 2016 election politics, Mr. Obama assailed Republicans for talking up the threat posed by the Islamic State group and talking down the American economy.

A self-assured and optimistic Mr. Obama cast himself as the foil of foes who warn the country is going in the wrong direction be-cause of his seven years in o� ce.

Hailing an epoch of “extraordi-nary change” laden with risk and opportunity, Mr. Obama called for a new “moonshot” to cure cancer, a shift away from dirty energy to power the world’s big-gest economy, and for a thaw in the last remnants of the Cold War by ending the embargo on Cuba.

Mr. Obama insisted “America has been through big changes before,” as he took thinly veiled shots at Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and other leading Republican presidential candidates.

“Each time, there have been those who told us to fear the fu-ture, who claimed we could slam the brakes on change, promis-ing to restore past glory if we just got some group or idea that was threatening America under con-trol. And each time, we overcame those fears.”

With less than three weeks until the Iowa caucuses — the fi rst votes cast in the process to replace him — Mr. Obama berated Republican economic rhetoric, saying “anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fi ction.”

But, some of his toughest words were for Republican state-

Comedian Morales now president of GuatemalaGUATEMALA CITY — Television comedian Jimmy Morales takes o� ce as the new president on Thursday in Guatemala, a coun-try whose pressing problems of-fer little to laugh about: poverty, corruption and deadly violence.

The former comic, 46, won fame on television for playing a country bumpkin who nearly becomes president. He has no previous real-life experience of elected o� ce.

Analysts say he won the Octo-ber elections due to public disgust at corruption in this central coun-try of 16 million people.

“There are high expectations because there is a need for him to promote changes in the country and solve people’s problems,” said Jose Carlos Sanabria, a political analyst at the Research and Social Studies Association.

Predecessor Otto Perez was forced to step down as the courts investigated his alleged role in a bribery racket in the state cus-toms authority.

Mr. Morales won October’s presidential election by a land-slide, vowing to fi ght what he called the “old politics” and corruption.

“My commitment remains to God and the Guatemalan people,”

the evangelical Christian said af-ter his win.

“I will work with all my heart and strength not to let you down.”

In a recent interview, he prom-ised “nice surprises.”

But, he has given few concrete details of his policies. Analysts have warned he lacks a true political base.

Mr. Morales was not even ex-pected to unveil his cabinet until hours before putting on the presi-dential sash at his investiture.

“That will fuel doubts, skepticism and criticism,” said Mr. Sanabria.

“To some extent, he has failed to make the most of this long transition period” before his in-vestiture, the analyst said.

After the ceremony late on Thursday, Mr. Morales will have to get to work fi ghting Guatema-la’s pressing problems.

Poverty a� ects just under 60% of the population. The homicide rate is one of the highest in the region at 35 killings per 100,000 inhabitants.

Despite the circumstances, Mr. Morales led a light-hearted cam-paign, cracking jokes at rallies.

“For 20 years, I’ve made you laugh,” he said. “I promise that if I become president, I won’t make you cry.” — AFP

HEALTH CARE workers wearing protective suits leave a high-risk area at the Medicins Sans Frontières Elwa hospital on Aug. 30, 2014, in Monrovia, Liberia.

AFP

WHO set to announce end of Ebola outbreak

PRESIDENT BARACK Obama waves as he walks back up the aisle at conclusion of his State of the Union address on Capitol Hill, Washington, on Jan. 12.

ments over the rise of the Islamic State group.

He painted the jihadists as “masses of fi ghters on the back of pickup trucks, twisted souls plot-ting in apartments or garages.”

He admitted that the extrem-ists, who have overrun large areas of Syria and Iraq, pose an “enor-mous danger,” but made clear: “They do not threaten our na-tional existence.”

“Our answer needs to be more than tough talk or calls to carpet-bomb civilians. That may work as a TV sound bite, but it doesn’t pass muster on the world’s stage,” he said pointedly.

“Over-the-top claims that this is World War III just play into their hands.”

And in a volley clearly aimed at Mr. Trump, Mr. Obama warned that “when politicians insult Muslims… that’s not telling it like it is. It’s just wrong. It diminishes us in the eyes of the world.”

The Republican frontrunner Mr. Trump was not impressed, describing the speech on Twitter as “really boring, slow, lethargic — very hard to watch!”

LAST CHANCE?Tuesday’s address was arguably Mr. Obama’s last big opportunity to sway a national audience and frame the 2016 White House race.

Around 30 million viewers were expected to watch live, a na-tionwide audience that may only be matched in political terms dur-ing the Democratic nominating convention later this year.

But, it risked being overshad-owed by news that 10 US Navy personnel had been taken to an Iranian naval base in the Gulf.

Senior US officials said they had received assurances the crews would sail onwards come first light, but Republicans held up the crisis up as evidence that Mr. Obama was naive to engage Tehran.

Overall, it was an unorthodox speech that eschewed the typical laundry list of legislative priori-ties as Mr. Obama tried to lift the country’s gaze beyond the next year, and beyond his presidency.

But he also tacitly, and explic-itly, admitted mistakes.

There was no mention of the racial tensions that have dogged

the tenure of the first black president.

There was only a fl eeting refer-ence, and a symbolic empty seat in the chamber, to gun control and the awful toll of American gun violence.

‘ANGRIEST VOICES’Mr. Obama did take some blame for Washington’s hyperpartisan politics.

“It’s one of the few regrets of my presidency� — �that the rancor and suspicion between the par-ties has gotten worse instead of better,” he said in a moment of personal candor.

“There’s no doubt a president with the gifts of Lincoln or Roo-sevelt might have better bridged the divide, and I guarantee I’ll keep trying to be better so long as I hold this o� ce.”

South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley said in the tradi-tional Republican rebuttal of Mr. Obama’s address that “the presi-dent’s record has often fallen far short of his soaring words.”

“As he enters his fi nal year in office, many Americans are still feeling the squeeze of an economy too weak to raise income levels.”

She also cited “chaotic unrest in many of our cities” and “the most dangerous terrorist threat our nation has seen since Sept. 11.”

But Ms. Haley, the daughter of Indian immigrants, also jabbed at Mr. Trump over his views on immigration.

“During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices,” she said.

“We must resist that tempta-tion. No one who is willing to work hard, abide by our laws, and love our traditions should ever feel unwelcome in this country.” — AFP

AFP

AN UNDATED handout sonar image released by Joint Agency Coordination Center on Jan. 13 shows an iron- or steel-hulled shipwreck some 3,700 meters below the surface and believed to have gone down at the turn of the 19th century.

AFP/JACC

10/S1TheWorld THURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 2016

QUETTA/DOUALA — A suicide bomber killed at least 15 people, most of them police, outside a polio eradication center in Paki-stan’s western city of Quetta on Wednesday, the latest militant attack on the anti-polio campaign in the country.

Militant group Jundullah, which has links with the Paki-stani Taliban and has pledged al-legiance to Islamic State, claimed responsibility for the attack.

The bomb ripped through a police van that had just arrived at the center to provide an escort for vaccination workers engaged in a drive to immunize all children under fi ve years old in the under-developed western province of Balochistan.

“It was a suicide blast; we have gathered evidence from the scene,” Ahsan Mehboob, the pro-vincial police chief told Reuters. “The police team had arrived to escort teams for the polio cam-paign.”

Ahmed Marwat, who identi-fi ed himself as a commander and spokesman for Jundullah, said the group was responsible. “We claim the bomb blast on polio of-fice. In the coming days we will make more attacks on polio vacci-nation o� ces and polio workers,” he said by telephone.

Teams in Pakistan working to immunize children against the vi-rus are often targeted by Taliban and other militant groups, who say the campaign is a cover for Western spies, or accuse workers

HK’s Leung pushes integration with China in policy speechHONG KONG’s leader announced steps on Wednesday to boost in-tegration with China, pinning the city’s future on the success of Beijing’s international “One Belt, One Road” concept.

Leung Chun-ying, who started a fi ve-year term as chief executive in 2012, said during his annual policy address that Hong Kong would play a significant role in promoting the new “Silk Road” spreading from Western China to Central Asia and Europe.

“Hong Kong is well-positioned to capture the wealth of the Belt and Road,” Mr. Leung said. He pledged HK$1.2 billion ($154.65 million) for the concept, mostly for scholar-ships for students from countries targeted by the program.

He mentioned “One Belt, One Road” 40 times in his speech, which also boosted existing plans in other areas but lacked sweep-ing new initiatives.

Four lawmakers were removed for heckling Mr. Leung during his speech over a lack of substance and his failure to mention concerns over the disappearance of fi ve Hong

Kong booksellers. The fi ve, linked to the production and sale of works critical of Beijing’s leaders, are widely feared to have been illegally abducted by mainland agents.

Mr. Leung said that any such action would be in contravention of Hong Kong’s Basic Law, or mini constitution, and that he had raised the issue with mainland authorities.

The policy address has tradi-tionally been a platform for leaders in the Chinese-controlled city to hand out billions to the less advan-taged or to signal shifts in economic and other political policies.

With many Hong Kong resi-dents increasingly dissatisfied with Mr. Leung’s administration, experts expressed surprise at the dominance of “One Belt, One Road” over other issues.

Pro-Beijing politician Regina Ip said Mr. Leung had “overdone it” while skirting key governance and political issues, particularly Beijing ’s ties with Hong Kong, a former British colony that re-turned to Chinese rule in 1997 with the promise of wide-ranging autonomy.

“I think [Mr. Leung] ought to offer stronger reassurances to Hong Kong people and address the confi dence issues,” she said.

James Sung, a political analyst at City University, said Mr. Leung seemed determined to show loyalty to Chinese President Xi Jinping, and he doubted smaller businesses would prosper from Beijing’s initiative.

Mr. Leung later acknowledged that some residents neither un-derstood nor were interested in “One Belt, One Road”.

One regular Hong Kong Uni-versity poll ahead of the speech showed his popularity had reached an all-time low of 37.5%.

Mr. Leung, who pledged in 2012 to make housing more af-fordable, said Hong Kong’s lack of a� ordable property remained a serious problem.

Prices and rents “are still beyond what people can afford, and have distorted the values of the younger generation,” he said. “We should continue to tackle the housing problem head-on and must not concede.”

He said about 97,100 public housing units will be built over the next fi ve years. He also boost-ed spending on public hospitals and launched a HK$2 billion matching fund to promote inno-vative business start-ups.

TURBULENT HISTORYIn tiny Hong Kong, 7.2 million people are packed into just 30% of the territory.

Mr. Leung has presided over some turbulent history as Hong Kong’s relationship to Beijing is being contested. Pro-democracy protesters shut down major roads for 79 days in late 2014 and Mr. Leung’s administration was accused of meddling in aca-demic appointments at the top university.

Now, the city’s economy — whose growth is closely tied to mainland China’s — is slowing.

The Hong Kong dollar’s peg to the US dollar has made it an increasingly expensive destina-tion for mainland Chinese who come to shop and buy property. — Reuters

Gunbattle in Afghan city after blast near consulateJALALABAD — Afghan security forces killed two gunmen bar-ricaded inside a house here on Wednesday, ending a siege that followed a suicide attack on the Pakistani consulate in the city, a senior o� cial said.

Deputy Interior Minister Ayoub Salangi said the two mili-tants were killed in a shootout with heavily armed police units. O� cials said at least seven mem-bers of the security forces were also killed.

The attack, which comes amid e� orts to restart the stalled peace process with the Taliban and ease diplomatic tensions between In-dia and Pakistan, resembled an

assault on the Indian consulate in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif last week.

There has been no claim of re-sponsibility for either attack.

Witnesses in Jalalabad, the main trade gateway to the Khy-ber Pass and Pakistan, said heavy gunfi re and a series of explosions could be heard during the battle, and residents and children from a nearby school were evacuated. There was no immediate comment from the Pakistani government.

Attaullah Khogyani, a spokes-man for the provincial governor, said a suicide bomber had tried to join a queue of people seeking visas to Pakistan and blew himself

up after being prevented from entering the building.

Two policemen were killed in the blast, the interior ministry said in a statement.

Last week, a group of attackers barricaded themselves in a house and resisted security forces for about 24 hours after a suicide at-tack on the Indian consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif.

The group responsible for that attack has not been identifi ed, but the incident fuelled suspicion in In-dia about militants sponsored from Pakistan, and it cast a shadow over the latest e� ort to improve relations.

Tension between India and Pakistan has risen since the at-

tack on the Indian consulate and on an Indian air base that killed seven Indian military personnel near their border.

Delegates from Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, and the United States also met this week to try to resurrect e� orts to end nearly 15 years of bloodshed in Afghani-stan, even as fighting with the Taliban intensifi es.

Pakistan says many Pakistani Taliban militants, who are sepa-rate from but allied with the Af-ghan Taliban, and are fi ghting to bring down the Pakistani state, have sought refuge in Afghani-stan from a Pakistani army of-fensive. — Reuters

China retorts to Japan about disputed isles in eastern seaBEIJING — China’s Foreign Ministry warned Japan on Wednesday not to take “provocative” action around a group of disputed islets in the East China Sea, saying Tokyo would have to ac-cept the consequences.

On Tuesday, Japan said it had told China that any foreign naval vessel entering Japa-nese waters for reasons other than “innocent passage” will be told to leave by a Japanese naval patrol, signalling a potential escalation in a long-running dispute.

Last year, Chinese navy ships sailed near the disputed isles — known as the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China — the Japanese government said.

Asked about the Japanese announcement, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said China had the right to carry out “nor-mal navigation and patrol activities” around the islands.

“We advise Japan against taking provoca-tive acts or doing anything to raise tensions,

otherwise it will have to accept responsibility for everything that happens,” he told a daily news briefi ng, without elaborating.

In an editorial on Wednesday, the infl uen-tial Chinese tabloid the Global Times said if Japan sent its navy in, China would have to send in its warships too.

“China can send as many warships to the Diaoyu Islands as Japan does,” said the news-paper, which is run by the ruling Communist Party’s o� cial People’s Daily.

The dispute over the uninhabited islands, which are under Japanese control, has been a major sticking point in Japan and China’s often contentious relations in recent years.

Late last year, a Chinese coastguard ves-sel with what appeared to be gun turrets entered territorial waters claimed by Japan near the islands, Japan’s coastguard said, adding that it was the first such incursion by an armed Chinese vessel in the area. — Reuters

North Korea faked launch footage of ballistic missile test — expertsSEOUL — Footage released last week by North Korea purporting to show the fi ring of a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) appears to be fake, according to studies by US experts.

In defi ance of a United Nations ban, North Korea has said it has ballistic missile technology which would allow it to launch a nuclear warhead from a submarine, though analysis of North Korean state media images casts doubt on the claim.

North Korea released the submarine launch footage after it separately conducted a fourth nuclear weapons test last Wednesday.

North Korean state television aired footage on Friday of the submarine test said to have taken place in December. Unlike a previous SLBM test in May, it was not announced at the time.

South Korea’s military said on Saturday North Korea appeared to have modifi ed the video and edited it with Scud missile footage from 2014, although an o� cial told Reuters the ejection technology might have improved since the May test.

An analysis by the California-based James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) shows two frames of video from state media where fl ames engulf the missile and small parts of its body break away.

“The rocket ejected, began to light, and then failed catastrophically,” Melissa Hanham, a senior research associate at the Middlebury Institute’s CNS, said in an e-mail. “North Korea used heavy video editing to cover over this fact.”

Ms. Hanham said North Korea state media used dif-ferent camera angles and editing to make it appear the launch was several continuous launches, when in fact it was a single event.

North Korean propagandists used rudimentary editing techniques to crop and fl ip old video footage of an earlier SLBM test and Scud missile launch, the CNS study showed.

In an analysis on the 38 North monitoring Web site, John Schilling, an aerospace engineer who is a special-ist in satellite and launch vehicle propulsion systems, said it appeared from the video that the launch was conducted from a submerged barge rather than a submarine.

“The failed launch, combined with testing from a barge, shows that North Korea still has a long way to go to develop this system,” he said. “An initial operational capability of a North Korean ballistic-missile submarine is not expected before 2020.” — Reuters

Suicide bombers strike Pakistan and Cameroon

of distributing vaccines designed to sterilise children.

The latest attack killed at least 12 policemen, one paramilitary officer, and two civilians, and wounded 25 others, o� cials said. They estimated the bomb con-tained about fi ve kilograms.

CAMEROONIn Cameroon, a suicide bomb-er killed at least 10 people and wounded at least one in an attack on a mosque in northern Camer-oon on Wednesday, o� cials in the Far North region said, in the lat-est attack linked to an insurgency by militant group Boko Haram.

The Islamist group, whose origins are in northeastern Ni-geria, has stepped up attacks in neighboring Cameroon, Chad, and Niger since last year. Many of the recent Cameroon attacks have been conducted by women.

“The suicide attack took place at 5:40 a.m. (4:40 a.m. GMT) in a mosque at Kouyape. There were 13 deaths, including the man who blew himself up, and one wound-ed,” said a senior local o� cial who declined to be identifi ed.

Another senior local official said at least 10 people died.

Boko Haram has waged a six-year campaign for an Islamist state in northeastern Nigeria. Neighboring countries joined an offensive against the group this year and the confl ict spilled across their borders, displacing tens of thousands of people. — Reuters

PAKISTANI SECURITY o� cials examine the site of a bomb blast near a polio vaccination center in Quetta, Pakistan, on Jan. 13.

AFP

AFP

S1/11TheNationTHURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 2016

Rebel priest shot dead two days after birthdayFr. Conrado Balweg is shown in this photograph taken in August 1986 as he explains demands of the Cordillera people in Sadanga, Mt. Province. Agapito “Butz” Aquino — who would be elected senator a year later — is shown in the background. The scene is from the one-hour color documentary entitled Fr. Balweg, Rebel Priest by prize-winning fi lmmaker, Amable “Tikoy” Aguiluz. The fi lm’s premier was held at the Ayala Museum also in August 1986. Balweg was shot dead on Dec. 31, 1999, two days after he celebrated his 57th birthday, a January 2000 BusinessWorld report said. The New People’s Army (NPA) executed the elder Balweg allegedly for “crimes against the people,” the report said. However, his common-law wife, Corazon, said “her husband was executed by the NPA for embracing peace and renouncing the communist ideology.”

BUSINESSWORLD ARCHIVES

Court holds fi re on M/V Princess of the Stars case

THE MANILA Regional Trial Court (RTC) has not immediately resolved the Public Attorney’s O� ce’s (PAO) request for the ex-ecution of the Sept. 18 decision ordering the payment of damages to victims of the M/V Princess of the Stars tragedy of 2008.

During the Wednesday hear-ing, RTC Branch 49 Judge Dan-iel C. Villanueva instead gave Sulpicio Lines, Inc. and mem-bers of the Go family 15 days to submit a position paper explain-ing their opposition to PAO’s two motions for execution. PAO was allowed to respond on an optional basis.

The execution of the Sept. 18 decision holding the shipping fi rm liable for negligence was tied

up over the issue of whether it had attained fi nality.

PAO Chief Persida V. Rueda-Acosta, on behalf of 71 plainti� s, said Sulpicio and the Gos fi led an invalid appeal that should not be considered. This should render the decision fi nal and executory, she argued.

But Sulpicio counsel Ma. Vic-toria P. Lim-Florido said PAO’s tack contradicted its earlier posi-tion as contained in a fi ling days earlier.

PAO’s Dec. 8 “omnibus mo-tion for execution to dismiss de-fendants’ notice of appeal with motion for execution” said the appeals should not be considered because they did not pay the docket fees for all of the 71 civil suits.

Ms. Florido argued that the Nov. 27 “motion for execution pending appeal based on good reasons” practically recognized

they were able to appeal the RTC ruling. She said the two motions, therefore, contradict each other.

“The [plainti� s] should decide which motion should stand,” Ms. Florido told the court.

She explained they are object-ing to both motions being consid-ered because “the plainti� cannot take one view... and take another. The two motions are diametri-cally opposed.”

Ms. Acosta responded by say-ing they would stand by both motions and leave to the judge’s discretion the question of which remedy to consider.

“Plaintiffs cannot put them-selves in the shoes of the Presid-ing Judge. That’s why there are two motions which are not op-posed to each other,” said the PAO chief.

When the defense proposed PAO submit a position paper instead to explain what stance

it will take, Ms. Acosta opposed the suggestion and maintained “these are already all the posi-tions of the parties.”

She said tackling this issue by way of another round of filings would “prolong the agony” of the plaintiffs who are still seeking compensation almost eight years after the ferry’s sinking.

“ Why prolong the ag ony [when] the court can exercise its discretion?” Ms. Acosta ex-claimed. “These [motions] are compatible. Why should the counsel dictate on us? We will not let any delay; the people of the Philippines are clamoring for the fast resolution of these cases.”

Mr. Villanueva still allowed the submission of the position paper to put the parties’ positions into writing and allow the court to study the issue.

The next hearing was set on March 1 — indicating that the

nearly-concluded case will go on in the meantime in spite of the Court of Appeals’ (CA) order for him to voluntarily inhibit.

During the hearing, Mr. Villan-ueva did not comment on wheth-er he will abide by the CA ruling, only asking the PAO about its appeal with the Supreme Court.

Ms. Acosta told the judge he did not need to follow the inhi-bition order because there are “good reasons” to fi nish the case and the appellate court did not issue a stay order against the pro-ceedings.

To recall, the Manila RTC’s Sept. 18 decision ordered Sulpi-cio — now Philippine Span Asia Carrier Corp. (PSACC) — to pay around P240 million in damages to 64 of the 71 plainti� s. It found negligence on the shipping fi rm’s part for allowing M/V Princess of the Stars to set sail along the Romblon area despite a Signal no.

2 storm warning being hoisted there.

On Sept. 21, the CA Special Six-teenth Division, through Associ-ate Justice Edwin D. Sorongon, granted Sulpicio’s petition for Mr. Villanueva to recuse him-self from the case. The appellate court affirmed this in a Dec. 18 resolution and ordered the civil suit rera� ed, prompting PAO to seek recourse from the Supreme Court.

Only 32 of M/V Princess of the Stars’ 851 passengers and crew members survived the mishap in the Sibuyan Sea, off San Fer-nando, Romblon.

The Maritime Industry Au-thority, on Jan. 23, 2015, can-celed the Certificate of Public Convenience of PSACC, ten years into the 25-year effectiv-ity. Because of this, the firm’s ships are now limited to carrying cargo.

By Vince Alvic A. F. NonatoReporter

INTERNET USERS who su� er from slow connection will soon have a software to measure the speed they get, and they can use this as evidence to fi le complaints against Internet service providers.

“It will be operational by June. It will be available nationwide and is downloadable anywhere,” National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) Regulation Branch Director Edgardo R. Cabarios told reporters in a re-cent interview.

If an Internet service provider advertises its product as “broad-band,” its data connection speed must not fall below 256 kilobits per second (Kbps), according to an Aug. 13 memorandum circular issued by the agency.

It has been a common com-plaint that the 256 Kbps mini-mum speed is slower than in other countries, and Internet us-ers have urged the regulator to set a higher standard.

But during a public hearing on Tuesday, Mr. Cabarios said “we will maintain that.”

Internet service providers should deliver the speed they ad-

vertise at least 80% of the time, or face penalties for false advertis-ing.

“We’re measuring your perfor-mance against what you prom-ised,” Pierre Tito Galla, co-found-er of advocacy group Democracy.Net.PH, told Internet service pro-viders during the hearing.

However, the government ad-mits the penalty is just a slap on the wrist.

Criminal and administrative fines currently range from just P1,000 to P5,000, and P500 to P300,000, respectively, according to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).

“There is a proposal to amend that — criminal penalties will be P50,000 to P1 million, and the administrative penalties are the same,” DTI’s Trade Industry De-velopment Specialist Ronald C. Calderon said in the same venue.

“We’re still reviewing the pro-posal.”

The measuring tool can be used to measure data connec-tion of both fixed and wireless broadband. The NTC will hold a public bidding to choose the sup-plier, and initial estimates show that the device will cost around P15 million, according to Mr. Cabarios.

NTC says software to monitor Internet speed ready by JuneBy Daphne J. Magturo Reporter

SC junks pleas by Pamatong, David, other ‘nuisance’ bets

Security officials say southern rebels not linked to Islamic State

THE SUPREME COURT (SC) en banc dismissed on Tuesday the petitions to overturn the Com-mission on Elections’ (Comelec) resolutions declaring Rizalito Y. David, Elly V. Pamatong and oth-er “nuisance candidates.”

SC Public Information Office Chief Theodore O. Te said on Wednesday the high court issued minute resolutions “uniformly” affirming that the Comelec “did not act with grave abuse of discre-tion.”

The petitions filed by seven presidential aspirants and one vice-presidential hopeful con-tested the Comelec resolutions canceling their certificates of candidacy.

Mr. David, the radio commen-tator who unsuccessfully peti-tioned the Senate Electoral Tri-bunal to oust Senator Grace Poe,

and Elly V. Pamatong, who failed in his two previous attempts to be included in the ballot, were among the seven “nuisance can-didates” whose petitions the SC denied.

The other five presidential aspirants were: “Ex- Governor” Ephraim Ninoy Baldomero De-fino, Buenafe A. Briggs, Juanita M. Trocenio, Antonio A. Obiña, and Luisito M. Falcon. The SC also dismissed the petition by vice-presidential candidate Nid Anima.

The SC likewise junked similar petitions by two party-list groups and two regional parties assailing the Comelec’s dismissal of their petitions for party registration and accreditation.

The two party-list groups were: Mindanao Alliance for Reforms (MAR), represented by president

Binang S. Jaruni; and Aasenso sa Barangay (LAKAN), Inc., repre-sented by Ariel S. Arceo.

The two regional parties, meanwhile, were: Bagong Alyan-sang Manggagawang Pangtrans-portasyon Para sa Edukasyon at Reporma (BAMPER), Inc., repre-sented by president Abraham H. Bio and secretary-general Rich-ard S. Vitto; and People’s Move-ment for Democratic Governance (PMDG), Inc.

In a related development, the SC required the Comelec to re-spond on the separate petitions by Vieva Farmers Coalition, rep-resented by president Lilia M. Cruz, and Scholarship ng Masa Party-list. The poll body was given 10 days to submit its com-ment on the two parties’ request for a temporary restraining order. — Vince Alvic Alexis F. Nonato

Sitting Marinduque solon won’tyield postTHE CAMP of Marinduque Rep. Regina Ongsiako-Reyes said she would not yield her position, despite the Supreme Court’s (SC) order for House Speaker Feliciano “Sonny” R. Belmonte, Jr. to swear in her rival.

This was in spite of the clarifi -cation issued by SC Public Infor-mation O� ce Chief Theodore O. Te on Wednesday, who said the SC’s Tuesday order to install Lord Allan Jay Q. Velasco in the House roster is “immediately executory.”

In May last year, the Commis-sion on Elections (Comelec) af-firmed with finality Ms. Reyes’s disqualifi cation for her being a dual citizen, as she had not renounced her American citizenship.

The SC, voting 8-1-6 on Tues-day, granted Mr. Velasco’s peti-tion to compel the House Speaker through a writ of mandamus to swear him in as Marinduque rep-resentative. It said the Comelec and the SC rulings disqualifying Ms. Reyes had become fi nal and executory, and the House Speaker has the ministerial duty to ad-minister the oath to Mr. Velasco.

In a statement, counsel Her-minio Harry L. Roque, Jr. said Ms. Reyes would stay put as a congresswoman as they prepare to appeal the decision through a motion for reconsideration.

“Until the denial of that motion, Rep. Reyes continues to be the law-ful representative of Marinduque in Congress,” Mr. Roque said.

The lawyer also “advised” Congress to “let Rep. Reyes and [Mr. Velasco]... fi ght it out anew in this year’s elections” instead of complying with the SC’s Tuesday writ of mandamus. Both politi-cians are gunning for the position again for the 2016 elections.

Mr. Roque said only Congress acting as a whole body — not the House Speaker on his own — has the power to replace its members.

Mr. Velasco is the son of SC Justice Presbitero J. Velasco, Jr. (who inhibited from the case) and Ang Mata’y Alagaan party-list Rep. Lorna Q. Velasco. A reelectionist, he lost the 2013 elections to Ms. Reyes by a margin of 4,000 votes.

Ms. Reyes was allowed to partic-ipate in the elections because her disqualifi cation was not yet fi nal.

She was proclaimed the win-ning representative on May 18 that year, as the May 14 resolu-tion had not lapsed into being executory. In December, the SC ruled with fi nality that she should be disqualified and Mr. Velasco should be declared the winner.

The House of Representatives did not abide by the ruling, be-cause it believed the Comelec lost its jurisdiction when Ms. Reyes was proclaimed. It said only the House of Representatives Elec-toral Tribunal has jurisdiction over a proclaimed representative.

On Tuesday, Mr. Belmonte said: “once the decision is final, I will enforce [the SC order].” — Vince Alvic Alexis F. Nonato

ISLAMIC STATE (IS) militants have no known links with Muslim rebel groups in the Philippines, security o� cials said on Tuesday, dismissing a video suggesting as much as propaganda.

A video emerged last week in-dicating the possible merger of four Islamist militant groups, in-cluding Abu Sayyaf, establishing a “wilayat,” or an Islamic State prov-ince, in the southern Philippines.

“There is no credible, verifi ed and direct link established and the possibility of establishing a satellite is unlikely,” military spokesman Col. Restituto Padilla told reporters, adding some of the personalities in the video had been killed in more recent clashes with security forces.

“The recent pronouncement of Abu Sayyaf group leader Is-nilon Hapilon is part of their

propaganda and does not neces-sarily refl ect the existence of an ISIS-directed terror operation in the country.”

Hapilon, who has a $5-mil-lion bounty on his head, is the only remaining Abu Sayyaf leader left alive of the five who kidnapped 20 hostages, mostly Western tourists, from Sipadan island in eastern Malaysia in 2000.

The islands of Basilan and Jolo are the strongholds of the Abu Sayyaf, known for kidnappings, beheadings and bombings. It is one of the most hard-line Mus-lim rebel factions in the Muslim south of the largely Christian Philippines.

An army intelligence official also disputed the likelihood of a wilayat being set up in the south-ern Philippines.

“The local militants are only interested in making money, and those attracted to Islamist ideol-ogy would rather travel to Syria and Iraq, especially those from Malaysia and Indonesia,” said an intelligence o� cial.

“What we have in the south are pure criminals hiding behind IS masks to gain prominence and raise more ransom money.” — Reuters

ELY PAMATONGAFP

12/S1TheNation THURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 2016 EDITOR RICKY S. TORRE

THE TWO FACTIONS of the country’s biggest labor group have hinted at the possibility of reunifi cation, following the death of another of its pioneering lead-ers on Tuesday evening.

Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) former presi-dent Democrito “Kito” T. Men-doza died 6:40 p.m. on Tuesday at the Chong Hua Hospital in Cebu City, according to a statement yesterday by the Nagkaisa faction

of the TUCP with which he had been a� liated.

“It is with profound sadness that the members, officers and staffs of the Trade Union Con-gress of the Philippines and the Associated Labor Unions (ALU) announce the passing of its founder and their long-time president Atty. Democrito “ K i t o ” To l o Me n d oz a ,” t h e statement said. Mr. Mendoza was 92.

Alan A. Tanjusay, spokesper-son of Nagkaisa, said on the heels of Mr. Mendoza’s passing: “As to the next set of leaders, the race to the leadership is very open.”

“The rule of thumb is that [whichever] qualifi ed candidate/s have the majority vote, wins. This is the essence of the TUCP constitu-tion and by-laws that dictates and oversees TUCP internal processes and mechanisms,” he said via text.

Mr. Tanjusay said majority of the TUCP council last Nov. 14 elected Mr. Mendoza’s son Raymond Dem-ocrito C. Mendoza as acting presi-dent, Arnel Z. Dolendo as acting general secretary, and Esperenza S. Ocampo as acting treasurer.

“They will prepare the organi-zation to hold [the] national con-vention [which] will [choose the] next set of o� cers for the next fi ve

years,” Mr. Tanjusay said, adding the target date for the convention is in February.

On the other hand, Ruben D. Torres, who was elected president this month by the TUCP faction led by the late former senator Ernesto F. Herrera, said among those who are next in line to be leaders are General Secretary Rodolfo M. Capoquian, Robrerto Flores, and Alex Villaviza.

“We are calling a convention on March 13,” said Mr. Torres, a former labor secretary of the first Aquino administration and executive secretary of the Ramos administration.

Mr. Tanjusay said communica-tion lines between the two fac-tions are open.

“There are free exchanges of ideas and positions on how to mend the rift and come together,” he said.

Mr. Torres, for his part, said all matters are open for discussions. “We strongly advocate unity. We are continuing our unity discus-sions,” he said in his text message.

This statement departs from Mr. Torres’s criticism of the No-vember election as having “no authority.”

The leadership dispute has dragged on for more than four years now, after the older Mr.

Mendoza revoked his 2011 resig-nation as TUCP president follow-ing Mr. Herrera’s assuming Mr. Mendoza’s position.

The Bureau of Labor Relations of the Department of Labor and Employment ruled in Mr. Men-doza’s favor in a 2012 decision. But this was voided by a Court of Appeals ruling the next year that, in turn, was a� rmed by the Supreme Court.

TUCP leader passes away; factions hint at unityBy Kathryn Mae P. TubadezaReporter

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CALIFORNIA PIZZA KITCHENMAKATI: Level 2, Greenbelt 5 Makati CityTel: 401-7160 / 572-59652/F Archaeology, Powerplant Mall, Rockwell Center makati CityTel: 895-3447 / 895-5250MUNTINLUPA: Activity Center, Alabang Town Center Muntinlupa City. Tel: 850-5771MANDALUYONG: Level 5, Shangri-la Plaza Mall, Mandaluyong CityTel: 687-7841 / 687-7842QUEZON CITY: Level M3, Trinoma Mall Quezon City.Tel: 901-3881 / 901-3882Ground Floor, Eastwood Mall Quezon CityTel: 584-0874 / 584-5150SAN JUAN: G/F Promenade Mall, Greenhills Shopping Center, San Juan City. Tel: 725-7377MANILA: 3/F Lucky Chinatown, Binondo Manila.Tel: 254-3151 / 254-3172TAGUIG: W Global Center, 30th Street Corner 9th Ave., Bonifacio Global City. Tel: 668-3912OLONGAPO CITY: Ground Level, Promenade Harbor Point, Rizal Highway, Subic Bay Freeport Zone; Tel: (047) 251-1084 / (047) 251-1085

MINAMISAKI BY ASTORIAG/F Astoria Plaza 15 J. Escriva Drive Ortigas Business District, 1600 Pasig. Tel: 687-1111 loc. 8164/8165www.minamisakibyastoria.com

QUBIERTOS GRILL & RESTAURANT HOUSE SPECIALTIES:Grilled meats and seafoods;Bagnet; Pinakbet; LaingKambing Dishes; and ournew product Authentic Boneless Cebu Lechon• With Aircon & Non-Aircon

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TAPEOThe Fort Strip 7th Ave Corner 28th Street Bonifacio Global City Taguig City. Tel: 556-2668 Mobile No. (0922) 361-1210FB:tapeo.phtapeo.manila@gmail.comtapeo.manila@gmail.com

ARACAMA FILIPINO CUISINEUnit C-1 The Fort Entertainment Center, 26th Street corner 5th Av-enue, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig 1634. Tel: 519-6815Hours:

• Lunch 11am-2pm• Dinner 5-10pm• Live Music / lounge /Club : 10pm onwards

Dining Reservations: (0917) 874-7738Lounge Reservations: (0917) 861-2702Events/Marketing: dawn@aracamamanila.com

MARIO’SQUEZON CITY: 191 Tomas Morato Ave., cor.Scout Gandia, Quezon City; Tel: 415-3887 / 376-6210 / 372-0360 Fax No.: 372-0352BAGUIO CITY: Upper Session Rd., Baguio City; Tel: (074)442-4241Fax No.: (074) 442-5445

WE CATERFor those occasions when you

want the best, call Mario’s for catering.call Mario’s for catering.

CRISOSTOMO LAGUNA: Solenad,Nuvali,LagunaTel: (049) 502-8106 Mobile: 0917-863-2568crisostomo.nuvali@ymail.comALABANG: G/F Expansion Wing Alabang Town Center Ayala Alabang Tel: 869-0988; Mobile: 0917-8371345crisostomo.alabang@ymail.com PASAY:Second Floor Resortsworld Manila Newport ,Pasay CityTel: 846-9275 / 212-1212Monday -Thursday 11:00 am -12 Midnight; Friday 11:00 am –1:00 amSaturday 10:00 am –1:00 amSunday 10:00 am-12:00 Midnightcrisostomo.newport@ymail.comCRISOSTOMO BLUEBAY WALK: Cluster L Unit 104 Bluebay Walk, Metropolitan Park Avenue, Pasay City. Tel: 832-6592 Mobile: (0917) 826-2535bluebay@crisostomo.phwww.crisostomo.phFAIRVIEW: Space UO72 Central Garden, Fairview Terraces, Bgy. Pasong Putik, Novaliches, Quezon City. Mobile: 0917-817-8326fairview.terraces@crisostomo.phLIBIS: 2/F Eastwood Mall VerandaE.Rodriguez Jr. AvenueBagumbayan Quezon CityTel: 710-1693; 709-2049Mobile: (0917) 881-4768eastwood@crisostomo.phUP TOWN CTR. KATIPUNAN: U-B231-B232 UP Town CenterKatipunan Avenue Diliman Quezon CityTel: 621-4150; Fax: 990-0287Mobile: (0917)837-1346crisostomokatipunan@yahoo.com.phuptown@crisostomo.ph

FELIXUnit 107-108 Ground Floor Greenbelt 5 Ayala Center Makati City.Tel: 710-1696Telefax: 729-9062Mobile: (0917) 881-3068www.felix.ph; FB/felixrestaurantinfo@felix.ph

SISA’S SECRETKm 36 Mamplasan, LagunaTel: (049) 576-2277; (02) 429-4835Mobile: 0917-8371347www.sisassecret.ph

KING CHEF987-989 Banawe Street Quezon City. Tel: 352-7534 /410-4919 / 441-4177; Fax: 413-6619

MUSEUM CAFÉAyala Museum Complex, Makati Avenue corner Dela Rosa St., Makati City, Philippines 1200 Tel: 757-3000 / 757-6000 / 391-4197 museumcafe.com.ph FB:/raintreemcafe

BAR AND RESTAURANTQUEZON CITY BRANCH:69 Timog Avenue, corner Sct. TorrilloTel: 426-9773CAINTA BRANCH:Sta. Lucia East Grand Mall (Back of Don Henricos). Tel: 571-7531

GOLDEN BAY SEAFOOD RESTAURANTBlock A2, CBP, Diosdado Macapagal Boulevard Pasay City. Tel: 556-7525

PARVATITRINOMA: Mindanao Lobby, Trino-ma (02) 901.1428 / (0927) 878.0890BANAWE: G/F 238 Banawe Build-ing, Banawe St. QC (0923) 688-7936 / (0906) 208-1531

MARKET ON 5TH AVE.G/F Medical Arts Building St.Lukes Medical Center Global City TaguigTel: 403-3545 / 403-9574Mobile: (0917) 854-1020Open from 7am-9pm Mon-FriInfo@marketon5thave.ph

MONGKOK DIMSUM & NOODLES• P1 Level, Powerplant Mall,

Rockwell Center, Makati City. Tel: 756-5112

• Space 2-204 2nd Floor New Glorietta, Ayala Center,

• Makati City. Tel: 625-5170 • 3rd Floor, Sta Lucia East

Grand Mall, Marcos Highway, Cainta Rizal Tel: 681-7327

• 4th Floor Robinson’s Galleria, Ortigas Center, Quezon City.

Tel: 636-6416• 6th Level, Shangri-La Plaza,

Mandaluyong City. Tel: 631-5857 • GF Santana Grove, Dr.

A. Santos Ave., Sucat Paranaque City.

Tel: 828-4831• GF Lourdes Suites Hotel,

8429 Kalayaan Ave., Makati City. Tel: 897-3888 loc. 101

• BDO Corporate Center, 7899 Makati Ave., Makati City. Tel: 840-7000 loc 1231

• The Rockwell Business Center, Ortigas Ave., Pasig City. Tel: 661-4152

• Vinzon Ave., Daet, Camarines Norte.

Tel: (054) 721-2418 • / 517-2864 • The Plaza At Bauan , J. P.

Rizal St. Bauan Batangas. Tel: (043) 702-8967

OAKROOM RESTAURANT & BAR6th Level, Oakwood Premier Joy~Nostalg Center Manila, 17 ADB Avenue, Pasig City 1600 Tel: 637-7888 / 910-8888 ext. 8604 premier manila @ oak wood asia.com; oakwood.com

SUGARLEAFSAN JUAN: G/F Health Cube Building, 226 Wilson Street, West Greenhills, San Juan, Metro Manila, PhilippinesTel: 661-6639MAKATI: G/-2/F MEDICard Life-style Center, 51 Paseo de Roxas corner Sen. Gil Puyat Avenue, Urdaneta Village, Makati City. Tel: 812-7323www.sugarleafph.com

HUAT POTTaiwanese Style All You Can Eat Shabu Shabu for only Php 688+Unit 2F 07 Metro Pointe Center P. Guevarra cor. Averilla St.San Juan City, (near Wilson St.)Open from 11:00am to 11:00pmReserve Now: (0915) 480-5500 650-3091huatpot21@gmail.comwww.eatoutmanila.com

ELIASQUEZON CITY: Level 1 Upper Ground Floor Robinsons Magnolia Aurora Blvd. New Manila, Quezon City .Tel: 546-7977; 961-0339Mobile: (0917) 586-9895magnolia@elias.ph elias.robmag@ymail.comTAGUIG: 7TH Avenue corner 30th Street Upper Ground 204 C3 Building Bonifacio High Street Taguig. Tel: 621-3195; Fax: 621-3276Mobile: (0917) 817-8290highstreet@elias.ph

CRYSTAL JADE DINING INSEUG 201 Bonifacio High Street Central7th Avenue Bonifacio Global City. Tel.: 808-5233

CRYSTAL JADE SHANGHAI DELIGHTUnit 117 V-Mall Greenhills Shop-ping Center, San Juan City.Tel.: 570-5233

CAFÉ @ SERENADE HALL MAKATI: Penthouse, Golden Rock Building 168 Salcedo St., Legaspi Village, Makati City (Makati Central Business District; right across the Indonesian Embassy; with park-ing along Sotto St. at the back of the building: or Convergy’s open parking with entrance along dela Rosa Street) Tel: 816-1564 / 816-2334 Mobile: 0905-4205235 cafe@ser-enadehall.com /Serenade Hallwww.serenadehall.com Open Mon to Fri from 7:00 AM - 5:00 PM • Serves All-Day Breakfast, Lunch & Merienda • Dinner by Reserva-tion • We Cater • We Accept Special Functions

THE FRAZZLED COOKNo. 78 Scout Gandia Street Brgy. Laging Handa Quezon CityTel: 374-68-79Mobile No.: (0917) 633-3352www.TheFrazzledCook.netInstagram: @thefrazzledcookFB/frazzledcookEmail: frazzledcook@gmail.com

BURGER COMPANYScout Reyes, corner Mother Ignacia Avenue, Barangay Paligsahan, Quezon City. Tel: 949-2269FB/BurgerCompanyPHTwitter/Instagram: @BurgerCompanyPH

ALFREDO’S STEAKSTomas Morato Ave. Quezon City Tel: 374-3576 / 412-7137; Tele fax: 413-7820

FEZ RESTOBARUnit C07-A, Serendra Commercial, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig. Tel: 901-1840FB/fez.restobar; T/ @FezRestobarDelivery Address: Resto Address

JOHNNY ROCKETSEASTWOOD MALL: Ground Floor, Eastwood Mall Veranda, Eastwood City, Libis, Quezon City. Tel: 470-2117/ 470-2208 TOMAS MORATO: 205 Jr Building 1 Tomas Morato Avenue Barangay Laging Handa, Quezon City. Tel: 352-0693 ROBINSONS GALLERIA : Level 2 Veranda, Robinsons Galleria, Edsa Cor. Ortigas Ave. Quezon City. Tel: 477-6501 BURGOS CIRCLE: Unit Ws-1 Burgos Circle Forbes Town Center, Rizal Drive Cor. West Crescent Park, Fort Bonifacio, Taguig 1634. Tel: 836-9546 ALABANG TOWN CENTER : Lower Ground Floor, The Street Of The Alabang Town Center, Alabang Muntinlupa City. Tel: 478-9297 HARBOR POINT SUBIC: Space No. 1122, Ground Floor, Harbor Point Mall Rizal Highway, Cbd, Subic Bay Freeport Zone 2200 Tel: (+6347) 478-9297www.johnnyrockets.com.phFB/johnnyrocketsphilT/ JohnnyRockets01

PF CHANG’STAGUIG: 30th st. Corner 9th Avenue, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig CityTel: 664-5956 / 898-7389MUNTILUPA: Corte, Alabang Town Center. Tel: 869-7837 / 869-9810/ 869-9776

CAFETERIA BY CHEF FLORABEL Lower Ground Floor Asan Hospital and Medical Center2205 Civic Drive Muntinlupa1780 Metro ManilaTel: 833-7131; 771-9000 loc. 8089Mobile: (0917) 881-5668 asian.cafeteria@gmail.com

MR. CHOI KITCHENROBINSONS GALLERIA: Level 2, East Wing, Robinsons Galleria Edsa Cor. Ortigas Ave. Quezon City. Tel: 638-4523; Fax: 638-4867 ROBINSONS FORUM: Upper Ground Floor, Robinsons Place Pioneer #30 Edsa Cor. Pioneer St. Mandaluyong City Tel: 687-6602; Fax: 687-2691 ROBINSONS MAGNOLIA: Level 2 Aurora Boulevard. cor Dona Hemady & N. Domingo St. New Manila, Quezon City. Tel: 961-1451WALTER MART (MAKATI): Ground Floor, 790 Chino Roces Ave., Cor. Antonio Arnaiz, Makati City Tel: 889-9948; Fax: 889-9948 Delivery Hotline: 87878 Or log on to: www.citydelivery.com.ph(Makati, Greenhills and Ortigas ONLY)MALATE: Level 1, Padre Faura Wing, Robinson’s Ermita Place, Manila. Tel: 526-890

BUBBA GUMP SHRIMP CO.2nd Level, Greenbelt 3, Ayala CenterMakati City PhilippinesTel: (02) 757-51-54; Fax: (02) 729-72-77Email : customer@bubbagump.com.phWebsite: www.bubbagump.com.ph

PIZZA PEDRICO’SGMA & LUZON BRANCHES: Central Mall Biñan • Cherry Anti-polo • Ever Commonwealth • Ever Recto • Ever Sucat • Funranch • Garden Plaza • Greenhills Shop-ping Center • Isetann Recto • Jack-man Caloocan • Market! Market! • Pioneer Supermarket • Puregold Balintawak • Puregold Blumentritt • Puregold Cabanatuan • Puregold Guiguinto • Puregold Lipa • Pure-gold Naga • Puregold Pagsanjan • Puregold Palawan • Puregold San Pablo • Puregold Tagapo • Robin-sons Forum • Shopwise Alabang • Shopwise Araneta • Shopwise Commonwealth • Shopwise Imus • Shopwise Libis • Shopwise, Pacita • SM Baguio • SM City Bacoor • SM City Naga • SM City Sta. Rosa • SM Las Pinas • SM Mall of Asia • SM Megamall Carpark • SM Megamall Foodcourt • SM Muntinlupa (Tuna-san) • South Supermarket Sta. Rosa • Super 8 Baclaran • Super 8 Visayas • Waltermart ERod • Waltermart Sta. Rosa • Waltermart Tanauan VISAYAS BRANCHES: Argao Cebu • Boracay Station 2 • Dream 21 / China Town Bacolod • Emall Ground Floor • Emall Food Court • Fiesta Mall Tabunok • Fooda Mango • Gaisano Cordova • Gaisano Casuntingan • Gaisano Grand Mac-tan SMKT • Gaisano Saver’s Mart • Gaisano South Colon • Gaisano Island Mall Mactan • Gaisano Min-glanilla • Gaisano Tisa • La Nueva Supermarket • Lee Plaza Dipolog • Lopues East Bacolod • G. Metro Ayala • G. Metro Colon • Metro Store Lapu-Lapu • Park Mall • Robinsons Bacolod • Shopwise Cebu • Rob-insons Dumaguete • SM Cebu • SM Bacolod • SM Terminal • South Central • Super Metro Mandaue MINDANAO BRANCHES: Abreeza Mall • City Triangle • Gai-sano Grand Digos • Gaisano Grand Illustre • Gaisano Grand Kidapawan • Gaisano Grand Marbel • Gaisano Grand Panabo • Gaisano Grand Toril • Kabacan Cotabato • KCC Mall of Gensan • LTO Ecoland • NCCC Cat-itipan • NCCC Center Point • NCCC Main • NCCC Mall • NCCC Panacan • Puregold CDO • Puregold Lanang • Robinsons Cybergate • Rustans Centrio • Shopwise Limketkai • SM Davao • SM Gensan • SM Lanang • Tacurong Public Market • Time Square.

.

SANDWICHEESE!For extraordinary sauce salads & sandwiches visit Banapple’s little brother just next to the original Banapple in Katipunan225 Katipunan Avenue, Brgy. Mila-grosa, Quezon City; Tel. 440-3677 • Market! Market! BGC

BANAPPLEFAIRVIEW TERRACES + WELLWORTH: Ayala Fairview Terraces, Maligaya Drive, Novaliches, Quezon CityGREENHILLS: Northeast Square, 47 Connecticut St., Northeast Greenhills, San Juan City; Tel. 477-2675TUSCANY: G/F Unit RA-RAM & RB-RBM Bldg. 3 Tuscany at McKinley Hill; Tel. 837-2675KATIPUNAN: 225 Katipunan Avenue Q.C.; Tel. 439-2675KATIPUNAN TOO: 206 Katipunan Avenue Q.C.; Tel. 438-2675TOMAS MORATO: 2nd Level, IL Terrazzo Tomas Morato, Q.C.; Tel. 413-2675AYALA TRIANGLE GARDENS: Ayala Triangle Gardens, Ayala Ave. Makati City; Tel. 756-2675ALABANG TOWN CENTER: New Wing Alabang Town Center, Alabang Muntinlupa City; Tel. 828-2675MARKET! MARKET!: G/F Fort Bonifacio TaguigSM NORTH EDSA: The Skygarden, SM North Edsa, Q.C.; Tel. 455-2675

CAFE VIA MAREMakati Greenbelt 1 Tel: 815-1918 • The Landmark Tel: 817-9720 • Parañaque BF Homes Tel: 403-6223 • Quezon City Landmark Trinoma Tel: 441-0643/441-0557 • Eastwood Mall Tel: 709-3006 / 709-3005

CORAZONShangri-la Plaza Mall Unit 4026 Level 4 East Wing Edsa ,Mandaluyong CityTel: 687-1955; Mobile: 0917-8178298www.corazon.ph corazon.shangrila@yahoo.com.ph

DULCINEAMAKATI: Glorietta 4 2/F Ayala Cen-ter San Lorenzo Village, Makati Tel: 817-7074 • Greenbelt 5, G/F Ayala Center Makati City Tel: 752-7110• Rockwell Powerplant Tel: 756-5043.MUNTILUPA: Casa Susana Building, Madrigal Ayala Alabang, Muntin-lupa City. Tel: 842-4381.QUEZON CITY: 282 Tomas Morato Avenue, Brgy. Sacred Heart, Q.C. Tel: 920-7892 to 93 • ALI MALL U/G Araneta Center 709-2674 • LIBIS (East wood) City Walk 1 E astwood Libis (0926) 698-4718.MANDALUYONG : SM Mega mall Mega Atrium 4/F. Tel: 634-0612

IHOPTAGUIG: 30th st. Corner 9th Ave-nue, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig City. Tel: 808-9589 / 808-9515QUEZON CITY: UP Town Center Kati-punan Ave. Diliman, Quezon City

MORELLI’S GELATOMAKATI: Power Plant Mall, Rock-well Drive Corner Estrella st. City of Makati.MANDALUYONG: Mid-level 2/3, East Wing, Shangri-la Plaza EDSA Corner Shaw BoulevardMandaluyong City. Tel: 654-4062

BANZAIBuilding J By The Bay Leisure ParkSeaside Blvd. SM Mall of Asia Complex Pasay City.The newest, all authentic ,all unlimited Japanese Buffet Mon-Fri Eat & Drink all you can (Dinner) public holiday not included; Sat-Sun Eat & Drink all you can (lunch & Dinner) public holiday not includedBuffet for Kids children below 4.5 Ft – Php 499, below 3.5 Ft. FREELeft over price Php 1,288It can accommodate 350 to 400 pax in one seating; For table reservations and corporate bookings Please call (0917) 706- 7328 or 552-7368

CHEF JUMBO GRILLA. LUNA: Zappy’s Bldg. 711-B A. Luna St., Cor. P. Gomez St., Barangay Hagdang Bato Itaas, Mandaluyong CityBONI: 468 Boni Avenue, Cor. Ballesteros St., Bgy. New Zaniga, Mandaluyong CityBARANGKA: 1087 San Rafael Street, Barangay Plainview, Mandaluyong cityVRP: Stall 1, VPVD Carpark, Sierra Madre Street, Brgy. Highway Hills, Mandaluyong CityAGLIPAY: 196 Aglipay Street, Brgy. Poblacion, Mandaluyong CityFor order and delivery:Tel: (02) 576-4055Mobile: (0925) 350-0055

MY SINGAPOREUnit 256 2nd Floor SM Megamall Bridgeway.Tel./Fax: 470-4546Mobile: 0917-4721282FB/mysingaporefoodstreetwww.mysingaporefoodstreet.ph

BORNGAUnit 5& 6 2nd Floor Alphaland Makati Place Mall, Ayala Ave. Exten-sion, corner Malugay St., Makati CityTel: (02) 519-6980 Mobile: (0905) 318-8282 (0928) 678-8282 FB/BorngaMakati

BIG D’S SMOKEHOUSE QUEZON CITY: 2F POS Building, Scout Madrinan, Corner Tomas Morato, Q.C. Tel: (632) 376-6139Mobile: (0915) 487-8153 / Store Hours: Sunday – Thursday 12nn-11pm; Friday – Saturday 12nn – 1am2F City Walk 2, Eastwood City, Ba-ranggay Bagumbayan, Q.C. Tel: (632) 650-4742Mobile: (0915) 487-8153 Store Hours: Sunday - Thursday 11:30 am - 11pm; Friday - Saturday 11:30am - 2amFB/bigdsmokehouseInstagram: #bigdsmokehouse #ribsthatrockT/BigDsmokehouse

AKIRAART OF SUSHI & TEPPANYAKI

Ground Floor, Alphaland Makati Place, Malugay St.corner Ayala Av-enue Ext.Makati. (Across The Col-umns & Makati Fire Station, nearRCBC & Makati Med)1st Restau-rant conceptualized by World Renowned Industrial Designer, Kenneth Cobonpue.For inquiries & reservations,call Mobile: (0917) 706-7328

CHEFS’ QUARTERMANILA: Level 1 Midtown Wing, Robinsons Place Manila, Adriatico cor Pedro Gil Sts., Ermita ManilaTel: 382-3449 / 381-7716 Telefax: 567-1910FB/CHEFS’ QUARTER (MALATE BRANCH)MEGAMALL: Level 3 Mega Atrium, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong CityTel:401-3658 Telefax: 706-5336FB/CHEFS’ QUARTER (MEGAMALL BRANCH)FOR CATERING INQUIRIES PLEASE CONTACT: (0926) 743-8863 / (0920) 924-3044

MOOMBAMother Ignacia Street corner Roces Avenue Tel: 431-9431

TERRAZ MEETINGS & BISTRO3rd Floor Zuellig BuildingMakati Avenue, corner Paseo de Roxas Avenue, Makati City.

TheLunch Going out to lunch? Let our directory of select restaurants help you decide

where to enjoy your next meal.

Guide

S2/1THURSDAYJANUARY 14, 2016

Banking&Financew w w . b w o r l d o n l i n e . c o m S2/1-8 • STOCK MARKET • WORLD SPORTS • ARTS & LEISURE

VOL XXIX ISSUE 119 ISSN0116-3930

BUSINESSNEWSPAPER OF 2014 AND 2015

ROTARY CLUB OFMANILA

Awarded by

EDITOR BETTINA FAYE V. ROC

EastWest gets license for insurance firm

Thrift banks’ bad loans up slightly at end-Nov.

RBI’s Rajan to central bank staff: read, get tough, send press releases earlierREAD MORE magazines, don’t be afraid of your boss, use less jargon and send press releases before 5:30 p.m.

That’s some of the advice Re-serve Bank of India (RBI) Gover-nor Raghuram Rajan shared with the regulator’s 17,000 employees in a memo that gives a glimpse into his efforts to change the cul-ture at the 80-year-old institu-tion.

The 2,500-word New Year e-mail, obtained by Bloomberg, came about eight months before his three-year term is set to ex-pire.

The wide-ranging comments from Rajan, once the Interna-tional Monetary Fund’s chief economist and a professor at the University of Chicago, show steps he’s taking to modernize the cen-tral bank apart from overhauling monetary policy.

He appeared to draw upon past speeches where he’s railed against oligarchs and corrupt politicians, urging staff to get tougher on companies that don’t comply with regulations.

“If we are to have strong sus-tainable growth, this culture of impunity should stop,” Rajan

wrote in the memo, which was first reported on by the Economic Times newspaper. “We cannot be seen as a paper tiger.”

Rajan and Prime Minister Narendra Modi have adopted a tough-love approach to state banks, insisting on more manage-ment discipline in return for capi-tal injections. In its quest to clean up bad loans, the government has pledged to tighten bankruptcy laws that it says favor debtors.

EMPLOYEE EVALUATIONSMost of the memo focused on procedures within the central bank, and suggested more change is coming to things like employee evaluations that heap praise on most people.

“If we demand more of the regulated, we should not be found wanting ourselves,” Rajan wrote. “Unfortunately, our performance evaluation system did not help us identify who needed motivation and improvement, and how they could be helped to do so. Almost everyone was deemed excellent, ranging from those who gave their heart and soul for the Bank to those who shirked all responsi-bility or duty.”

Alpana Killawala, the central bank’s spokeswoman, didn’t im-mediately respond to an e-mailed query on Tuesday night.

NO SILOS“Rajan thinks out of the box,” said Arvind Mayaram, a former Finance Ministry official who has worked closely with Rajan, refer-ring to the memo.

“It only shows his impatience with the manner in which things have happened.”

Rajan called on his colleagues to break down silos in the work-place and meet lower-level staff more regularly to explain deci-sions.

Customers should be given clear answers, he said, urging em-ployees to avoid “hiding behind opaque rules.”

“It means fast responses to the queries that come to your desk, recognizing that cooperation will be amply repaid,” he wrote.

He coaxed staff to be more cu-rious about the world and pledged to improve career planning sup-port. The institution must de-velop the skills to monitor new trends, he said.

SOURED DEBTS held by thrift banks went up as of November from a year ago alongside an increase in total loans handed out by the lenders, data from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) showed.

Latest available data from the central bank showed non-per-forming loans (NPLs) — which are debts left unsettled at least 30 days past their due date — stood at P32.055 billion as of November, up from the P25.991 billion seen a year ago and from October’s P30.301 billion.

Relative to the thrift banks’ loan portfolio, bad loans held by thrift banks stood at 4.7%, inch-ing up from the 4.35% recorded a year ago and from October’s 4.51% share.

The thrift lenders posted a big-ger NPL ratio as they broadened their lending activities in the pe-riod, based on the central bank data.

The NPL ratio is a key indica-tor of the quality of assets held by the banking industry.

Thrift banks are financial enti-ties involved in collating savings from depositors which are put up for reinvestment.

Some examples include sav-ings and mortgage banks, private

Rajan, S2/3

By Melissa Luz T. LopezReporter

Loans, S2/3

EAST WEST Banking Corp. (EastWest Bank) has secured the final regulatory approval needed to put up its planned joint ven-ture life insurance company with Belgium-based insurer Ageas Insurance International N.V. (Ageas).

“The Insurance Commis-sion (IC) recently granted a life insurance license to EastWest

Ageas Life Insurance Corpora-tion (EastWest Ageas Life), a joint venture of EastWest and Ageas Insurance International NV (Ageas),” the Gotianun-led lender said in a disclosure yesterday.

While the license grants per-mission to underwrite life insur-ance, EastWest Ageas Life still has to wait for Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ (BSP) clearance of the bancassurance business within EastWest premises, it added.

Last Oct. 22, the listed lender announced that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)

issued a Certificate of Incorpora-tion dated Oct. 20 signifying its approval of the Articles of Incor-poration and By-Laws of the new life insurance firm following the BSP’s approval of its initial equity investment in the life insurance company, which it announced in a separate filing to the stock ex-change on Oct. 7.

Last May, the listed lender an-nounced that it has entered into a joint venture agreement with the Belgium-based insurer Ageas to up a new life insurance company in the Philippines.

The new insurance company will enable EastWest Bank to offer life insurance products to its customers and increase its revenue base and market share, the listed lender said in an earlier disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange.

EastWest Bank earlier said the initial paid-in capital of the joint venture will be P2 billion, with the two companies having an equal shareholding of 50% each in EastWest Ageas Life. The bank said then that it will get ap-proximately 50% income share

from the life insurance company and the partnership will be for a 20-year exclusive distribution agreement.

The bank said yesterday it has tapped Hans Loozekoot from Ageas to be CEO of EastWest Ageas Life, and charted the strat-egy of the new life insurer to tap the millennial market.

“The Philippines is basically a one product market for life in-surance as over 75% of all such products sold here are single premium Universal Life Insur-

By Imee Charlee C. DelavinReporter

Insurance, S2/3

source: BSP

PESO CROSS RATES WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2016

Phil Aussie Bahrain Canadian HKong Japan Saudi S’pore Swiss UK US EMUone unit of currency peso dollar dinar dollar dollar yen rial dollar franc pound dollar euroPhilippines 1.0000 0.0303 0.0079 0.0301 0.1640 2.4876 0.0793 0.0304 0.0212 0.0146 0.0211 0.0195Australia 33.0274 1.0000 0.2622 0.9957 5.4164 82.1577 2.6176 1.0035 0.6996 0.4831 0.6979 0.6428Bahrain 125.9682 3.8141 1.0000 3.7976 20.6583 313.3537 9.9838 3.8274 2.6684 1.8424 2.6618 2.4517Canada 33.1709 1.0043 0.2633 1.0000 5.4399 82.5147 2.6290 1.0078 0.7027 0.4852 0.7009 0.6456Hong Kong 6.0977 0.1846 0.0484 0.1838 1.0000 15.1684 0.4833 0.1853 0.1292 0.0892 0.1288 0.1187Japan 0.4020 0.0122 0.0032 0.0121 0.0659 1.0000 0.0319 0.0122 0.0085 0.0059 0.0085 0.0078Saudi Arabia 12.6173 0.3820 0.1002 0.3804 2.0692 31.3863 1.0000 0.3834 0.2673 0.1845 0.2666 0.2456Singapore 32.9126 0.9965 0.2613 0.9922 5.3975 81.8721 2.6085 1.0000 0.6972 0.4814 0.6955 0.6406Switzerland 47.2070 1.4293 0.3748 1.4231 7.7418 117.4303 3.7415 1.4343 1.0000 0.6905 0.9975 0.9188United Kingdom 68.3704 2.0701 0.5428 2.0612 11.2125 170.0756 5.4188 2.0773 1.4483 1.0000 1.4447 1.3307United States 47.3250 1.4329 0.3757 1.4267 7.7611 117.7239 3.7508 1.4379 1.0025 0.6922 1.0000 0.9211EMU 51.3808 1.5557 0.4079 1.5490 8.4263 127.8129 4.0723 1.5611 1.0884 0.7515 1.0857 1.0000

Source: BSP

EXCHANGE RATESNEW YORK-one US$ expressed in respective unit of foreign currency EMU 1.0853/57United Kingdom 1.4445/47Canada 1.4267/70Switzerland 1.0025/29Japan 117.73/74India 66.93/95Mexico 17.8900/00Denmark 6.8727/37Norway 8.8732/62Sweden 8.5231/60 Singapore 1.4379/82 Australia 0.6984/89 New Zealand 0.6534/44 Hong Kong 7.7626/38 S. Africa 16.6459/59 Hungary 291.35/75 Israel 3.9365/65 Iceland 130.15/48 Czech Koruna 24.881/911LONDON - one pound sterling expressed in respective unit of foreign currency at 1637 GMT US 1.4471 1.4472Swiss France 1.4551 1.4554Japan 171.1700 171.21Norway 12.8520 12.874EURO 1.3378 1.3388Canada 2.0570 2.0582Denmark 9.9839 9.9882Sweden 12.3761 12.3840JAPAN-in ¥ per unit of foreign currency UK 0.5840 0.5842Switzerland 0.8499 0.8509

SINGAPORE-in S$ per unit of foreign currencyUS 1.4328 1.4336UK 2.0734 2.0747Australia 1.0093 1.0105Per 100 Hong Kong 0.1847 0.1848Japan 1.2109 1.2120 MONEY RATES Prime rate-charged by large comm’l banks to their best corp. borrowers; Broker Loan Rate-charged to broker on stock exchange collaterals; Federal Funds-reserves traded among comm’l banks for overnight usePrime rate 3.2500Discount 0.7500Broker Loan Rate 2.0000Federal Funds Rate 0.2500 EURODOLLAR DEP (New York) One month 0.3800 0.4800Two months 0.4500 0.5500Three months 0.5700 0.7000Four months 0.6300 0.7300Five months 0.6800 0.8000Six months 0.8000 0.9000Nine months 0.9500 1.1000One year 1.1000 1.2500MONEY RATES (London) Euro$ Depo One month 0.5700 0.6800Three months 0.5700 0.6700Six months 0.8000 0.9000One year 1.4000 1.6000

Forwards & Deposits (Singapore) One month 1.0000 1.1200Two months 1.0600 1.1800Three months 1.1200 1.2500Six months 1.1800 1.3100Nine months 1.2500 1.3700One year 1.3100 1.4300

LIBOR RATE -London Interbank Offered Rates charged in US$ for Eurodollar loans Rates fixed at 11:00 a.m. London time One Month 0.4240Two Months 0.5146Three months 0.6221Six months 0.8513One year 1.1536 GOLD BULLION WORLD BULLION-in US$ per troy ounce, rupees/10 gms, won/gram Ldn morning fix 1094.85Ldn aftrn fix 1085.40London close 108.00 .22 New York 1085.80 1086.30Zurich 1,085.80 1,086.30Bombay 24 carat 20/ 0.00Karachi 24 carat 0.00 0.00Dubai 24 carat 0.00 0.00US Gold Prices ($/Troy ounce) Engelhard gold (bullion) 1089.5Engelhard gold (fabricated) 1171.21Handy & Harman (base price) 1085.4Handy & Harman (fabricated) 1204.794Krugerrand 1074.2 1077.2

MONEY QUOTATIONS TUESDAY, JANUARY 12, 2016Source: REUTERS

Equivalent Equivalent Equivalent Equivalent Equivalent Equivalent of foreign of US$1 of foreign of RPP in of foreign of EURO currency in in foreign currency in foreign currency in in foreignCurrency US Dollar currency RP peso currency EURO currency Convertible currencies with BSP US dollar 1.000000 1.000000 47.3250 0.021130 0.9211 1.085700Japanese yen 0.008494 117.730162 0.4020 2.487562 0.0078 127.811861UK pound 1.444700 0.692185 68.3704 0.014626 1.3307 0.751506Hongkong dollar 0.128848 7.761083 6.0977 0.163996 0.1187 8.426233Swiss franc 0.997506 1.002500 47.2070 0.021183 0.9188 1.088414Canada dollar 0.700918 1.426700 33.1709 0.030147 0.6456 1.548968Singapore dollar 0.695459 1.437899 32.9126 0.030384 0.6406 1.561127Australia dollar 0.697885 1.432901 33.0274 0.030278 0.6428 1.555701Bahrain dinar * 2.661769 0.375690 125.9682 0.007939 2.4517 0.407887Kuwait dinar N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/ASaudi Arabia rial 0.266610 3.750797 12.6173 0.079256 0.2456 4.072242Brunei dollar 0.693049 1.442899 32.7985 0.030489 0.6383 1.566556Indonesia rupiah 0.000072 13888.888889 0.0034 294.117647 0.0001 15151.515152Thailand baht 0.027533 36.320052 1.3030 0.767460 0.0254 39.432177U. A. E. Dirham 0.272301 3.672407 12.8866 0.077600 0.2508 3.987130E.M.U. euro 1.085700 0.921065 51.3808 0.019463 1.0000 1.000000South Korea won 0.000827 1209.189843 0.0391 25.575448 0.0008 1312.335958China yuan ** 0.152077 6.575616 7.1970 0.138947 0.1401 7.139135 Others (Not Convertible with BSP) Argentina peso 0.073905 13.530884 3.4976 0.285910 0.0681 14.690544Brazil real 0.246853 4.050994 11.6823 0.085600 0.2274 4.398156Denmark kroner 0.145503 6.872711 6.8859 0.145224 0.1340 7.461684India rupee 0.014951 66.885158 0.7076 1.413228 0.0138 72.616368Malaysia ringgit 0.226809 4.408996 10.7337 0.093165 0.2089 4.786842Mexico new peso 0.055897 17.890048 2.6453 0.378029 0.0515 19.423133New Zealand dollar 0.652997 1.531401 30.9031 0.032359 0.6015 1.662640Norway kroner 0.112699 8.873193 5.3335 0.187494 0.1038 9.633633Pakistan rupee 0.009540 104.821803 0.4515 2.214839 0.0088 113.804484South African rand 0.060004 16.665556 2.8397 0.352150 0.0553 18.093653Sweden kroner 0.117328 8.523115 5.5525 0.180099 0.1081 9.253519Syria pound 0.004551 219.731927 0.2154 4.642526 0.0042 238.549618Taiwan dollar 0.029980 33.355570 1.4188 0.704821 0.0276 36.213515Venezuela bolivar 0.159129 6.284210 7.5308 0.132788 0.1466 6.822772SDR Rate = $1.38215 SDR GOLD Buying: $1,085.55 SILVER Buying: $13.80 * Various banks in Bahrain as quoted in Reuters’ Screen ** Asian Time Closing Rate as of January 12, 2015

BSP REFERENCE RATE WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2016Source: BSP

LIBOR (US$) Nov. 16 Dec. 14 Jan. 11

90-days 0.3641 0.5178 0.6221

180 0.6028 0.7485 0.8513

SIBOR (SG$) Nov. 10 Dec. 08 Jan. 05

90-days 1.0723 1.0783 1.1913

180 1.1290 1.1303 1.2534

FOREIGN INTEREST RATESPercent per annum

Source: BSP

s

High Low

Current: 1.836Previous: 1.773(November 2, 2015)

Current: P47.457Volume: $858.80MPrevious: P47.325

P21.040 B

LENDING RATESTUESDAY, JANUARY 12, 2016

UNIVERSAL BANKS LOCAL BANKS Asia United Bank 7.0000 6.2500Banco de Oro Unibank 6.8360 4.0000Bank of the Philippine Islands 6.8000 4.0000China Banking Corporation 8.0000 4.2500Development Bank of the Phils. 7.5000 4.5000East West Bank 6.2500 4.2500Land Bank of the Philippines 7.6667 4.6667MetroBank and Trust Co. 7.5000 5.0000Philippine National Bank 8.4000 7.4000Philippine Trust Co. 7.0000 4.5000Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. 7.7500 5.7500Security Bank Corporation 7.0000 5.2500Union Bank of the Philippines 8.5000 6.5000United Coconut Planters Bank 7.0000 5.0000AVERAGE 7.3716 5.0941 BRANCHES OF FOREIGN BANKS ANZ Bank 6.0000 2.7000Deutsche Bank 6.2500 3.2000Hongkong & Shanghai Bank 9.7500 2.9000ING Bank 5.6000 3.6000Mizuho Corporate Bank Ltd. 6.8360 1.7000Standard Chartered Bank 4.6600 3.5550AVERAGE 6.5160 2.9425 COMMERCIAL BANKS LOCAL BANKS: Bank of Commerce 6.7500 4.2500BDO Private Bank 6.8360 4.0000Phil. Bank of Communications 7.0000 5.0000Philippine Veterans Bank 7.3250 4.8250Robinsons Bank Corp. 7.5000 4.7500AVERAGE 7.0822 4.5650 BRANCHES OF FOREIGN BANKS Bangkok Bank 7.5000 4.5000Bank of America 6.8360 4.8360Bank of China 6.0000 2.8000Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi 5.7500 3.7500Cathay United Bank Co., Ltd. Citibank, N.A. 5.9200 2.7500Industrial Bank of Korea-Manila JPMorgan Chase Bank * 6.8130 6.8130Korea Exchange Bank 8.0000 4.5000Mega Int’l. Comm’l. Bank Co. Ltd. 8.0000 3.5000AVERAGE 6.8524 4.1811 SUBSIDIARIES OF FOREIGN BANKS Chinatrust Bank 7.9720 6.9720Maybank 7.0000 6.0000AVERAGE 7.4860 6.4860GENERAL AVERAGE 7.0714 4.5205* as of January 8, 2016

MARKET WATCH

PDS weightedaverage rate

DEMAND RATE

HIGH: 2 9/16% LOW: 2 1/2% AVE.: 2 17/32%

FOREX RATEWEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2016

INTERBANK RATESTUESDAY, JANUARY 12, 2016

DAILY VOLUME

T-BILL 91-DAYMONDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2015

Average yieldJanuary 10, 2011 — December 7, 2015

Sept Oct Nov Dec Jan

Sept Oct Nov Dec Jan

Sept Oct Nov Dec Jan

13.2ctvs

THRIFT BANKS non-performing loans went up slightly at end-November alongside an expansion in their lending books.

BW FILE PHOTO

2/S2TheStock Market THURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 2016 EDITOR BETTINA FAYE V. ROC

Stocks surge as markets cheer China trade data

PHILIPPINE STOCKS scored their best day in more than two years following a surprise im-provement in China’s trade data, as calmer conditions returned to regional markets after several days of wild swings.

The Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi) shot up 163.58 points or 2.58% to end at 6,494.13, its big-gest one-day point and percent-

age increase since Oct. 2, 2013 when the local barometer climbed 164.42 points or 2.7%.

The all-shares index surged 78.85 points or 2.16% to fi nish at 3,724.31.

“There was momentum from [Tuesday’s] rise so some inves-tors took advantage of that and bought beaten-down stocks in the past few weeks,” Lexter L. Azurin, head of research at Unicapital Securities, Inc., said in a mobile phone message.

The PSEi was coming o� a four-day losing streak that dragged the

main gauge to its lowest level in nearly two years before staging a two-day technical rebound.

“What also helped the rally was the trade figure in China, which unexpectedly improved,” Mr. Azurin said.

Data from China’s Finance Ministry showed the country’s exports rose 2.3% in December from a year earlier in yuan terms — a turnaround from a 3.75% de-cline in November — suggesting that the weakening yuan may be helping prop up demand for Chi-nese products.

“Investors have seen a little stability after China’s better-than-expected trade data. How-ever, we should take this export data with caution, as some ana-lysts said it might be ‘fake trade activities,’” Joylin F. Telagen, equity research analyst at IB Gimenez Securities, Inc., said in a mobile phone message.

All subindices were sharply in the green.

Holding fi rms advanced 169.79 points or 2.82% to 6,182.40; prop-erty jumped 71.56 points or 2.78% to 2,645.48; and industrial went

up by 234.19 points or 2.29% to 10,424.47.

Likewise, financials gained 25.45 points or 1.75% to 1,478.88; mining and oil rose 139.70 points or 1.52% to 9,329.68; and services added 14.54 points or 1.04% to 1,405.20.

Value turnover improved to P6.22 billion yesterday after 644.38 million shares changed hands, from Tuesday’s P4.70 bil-lion.

Advancers dominated declin-ers, 109 to 71, while 32 issues were fl at.

Foreign investors returned to buying territory, with net pur-chases logged at P250.06 million — a reversal of the net outflows of P69.10 million in the previous session.

The Philippine market is poised to test the resistance level at 6,600 — the main index’s pre-vious support level which was breached last week, analysts said.

“We are not of the woods yet. There’s still that uncertainty in China. That will still be the story in the coming days,” Unicapital’s Mr. Azurin said.

By Krista A. M. MontealegreSenior Reporter

NOTE: These schedules are subject to change without any further notice.

Date Company Time & PlaceJANUARY29 Primex Corp. (Annual) 3:00 p.m. Pasig Room, Valle Verde Country Club, Capt. Henry Javier St., Pasig CityFEBRUARY02 Victorias Milling Co., Inc. (Annual) 8:00 a.m. Victorias Golf & Country Club, Victorias City, Negros Occidental

SCHEDULE OF MEETINGS

Banks 49.87 43.23 22,251 Asia United Bank Corp. 21,400 45.75 45.9 45.2 45.85 45.9 421,165 123.7 93 357,247 Banco de Oro Unibank, Inc. 1,932,480 96.2 98.9 96 98 95.9 (12,639,989) 107 80.05 333,580 Bank of the Phil. Islands 4,334,440 83.1 84.9 83.1 84.9 83.1 82,011,840 44.58 36.05 66,827 China Banking Corp. 86,700 36.4 36.4 35.95 36.05 36.4 - 26.13 17.08 25,620 East West Banking Corp. 49,400 17.2 17.2 17.08 17.08 17.16 (264,346) 99.8 69 229,608 MetroBank and Trust Co. 2,169,660 71 73.95 71 72.2 69.95 44,008,427 19.2 14.32 8,412 Philippine Business Bank 22,600 15.76 15.76 15.68 15.68 15.8 - 87 49.5 61,895 Philippine National Bank 52,740 49.9 49.9 49.5 49.55 50 (1,792,451) 108.1 85 23,785 Philippine Savings Bank 300 98.9 99 98.9 99 98.9 - 48.5 29.25 44,727 Rizal Commercial Banking 45,900 32.1 32.1 31.9 31.95 32.1 606,810 177 120 81,382 Security Bank Corp. 1,674,380 134.1 135.4 134.1 135 134 5,881,561 71.95 49.8 60,220 Union Bank of the Phils. 100,150 56.95 56.95 56.5 56.9 56.6 (650,288) Other Financial Institutions 8.7 2.1 550 AG Finance, Inc. 52,000 2.16 2.25 2.05 2.1 2.2 - 2.55 2.17 5,298 BDO Leasing & Fin., Inc. 12,000 2.5 2.5 2.45 2.45 2.41 - 9.8 6.12 351 Filipino Fund, Inc. 7,000 6.64 7 6.6 7 7 - 2.34 1.15 1,108 I-Remit, Inc. 10,000 1.82 1.84 1.61 1.81 1.63 - 0.73 0.35 308 Medco Holdings 90,000 0.44 0.44 0.44 0.44 0.4 - 850 600 1,183,145 Manulife Financial Corp. 230 630 630 600 600 630 - 1.21 0.9 1,932 National Reinsurance Corp. 154,000 0.91 0.91 0.91 0.91 0.9 - 361.2 272.4 19,989 The Phil. Stock Exchange, Inc. 5,590 273 274 272.4 272.4 275 - 1,560 1,000 813,174 Sun Life Financial, Inc. 20 1,328 1,328 1,328 1,328 1,325 (26,560) 3.2 1.43 6,467 Vantage Equities, Inc. 81,000 1.54 1.6 1.54 1.54 1.6 15,700 Electricity, Energy, Power & Water 2.27 1.24 7,801 Alsons Cons. Res., Inc. 466,000 1.28 1.28 1.23 1.24 1.25 - 46.5 39.1 298,023 Aboitiz Power Corp. 490,000 40.5 40.5 39.95 40.5 39.95 3,961,765 8.96 5.2 106,445 Energy Dev’t. (EDC) Corp. 12,650,500 5.57 5.76 5.56 5.68 5.55 23,686,887 31.2 20.15 74,866 First Gen Corp. 1,562,100 20.2 20.7 20.2 20.45 20.15 634,360 106.2 59.35 32,868 First Phil. Hldgs. Corp. 316,600 60.3 60.3 59 59.35 60.3 (6,318,059) 343.8 260.4 347,823 Manila Electric Co. 58,040 304.4 310 304.4 308.6 304.8 (1,706,880) 33 20 50,630 Manila Water Co. 782,400 24 24.75 24 24.65 24 10,282,165 10.62 5.85 55,313 Petron Corp. 2,994,900 5.85 6.1 5.85 5.9 5.85 2,735,547 4.16 3.15 5,429 Phoenix Petroleum Phils. 281,000 3.63 3.8 3.63 3.8 3.68 18,150 2.47 1.66 9,828 Trans-Asia Oil and Energy 512,000 2 2.04 2 2.02 2 - Food, Beverage & Tobacco 5.15 1.25 2,686 Agrinurture, Inc. 1,000,000 4.06 4.4 4 4.32 3.92 (645,490) 63.5 38.65 232 Bogo Medellin Milling Co. 800 38.6 38.65 38.6 38.65 49.4 - 100 71.55 2,825 Central Azucarera De Tarlac 1,000 100 100 100 100 95 - 20.55 14.96 33,392 Century Pacifi c Food, Inc. 3,834,900 15 15 14.96 14.96 15 46,701,838 15.09 9.49 22,969 Del Monte Pacifi c Ltd. 190,400 11.82 11.9 11.52 11.82 11.92 2,063,044 11.43 7.04 52,286 D and L Industries, Inc. 19,679,700 7.3 7.46 7.3 7.32 7.04 (32,276,873) 11.9 6.99 135,086 Emperador, Inc. 1,157,300 8.36 8.8 8.36 8.38 8.36 650,033 15.7 10.52 3,256 Ginebra San Miguel, Inc. 200 11.6 11.6 11.6 11.6 11.8 - 235.8 180 219,282 Jollibee Foods Corp. 661,400 199 205.2 199 205 199 43,054,604 60 38.5 42,629 Macay Hldgs., Inc. 200 39.9 39.9 39.9 39.9 38.5 - 34.4 16.6 18,046 Max’s Group,Inc. 669,100 16.8 16.8 16.58 16.6 16.6 476,448 210 115 20,000 San Miguel Pure Foods Co., Inc. 47,050 120 120 120 120 120 (363,600) 4.94 3.19 11,783 Pepsi-Cola Products Phils. 5,457,000 3.21 3.33 3.18 3.19 3.19 (106,180) 6 3.86 13,512 RFM Corp. 5,236,000 3.88 3.88 3.85 3.86 3.87 577,840 7.08 3.8 5,528 Roxas Hldgs., Inc. 15,000 4.8 5 4.8 4.8 4.4 - 0.203 0.129 249 Swift Foods, Inc. 50,000 0.137 0.137 0.137 0.137 0.137 6,850 230 173.6 397,033 Universal Robina Corp. 1,249,270 175.1 182 175.1 182 175.1 46,962,535 0.86 0.56 1,644 Vitarich Corp. 126,000 0.6 0.6 0.58 0.59 0.6 - Construction, Infrastructure & Allied Services 12.9 8.05 1,984 Asiabest Group Int’l., Inc. 5,300 10.2 10.2 9.92 9.92 10.08 - 70 34 773 Concrete Aggregates “A” 100 35 35 35 35 34 - 2.34 1.19 2,070 Da Vinci Capital Hldgs., Inc. 1,048,000 1.8 1.87 1.8 1.84 1.8 111,620 11.16 4.54 5,523 EEI Corp. 5,293,900 5.35 5.35 5.32 5.33 5.35 913,541 15.18 12 92,265 Holcim Philippines, Inc. 200 14.3 14.3 14.3 14.3 13.9 - 25.6 8.6 12,262 LBC Express Hldgs., Inc. 54,600 8.8 8.8 8.6 8.6 8.7 - 8.6 5.21 13,269 Megawide Const. Corp. 12,400 5.5 5.53 5.5 5.53 5.5 - 12.28 10.1 3,002 Phinma Corp. 15,100 11.22 11.58 11.22 11.58 11.6 - 1.7 0.98 1,450 Vulcan Industrial Corp. 273,000 1.01 1.04 1 1 0.98 - Chemicals 3.2 1.53 1,388 Crown Asia Chemicals Corp. 370,000 2.15 2.24 2.11 2.2 2.2 - 2.69 1.3 6,826 Euro-Med Lab. Phil., Inc. 11,000 1.66 1.66 1.66 1.66 1.66 - 6 1.61 2,077 Mabuhay Vinyl Corp. 1,000 3.14 3.14 3.14 3.14 3.01 - 4.07 1.4 4,420 Pryce Corp. 45,000 2.16 2.25 2.16 2.21 2.19 2,250 Electrical Components & Equipment 65.8 40 14,247 Concepcion Ind’l. Corp. 43,100 44 44 41.95 41.95 41.95 599,885 7 5.1 9,693 Integ. Micro-Electronics 52,900 5.28 5.28 5.11 5.22 5.1 - 3.82 0.43 1,893 Ionics, Inc. 1,359,000 2.24 2.28 2.2 2.21 2.2 (417,360) 4.4 3.5 330 Panasonic Mfg. Phils. Corp. 2,000 4 4 3.9 3.9 4 - 2.96 1.39 3,096 Phoenix Semicon. Phils. Corp. 129,000 1.4 1.44 1.4 1.43 1.45 - 32.09 16.4 7,451 Cirtek Hldgs. Phils. Corp. 172,100 18.2 18.2 17.78 17.78 17.78 - Other Industrials 2.65 1.56 1,534 Splash Corp. 289,000 2.56 2.6 2.48 2.52 2.5 25,280 Holding Firms 0.49 0.3 972 AbaCore Capital Holdings,Inc. 3,880,000 0.32 0.32 0.3 0.3 0.32 (180,000) 821 660 415,139 Ayala Corp. 392,800 673 682 670 670 660 28,737,690 59 51.95 311,594 Aboitiz Equity Ventures 1,237,620 55.45 57.1 54.95 56.1 55 (6,715,736) 27.3 14.6 153,020 Alliance Global Group, Inc. 3,099,900 15.02 15.14 14.9 14.9 14.78 12,153,258 7.24 6.12 15,300 A. Soriano Corp. 8,400 6.2 6.2 6.12 6.12 6.2 (18,450) 1.62 0.9 3,214 Anglo-Phil. Hldgs. Corp. 4,000 1.07 1.07 1.07 1.07 1.08 - 9.72 6.5 55,984 Cosco Capital, Inc. 5,210,600 7.6 7.6 7.56 7.58 7.59 1,637,816 16 10.7 159,595 DMCI Hldgs., Inc. 3,559,600 11.82 12.08 11.82 12.02 11.74 2,613,084 4.85 3.6 40,997 Filinvest Dev’t. Corp. 292,000 4.2 4.4 4.2 4.4 4.2 1,192,690 6.6 2.76 1,536 F&J Prince Hldgs. Corp.”A” 300 5.25 5.25 5.25 5.25 5.2 - 0.42 0.176 355 Forum Pacifi c, Inc. 20,000 0.196 0.196 0.193 0.193 0.2 - 1,446 1,097 226,416 GT Capital Hldgs., Inc. 100,370 1,292 1,312 1,292 1,299 1,287 (106,200,650) 6.88 5.18 3,203 House of Investments, Inc. 25,500 5.35 5.35 5.2 5.2 5.4 117,000 9.96 4.9 6,769 IPM Hldgs., Inc. 1,988,500 9.61 9.83 9.61 9.81 9.82 - 75 62.1 475,971 JG Summit Hldgs., Inc. 1,712,130 64.2 67.5 64.15 66.45 64.15 15,431,389 0.89 0.54 459 Lodestar Invest. Hldg. Corp. “A” 123,000 0.61 0.64 0.6 0.62 0.62 - 9.18 5.14 26,489 Lopez Hldgs. Corp. 791,900 5.85 5.85 5.76 5.76 5.8 (833,090) 16.84 9.89 151,499 LT Group,Inc. 2,346,000 13.8 14.16 13.8 14 13.72 59,894 5.44 4.21 146,398 Metro Pac. Inv. Corp. 24,600,700 5.17 5.27 5.16 5.25 5.14 13,862,377 0.057 0.028 1,160 Pacifi ca, Inc. 44,000,000 0.029 0.03 0.028 0.029 0.029 - 2.35 0.65 4,119 Prime Orion Phils., Inc. 1,045,000 1.71 1.74 1.7 1.74 1.71 - 1.68 1.02 720 Prime Media Hldgs., Inc. 21,000 1.03 1.03 1.03 1.03 1.03 - 1.31 1.09 1,985 Solid Group, Inc. 80,000 1.09 1.09 1.08 1.09 1.1 - 970 769.5 650,475 SM Investments Corp. 138,820 781 812 781 810 775 68,799,460 80.75 44 142,712 San Miguel Corp. 693,270 52 60 52 60 52 (11,435,084) 123.9 62.9 21,088 Top Frontier Inves. Hldgs., Inc. 67,040 62.95 64.95 62.9 63.35 62.9 (3,387,318) 0.62 0.25 421 Unioil Res. And Hldgs. Co. 500,000 0.26 0.27 0.26 0.27 0.26 - 0.28 0.162 589 Wellex Industries, Inc. 1,490,000 0.182 0.182 0.18 0.18 0.18 138,600 0.37 0.21 643 Zeus Hldgs., Inc. 370,000 0.237 0.237 0.23 0.235 0.235 (25,300) Property 0.28 0.18 1,064 Arthaland Corp. 500,000 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 - 41 30 449,686 Ayala Land, Inc. 19,714,000 30.65 31.1 30.25 30.6 30 (52,741,425) 1.45 1.03 1,702 Araneta Properties, Inc. 10,000 1.13 1.13 1.09 1.09 1.12 - 4.72 2.42 25,449 Belle Corp. 7,020,000 2.49 2.49 2.4 2.42 2.49 (3,972,590) 1.15 0.55 1,057 A Brown Co., Inc. 537,000 0.61 0.64 0.6 0.61 0.62 12,200 0.164 0.1 1,523 Crown Equities, Inc. 300,000 0.112 0.112 0.112 0.112 0.112 11,200 5.43 4.65 9,600 Cebu Hldgs., Inc. 1,000 5 5 5 5 4.76 - 1.03 0.47 5,626 Century Prop. Group, Inc. 2,090,000 0.47 0.49 0.47 0.48 0.47 24,000 0.6 0.38 2,791 Cyber Bay Corp. 250,000 0.42 0.42 0.41 0.41 0.39 - 25.35 7.26 48,385 DoubleDragon Prop. Corp. 2,424,300 21.4 22.25 21.4 21.7 21.15 6,977,080 0.96 0.67 10,860 Empire East Land, Inc. 12,000 0.74 0.74 0.74 0.74 0.68 - 2.09 1.56 38,800 Filinvest Land, Inc. 14,081,000 1.58 1.62 1.58 1.6 1.58 (5,936,610) 1.78 0.88 10,437 Global-Estate Resorts, Inc. 3,736,000 0.89 0.99 0.89 0.95 0.88 - 10.4 6.05 37,522 8990 Hldgs., Inc. 20,900 6.9 6.9 6.8 6.8 6.9 (3,500)

5.88 3.52 125,089 Megaworld Corp. 81,908,000 3.64 3.88 3.63 3.88 3.58 (333,960) 0.134 0.073 638 MRC Allied Industries, Inc. 80,000 0.075 0.075 0.075 0.075 0.073 - 0.4 0.212 306 Phil. Estate 1,580,000 0.22 0.221 0.211 0.212 0.221 - 8.79 4.78 2,732 Primex Corp. 16,100 8.6 8.6 8.45 8.45 8.45 - 31.9 23.45 97,024 Robinsons Land Corp. 1,565,900 23.45 24.2 23.3 23.7 23.45 (22,111,390) 0.55 0.35 1,723 Philippine Realty & Hldgs. 510,000 0.39 0.39 0.35 0.35 0.39 - 1.87 1.35 8,563 Rockwell Land Corp. 164,000 1.3 1.4 1.3 1.4 1.39 197,080 3.4 3.02 15,150 Shang Properties, Inc. 13,000 3.17 3.18 3.17 3.18 3.15 - 0.98 0.68 6,799 Sta. Lucia Land, Inc. 55,000 0.74 0.76 0.74 0.76 0.74 - 22.95 17.46 596,356 SM Prime Hldgs., Inc. 54,661,000 19.82 20.9 19.8 20.65 19.82 (3,983,870) 8.49 3.89 37,917 Starmalls, Inc. 3,000 4.5 4.5 4.5 4.5 4.8 (4,500) 1.5 0.65 1,710 Suntrust Home Dev., Inc. 205,000 0.76 0.81 0.76 0.76 0.76 - 8.59 4.5 56,282 Vista Land & Lifescapes 5,406,000 4.55 4.6 4.32 4.5 4.55 (11,874,490) Media 67.8 49 50,878 ABS-CBN Corp. 35,340 60 60.1 59.75 59.8 60 - 7.57 5.95 21,880 GMA Network, Inc. 39,200 6.48 6.51 6.45 6.51 6.47 - 0.71 0.48 1,615 Manila Bulletin Pub. Corp. 30,000 0.48 0.48 0.48 0.48 0.49 - Telecommunications 2,702 1,681 226,591 Globe Telecom, Inc. 160,820 1,686 1,711 1,686 1,707 1,681 (46,099,790) 4.89 1.91 5,757 Liberty Telecoms Hldgs. 686,000 4.42 4.54 4.42 4.45 4.42 133,280 3,200 1,920 419,148 Phil. Long Dis. Tel. Co. 91,110 1,935 1,962 1,935 1,940 1,930 (31,108,660) Information Technology 7.33 4 1,385 DFNN, Inc. 351,700 5.85 5.87 5.55 5.55 5.85 (813,480) 0.4 0.122 625 Island Info. and Tech., Inc. 1,530,000 0.125 0.128 0.124 0.128 0.125 (38,850) 1.9 1.2 931 ISM Comm. Corp. 348,000 1.31 1.32 1.3 1.3 1.31 - 1.03 0.41 971 Now Corp. 3,135,000 0.65 0.66 0.64 0.64 0.65 (315,147) 23.1 12.1 29,248 Philweb Corp. 69,100 20.1 20.4 19.9 20.4 20 - 4.8 1.2 973 Yehey! Corp. 51,000 3.5 3.5 3.4 3.5 3.5 - Transportation Services 11.32 3.82 15,851 2Go Group, Inc. 19,800 6.5 6.5 6.48 6.48 6.5 - 14.48 10.9 21,960 Asian Terminals, Inc. 500 11.4 11.4 10.98 10.98 10.98 - 98.4 76 48,173 Cebu Air, Inc. 345,260 76.5 79.5 76.5 79.5 76.5 (7,350,837) 117.8 58 120,219 Int’l. Cont. Term’l. Serv., Inc. 547,580 58.8 60.4 58.55 59.1 58.8 (15,283,542) 1.69 0.77 582 Lorenzo Shipping Corp. 6,000 1.05 1.05 1.05 1.05 1.08 - 2.48 1.8 2,812 Macroasia Corp. 2,000 2.27 2.28 2.27 2.28 2.24 - 5.28 4.33 108,039 PAL Hldgs., Inc. 38,000 4.4 4.4 4.35 4.35 4.38 30,800 Hotel & Leisure 1.26 1.02 390 Acesite (Phils.) Hotel Corp. 1,000 1.13 1.13 1.13 1.13 1.12 - 0.12 0.037 480 Boulevard Hldgs., Inc. 5,000,000 0.039 0.04 0.039 0.04 0.04 (19,500) 2 1.49 933 Discovery WorldCorp. 8,000 1.49 1.49 1.49 1.49 1.5 - 0.4 0.165 800 Waterfront Philippines, Inc. 10,000 0.32 0.32 0.32 0.32 0.32 - Education 12 9.5 3,564 Centro Escolar University 1,100 9.5 9.57 9.5 9.57 9.5 - 12.5 11 8,328 iPeople, Inc. 3,500 11.8 11.8 11 11.12 11.12 - 0.74 0.4 4,011 STI Educ. Systems Hldgs., Inc. 1,740,000 0.41 0.41 0.41 0.41 0.4 222,750 Casinos & Gaming 13 3.44 38,662 Bloomberry Resorts Corp. 23,314,000 3.5 3.56 3.44 3.51 3.44 (58,313,830) 0.016 0.0053 258 IP E-Game Vent., Inc. 1,000,000 0.0086 0.0086 0.0086 0.0086 0.0085 - 21 17.12 5,372 Pacifi c Online Sys. Corp. 16,300 17.8 18 17.8 18 18 - 11.48 6.8 8,195 Leisure and Resorts Corp. 12,000,100 6.78 7.1 6.78 6.83 6.8 82,825,681 12.86 1.54 8,691 Melco Crown Resorts Corp. 7,088,000 1.55 1.59 1.54 1.54 1.55 (7,837,160) 1.98 0.45 14,549 Premium Leisure Corp. 43,660,000 0.45 0.47 0.45 0.46 0.45 (48,600) 7.57 3.19 59,085 Travellers Int’l. Hotel Grp., Inc. 810,000 3.53 3.8 3.53 3.75 3.52 (533,110) Retail 5.06 3.14 1,137 Calata Corp. 38,000 3.08 3.16 3.07 3.16 3.15 9,240 4.01 3.57 12,243 Metro Retail Stores Group, Inc. 2,048,000 3.62 3.67 3.56 3.57 3.6 338,580 43 30 88,492 Puregold Price Club, Inc 1,362,700 31.35 32.2 31.35 32 30.75 29,152,310 89 61.8 90,164 Robinsons Retail Hldgs., Inc. 448,740 65 65.1 64.4 65.1 65 1,026,282 140.6 83.5 46,302 Philippine Seven Corp. 4,870 100 101 100 101 101 476,950 11.26 2.44 8,481 SSI Group, Inc. 15,147,000 2.47 2.58 2.43 2.56 2.44 (5,636,730) Other Services 0.83 0.41 3,077 APC Group, Inc. 2,750,000 0.41 0.41 0.41 0.41 0.41 - 0.73 0.41 816 Premiere Horizon Alliance Corp. 50,000 0.41 0.41 0.41 0.41 0.43 - 7.23 4.12 5,940 SBS Phil. Corp. 1,535,000 4.75 5.14 4.75 4.95 4.74 (149,550) Mining 3.4 1.6 10,587 Apex Mining Co., Inc. “A” 32,000 1.75 1.75 1.7 1.7 1.7 - 0.007 0.0038 837 Abra Mng. and Ind’l. Corp. 71,000,000 0.0043 0.0043 0.0041 0.0042 0.0043 - 10.22 3.9 8,348 Atlas Cons. Mng. & Dev’t. 13,000 4.22 4.22 3.99 4 3.93 8,090 8.5 5.32 413 Benguet Corp. “B” 1,000 5.34 5.34 5.32 5.32 5.6 (5,330) 0.97 0.49 2,040 Coal Asia Holdings, Inc. 64,000 0.52 0.53 0.51 0.51 0.5 - 1.14 0.53 1,495 Century Peak Metals Hldgs. 730,000 0.55 0.55 0.53 0.53 0.55 7,950 9.26 5.62 471 Dizon Copper Silver Mines 19,900 6 6.08 5.92 5.95 5.92 - 3.47 0.48 8,559 Global Ferronickel Hldgs., Inc. 3,034,000 0.5 0.52 0.49 0.49 0.5 (75,500) 0.47 0.26 893 GEOGRACE Res. Phils., Inc. 620,000 0.27 0.27 0.245 0.26 0.26 - 0.3 0.153 4,715 Lepanto Cons. Mng. “A” 6,850,000 0.16 0.16 0.153 0.153 0.159 - 0.32 0.18 3,801 Lepanto Cons. Mng. “B” 30,000 0.16 0.185 0.16 0.185 0.18 - 0.018 0.0097 1,558 Manila Mining Corp. “A” 30,600,000 0.01 0.01 0.0099 0.01 0.01 - 0.019 0.01 1,245 Manila Mining Corp. “B” 7,300,000 0.011 0.012 0.011 0.012 0.01 - 6.41 1.57 2,860 Marcventures Hldgs., Inc. 285,000 1.58 1.58 1.55 1.57 1.58 - 4.17 2.35 2,384 Nihao Min. Resources 12,000 2.6 2.6 2.36 2.36 2.4 - 16.02 4.38 33,427 Nickel Asia Corp. 2,633,000 4.39 4.5 4.35 4.4 4.38 (1,459,440) 0.8 0.5 536 Omico Corp. 117,000 0.51 0.51 0.51 0.51 0.51 34,170 2.57 1.05 3,022 Oriental Peninsula Res. 1,099,000 1.06 1.1 1.05 1.05 1.06 - 9.4 4.11 20,305 Philex Mining Corp. 311,000 4.15 4.19 4.11 4.11 4.15 (103,610) 168.4 111.1 137,869 Semirara Mng. and Power Corp. 404,730 127 130.7 127 129 125.6 5,067,310 Oil 0.014 0.008 1,092 Oriental Pet. & Min. Corp. “A” 3,000,000 0.0091 0.0091 0.0091 0.0091 0.0097 - 0.022 0.009 2,111 The Philodrill Corp. 6,600,000 0.01 0.011 0.01 0.011 0.01 - 5.92 3.2 1,355 Petroenergy Res. Corp. 20,000 3.33 3.33 3.03 3.3 3.25 - 5.3 1.2 2,091 Philex Petroleum Corp. 24,000 1.21 1.23 1.21 1.23 1.21 - 12.26 1.93 490 Trans-Asia Petroleum Corp. 77,000 1.93 1.96 1.92 1.96 1.95 (41,160) Preferred 532 500 10,510 Ayala Corp. Class “B” series 1 Pref. 1,710 525.5 525.5 525.5 525.5 525 - 1.14 1.02 1,749 Leisure & Resorts World-Pref. 732,000 1.07 1.07 1.06 1.06 1.07 - 115.9 102.5 4,400 Megawide Const. Corp.-Perp. Pref. 1,000 110 110 110 110 109 - 1,064 1,005 15,360 San Miguel Purefoods Perp. Pref. 2 135 1,023 1,024 1,023 1,024 1,024 - 104.1 103 1,301 Phoenix Petroleum-Non-Voting 3A 4,500 104.1 104.1 104.1 104.1 104 (416,400) 106.8 105.7 799 Phoenix Petroleum-Non-Voting 3B 3,800 106 106.5 106 106.5 106.8 - 1,170 1,016 3,059 Petron Corp.-Perpetual Pref. 2B 100 1,063 1,063 1,063 1,063 1,065 31,890 85.6 76 7,307 San Miguel Corp. Series 2-B Pref. 3,200 80.8 80.8 80.8 80.8 80.9 - 89.05 78.9 21,084 San Miguel Corp. Series 2-C Pref. 20,830 82.6 82.6 82.5 82.5 82.55 (564,158) 85 77 7,057 San Miguel Corp. Series 2-D Pref. 11,600 79 79 79 79 78.2 - 80 76 10,586 San Miguel Corp. Series 2-E Pref. 13,600 78.9 79 78.9 79 79 - 80.85 78 17,777 San Miguel Corp. Series 2-F Pref. 87,730 79.6 79.6 79.5 79.6 79.6 - Phil. Deposit Receipts 68 48.5 19,628 ABS-CBN Hldgs. Corp. “PDR” 44,190 61.2 61.2 59 59.55 59 (1,309,313) 7.4 5.92 5,417 GMA Hldgs., Inc. “PDR” 4,500 6.4 6.4 6.4 6.4 6.4 - Warrants 4.7 1.59 131 Leisure & Resorts World-Wrnts. 195,000 1.67 1.75 1.42 1.59 1.68 5,800 Small and Medium Enterprises 4.49 2.64 1,028 Alterra Capital Partners, Inc. 78,000 3.18 3.3 3.18 3.3 3.15 - 4.22 2.59 578 Italpinas Dev’t. Corp. 268,000 2.79 2.79 2.58 2.61 2.63 - 17.24 8.4 23,598 Xurpas, Inc. 1,536,300 13.42 13.8 13.42 13.72 13.42 7,095,996 Exchange Traded Funds 132 102.9 1,261 First Metro Phil. Equity ETF 10,810 104.9 106 104.5 106 103.5 -

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52Wk 52Wk MktCap Stocks Volume Open High Low Close Prev Net ForeignHigh Low (Pmil) Close Trade (peso) Buy(sell)

PHILIPPINE STOCK EXCHANGE WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2016PROVIDED BY TECHNISTOCK

52Wk 52Wk MktCap Stocks Volume Open High Low Close Prev Net ForeignHigh Low (Pmil) Close Trade (peso) Buy(sell)

StockCode

StockCode

Issue Stock Cash Ex-date Record Payable Manila Broadcasting Co. P0.0625 16-Dec.-’15 21-Dec.-’15 15-Jan.-’16Far Eastern University P12.00 22-Dec.-’15 29-Dec.-’15 15-Jan.-’16Puregold Price Club, Inc. P0.30 05-Jan.-’16 08-Jan.-’16 18-Jan.-’16

DIVIDEND UPDATE

Volume High Low Close ChangePLDT 50,010 $41.55 $40.68 $40.82 ($0.47)Manulife Financial Corp. 2,905,794 $13.49 $12.92 $13.21 ($0.10)Sun Life Financial, Inc. 396,469 $28.45 $27.50 $28.07 $0.10

PHL ABROAD JANUARY 12, 2016 Source: PSE

Stocks Volume Close Net ±%Manila Mining Corp. “B” 7,300,000 0.012 0.002 20.00%San Miguel Corp. 693,270 60.00 8.000 15.38%I-Remit, Inc. 10,000 1.81 0.180 11.04%AgriNurture, Inc. 1,000,000 4.32 0.400 10.20%The Philodrill Corp. 6,600,000 0.011 0.001 10.00%MEDCO Holdings, Inc. 90,000 0.440 0.040 10.00%Roxas Holdings, Inc. 15,000 4.80 0.400 9.09%Empire East Land Holdings, Inc. 12,000 0.74 0.060 8.82%Megaworld Corp. 81,908,000 3.88 0.300 8.38%Global-Estate Resorts, Inc. 3,736,000 0.95 0.070 7.95%

Stocks Volume Close Net ±%Bogo Medellin Milling Co. 800 38.65 -10.750 -21.76%Philippine Realty and Holdings Corp. 510,000 0.350 -0.040 -9.09%Starmalls, Inc. 3,000 4.50 -0.300 -6.25%Oriental Pet. and Minerals Corp. “A” 3,000,000 0.0091 -0.0006 -6.19%Leisure and Resorts World Corp.-Warrants 195,000 1.59 -0.090 -5.36%DFNN, Inc. 351,700 5.55 -0.300 -5.13%Benguet Corp. “B” 1,000 5.32 -0.280 -5.00%Manulife Financial Corp. 230 600.00 -30.000 -4.76%AbaCore Capital Holdings, Inc. 3,880,000 0.305 0.150 -4.69%Premiere Horizon Alliance Corp. 50,000 0.410 -0.020 -4.65%

LAGGARDS

LEADERS

TOP 10 IN VOLUME TOP 10 IN VALUEStocks VolumeMegaworld Corp. 81,908,000Abra Mining and Industrial Corp. 71,000,000SM Prime Holdings, Inc. 54,661,000Pacifi ca, Inc. 44,000,000Premium Leisure Corp. 43,660,000Manila Mining Corp. “A” 30,600,000Metro Pacifi c Investments Corp. 24,600,700Bloomberry Resorts Corp. 23,314,000Ayala Land, Inc. 19,714,000D and L Industries, Inc. 19,679,700

Stocks ValueSM Prime Holdings, Inc. 1,122,055,000Ayala Land, Inc. 604,283,000Bank of the Philippine Islands 364,390,000Megaworld Corp. 307,773,000Globe Telecom, Inc. 273,330,000Ayala Corp. 264,809,000Security Bank Corp. 226,050,000Universal Robina Corp. 225,086,000Banco de Oro Unibank, Inc. 189,317,000Phil. Long Distance Telephone Co. 177,304,000

PSE TURNOVERS AND AVERAGES VOLUME VALUE (P)FINANCIAL 11,406,134 989,560,727.05INDUSTRIAL 68,825,124 901,344,266.50HOLDINGS 97,954,188 1,065,722,544.59PROPERTY 198,202,399 2,233,951,363.36SERVICES 128,937,140 939,217,166.19MINING 137,163,151 71,363,334.57SME 1,882,300 21,954,816.00ETF 10,810 1,136,985.00GRAND TOTAL 644,381,246 6,224,251,203.26 TOTAL FOREIGN BUYING: 3,251,967,072.34TOTAL FOREIGN SELLING: 3,001,903,340.45

OPEN HIGH LOWFINANCIAL 1,458.87 1,482.47 1,458.87INDUSTRIAL 10,217.95 10,424.67 10,216.50HOLDINGS 6,061.20 6,207.42 6,060.08PROPERTY 2,600.10 2,651.08 2,600.10SERVICES 1,393.52 1,410.53 1,393.52MINING 9,206.05 9,443.22 9,205.98ALL SHARES 3,662.88 3,726.49 3,662.88PSEI 6,371.94 6,506.91 6,371.94ADVANCES: 109 DECLINES: 71 UNCHANGED: 32 ODD LOTS VOLUME: 3,677,801.00 ODD LOTS VALUE: 210,453.95

* - NAVPS as of the previous banking day. ** - NAVPS as of 2 banking days ago*** - Listed in the PSE.***** - Manage by BDO Private Bank starting September 1, 2015 (Formerly Manage by PAMI). ****** - Inception date is October 8, 2014. **** - Formerly, Optima Balanced Fund, Inc. ******* - Launch date is May 5, 2015. ******** - Launch date is June 16, 2015

STOCK FUNDS Primarily invested in Peso securities ALFM Growth Fund, Inc. * 227.77  -14.03%  0.15%  4.95%  -7.79% ATRKE Alpha Opportunity Fund, Inc. * 1.0414  -37.34%  -5.34%  n.a.  -10.96% ATRKE Equity Opportunity Fund, Inc. * 3.3299  -24.73%  -2.74%  4.06%  -9.1% First Metro Save & Learn Equity Fund, Inc. * 4.7948  -14.84%  -1.01%  6.81%  -9.16% PAMI Equity Index Fund, Inc.* ********  42.8526  n.a.  n.a.  n.a.  -8.49% Philam Strategic Growth Fund, Inc. * 468.68  -15.06%  -3.45%  4.92%  -7.5% Philequity Dividend Yield Fund., Inc. * 1.0856  -14.35%  n.a.  n.a.  -7.73% Philequity Fund, Inc. * 31.0639  -16.9%  1.61%  9.26%  -8.42% Philequity PSE Index Fund, Inc. * 4.2155  -13.82%  2.44%  9.7%  -8.92% Philippine Stock Index Fund Corp. * 705.83  -13.92%  2.03%  9.88%  -9.34% Soldivo Strategic Growth Fund, Inc. * ****** 0.7923  -16.64%  n.a.  n.a.  -7.59% Sun Life Prosperity Phil. Equity Fund, Inc. * 3.4805  -15.58%  -2.02%  6.51%  -9.39% Sun Life Prosperity Phil. Stock Index Fund, Inc.* *******  0.8167  n.a.  n.a.  n.a.  -8.85% United Fund, Inc.* 2.8585  -13.79%  -5.01%  0.19%  -9.22% Exchange Traded Fund First Metro Phil. Equity Exchange Traded Fund, Inc. * ***  103.4399  -12.98%  n.a.  n.a.  -9.3% Primarily invested in foreign currency securities ATR KimEng Asia Plus Recovery Fund, Inc. ** $0.8095  -18.49%  -6.72%  -6.49%  -9.44% BALANCED FUNDS Primarily invested in Peso securities ATRAM Dynamic Allocation Fund, Inc.* ****  1.6483  -15.14%  0.08%  6.69%  -5.39% ATRKE Phil. Balanced Fund, Inc. * 2.0248  -14.3%  0.62%  4.93%  -5.25% Bahay Pari Solidaritas Fund, Inc.* 1.9165  -6.42%  1.67%  6.61%  -4.29% First Metro Save & Learn Balanced Fund, Inc. * 2.5043  -11.49%  -2.75%  5.03%  -6.88% NCM Mutual Funds of the Phils., Inc.* ***** 1.7154  -8.98%  -2.71%  4.03%  -4.24% One Wealthy Nation Fund, Inc.*  0.9273  -11.53%  n.a.  n.a.  -7.4% PAMI Horizon Fund, Inc. * 3.4083  -10.15%  -3.43%  3.62%  -4.44% Philam Fund, Inc. * 15.3018  -10.26%  -3.03%  4.37%  -4.39% Sun Life of Canada Prosperity Balanced Fund, Inc.* 3.4158  -9.72%  -0.72%  5.9%  -5.1% Sun Life Prosperity Dynamic Fund, Inc. *  0.8776  -13.08%  n.a.  n.a.  -5.49% Primarily invested in foreign currency securities Cocolife Dollar Fund Builder, Inc. * $0.03539  2.17%  1.15%  3.57%  0%PAMI Asia Balanced Fund, Inc. * $0.834  -15.54%  -7.32%  -3.78%  -5.88% Sun Life Prosperity Dollar Advantage Fund, Inc. * $2.979  -6.03%  0.74%  2%  -4.36% BOND FUNDS Primarily invested in Peso securities ALFM Peso Bond Fund, Inc. * 322.7  0.86%  2.42%  4.05%  -0.02% ATRAM Corporate Bond Fund, Inc.*  1.9126  -3.77%  2.9%  3.99%  -0.27% Cocolife Fixed Income Fund, Inc. * 2.5442  4.95%  5.22%  6.06%  0.09% Ekklesia Mutual Fund, Inc. * 2.0408  0.35%  3.21%  5.52%  0.11% First Metro Save & Learn Fixed Income Fund, Inc. * 2.202  0.47%  5.82%  8.39%  -0.11% Grepalife Bond Fund Corp. * 1.3304  -3.05%  -0.11%  3.1%  -0.33% Grepalife Fixed Income Fund Corp. * ***** P1.5898  -3.18%  0.01%  2.78%  -0.39% Philam Bond Fund, Inc. * 3.98  -1.82%  2.16%  4.92%  -0.03% Philequity Peso Bond Fund, Inc. * 3.4464  -1.09%  4.26%  5.78%  -0.92% Soldivo Bond Fund, Inc. * ****** 0.9147  -5.14%  n.a.  n.a.  -0.26% Sun Life Prosperity Bond Fund, Inc. * 2.695  -0.67%  1.81%  3.72%  -0.29% Sun Life Prosperity GS Fund, Inc. * 1.5196  -1.8%  0.68%  2.84%  -0.26% Primarily invested in foreign currency securities ALFM Dollar Bond Fund, Inc. * $419.8  2.58%  1.73%  3.83%  0.35% ALFM Euro Bond Fund, Inc. * €206.06  -0.06%  1.83%  2.86%  0.01% ATR KimEng Total Return Bond Fund, Inc. ** $1.0955  2.67%  0.86%  1.79%  0.16% First Metro Save and Learn Dollar Bond Fund, Inc. * ******  $0.0243  0.83%  n.a.  n.a.  0%Grepalife Dollar Bond Fund Corp. * $1.7184  0.73%  0.99%  4.51%  0.47% MAA Privilege Dollar Fixed Income Fund, Inc. N.S.  N.S.  N.S.  N.S.  N.S. MAA Privilege Euro Fixed Income Fund, Inc. N.S.  N.S.  N.S.  N.S.  N.S. PAMI Global Bond Fund, Inc. * $1.0555  -6.64%  -4.59%  -1.84%  0.57% Philam Dollar Bond Fund, Inc. * $2.1221  0.77%  0.59%  3.16%  0.65% Philequity Dollar Income Fund, Inc. * $0.0555023  1.36%  1.02%  3.66%  0.07% Sun Life Prosperity Dollar Abundance Fund, Inc. * $2.8533  2.16%  -1.06%  2.37%  0.58% MONEY MARKET FUNDS Primarily invested in Peso securities ALFM Money Market Fund, Inc. * 114.36  1.19%  1.38%  2.09%  0.11% Philam Managed Income Fund, Inc. * 1.1553  0.02%  0.29%  0.88%  -0.16% Sun Life Prosperity Money Market Fund, Inc. * 1.1404  1.33%  0.28%  0.31%  0.07% 

NAV One Year Three Year Five Year Y-T-D per share Return Return* Return* Return % % % %

MUTUAL FUNDSWEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2016

FINANCIAL: 1,478.88

A S O N D J

INDUSTRIAL: 10,424.47 HOLDINGS: 6,182.40 PROPERTY: 2,645.48 SERVICES: 1,405.20 MINING & OIL: 9,329.68 ALL SHARES: 3,724.31 PSEi: 6,494.13

A S O N D J A S O N D J A S O N D J A S O N D J A S O N D J A S O N D J A S O N D J

Philippine Index Charts WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2016

25.45 78.85139.7014.5471.56169.79234.19 163.58

S2/3Banking&FinanceTHURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 2016

Peso hits new trough as market stays cautious amid China woes

“If we do not expand our responsibilities, others will fill them,” Rajan said.

Rajan didn’t shy away from controversial topics. He made the case that the central bank should be willing to hire outside experts if the required skills aren’t avail-able in-house, a touchy topic among rank-and-file staff who went on strike in November for the first time since 2009 to protest institutional reform and demand better pensions.

MEDIA STRATEGY“This is one area where I feel pro-tectionist attitudes in the organi-zation are strong and require to be debated,” Rajan said.

Rajan wrote about the need to improve communication with

the wider world, referring to an instance when the central bank was branded as “anti-technology” for seeking to close a loophole that allowed ride-hailing applica-tion Uber to permit simpler pay-ments. Press releases should get to the point quickly and reach journalists before 5:30 p.m. to get into the newspapers the next day, Rajan said.

“Some in the Bank disdain communication. ‘Why not let our achievements speak for them-selves?’, they might say,” Rajan wrote.

“Unfortunately, in this world where the press is more atten-tive and the public more hungry for news, we either should shape news or we will be shaped by it.” — Bloomberg

Rajan,from S2/ 1

development banks, stock savings and loan associations and micro-finance thrift banks.

These smaller banks likewise hand out short-term credit and offer financing options for busi-nesses, particularly for small- and medium-scale firms.

These banks’ total loans as of end-November stood at P681.405 billion, 14.18% higher than the P597.124 billion they lent out a year ago.

Non-performing assets held by banks — which represent bad debts and foreclosed properties, to name a few — hit P53.626 bil-

lion, up 17.09% from November 2014’s P45.798 billion.

Coverage for soured loans also slipped by end-November to log at 72.02% against the 74.7% seen the year prior.

The thrift lenders, however, were able to hike their cover against expected credit losses as loan loss reserves rose by nearly a fifth to P23.087 billion from last year’s P19.416 billion.

The BSP monitors the loan quality of Philippine banks as among its initiatives in keeping high standards for credit risk management.

Loans,from S2/ 1

METLIFE Inc., the largest US life insurer, plans to separate much of its domestic retail business as Chief Executive Officer Steve Kandarian works to shrink the company amid tighter govern-ment oversight. The stock rallied in extended trading.

The insurer is weighing a possible sale, spinoff or public offering of the operation, New York-based MetLife said Tuesday in a statement. The new company would have about $240 billion of assets and accounts for approxi-mately 20% of MetLife’s oper-ating earnings, according to the statement.

MetLife joins General Electric Co.’s finance unit in seeking to simplify operations after being designated by a US panel as a non-bank systemically important financial institution (SIFI), a tag that can lead to stricter limits on the balance sheet. Kandarian has sought to reverse that designa-tion in court.

The retail business, as part of a SIFI, faces “higher capital requirements that could put it at a significant competitive dis-advantage,” Kandarian said in the statement.

“Even though we are appealing our SIFI designation in court and

do not believe any part of MetLife is systemic, this risk of increased capital requirements contrib-uted to our decision to pursue the separation.”

MetLife rallied 6.6% to $44.76 at 6:28 p.m. in New York on the announcement, which was after the close of regular trading. The company had dropped 13% this year through Tuesday’s close af-ter slumping 11% in 2015.

MetLife would retain units providing workplace benefits and property-casualty coverage along with the corporate benefit funding division that offers pen-sion and retirement products. Kandarian’s company also plans to keep operations in Asia, Latin America, Europe the Middle East and Africa.

‘GROWTH PROSPECTS’The retail unit slated for separa-tion is a provider of variable an-nuities, where results can be tied to fluctuations in stock markets and interest rates. The new com-pany would also include life in-surance entities. MetLife didn’t outline a timetable for the plan, saying the completion of a trans-action could depend on market conditions, and also regulatory approvals.

Breaking off a retail unit would leave MetLife “with a regulated set of businesses, but less heavily regulated than retail products,” David Havens, a debt analyst at Imperial Capital, said in a note. “It should also leave MET with a large international portfolio that has good long-term growth prospects.”

The insurer said Executive Vice President Eric Steigerwalt will lead the new company. He previously ran the domestic re-tail business and was named in November as interim head of US operations, which added respon-sibility for segments including group coverage and workplace benefits.

Under a prior management structure, all operations in the Americas were overseen by Wil-liam Wheeler, the insurer’s for-mer chief financial officer. Wheel-er departed last year and became president of Athene Holding Ltd., the insurer with ties to Apollo Global Management LLC.

Maria Morris, executive vice president and head of global employee benefits, was named interim head of the remaining parts of MetLife’s US businesses, according to John Calagna, a spokesman for the company. Os-

car Schmidt will continue to lead Latin American operations.

MetLife is among four non-bank companies that were named SIFIs by the Financial Stability Oversight Council. That panel was created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank law and charged with monitoring potential threats to the financial system after the near collapse in 2008 of companies including insurer American International Group Inc., which required a US bailout.

GE, AIGGE has been divesting finance op-erations and has said it will apply to drop its tag as a SIFI. Pruden-tial Financial Inc., the second-largest US life insurer, in 2013 opted against filing a lawsuit to overturn its SIFI status.

AIG, also a SIFI, has been fac-ing pressure from activist inves-tor Carl Icahn to break up into three separate businesses — one offering property-casualty cov-erage, another selling life insur-ance and a third backing mort-gages. Icahn has said the risk tag is intended to be a tax on size and AIG’s businesses would be worth more to shareholders if they’re not part of a systemically impor-tant company. — Bloomberg

MetLife weighs splitting off US retail business

ance contracts. Our approach is different. We believe in build-ing and nurturing relationships for life with our customers. We will focus on offering insurance solutions which are relevant for the relatively young customers of EastWest. Young people are generally more concerned with having a safety net. Therefore, we will provide advice on access to healthcare, children’s educa-tion, home loan protection and planning for the longest holiday of their life — retirement,” Mr. Loozekoot was quoted as saying.

The partnership with East-West Bank, he noted, will bring complementary skills to the com-pany.

EastWest Bank President and CEO Antonio C. Moncupa Jr. said he is very optimistic about the joint venture, noting it enhances EastWest’s value proposition to customers.

“Bancassurance is a vital strategy for us as it makes us a truly one-stop shop for our cli-ents’ financial and insurance needs. We are confident that the diversification of our products to include protection solutions will enhance our competitive edge, increase customer loyalty, and create greater value for our customers while expanding our revenue stream,” Mr. Moncupa was quoted as saying.

The newly formed insurance company is seen to benefit from EastWest’s customer base and large network consisting of 433 branch stores. On the other hand, Ageas said it contributes its vast experience in bancassurance from its successful businesses in Asia and Europe.

Insurance Commissioner Em-manuel F. Dooc, for his part, yes-terday said EastWest Ageas Life is a “welcome force” in develop-ing the insurance industry in the Philippines.

“There is strong commitment evidenced by the joint venture’s P2-billion capitalization which is double our minimum require-ment. The focus on protection products for youth and the mass market will help in the financial inclusion of Filipinos and will give them a better future,” Mr. Dooc said.

The Gotianun-led bank posted a P1.3-billion net income in the January to September period, lower by 21% from the year-ago level amid depressed trading gains and higher provisions, de-spite the expansion of its core businesses. The listed lender posted a net income of P2.073 bil-lion in 2014.

EastWest Bank shares closed at P17.08 apiece yesterday, down 0.47% from its previous day’s P17.16 per-share close.

Insurance,from S2/ 1 Growth in life insurance sector premiums expected

THE LIFE insurance sector is seen to have grown its total pre-miums in 2015 from the year prior, a top official of a life insurer said, citing growth in both regular and single pay premiums.

“Definitely there’s gonna be growth compared to 2014... there’s gonna be growth last year com-pared to 2014,” Manufacturers Life Insurance Co. (Philippines), Inc. (Manulife Philippines) Presi-dent and CEO Ryan Charland told reporters when asked for his out-look on the performance of the life insurance industry last year.

“I actually think you’ll see pick up in regular and single pay [al-though] regular is up in the sec-ond half compared to single pay,” he added.

The Philippines’ insurance in-dustry reported a total premium income of P188.96 billion in 2014.

The life insurance sector booked P157.83 billion in total premiums while the non-life sector posted P31.13 billion in total net premi-ums written during the period.

The industry’s total income from premiums for the January to September period jumped 29.75% to P172.40 billion. The life insurance sector showed a strong performance in the first nine months, with total premi-ums expanding 33.16% to P145.48 billion, while the non-life sector saw total net premiums for the nine-month period at P26.92 bil-lion, up 13.97%.

Insurance Commissioner Em-manuel F. Dooc earlier said the industry could post a “P240-250 billion” premium income in 2015, a little over the P200-billion tar-get earlier set by the regulator — which was the highest premium

production of the industry thus far — given the encouraging fig-ures seen in the first half of 2015.

Given the current trend, the industry could also grow its pre-mium income to P300 billion by this year and to around P500 bil-lion in 2019.

Moving forward, the Manulife executive noted that health-relat-ed products are seen increasing their contribution to total premi-ums earned by insurers.

“I absolutely think the takeup of health products will increase its share in premiums,” Mr. Char-land said.

For Manulife in particular, he said the launch of its ManulifeM-OVE — a program that rewards customers with discounted pre-miums for living a more active lifestyle — is seen to start contrib-uting to its sales this year.

The new approach to insur-ance is designed to appeal to an increasingly tech-savvy customer base who are conscious about staying active and healthy, he noted.

“ManulifeMOVE can make contribution to us this year that’s why we launch it this early,” Mr. Charland said.

For his part, Jason Dehni, Chief Marketing and Distribu-tion Officer of Manulife Asia was quoted as saying: “Across Asia, Manulife is focused on helping its customers live a more active lifestyle in an accessible, simple and engaging way.”

“ We are excited to launch ManulifeMOVE in the Philip-pines on the heels of its successful launch in Hong Kong and Macau,” he added. — Imee Charlee C. Delavin

THE PESO slumped to another six-year low against the dollar yesterday on continued risk aver-sion amid persisting worries over the health of the Chinese econo-my.

The local currency closed at P47.545 against the greenback on Wednesday, 10.5 centavos weaker than its P47.44-per-dollar finish the previous session.

The peso’s latest close is again its worst finish since it finished at P47.63 a dollar on Nov. 5, 2009.

The peso opened the session slightly stronger at P47.35 versus the greenback, which was already the local unit’s strongest intraday level. Its weakest point was logged at P47.55 against the foreign unit.

Dollars traded fell to $858.8 million from the previous ses-sion’s $988 million, according to

data from the Philippine Dealing & Exchange Corp.

Traders attributed the contin-ued slide of the peso to persisting worries over China, which is drag-ging sentiment in the region and causing safe-haven buying.

“We’re still testing highs on the back of a strong dollar sentiment and weaker EMs (emerging mar-kets) on concerns over China,” a trader said.

“We continue to see risk aver-sion and safe-haven buying... it looks like P48-per-dollar is not far away anymore.”

Another trader said: “The peso depreciated but not as much as expected, on account of the bet-ter-than-expected Chinese trade report, which showed exports and imports declining at a slower pace in December 2015.”

“Persistent concerns over the health of the Chinese economy af-ter a series of currency interven-tions from government authori-ties also kept the local currency weak against the US dollar,” the trader added.

For today, a trader noted that “the peso may remain weak due to the financial turmoil in China and the weakening in global oil prices.”

“Profit taking, however, may potentially limit the peso’s de-preciation. The lack of major economic data releases may keep exchange rate movements mini-mal,” the trader added.

A trader said the peso could move within the P47.45 to P47.60-per-dollar band today, while an-other put support at P47.30 and resistance at P47.65.

The peso missed a regional rally as emerging Asian curren-cies rose on Wednesday thanks to China’s stronger-than-expected December trade data and persis-tent efforts to calm the yuan, even as traders and analysts expected the renminbi to weaken over the long term.

China’s yuan also eased al-though the central bank kept its daily guidance rate steady again in a bid to stop the currency’s slide.

The won and the Malaysian ringgit advanced on Wednesday as investors covered short posi-tions in the two worst-perform-ing regional units so far this year on data showing China’s exports and imports shrank much less than expected. — Imee Charlee C. Delavin with Reuters

A BANK EMPLOYEE counts peso notes in Manila in this Dec. 16, 2011 photo. The peso hit a new six-year low yesterday.

AFP

THE MetLife building in New York City. AFP

SportsWorld

4/S2 THURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 2016

FOR THE third time in four con-ferences the Alaska Aces will play in a Philippine Basketball Asso-ciation (PBA) finals and they are hoping it is going to be a charm after being denied a title in the previous two.

In yet another dominant show-ing Tuesday night, the Aces com-pleted a turnaround in form and eliminated the GlobalPort Batang Pier, 118-89, in their best-of-seven PBA Philippine Cup semifinals in five games.

The victory was the fourth straight for the Aces after a flat performance in the series opener where they were beaten 107-93 by the port masters, who made their maiden final four appearance in their young PBA existence.

In the series clincher, Alaska was once again in its defensive best, holding GlobalPort to below 90 points for the fourth consecu-tive time, while being crisp and fluid on offense anchored on a balanced attack.

Six players finished in double figures for Alaska, with guards Ping Exciminiano and Chris Banchero leading with 18 points apiece while veteran big man Sonny Thoss and explosive for-ward Calvin Abueva ended up with 14 each.

Vic Manuel and Cyrus Baguio, meanwhile, scored 10 points apiece.

The Game Five romp cata-pulted the Aces to their 29th finals appearance in their long PBA history and gave them the oppor-tunity to add up to their 14 league titles, second all-time.

They now await the winner of the other semifinal series be-tween the San Miguel Beermen and Rain or Shine Elastopainters in a best-of-seven finals begin-ning next week.

“I really want four victories in the next series,” a relieved Alaska coach Alex Compton said after their series-clinching win, referring to the number of wins needed to claim the title after being denied of a championship twice last year.

In last year’s Philippine Cup, Alaska came within one win away

from a title, losing to San Miguel, 4-3, in a best-of-seven series, and was swept by the Beermen, 4-0, in the season-ending Governors’ Cup.

Coach Compton lauded his wards for showing no compla-cency and for raising their level of play as their semifinal series went along.

Equally excited and happy was team owner Wilfred Uytengsu, who also spoke in the postmatch press conference and under-scored how this latest finals ap-

pearance affords them a chance for “redemption.”

He, however, did not express directly any preference on whom they want to face in the champi-onship series, believing either way they have to work hard to succeed.

“I don’t care who we play as long as we win,” the Alaska owner said, adding, “Whether it’s San Miguel or Rain or Shine, it’s going to be hard.”

Barging into yet another finals, Alaska further highlighted its status as one of the better teams in the league right now, one local basketball analyst said.

“Alaska was dominant and the semifinal series with GlobalPort highlighted the team’s depth, chemistry and experience...,” Levi Verora, Jr. of online site Tie-breaker Times said in an interview with BusinessWorld.

With the play the Aces are displaying, the analyst expressed bullishness that they could finally break through this time around.

“Alaska will have one of the best rosters in the finals. They have a lot of weapons on both ends. It is doable, but Rain or Shine and San Miguel are both talented and deep as well,” Mr. Verora said.

Third time’s a charm for Alaska Aces?THE ALASKA ACES will play in their third PBA finals in four conferences.

WORLD NUMBER ONE Serena Williams

MELBOURNE — World number one Serena Williams insists she is fit and ready for a tilt at a seventh Australian Open title, downplay-ing a knee injury that forced her out of the Hopman Cup.

The world number one retired due to soreness in her left knee during a singles match on Jan. 6 at the mixed-team tournament in Perth, casting doubt over her abil-ity to defend her title at the open-ing Grand Slam of the season.

But the 34-year-old told the Melbourne Herald Sun she was “ready for it”.

“My body is feeling great now,” she said.

“Obviously I had a hiccup but right now it is doing much better. I’ve had a few days of training so it’s looking good.”

The 34-year-old, who battled knee problems in the latter half of 2015 and has barely played since October, trained at Melbourne Park on Monday.

“I know what I need to do on and off the court to win big tournaments,” she added to the

newspaper late Monday. “That is what I like to do.”

At the time of her retirement in Perth, Williams said: “I just have some inflammation that’s been going away very slowly.

“It’s still there, it’s going away, but just needs a little more time. A little rest, a little treatment.”

Melbourne Park has been a happy hunting ground for the American 21-time major winner.

She won the Australian Open for the first time way back in 2003, and made it title number six last year when she toppled archrival Maria Sharapova in the final.

Williams owned women’s ten-nis in 2015, winning three Grand Slams (Australian Open, French Open and Wimbledon) and tri-umphing in 53 of the 56 matches she played.

She was on track for a rare calendar-year Grand Slam until she was beaten by Italian Roberta Vinci in the US Open semifinal in early September, before bringing an early halt to a season that took a heavy physical toll. — AFP

Serena Williams saysshe’s ‘feeling great’ for2016 Australian Open

MELBOURNE — Rejuvenated former world number one Vic-toria Azarenka believes she is primed for a solid run at the Australian Open after an injury-wracked two years, with the pain-free star happy and in form.

The Belarusian won the open-ing Grand Slam of the season at Melbourne Park in 2012 and defended the title the following year before injuries stalled her high-flying career.

She struggled with foot and knee problems in 2014 and only played nine tournaments, also bat-tling depression and a split from long-term boyfriend Stefan Gordy, better known as Redfoo, the US musician and reality TV star.

Then a painful thigh strain in 2015 sent her spiraling down the world rankings.

But she is again fighting fit and won the build-up Brisbane Inter-national last weekend, dropping just 17 games in four matches for her first title since Cincinnati in August 2013, propelling her back into the world top 20 at number 16.

It sets her up as a legitimate threat at the Australian Open, starting Monday, with a host of other top players struggling with injuries or illness.

“Definitely a lot more com-fortable, a lot more calm, a lot more aware. Happy. Very happy,” Azarenka told the Herald Sun late Tuesday as she prepares for an-other title shot.

“I was hurt the whole year ac-tually,” she added of her troubled 2015 campaign.

“There was not a moment where I felt good. (Now) I have no pain. There was a lot of medica-tion last year which made me feel crazy actually at some moments.

“I don’t respond well to medi-cation. It was a constant battle with pain, with my own fear. Like, is it going to hurt again?

“I don’t want to go through that. But it took me to a point where I decided, ‘Ok, I got to stop and try to figure out and actually change my life around the tennis court’.”

Nicknamed “Vika” and re-nowned in the past for fiery on-court outbursts, Azarenka is now coached by Wim Fissette after splitting with longtime mentor Sam Sumyk and said it had taken time to adjust.

“I had a lot of changes last year, so it took a little bit of time to re-group, reorganize, mature a little bit, understand how to organize yourself,” she said, adding that she was once again enjoying her tennis.

“I think being an athlete we always think about physical performance tennis and tacti-cal performance. I think mental preparation is very important — feeling happy on the court.

“We have such a long season. To have that sense of just enjoy-ment, joy on the court, I think is important, too.” — AFP

Fit and happy Azarenka primed for Aussie Open run

A FILE PHOTO taken on Jan. 9 shows Victoria Azarenka of Belarus lifting the trophy after winning the Brisbane International tennis tournament.

BELEN, ARGENTINA — Carlos Sainz moved atop the overall stand-ings of the Dakar Rally in winning Tuesday’s ninth stage as Sebas-tien Loeb fell further behind after struggling in sandy conditions.

The stage around Belen was cut short because of searing heat and the many difficulties encoun-tered by competitors between Belen and Fiambala.

For the motorbikes the stage was halted after 179 kilometers (km) of the day’s planned 436-km run with the riders continuing on in convoy to the finish line, apart from some 30 competitors who had already reached that point.

For cars the race was also shortened to the 179-km mark, of the planned 396 km, of which 285 km were timed. Temperatures were between 37º and 40º Celsius (98-104º Fahrenheit).

Spanish veteran Sainz, driv-ing a Peugeot, held off the Minis of Erik van Loon and Mikko Hirvonen by 10 and 17 seconds, respectively.

“It was a very demanding course, physically speaking, with a lot of off-road, navigation and vegetation,” said Sainz.

“It was very hot,” the 2010 winner added shortly after being cooled down with blocks of ice.

Stephane Peterhansel, who finished 9:12 behind Peugeot teammate Sainz, lost the com-mand of the overall standings to the Spaniard, the latter now lead-ing the Frenchman by 7:03.

After rolling his Peugeot on Monday, Loeb struggled in the dunes, becoming stuck in the sand on several occasions.

The nine-time world rally champion from France eventu-ally limped home in 18th spot, one hour 13 minutes behind Sainz.

“It was very tough and very sandy in places,” Loeb said. “We wanted to try to follow the road-book closely so as not to get lost.

“In the end, there were some spots we couldn’t pass. The sand is so soft, we got stuck several times.

“It’s a bit depressing, but it’s a learning process.”

After the arrival of just 10 mo-torbikes at the finish line, Austra-lian KTM rider Toby Price, the overall race leader, had clocked the fastest time of three hours 55 minutes 51 seconds.

But organizers could decide to recalculate the times at the 179-km mark where Price also had the best time.

There was more drama for de-parting French competitor Lionel Baud.

On Saturday’s stage seven, Baud hit and killed a 63-year-old Bolivian shepherd, an accident that saw the tearful Frenchman withdraw from the grueling event.

But on Tuesday a convoy lead-ing Baud’s car back to Buenos Ai-res was hit by a goods lorry in an accident also involving four other vehicles, the Cadena 3 television station reported.

An Argentinian car driver was reported killed in the accident.

Wednesday ’s 10 th stage is from Belen to La Rioja, with similarly hot temperatures predicted and the notorious Fiambala dunes to be negoti-ated. — AFP

Dakar: Sainz takes control, Loeb suffers in the sand

PEUGEOT’s Spanish driver Carlos Sainz and co-driver Lucas Cruz (L) drive past Peugeot’s Stephane Peterhansel and co-driver Jean Paul Cottret of France while they repair their vehicle during the Stage 9 of the 2016 Dakar Rally around Belen, Argentina, on Jan. 12.

EDITOR FRANCISCO P. BALTAZAR

By Michael Angelo S. MurilloReporter

ALVI

N S.

GO

AFP

AFP

AFP

Final Top StandingsPan-American Intercollegiate

Chess ChampionshipSheraton Cleveland Airport Hotel

Dec. 28-30, 2015

FINAL TOP STANDINGS(ratings are US, not FIDE)Texas Tech “A”. GM Yaroslav Zhere-

bukh 2697, GM Elshan Moradiabadi 2663, IM Andrey Gorovets 2636, GM Andrey Baryshpolets 2631, IM Luis Carlo Torres 2411.

University of Texas Rio Grande Valley “A”. GM Anton Kovalyov 2703, GM Andrey Stu-kopin 2662, GM Hold-en Hernandez 2600, IM Guillermo Vazquez 2511, IM Fe Ynojosa Aponte 2473.

Webster University “B”. GM Ilya Nyzhnyk 2725, GM Alex Shimanov 2681, GM Andre Diamant 2568, GM manuel Leon Hoyos 2531.

Columbia University “A”. FM Arthur Shen 2475, FM Kyron Griffith 2396, Aar-on Jacobson 2263, Alexander Fabri 2224

Webster University “A”. GM Le Quang Liem 2803, GM Ray Robson 2752, GM Vasif Durarbayli 2707, GM Fidel Cor-rales Jimenez 2584.

University of Texas at Dallas “B”. GM Gil Popilski 2692, GM David Berec-zes 2575, GM Valentin Iotov 2570, GM Nadezhda Kosintseva 2523, IM Zurab Javakhadze 2485

Total of 42 participantsTime Control: 90 minutes play-to-

finish with 30-second increment added after every move starting move 1.

Webster University has been de-throned as the Pan-American Intercol-legiate Champion. This competition is open to all Universities and Colleges in North America, Central America, South America and the Caribbean. It is held over six rounds and the winning team is con-sidered to be the top college or university team in Pan-America. The top Four US Schools advance to the President’s Cup, also known as the “Final Four of College Chess” to determine the US National Col-lege or University Champion.

There are two stories here today. Back in 2007 GM Susan Polgar signed on as

the head coach of the Texas Tech Knight Raiders chess team. Under her tutelage and guidance the school became a pow-erhouse and won the Final Four in 2011.

After this big success the trouble start-ed — Polgar asked for a $1-million budget per year for the next five years to continue the program. Texas Tech balked at the huge capital outlay and Polgar brought her program, including the players, over to Webster University in St. Louis. True

to her word Webster Uni-versity rose from obscurity and won all three Pan-Ams in their team’s existence and was the Final Four Cham-pion from 2013-2015.

On the other hand Texas Tech had to start over again.

The second story is the Philippines’ Wesley So. He accepted a scholarship with Webster University in Au-

gust 2012 and was an important part of the championship teams above. After several tournament successes Wesley decided to focus full-time on chess and resigned his scholarship with Webster. They parted under less than amicable circumstances.

The two stories intersected in this year’s Pan-American Intercollegiate Championship, as Webster University sorely missed Wesley’s point-making ability and Texas Tech under its new coach GM Alexander Onischuk was sur-prisingly strong and figured in a quadru-ple tie for 1st place with the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley “A”, Webster University “B”, and Columbia Univer-sity “A”. Bragging rights as the Pan-Am champion went to Texas Tech based on superior tie-break points.

Webster’s “A” team had never lost a match in their history but this year was held to a draw by Texas Tech and lost to the “B” Team of University of Texas at Dallas and tumbled down to fifth place. It was Webster’s “B” team which saved the day by tying for first although they were third place on tie-breaks. The good thing is that the top four teams automat-ically qualified for the Final Four so at least Webster University is represented.

Wesley So’s replacement in the Web-ster team, Azeri GM Vasif Durarbayli, had a rough tournament and lost two crucial games.

In round 3 Webster was upset by UTD and the following game had a lot to do with that. GM Nadezhda Kosintseva is the older of the Kosintseva sisters (the other being GM Tatiana). The two of them have won many prizes in women’s tournaments and were mainstays in the Russian Women’s national team. In January 2013, citing “psychological incompatibility” with their coach GM Sergei Rublevsky, both sisters quit the Russian team and never played for it again. This was a huge blow because at that time they were nos. 1 and 2 in their country’s ranking list, but that is a story for another time.

Nadezhda married GM Leonid Kritz, became a mother and moved to the United States. Here she shows that her chess is still in tip-top shape.

* * *Durarbayli, Vasif (2707) -

Kosintseva, Nadezhda (2523) [E05]2015 Pan-American Intercol-

legiate Chess Cleveland Ohio (3), 28.12.2015

1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 d5 3.g3 e6 4.Bg2 Be7 5.0–0 0–0 6.c4 dxc4 7.Qc2 a6 8.a4 Bd7 9.Qxc4 Bc6 10.Bg5

We are still in one of the main lines of the Catalan. By the way, a known mistake here is 10.Nc3? as after 10...b5! 11.Qd3 b4 12.Nb1 Be4 13.Qd1 c5 Black is doing very well. Sveshnikov, E (2560)-Ivanchuk, V (2475) Pinsk 1986 0–1 38.

10...a5 11.Nc3This is a typical tabiya in the Catalan:

White will exchange on f6 and then go for e2–e4 to get superiority in the center. Black though has the two bishops. The coming middle game is difficult for both sides as White tries to make something of his center while Black tries to neutralize it.

11...Na6 12.Bxf6 Bxf6 13.e4 Nb4 14.Rfd1 b6 15.Qe2

Maybe 15.Ne1 followed by d4–d5 is more forceful, but it is hard to see how it will play out.

15...Bb7 16.Rac1 Re8 17.h4 h6 18.Qe3 Rc8 19.Qf4 Ba6 20.Bf1 Bxf1 21.Kxf1 c6 22.Qe3 Qc7 23.Kg2 Red8 24.Rd2 Qb8 25.Rcd1 Be7 26.Qe2 Bf6 27.Nh2 c5 28.d5 exd5 29.Nxd5 Nxd5 30.Rxd5 Re8 31.b3 Rc6 32.Qc4 Rce6 33.Re1 Qb7 34.Nf3 Qc6 35.Qd3 Be5 36.Rd8 Rxd8 37.Qxd8+ Kh7 38.Qd5 Qc7 39.Rd1 Qe7 40.Qa8 g6 <D>

POSITION AFTER 40...G6Now the exciting part starts.41.h5! gxh5 42.Rd5?[42.Nxe5 Rxe5 43.Rd8 (threatening

mate with 44.Rh8+ Kg6 45.Qg8+ Kf6 46.Rxh6#) 43...Qf6 44.f4 Black is in trouble]

42...Bf6 43.Rf5 Kg7[43...Rxe4?? 44.Rxf6]44.Nd2 Now Kosintseva says “my turn!”44...h4! 45.Rf4?Durarbayli is still in attack mode. He

should actually go defensive already with 45.Rf3.

45...Bg5 46.Rg4 h5 47.gxh4 hxg4 48.hxg5 Qxg5 49.Nf1 Qf4 50.Ng3 Qf3+ 51.Kg1 Kh7 52.Qd5 Rh6! 53.Nh5 g3 54.Nxg3

Of course not 54.fxg3?? Rxh5.54...Rf6 55.Nf5 Rxf5!This had to be calculated to the end.5 6. Q x f 5 + Q x f 5 5 7. ex f 5 Kg 7

58.Kg2 Kf6 59.Kg3 Kxf5 60.Kf3 Kf6 61.Kf4 Ke6 62.Ke4 f6 63.Kf4 Kd5 64.Kf5 c4 65.bxc4+ Kxc4 66.Kxf6 b5 67.axb5 Kxb5 68.f4 a4 69.f5 a3 70.Ke7 a2 71.f6 a1Q 72.f7 Qg7 73.Ke8 Kc6 0-1

[73...Kc6! 74.f8Q (74.Ke7 Kd5 75.Ke8 Ke6 and wins) 74...Qd7#]

In the last round Webster “A” was in a must-win situation but the 24-year old Ukrainian GM Andrey Baryshpolets crushed their chances with a sudden attack from the Black side of the Berlin.

* * *Durarbayli, Vasif (2707) - Barysh-

polets, Andrey (2631) [C67]2015 Pan-American Intercol-

legiate Chess Cleveland Ohio (5), 29.12.2015

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6 4.0–0 Nxe4 5.Re1

This line is supposed to be even more drawish than its cousin 5.d4 Nd6 6.Bxc6 dxc6 7.dxe5 , the so-called Berlin Wall.

5...Nd6 6.Nxe5 Be7 7.Bf1 Nxe5 Not a new move at all. Adolf Ander-

sen (yup! the author of the Immortal and Evergreen games) used to play this in the 1860s.

8.Rxe5 0–0 9.d4 Bf6 10.Re1 Nf5 11.d5 [11.c3 d5 12.Bd3 looks more logical]11...Re8 12.Nd2 Rxe1 13.Qxe1 d6

14.Ne4 Bd4 15.c3 Bb6White has forced this bishop to go to

where it wants to go in the first place.16.Bf4 Bd7 17.Bd3 Ne7 18.c4 Ng6

19.Bg5 Qf8 20.Qc3 f5 21.Nd2[21.Ng3 gives Black the tempo to

push his pawn all the way to f3]21...Ne5 22.Bf4 Re8 23.b4 Qf6

24.Bxe5[24.c5?? Nf3+]24...Rxe5 25.Qc1 c5 26.Nf3 Re8

27.a3 f4 28.h3 g5 29.Rb1 h5 30.bxc5 Bxc5 31.Rxb7! g4! 32.Rxd7

Forced. Knight moves result in in-stant annihilation.

32.Nd2 Bxf2+! 33.Kh1 (33.Kxf2 Qd4+ 34.Kf1 Qxd3+ 35.Kg1 Qe3+ 36.Kh1 (36.Kf1 g3) 36...Qe1+ is a rout) 33...Re1+;

32.Ne1 Bxf2+ 33.Kxf2 Qh4+ 34.Kf1 gxh3 35.gxh3 Bxh3+

32...gxf3 33.Qc2 Re1+ 34.Bf1[34.Kh2 fxg2 35.Kxg2 f3+ 36.Kg3 h4+

37.Kg4 Rg1+ 38.Kh5 Qg5#]34...Rxf1+! 35.Kh2[35.Kxf1 Qa1+]35...fxg2 36.Qh7+ Kf8 37.Rd8+

Qxd8 38.Qh8+ Ke7 39.a4 0–1Webster “B” was the one who quali-

fied for the Final Four, but under the rules of the tournament they can change the line-up and the players from “A” can play for “B”. I wonder which team which show up for the Final Four?

DALLAS — Lebron James scored 27 points as the Cleveland Cava-liers snatched a thrilling overtime victory from the Dallas Mavericks on Tuesday.

James led the scoring for Cleveland after the Cavaliers had trailed for much of the contest as the Mavericks raced into an early 23-7 lead.

The pivotal moment in a 110-107 win for the Cavaliers — their eighth consecutive vic-tory — came with 13 seconds to go in overtime, when Kyrie Irving nailed a long-range three-pointer to seal the win.

It capped a remarkable trans-formation in fortunes for the Cavaliers, who struggled to find the basket all night, with Irving and Kevin Love both missing a succession of attempts.

Cleveland’s winning streak might have come to an end had Dallas veteran Dirk Nowitzki not squandered a gilt-edged oppor-tunity in the closing seconds of regulation.

Nowitzki looked certain to score after finding himself iso-lated with Cleveland guard Iman Shumpert. But Shumpert man-aged to strip Nowitzki and the chance was gone.

A nerve-jangling final quar-ter saw the lead change 10 times, while the game was tied three times in the final two minutes.

Cleveland now lead the East-ern Conference standings with a record of 27-9, ahead of the To-ronto Raptors (24-15).

DURANT LATE SHOWIn Minneapolis, Kevin Durant underscored his importance to the Oklahoma City Thunder once

again with a 30-point haul which helped see off the Minnesota Timberwolves.

Durant reeled off 12 points in the final three minutes to steer the Thunder safely to a 101-96 victory which left them with the third best record (27-12) in the Western Conference behind Golden State and the San Antonio Spurs.

However, Durant was unhappy that he left it late to deliver the goods.

“I’ve got to get it going there in the first three quarters,” Durant said.

“Can’t just come out and try to save the game and make shots in the fourth. I’ve got to get it going early.”

Russell Westbrook added 22 points for Oklahoma City, nar-rowly missing out on a triple double with 11 assists and seven rebounds.

SAN ANT0NIO SPURSSan Antonio meanwhile ex-tended their winning streak to nine games after a scintillating 31-point performance from Tony Parker helped the Spurs to a 109-99 victory over the Detroit Pis-tons.

LaMarcus Aldridge weighed in with 22 points and 13 rebounds while shooting guard Manu Gi-nobili finished with 15 points and five rebounds as the Spurs im-proved to 34-6.

Veteran center Tim Duncan added 14 points and nine re-bounds with Boris Diaw supply-ing 12 points.

French star Parker, 33, de-scribed his performance as a blast from the past.

Spurs coach Gregg Popovich revealed he had placed the onus of the scoring on Parker during the game.

“At the start of the third quar-ter, I told him, ‘We’re going to need you to score. You’ve got all kinds of opportunities.’”

ROCKETS 107, GRIZZLIES 91James Harden scored 25 points and Terrence Jones added 20 off the bench to lead the Houston to its fourth straight win.

The Rockets connected on 18 three-pointers, including four by Harden, and enjoyed a decisive edge on the board to snap their losing streak against Memphis.

KNICKS 120, CELTICS 114Kristaps Porzingis poured in 26 points to lead New York to the victory.

The Knicks won for the fifth time in their last seven games despite the loss of Carmelo An-thony, their leading scorer, who left the game with a sprained right ankle after a collision late in the first half with a referee.

The veteran small forward was having a good offensive night, finishing with 17 points, four rebounds and three assists in al-most 18 minutes.

BUCKS 106, BULLS 101Jimmy Butler scored 30 points but it was not enough for Chi-cago Bulls. Giannis Antetok-ounmpo led the Bucks with 29 points, and Khris Middleton added 16, including five over the final 2:30 of the fourth quarter as the Bucks mounted a late rally.— AFP/Reuters

S2/5WorldSportsTHURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 2016

O P I N I O N

CHESS PIECEBOBBY ANG

Webster University has been dethroned as the Pan-American Intercollegiate Champion.

BOBBY ANG is a founding member of the National Chess Federation of the Philippines (NCFP) and its first Executive Director. A Certified Public Accountant (CPA), he taught accounting in the University of Santo Tomas (UST) for 25 years and is currently Chief Audit Executive of the Equicom Group of Companies.bobby@cpamd.net

Pan-Am college championship

NEW YORK — Reigning Mas-ters and US Open champion Jordan Spieth topped the Golf Digest 50 money list revealed on Tuesday while Tiger Woods, who topped the first 13 lists, settled for third place.

Wo o d s, w h o s e r u n t o 14 major titles from 1997 to 2008 boosted prize money and tele-vision rights fees, has struggled with injuries and turned 40 two weeks ago with a back injury and no timetable for his return to competition.

World number one Spieth, 22, made more than $53 mil-lion in combined winnings and endorsement deals to top the magazine’s list of 2015 golf revenue producers, with $30 million from sponsor Under Armour boosting Spieth’s total.

Spieth had five PGA tri -umphs, including the two major wins.

At $48.5 million with only $ 5 5 1 ,0 0 0 i n p r i z e m o n e y, Woods trailed 45-year-old Phil Mickelson and finished just ahead of 26-year-old Northern Ireland star Rory McIlroy.

Arnold Palmer, the 86-year-old legend whose popularity and skill made him a pioneer in golf endorsement deals and branding, was fifth with fel-low retired icon Jack Nicklaus sixth.

Australia’s Jason Day was seventh with American Rickie Fowler eighth.

Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama was 22 nd, 12 spots ahead of countryman Ryo Ishikawa.

New Zealand’s Lydia Ko, the LPGA teen star who domi-nated the season, was 47th, one spot behind Kiwi men’s golfer Danny Lee and one ahead of South Korean men’s standout Bae Sang-Moon. — AFP

In form Spieth dethrones Tiger in Golf Digest money ranking

REUTERS, JEROME MIRON-USA TODAY SPORTS

CLEVELAND CAVALIERS guard Kyrie Irving (2) shoots over Dallas Mavericks guard Deron Williams (8) during the second half at the American Airlines Center. The Cavaliers defeat the Mavericks 110-107 in overtime.

Cavs edge Mavson James heroics

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MANILAQUEZON CITY

MAKATI CITY PASAY CITY

PASIG CITYMUNTINLUPA CITY

2205 Market Street, Madrigal Business Park Phase IIIAlabang,Muntinlupa City,PhilippinesTel No: (632) 869 9888E-mail: sales@azumi.ph

AZUMI BOUTIQUE HOTEL

ASTORIA HOTELS & RESORTSORTIGAS • MAKATI 15 J. Escriva Drive, Ortigas Business District, Pasig CityTel.: (+632) 697-1111, 335-1111Email: sales@astoriaplaza.comastoriahotelsandresorts.com

• ZAMBOANGA CITY •

Governor Camins Avenue, 7000 Zamboanga City, P.O. Box 100Tel: +63 62 991-0031 to 34; • Fax: +63 62 991-0035Email: reservation.gardenorchidhotel@gmail.com

GARDEN ORCHID HOTEL

ASTORIA BORACAYStation 1 ,Boracay IslandMalay Aklan, 5608 Phils.D/L(+63 36) 288.1111T: (+632)687.1111 loc. 8110E: sales@astoriaboracay.comW: www.astoriaboracay.com

AZALEA HOTELS & RESIDENCES BORACAYStation 2, Boracay IslandMobile: 0917 861 1639Email: reservations@azalea.com.phwww.azaleaboracay.com.ph

MANILA CENTRAL SALES AND RESERVATIONS1725 M. Adriatico Street, Malate Manila(+63) 450 1151, 450 8012, 450 11270917 861 1641, 0919 994 4140

Km 62 North National Highway Barangay San Rafael, Puerto Princesa City, PalawanT: (+687.1111 Loc. 8302E: sales@astoriapalawan.comW: www.astoriapalawan.com

ASTORIA PALAWAN

• PALAWAN •

Barangay Taguihon,Baclayon Bohol 6301 Phils.T:(+038) 540-9880 (+632)335-1123E: sales@astoriabohol.comW: www.astoriabohol.com

ASTORIA BOHOL• BOHOL•

24 Roxas Blvd corner Cuneta St. Pasay City, Manila, PhilippinesTel.: (+63 2) 558www.88courtyardhotel.com.ph Twitter: @88Courtyard • Facebook: 88CourtyardHotel • Instagram: 88courtyardPH

88 COURTYARD HOTEL PASAY CITY, MANILA

17 ADB Avenue, Ortigas Center Pasig City 1600, PhilippinesOAKWOOD PREMIER JOY~NOSTALG CENTER MANILA

1034-36 Roxas Blvd. Corner UN Ave. Ermita, ManilaTel. No.: (632) 532. 4484-86 • Fax: (632) 526. 1866Mobile No.: 0915 446 21 15 / 0998 572 67 02Email: reservations@miramarhotel.phwww.miramarhotel.ph • Facebook: Miramar Hotel Manila

MIRAMAR HOTEL

#1667 Bocobo St., Malate, Manila, PhilippinesTel.: 875-7888Facebook/Instagram/Twitter @ameliehotelmnl

AMELIE HOTEL MANILA

TORRE VENEZIA SUITES170 Timog Avenue corner Scout Santiago Street,Barangay Laging Handa, Quezon City 1103, Metro Manila, Philippineswww.torreveneziasuites.comTel.: +63 (2) 332 1658 to 60 | Fax: +63 (2) 332 1621Email: sales@torreveneziasuites.comLike us on Facebook: facebook.com/torreveneziasuitesFollow us on Instagram: torreveneziasuites

AZALEA HOTELS & RESIDENCES BAGUIO#7 Leonard Wood Loop, Baguio CityT: (074) 424-8710Email: reservations@azalea.com.ph • www.azaleabaguio.com

MANILA CENTRAL SALES AND RESERVATIONS1725 M. Adriatico Street, Malate Manila(+63) 450 1151, 450 8012, 450 11270917 861 1641, 0919 994 4140

CONGRESSIONAL Avenue Ex-tension doesn’t really ring a bell for most people — it’s a highway connecting the University of the Philippines-Katipunan Area to Tandang Sora and Congressio-nal Avenues via a fl y-over. Many small residential villages, as well as the back gates and secondary phases of larger residential vil-lages are located here.

Due perhaps to its proximity to the C5 gateway near Katipunan on one end, and the entrance to the North Luzon Expressway not too far away, not to mention the mine of universities, schools, and o� ces nearby, the recently developed area has experienced an increase in development, with restaurants popping up almost next to each other. One is Guisados, a Mexican-inspired restaurant.

A huge tin sign leads to the restaurant’s small dining area which could probably sit just around 20 to 30 people. A mix of the rustic, the industrial, and the kitschy meet in the restaurant’s interiors, featuring solid, stark wooden benches, strung-up red lights, colander-covered ceiling lamps, and commemorative car plates all sitting within strict gray walls. What appears to be a black light also hangs from the ceiling of corrugated tin. At least for the night BusinessWorld visited, a serving of 1980s hits by Madonna and The Pretenders blaring from the speakers completed the ef-fect: cozy, kitschy, but manly, and the drab color palette makes the place appear large. While this writer was waiting for his orders, every vacated table was almost immediately occupied again, and all this on a Monday night.

That evening, this writer or-dered a Pork Carnitas taco (P80, while a promo for three is at P225). Other options for the tacos includ-ed Beef Barbacoa, Chicken, Pork Belly, Chorizo, and Chicharon. For the main course, we ordered a quarter-kilo slab of Roasted Pork Belly (P250) and a side of Mexican Dirty Rice (P65). A server dressed

in denim cuto� s and a bandanna around her head suggested wash-ing it all down with local beer, so we went ahead and got some.

The Pork Carnitas — pork slowly cooked in beer, orange juice, and milk (according to the menu and the restaurant’s general man-ager, Eric Alcalde), wrapped in two soft corn tortillas — attacked the palate with a surge of great taste, and without any shame. It tasted very straightforward yet complex, with a play of sweet, savory, and mildly spicy flavors accenting strong, well-textured meat. The taco was served with three options for (homemade) salsa: a mild salsa verde, a fresh fl irtatious red salsa, and a nasal passage-clearing spicy version of the red. The taco as an appetizer only served to excite this writer for the main course, the

pork belly with the side of “dirty rice.” The rice, a melange of mushy kidney beans and fl u� y rice, woven together with cilantro and red salsa was fi lling and tasty, and the pork belly — well, wow. Think of noisy, crispy crackling skin, gooey, sticky, melting fat (New Year’s resolutions be damned), with a smoky, sweet-ish, and spicy flavor permeating from skin to fl esh. The quarter-kilo slab apparently serves two to three people, but who’s counting?

Applause goes to the two own-ers, JP Valera and Jellone Umali, both from Texas, according to Mr. Alcalde who apparently also helped with some of the recipes, himself hailing from California. “I live, like, maybe 20 minutes away from the border, and I go down to Mexico all the time,” said Mr. Alcalde. “We all loved Mexican food,” he added.

Despite having an authentic Tex-Mex (but not yet quite Mex) flavor, it is something familiar to the Filipino palate, probably thanks in part to the use of all local ingredients. Aside from the price constraints of importing in-gredients, Mr. Alcalde says, “Our chef… he wants to appeal to the appetite of the Filipino.”

“It’s our shared history... so we share the same palates,” he said on executing Mexican food with Filipino ingredients. He warned, however, “Being that we’re [in] a [tropical] climate, and Mexico [has] an arid climate… the ingre-dients are going to be di� erent.”

“Right now, our owners feel like this is a good place…” said Mr. Al-calde on Guisados’ location in what could be considered a backstreet. “It’s expanding, it’s growing.”

“Originally, we wanted Makati, but the space wasn’t available at the rate that we wanted,” he added. “We felt that this was the best way that we can… start our business, that was economical,” he said, pointing out that Messrs. Valera and Umali are new busi-ness owners. “Ideally, we would want to be open in SM or Tri-Noma, because that gets the most foot tra� c,” said Mr. Alcalde on opening new locations.

FOOD PARKING LOTSAbout two blocks away from Guisados are two food lots fi lled with small food stalls. Box Park and Urban Eats (which sit side by side) seem to be taking advantage of the street’s location, follow-ing a pattern seen in some estab-lishments in Teacher’s Village in Quezon City (also blessed with a proximity to homes and universi-ties) in which food trucks or food stalls are lined up in what look like parking lots, providing cheap, quality eats.

From Box Park, try a fragrant pad thai from a stall called Thai Food (pretty straightforward) for P100. Pork Folio o� ers, of course, pork dishes for about P150, while bow-tied servers wait for you at an ice cream and wa� es stall. At Urban Eats, try pizza, fries and ribs from Frizzed Bar, or homey pan de sal burgers (especially the bacon cheese melt) from Pan de Burger. Thai food and Japanese food are also available in Urban Eats, and both Box Park and Ur-ban Eats feature bars, which seem to be populated by either skate-board-toting teens — or their fathers. Most of them play around in the P100 and above price range, although parking is a bit di� cult.

Down at Urban Eats, which mostly feature new concepts, the Farinas Empanada chain makes an appearance — initially a surprise, until one discovers that the Urban Eats food lot is owned by Hazel Farinas, co-owner of the Farinas Empanada chain (the other owner is her husband, she said). “Actually, feel ko, Congressional [Avenue Extension] iyong next Maginhawa (I feel that Congressional Avenue Extension is the next Maginha-wa),” said Mrs. Farinas.

By Joseph L. GarciaReporter

S2/7THURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 2016

THE RICH texture of Italian food brings comfort to many, and for new Bonifacio Global City (BGC) restau-rant Casa Italia, it tries to go all out in presenting authentic Italian food with very little fuss and all of the character.

During its Dec. 10 opening, the res-taurant served guests beef lasagna, pizza, chicken cannelloni, fish with a tomato-based sauce, and a roasted chicken with potatoes, studded with spices. Most of the dishes were very fi lling and tasted familiar, punctuated by piquant notes that professed the dishes to be as closely Italian as pos-sible. Highlights downstairs include long pizza and gelato counters.

Casa Italia is a restaurant concept based in Singapore, with 13 branches there. While its logo says that it has been around since the 1960s, it actually opened in 2010 — but its recipes come from the Italian-born founder’s great-grandmother in Italy, who had once op-erated a small gelateria (ice cream shop) said Jay Tan, chief executive o� cer of Waterwoods Group, which has the Casa Italia franchise in the Philippines.

He said the pizza is made by a fellow who had served pizza to the likes of Madonna and U2. “We’re as authentic as you can get,” said Mr. Tan. Their co� ee, he pointed out, is meticulously

sourced, using only 100% Arabica beans from Honduras, Guatemala, and Brazil, and nowhere else.

The restaurant in BGC is its first outside Singapore, said Mr. Tan, al-though it plans to open other branch-es within the Southeast Asian region. A second branch in the Philippines is being planned in SM North EDSA.

In Singapore, its o� erings are limit-ed to gelato and panini, but in the Phil-ippines, it has pasta dishes and main courses. Mr. Tan said that almost all of the ingredients are imported (“98%”), and even the furniture comes from Italy. “The only thing not Italian here is our heart: we’re Filipino,” said Mr. Tan.

Since he prides himself on the authenticity of his Italian restaurant franchise, he was asked how hard it is to fi nd an authentic Italian restaurant in Manila. “Name one,” he answered slyly. “It’s hard. Usually, when you think of authentic Italian food… it’s expensive… I wouldn’t go there on a regular basis.”

Casa Italia’s o� erings can start at a little above P100 (gelato) or a little above P200 for the main courses. “I want everyone to say, ‘I’m going to go back here,’” he said. “Ayoko iyong, ‘Ay, pu-punta ako doon like once in two months lang kasi ang mahal (I don’t want people saying that they’ll come here once in two months because it’s expensive).” — JLG

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PHL franchise of Singaporean restaurant prides itself on serving authentic Italian food

a toppings combination of sea salt, Oreo cookies and queso de bola next time.)

As an added treat for ice cream lovers, Magnum Manila MOA will be hosting a #MagnumPleasureHour where patrons have the chance to eat ice cream for free said Ms. Huang. On Jan. 22, 23, 29, 30, Feb. 5 and 6, customers

can line up to the store between 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. and share the promo photo found on Magnum Twitter and Instagram accounts to claim their prize.

The Magnum Pleasure Store is a global concept that started in Paris, London, Hamburg, and Istanbul, and is now making sweet, albeit short, journeys around the world. — Nickky Faustine P. de Guzman

ROAST CHICKEN with potatoes

Dining at Congressional Avenue Ext.

MARGARITA ARANETA FORÉS, the chef restaurateur behind Chibo, Lusso and Grace Park, a catering company Cibo di M, has been named Asia’s Best Female Chef by the award-giving body behind the Asia’s 50 Best Restau-rants list.

“I feel like Miss Universe!” an obviously shocked and elated Ms. Forés said upon learning the news. She quickly followed it up with a quip “Don’t take it away later!” alluding to the Miss Co-lumbia-Miss Philippines mix-up at the latest Miss Universe beauty pageant.

She later send a tweet saying: “MaramingSalamat @Asias-50Best @TheWorlds50Best for this incredible honor.Am blown away!Truly humbled&grateful.My PHILIPPINES,this is fo-ryou.”

Ms. Forés is the fi rst Filipino chef to receive the honor. She will receive her award at the Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants 2016 ceremony in Bangkok, Thailand, on Feb. 29.

The Asia’s 50 Best Restau-rants list is published by William Reed Business Media which also publishes The World’s 50 Best Restaurants, launched in 2002, and Latin America’s 50 Best Res-taurants, launched in 2013.

The World’s 50 Best Restau-rants list is an annual snapshot of the opinions and experiences of almost 1,000 international restaurant industry experts. Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants was launched in 2013 and is created by the Diners Club Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants Academy, a group of over 300 leaders in the restaurant industry across Asia.

The video of Ms. Forés’ reac-tion upon receiving the news can be seen at https://goo.gl/GqKyrl.

Forés named Asia’s Best Female Chef

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Complete the grid so that every row, columnand 3x3 box contains every digit from 1 to 9 inclusively.

Crossword By Thomas Joseph

ACROSS 1 Group of players 5 Grapevine talk 11 Geometry calculation 12 Individually 13 Gallup concern 14 Vacillate 15 Su� ers from the heat 17 Corp. VIP 18 Worried 22 Texas player 24 Hayek of Frida 25 Letter after upsilon 26 Near-eternity 27 Roof overhangs 30 Bulletin board items 32 Refi ne ore 33 Ump’s cry 34 Crescent’s ascent 38 Playwright Pinter 41 Kitchen sight 42 Doted on 43 Woodwind part 44 Egg buys 45 Invites

DOWN 1 Tube tops 2 In — (aligned) 3 Choosy 4 More statuesque 5 Fence feature 6 Met shows 7 Afternoon break 8 Ready to go 9 Road hazard 10 Individually 16 Not to mention 19 Nonessential courses 20 In a frenzy 21 Salon o� erings

22 Big galoots 23 Counterfeit 28 Writer Leonard 29 Taken the wrong way 30 Great weight 31 Dawn goddess

35 Bookie’s concern 36 Hunt for 37 Goals 38 Owned 39 Hubbub 40 Cartoonist Chast

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WEDNESDAY’S ANSWER 1-14

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BOX PARK PORK BELLY at Guisados

PORK CARNITAS at Guisados URBAN EATS

8/S2 THURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 2016

THREE POPULAR US restau-rants — Denny’s, Moe’s South-west Grill, and Texas Roadhouse — are coming to the Philippines this year.

T h e r e st a u r a n t s w i l l b e brought here by The Bistro Group, which already holds the Philippine franchise for TGI Friday’s, Buffalo Wild Wings, Bulgogi Brothers, and Italianni’s, among others. Store openings for previously held concepts are also being planned for this year.

Denny’s (founded in 1953) has about 1,700 locations worldwide, from the US to Japan, while Texas Roadhouse (founded in 1993) has more than 400 locations, stretch-ing from the US to the Middle East. The youngest player in this trio, Moe’s, was founded in 2000 and already has more than 500 locations, including some outside the US, in places like Turkey and Russia. Denny’s is known as an all-day diner, Texas Roadhouse is a steakhouse, and Moe’s ventures into Southwestern territory with Mexican-American dishes.

The Bistro Group started more than 20 years ago with TGI Fri-day’s. Last year, it opened the first Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant in the Philippines and in Asia.

While the company acquired the concepts last year, Bistro Group President and COO Jean Paul Manuud said that they are opening this year since “the loca-tions for these three brands had just recently materialized. That’s why we’re just opening this year.” He was referring to the Uptown Mall in Bonifacio Global City,

which had only been recently built. “You see the buildings, the cranes... a lot of things are hap-pening in this area that [are] still unserved, or underserved... we feel our presence here would do very well to tap this market,” he said.

Bringing foreign food concepts to the country brings with it some challenges and some new ground to play around and explore: for example, rice is offered at Buffalo Wild Wings in the Philippines, but not in the US. “We are not

changing the concepts, we’re not changing the recipe; but we tweak... [its] palate,” Mr. Manuud told BusinessWorld at the sideline of a press conference last Tues-day. “I call it, ‘operating globally with a regional relevance.’”

“[As] Filipinos, we like strong flavors, we like salty; we like spic-es, you know? So in that aspect, we tweak [the recipe]... a little bit, in [the] spice or salt level, but we keep the same ingredients and recipes,” he added.

“The palate of Filipinos has evolved... Filipinos are well-traveled,” he said, discussing the changing palates of the Filipino consumer, now more attuned to global cuisine. “As a company, we strive hard to evolve [our con-cepts] also... we have maturing brands like [TGI] Friday’s, but we continously evolve that brand as far as product offerings, the look of the restaurant [are con-cerned]... it’s also very impor-tant... [to]... tap the milennials.”

Of the many restaurant con-cepts in The Bistro Group’s port-folio, Mr. Manuud only recalls one being a homegrown brand: Krazy Garlik. Most of the other, he said, are concepts from Japan, Korea, and Singapore, among oth-er countries. “We will continue to expand these restaurants and open more restaurants. As we do that, we are focusing on acquir-ing more... Western or American brands,” said Mr. Manuud.

“What we have realized is [that] our strength is more on execution. We are very strong in executing brands... [that] have [an existing] culture, [which] have systems al-ready, rather than developing our own homegrown concepts.

“There’s so much stress; we stress our people. There’s so much birth pain [that goes] into it,” he said about developing homegrown concepts. “Our core competence is not to develop concepts or restaurants. We are very rock solid [in] execut[ing] concepts, meaning, we are more successful when it’s franchise[d] concepts.” — Joseph L. Garcia

CHOCOLATE IS love. And chocolate, like love, is sweeter the second time around. Magnum Manila proves this — and of-fers more — with the opening of its second pop-up ice cream parlor at SM Mall of Asia.

After Magnum Manila’s flagship store at SM Aura closed down on July 26 last year — all Magnum Pleasure Stores around the globe shut down after a year or so — the second concoct-your-own ice cream store comes back with more toppings to choose from. It opened to the public on Dec. 19.

While first store in Taguig was a res-taurant with other choices on the menu besides ice cream, the store at MOA is smaller and specializes only in sweets. This is how the Magnum Pleasure Stores around the world work, said brand man-ager Andrea Huang. The ambiance may have changed, but the flavors didn’t.

CHOOSE YOUR FLAVORSHow does the make-your-own-Magnum work? Customers are asked to choose a “naked” bar, which comes in vanilla or Belgian chocolate flavors. To “clothe” to the “naked” bar, choose from white chocolate, milk chocolate, or dark chocolate coatings.

One then has to choose from among 18 toppings: pistachio nuts, dried rasp-

berries, chili flakes, queso de bola, dried mangoes, Nerd candies, dark chocolate crunchies, white chocolate crunchies, corn flakes, potato chips, sea salt flakes, Graham crackers, Oreo cookies, Par-mesan popcorn, marshmallow, caramel balls, dried almonds, and pastillas (milk candies). The customer can only choose three toppings. An order costs P120.

Finally, one has to choose among white, milk, or dark chocolate drizzle. Then an “M” shaped coin is put on top. Voila! It’s ready to eat.

“The flavors go from conventional to unusual and gourmet. But I assure you, there are no bad combinations,” Ms. Huang told BusinessWorld. She said she like hers dark, with dried raspberries, pistachios, and pastillas on top.

This writer tried an unconventional combination. Who knew dark chocolate ice cream with chili flakes, Parmesan popcorn, and Nerd candies go well together? The sour Nerd candies complement the sweetness of the ice cream bar. The Parmesan popcorn adds a tinge of salt and the chili flakes adds a spicy punch.

The best thing about creating your own ice cream is you have something to look forward, especially during sum-mertime. (This writer plans to try

Make your own ice cream bar

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ACCOUNTTexas Roadhouse, Denny’s, and Moe’s opening this year

BISTRO GROUP President and COO Jean Paul Manuud

Magnum, S2/7

Thursday, January 14, 2016VOL XXIX ISSUE 119 ISSN0116-3930

This advertisement has been placed by BusinessWorld

Post-industrial revolutionBy Ed Crooks

General Electric’s latest technology for boosting manufacturing productivity is a gadget that feels like it would be more at home in an amusement arcade or theme park than in an industrial laboratory.

At the group’s global research center in Niskayuna, New York, you can enjoy the sensation of fl ying around its steam turbine plant in Schenectady, six miles away.

A virtual reality 3D scan of the plant, ac-curate to every last machine tool and piece of pipework, is projected onto a screen and special glasses. Using a PlayStation-style controller, you can move around the fac-tory fl oor, swooping over assembly lines or hovering over a stack of components.

The system is a lot of fun to use, but the intent behind it is entirely practical: to allow GE’s engineers to work on design, layout and workfl ow at its plants without actually being there. If they want to move in a piece of new equipment, for example, they can use the simulation to see if it will fi t. The systems for collecting and analyzing manufacturing data — fi tted in at least 75 of GE’s 590 plus factories — can cut costs by 15% or more, say company executives.

The technology is just one part of a radi-cal overhaul designed to transform the 123-year-old group into what Je� Immelt, chief executive since September 2001, calls a “digital industrial” company. At its core is a drive to use advances in sensors, commu-nications and data analytics to improve per-formance both for itself and its customers.

GE’s products such as aero engines, power generation equipment, locomotives and medical scanners are being made part of the “internet of things” — intelligent connected devices that can transmit information and receive instructions — and the company is building new capabilities in software to understand and manage those machines.

The potential rewards for success are enormous for a group that has sold o� large chunks of its business to refocus on its in-dustrial operations.

“It is a major change, not only in the products, but also in the way the company operates,” says Michael Porter of Harvard Business School. “This really is going to be a game-changer for GE.”

If it fails, however, it could prove a decisive factor in hastening a further break-up of the group.

The power of the industrial internet of things is only just starting to be explored.

Companies in areas from manufacturing to energy, transport, and mining collect huge volumes of data, but use only a fraction of it.

If GE can succeed in fi nding ways to use that information to cut its costs and raise the productivity of its products and services, it could gain a critical competitive advantage over rivals such as Siemens, Mitsubishi, United Technologies and Rolls-Royce. It also aims to create an important new source of income from cutting costs and boosting productivity for other companies, even if they are not using GE equipment.

Entering this world, however, is also bringing GE new competition. In setting itself up as a software business that can help other industrial groups reap the ben-efits of the internet of things, GE will be taking on Microsoft, Amazon, IBM, Oracle and SAP.

“GE is drag-racing with the best technol-ogy companies in the world,” says Frank Gil-lett of Forrester Research. “Kudos to them for trying, but I think they will fi nd it harder than they think.”

Getting out of fi nanceIn April, GE embarked on one of the most

radical changes in its history, saying it would sell about 90% of GE Capital, the fi nancial services unit that just a couple of years ago provided about half the group’s $14-billion earnings.

That decision was welcomed by analysts and investors — its shares, after lagging be-hind the wider market for most of Mr. Im-melt’s tenure, have risen 17% in the past 12 months. The crisis of 2007-09, which forced GE to cut its dividend and lose its triple-A credit rating, convinced many of the busi-ness’s potential for disaster.

The regulation that followed, placing ad-ditional burdens on GE as a “systemically important fi nancial institution,” meant that even in good times the returns on capital looked unattractive.

Yet while financial services might have been a dangerous artifi cial stimulant, there is a big question about how fast GE, can grow without them.

When Jack Welch, Mr. Immelt’s predeces-sor, took over GE in 1981, it was viewed by many as a “GDP company”: the kind of big, boring business that grows only as fast as the gross domestic product.

To avoid that tag Mr. Welch pushed into financial services and other businesses that could grow more rapidly. Without that

Hollywood, S3/2

“We didn’t want this to be a marketing tool. We want it to be a commercial endeavor that we can sell. In order to do that consum-ers have to want to use it again and again.”

The Martian is Fox’s second VR project after the company pro-duced a short companion piece to its fi lm Wild last year.

Other studios are also ramp-ing up their VR production. Sony Pictures has developed a piece pegged to the home entertain-ment release of its fi lm The Walk and produced another to pro-mote Goosebumps, a recent fi lm starring Jack Black.

The premiere of The MartianVR experience at the Con-sumer Electronics Show this week underlined the event as a coming-out party for the new technology. Attendees formed long queues to try the latest games from Oculus Rift, the VR company Facebook bought for $2 billion in 2014, and ride a virtual roller coaster — com-plete with moving chairs — at Samsung ’s Gear VR stand.

But there was widespread sur-prise when Oculus announced at CES that its Rift headset would cost $599, far higher than the $350 price at which Oculus had sold prototype headsets to de-

Hollywood shoots for stars with virtual realityBy Matthew Garrahan and Tim Bradshaw

When 21st Century Fox released The Martian last autumn, au-diences flocked to watch Matt Damon portray a scientist left to fend for himself after being marooned on the red planet.

This year, fans of the fi lm will have the chance to go one step further: they will be able to try on Mr. Damon’s spacesuit for size by donning a virtual reality (VR) headset and buying an immersive “experience” developed by Fox’s innovation lab.

The project is a blend of inter-active video game and old-fash-ioned fi lm storytelling.

It is also one of the fi rst com-mercial VR e� orts to come out of Hollywood, an industry looking to create new revenue streams as it grapples with the transi-tion from physical media, such as DVDs and Blu-rays, to a more digital-centric business model.

The Martian VR launch is also indicative of how media compa-nies are circling a technology that has generated the most enthusi-asm in the video gaming industry.

“It is a new platform and could be a new form of media,” says Mike Dunn, worldwide president of Fox Home Entertainment.

velopers. This comes on top of having to buy a compatible PC, which start at about $1,000.

“Oculus Rift is priced well above video game consoles,” says Colin Sebastian, an analyst at Baird research.

“As such, we expect the in-stalled base of high-end VR platform to ramp up gradually, and not penetrate the mass mar-ket likely until 2017-18 as price points fall below $400.”

Film and television content could play as big a role as video games in pushing adoption of the new technology, according to Mike Vorhaus, president of Magid Advisors, a research com-pany that surveyed consumers about VR. “Film and television ranked as most popular forms of potential VR entertainment — even among gamers.”

VR technology has won admir-ers from across the media spec-trum. Laura Desmond, global chief executive of Starcom Me-diavest Group, the marketing and advertising group, says brands are preparing to jump into the new technology but trying to fi gure out how to use it most ef-fectively.

“They are curious about it and they are engaging with content producers,” she says.

“There are small pilot tests go-ing on across our client base.”

The New York Times has de-veloped VR projects backed by advertisers. In November it gave away 1m Google Cardboard VR headsets with its Sunday edition and it has produced nine films: four were made by its edito-rial department and five were branded content productions developed with advertisers, including GE and the Mini car group.

“ We c a n t e l l c o m p e l l i n g and immersive stories with this technology,” says Mark Thompson, chief executive, who pointed to the VR films com-missioned by the paper, such as a piece from a refugee camp for Syrian refugees.

“We’ve shown that we can get people to use the VR devices in ways which work for them and which work for our advertisers.”

Media groups are beginning to back their interest in VR with hard cash. Walt Disney was among several companies in Sep-tember to invest in a $65-million fundraising round for Jaunt, a Silicon Valley-based VR group.

Thomas Tull, founder and chief executive of Legendary Enter-tainment, the studio behind the

Revolution, S3/2

AFP

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S3/2 • Thursday, January 14, 2016

Hollywood,from S3/ 1

Revolution,from S3/ 1

Godzilla and Pacific Rim films, put money into Magic Leap, which is developing “immersive” VR experiences.

Elisabeth Murdoch, the former head of TV production company Shine, is one of several people to have invested in Vrse, a technol-ogy group started by VR pioneer Chris Milk.

Mr. Milk says Vrse, which includes a production studio and viewing technology, is aim-ing at an “untapped market” of hundreds of millions of smart-phone owners.

“What we need is a breadth of content that we don’t have in cinematic VR right now,” he says.

“That is the missing piece of the puzzle.”

business, GE faces the prospect of returning to GDP rates of growth.

With a market capitalization of $250 billion GE is one of the most valuable brands in the world. The group employs over 300,000 peo-ple and its most profitable sectors last year were power equipment and aviation which both contrib-uted about $5.5 billion.

However, the slowdown in the world economy, and the fall in commodity prices that has hit GE’s businesses providing equip-ment for oil production and mining, mean that the group’s earnings per share are expected to have dropped by 21% last year.

Brian Langenberg, an indus-trial analyst who chairs the busi-ness school at Aurora University in Illinois, expects GE’s organic sales growth from now on to be in line with global GDP, forecast by the International Monetary Fund to be 3.6% this year.

The industrial internet, how-ever, offers GE a hope of escaping that uninspiring prospect. The falling cost and rising power of sensors, communications devices and data processing mean that just about any product can be made capable of sending and receiving information and commands. The internet of things is best known today for consumer applications such as fridges that can order your groceries. The more important applications, however, are likely to be in industry.

By 2025 the economic benefits of the internet of things could be $11.1 trillion a year, according to the McKinsey Global Institute. It estimates that about 40% of those benefits could come in fac-tories and work sites such as oil-fields, with transport and urban infrastructure accounting for a further 30%.

Big businessMarco Annunziata, GE’s chief

economist, believes that as com-panies work out how to exploit the potential of the new technol-ogies, it could unleash a new pro-ductivity revolution in industry.

Since 2010 productivity in US manufacturing has stagnated, rising just 1% a year compared with the annual 4% growth in the previous two decades. Mr. Annunziata says the industrial internet could help bring back those higher rates of growth.

“The first ICT revolution came in the 1990s: using computers as ways to gather and organize information. Now we are literally making machines more intelli-gent,” he says.

“This tying together of the digi-tal and the physical is something we have never seen before.”

He cites mining companies, under huge pressure to cut costs because of weak com-modity prices, as an example of businesses that are keenly interested in the potential of the technology.

They already record large amounts of data — Teck Re-sources of Canada says it has 200 sensors on every mining truck — and if they can analyze it properly they can discover ways to improve efficiency, such as predicting more precisely when failing parts need to be replaced, reducing the time when expen-sive machinery sits idle.

GE says that at one of its mining customers, trucks that were pre-viously available for use 70% of the time are now available 85%.

Jim Heppelmann, chief execu-tive of PTC, a software company that works with GE and other manufacturers, says that sort of boost to productivity represents a critical competitive advantage.

“If you have a 10% to 20% cost advantage on a product with 3% to 5% margins, you’re going to walk all over the competition,” he says.

GE executives believe it can be in the vanguard of this revolu-tion. The company is spending $1 billion a year to boost its digital capabilities, hiring 1,000 software engineers and data scientists and setting up a new data analytics center in San Ramon, California, just across San Francisco Bay from Silicon Valley.

In the next month, it is expect-ed to launch Predix, its software platform for managing and ana-lyzing industrial data.

“In industry, there is a lot of stuff that people don’t know how to find and don’t know how it

is performing,” says Beth Com-stock, who leads new business development at GE. “We can ana-lyze how it is performing, [and] we can predict what will happen.”

That analysis will be applied to both GE products and to those made by other companies. A modern locomotive is a “rolling data center”, as Mr. Immelt puts it. By analyzing that data and cross-referencing with its rail traffic management system, and sending instructions to trains, GE can squeeze out an extra mile per hour of speed for US railway operators worth $200M per year in extra profits.

Similarly, Toshiba is working on a pilot project with GE to develop an application for installing, op-erating and maintaining lifts.

GE expects the use of Predix to grow rapidly, with 500,000 prod-ucts under management by next year. Ms. Comstock argues that many customers will want GE to provide them with an integrated package of products and services to deliver specified outcomes, with data analysis a central part of the package.

So far GE is the industrial com-pany that has made the strongest commitment to the industrial in-ternet, although other manufac-turers such as Bosch of Germany and France’s Schneider Electric have also been starting to explore it. Siemens, GE’s main European rival, has announced only tenta-tive initiatives.

Friends and familyGE accepts it is facing stiff

competition in data analysis from specialized software com-panies. It argues, however, that rivals start from a position of weakness because they do not have the same understanding of industrial machines.

“The domain knowledge for this is hard to come by. It is held by a small number of people,” says Bill Ruh, head of GE’s global software operations. “We are the best of the best, because of what we’ve done in combining physics and analytics.”

For all Mr. Ruh’s confidence, grafting a world-class software business onto an industrial con-glomerate is not easy.

In its attempt to rebrand itself as “the digital company that’s also an industrial company,” GE has been running adverts showing a young software engineer trying to explain his new job at the com-pany to family and friends.

In one, his friends are un-impressed by what he does for power plants and hospitals, but enthuse over another engineer who is working on “the app where you put fruit hats on animals”.

It is funny because it is true: the gulf between the cultures of Palo Alto, California and GE’s head-quarters in Fairfield, Connecticut is wide.

“They should not underesti-mate the challenge of reinventing themselves as a digital company,”

Mr. Heppelmann says. “Silicon Valley is a very special place in terms of its culture, its star sys-tem, its remuneration. That’s something GE can’t bring.”

It is not just in terms of recruit-ment that Silicon Valley poses a threat to GE.

“GE is in a race to capture cus-tomers before the likes of Ama-zon get better at meeting indus-trial requirements, and before customers get comfortable about using them,” says Mr. Gillett.

Establishing General Electric as a leading company in the industrial internet would be a crowning achievement for Mr. Immelt, who for much of his time at the top of GE has labored in the shadow of Mr. Welch. If the strategy fails, however, it will be his failure.

The arrival of its first activist investor — Nelson Peltz’s Trian Fund Management last year re-vealed a stake of just under 1% — could also prove problematic. While broadly supportive of Mr. Immelt, Trian has urged him to do more to raise profit margins, and it is clear that its amicable tone could sour.

If the costly bet on the indus-trial internet fails, then so will GE’s dreams of achieving growth through technological leadership.

A less glamorous future of deeper cost cuts, lower levels of investment and perhaps a further breakup would await.

Much of the investment from Hollywood has come in the form of promotions for theatrical re-leases or experiments in the new medium, which were distributed for free.

VR production costs are typi-cally higher than making a regu-lar short film or music video, ac-cording to Mr. Milk.

“ What you’re not seeing is anyone making cinematic virtual reality where there is a path to recoup the investment,” he says.

“That is the way that good television is funded [and] that is what Fox has planted a flag with The Martian. They as a studio have now financed something that they expect to recoup their investment on,” he added.

“That’s a shift in the tides and it’s needed for the industry to blossom.”

Mr. Milk, a friend of James Murdoch, Fox’s chief executive, showed a VR demo to a group of the media group’s executives last year.

Mr. Murdoch is a convert to the potential of VR.

“There are filmmakers who talk about virtual reality as sort of an empathy machine, and I think that’s a very powerful notion,” he said recently.

“We will have entertainment that’s indistinguishable from re-ality really soon.”

Mr. Milk says Fox and Anna-purna Pictures, the company behind films including Joy and

American Hustle, are the most ambitious in Hollywood in their VR experiments.

“ What’s really interesting about The Martian experience is that they plan to charge for it,” he says.

For some analysts, Hollywood’s role in bringing VR technology to the masses is inevitable.

“ What Hollywood brings to this is massive expertise in traditional storytelling and a huge library of intellectual property,” says Dan Cryan, a senior analyst with IHS, the research firm.

“VR is a new medium that brings together Hollywood and video games in a way that we haven’t seen before.”

Virtual reality technology can immerse the user into a different time or place.

And what could be more different than a trip to Mars?The new VR project from 21st Century Fox was created in conjunc-

tion with Ridley Scott, who directed The Martian.The film’s VR “experience” gives the user a set of challenges

similar to those tackled by Matt Damon’s character in the movie, such as driving a Mars rover over the planet’s rocky surface.

Mr. Scott produced the VR project. “Having his thumbprint on it connects it tightly to the movie,” says Mike Dunn, worldwide president of Fox Home Entertainment.

The studio plans to build a release “slate” of VR films and has licensed 100 titles to the Oculus platform.

“Two years ago VR was looked at very much as a games platform,” he says.

“But it’s going to be much more than that.”

Ground control

WWW.GE.COM

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S3/3World BusinessTHURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 2016

SAN FRANCISCO — Last year ended with a record-setting drop in personal computer (PC) ship-ments, with Apple bucking the trend, a report found on Tuesday.

The International Data Corp. (IDC) calculated that some 71.9 million PCs were shipped world-wide in the fi nal quarter of 2015, a 10.6% drop from the same period a year earlier.

The PC market faced chal-lenges including competition from smartphones and tablets, and people waiting longer to buy new machines, according to IDC.

“The PC market remains com-petitive and the economic envi-ronment weakened further with the recent drop in the Chinese stock market,” IDC Worldwide PC Tracker Vice-President Loren

Loverde said in a statement.“However, PC replacements

should pick up again in 2016, par-ticularly later in the year.”

Mr. Loverde expected an in-crease in the pace of businesses upgrading to computers powered by new-generation Windows 10 software.

Consumers should also be mo-tivated to upgrade to new PCs

for security and performance improvements, according to IDC.

“The free upgrade path to Win-dows 10 allowed some consumers who might otherwise have shopped for new PCs during the holiday season to obtain a ‘new’ PC experi-ence,” said IDC devices and displays research director Linn Huang.

“Additionally, the launch of the iPad Pro may have siphoned off

some consumer interest in tradi-tional PCs.”

Chinese computer maker Lenovo maintained its top po-sition in the market, shipping nearly 15.4 million PCs in the fi nal quarter of last year, according to IDC.

US rivals HP and Dell were second and third, shipping ap-proximately 14.3 million and 10.2

million PCs respectively, the re-port showed.

Apple saw its position improve, with shipments climbing 2.8% to some 5.66 billion in a year-over-year comparison, according to IDC.

The report listed Apple and Asus as essentially tied for four place in the market in the quarter. — AFP

Personal computer shipments plunge but Apple bucks trend: IDC

THE CHARGING PORT on a BMW 330e is shown as the car is displayed at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, on Jan. 12.

DETROIT — Beneath the hoods of the cars showing in Detroit this week lie engines that are as pow-erful as ever, but are smaller and, helped by direct injection, guzzle less gas.

Automakers have subbed out stainless steel for aluminum and other lighter-weight materials, and added more gears to let en-gines run in “sweet spot” mode more often, so that their cars and trucks can save money on fuel and emit less climate-harming pollutants.

But with gasoline prices now nearly half of what they were just two years ago, the question is, do consumers care?

Or will a surge in sales of higher fuel-consuming cars and trucks, especially sport utility vehicles (SUV), erase recent efficiency gains on US roads?

The improvements to gaso-line-based internal combustion engines that automakers have made show how greater effi-ciency has been mainstreamed throughout the industry, and not just on the electric and hy-brid cars that steal most of the glory.

Under pressure from govern-ment regulation, fuel economy in US cars has risen 26% since 2004, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

SIGNS PROGRESS IS FLAGGINGYet there are signs of fl agging progress. Fuel economy for the fl eet overall was unchanged at 24.3 miles per gallon in 2014, the last year with full data, according to the EPA report.

Data from the University of Michigan Transportation Re-search Institute suggest fuel econ-omy fell in 2015, with a signifi cant drop in the last months of the year.

With gasoline prices so low, customers appear less pressured to buy more fuel-efficient cars, not to mention electrics and hy-brids.

Of the 17.5 million cars US auto-makers sold in 2015, less e� cient pickup trucks and SUVs domi-nated the market and grew much faster in sales than other types.

“You hear a lot of noise about demand for hybrids not being so big,” Honda Executive Vice-President John Mendel said at a launch Monday of its Ridgeline pickup truck.

“When (gasoline) was four or five bucks a gallon, everybody was clamoring for anything — a hybrid,… something to take the sting out.”

FOCUS SHIFTS TO SUVS, PICKUPSTo boot, Bill Fay, group vice-president and general manager at Toyota, said his company has low-

ered production of some fuel-ef-fi cient models, while taking steps to lift output of SUVs and pickups.

Government pressure since the late 2000s to improve fuel con-sumption has spurred the gains. President Barack Obama has set the goal of cars getting 54.5 miles per gallon (4.36 liters per 100 kilo-meter) in 2025, compared to about 29 miles per gallon in 2014.

Compliance is determined on gains of individual models and also whether the average e� cien-cy of an automaker’s overall fl eet is improving enough.

Trucks and SUVs are not ex-pected to get the same mileage as sedans and subcompacts, only to improve their mileage each year.

The result has been not only an unprecedented number of hy-per-efficient electric and hybrid vehicles in the US fl eet, but also the signifi cant improvements in gas-powered cars.

But with trucks and SUVs now dominating sales, automakers have to keep improving the per-formance of those vehicles.

Some industry officials gripe that many of the easiest and cheapest changes have already been made, and meeting the 2025 targets will be hard.

Achieving gains has become more di� cult now that the easi-est changes — the “low-hanging

fruit” — have been implemented, said Wade Newton, a spokesman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers.

“You need more and more advanced technology to meet ever-increasing fuel economy standards,” Mr. Newton said.

Others say there is still lots of potential.

“There’s lots of room to get efficiency from these engines before we get rid of the internal-combustion engine,” said General Motors Executive Vice-President Mark Reuss on Tuesday at a launch of the new GMC Acadia SUV, which weighs 700 pounds (318 kilograms) less than the ver-sion it replaces.

Still, automakers say they are not counting on the government to walk back the fuel targets.

“It’s a poor bet to base your business case on somebody changing the rules at the last minute,” noted Honda Executive Vice-President John Mendel.

Toyota, which has enjoyed the profi table surge in truck and SUV sales, has also unveiled a revamped Prius and in October launched the Mirai, a fuel cell vehicle.

“We’re starting to get ready for a world that doesn’t have any more gas engines by 2050,” Mr. Fay told AFP. “Long way away… but invest-ing in that today.” — AFP

Auto industry’s green push challenged by low gas prices

Google reveals self-driving car slip-ups in test period

FORD MOTOR CO. Chief Executive Mark Fields holds up a new Velodyne LIDAR sensor at the Ford press conference at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, on Jan. 5. Ford said it will begin using a new, lower cost LIDAR sensor made by California-based Velodyne. The high cost of such sensors, which act as the eyes of a self-driving car, is one of the main technical obstacles to widespread commercialization of self-driving vehicles, industry executives say.

Can car crashes become thing of past? Automakers say its closer than you think

EDITOR FRANCISCO P. BALTAZAR

REUTERS

REUTERS

DETROIT — Automakers are imagining a world where nobody dies in car accidents and they say it is closer than most people think.

While they maintain that the real solution to a crash-free world lies in self-driving cars, a host of high-tech safety features are making drivers safer — and better — in the meantime.

“The long-term vision is that cars shouldn’t crash,” Volvo spokesman Jim Trainor said on Tuesday on the sidelines on the Detroit auto show.

Volvo — which has built its reputation on safety leadership — has set a goal that by 2020 nobody will be killed or seriously injured in its new cars.

The past decade has seen dra-matic development by various au-tomakers in the fi eld of collision-avoidance technology.

Blind-spot detectors now watch for oncoming vehicles, adaptive cruise controls reduce speed based on cars ahead, and camera systems warn drivers when they drift out of their lanes.

Detectors can even pick up on a drowsy driver’s subtle changes in behavior to indicate it’s time for a break.

FRUSTRATION-FREE IS ‘KEY’The key to making new safety fea-tures desirable to drivers is en-suring that they assist rather than irritate, Mr. Trainor said.

“If it false brakes too often, people get frustrated and they turn the system o� ,” he told AFP. “We need to calibrate the system so it gives the driver every last possible moment to take action.”

In addition to accident avoid-ance, Volvo is developing systems that reduce injuries when crashes are inescapable.

Among these is a rear impact mitigation system which senses if a car is approaching too quickly and preconditions the interior for impact by tightening seatbelts and engaging brakes.

SAFETY FOR THE MASSESInitially reserved for high-end luxury vehicles, the cost of safety technology is falling and fi nding its way into lower-priced auto-mobiles.

The new Ford Fusion, which the automaker introduced at the Detroit auto show on Monday, contains 20 driver-assistance technologies including a pedes-trian-detection system and a steering wheel that vibrates if a driver begins drifting from the lane.

“As we release more vehicles I think you’ll anticipate a lot of mi-gration across the lineup,” Ford spokesman John Cangany told AFP.

Genral Motor (GM) unveiled a new rear-door monitor in its GMC Acadia crossover on Tues-day that reminds drivers to check the back seat for children before leaving the car.

The safety feature will eventu-ally be included in all of its mod-els.

“Too many children are acci-dentally left behind in vehicles,” Mark Reuss, head of product development at GM, said while introducing the feature.

GM is the first automaker to use the alert system and is work-ing on technology that can detect if a child is left behind.

About 30 to 40 children die ev-ery year in the United States from heat stroke after being left in a hot vehicle, most because their distracted parents simply forgot they were still in their car seats.

“Obviously we want to protect our customers,” Rich Latek, who heads marketing for GMC, told AFP.

“We’re really looking at a goal to end up with zero collisions and zero fatalities. It’s a lofty goal but it’s something that’s possible with the technology that’s out there.”

Meanwhile Toyota recently in-troduced a new suite of features called Safety Sense which will be offered on nearly all models by 2017.

When fi rst introduced on Lex-us vehicles it cost an additional $6,000. Toyota has now managed to bring the price down to $300 to $630, spokesman Mike Kroll said.

SCANDALS HIT CONFIDENCEDespite the science fi ction-like advancements in safety technol-ogy, a slew of scandals has under-mined trust in the reliability of vehicles.

Monday saw the fi rst civil trial over a deadly ignition switch de-fect which GM hid from safety regulators for more than a de-cade and is linked to at least 124 deaths.

Automakers are still working to replace potentially explosive air bags by Japanese supplier Takata in 19 million vehicles in the United States.

And Fiat Chrysler and Toyota have each become embroiled in scandal — and handed millions upon millions of dollars in fi nes — over improperly handling or even covering up defects in millions of vehicles. — AFP

SAN FRANCISCO — Google on Tuesday said that while its self-driving cars have safely driven more than a mil-lion miles, there have been times when humans have had to take over to avoid crashing.

System “anomalies” caused drivers to take the wheel 272 times in California test cars in the 14 months leading up to December, Google said in a report to the California Department of Motor Vehicles.

The test period saw cars travel more than 420,000 miles (676,000 kilometers) across the state.

There were an additional 69 occasions when drivers seized control from automated systems based on their own judgment calls, according to the report.

The most common cause for intervention occurred when technology did not properly sense a real-world situation, the report indicated.

‘TREND LOOKS GOOD’Google then plays out these situations on a simulator to reveal whether the vehicle would have hit something had the human not taken control, according to Chris Ur-mson, head of the Internet giant’s self-driving car team.

Simulations determined that 13 of the 69 “driver-initiated disengagements” would have resulted

in crashes if the car had been steering, the report indicated.

Two of the incidents involved tra� c cones and three were blamed on reckless driving by someone in another vehicle.

Eight of the near-misses took place over the 53,000 miles traveled in California in 2014, while only fi ve hap-pened as the cars logged a hefty 370,000 miles during the 2015 part of the trial, according to Mr. Urmson.

“This trend looks good,” he said.Mr. Urmson cautioned, however, that the number

could actually rise as Google self-driving cars are tested in trickier environments such as dangerous weather or tra� c.

“On our test track, we run tests that are designed to give us extra practice with rare or wacky situations,” Mr. Urmson said.

Engineers also use a powerful simulator to generate scenarios and variations on circumstances.

“Thanks to all this testing, we can develop measur-able confi dence in our abilities in various environ-ments,” Mr. Urmson said.

“This stands in contrast to the hazy variability we accept in experienced human drivers — never mind the

16-year-olds we send onto the streets to learn amidst the rest of us.”

Mr. Urmson was not ready to declare self-driving cars safer than those controlled by humans, but believed Google was making progress toward getting them to market.

DRIVERS STILL NEEDEDCalifornia Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) o� cials last month proposed self-driving car regulations that would mandate that a person be able to take the wheel if needed.

California has the potential to set precedent with its rules for self-driving cars, and the proposed regula-tions were seen as sure to slow down the technology’s progression as it heads mainstream.

“DMV got it exactly right and is putting our safety fi rst,” said John Simpson, director of nonprofi t Con-sumer Watchdog Privacy Project.

“How can Google propose a car with no steering wheel, brakes or driver when its own tests” show so many failures, he added.

Overall Google’s self-driving vehicles have logged more than 1.3 million miles (two million kilometers), the company said. — AFP

4/S3 World Markets THURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 2016

A LATE REBOUND in energy and biotech shares helped push the S&P 500 to a second straight day of gains on Tuesday, while Apple and other technology shares also boosted the market.

The Nasdaq snapped an eight-session losing streak, with the Nasdaq Biotech Index rebound-ing late, also breaking an eight-day run of losses. The biotech index, among the hardest-hit in this year’s sell-o� , ended up 1.5%.

Crude oil prices ended lower after another roller-coaster ses-sion, but the S&P 500 energy index reversed course to end up 0.4%, while shares of Exxon Mobil jumped 2% to $75.20 and Chev-ron rose 1.7% to $82.15.

Technical indicators also sug-gested a rebound was in order,

even if it is just short-lived, ana-lysts said.

“This looks to me like a tech-nical bounce. The market’s very oversold,” said Bruce Zaro, chief technical strategist at Bolton Global Asset Management in Bos-ton. “Until investors can funda-mentally get their heads around oil at this price, the market will react to oil and China.”

Stocks had their worst five-day start to a year ever follow-ing mounting investor concerns about declining oil prices and a China-led slowdown in global growth.

The Dow Jones industrial av-erage on Tuesday was up 117.65 points, or 0.72%, to 16,516.22, the S&P 500 gained 15.01 points, or 0.78%, to 1,938.68 and the Nasdaq

composite added 47.93 points, or 1.03%, to 4,685.92.

Apple ended up 1.5% at $99.96 after Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysts upgraded their rating on the stock, while Intel rose 1.9% to $32.68 after J.P. Mor-gan gave upbeat comments on the stock.

Shares of Alcoa dropped 9% to $7.28, a day after it posted a quarterly net loss.

Health insurer Anthem, Inc. finished up 5.6% at $135.60 per share after it gave a profit fore-cast. It boosted shares of other health insurers, including Unit-edHealth, which gained 2.4% to $112.26.

After the bell, shares of Ford Motor fell 3.1% to $12.45 after it forecast results, while MetLife

gained 7.6% to $45.19 after it said it plans to separate a substantial portion of its US retail business.

Earnings of S&P 500 compa-nies are forecast to have declined 4.7% in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, according to Thom-son Reuters data. It would be the second straight quarterly profit decline for S&P 500 firms. Vol-ume remained heavy. About 9.0 billion shares changed hands on US exchanges, above the 7.5 bil-lion daily average for the past 20 trading days, according to Thom-son Reuters data. Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by 1,600 to 1,470, for a 1.09-to-1 ratio on the downside; on the Nasdaq, 1,417 issues rose and 1,412 fell for a 1-to-1 ratio fa-voring advancers. — Reuters

Energy, biotech stocks help liftWall St. to second day of gains

NEW YORK/LONDON — Gold fell for a third straight session on Tuesday as a rebound in Euro-pean and US stock markets un-dermined the metal’s appeal as a haven from risk, and as the dollar strengthened against a basket of currencies.

Spot gold was down 0.3% at $1,090.30 an ounce at 2:39 p.m. EST (1939 GMT), while US gold futures for February delivery

settled down 1% at $1,085.20 an ounce.

The metal pared losses as US and European shares came off their highs when depressed oil prices failed to sustain a rally, while the US dollar rose for the third straight session. The rise in stocks suggested risk appetite is recovering after last week’s rout.

“(We’re) looking for gold to perhaps get down to the $1,055-

$1,060 level as we expect a bounce in the equity markets to continue on account of earnings that likely will be no worse than estimates, stabilizing macro readings from a number of countries, including China... and a possible jump in oil,” said INTL FCStone analyst Edward Meir.

The metal’s early January rise ran out of steam late last week after prices hit resistance at their

100-day moving average. Gains have been capped by concerns over higher US interest rates. Since the US Federal Reserve raised rates in December, atten-tion has shifted to how many hikes will follow in 2016.

“The Chinese stock market crash and the unease it’s created... lifted gold prices higher,” Natixis analyst Bernard Dahdah said, referencing last week’s rally that

lifted prices to two-month highs. “But generally, (we expect) gold to be below $1,000 this year. The market will be focused on what the Fed decides.”

Holdings of the world’s larg-est gold-backed exchange-traded fund, New York-listed SPDR Gold Shares, rose 2.1 tons on Monday, data from the fund showed.

Among other precious metals, palladium took the biggest dive,

sliding 6.3% to a fi ve-and-a-half year low of $449.55 an ounce before paring losses to $473.40 an ounce. “Concerns over China have continued to dominate pric-ing trends across industrial and PGM metals since the start of the year,” Citi Research said in a note.

Silver was down 0.3% at $13.82 an ounce, while platinum was down 1.2% at $832.95 an ounce. — Reuters

Price of bullion falls as equities rebound in Europe, dollar rises

Oil trades below $30/barrel for first time in 12 years

LONDON — Nickel prices slid to their weakest levels in over 12 years on Tuesday, amid worries about high inventories, while copper sunk to fresh six-and-a-half year lows on persistent wor-ries over China’s economy.

Data on Tuesday showed an-other increase in refined nickel inventories on the London Metal Exchange (LME) to 437,334 tons, a gain of 11% over the past month.

Weak demand from the stain-less steel sector, the dominant source of demand for nickel, and a glut of supply have hammered prices.

Analyst Ash Lazenby at HSBC said the bank slashed nickel price forecasts by 22%-34% for 2016-18, saying nickel ore stockpiles were high at 773,000 tons and will take about three years to halve. “We cut our price forecasts… re-fl ecting a protracted recovery as a result of slow supply discipline and heightened inventory levels.”

LME three-month nickel, which was the worst performer on the LME last year with losses of over 40%, tumbled to $8,120 a ton, the lowest since May 2003, before paring losses to close at $8,220, a decline of 0.6%.

Base metals have been hit by relentless selling pressure on fears over economic and demand growth prospects in top consum-er China.

Benchmark LME copper hit another multi-year low, ending

down 0.7% at $4,355 a ton, its weakest since May 2009.

Copper briefl y moved into pos-itive territory during the session as some investors bought back short positions to lock in prof-its, traders said, but those gains evaporated as other speculators resumed the selling.

A revival of manufactured ex-ports in China, which accounts for nearly half of global copper demand, may need a weaker yuan, analysts say. But China’s central bank has other ideas, stepping up e� orts to curb bets against the yuan. “China needs to let the cur-rency find its own level, which could result in stronger growth and commodity demand further down the road,” said Danske Bank analyst Jens Pederson.

A firmer US currency also undermined demand for metals as it makes dollar-denominated metals more expensive for non-US fi rms.

Traders say a seasonal lull in demand ahead of China’s Lunar New Year holiday was making the weak outlook appear even worse.

T h r e e - m o n t h a l u m i n u m , which has been the best LME per-former this year, finished down 0.8% at $1,450 a ton, the lowest since Dec. 1 last year.

Lead bucked the weaker trend and closed up 0.4% at $1,607, while zinc ended 1% weaker at $1,468 and tin dropped 1.7% to $13,450. — Reuters

NEW YORK — Oil fell briefl y be-low the widely watched $30-per-barrel level on Tuesday, extend-ing a sell-o� that has sliced almost 20% o� prices this year amid deepening concerns about fragile Chinese demand and the absence of output restraint.

Prices settled down 3%, a seventh straight daily decline for oil. Traders have all but given up attempting to predict where the new year rout will end, with momentum-driven dealing and overwhelmingly bearish senti-ment engulfi ng the market. Some analysts warned of $20 a barrel; Standard Chartered said fund selling may not relent until it reaches $10.

By Tuesday, the crash had be-come almost self-fulfilling, with speculators too afraid to buy for fear of being burned by another false bottom. The slide appeared to fi rst accelerate when it broke below the $32 area around 9 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT).

The $30 mark is both a psycho-logical and fi nancial threshold. In recent days, traders have poured money into $30 put options for expiration in February and March. Hedging activity usually

picks up as oil prices near big a options level, as buyers and sell-ers defend their interests. More than 15,000 contracts traded on Tuesday and 18,000 contracts traded on Monday for the Febru-ary contract, more than doubling Friday’s volumes.

US West Texas Intermediate crude (WTI) fell 97 cents to settle at $30.44 a barrel, a 3.1% loss, after touching a low of $29.93, which was last seen in December 2003.

“The momentum is too strong to the bearish side, even if funda-mentally nothing has changed,” said Dominick Chirichella, a se-nior partner at Energy Manage-ment Institute.

With prices now below break-even costs for many producers, particularly in the once-thriving US shale patch, and the costly Ca-nadian oil sands producers barely making $15 a barrel, an extended slump has caused financial pain to fl are across the world, threat-

ening corporate bankruptcies and fi scal strain.

Benchmark Brent crude fell 69 cents settle at $30.86, after bottoming at $30.34.

Prices fi rmed early in the day after a deadly suicide bombing rocked central Istanbul and Ni-geria’s oil minister said a couple of Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) members had requested an emer-gency meeting.

But they then nose-dived anew after the United Arab Emirates oil minister quashed talk of a pos-sible meeting, saying the group strategy was working. OPEC has rejected calls by some of its members to curb output, opting instead to pump full throttle to defend market share rather than shore up prices.

Oil has tumbled nearly 17% this year alone, the worst seven-day run since the fi nancial crisis. The long list of negative factors also includes the weakening economy and ailing stock mar-ket of no. 2 consumer China, the rising US dollar which makes oil more costly and the surprising re-silience of US shale drillers in the face of the price slide. — Reuters

Nickel hits 12-year low on high inventories

EDITOR WILFREDO G. REYES

�

ASIA-DUBAI(JANUARY CONTRACT)

� DOLLARS PER BBL� 30 days to January 12, 2016

Average (Jan. 4-12) $29.26Average (Dec. 1-31) $34.64

Jan. 6 7 8 11 12

$/bbl 30.20 27.20 29.20 28.10 26.50

NEW YORK-WTI(FEBRUARY CONTRACT)

Average (Jan. 4-12) $33.57Average (Dec. 1-31) $37.33

Jan. 6 7 8 11 12

$/bbl 33.97 33.27 33.16 31.41 30.44

�

� DOLLARS PER BBL� 30 days to January 12, 2016

LONDON-BRENT(FEBRUARY CONTRACT)

Average (Jan. 4-12) $33.94Average (Dec. 1-31) $38.86

Jan. 6 7 8 11 12

$/bbl 34.23 33.75 33.55 31.55 30.86

�

� DOLLARS PER BBL� 30 days to January 12, 2016

Source: REUTERS

FOOD COCOA ICCO Dly (SDR/mt) 2,131.45COCOA ICCO $/mt 2,953.28COFFEE ICA comp ‘79 cts/lb 109.33COFFEE mild arabica NY cts/lb 143.44COFFEE mild arabica B’men/H’burg 141.31COFFEE robusta NY cts/lb 82.17COFFEE robusta Le Havre/Marseilles 73.54SUGAR ISA FOB Daily Price, Carib. port cts/lb 13.92SUGAR ISA 15-day ave. 14.52GRAINS (FOB Bangkok basis at every Thursday) FRAGRANT (100%) 1st Class, $/ton 789FRAGRANT (100%) 2nd Class, $/ton 761RICE (5%) White Thai- $/ton 366RICE (10%) White Thai- $/ton 363RICE (15%) White Thai- $/ton 362RICE (25%) White Thai- $/ton (Super) 358BROKER RICE A-1 Super $/ton 329

METAL COPPER Merchant,US cts/lb 200.8COPPER No. 2 Refi ned, US cts/lb 355.35COPPER Bare Bright,del US cts/lb 389.85LEAD battery scrap, del US cts/lb 42.5LEAD Premium, del US cts/lb 13.5ALUMINUM Premium, del US cts/lb 8.95ALUMINUM Alloy, spot, US cts/lb 87ALU Mixed Clips, del US cts/lb 61ALU Turnings, del US cts/lb 49TIN Premium/Grade A, US cts/lb 34.03TIN Premium/Low Lead, US cts/lb 41.9PALLADIUM free $/troy oz 473.45PALLADIUM JMI base, $/troy oz 476PLATINUM free $/troy oz 841.3PLATINUM JMI base $/troy oz 844KRUGGERAND, fob $/troy oz 1,074.2NICKEL Premium, del US cts/lb 22.5ZINC Premium, del US cts/lb 7IRIDIUM, whs rot, $/troy oz 510RHODIUM, whs rot, $/troy oz 630

SPOT PRICES TUESDAY, JANUARY 12, 2016

New Robusta 10 MT - $/ton High Low Sett Psett

Mar. 1450 1432 1448 1444

May 1479 1461 1477 1473

July 1507 1491 1507 1502

Sept. 1533 1517 1533 1528

High Low Sett Psett

Mar. 2079 2044 2063 2068

May 2083 2047 2066 2070

July 2084 2048 2067 2070

Sept. 2079 2044 2062 2065

LIFFE COCOA (Ldn)-10 MT-£/ton

LME FINAL CLOSING PRICES, US$/MT

CASH 3 MOS

ALUM. H.G. 1,457.00 1,450

ALUM. Alloy 1,600.00 1,610

COPPER 4,355.00 4,352

LEAD 1,597.00 1,607

NICKEL 8,180.00 8,240

TIN 13,500.00 13,450

ZINC 1,453.50 1,468

LONDON METAL EXCHANGE

LIFFE COFFEE

MANILA COPRA (based on 6% moisture)

Peso/100kg Buyer/Seller

Lag/Qzn/Luc 3,300/3,380

Coconut Oil - Crude 64.50/65.50

COCONUT OIL (PHIL/IDN),$ per ton,

CIF Rotterdam

Feb. 16/ March 16 1,140.00

March 16/ April 16 1,142.50

COCONUT OIL (US)-cents/lb

Crude CIF, NY Nola March / April

Crude FOB rail Nola March

COCONUT

30 days to JANUARY 12, 2016

DOW JONES

OPEN: 16,419.11 CLOSE: 16,516.22

HIGH: 16,591.35 NET: 117.65

LOW: 16,322.07 PREV: 16,398.57

NASDAQ COMPOSITE

30 days to JANUARY 12, 2016

OPEN: 4,681.54 CLOSE: 4,685.92

HIGH: 4,714.80 NET: 47.93

LOW: 4,618.03 PREV: 4,637.99

FTSE

30 days to JANUARY 12, 2016

OPEN: 5,871.83 CLOSE: 5,929.24

HIGH: 5,985.80 NET: 57.41

LOW: 5,866.67 PREV: 5,871.83

DJ EURO STOXX

30 days to JANUARY 12, 2016

OPEN: 3,026.70 CLOSE: 3,064.66

HIGH: 3,099.54 NET: 37.17

LOW: 3,019.68 PREV: 3,027.49

225-NIKKEI

30 days to JANUARY 13, 2016

OPEN: 17,499.12 CLOSE: 17,715.63

HIGH: 17,717.75 NET: 496.67

LOW: 17,414.55 PREV: 17,218.96

KOSPI

30 days to JANUARY 13, 2016

OPEN: 1,904.33 CLOSE: 1,916.28

HIGH: 1,921.00 NET: 25.42

LOW: 1,902.49 PREV: 1,890.86

US COMMODITY FUTURES TUESDAY, JANUARY 12, 2016Source: REUTERS

PLATINUM(JANUARY CONTRACT)

30 days to JANUARY 12, 2016

Dollars per ounce

OPEN: 845.60 CLOSE: 837.50HIGH: 845.60 NET: -7.50LOW: 832.80 PREV: 845.00

GOLD(JANUARY CONTRACT)

30 days to JANUARY 12, 2016

Dollars per ounce

OPEN: 1,093.80 CLOSE: 1,085.60HIGH: 1,098.50 NET: -10.90LOW: 1,084.00 PREV: 1,096.50

SILVER(JANUARY CONTRACT)

30 days to JANUARY 12, 2016

Dollars per ounce

OPEN: 13.86 CLOSE: 13.74HIGH: 13.86 NET: -0.12LOW: 13.71 PREV: 13.86

COPPER(JANUARY CONTRACT)

30 days to JANUARY 12, 2016

Dollars per ounce

OPEN: 1.96 CLOSE: 1.95HIGH: 1.96 NET: -0.01LOW: 1.95 PREV: 1.97

COFFEE(MARCH CONTRACT)

30 days to JANUARY 12, 2016

US cents per pound

OPEN 114.50 CLOSE: 114.35HIGH: 115.30 NET: -0.10LOW: 113.60 PREV: 114.45

SUGAR(MARCH CONTRACT)

30 days to JANUARY 12, 2016

US cents per pound

OPEN: 14.25 CLOSE: 14.05HIGH: 14.27 NET: -0.10LOW: 13.93 PREV: 14.15

COCOA(MARCH CONTRACT)

30 days to JANUARY 12, 2016

US cents per pound

OPEN: 2,875.00 CLOSE: 2,860.00HIGH: 2,892.00 NET: -42.00LOW: 2,852.00 PREV: 2,902.00

WHEAT(MARCH CONTRACT)

30 days to JANUARY 12, 2016

Dollars per bushel

OPEN: 470.25 CLOSE: 481.25HIGH 483.25 NET: 12.25LOW: 462.50 PREV: 469.00

S4/1THURSDAYJANUARY 14, 2016

s p e c i a l f e a t u r eVOL XXIX ISSUE 119 ISSN0116-3930

FINEX INAUGURAL MEETING AND INDUCTION CEREMONIES 2016

w w w . b w o r l d o n l i n e . c o m

AYALA AD9x27 FC

T H E F I N A N C I A L E x e c u t i v e s I n s t i t u t e o f t h e P h i l i p p i n e s (FINEX) holds its annual Inaugural Meeting and Induction Ceremonies tod ay i n celebr at ion of it s 4 8 t h fou nd ing a n n iversa r y on Fr iday, January 15, 2016. George S. Chua, this year’s elected president, chose “Supporting Financial Inclusion for a ll Filipinos” as FIN E X’s overa ll t h e m e f o r 2 016 t o u n d e r s c o r e t he ne e d for mor e F i l ipi no s t o be i ncluded a nd i nvolved i n t he country’s financial system.

“It will enable more Filipinos to participate in the development of the Philippines not only as a beneficiary but a lso a s a contr ibutor to this development,” Mr. Chua recently told BusinessWorld in an email. “As people know how to manage their finances, they are able to make more intelligent decisions in ter ms of investments and savings.”

Accord i ng to h i m, t he lack of job opportunities and government policies that do not encourage or deter economic growth — such as the high tax rate, high cost of utilities, and the lack of infrastructure — are among the key factors that hinder the country from being financially inclusive.

Heightening financial inclusionTo address these, Mr. Chua said

FINEX equips finance professionals with the skills and network needed to do their jobs well, and in turn, this enables them to thrive in their field and contribute to the profitability and productivity of their companies.

“This results to their growth and expansion which provides for more job opportunities for Filipinos,” he said. “Of course, FINEX can also provide training and seminars to help educate the general public on basic financial knowledge such as budgeting, savings, and investments.”

For his part, Ronald S. Goseco, this year’s elected executive vice president, believes financial inclusion is crucial “to include the vast majority of our Filipino population in the economic growth and promise of our national development.”

“The base of the economic pyramid could provide the greatest impetus to the economic growth of the country. If this base prospers, the country’s growth is amplified,” Mr. Goseco also said in an email. “We have to provide financial and market opportunities to allow this segment of the population to participate in the economic benefits of the country.”

Like Mr. Chua, he said that FINEX helps ma nage these concerns by

prov id ing tra in ing for f ina ncia l competence.

Mr. Chua pointed out that the organization would like to provide more activities for its members not only for their professional growth but also their personal development, so they are planning to hold more outdoor activities this year.

“We have many activities lined up like our Monthly General Membership Meeting with guest speakers, our FINEX Week and Convention, golf tournaments, sports and recreational activities, cultural events, seminars, Family Day, and other joint activities with other organizations.”

Last year, FINEX championed the theme “Building Bridges Towards Sustainable Development” and held a myriad of successful activities both for members and the general public. In a message published online in August 2015, outgoing FIN E X president

Jaime E. Ysmael outlined some of the recent accomplishments of the group, including holding its Annual SME Day with host Senator Paolo Benigno “Bam” Aquino to celebrate the National SME Month; hosting the third SME Forum under the theme “SMEs = Inclusive Growth”, which the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) sponsored; hold i ng t he Mid-Yea r Econom ic Briefing, which hosts three economic briefings each year; and hosting the 11th Parangal Golf Tournament in honor of Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Governor Amando M. Tetangco.

F I N E X a l s o s p o n s o r e d a session during the 7th Cor porate Treasur y and CFO Summit, titled “Forgetting the numbers: W hat it takes for finance executives to focus on the bigger picture”, which had pa r t icipa nt s Mt . Grace Hospit a l CFO Ted Constantino, Ayala Corp.

CFO TG Limcaoco, Shell Philippines Exploration Finance Director Jeng Pascual, and Seaoil Philippines CFO Mark Yu as panelists.

FINEX is a non-stock, non-profit, non-political association that was for ma lly orga nized a nd founded on January 15, 1968 by 12 financial executives: Elmer D. Aguilar, Reneo A. Albano, Edgardo Bacani, Romeo Y. Co, Romeo C. Esteban, Ramon K. Ilusorio, Jaime Y. Ladao, Vicente J. Muro, Vicente Pacis, Jr., Joaquin R. Olaño, Antonio Sta. Ana, and Arsenio J. Vistro.

Today, it is an institution known to carr y out initiatives aimed at fulfilling the objectives upon which it wa s established, including its primary goal of being the lead national organization of finance professionals and practitioners dedicated to the advancement of financial knowledge and expertise.

2/S4 special feature

CHINA BANK AD5x24 FC

THURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 2016

FINEX INAUGURAL MEETING AND INDUCTION CEREMONIES 2016

Messages

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) extends its warmest greetings to the Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines (FINEX) as you celebrate your 48th Founding Anniversary and hold your Inaugural Meeting and Induction Ceremonies for 2016.

The BSP is pleased that FINEX has chosen “Supporting Financial Inclusion for All Filipinos” as theme for these events.

As a longtime advocate of financial inclusion, the BSP welcomes the efforts of FINEX to extend benefits from the formal financial system to as many Filipinos as possible.

With your intimate knowledge of finance and your broad membership base, FINEX is in a strategic position to become proponents of financial inclusion in the sectors and industries that your members represent.

Your decision to promote this advocacy is indeed very timely as it is in line with multi-sector efforts to improve the well-being of the unbanked under the National Strategy for Financial Inclusion.

The BSP looks forward to collaborating with FINEX in this regard.

AMANDO M. TETANGCO, JR. Governor Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas

With great delight, I extend my congratulations to the Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines (FINEX) as you celebrate your 48th founding anniversary this January.

I commend your organization’s theme this year which aims to highlight the need to support the push towards financial inclusion in the Philippines. Promoting financial inclusion is a noble advocacy for it showcases the collective effort of the government and its partner organizations to bridge the gap between the rich and the poor.

Please continue to be a good partner in promoting this advocacy through educating the public and promoting financial literacy. For our part, the Commission will remain true to our mandate to supervise and regulate the corporate and capital market infrastructure of the country and to promote and ensure the protection of the investing public. In doing this, we hope to create a good environment that will foster the creation of more micro, small, and

medium enterprises, and to shield the hard-earned money of investors from scams. Again, congratulations and mabuhay!

TERESITA J. HERBOSA Chairperson Securities and Exchange Commission

GEORGE CHUA likes to ride bikes. He likes them all – small ones, in-between ones, and big ones. One thing you have to remember when you ride bikes fast is that you’ve got to plan ahead. You have to know the route and you have to know the proper safety procedures. That’s the paradox of being a good bike rider: these guys aren’t reckless – they plan ahead to be safe.

That’s the same kind of discipline that Chua brings to his FINEX Presidency. He thinks ahead, and he implements his plan. He scored an landslide victory at the presidential elections held at the board level last year and he takes over from Jimmy Ysmael, the outgoing President.

Ysmael’s theme for his presidency was “Building Bridges Towards Sustainable Devel-opment,” a reflection of the outward looking point of view given the impending ASEAN integration. Chua’s them is “Supporting Fi-nancial Inclusion for All Filipinos.” In a way, Chua is building a bridge to his fellow Filipino by offering them the tools and the education to stave off financial ignorance.

“I think it is about time that we focus on really doing something for the Filipino people as financial executives,” Chua says. “Every few months people are victimized by pyramiding scams, and people are taken advantage of by unscrupulous money lenders.”

The 2014 Findex Database shows that only 31% of Filipinos have access to the formal banking system. The remainder are “un-banked.” This also means that the majority of Filipinos lack basic financial literacy. Chua talks about his theme passionately because for those Filipinos with jobs, most live from paycheck to paycheck. “Shouldn’t we look closer to home first?” he asks. “Let’s reach out to our neighbors and make sure that we do our civic duty closer to home.”

Chua’s concern for the common Pinoy stems from his belief in the power of individu-als to get things done. One may view him as an optimistic pragmatist. “I come from a family of entrepreneurs,” he explains. “My parents and grandparents were businessmen. I al-ways felt it was my responsibility to get things done.” He believes that one of the highest imperatives of the private sector is to provide jobs to people qualified to do them.

George Chua elected FINEX President, aims to push financial inclusion

“There is a big multiplier effect in manu-facturing. There are upstream industries and downstream industries,” he says. “The value chain is longer, with more value added opportunities.” He believes people need jobs, not handouts.

Chua believes in the power of the indi-vidual, and he also believes in the power of business to get things done. He also happens to be the President of the Federation of Philip-pine Industries (FPI). While he is now in the automotive sector, as President of Bayan Au-tomotive Industries Corp (BAIC), he started out as a banker. He spent 15 years as a banker before moving to the corporate side.

“My career has been more evolutionary” he says. “I have held CFO positions in the past, and I advanced to COO and CEO in my career.” He credits having gone through the finance function, and into general management, with giving him a broad based knowledge across industries and functions.

Chua dispels any notion of being satisfied with the status quo. “There’s an old saying that if something isn’t broken, don’t fix it” he states. He maintains this generally accepted piece of wisdom is false. “If it is the case we will never progress,” he says. “Maybe you need to fix what is broken first, but when every-thing is running smoothly, maybe you need to think about whether you can do more.” Chua believes that one has to set the pace, to be the example for others to follow.

In his career, he believes his best work has been done during times of distress. “My great-est achievements have been turning around companies,” he reveals. “I have restructured companies, stopped losses from recurring, and made firms profitable again.” He does not claim a secret formula or process for achieving corporate turnarounds. “The first thing to do is to assess the situation properly” he explains. “Go out into the field, keep an open mind, and see everything yourself. Only then will you get the proper baseline information.”

Given that, he is an empiricist, observ-ing what is, rather than what he wants it to be. “Biases cloud people’s judgment” Chua explains. “I try to assess the loca-tion of the bottlenecks, whether it is due to wrong people or flawed processes. I try to concentrate resources where they are most effective.” Our country needs more people like George Chua.

2016 FINEX Committees

My Friends,It is truly an honor for me to have been elected as the President of FINEX for 2016.

Having been a member since 1992 and as a Life Member, I have many fond memories of our organization and of course the many wonderful friends that I have gotten to know and cherish throughout this time. FINEX is like a family to me where we not only nurture our professional development but also our personal growth.

For 2016, our theme is “Supporting Financial Inclusion for all Filipinos”, to highlight the continuing difficulties that many Filipinos face in terms of economic hardship brought about by unemployment, underemployment and the lack of proper understanding of fundamental financial principles such budgeting, savings and investments. Our objective is of course to be part of the solution by doing our job as finance professionals in ensuring

the efficient financial management of our respective organizations so that we can generate more job opportunities for Filipinos.

Our thrust also includes financial education that will not only cater to the needs of CFOs and Finance Directors but also to have seminars and programs that will appeal to the grass roots so that they do not become victims of various pyramiding scams and also learn how to manage their funds properly so that they can look forward to a comfortable retirement. We would also like to be more involved in the development of MSMEs. Perhaps through our FINEX Foundation for Entrepreneurship, Inc. we can institute more programs that will provide mentoring and financial education particularly in the areas of budgeting, forecasting, project feasibility and credit and collection.

As a Presidential Election year, 2016 promises to be an exciting year full of hope. While FINEX is a non-political organization and does not endorse any political candidate, we are aware of the impact that government rules and regulations, legislation and court rulings will have in business, particularly in accounting and tax matters. This is another area where FINEX can provide some technical assistance and support to whoever will be elected into office.

It is my pleasure to be your President for 2016 and I will do my best to serve you.Thank you for your support and confidence in me. Mabuhay ang FINEX!

GEORGE S. CHUA President FINEX

COMMITTEES LIAISON DIRECTOR CHAIRMAN CO-CHAIRMAN VICE CHAIRMAN Affiliates Esther P. Magleo Persie Torregoza ASEAN Economic Integration Gaudencio S. Hernandez, Jr. Benedicta Du-Baladad

Audit Eusebio V. Tan Jaime Villegas Capital Markets Development Consuelo D. Garcia Senen Matoto CFO of the Year Grace P. Tiongco Melito Salazar, Jr. Abelardo CortezCFO of the Year - Search and Selection Grace P. Tiongco Ma. Teresita Dimaculangan Judith LopezElections George S. Chua Jaime Ysmael Ethics Valentin A. Araneta Alfredo Javellana II Finance Erdulfo S. Sison Exequiel Lampa FINEX Week/AnnualConference Esther P. Magleo Norie Bordador Golden Jubilee George S. Chua Gregorio Navarro

COMMITTEES LIAISON DIRECTOR CHAIRMAN CO-CHAIRMAN VICE CHAIRMANGood Governance Florencia G. Tarriela Hilaria Concepcion Information & CommunicationsTechnology Peter Wallace Reynaldo Lugtu, Jr. International Relations Edith D. Dychiao Rosanna Quito Judicial Reforms Peter Wallace Santiago Dumlao, Jr. Junior FINEX Edith D. Dychiao Rene Jazmines Membership Ronald S. Goseco Stephanie Zulueta National Affairs Edith D. Dychiao Eduardo Yap Professional Development Carmen V.F. Serina Ma. Victoria Españo Marilou Cristobal Programs and Meetings Ronald S. Goseco Loretta Mangilit Antonino Inumerable Media Affairs Jaime E. Ysmael Wilma Miranda Speakers’ Bureau Grace P. Tiongco Marybeth Delgado Sports and Wellness Cecilio Paul D. San Pedro Arthur Chung Tax and Legal Eusebio V. Tan Euney Marie Mata-Perez Ways and Means Erdulfo S. Sison Franklin Ysaac Secretariat Ronald S. Goseco

By Raoul Villegas

UNION BANK AD9x27 FC

2016 FINEX Board of Directors

GEORGE S. CHUAPresident

RONALD S. GOSECOExecutive VP

ESTHER P. MAGLEOVP Internal Affairs

EDITH D. DYCHIAO VP External Affairs

CONSUELO D. GARCIA VP Capital Markets

FLORENCIA G. TARRIELA VP Corporate Governance

CARMEN V.F. SERINA VP Professional Development

ERDULFO S. SISON Treasurer

ATTY. EUSEBIO V. TAN Corporate Secretary

VALENTIN A. ARANETADirector

GAUDENCIO S. HERNANDEZ, JR.

Director

CECILIO PAUL D. SAN PEDRO

Director

GRACE P. TIONGCODirector

PETER WALLACEDirector

JAIME E. YSMAELDirector

2016 FINEX Foundation Board of Trustees

GEORGE S. CHUAVice Chairman

JAIME E. YSMAELChairman

ATTY. FRANCISCO ED. LIM Corporate Secretary

SHERISA P. NUESA Treasurer

JAIME Y. LADAOCorporate Auditor

ADOR A. ABROGENATrustee

ATTY. BENEDICTA DU-BALADAD

Trustee

OMAR T. CRUZTrustee

VICTOR P. DELA DINGCOTrustee

EDUARDO V. FRANCISCOTrustee

VICTOR Y. LIM, JR.Trustee

CONCHITA L. MANABATTrustee

ANTONILO D. MAURICIOTrustee

EDMUNDO S. SORIANOTrustee

BENITO G. SOLIVEN IIITrustee

S4/3special featureTHURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 2016

FINEX INAUGURAL MEETING AND INDUCTION CEREMONIES 2016

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