MERCHANDISE exports slid for the fifth straight month in May while imports grew further, albeit at a slower pace, driving the trade deficit to its widest level so far this year, according to latest trade data the government released on Tuesday. Read the full story.
FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENTS (FDI) inflows rose further in April to a six-month peak, the central bank said in a statement on Tuesday, supported by solid investor optimism towards the Philippines. Read the full story.
FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENTS (FDI) inflows rose further in April to a six-month peak, the central bank said in a statement on Tuesday, supported by solid investor optimism towards the Philippines.
Net FDI inflows reached $1.027 billion for the month, surging from the $682 million in March but 3.2% less than the $1.062-billion inbound capital recorded in April 2017, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported yesterday.
Inflows marked the third straight month of increase and were the largest seen since October’s $1.918 billion.
Investors grew more bullish about Philippine prospects as they poured more funds into equity.
Total equity investments reached $262 million in April, almost triple the $84 million tallied a year ago. These inflows were partly offset by $15 million in withdrawn capital, versus $14 million the prior year.
This yielded $247 million in net equity capital that was nearly four times bigger than the $70 million in April 2017.
Investors from Singapore, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, the United States and Japan were the biggest sources of fresh capital in April, the BSP said. Funds went to manufacturing; arts, entertainment and recreation; real estate; financial and insurance; and wholesale and retail trade activities.
The surge in equity infusions more than offset declines in other investment components.
Reinvested earnings slipped by 7.1% to $75 million from $81 million.
Lending by foreign companies to their Philippine subsidiaries and affiliates saw a bigger 22.6% fall to $705 million from $911 million the past year.
Despite April’s decline, year-to-date FDIs still settled 24.3% higher at $3.202 billion from $2.577 billion in 2017’s comparable four months.
Net equity placements grew sixfold to $1.134 billion as of April from $199 million in the 2017’s first four months, as total placements increased more than fourfold to $1.258 billion from $285 million and total withdrawals increased by a slower 43.4% to $124 million from $86 million.
The same comparable four months saw foreign companies’ investments in their Philippine units’ debt instruments going down 14.6% to $1.8 billion from $2.104 billion and reinvested earnings slipping by 2.1% to $268 million from $274 million.
“FDI inflows were boosted by continued favorable investor sentiment on the back of the country’s solid macroeconomic fundamentals and growth prospects,” the central bank said in its statement.
Such investments — which are longer term than foreign portfolio investments that come and go with ease in the face of breaking developments and news and, hence, are labelled as “hot money” — inject additional capital to the local economy, spurring business expansion and, in turn, generating more jobs.
The Philippine economy expanded by 6.8% in the first quarter, fueled partly by industry expansion, the Philippine Statistics Authority said.
This compares to the government’s 7-8% growth goal, largely supported by P1.068 trillion in infrastructure investments for 2018.
Economic managers have said that they expect growth to have accelerated to seven percent last quarter given a fresh boost from government spending as more infrastructure projects are rolled out.
The central bank expects full-year FDIs to reach $9.2 billion this year, coming from the record $10.049 billion in 2017.
London-based Capital Economics has flagged that persistent political noise and relatively unstable policy in the Philippines could turn off investors and “hold back” the economy, but acknowledged that it has not seen such impact on growth so far. — Melissa Luz T. Lopez
PRESIDENT Rodrigo R. Duterte and his Cabinet approved in a July 9 meeting the proposed P3.757-trillion national budget for 2019 that is designed to help spur faster overall economic growth that will also lift more Filipinos out of poverty by the time he ends his six-year term in mid-2022.
“Kahapon po ay na-approve po ng kabinete iyong ating budget for 2019; at ang ating budget po ay P3.757 trillion (Yesterday, the Cabinet approved our budget for 2019, and our budget is P3.757 trillion),” Presidential Spokesperson Harry L. Roque, Jr. told journalists in a briefing in Indang, Cavite on Tuesday.
The P3.757-trillion 2019 proposed national budget is slightly less than the P3.767 trillion programmed this year, since next year’s spending plan will have only allocations that can be disbursed within the fiscal year, versus previous obligation-based budgets that allowed implementing agencies to disburse funds over two years.
Mr. Roque also said: “Ang major expense po natin ay (Our major expenses are): personnel services, P1.185 trillion (31.5% of the total); maintenance expenditures, P562.9 billion (15%); capital outlays, P752.7 billion (20%); allotment to local government units, P640.6 billion (17.1%); support to government-owned and controlled corporations, P187.1 billion (five percent); tax expenditures (tax subsidies for items like duties for state rice importation), P14.5 billion (0.4%) and debt burden which is 414.1 billion (11%).”
In a text message to reporters on Tuesday, Budget Secretary Benjamin E. Diokno said “[t]he 2019 budget amounting to P3.757 trillion was approved by President Duterte and the Cabinet in a marathon meeting last night that ended until 2 a.m.”
He also said the proposed 2019 budget “will be 19.8% of the gross domestic product” compared to 21.6% for this year.
Mr. Diokno said that, in proportion to the total proposed budget for 2019, allocations for social services (consisting of human capital investments like education and healthcare) for 2019 was cut to 36.7% from 37.8% this year and for economic services (such as infrastructure) was reduced to 28.4% from 30.6%, while those for general public services will go up to 18.9% from 17.4%, for debt service will rise to 11% from 9.9% and for defense will increase to 5.0% from 4.3%.
On July 2, the Development Budget Coordination Committee raised the revenue program for 2019 to P3.208 trillion from P3.203 trillion earlier programmed in the interagency body’s previous meeting in April, and 12.7% more than the P2.846 trillion targeted this year.
Disbursements for next year were likewise raised to P3.832 trillion from P3.782 trillion initially programmed and 13.7% more than the P3.37-trillion spending target in 2018.
This program will result in a P624.37-billion fiscal deficit that is equivalent to 3.2% of GDP, as well as 7.79% wider than the P579.23 billion initially programmed for 2019 and 19.23% bigger than the P523.68-billion deficit target this year — both equivalent to three percent of GDP.
The Department of Budget and Management has said that it targets to submit the proposed 2019 budget to Congress on July 23, the day Mr. Duterte delivers his third State of the Nation Address.
The current administration plans to increase spending on public infrastructure and social services in a bid to drive GDP growth to 7-8% annually till 2022 from a 6.3% average in 2010-2016, believing it will take such pace of overall economic expansion to slash unemployment rate to 3-5% by 2022 from 5.5% in 2016 and achieve its bottom line of cutting the national poverty rate to 14% also by 2022 from 21.6% in 2015. — Arjay L. Balinbin
HOW CAN a man fall in love with someone without ever realizing — even after 20 years — that his lover is not a woman?
That is the conundrum posed by David Henry Hwang’s play M. Butterfly, which is loosely based on the odd yet true story of a French diplomat, Bernard Boursicot, who fell in love with Shi Pei Pu, a male Peking opera singer who performed female roles — and who just happened to be a Chinese spy. How could he not know that his long-time lover was a man? How did the Chinese actor get away with it?
M. Butterfly premiered on Broadway in 1988 (two years after the espionage case scandalized France) and won the Tony Award for Best Play. It was later adapted into a film directed by David Cronenberg in 1993.
Critics applauded Mr. Hwang’s play because it was the inverse of Miss Saigon (which opened in London in 1989) where the Asian women were often victimized and deemed meek and submissive by Western males. In Miss Saigon, Kim is a victim of male white supremacy, while her lover, the American soldier Chris, is the embodiment of Orientalism. In M. Butterfly, it is the naive and insecure Frenchman who is the victim of the Chinese actor, who is not represented as the typical obedient and weak Asian. The two plays touch on different perspectives of Asian gender stereotypes, white supremacy, and toxic masculinity.
28 YEARS LATER
In May 1990, the then 18-year-old theater actor RS Francisco played the role of Song Liling, the Chinese opera singer who has a relationship with French diplomat René Gallimard, in the first staging of M. Butterfly in the Philippines. It was a huge success.
Twenty-eight years later, Mr. Francisco, now with a wealth of life experiences under his belt, is reprising the role as Song Liling for the latest re-staging of M. Butterfly in the country.
The play will be presented from Sept. 13 to 30 at the Maybank Performing Arts Theater in BGC, Taguig.
Jhett Tolentino — the Grammy award-winning producer of The Color Purple and Tony award-winning productions A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, A Raisin in the Sun, and Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike — is the man behind this latest production, along with Front Row Entertainment.
Mr. Tolentino obtained the rights to produce the play from Mr. Hwang, and during the production’s media launch on July 2, he read out loud some of his e-mail correspondence with the playright. (Mr. Hwang said he will be giving a writing masterclass for free on Sept. 28 at the Maybank Theater.)
Mr. Hwang updated his script for the 2017 Broadway re-staging. Among the revisions is a monologue by Song Liling describing how he manipulated his genitals to fool his lover into thinking he was making love to a woman. But Mr. Tolentino’s production will follow the original script which uses metaphors and more magic.
“How can one person do it? But today we’re being fooled — by the internet of fake news. We’re living in a world of great illusion. In a time of fake news and revisionism like ours today, and the short term memory of Filipinos, [M. Butterfly] is truer than ever, more relevant today than when it was written in 1988,” said the play’s director Kanakan Balintagos during the media launch.
Mr. Balintagos said he was aiming for the authentic, so the role of the French diplomat Gallimard will be done by French actor Olivier Borten, a longtime Philippine resident.
American actor Lee O’Brian will play as Marc, Mr. Gallimard’s best friend, who is portrayed as a toxic man who takes sexual advantages of women without regard to their feelings.
“Authenticity is my intention. I aimed for an all-Caucasian cast where the conflicts between the west and east, the male and the female, the animus and the anima, are visually more apparent,” said Mr. Balintagos.
Also in the cast are Pinky Amador, who plays Helga, Mr. Gallimard’s wife whom he married for convenience; Maya Encila as Renee, a sexually liberated Danish woman who has an affair with Gallimard; and Rebecca Chuaunsu as Comrade Chin, a paramilitary guard who is Song Liling’s friend.
Costume designer Eric Pineda’s challenge, aside from having to be historically correct, was to make Song Liling believable.
“My main task is to create an illusion of Song Liling. To convince the audience that Song Liling is indeed a woman. Ayaw kong magmukha siyang bading, dapat mukha siyang babae. [I don’t want him to look gay, he should look like a woman.] From a man’s point of view, how does a man see a beautiful woman? My role is to tell the story visually,” he said.
Front Row Entertainment and Jhett Tolentino said 100% of the proceeds from M. Butterfly will go to their chosen 14 charities: the Love Yourself Foundation, Philippine Stagers, Teach for the Philippines, Dulaang UP, Trip to Quiapo, UP Samaskom, the Philippine High School for the Arts, the Philippine Science High School Foundation, Hope for Change, Love Lipa Foundation, Pakisama, the Calumpang Elementary School in Iloilo, the Environmental Legal Assistance Center, and Our Lady of Immaculate Conception.
THE CHRYSALIS
A related project is The Chrysalis, an exhibit of limited edition prints (three each) created by some of the country’s top photographers. Each of the photographers will come up with their interpretation of Song Liling while Mr. Pineda will be creating Song Liling’s costumes for all photo shoots in this series.
Among the notable photographers who will be participating in this photo exhibit for a cause are: Wig Tysmans, Mandy Navasero (she was the first to shoot RS Francisco’s nude photos when he portrayed Song Liling for Dulaang UP in 1990, and the photos landed on the covers of countless publications including the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Asiaweek), Jun de Leon, Patrick Uy, Raymund Isaac, Manny Librodo, and BJ Pascual.
All the proceeds from the auctioned photos will go to the selected foundation of the photographer who took the photo. The 30×40 inch photographs will be uniformly framed. They will be showcased at the Maybank Performing Arts Theater lobby for the duration of M. Butterfly’s staging from Sept. 13-30, and will be auctioned at a minimum bid of P50,000.
Assuming all three limited edition photographs of each photographer are sold, they will each get the chance to raise at least P150,000 for their chosen charity.
Tickets are available at Ticketworld (www.ticketworld.com.ph). — Nickky Faustine P. de Guzman
