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Senate to begin hearings on second tax reform

By Camille A. Aguinaldo
Reporter
THE SENATE on Tuesday will hold its first public hearing on the second tax reform package, with senators expected to scrutinize the rationalization of fiscal incentives provisions and its possible effects on jobs and prices.
Senator Juan Edgardo M. Angara, chairman of the Senate Ways and Means committee, said the panel will try to strike a balance between streamlining fiscal incentives, which the Finance department has blamed for billions of pesos in foregone revenues yearly, and keeping the Philippines’ investment lure and jobs intact.
“That would be an ideal outcome. I can tell you if it’s doable after a few hearings, perhaps when we hear out all the stakeholders,” Mr. Angara said in a mobile phone message to BusinessWorld.
“The important thing is we listen to the different sectors because many say that jobs may be lost if we remove the incentives on foreign direct investments and exporters, so we will really have to study that,” he said in a radio interview, speaking in Filipino.
“At a time when the country’s economic growth has slightly slowed down, we should be careful on what we will do because we might send a wrong signal to the investment community.”
The committee will tackle Senate Bill No. 1906, or the proposed Corporate Income Tax and Incentives Reform Act authored by Senate President Vicente C. Sotto III, as well as separate bills cutting the corporate income tax (CIT) rate and rationalizing fiscal incentives, proposed amendments to the Tax Incentives Management and Transparency Act and other tax administration reforms.
The House of Representatives approved its version — House Bill No. 8083 or the Tax Reform for Attracting Better and High-Quality Opportunities (TRABAHO) — on third and final reading on Sept. 10.
Senate Bill No. 1906 cuts the CIT rate to 25% from 30% in the first year of the implementation. That compares to HB 8083 which gradually reduces CIT rate to 20% by two percentage points every other year starting 2021.
It also seeks to repeal special laws on fiscal incentives and consolidate all such perks in a single measure.
“We all know how important investments are because the country still faces problems on job losses and the quality of jobs. That is really the biggest concern of my committee in the hearing,” Mr Angara said.
The senator said he will also take a look at the provisions that remove the preferential income tax rate for proprietary education institutions and hospitals and incentives of imported books or raw materials to be used in book publishing under Republic Act No. 8047, or the Book Publishing Industry Development Act.
“We will not allow that because it runs counter to our law on free college education and our advocacy to make education accessible,” Mr. Angara explained.
“Anything that will contribute to higher inflation rate, maybe we should set those aside.”
The first of up to five planned tax reform packages — Republic Act No. 10963 or the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion Act (TRAIN) that came into force as this year began — cut personal income tax rates in hopes of spurring household consumption that drives nearly 70% of gross domestic product and either increased or added taxes on a host of goods and services.
Critics have blamed that tax reform for headline inflation rates that have pierced the central bank’s 2-4% full-year target for 2018 for six straight months till August, so far, which saw a multi-year-high 6.4% that fueled the year-to-date pace to 4.8%.

Century Properties sets next phase of P2.8-B Lipa project

By Arra B. Francia
Reporter
CENTURY Properties Group, Inc. (CPG) plans to launch the second phase of its P2.8-billion housing project in Lipa, Batangas ahead of schedule, following the brisk take-up of the first set of units in the affordable development.
CPG President for the Affordable Housing Unit Ricky M. Celis said they have sold around 650 units out of the 900 units included in the first phase of Phirst Park Homes Lipa. The 20-hectare property will offer a total of 1,800 units, and will be developed in three phases.
“We launched officially in June, and we opened the first 900 out of the 1,800. We’re practically 70% sold out of those first 900,” Mr. Celis said in a press conference before the launch of its partnership with Japanese firm Mitsubishi Corp. for affordable housing projects.
With this, Mr. Celis said they look to launch the second phase “very soon.”
“In fact we’re now filing for our phase 2 license to sell. That’s two years ahead of schedule. So we’re happy that the market is responding quite well,” Mr. Celis said.
The company targets first home buyers with a monthly household income of P30,000 to P60,000 for the project, with amortization offered as low as P9,000 per month for a 40-square meter townhouse.
Amenities in the development include a village clubhouse, swimming pools for adults and children, an open-air cinema, and playgrounds that depict traditional Filipino games such as piko, patintero, taguan, tumbang preso, and holen.
Phirst Park Homes Lipa will likewise feature an outdoor gym, basketball court, bike lane, hiking area, and jogging path.
The Lipa development is CPG’s second affordable housing project after Phirst Park Homes Tanza in Tanza, Cavite. The Cavite project is being developed in partnership with Mitsubishi Corp., offering a total of 2,877 homes in a 26-hectare community.
CPG reported that it has already sold out the first phase of the Tanza project consisting of 1,200 units, bringing in sales of around P1.4 billion. The company will complete about 600 units of townhouses and single-attached models by year end.
The company’s foray into the affordable housing sector forms part of its plan to address the 6.6-million housing backlog in the country, which is further expected to grow to 12 million by 2030.
CPG formally unveiled last week its partnership with Mitsubishi Corp., which will further deepen its investments in the affordable housing market through Phirst Park Homes, Inc. The newly-incorporated firm will be investing P28 billion in the following years to develop 15 master-planned communities.
Mr. Celis noted that they are currently building up their scale, as they plan to enter the Visayas and Mindanao markets in the medium term. For now, the company’s focus is in Luzon, particularly in Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Bulacan, and Pampanga.
CPG generated a P490-million profit in the first half of 2018, as revenues jumped 40% to P4.7 billion for the period.

How does the Philippines fare as a market-based democracy

How does the Philippines fare as a market-based democracy

Making it through the storm

TWENTY-EIGHT years since the first Robinsons mall opened in the Ortigas Center, Robinsons Land Corp. (RLC) hit a milestone when it opened its 50th mall in Cagayan’s Tuguegarao City in July this year.
The opening of the 5.7-hectare mixed use development came at the heels of the opening of the company’s third mall in Iloilo, Pavia, in June.
Robinsons Mall Pavia, has over 27,000 square meters of retail space and 3,500 square meter outdoor water playground, AquaFun.
Robinsons Place Tuguegarao is the second mall in Region II after Robinsons Place Santiago opened in 2014.
Despite being battered by Typhoon Ompong (international name: Mangkhut), considered the strongest typhoon to hit Luzon since 2010, which laid waste to nearly 76,000 homes in Cagayan, Robinsons Tuguegarao made it through with minor damage.
“Robinsons Place Tuguegarao sustained minor damage, particularly to its exterior. Power has been restored on Sept. 18 within the vicinity of the mall although parts of the city are still without electricity,” Arlene G. Magtibay, general manager of the commercial centers division of RLC, told BusinessWorld through a text message on Sept. 19, before adding “customer traffic in the mall is back to normal,” with the mall offering to charge mobile phones, gadgets and rechargeable lanterns for free to help affected residents.
THE DESIGN
Inspired by the “Golden Harvest” as Cagayan Valley (where Tuguegarao is located) is one of the country’s top producers of rice and corn, the mall was designed with many accents and features using rice grain or palay as a motif, from the ceiling accents to murals on the pillars.
“Since malls are essential parts in Philippine society, [ASYA Design] made sure to make the space as engaging to the consumers as possible,” architect Albert Yu of ASYA Design said in a press release.
Ortigas-based ASYA Design collaborates frequently with RLC — the company designed several Robinsons malls including Robinsons Galleria Cebu, Robinsons Place General Trias, and, most recently, Robinsons Place Ormoc.
“We design modern malls to be as engaging to the consumers as possible. There is also a trend in terms of blurring the lines between shops and common spaces. Traditional shop fronts are reinvented and public areas of the malls are being integrated into shops and vice versa. We also need to address sustainability and green design practices to minimize our malls’ impact on the environment such as the provision of solar panels, atriums to let in natural light, low-flow water fixtures, energy-saving lighting fixtures etc.,” Mr. Yu added.
Considered the first full-service mall in the city, Robinsons Place Tuguegarao features 60,000 square meters of retail space which includes six digital cinemas (one of which has 3D capabilities) which can seat more than 1,300 audience members.
“This way, people from Tuguegarao won’t have to travel for two hours just to watch their favorite films,” Ms. Magtibay said during the mall’s launch on July 26.
The new mall features many of the usual suspects: from Handyman, Robinsons Supermarket, Robinsons Department Store, and Daiso Japan which debuted its new sakura (Japanese cherry blossom) look in Tuguegarao. The airier, more spacious style will be carried over to the company’s flagship, Robinsons Galleria, once the Daiso branch there opens.
Aside from the tried and true merchants, Robinsons Tuguegarao also features homegrown brands including restaurants such as Slobber Lab, Alice Pancit Malabon, Criselda’s, Mix & Match, Sensei, OZ Organic, and Baker’s Percent.
Clothing retailers present in the mall include Uniqlo, Mango, Guess, Levi’s, Bench, and Penshoppe.
In the next few years, Robinsons Tuguegarao will welcome a branch of Go Hotels which will be accessed directly from the hotel, as announced by RLC president Frederick D. Go during the same launch. — Zsarlene B. Chua

Lopez-led EDC says tax reform to hurt renewables

ENERGY Development Corp. (EDC) has called on the government to rethink its plan to remove the incentives currently enjoyed by renewable energy developers, a move which it called misguided the wrong direction for the energy industry.
“I think it’s a misguided policy to remove the incentives from renewable energy just as we need to transition into clean energy,” EDC President and Chief Operating Officer Richard B. Tantoco told reporters during the National Sustainability Summit for Millennials and Gen Zs at the University of Asia and the Pacific over the weekend.
He said from an “energy and sustainability standpoint” the proposed policy could put the company and the entire industry at risk.
EDC produces 1,472 megawatts (MW) of power from hydro, solar and wind resources, apart from its 1,200 MW of geothermal capacity.
“We’re headed in the wrong direction,” he said, adding that he does not mind being quoted on behalf of the company, which was recovering from the devastation of Typhoon Urduja in December last year.
Mr. Tantoco was referring to the government’s so-called Trabaho bill, the second phase of its tax reform program that seeks to lower the corporate income tax.
The bill, the Department of Finance (DoF) said, also corrects the country’s “convoluted” incentives scheme for businesses. The proposed legislation has been approved by the House of Representatives on third and final reading.
The DoF said the “pro-investment” tax reform package would ensure that fiscal incentives remain but performance-based or must commit to meeting targets such as job creation, export sales, countryside growth and research and development.
“If you remove the fiscal incentives, the impact on renewable energy is like you’re taxing it 10 times of coal,” Mr. Tantoco said, adding that renewables are what the country needs to begin its transition from coal-fired power plants.
He described the current times as a period of uncertainty for energy companies.
“It’s a major uncertainty because people are looking at their numbers and then they don’t know whether they’re gonna have 10% income tax or 30[%]. They don’t know if they’re gonna be able to import without duties or with duties. [What] they’re gonna have in the meantime is insecurity,” he said.
“Definitely today with the specter of the bill hanging over the industry’s head, we will see investments slow down,” he added.
The DoF said incentives should also be time-bound, thus tax perks are not granted indefinitely. It said the perks should also be targeted so that only industries that provide multiplier benefits to the economy will be given incentives. It also wants incentives to be transparent to ensure recipients report the perks they get to the government and the public.
EDC Chief Executive Officer Federico R. Lopez said the company had voiced out its views on the removal of the incentives, and that the DoF had been listening.
Mr. Lopez, who is also CEO of First Philippine Holdings Corp., said locators in the holding firm’s industrial park are on a wait-and-see mode ahead of the final outcome of the proposed tax reform. — Victor V. Saulon

Banking industry weakness weighs down Security Bank

NEWS of Security Bank Corp.’s (SECB) fund-raising via its five-year fixed rate note facility, coupled with the ongoing weakness from the banking industry in general, made it one of the most actively traded stocks last week.
SECB was the tenth most actively traded stock with a total of 3.596 million shares worth P815.338 million having exchanged hands on the trading floor from Sept. 17 to Sept. 21, according to data from the Philippine Stock Exchange.
Week-on-week, its share price was down by 7.4% to P168.5 on Friday from its Sept. 14 closing price of P182 apiece. Year-to-date, its share price was down by 33.6%.
Luis A. Limlingan, Managing Director at Regina Capital Development Corp. ascribed the stock’s price decline to the weakness surrounding the country’s banking industry.
“All the banks, including SECB… are getting hit hard,” Mr. Limlingan said, adding that banks have generally underperformed this year.
For Cristopher Adrian T. San Pedro, certified securities representative at Unicapital Securities, Inc.: [O]ne of the main reasons why it was actively traded was the news about the successful issuance of the $300 million USD Senior Unsecured Fixed rate notes…”
While the bond issuance “has no direct impact” on SECB’s stock price, Mr. San Pedro noted that there may be a possibility in which investors perceive it as an increase in the debt position of the company’s balance sheet. This, in turn, would affect the stock’s value in the short term.
The analyst likewise pointed to the net foreign selling on SECB last week, which contributed to the stock’s further decline.
Stock market data showed net selling on SECB amounted to P142.118 million on Sept. 17-21, a reversal of the P79.848-million net buying a week before.
The listed lender’s capital raising activity last week marked its maiden drawdown from its $1-billion medium-term note program established last month. The transaction is expected to be settled today and will be listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange.
The offering was 3.7 times oversubscribed, fetching tenders totaling $1.1 billion.
Local banks have been conducting various fund-raising activities ahead of tighter risk management requirement by the central bank which will take effect next year under the international Basel 3 standards.
Moving forward, Regina Capital’s Mr. Limlingan expects Security Bank’s stock price to remain subdued given the Bank’s financial performance: “the [Banks’] earnings will not be as strong, but I think it is only going to be for this year,” he said,
Mr. Limlingan placed the stock’s support and resistance at P162 and P176, respectively. Unicapital’s Mr. San Pedro, for his part, pegged the stock’s support at P166 and resistance at P189.
Security Bank booked a net income of P4.3 billion in the first half, down 18% a year ago primarily due to a continued decline in trading gains. — V.M.P. Galang

Versatile jewelry

DURING a late-night drizzle in August last year, a young woman named Chynna Gonzalez stubbed out her cigarette to show me her earring. It was a turquoise stud with a halo of clear stones, and a dangler below it. She took it apart, and demonstrated how the earring could be broken apart of wear as a stud earring — with or without a halo — or the stud and the dangler without the halo. When asked where she bought it, she said, she made it herself. My ears immediately perked up at the thought of discovering a new jewelry designer. She told me to wait and see where the earrings would take her.
The earrings would apparently take her to Manila House for a launch of her line, Adornata, on Sept. 21. The concept of her transforming earrings is still there, and she demonstrated with a teardrop-shaped amazonite how to take the earrings apart and wear them in several configurations. She did the same with a bejewelled pendant in semiprecious stones, demonstrating how it could be used as a brooch.
While already a dabbler in fashion, Ms. Gonzalez found her calling while in the search for a certain piece. About two years ago, Ms. Gonzalez was looking for a piece that she would use to mark a milestone. Asked what piece she eventually decided on buying, she said, “That was the problem” — she couldn’t find a piece that suited her and her personality, because she found that the pieces available in the market for a young woman were far too ostentatious.
“I wanted something that fit my lifestye more.”
She ended up making it herself — an opal ring with a halo of blue topazes. While it was too beautiful for her to sell to someone else, in the process of creating it, she decided to make more of the designs that started to twinkle in her mind.
Ms. Gonzalez was very hands-on with her collection. She developed the clasps and the mechanisms for the pieces herself, such as a concealed hook that would be revealed by drawing it out with the earring itself.

Adornata 2
The Rosie, which is made with pink opal, rhodolite, star sapphire, garnet, red agate, London blue topaz, carnelian, and pearl, can be worn three ways.

“I’m very fortunate that my manufacturing leg is very good,” she said, noting the skills of her metalsmiths. While supervising closely, she also made pieces first by herself to know if what she wanted was possible.
The results of these processes are one-offs: there are only one each of Ms. Gonzalez’s designs. “I personally don’t like it when I spend so much on something and [then] I’ll see someone else wearing [the same thing],” she said.
Her pieces can range from P25,000 to P90,000, but entire sets are available for P100,000.
For this collection, was inspired by the Festa del Redentore, a feast held in Venice for the Holy Redeemer to give thanks for saving the city from the Plague in the 1500s. The celebrations are marked by an hour-long fireworks display. Translating this into Adornata’s collection, a motif in Ms. Gonzalez’s designs are starbursts executed in varicolored stones. They have an effect of seeming as if the explosions in the sky were captured and frozen forever, to be worn as a good memory.
“I feel like jewelry is very personal. It’s one of the purchases that make you feel like you’ve made it,” she told BusinessWorld.
Adornata is available through www.adornata.jewelry. — Joseph L. Garcia

NFA says rice dealers do not want to sell lower-grade grains

THE National Food Authority (NFA) said the market is running short of regular-milled rice, which it says should force a rethink of the private-sector led-importation rules to increase the availability of the affordable type of the staple.
“Nobody wants to sell regular milled, which is not the whitest variety. Everyone wants to sell well-milled,” Judy Carol L. Dansal, Deputy Administrator for the grains agency’s Marketing Operations, told Trade Secretary Ramon M. Lopez during talks at the NFA headquarters last week.
The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has threatened to issue an order that will revoke business permits of retailers who do not sell the more affordable type of rice, as consumers have been left to choose between well-milled and other higher-priced varieties.
The DTI was seeking to bring down the price of the staple grain after inflation hit 6.4% in August.
According to the Philippine Statistics Authority, well-milled rice sold for an average of P48.93 per kilogram in the second week of September, up 15.73% from a year earlier and up 1.1% from the prior week.
Regular-milled rice prices averaged P45.71 per kg., up 20.26% from a year earlier and up 0.97% from a week earlier.
The suggested retail price for regular-milled rice is P39 per kg. set by the Department of Agriculture (DA) in June.
Due to the unenforceability of the DA price ceiling after the NFA reported the disappearance of regular-milled rice from the market, the DTI asked the NFA to accredit importers shipping in rice graded at 25% brokens.
For domestic procurement, the NFA recognizes three categories of regular-milled rice, graded RD1 to RD3 in descending order of price, and three grades of well-milled rice graded WD1 to WD3. A seventh category, WD1-A, commands the highest wholesale procurement price of P30 per kg.
For imported rice, the NFA lists five categories, the lowest quality being 25% brokens.
Outgoing NFA Administrator Jason Laureano Y. Aquino has said that key rice suppliers like Vietnam may be “uncomfortable” supplying lower-grade rice. The world’s top rice exporter has been improving its rice quality to minimize the content of grain fragments, which command lower prices.
The Philippines is moving to liberalize rice imports and impose a rice tariff system.
House Bill 7735 seeks to amend Republic Act No 8178 or the Agricultural Tariffication Act to implement a system of rice tariffs. It proposes a 35% duty on imports from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), with a 40% rate applying to imports from non-ASEAN countries.
It was approved on third and final reading in August while its counterpart measure in the Senate is being discussed at plenary level.
Identified as a priority bill by the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council, economic managers have also cited rice tariffication as one of the levers for containing inflation. — Janina C. Lim

Hilton Manila sees need for more premium rooms in prime site, readies early opening

Hilton Manila looks to open its doors to the public in October, banking on its prime location near the country’s premier gateway to capture both corporate guests and the staycation market.
Located in Newport City in Pasay, Hilton Manila will be the newest addition to the pool of internationally branded hotels in the integrated resort and casino complex near the Ninoy Aquino International Airport.
While the hotel has started to book reservations for November, Hilton Manila General Manager Simon McGrath said they hope to open a few days before that.
“We would like to open a little bit earlier than the first (Nov. 1) because obviously that’s leading in to a four-day weekend. We already have good bookings for that weekend, around 50 rooms are booked on that Sunday night,” Mr. McGrath told reporters in a media round table in the hotel last week.
Hilton Manila will offer a total of 357 guest rooms and suites. The smallest room covers 40 square meters (sq.m.), while the largest — called the two-bedroom governor suite — spans 160 sq.m. Each room will feature Hilton’s signature Serenity bed, a pillow menu that allows guests to choose from different variants of pillows, bathroom with separate bathtub and shower, a 55-inch smart TV, and Wi-Fi access.
The hotel will also house six flexible meeting and event spaces, an executive floor and lounge, a resort-style pool, fitness center, kids’ play areas, and digital check-in features. The digital check-in will allow guests to enter their rooms through an app on their phones, doing away with the usual card key used by most hotels.
Mr. McGrath said Hilton Manila’s target market includes leisure guests looking for places to stay in during long weekends and holidays.
“Given where we are, we’re looking at local leisure. From the statistics, 50% of the Filipino domestic market travel to a tourism attraction in the last couple of years. It’s a growing market. The staycation market, obviously we have to look at for weekends and public holidays, the leisure market is going to be a huge part of the business,” Mr. McGrath said.
From leisure travelers on weekends, the hotel manager said the hotel also hopes to attract the meetings, incentives, conventions, and exhibition (MICE) crowd on weekdays, driven by the convention centers in Newport City.
Newport City houses the Marriott Grand Ballroom, which spans 3,000 sq.m. and can accommodate 4,000 guests for cocktails and 2,500 for a banquet set-up. The facility describes itself as the largest hotel convention center in the country.
With this, Mr. McGrath noted that despite the presence of several hotels in the area, there is still a lack of premium rooms whenever the Grand Ballroom hosts large events.
“When you have a big event and everybody wants premium rooms, there’s currently not enough rooms available. The addition of the inventory of rooms at Hilton will certainly help stimulate further the MICE market using that facility,” he explained.
The hotel also looks to leverage on corporate accounts that frequently travel abroad and stay in Hilton hotels, given their Hilton Honors program. The rewards system will allow members to earn points every time they stay at a Hilton hotel, which can then be exchanged for rewards such as free hotel stays, access to travel packages, and dining privileges, among others.
Hilton Manila is being developed by Travellers International Hotel Group, Inc., the gaming arm of tycoon Andrew L. Tan. It is among the three international luxury hotels the company looks to add to the Resorts World Manila Grand Wing, with the other being Sheraton Manila Hotel and Hotel Okura Manila. The three hotels will have a combined 940 rooms. — Arra B. Francia

New running shoes tackle old pain points


AS RUNNING and fitness in general have earned their rightful place in the routines and schedules of urbanites previously confined to a sedentary, unhealthy life, equipment and apparel makers are heeding more specific calls. The pain points of the runner, for instance, include most literal ones in the feet and the knees because of repeated impact — particularly for those more advanced in age.
More than a century old, Seattle-headquartered Brooks Running Company produces and sells performance footwear (in addition to apparel, sports bras, and accessories) in more than 50 countries, including the Philippines. It now banners five new shoe releases with the promise of better cushioning. When your knees are happy, you’re happy, the company declares in a release.
The Transcend 5 (P8,295) is touted to have “running’s most advanced support system, served super soft.” It features Guide Rail Technology which provides holistic support from the user’s feet to hips, and is suited for people with wider feet. Levitate 2 (P7,495) is said to return more energy with every stride “so runners feel like they can run further and faster.” Its outsole moves quickly from heel to toe, and a knit construction provides more comfort. Ghost 11 (P6,495) is about “smoothening” the ride, with promises of responsiveness and durability. Meanwhile, a 3D-fit-print mesh upper and internal stretch bootie surround the feet in the Glycerin 16 (P6,995). Finally, the Adrenaline GTS 18 (P6,295) strikes a balance of cushioning, flexibility, and support.
At the end of the day, experts say it’s all about how your feet feel when you wear a certain model. “You shouldn’t be cornered into making a decision by a salesperson, or even marketing,” said Noy Basa, a runner and a coach. Even sizing, added coach Al Gonzales, largely varies from one person to the next. He suggests to select a pair of shoes during the “latter part of the day, (when) your feet would be swelling a bit.” Do not completely trust a manufacturer’s measurements, he cautioned. “No matter what the numbers say, if you put the shoes on, and they’re tight, it’s not going to work.”
Brooks is available in all Runnr stores, Toby’s Mall of Asia, Toby’s SLP, Olympic Village Glorietta, SM Department stores in Mall of Asia, North Edsa, and Davao. — Kap Maceda Aguila

Irrigation firm from Israel targets Davao Region’s fruit, vegetable farms

By Maya M. Padillo
Correspondent
DAVAO CITY — Rivulis Irrigation, an Israeli company specializing in micro-irrigation solutions, is eyeing fruit and vegetable farms in the Davao Region, starting with banana plantations.
“It is solid for us to have the banana plantations because we are already active in banana plantations and we think our experience and our product range can fit, especially for vegetables and pineapple, of course banana and corn as well,” Ilan Tamir, Rivulis Irrigation business development manager, told BusinessWorld in an interview on the sidelines of the Davao Agri Trade Expo 2018 (DATE 2018) held Sept. 20-22.
He said the company’s technology, which covers the whole irrigation network from reservoir to sprinklers, can increase crop yields by at least 10%, minimize fertilizer input, and reduce manpower requirements.
“We are saving a lot of money (on) manpower, and we are protecting the environment when you are providing precise amounts of water into the roots and nothing to the land. because the water should serve the plant and not the land. You will be able to dramatically increase the yield,” said Mr. Tamir, whose company joined the annual DATE for the first time this year.
Mr. Tamir said irrigation’s effects on crop yield will also raise incomes and reduce costs in the form of reduced water and fertilizer use.
Rivulis Irrigation was part of the DATE 2018 line-up on agricultural technology, which was one of the event’s main topics of discussion.
“We all know last year quality of our fruits declined and quality and quantity suffered because the year prior there was a drought, and we all know that the lack of adequate irrigation will affect the fruiting of many of our crops,” said DATE 2018 chair John B. Tria, and vice president for agriculture of the Davao City Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Inc.
Aquaponics was also in the spotlight for both backyard operations and commercial aquaculture applications.
Aquaponics combines raising fish in tanks with soil-less plant culture, also known as hydroponics. It can be set up in a residential setting or a village for family or small community consumption. On a bigger scale, the system can be applied to a fish farm venture.
“This is controlled growing, which can help alleviate the effects of climate change. So we are hoping to introduce new technologies and get many of our agribusiness (stakeholders) and entrepreneurs interested in non-traditional growing methods to address the climate change challenges,” Mr. Tria said.

Caraga firms raise alarm on declining aquatic, forestry resources

DAVAO CITY — The business sector in Caraga region has expressed alarm over the continued decline of the fish catch and the denudation of forests in the region, one of the richest in natural resources but with the second-lowest contribution to the country’s economy.
In a resolution submitted to the recent Mindanao Business Conference (MinBizCon), the region’s businesses said government action is required, particularly from the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).
BFAR has to “strictly enforce policies against smuggling of high-value marine products in the ports and to promote the use of advanced technologies to support the development of Caraga’s high-value marine products,” according to the resolution.
The various business chambers in the region also want BFAR to “conduct research on the Caraga waters, particularly the decreasing harvest of tuna.”
Citing Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) data, they said the volume of fish caught in 2017 was just about 10% of 1989 levels. PSA reported that this is one of the main contributors to poverty incidence.
As of the 2015 census, 30.8% of the nearly 2.6 million population was classified as poor.
Caraga’s gross regional domestic product growth rate in 2017 improved to 4.3% from 2% in 2016, but its contribution to the Philippine’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) remained flat at 1.2% in those two years.
In 2017, the region’s GDP contribution was the second-lowest, trailing only the 0.6% of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
On forestry, the business sector in the region said illegal logging continues to thrive and government help is necessary to plant fast-growing species for reforestation.
Caraga, based on the Department of Trade and Industry’s profile, is “noted for its wood-based economy, its extensive water resources and its rich mineral deposits such as iron, gold, silver, nickel, chromite, manganese, and copper.”
Former President Benigno S.C. Aquino III’s Executive Order 23 in 2011, which contains a moratorium on logging, officially remains in effect. The implementation of the moratorium and regulation of sawmills using legally sourced timber is the DENR’s responsibility.
“Smuggling of tuna and illegal logging have become so rampant that (the Caraga business sector) wants government to strengthen the implementation of the laws,” said Virgilio F. Agunod, president of the Tagum City Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which hosted MinBizCon.
The Caraga resolution, along with several others endorsed by the MinBizCon, was submitted to Secretary Abul Khayr D. Alonto, chair of the Mindanao Development Authority. — Carmelito Q. Francisco

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