Archive for the ‘money’ Category
last-minute blues
there must be another way of handling the comelec registration process. alam naman natin na may last-minute mentality ang pinoy. comelec should have expected, and prepared for, the swarm instead of saying, kayo kasi… lalo na’t merong concessions made to the rich and famous, like satellite ek-eks in kris aquino’s case, and good old palakasan as in manuel buencamino’s. these, while masses of ordinary pinoys without connections had to line up for hours to register, if they were able to at all. paano ka naman matutuwa sa ganyang palakad.
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i can’t believe people are raving about the noynoy video hindi ka nag-iisa. what’s so powerful about that torch-lit parade led by noynoy that went nowhere. i’m like, they love this? c’mon people, taas-taasan naman ang standards natin. we already know na hindi siya nag-iisa. tell us something new, let’s hear him talking platform. hindi porke anak siya nina Ninoy at Cory ay okay na, siguradong he won’t lie, cheat, or steal. that’s just too low a bar for a presidential candidate. i need to hear how he’s going to address the problems of poverty, land reform, environment, education, foreign debt, chacha, atbp. i will not take him, or anyone, on sheer faith. i leave that to the pink sisters.
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ayon kay senador nene pimentel tuloy tuloy ang pag-benta ng gma administration ng government assets, tipong ‘midnight sale,’ mostly to raise money pampuno sa napakalaking budget ng 2009 or puwede ring pangkampanya sa 2010. whatever, hindi lang pala ang food terminal inc. sa taguig at ang government shares in san miguel corp. at pnoc energy exploration corp. ang ibinebenta. pati pala the sprawling properties ng national center for mental health at ng welfareville sa mandaluyong, gayon din ng national penitentiary sa muntinlupa city at ng home for the aged sa quezon city, “in complete disregard of their importance in providing vital social government services.” ano ba yan. ubos ubos biyaya. and then what. pag naubos, nakatunganga. there must be a smarter way of handling our resources. let’s demand that presidentiables be honest, yes, but also creative and wise.
environment & revolution 3
FORESTS GONE
(In Defense of Kaingineros)Junie Kalaw
In 1863, after three hundred years of free access to forests for all, natives and Spaniards alike, the Inspeccion General de Montes was created by royal decree to keep track of, and control access to, the forests that blanketed the archipelago. It was charged with all matters that had to do with the cutting of timber, the opening up of virgin forests, and the selling of forest land. The discernible goals of forest policy were to (1) provide for Spanish civil and naval needs for timber, (2) contribute to government revenue, and (3) perpetuate forest resources. These goals were not met. Revenues from commercial timber exploitation and forest use were low. Timber could be used freely under a permit but few bothered; illegal cutting of trees and clearing of forest lands for cultivation increased among the natives. In 1874 kaingin farming was banned and commercial cutting a crime.
Fortunately the population was small and forest loss negligible. In fact, when Spain ceded the Philippines to the United States in 1898, the islands were still covered with forests, plains and mountains alike. According to a report of the U.S.-appointed director of the Forestry Bureau, the forests of Mindanao, Palawan, Samar, and Luzon were intact, “waiting to be explored.”
The forest industry flourished under American rule, thanks to America’s huge demand for Philippine hardwood. Soon enough the forests started to suffer from both destructive logging and kaingin farming. By 1934 only about 17 million hectares or 57% of the country’s 30 million-hectare forest remained. By World War II the lumber industry ranked second in employment and fourth in value of production among Philippine export industries, with annual government revenues from forest charges averaging Php 2.5 million.
During the occupation, the Japanese took every opportunity to exploit Philippine forests. Forest stations in occupied territories were made to continue operations, resulting in severe destruction of forests and the devastation of the industry, with 141 out of 163 sawmills completely destroyed.
Upon independence, the state’s ownership of all forest land was affirmed. Projecting a bias for social justice and equity and envisioning democratic participation, the Philippine Constitution mandated that natural resources belong to the state. In practice, the “state” has meant politicians and their business partners, and the doctrine has been “what is good for business is good for the general welfare.”
The forestry industry was rehabilitated and mechanized with American help and the exploitation of timber institutionalized through the concession system used by most governments of the tropical world. Set up for the private management of commercial forests and to allow public authorities to collect revenue, the state controls exploitation through (1) a system of licensing that limits the area and duration of concession to 50 years, including renewals; (2) the collection of fees based on the volume cut; and (3) the enforcement of a maximum allowable cut derived from estimates of sustainable productivity. Firms capable of setting up or linking with a complementary sawmill or wood–processing operation are more likely to be granted licenses.
In response to U.S. market demands, and to raise revenues for industrialization, the country resumed exporting forest products, with exports valuing Php 3.3 million in 1949. Early in the next decade Japan stepped up its imports of Philippine hardwood, lauan in particular; from half a million cubic meters by 1952 to 4 million cubic meters by the end of the decade. Forests were then clear-cut, large-scale, without concern for the future, until 1954 when government imposed the selective logging system on commercial loggers. Designed as a “sustainable yield management scheme,” it requires the logger to refrain from cutting a certain proportion of trees in the concession, as designated by the Bureau of Forest Development, the residual stand to be managed by the logger, who arranges a second cycle of cutting after a specific growing period.
In the 1960s the Japanese government decided to develop its own wood-processing export industry, treating the forest resources of the Philippines and other South Seas countries as a singe resource base. Hardwood imports, mainly logs, were processed into plywood in Japan and the best-quality production exported to the U.S. This trade enjoyed special government privileges since it helped obtain precious currency for the Japanese economy and fueled the development of its plywood manufacturing industry.
In 1969, the peak year of the “logging boom,” the Philippines exported 8.3 million cubic meters of logs to Japan. Two co-existing systems facilitated the process. The first consisted of local concerns (Chinese timber merchants who generally managed the logging for the well-connected Filipino concessionaires) borrowing large capital from Japanese trading houses for the purchase of logging equipment; loans were repaid with log shipments. The second system consisted of joint ventures between local capital and Japanese trading houses, with the Japanese supplying as much as 30% of the capital investment through the back door.
In the early 1970s log exports started to decline. Despite the selective logging policy, Mindanao had been largely deforested, its high-density dipterocarp stands in accessible areas exhausted. Logging continued but mostly in Luzon. In principle, a ban on exports and a ban on logging in seven provinces, later reduced to six, were introduced in 1976. However, government repeatedly delayed their implementation for “economic recovery” reasons.
Deforestation took place most rapidly under the authoritarian regime of Ferdinand Marcos. The Japanese system of processing imported Philippine hardwood and then exporting the best products to the U.S. not only earned the Japanese government scarce currencies but also permitted the excesses of Marcos cronies. When the Aquino administration came into power in 1986, several large concessions, some of them directly connected with Japanese interests, were canceled and a number of people, including government officials, were charged with corruption.
President Corazon Aquino, on whom the hopes of the 1986 revolution were pinned, did not fare much better, unfortunately. By 1988, according to the latest nationwide inventory survey, Philippine forests had shrunk to 6.3 million hectares or 21% of their original area, with as much as 80% of these remaining forests partly logged over. The most severely affected type is the naturally-grown dipterocarp forest. Once dominating the country’s silvicultural pattern, it now stands marginally in (only) 4 out of 12 regions. From 1934 to 1988, the size and proportion of this type of forest declined between 11.1 and 13.6 million hectares to about 1.04 hectares. In other words, almost 90% of the natural dipterocarp forest existing in the mid-’30s had been either cleared or transformed into residual forest areas, unproductive mossy fields, and open cogon lands by the 1980s.
The problem is essentially an institutional one, having to do with rules of access and control. The red tape and complicated requirements involved in acquiring a Timber Licensing Agreement (TLA) or forest concession effectively squeeze out small-time operators or community interests in favor of big and influential concerns. Besides, the prices assigned to standing timber are so low relative to their true market values that logging concessionaires make a killing in “rents,” which is the “surplus” profit available to a logging company once labor, equipment, and marketing costs are accounted for. Since they incur no costs in producing the timber, loggers’ profits are often far higher than normal capital remuneration, which has led to the overexploitation of the resource.
This would also explain why the selective logging system has not worked for Philippine forests. It has been shown that while the first cutting cycle is profitable for the private logger, the timber-stand improvement phase is not, due to the long period of time involved in waiting for the second cut. Thus loggers tend to maximize revenues from the first cut, and then forego the second. Invariably, when the loggers move on, “informal” forest users follow in their wake to clear logged-over areas for kaingin farming. These are mostly migrant farmers from lowland communities, numbering some 14 million Filipinos.
It is important to recognize the critical nature of this population pressure on the forest areas, which are now mostly in the uplands. Unlike indigenous tribes that have long adapted to the environment, migrant farmers tend to overexploit the land quickly, using technology suited only for lowland agriculture. It is therefore not surprising that government has singled out these kaingineros as the major culprit in 75% of forest destruction.
But if there is anything that the ecological crisis teaches us, it is to have a systems view of life, from which perspective everything is interconnected and interdependent. We need to ask why we have 14 million kaingineros in our uplands and why they were forced to migrate in order to survive. And we need to ask why only a few well-connected people are benefiting from forest resources.
From 1979 to 1982, loggers made a profit of US$ 820 million (roughly Php 16.4 billion) and the government earned approximately US$140 million (Php2.8 billion) in taxes. Clearly now, this centralization of access to and benefits from forest resources has directly contributed to the poverty and environmental degradation in the countryside. At a national level, benefits from forest resources have been used to finance political power through the dispensing of patronage to an impoverished electorate and the buying of military protection. This has produced a basic anomaly in our democratic system. Authentic democratic elections are not possible when the voters are poor and depend upon the patronage of a powerful few for their survival. Ecological consciousness points to the necessity of acknowledging that the right to a life-support system from our natural resources is an inherent human right that must be given to people before the rights of the state and political leaderships can be voted on.
After the authoritarian Marcos regime, any other administration would have had to cope with the problem of poverty and democratic access, including Marcos himself, had he won the snap election as he claimed, and come to terms with the assault unleashed by an outraged civil society. The history of primary-resource exploitation in the Philippines is replete with the names and interlocked fortunes of politicians and foreign interests, as left-wing ideologues have not tired of repeating. These ideologues, however, seek to impose a political solution to what is at the core a problem of ecological relationship. Until this is understood, poverty, as well as the aggravations created by insurgency, will continue to bedevil us.
A HARIBON READER ON THE PHILIPPINE FOREST, September 1989
Philippine Daily Inquirer 26 July 1988
THE POWER OF MONEY
Satur Sulit
the thing about money is it is very tricky
one minute you have it the next one you don’t
and so with the power that accompanies it
you have to exercise it or somebody else willevery dispensation needs loyal beneficiaries
to serve as its staunchest defenders and apologists
the benefits on offer are largely economic
but also psychological, the thrill of belongingdressed up in uniforms, with titles and honors
the trappings of privilege, command of their lessers
it is a fantasy invented especially for them
to keep enthralled in the service of mammonthe work may be ugly, but you get used to it
the rewards are fantastic, you would not believe
you fall into its throes, it is very addictive
heaven on earth, the great ulterior motive!it is heaven while it lasts but money is tricky
it traps you and then it throws away the key
there is no escape then, the show must go on
it is a ticket to hell, or maybe to prison.
cheap meds – gma vs. mar
ano ba talaga? kahapon ito ang balita: Arroyo to sign cheap meds EO
MANILA, Philippines-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo will finally sign next week the executive order placing a price ceiling on 22 essential drugs sold in the country.
Malacañang made the announcement Tuesday amid allegations that Pfizer Phil. had tried to bribe the President with some P100 million worth of discount cards for distribution to indigent patients around the country.
pero today iba na: Palace backtracks on issuing cheap meds EO!
Malacañang on Wednesday said President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo would first take into account keeping foreign investors and ensuring public access to cheaper drugs before ordering a price ceiling for essential medicines.
“The implications for economic health go beyond just the issue of cheaper medicines at hand,” Gary Olivar, deputy presidential spokesperson, told reporters Wednesday.
The Palace was apparently backtracking on its tough position on Tuesday that Ms Arroyo was set to sign the executive order imposing maximum retail prices (MRP) by next week.
ano ba ‘yan? what implications for “economic health”??? it won’t be healthy for the economy if the president signs the e.o. because it might drive away foreign investors, such as multinational drug companies who are making a killing, selling us meds at three times the price in other countries??? come on! does she really think these drug companies will stop selling us their drugs if she signs the e.o.? in the end, they will settle for a small cut in profits dahil hefty pa rin surely, than no profits at all.
so why really is gloria making urong-sulong when signing the e.o. would be very good if not for the books then for her public image and approval rating, lalo na’t swak ang timing for the SONA? aha. kung si ellen tordesillas ang tatanungin, it’s pure and simple inggit. inggit si gloria kay senator mar roxas because roxas, who steered the law through congress, will get the credit for it and might even get elected president in 2010 because of it.
Ang ugat ng kontrobersya sa executive order na magpapatupad ng Maximum Retail Price (MRP) na nakasaad sa 2008 Cheaper Medicines Act ay inggit. Inggit ni Gloria Arroyo na makalamang si Senador Mar Roxas sa isyung ito.
Sabi ng isang source namin sa Malacañang inis raw si Arroyo na ang pipirmahan niyang executive order ay magagamit ni Roxas sa kanyang kampanya para presidente sa 2010. Kaya pinulong niya ang mga hepe ng pharmaceuticals nuong Hulyo 8 at sinabing ibaba nila ang presyon ng 50 na gamot para siya ang sikat at masasabi niya na mas magaling siya kasi 22 lang ang gamot na nasa listahan ng MRP.
Ang kapalit siyempre ng kooperasyon ng mga pharmaceutical firms ay hindi pipirmahan ang MRP.
hm, naisip ko rin yan, but not in terms of inggit, rather of just not doing the presidentiable senator any favors. i’m still hoping that gma would could be big enough to allow credit where credit is due, never mind the politics of it. after all cheaper meds would mean more money to spend, more money going around, for other essential goods and services, which would be very good for the economy’s ever failing health di ba?
as for the criticism laid at mar roxas’ door that the power to implement the cheaper meds law should have been given not to the president but to a price regulatory board, hmm, i tend to agree with mar:
(mar) said it is difficult to pinpoint responsibility in a board that he predicted to be the dumping ground of “election losers and relatives of powerful politicians…”
sa totoo lang, i like it that the cheaper meds law puts the president on a spot. it’s time she showed some real statesmanship. something we can remember her fondly for, unlike the “hello garci” tapes, and the infamous if unfortunate boob job (ang dagdag ang dagdag)!
defending celso
i’m not going to pretend i understand what’s really going on with celso de los angeles and the banking establishment. my kneejerk response when i read that his rural banks had a ponzi-like scheme going, promising high returns to depositors, higher than that offered by the big banks, i was disgusted, lalo na’t it seemed that he was counting on the pdic to bail out his depositors just in case…
and then i read manila times columnist dan mariano’s vilification of celso de los angeles, and it made me think again. in the wake of the u.s. economy’s crash thanks to innovative financial schemes, it’s hard to think positive of celso’s own innovations, especially because he has been painted as an incorrigible scoundrel by the mass media.
but if it’s true that big banks could actually match the interest rates he offered on savers’ deposits but big banks just won’t because it would eat into their huge profits, then talaga, it’s possible that celso is the victim of a vilification campaign that was meant to panic his depositors, thus to protect the interests of big banks rather than the interests of the banking public.
makes me wonder about the senate and house investigations. sino ba talagang pinoprotektahan nila? makes me wonder too about vice-president noli de castro’s deafening silence. anyway here’s dan mariano’s column in full:
Vilification of Celso de los Angeles
If you are convinced that Celso de los Angeles is as guilty as sin, read no further.
Off the bat, let me say he is a former classmate of mine. I still regard him as a friend even if these past couple of weeks he has not replied to my calls, text messages and e-mail. Given the pressure he is under, I don’t fault him at all.
As Celso’s friend, I am ready to give him, if not sympathy, then certainly the benefit of the doubt. I am still so prepared-even in the current lynch-mob atmosphere created by certain central bank officials and other quarters.
Not too long ago, Celso told some of his friends he was anxious about a plot to shut down his businesses. The rural banks he set up, for instance, were offering depositors interest rates on their savings that the big banks could not-or simply refused to-match lest it cut into their profit margins.
As a result, the number of depositors in Celso’s banks, which were spread out across the archipelago, grew at such a rate that the big banks began to feel genuinely threatened.
Serves the big banks right, I thought. Their interest rates were so tiny they did not even allow their depositors’ savings to keep pace with inflation. Keeping your money in one of those big banks was only a bit better than stuffing cash into your mattress, but it still was a losing proposition for the average depositors. I had thought that the aggressive marketing tack taken by Celso’s banks would ultimately stir the big banks into giving their customers a similar or an even better deal. I had hoped the big banks would finally wake up and realize that they now face a serious competitor.
Boy, was I wrong.
Instead of stimulating the big banks’ competitive instincts, Celso’s rural banks-along with his “preneed” ventures, which formed an integrated business-became the object of what amounts to corporate murder. The big banks decided to deal with the competition the only way they knew how-elimination at all costs.
For months, articles and columns were caused to be printed in newspapers and aired on radio and TV questioning the “unsound practices” of the rural banks identified with De los Angeles. Predictably, politicians saw a chance to draw free publicity to themselves and grabbed it.
In what seemed like the blink of any eye Celso had become one of the most vilified men in the Philippines.
Even before the hatchet job was completed, enough of the rural banks’ customers had been so unnerved that they understandably withdrew their money.
Result: A bank run triggered, not by the lack of assets or fraudulent business practices, but by negative publicity and intimidation by officials-far too many of whom look forward to a cushy sinecure in conglomerates that own big banks after retirement.
But was there anything intrinsically illegal in how Celso’s banks and preneed companies operated?
For an answer let me quote excerpts from a column written by Dean de la Paz in the Busi-nessMirror. Last Friday, de la Paz wrote in part:
“Despite the absence of an elementary preneed code, regulators and Monday-morning quarterbacking politicians cry illegality. Because there are no laws, to declare criminality requires some amount of creativity for the charges to stick if fraud and malice are to complement illegality.
“Let us examine a hypothetical preneed offering and see whether those are present.
“Matching revenues against costs is critical in the preneed industry. Where revenue sources and fund providers are one, through a virtual holdout feature, risks of defaults are mitigated, collections more efficient and the matching of revenues to costs closer. Note that here we have a preneed subscriber as clients of either a credit-card company or borrowers in affiliated banks.
“By enhancing this financial model, either through a compounding mechanism on the invested fund where interest earned is compounded monthly, quarterly or even semiannually, a doubling of earnings can be achieved.
“For instance, a credit-card holder paying an effective annual interest of 36 percent, or 3 percent monthly, quickly covers a holdout on the same individual whose funds provided costs a nominal 12 percent annually. By tying an investment that earns 12 percent annually to a debt, or a revenue source that earns 36 percent within the same period, a financial institution can earn 300 percent over the same base. Depending on the compounding schedule-doubling can occur in less than five years.
“In the preneed industry, a hypothetical educational plan can be offered featuring a front-end 20-percent rebate. With warrants that allow repurchases where credit-card companies buy the plan via postdated checks [PDCs], a double-your-money instrument can be offered.
“Should the plan holder liquidate prior to maturity, the 20-percent front-end rebate and the PDC repayments that double the plan’s initial value count as the cost of the investment. Matched against the credit-card company’s 36-percent-per-annum revenue, the cost of the assignable preneed plan can adequately be covered under normal circumstances.
“When offered as a contiguous package, is this patently illegal? Was fraud the intent? Are these designed to steal from plan holders? Or were they meant to offer yields matched against specific revenues?”
Some commentators bewail the fact that the deposit insurance cover for the customers of Celso de los Angeles’s rural banks will cost taxpayers some P14 billion.
Yet some of the same pundits remain mum on, say, the billions of pesos in kickbacks from World Bank projects that were reportedly cornered by a close relative of a high-ranking government official.
Now, why is that?