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Singapore gets first female president without a vote

SINGAPORE — Singapore got its first female president Wednesday, but the milestone was overshadowed by criticism that her selection was undemocratic after she was handed the job without a vote.

Halimah Yacob, a former speaker of parliament from the Muslim Malay minority, did not have to face an election for the largely ceremonial post after authorities decided her rivals did not meet eligibility criteria.

It was not the first time in the affluent city-state — which is tightly controlled and has been ruled by the same party for decades — that the government has disqualified presidential candidates, making an election unnecessary.

But there was already unease about the process as it was the first time that the presidency had been reserved for a particular race, in this case the Malay community. The decision to hand her the job without an election added to the anger.

Social media was abuzz with criticism as Ms. Halimah, a bespectacled 63-year-old who wears a headscarf, was formally announced as president-elect, with Facebook user Pat Eng writing: “Elected without an election. What a joke.”

“I will call her President Select from now on,” said Joel Kong on the networking site, while some posts were marked with the hashtag #NotMyPresident — echoing the message used by upset Americans after the election of President Donald J. Trump.

‘PRESIDENT FOR EVERYONE’
Halimah was a member of parliament for the ruling People’s Action Party for nearly two decades before resigning to contest the presidency. She addressed the concerns about the selection process after being named president-elect.

“I’m a president for everyone. Although there’s no election, my commitment to serve you remains the same,” she said.

Ms. Halimah added she would “start working immediately” to bring the country together.

She also insisted her status as Singapore’s first female president was “not just tokenism,” in a speech to a cheering crowd while wearing orange, a color supposed to symbolize unity.

“Every woman can aspire to the highest office in the land when you have the courage, determination and will to work hard,” she said.

Singapore’s head of state has limited powers, including vetoing senior official appointments. But an establishment figure has always held the role and there are rarely tensions with the government.

Authorities decided to allow only candidates from the Malay community to put themselves forward for the presidency to foster harmony in the city-state of 5.5 million people which is dominated by ethnic Chinese, and give more opportunities to minorities.

Ms. Halimah is the first Malay president of Singapore for almost five decades. The last was Yusof Ishak, president from 1965 to 1970, the first years of the city-state’s independence.

But the decision to limit candidates to one race had caused concern, including among Malays, as it was seen as positive discrimination that ran counter to the city-state’s traditional meritocratic principles.

Five people had originally put their names forward for the presidency and the government had scheduled an election for September 23.

Two were quickly eliminated as they were not Malay. The two others, Malay businessmen, were disqualified on Monday as their companies were smaller than required by strict new eligibility rules introduced last year.

Ms. Halimah automatically qualified as she has held public office. She will be inaugurated in a ceremony on Thursday. — AFP

Jersey retirement

When news of Kobe Bryant’s upcoming jersey retirement first hit hoops circles yesterday, not a few quarters wondered what number the Lakers would opt to hang in the rafters. Will it be “8,” which he wore en route to claiming three championships and eight All-Star, four All-NBA First Team, and four All-NBA Defensive First Team selections? Or will it be “24,” which he headlined in taking two championships, two Finals Most Valuable Player awards, and 10 All-Star, seven All-NBA First Team, and five All-NBA Defensive First Team spots? Based on stats and accolades, not to mention the transformation of his career narrative from selfish baller to ruthless competitor, the latter would seem to be a better choice.

Not that Bryant didn’t have bad days wearing either number. Number 8 was a cocky a — hole who placed self above team, as evidenced by the tug-of-war with acknowledged top dog Shaquille O’Neal that submarined a dynastic run, by the recalcitrant tanking in the rubber match of the first-round series against the Suns in 2006 (not coincidentally his last game in “8”), and, off the court, by criminal and civil cases of sexual assault. Number 24 fared better as a veteran mentor, but a stubborn refusal to command anything less than max salary and starters’ minutes even in the waning years ultimately dealt blows from which the Lakers have yet to fully recover.

In any case, the answer became clear some three hours after the story broke: Both numbers are slated to be honored, which effectively means that Bryant will be the first player in the National Basketball Association to have two jerseys retired for the same franchise, and on the same day. And, to be sure, the Lakers have cause to do so; as he himself noted last year when ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne queried him on the matter, “it’ll be pretty hard for someone else to wear” the number that won’t be joining those of Wilt Chamberlain, Elgin Baylor, Gail Goodrich, Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Shaquille O’Neal, James Worthy, Jerry West, and Jamaal Wilkes.

In the final analysis, Bryant deserves to be feted for his accomplishments. He will find his uniforms raised on Dec. 18, and it’s not wrong to surmise that, sometime after, he will then see the unveiling of his statue outside Staples Center. These days, hardly anybody remembers that he once demanded to be traded, and that he once cut the figure of a petulant showboat who produced more style than substance. These days, he’s a certified winner, destined to be in the Hall of Fame.

Anthony L. Cuaycong has been writing Courtside since BusinessWorld introduced a Sports section in 1994. He is the Senior Vice-President and General Manager of Basic Energy Corp.

Automation and artificial intelligence: What it means for every Juan

Robotic Process Automation or ‘RPA’ has taken the market by storm since its inception. The adoption of new and technologically advanced ways of working has become necessary in order to transform global companies and various industries into digitally enabled enterprises, and to stay relevant and competitive.

RPA is part of a wide spectrum of Intelligent Automation, along with Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented Reality (AR), drones and other machines that have the ability to learn such as Natural Language Programming (NLP) and chatbots. The impacts of these technologies are felt across multiple sectors such as health care, government, financial services, telecommunications, energy, automotive, retail/consumer and aerospace. What does this “industrial revolution” mean for every “Juan” or for each working Filipino and our economy? Let me provide an insight on what we can expect with Intelligent Automation and AI.

According to the Information Technology and Business Process Association of the Philippines and a number of research pieces published by consulting firms last year, the Philippines is one of the top Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) countries in the world. BPOs and Shared Service Centers have proliferated in the National Capital Region and have also reached the Visayas and Mindanao. Both are part of huge multinational companies quickly adopting and exploring RPA.

Recently, I led a successful implementation of some RPA pilot projects across Southeast Asia for a multinational company. Our team created software robots and automated selected processes from HR, Finance & Accounting and Marketing. The goals were to prove that these ‘bots’ can work within the organization’s technology environment and to quantify the RPA benefits.

The result was mind-blowing; return on investment of around 200% over five years, a digital work force that can work 24/7, reduced processing turn-around time up to 40%, an error rate from 0%  to 0.05% and improved compliance and control. These are some of the tangible benefits, which is why RPA has become hot in the market today.

The RPA project helped the organization release capacity and do two things — 1) allocate resources to shift focus from transactional work and move to a more complex value-adding work such as data analytics; and 2) absorb additional work with the same amount of resources — making the organization process-efficient and cost-effective.

RPA consists of software-configured robots that sit on top of existing systems to perform tasks that are performed by humans. These bots can undertake structured, repeatable and computer-based tasks and can access multiple systems (e.g. ERP, CRM, e-mail etc.) to complete the process. The bots will execute the steps to complete the process based on what it is programmed to do. For example, it can log in to an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system and generate a list from a report, validate the report, transfer and save the result into a spreadsheet or document, and send the document to a customer via e-mail. While these bots deliver expected outputs, they have limitations; they are not capable of learning trends, analyzing data and making decisions.

RPA pilot projects can be completed in five to 10 weeks depending on the complexity of the process being automated. The processes that fit well with RPA are those that are transactional in nature or routine with few or no human judgment needed. Note also that these bots can only read digitized inputs, which means they cannot process or recognize handwriting or scanned text… at least, not yet.

With the identified limitations of RPA comes a more advanced technology in artificial intelligence or AI. According to Andrew Ng, founder of the Google Brain deep learning project, “AI could be as important to transforming the economy as electricity was 100 years ago.”

AI incorporates “machine learning,” which means having the ability to learn by processing data without the need to be programmed. This machine-learning capability gives computers or bots the ability to do pattern recognition and construction of algorithms that predict data providing fast and efficient data-driven decisions.

AI is useful in a variety of sectors. The use of AI for drug discovery, predicting impact of containing and spreading diseases and robots in surgery may be utilized in the health industry. In the media industry, AI are able to personalize, generate and filter content (Think of Netflix). In transportation, Uber uses AI to find the best route to your destination. As reported by Bloomberg, Uber also started to use AI to charge customers based on what they are likely willing to pay for a trip to serve more people in more places at fares riders can afford.

“Chatbots” with NLP capabilities are quickly being explored in BPO call centers. These bots can let you choose flight seats, buy a ticket, change an appointment, order at a restaurant, etc. More than that, the chatbots are quickly evolving with the possibility of reading emotions through the facial features and inflections in tone of voice of the person they are communicating with. They can also use your Instagram feed to tell whether you’re clinically depressed.

AI evolves rapidly to the point of attempting to mimic the way our brain processes information. Take for example something as simple as predicting your buying behavior and receiving marketing ads in your social network account to an intelligent personal assistant with “Language Processing” capability like Siri for Apple and Alexa for Amazon Echo. These intelligent PAs are capable of voice interaction, paying your bills, providing real time information, controlling “smart homes” and even driving your car such as a Tesla. In gaming, both IBM’s Watson and Elon Musk’s OpenAI defeated game champions in Jeopardy and Dota 2. All of these capabilities are driving innovation at the cutting edge of AI, which can be seen in various applications today.

Another technology soaring in popularity is Drones as a Service. The use of drones is greatly expanding in the commercial and private sectors in North America and Australia. Police departments are flying drones to help with crowd control. My client uses drones to allow surveyors to collect accurate spatial data in mining sites, which vastly reduces risk by minimizing the times these staff spend on site.

Every Juan needs to be aware that there are more innovations and advance technologies ahead. It is our responsibility to learn and understand its impact to our work and economy, before becoming afraid. When electricity, the internet and mobile phones were first introduced, many jobs were replaced but many jobs were also created. Tread lightly; how we upskill our capabilities and quickly adapt to the change will prepare us for what’s to come. But it is not all up to Juan. The government and educational institutions should be prepared to support and equip the working Filipinos with the new knowledge and skills and help to make them available.

The next three to five years are indeed very exciting as well as challenging for every Juan in the realm of technology advancement.

The views or opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting Services Philippines Co. Ltd. The content is for general information purposes only, and should not be used as a substitute for specific advice.

Angelo L. Basuan is a senior manager with the Management Consulting practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting Services Philippines Co. Ltd., a Philippine member firm of the PwC network.

+63 (2) 845 2728 ext. 3108

angelo.l.basuan@ph.pwc.com

Under EU attack, top palm oil producers Malaysia, Indonesia rethink trade strategy

FACING A BACKLASH in Europe over palm oil’s environmental toll, the world’s top producers are scrambling to find new markets and even striking unusual barter deals, such as exchanging Russian Sukhoi jets for the edible oil.

The European Union is the second-largest palm oil export destination after India for both Malaysia and Indonesia, which dominate production in a global market worth at least $40 billion.

But palm has come under increasing fire in Europe over its impact on forest destruction, encouraging producers to look at new markets ranging from Africa to Myanmar.

Threatened by crumbling demand in Europe, the industry is waging a public relations battle and pushing producers to enter more price-sensitive markets, where Indonesia should have an advantage over Malaysia due to its lower production costs.

“Our principle is we will not let go of even one tonne of trade contract or potential demand palm has globally,” Indonesia’s deputy Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Musdhalifah Machmud told Reuters.

Machmud said palm oil sales were being brought up in “every trade negotiation” Indonesia conducts.

Palm oil is used in thousands of household products, from snack foods to soaps, as well as to make biodiesel.

But the demand boom has spread plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia across an area of more than 17 million hectares — an area greater than the size of Portugal and Ireland. They are mostly carved out of rainforests, which critics say has lead to an increase in the greenhouse gases that warm the planet.

Environmental activists have pressured consumer companies into demanding that their palm suppliers adopt more environmentally sustainable forestry practices. But in Europe, politicians say the industry’s standards on sustainability do not go far enough.

So far, palm oil sales to the European Union have held up. Indonesian exports rose about 40% to 2.7 million tons in the first half of 2017 from a year earlier.

Indonesia’s overall palm exports were worth $18 billion last year, with EU sales accounting for 16%, the Indonesian Palm Oil Association (GAPKI) said. For Malaysia, the EU made up nearly 13% of exports, government data showed.

Europe is particularly concerned about the soaring use of oils, including palm, as a biodiesel fuel. Once regarded as a green alternative, an EU-commissioned report now says it creates more emissions than fossil fuels.

France said in July it will reduce the use of palm in biofuels over concerns of “imported deforestation,” prompting concerns from Indonesia that other European countries could follow suit.

In Germany, the environment ministry said it will press to amend an EU renewables directive to take account of the study showing “palm oil and soyoil caused, in comparison to other biofuels, very much higher greenhouse gas emissions per energy unit through indirect land use change.”

The European parliament in April voted to phase out unsustainable palm oil by 2020. The resolution endorsed a single Certified Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO) plan for Europe-bound palm and other vegetable oil exports to ensure they are produced in an environmentally sustainable way.

In addition to environmental damage, the industry has come under fire over frequent reports of land grabs, child labor and harsh working conditions. Some of the annual forest fires that send shrouds of smoke over parts of Southeast Asia have broken out on palm oil concessions that burn forests to clear land.

Indonesian Trade minister Enggartiasto Lukita in May warned his EU counterparts that he might ask Jakarta not to buy Airbus planes in retaliation, the Jakarta Post reported.

GAPKI Chairman Joko Supriyono told a United Nations sustainability meeting in New York last week that Indonesian palm oil plantation governance met international standards.

Meanwhile, Indonesia is looking at new palm oil markets in Africa via barter trade. Lukita told reporters on a visit to Nigeria he had proposed to swap palm oil for crude oil.

Indonesia signed a preliminary deal last month with Russia’s Rostec to exchange commodities, including palm, as part of a $1.14-billion payment for 11 Sukhoi jets.

Indonesia’s Vegetable Oil Association executive director Sahat Sinaga said palm oil producers will open a marketing and research company in Russia, aiming to increase exports of 920,000 tons in 2016 by 4-5% per year up to 2023.

The group is also planning to open a storage facility in Pakistan, which imports 1-2 million tons of palm from Indonesia a year, anticipating further growth in demand.

The Malaysian Palm Oil Council says it will increase efforts to diversify into new markets such as Myanmar, the Philippines and West Africa regardless of the EU Resolution.

Malaysia’s plantation industries and commodities minister Mah Siew Keong said in June he met EU commissioners and members of parliament for talks. The ministry did not respond to a request for further comment.

Malaysia is more reliant on palm oil exports than Indonesia, shipping out more than 90% of its palm oil last year, compared to about 70% in Indonesia.

Production costs in Malaysia are also 10-15% higher than in Indonesia, analysts estimate.

“If EU doesn’t take up palm for biodiesel, demand for palm oil globally will fall and prices will be affected on the downside… which will impact everyone equally,” Ivy Ng, regional head of plantations research at CIMB Investment Bank, said. — Reuters

Federal Reserve’s patient or preemptive clash looms as inflation fails to hit goal

FORMER Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, in year nine of a US economic expansion, conceded in 1999 that patience was sometimes a better policy than his doctrine of preemptive interest-rate moves because “the future at times can be too opaque to penetrate.”

For some Fed officials, these days look like one of those times to wait for clarity.

Faith in preemption — the Greenspan-era strategy of setting of monetary policy based on forecasts to get ahead of where the economy was going — is beginning to falter among some officials. That’s because in the current expansion’s ninth year, inflation isn’t accelerating as they predicted for reasons that aren’t yet understood, even as the labor market tightens and global growth improves.

“The conventional wisdom did not work in the 1990s and it is not working now,” said Allen Sinai, chief executive officer of Decision Economics in New York.

The debate over whether the Fed should get ahead of the inflation curve or stick with a wait-and-see approach is heating up ahead of the Federal Open Market Committee’s meeting next week. Influential policy makers such as Governor Lael Brainard and New York Fed President William Dudley have staked out different views about whether to let the job market run hotter or rely on once-trusted models and cool it down preemptively.

BALANCE SHEET
Officials are expected to keep rates on hold while announcing the start of a gradual process to shrink their $4.5 trillion balance sheet. Still, the discussion about why inflation has been stuck under their 2% target for most of the past five years could sharpen between hawks pushing for another hike this year and doves preferring to delay.

Outsize declines in the prices of things like cell phone plans, doctor visits, new vehicles and hotel rooms have contributed to a broader deceleration in US inflation over the past five months despite low US unemployment.

That has led key policy makers not only to question whether the labor market still has more room to run before triggering excessive inflation, but also whether they should still be taking a preemptive approach to warding it off at all — a view at the core of modern central banking.

The coming months should be revealing, according to Dudley, who said on Sept. 7 that technology-enabled changes in how consumers shop may be weakening business pricing power and weighing on inflation.

‘JURY’S OUT’
“We just don’t know at this point whether the inflation decline that we’ve seen is mostly being driven by transient, idiosyncratic factors, or whether it’s something more secular, longer-term at play,” Dudley said. “My view is the jury’s out, and I think the data over the next six months is going to be very, very important.”

Either way, the New York Fed chief believes officials should still be able to count on the so-called Phillips curve — named for the late economist William Phillips, whose 1958 discovery of a historical relationship between unemployment and wage growth in the UK guided generations of central bankers.

To Dudley’s mind, the question is whether structural changes have led to a situation in which inflation is lower for any given level of labor utilization.

If so, it would imply that the Fed can delay further rate hikes until unemployment falls further, but that it will eventually need to resume preemptive tightening to ward off inflation as it rises toward 2%.

“I’m not ready to throw the Phillips curve out the window, but I am willing to be a little bit agnostic about whether full employment is potentially as high as we think it is,” he said.

Brainard has less faith that inflation will eventually rise back to the target if the unemployment rate goes low enough. Part of the doubt is due to low inflation expectations, which may represent the underlying, trend level of inflation.

“Some might determine that preemptive tightening is appropriate on the grounds that monetary policy operates with long lags, and inflation will inevitably accelerate as the labor market continues to tighten because of the Phillips curve,” she said Sept. 5. “However, in today’s economy, there are reasons to worry that the Phillips curve will not prove very reliable in boosting inflation as resource utilization tightens.”

BRAINARD’S PATIENCE
Prospects for fiscal stimulus after Republicans won the US presidential election in November appeared to raise expectations for inflation among investors, but the effect has faded over the past six months amid a return to political gridlock in Washington.

“The key question in my mind is how to achieve an improvement in longer-run inflation expectations to a level that will allow us to achieve our inflation objective,” Brainard said. “I believe it is important to be clear that we would be comfortable with inflation moving modestly above our target for a time.”

A year ago, when concerns about global growth loomed over financial markets, there was more discussion among policy makers about allowing inflation to rise above their 2% target.

That may be a tougher sell today, said Neil Dutta, head of US economics at Renaissance Macro in New York.

“It seems as though the rest of the committee sees weak inflation as being largely a function of factors unlikely to persist,” Dutta said. “With financial markets in a healthier place today than a year ago, a shift to more of an explicit overshoot seems less likely.” — Bloomberg

How PSEi member stocks performed — September 13, 2017

Here’s a quick glance at how PSEi stocks fared on Wednesday, September 13, 2017.

Nation a at a Glance — (09/14/17)

News stories from across the nation. Visit www.bworldonline.com (section: The Nation) to read more national and regional news from the Philippines.

Human capital index 2017

THE PHILIPPINES has remained among East Asia and the Pacific’s top 10 economies in terms of human resource development, according to an annual report of the World Economic Forum that nevertheless showed the country slipping in regional and global ranking, weighed down by challenges in skills application and accumulation through work. Read the full story.

Philippines slips in human capital ranking

Lift off

Russia’s Soyuz MS-06 spacecraft carrying the members of the International Space Station (ISS) expedition 53/54, US astronauts Joseph Akaba and Mark Vande Hei and Russia’s cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, blasts off from the launch pad to the International Space Station (ISS) early on September 13, 2017. — AFP

Naked protest

A naked man playing guitar stands in front of police officers during a protest called by several French unions against the labor law reform in Paris, on September 12, 2017. — AFP

Waist-deep

A Cuban wades through a flooded street in Havana, on September 10, 2017. — AFP

The next thing your business may need is a ‘bot’

The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) is significantly disrupting the traditional way of doing business. And its latest offering, chatbots, is gaining momentum as a primary customer service channel for companies.

It created a louder noise when social media giant Facebook announced that enterprises can already integrate chatbots into their Messenger during its F8 conference last year. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said chatbots would enable businesses to deliver automated customer support, among others.

This announcement gave a trio of Filipino business founders who were fresh off a failed startup venture a ray of hope.

Ron Baetiong, who previously worked at US-based online marketplace Groupon, Stephen Ku, owner of an event agency and clubs in Manila, and JC Velasquez, who runs two mobile application development companies, were the men behind Partyphile—an app that allowed users to access clubs, bars, and events. The team, later on, decided to close the business due to lack of traction.

“Just like any other mobile app startup, the challenge was how to get people to download our app because there were too many friction points like searching on the app store, downloading, installing, and more,” Mr. Baetiong told SparkUp in an email when sought for comment. “We had to look for a better way to deliver value.”

So in January, the trio launched ChatbotPH, which boasts of being the pioneer chatbot development agency in the country. It creates, trains, and maintains chatbots for businesses.

According to Mr. Baetiong, “80% of businesses think that they provide superior customer service, but only 8% of consumers agree.” In putting up the agency, he said the team aimed at helping local companies in enhancing their customer service.

“There is a big gap in customer service, especially among growing businesses. Before, the only way you can avert this problem is to pump in more resources by hiring more people, which is an inefficient way to use human effort and intellect,” he said. “Now, you can address this issue by deploying a chatbot for your business to answer queries and become your front‑liner.”

He further said: “70% of questions thrown at a business are repetitive. The only difference is how people ask them and what language they use. Now if there is a pattern, it can be automated by teaching a bot to answer these queries regardless of how they are asked.”

Since its launch, Mr. Baetiong said ChatbotPH has “achieved very good momentum.” Among its current clients are a local bookstore chain and other “big brands.”

“Everyone is in awe of what chatbots can do and how easy it works. It can be applied to all businesses and the use cases for it are unlimited,” he said. “Over time, the bot becomes smarter and smarter that eventually all customer service will require minimal human intervention.”

‘AI not a threat’

For Mr. Baetiong, the Philippines is a suitable place where AI can grow.

“The potential of artificial intelligence is huge here in the Philippines because a lot of jobs are still being done manually with rudimentary tasks. Imagine if we can automate that and get people to do better things that would contribute more,” he said.

AI is among the current hot topics among businesses in the country that it prompted Senator Bam Aquino to file a resolution for a hearing to discuss its impact on the country’s workforce.

While many believe that AI is a great advantage for the business community, some see it as a threat that may leave many Filipino workers jobless, especially those in the business project outsourcing industry.

But Mr. Baetiong said this is only a “case‑to‑case basis.”

“AI will only be a threat (to) jobs that require the same amount of effort and answers. If there are patterns, then it can be automated. But there are still some jobs that really require human labor to be executed properly,” he said.

“Overall, AI is not a threat, it is actually designed to make human lives easier and we should embrace the inevitable future now.”

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