Officials and emergency personnel remove the wreckage of a collision between two trains on August 11, 2017 near Khorshid station in Alexandria.
At least 36 people were killed as two trains collided August 11 outside the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, in one of the deadliest in a string of such accidents in Egypt, the health ministry said. The crash also injured 123 people, the ministry said in a statement. AFP
By Christine J. S. Castañeda
and Mark T. Amoguis
Researchers
EXTERNAL TRADE in goods and manufacturing likely delivered a smaller contribution to economic growth in the second quarter compared with the first three months of the year, based on data released by the government yesterday.
Sales abroad of Philippine-made goods expanded for the seventh straight month in June, albeit nearly flat for the latest period, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
Preliminary data released by the agency showed exports inching up by 0.8% to $4.913 billion in June, slower than the previous month’s revised 14% increase, but still a turnaround from the 9.2% contraction in June of last year.
“The steady increase in exports can be attributed to improving global demand,” said Guian Angelo S. Dumalagan, market economist at the Land Bank of the Philippines (Landbank).
“The overall rise, however, was partly offset by weaker demand for US goods and services. Moreover, there was also some normalization observed after a surge in exports last year,” he added.
The June turnout brought year-to-date merchandise receipts to $31.04 billion, up 13.6% from $27.33 billion in the same period last year, surpassing the government’s 5% merchandise export growth projection for 2017.
The PSA data showed five major commodities out of the top 10 exports contributed to the increase in June. These include electronic equipment and parts (28.6%), metal components (18.7%), ignition wiring set and other wiring sets used in vehicles, aircrafts and ships (13.7%), electronic products (4.4%), and machinery and transport equipment (1.1%).
By commodity group, shipments of manufactured goods — which accounted for 85.1% of the total overseas sales — fell by 0.03% to $4.183 billion.
Exports of mineral products rose 27.9% to $310.981 million while shipments of agro-based products increased 0.3% to $303.693 million.
“We expect Philippine trade to recover, as the global economic recovery is seen to be on firmer footing in the second half of the year,” Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto M. Pernia said.
Japan remained the Philippines’ top export market in June with an 18.5% market share at $909.17 million. On the other hand, China — with an 18.8% share — was the country’s top source of imports.
IMPORTS DIP
Merchandise imports last June dipped by 2.5% to $7.06 billion, a reversal of the 16.6% growth the month before, as well as the 21.9% expansion in June of last year.
Mr. Dumalagan blamed the drop on easing domestic demand after last year’s one-time boost from election-related spending.
“The ability of locals to purchase foreign goods has also declined as a result of the peso’s depreciation,” he added.
Comprising 36.9% of the total imports, raw materials and intermediate goods were down 6.9% to $2.60 billion. Inbound shipments of capital goods also fell 3.5% to $2.30 billion.
With the contraction in June imports outpacing the growth in exports, the country’s balance of trade in goods registered a deficit of $2.147 billion, narrower than both the $2.737 billion last May and the $2.371 billion in June of last year.
For the second quarter alone, the deficit narrowed to $6.638 billion this year from $7.190 billion in 2016, but was wider than the $6.535 billion in the first quarter of this year.
“An improvement in the country’s trade deficit means that net exports would be a lesser drag to the Philippines’ growth in the second quarter of 2017,” Mr. Dumalagan said.
Ruben Carlo O. Asuncion, chief economist at Union Bank of the Philippines (Union Bank), agreed: “This slight improvement in the trade deficit is very positive. It must be understood that not all trade deficits are bad for an economy, in the first place. All types of trade is good for an economy. It depends on the type of exports, most especially the imports. Overall trade will be good for the country’s economic growth.”
MANUFACTURING OUTPUT SLOWS
In a separate report, the PSA said the volume of production index (VoPI) rose by 8.1% last June, slower than the 9.8% recorded in the month before and the previous year.
The latest VoPI growth is faster than the 5.8% estimate made by Moody’s Analytics, but was in line with the slowdown forecast by IHS Markit-Nikkei’s purchasing managers’ index (PMI) for June.
In a statement, the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) said construction-related and export-oriented products propped up manufacturing growth last June.
Capacity utilization, which represents how much of factory capacity is used, averaged 83.8% for the month. Twelve of the 20 sectors registered capacity utilization rates of 80% and above.
UnionBank’s Mr. Asuncion said June’s slowdown may have been caused by the weak peso.
Landbank’s Mr. Dumalagan agreed: “Same as with imports, the slowdown in factory activity might be brought about by normalizing domestic demand after 2016’s one-time election boost.”
Despite the dip in June, manufacturing output has stayed in positive territory for almost two years since July 2015.
“The consistent expansion in factory output generally provides evidence of upbeat economic conditions in the country,” Mr. Dumalagan said.
Mr. Pernia agreed: “Looking ahead, the outlook for the manufacturing sector remains optimistic on the back of favorable domestic conditions such as stable inflation rate, robust economic demand, increased investments, and business confidence.”
The June VoPI brings the second-quarter growth to 7.3%, slower than the 12.7% in the first quarter of this year, and the 9.1% in the second quarter of last year.
The external trade in goods and manufacturing output are the last major economic data sets that the government released ahead of the announcement of the second-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) figures on August 17.
Mr. Pernia earlier said he was looking at second-quarter GDP growth settling between 6.5% and 7%. In the first quarter, GDP growth came in at 6.4%. This was below the government’s full-year target range of 6.5%-7.5%.
FOREIGN direct investments (FDI) to the Philippines surged anew in May on the back of substantial lending to local affiliates, but they were still not able to curb a year-to-date drop of more than a fifth, according to data the central bank released yesterday.
Net foreign fund inflows amounted to $572 million that month, up 57% from the $364 million that entered the country in May 2016 although 35% less than April 2017’s one-year-high $874-million haul.
In a statement, the central bank attributed the FDI climb to the “continued positive outlook” on the Philippine economy in the face of “strong” macroeconomic fundamentals.
FDIs are a key source of capital for the local economy, which in turn generate more jobs for Filipinos through business expansion.
Bigger intercompany borrowings fuelled the leap in net investments in May, with bets on debt instruments doubling to $459 million from the year-ago $220 million, though 37% less than April 2017’s $723 million.
Economists have said that foreign players may be leaning towards debt instruments at a time of rising uncertainty in the global market, as they view debt as the “safer” alternative rather than betting on equities.
Reinvested earnings likewise picked up by 7.8% to $71 million from $65 million a year ago, though 14% less than the preceding month’s $81 million.
Increases in these two components offset the 45.6% year-on-year fall in net equity placements to $43 million from $79 million.
The same comparative months saw gross placements slide 3.9% to $83 million from $86 million, while withdrawals grew fivefold to $40 million from $8 million.
The net increase in FDI flows — as well as the fall in equity placements — took place as President Rodrigo R. Duterte on May 23 placed the entire Mindanao island under martial law to contain within Marawi City the battle between government troops and extremists who have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. The military rule initially spanned two months, but Congress opted to extend its validity until yearend as the fighting has stretched to a third month.
YEAR-TO-DATE FALL
The strong growth in investments seen in May was not enough to pull the year-to-date tally higher than the $3.946 billion recorded in 2016’s comparative five months.
Net FDIs amounted to $3.006 billion from January to May, down 23.8% from the previous year and less than half the government’s full-year projection for 2017.
The same comparative five months saw inter-company lending increase by 12.8% to $2.448 billion from $2.171 billion and reinvested earnings grow 7.5% to $345 million from $321 million.
Net equity capital investments, however, fell by 85.4% to $213 million from $1.454 trillion, as gross placements dropped 77.3% to $358 million from $1.578 billion and withdrawals grew by 16.1% to $145 million from $125 million.
The central bank expects net FDIs to reach $8 billion this year, slightly higher than the $7.93 billion that entered the country in 2016.
Japan, US, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Germany were the biggest sources of foreign capital, bulk of which went to real estate, manufacturing, financial and insurance sectors, as well as wholesale and retail trade. — Melissa Luz T. Lopez
By Zsarlene B. Chua, Reporter
Food delivery services have always hinged on serving the need for convenience, especially for those who can barely find time to cook or do their groceries. And while fastfood options abound and beckon — because a two-piece Chickenjoy is a great temptation — there are those who look for healthier options.
Enter diet meal delivery services: these are services which offer a week’s worth of healthy meals for a set price, delivered to your home or office, which can sometimes be customized depending on the customer’s dietary needs or restrictions.
A cursory search would reveal more than a dozen healthy meal delivery options, ranging from those offering affordable yet healthy meals to those that cater to people who want to follow a specific diet regime.
“Filipinos now are generally more health conscious,” chef Barni Alejandro-Rennebeck, owner of the Sexy Chef, told BusinessWorld during a July 28 interview at their commissary in Quezon City.
Now more than a decade old, the Sexy Chef, which specializes in specific diet plans from South Beach to Paleo, is inarguably one of the pioneers of the movement but Ms. Alejandro-Rennebeck admitted that it was an uphill climb. “A decade ago, a service like us was unheard of… we were the only diet food delivery service [in Metro Manila],” she said.
“And it’s only now that Filipinos have started to become health-conscious. Millennials now, everything they post is about them working out or eating healthy. It took a long time for us to catch on. So it was good we started out small,” she said.
The company — inspired by Ms. Alejandro-Rennebeck’s need to adopt a healthy lifestyle after years of being sickly — grew from serving meals to friends and cooking in her grandmother’s kitchen, to having its own commissary which employs 40 people in the kitchen and eight in-house delivery riders.
“My first recipe was a simple pasta pomodoro dish which I had Rachel [Alejandro, her sister] try and she loved it. That positive response encouraged me to create more healthy recipes,” she said.
Singer/actress Rachel Alejandro co-manages the business with Ms. Alejandro-Rennebeck.
SOUTH BEACH DIET
“Back in 2004, South Beach diet was all the rage and Rachel bought me a cookbook and since there were quite a few ingredients not readily available in the market, I decided to ‘Filipinize’ it a bit by substituting more common ingredients,” Ms. Alejandro-Rennebeck said.
The South Beach diet was introduced in 2003 by Arthur Agatston, an American cardiologist and celebrity doctor, and is mainly comprised of high fiber, low glycemic index carbohydrates and lean protein.
“At that time, both Rachel and I were following the diet and she told me that since I was cooking for her, for her manager, and a few of our friends, it may be time to make it into a business as the people I was cooking for were losing weight,” she said.
During that first year, they had about 20 customers because that was all their grandmother’s kitchen would allow — they had to move to a bigger space after six months of operation.
Now the Sexy Chef offers seven core diet plans: their signature South Beach Diet, Belly Trimmer (which includes superfoods), Pounds Away (which provides 1,200 to 1,400 calories a day), the gluten-free Paleo diet, the Eat Clean Detox, Fat Flush with Sexy Beast (which includes all-natural cold-pressed juices), and Keto (based on the Ketogenic diet which follows a low-carb, moderate protein, and high fat principle) alongside the more affordable Fit Meals which only include lunch and dinner and are customizable based on preference.
The Sexy Chef — which also caters — currently provides meals for more than 100 diet plan customers and 100 Fit Meal customers every day.
“We cook and deliver around 1,000 meals a day,” said Ms. Alejandro-Rennebeck.
COMPETITION
While the Sexy Chef was once the only service of its kind, it has since been joined by other players, many of which offer lower-priced meals which admittedly lured away a lot of its customers.
“The business was good until 2013 because there were no competitors,” Ms. Alejandro-Rennebeck admitted, adding that their competition started gaining ground in 2013.
One of those competitors is Plan:Eat Program which considers itself the most affordable healthy food delivery service in the Metro as its week-long meal plans start at P1,200 for five days.
In comparison, five days of Sexy Chef’s Belly Trimmer meals cost P5,125.
“My first customers were my sister’s barkada (group of friends),” Patricia Quizon, owner and dietician of Plan:Eat Program, said in an interview on July 26 in Makati.
Much like Ms. Alejandro Rennebeck, Plan:Eat started with a personal need to find healthier food options — this time, the owner’s sister who needed to lose weight. Back then, Ms. Quizon’s sister was subscribing to meal delivery services but Ms. Quizon found that the portions were too small for her sister and that she was starving.
“She was losing weight but not the healthy way,” she said. After pointing this out to her, Ms. Quizon was encouraged to create a menu that would better suit her sister and she did.
After a while, her sister started to lose weight and her friends got interested. Soon, Plan:Eat was born.
“In 2013, postpaid plans for mobile phones were all the rage, right? So we decided to tailor our menu the same way,” Ms. Quizon said.
The Plan:Eat Program offers meal plans from P1,200 (which serves meals with a total of 1,200 calories a day) to P1,800 (which serves meals totalling 1,800 calories).
“Being a dietician, my biggest pet peeve is people complicating nutrition. Nutrition isn’t ‘cakes are bad,’ ‘white rice is bad,’ ‘bad this,’ ‘bad that.’ It’s just everything you eat, you need to moderate it,” she explained.
So unlike other services, Plan:Eat usually offers white rice, sometimes sprinkled with bacon, and panna cotta for dessert. It recently introduced themed weeks: Mediterranean, Filipino, etc.
It currently serves 800 to 900 individuals a day, excluding companies that order lunches for their teams for the day (“around 200 corporate meals”).
Again, similar to the Sexy Chef, Plan:Eat started in the Quizon’s home kitchen but it will be moving to a new commissary by 2018. Plan:Eat currently employs 30 individuals in the kitchen and outsources around 40 riders who deliver meals across Metro Manila.
ADVANTAGES OF HEALTHY MEALS
For busy office folks, meal delivery services provide convenient and nutritious meals for an entire day as many services offer meals from breakfast to dinner with small snacks in between. The services are particularly convenient because meals are typically delivered the night before or in the very early morning and the only thing a customer needs to do is to pop it in the refrigerator and heat it up when it’s time to eat.
“I’m very happy with the food. With the service, it varies. They are a small group, with a small outlet. So sometimes there are inevitable delays,” said Marco Sindiong, a PR executive, in an online interview.
Mr. Sindiong has been ordering his lunches from a small service in Makati called the Greenery Kitchen since February and each meal costs P100 and is delivered fresh to the office.
“For a vegan in Makati, they are a godsend,” he said, adding that he will continue ordering from this particular service.
SPOILAGE
Since food companies, especially delivery ones, have to deal with transporting meals in an uncontrolled environment — under various weather and environmental conditions — spoilage is a real problem.
“We had a problem with spoilage during our early years, mostly because of delivery times as riders have to deliver several meal packages a day and sometimes the meals delivered are left at the guardhouses or lobbies for too long [and] they spoil,” said Ms. Quizon.
She added that it became a huge problem for them as almost “30%-40%” of the meals they delivered spoiled which isn’t good for business — they had to process refunds.
“I was at a loss because I didn’t want to use preservatives so I called my old boss and asked for advice and I was advised to invest in a blast freezer,” she said.
The use of the blast freezer almost entirely solved the problems for them as less than 10% of the meals they deliver are reported to have spoiled.
“It took us many years to perfect and prevent spoilage,” said Ms. Alejandro-Rennebeck, noting that now less than 5% of their meals spoil and that the problem is, most of the time, not due to them anymore.
“We don’t leave meals at lobbies, at guardhouses, but if we had to, we get the customer to sign a waiver,” she said.
She added that her staff are often the ones who have to try and see if their current menu items would easily spoil during transport, and since she didn’t want to blast chill their meals (“especially for rice dishes, the quality lowers”), they decided on limiting the number of deliveries their riders make and pack everything with ice from top to bottom, with instructions to the customer to immediately refrigerate the meal.
DIFFICULTIES AND REBRANDING
Because of the popularity of meal delivery services, competition became stiff. The Sexy Chef’s Ms. Alejandro-Rennebeck admitted that in 2013, when many new players entered the market, business went down and she toyed with the idea of closing shop.
“We were losing customers, and as I was looking at how [the competition] can keep their prices lower, I realized other services were offering ensaymada (a sugary local bun) for [a] snack among other things. I thought then, ‘should I sell out and sell ensaymada as well [to attract more customers]?’ but I decided I’d rather close down than not be able to stand by my principles,” she said.
The Sexy Chef hired a consultant who helped them re-brand and re-package the business.
“I was told by our consultant that we didn’t need to lower our prices. We had to remind our customers why we’re the premium choice,” she said.
What it did have to do was pare down the selection to the core diet plans and introduce the more affordable Fit Meals. Packaging was also improved and Ms. Alejandro-Rennebeck said she had to take mobile photography classes and lessons in food plating
“[After the changes, customers] returned,” she said, adding that the key to surviving this business is to “keep evolving.”
“Of course people always want to try something new [but] the customers are not stupid, they will go where they feel service is good,” she said.
“Now? Competition doesn’t bother me so much anymore. We have our fair share of that pie,” she said.
Plan:Eat’s Ms. Quizon said that while there are many players in the market now, she isn’t especially bothered by the competition because she still offers one of the most affordable options.
Having been in the business for almost four years now, Ms. Quizon has begun to look beyond Metro Manila, planning to expand into other metro cities in the country like Cebu and Davao. She feels “there is a market to be served in other cities.” No definite date has been set for this expansion as they are currently talking with several prospective partners.
Aside from expanding beyond Metro Manila, Plan:Eat is also looking to create ready-to-eat meals which will be sold in healthy grocery stores as a way to reach more people and have them try Plan:Eat’s food.
The Sexy Chef meanwhile, expects to evolve into a “one-stop-shop for healthy [pre-prepared] meals and healthy products,” and is currently “looking to partner with a company early next year.”
THE TOP police official involved in the bloody raid in the residence of Ozamiz City Mayor Reynaldo O. Parojinog, Sr. has issued a warning to the mayor where he will be assigned next.
Ozamiz City Police Chief Inspector Jovani Espenido told the media that while he does not know yet where he will be deployed next, Philippine National Police (PNP) Chief Director-General Ronald M. dela Rosa already hinted that he will be transferred to another area with the “next target.”
In a manner reminiscent of President Rodrigo R. Duterte’s threat to drug users, Mr. Espino said: “Kung saan ako malagay, resign na lang. Kung involved [on illegal drugs], mag-resign na lang, para humaba buhay (Wherever I may be reassigned, just resign. If you are involved in drugs, just resign so you can live longer).”
Mr. Parojinog, along with his wife and 13 others, were killed in the Ozamiz operation.
Mr. Espenido was at the Department of Justice (DoJ) yesterday to check a complaint filed against him. However, he declined to discuss the details of the case saying he has yet to look into the accusations.
Mr. Espenido led the raid last July 30 in the residence of Mr. Parojinog, among the alleged narco-politicians included in the list of Mr. Duterte.
Mr. Parojinog is the second mayor allegedly involved in the drug trade killed under the administration of Mr. Duterte.
The first was Mayor Roland R. Espinosa, Sr. of Albuera City, where Mr. Espenido also served as police head.
Meanwhile, Mr. Duterte on Wednesday said the country’s drug problem — which he previously promised to end in just six months upon taking office — will not be solved by a chief executive in just one term.
“Look, itong shabu and drugs, et cetera, cannot be solved by one man for a President for one term. It has bogged nations,” Mr. Duterte said in his speech before businessmen and government officials.
Last year, the firebrand leader also admitted that it was a “miscalculation” on his part when he promised during the election campaign to end the drug scourge in three to six months.
Sought for comment, Presidential Spokesperson Ernesto C. Abella told reporters yesterday that the feisty leader’s recent statements were “not an admission of failure.”
“It is an admission of the depth, the breadth, and complexity of the problem especially considering the fact that he has also said that it was only after he became President that he realized how widespread narco-politics had become,” Mr. Abella said. — Kristine Joy V. Patag and Ian Nicolas P. Cigaral
