Carbon emissions have rebounded to near pre-pandemic levels, according to a study released on Thursday, with coal and natural gas emissions surging in the power and industry sectors even as transportation emissions remain low.
“We were expecting to see some rebound. What surprised us was the intensity and rapidity of the rebound,” said the study’s lead author Pierre Friedlingstein, a climate modeling researcher at the University of Exeter.
In 2020, CO2 emissions fell by a record 1.9 billion tons — a 5.4% drop — as countries locked down and economies ground to a halt. The new report, produced by the Global Carbon Project, forecasts emissions to rise by 4.9% this year.
Among major emitters, China and India are expected to post higher emissions in 2021 than in 2019, while the United States and Europe are expected to have slightly slower emissions.
China was an outlier in 2020 because investments to spur pandemic recovery led to large increases in coal use, even as emissions in other countries dropped.
The study projected total global emissions this year to reach 36.4 billion tons of CO2.
The report comes as global leaders meet at a UN climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, to try to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius and avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change. In order to do so, scientists say, CO2 emissions must reach net zero by 2050.
Total global commitments to reduce emissions fall far short of meeting this goal. Already, deadly wildfires, hurricanes, and floods have become more frequent and more intense because of climate change, and sea level rises are locked in for centuries to come.
To reach net zero in the next three decades, drastic CO2 reductions are needed, said Mr. Friedlingstein. “What needs to be done every year between now and 2050 is — broadly speaking — about the same [reduction] as we had during the COVID crisis,” he said.
At the current level of emissions, the researchers found, it will take only 11 years before the odds of staying within the Paris Agreement’s goal of 1.5 degrees of warming will be no better than a coin toss. — Andrea Januta/Reuters
BookShelf PH, an online bookshop and publisher, has started selling non-fungible tokens (NFTs) of book chapters, starting with its recent publication, The E-Hustle: What the Country’s Best Digital Leaders Can Teach You About Launching and Growing Your Online Business. The Philippine-based bookshop hopes the new model — dubbed a public domain as a service (PDaaS) — will be a sustainable way for Filipinos to access a book’s content even before its copyright expiration.
When a book’s copyright expires, they no longer have exclusive intellectual property rights protections — they have entered the public domain. Some Filipino works in the public domain are Jose Rizal’s El Filibusterismo and Noli Me Tángere. Since copyright expiration in the Philippines continues from the date of the author’s death, plus 50 years, more recent books are not copyright free.
NFTs, as defined by finance website Investopedia, are virtual assets on a blockchain with unique identification codes. Because of their unique identification, they can’t be used as a medium for commercial transactions, although they can be used to represent physical assets such as real estate or an artwork. Because they are based on blockchains (which are digital, decentralized, unalterable ledgers that can record transactions involving value, like money or property), deals are simplified and risks are reduced.
NFT OWNERSHIP “The chapter-bought NFTs will be created into a new public domain version of the book. [It will] be posted on Bookshelf PH and other channels for all to access and download, anytime and anywhere. The release also allows anyone to reproduce the content,” said Ada A. Ortega, co-founder of Bookshelf PH, in an e-mail to BusinessWorld.
Ownership of NFT assets varies. In BookShelf PH’s case, when individuals buy NFTs associated with particular chapters of The E-Hustle, the bookshop will release the chapters to the public domain and forfeit its copyright as publisher.
“The contents of The E-Hustle are produced by Bookshelf PH which means that we have the right to make it public domain,” explained Ms. Ortega. “The buyer of the NFTs, on the other hand, only has ownership of the NFT artwork with the additional utility of being named the presenting sponsor of the respective chapter once it is released into public domain.”
PURCHASE VALUE The NFTs will be auctioned on OpenSea, a global marketplace for NFTs. Individuals interested in purchasing the NFTs first need to create a crypto wallet that OpenSea accepts, such as MetaMask, and then purchase Ethereum (ETH), the cryptocurrency OpenSea accepts for NFT purchases. The cryptocurrency can be bought through either MetaMask or crypto exchanges such as Moneybees.
One NFT of The E-Hustle costs 0.114 ETH, or about $500. Each comes with digital art — a holographic adaptation of the original chapter cover, belonging exclusively to the buyer.
“The value for the NFT owner is that they get to be associated as a supporter of e-commerce and entrepreneurship in the Philippines,” Ms. Ortega told BusinessWorld. “The value for readers is that they get a free resource about e-commerce, [thus] reducing the barrier to entry when it comes to starting or growing an online business.”
Bookshelf PH also has a marketing campaign, called E-Commerce for Everyone, that aims to get the public domain version of The E-Hustle into the hands of one million Filipinos. The year-long campaign starts this November, with all marketing collaterals recognizing buyers of the book’s NFTs as e-commerce enablers.
Asia’s gradual easing of international travel curbs is proving a welcome relief for the region’s hard-hit tourism operators slowly opening up to visitors from around the world — with one giant exception.
China, previously the world’s largest outbound tourism market, is keeping international air capacity at just 2% of pre-pandemic levels and has yet to relax tight travel restrictions as it sticks to zero tolerance for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
That has left a $255 billion annual spending hole in the global tourism market for operators such as Thailand’s Laguna Phuket to try and fill.
Managing director Ravi Chandran says Laguna Phuket’s five resorts have shifted their marketing focus to Europe, the United States and United Arab Emirates to make up for the loss of Chinese visitors, who accounted for 25%–30% of its pre-COVID business.
“Up to today, we have not done significant marketing or promotion in China … because we don’t feel anything coming our way,” Mr. Chandran said.
The pandemic has cost Thailand an estimated $50 billion a year in tourism revenue and Chinese were above-average spenders based on tourism ministry data.
Thailand hopes to receive 180,000 foreign tourists this year, a fraction of around 40 million it received in 2019, as it opened places beyond Phuket to tourists on Monday.
Many experts expect China to keep such stringent measures such as up to a three-week quarantine for those returning home until at least the second quarter of next year and possibly then open gradually on a country-by-country basis.
“Destinations have to identify new source markets and learn how to market and cater to different cultures,” Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) Chief Executive Liz Ortiguera said, citing the Maldives as a rare example of a successful pivot during the pandemic.
The string of islands in the Indian Ocean promoted itself heavily at trade shows and attracted more Russian and Indian visitors to its luxury resorts and sparkling waters.
China had been its greatest source of tourists before the pandemic but the Maldives saw overall arrivals in the first nine months of 2021 fall just 12% versus the same period of 2019.
“When we realized that Chinese travelers weren’t coming to the Maldives any time soon, we switched our focus to other key markets including Russia,” said a spokesperson for COMO Hotels and Resorts, which has two Maldives resorts.
CHINA TOURISM EVOLVES Travel data firm ForwardKeys estimates it will take until 2025 for Chinese outbound travel to recover to pre-pandemic levels. That will also force airlines to re-evaluate their routes given its data shows 38% of Chinese tourists took foreign carriers in 2019.
Even as Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia’s Bali gradually open up for international travelers, Thai Airways and Garuda Indonesia are drastically shrinking their fleets as part of restructuring plans amid the absence of Chinese tourists.
When China does open its borders, industry surveys show a reluctance by many to travel internationally due to COVID-19 fears.
There has also been a boom in domestic holidays to Hainan Island which now offers duty free shopping in a threat to future visits to nearby destinations such as Hong Kong and South Korea.
“I honestly do not have much enthusiasm for international travel,” said at Kat Qi, 29, a researcher in Beijing who travelled to Southeast Asia and Britain before the pandemic. “A lot of places that I wanted to visit are in less developed countries with gorgeous natural scenery and they tend to be the least vaccinated countries.”
Her preference for natural scenery is also a trend emerging in surveys of Chinese travellers. Many are focused on the outdoors at a time when domestic camping holidays have become popular and tourism operators will need to adapt accordingly, experts say.
“The market will have changed so the Chinese people traveling in 2022 will be different from the Chinese traveling in 2019,” said Wolfgang Georg Arlt, CEO of the China Outbound Tourism Research Institute. “I think the trends will go away from this shopping and rushing around.”
Large group tours that have also fallen out of favor on domestic trips could also be a thing of the past, to be replaced by independent travel and smaller customized tours with family and friends, said Sienna Parulis-Cook, director of marketing and communications at advisory firm Dragon Tail International.
“You might have organized travel and everything but it would be with a small group of people that you know, rather than 50 strangers on a tour bus,” she said. — Jamie Freed/Reuters
GLASGOW — As climate change triggers deadly heat waves, droughts and floods, three UN agencies on Wednesday rolled out funding plans to improve weather forecasting in vulnerable countries.
The initiative, announced at the UN climate summit in Glasgow, aims to plug gaps in weather monitoring and data collection so developing countries can better prepare for possible climate-fueled disasters.
Over the next decade, organizers at the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) plan to boost weather monitoring in 75 small island nations and least-developed countries that have done little to cause the climate crisis but face the biggest and costliest impacts.
“We have to invest in weather and climate services,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas told conference attendees. “Without observations we are not able to provide good services.”
“In modeling we say that if you put junk in your forecasting models you are getting junk out. Unfortunately, that’s the situation in several developing countries and also several island state countries,” he said.
Improving rain forecasts, for instance, can help farmers manage their fields, communities manage water resources or governments plan for food imports when yields look likely to falter. They can also allow people to prepare for possible flooding.
For the Red Cross in Burkina Faso, such forecasts — when they exist — are crucial to the aid organization’s budget and procurement planning, Red Cross climate scientist Kiswendsida Guigma said.
But in many places, there is a “huge gap” in accuracy and detail, Guigma said. “We don’t have very dense networks of instruments collecting data, and [there is] a lack of human and technical capacity.”
The new initiative, called the Systematic Observations Finance Facility, is led by the WMO, the UN Development Programme and the UN Environment Programme and falls under global plans to provide $100 billion a year in climate financing to poorer nations.
Failure by rich nations to meet this 2020 goal has earned wide rebuke in Glasgow. On Tuesday US climate envoy John Kerry said the world might meet that goal by 2022.
Improving weather data can also help with longer-term predictability around climate change, said Lars Peter Riishojgaard, director of the WMO’s Earth System Branch.
“If you’re a rural economy with subsistence farming, you need to know: Can people have their livelihoods where they are right now, or do they need to pick different crops?” Mr. Riishojgaard said. “If you can’t predict it, you can’t adapt to it.”
DISAPPEARING DATA In recent years, weather data for Africa has declined as readings from weather balloons equipped with observation equipment – known as radiosondes — decreased by about half between 2015 and 2020.
Radiosonde data, which unlike satellite data is collected at various atmospheric altitudes, is crucial for both weather predictions and climate modelling. Lack of investment, security conflicts and other problems have prevented African countries from floating new balloons, said Columbia University climate scientist Tufa Dinku.
“There is almost no data outside the roads, outside the towns and cities,” he said. And “if you think about it, agriculture doesn’t happen in towns or cities.”
That has left African farmers and herders struggling to plan ahead, even as the rates of temperature increase in the continent’s south have been among the world’s fastest.
Madagascar, off Africa’s southeast coast, has this year suffered from a crippling famine that scientists say is caused by climate-fueled drought.
More than a million people face extreme hunger in the island nation that has produced less than 0.01% of the carbon-dioxide emissions causing global warming, according to the Global Carbon Project.
Globally, weather-related natural disasters have increased five-fold over 50 years, the WMO said. More than 91% of associated deaths have occurred in developing countries.
Prime Minister of Fiji Frank Bainimarama told attendees at the initiative’s rollout that climate-driven superstorms, rising seas, and changing weather patterns are the “new norm” in the Pacific. He added that 13 cyclones have struck the island nation since 2016.
“Disaster readiness and disaster resilience are two sides of the same coin,” Mr. Bainimarama said. “They both depend on robust weather and climate data.” — Andrea Januta, Kanupriya Kapoor, and Katy Daigle/Reuters
GLASGOW — Banks, insurers, and investors with $130 trillion at their disposal pledged on Wednesday to put combating climate change at the center of their work, and gained support in the form of efforts to put green investing on a firmer footing.
And in another development at the COP26 UN climate conference, at least 19 countries are expected to commit on Thursday to ending public financing for fossil fuel projects abroad by the end of 2022, two sources said.
In an earlier announcement at the meeting in Scotland, financial institutions accounting for around 40% of the world’s capital committed to assuming a “fair share” of the effort to wean the world off fossil fuels.
A main aim of the COP26 talks is to secure enough national promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions — mostly from coal, oil and gas — to keep the rise in the average global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
But how to meet those pledges, particularly in the developing world, is still being worked out, and it will require a lot of money.
UN climate envoy Mark Carney, who assembled the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), put the figure at $100 trillion over the next three decades, and said the finance industry must find ways to raise private money to take the effort far beyond what states alone can do.
“The money is here — but that money needs net zero-aligned projects and (then) there’s a way to turn this into a very, very powerful virtuous circle — and that’s the challenge,” the former Bank of England governor told the summit.
Mr. Carney’s comments reflect a problem often cited by investors who, in the face of a myriad of climate-related risks, need to be sure that they are being accounted for in a transparent and preferably standardized way globally.
“Some of the key interlocking pieces of the finance puzzle are now coming together,” said Nick Robins of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
Another piece of the jigsaw is where the public money to assist the transition from carbon intensive energy and industry will come from, and on Wednesday the United States said it would support a mechanism to raise new finance for clean energy and sustainable infrastructure in emerging markets.
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the United States would join Britain in backing the Climate Investment Funds’ (CIF) new Capital Market Mechanism, which would help attract significant new private climate funds and provide $500 million per year for the CIF’s Clean Technology Fund, as well as its new Accelerating Coal Transition investment program.
“The reason I am here is because climate change is not just an environmental issue. It is not just an energy issue. It is an economic, development and market-destabilizing issue, and I would not be doing my job if I did not treat it with the seriousness warranted,” Ms. Yellen said.
LOOPHOLES
However, others were not convinced by progress at COP26.
“These happy headlines conceal a wealth of loopholes and opportunities for backsliding that we cannot afford if we are to avoid climate breakdown,” the Environmental Justice Foundation said in a statement.
“Net zero pledges mean nothing without fossil fuel divestment. Time for financial institutions to put their money where their mouth is and stop funding climate-destroying fossil fuels,” the NGO’s CEO Steve Trent added.
Mr. Carney has led an effort to ensure that financial institutions account for and disclose the full climate risks of their lending or investments, forcing the wider economy to price in costs that until now have been largely concealed.
These include not only the direct effects of extreme weather events, but also any loss of government subsidies for fossil fuels, or the health and environmental costs of greenhouse gas emissions.
Kristalina Georgieva, head of the International Monetary Fund, said it was crucial to incorporate climate data into everyday macroeconomic reporting.
The vice chair of the global Financial Stability Board, Dutch central banker Klaas Knot, said a mandatory global minimum standard for disclosure of climate risks was now needed for financial stability and the provision of sustainable finance.
The change in private sector financial institutions was praised by British COP26 President Alok Sharma who said:
“What we have seen over the last few years is a big move in the private sector and financial services sector to go green … in the 1990s, clearly [then] climate finance, investing in green, was not mainstream. I do believe it is now mainstream.”
China’s central bank governor, Yi Gang, said Beijing was working on a new monetary policy facility to provide cheap funds for financial institutions to support green projects.
Jane Fraser, CEO of Citigroup, a GFANZ member, said the initiative needed scale in order to work.
“If you don’t work together, you’re going to come up with a lot of really nice speeches, but you’re … in danger of being divorced from reality,” she said.
Investors will welcome the launch of a global standards body to prevent companies giving a flattering picture of their climate policies and business practices in what is already a multitrillion-dollar global market for environment, social and governance targeted funds.
“If you don’t have basic information on a globally comparable basis … you increase the risks of greenwashing enormously,” said Ashley Alder, chair of the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO), the global umbrella body for securities regulators.
Private sector enthusiasm for mobilizing climate-friendly investment also requires the assurance that governments are setting emission reduction goals that are ambitious enough to meet the 1.5 Celsius goal — by no means certain to happen by the end of COP26 on Nov. 12. — Simon Jessop and Andrea Shalal/Reuters
CHICAGO — As the devastating Delta variant surge eases in many regions of the world, scientists are charting when and where coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) will transition to an endemic disease in 2022 and beyond, according to Reuters interviews with over a dozen leading disease experts.
They expect that the first countries to emerge from the pandemic will have had some combination of high rates of vaccination and natural immunity among people who were infected with the coronavirus, such as the United States, the UK, Portugal and India. But they warn that SARS-CoV-2 remains an unpredictable virus that is mutating as it spreads through unvaccinated populations.
None would completely rule out what some called a “doomsday scenario,” in which the virus mutates to the point that it evades hard-won immunity. Yet they expressed increasing confidence that many countries will have put the worst of the pandemic behind them in the coming year.
“We think between now and the end of 2022, this is the point where we get control over this virus … where we can significantly reduce severe disease and death,” Maria Van Kerkhove, an epidemiologist leading the World Health Organization’s (WHO) COVID-19 response, told Reuters.
The agency’s view is based on work with disease experts who are mapping out the probable course of the pandemic over the next 18 months. By the end of 2022, the WHO aims for 70% of the world’s population to be vaccinated.
“If we reach that target, we will be in a very, very different situation epidemiologically,” Ms. Van Kerkhove said.
In the meantime, she worries about countries lifting COVID precautions prematurely. “It’s amazing to me to be seeing, you know, people out on the streets, as if everything is over.”
COVID-19 cases and deaths have been declining since August in nearly all regions of the world, according to the WHO’s report on Oct. 26.
Europe has been an exception, with Delta wreaking new havoc in countries with low vaccination coverage such as Russia and Romania, as well as places that have lifted mask-wearing requirements. The variant has also contributed to rising infections in countries such as Singapore and China, which have high rates of vaccination but little natural immunity due to much stricter lockdown measures.
“The transition is going to be different in each place because it’s going to be driven by the amount of immunity in the population from natural infection and of course, vaccine distribution, which is variable … from county by county to country by country,” said Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Several experts said they expect the US Delta wave will wrap up this month, and represent the last major COVID-19 surge.
“We’re transitioning from the pandemic phase to the more endemic phase of this virus, where this virus just becomes a persistent menace here in the United States,” former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said.
Chris Murray, a leading disease forecaster at the University of Washington, likewise sees the US Delta surge ending in November.
“We’ll go into a very modest winter increase” in COVID-19 cases, he said. “If there’s no major new variants, then COVID starts to really wind down in April.”
Even where cases are spiking as countries drop pandemic restrictions, as in the UK, vaccines appear to be keeping people out of the hospital.
Epidemiologist Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London said that for the UK, the “bulk of the pandemic as an emergency is behind us.”
‘A GRADUAL EVOLUTION’
COVID-19 is still expected to remain a major contributor to illness and death for years to come, much like other endemic illnesses such as malaria.
“Endemic does not mean benign,” Ms. Van Kerkhove said.
Some experts say the virus will eventually behave more like measles, which still causes outbreaks in populations where vaccination coverage is low.
Others see COVID-19 becoming more a seasonal respiratory disease such as influenza. Or, the virus could become less of a killer, affecting mostly children, but that could take decades, some said. Imperial College’s Mr. Ferguson expects above-average deaths in the UK from respiratory disease due to COVID-19 for the next two-to-five years, but said it is unlikely to overwhelm health systems or require social distancing be reimposed.
“It’s going to be a gradual evolution,” Mr. Ferguson said. “We’re going to be dealing with this as a more persistent virus.”
Trevor Bedford, a computational virologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center who has been tracking the evolution of SARS-CoV-2, sees a milder winter wave in the United States followed by a transition to endemic disease in 2022–2023. He is projecting 50,000 to 100,000 US COVID-19 deaths a year, on top of an estimated 30,000 annual deaths from flu.
The virus will likely continue to mutate, requiring annual booster shots tailored to the latest circulating variants, Mr. Bedford said.
If a seasonal COVID scenario plays out, in which the virus circulates in tandem with the flu, both Messrs. Gottlieb and Murray expect it to have a significant impact on healthcare systems.
“It’ll be an issue for hospital planners, like how do you deal with the COVID and flu surges in winter,” Mr. Murray said. “But the era of … massive public intervention in people’s lives through mandates, that part I believe will be done after this winter surge.”
Richard Hatchett, chief executive of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, said with some countries well protected by vaccines while others have virtually none, the world remains vulnerable.
“What keeps me up at night about COVID is the concern that we could have a variant emerge that evades our vaccines and evades immunity from prior infection,” Mr. Hatchett said. “That would be like a new COVID pandemic emerging even while we’re still in the old one.” — Julie Steenhuysen/Reuters
The unemployment rate rose to 8.9% in September, the highest so far this year, even as lockdown restrictions were loosened in the Philippine capital.
The preliminary report of the Philippine Statistics Authority’s (PSA) September round of the labor force survey (LFS) put the unemployment rate at 8.9%, compared to the 8.1% in August. It was the highest so far for this year since the 8.8% rate recorded in January.
There were 4.25 million unemployed in September, up from 3.88 million in August. This was also the highest since the 4 million Filipinos without jobs in January.
In an online press conference on Thursday, National Statistician and PSA chief Dennis S. Mapa said the agriculture and forestry sector logged the biggest increase in unemployment due to bad weather conditions in September.
Around 862,000 jobs in agriculture and forestry were lost in September versus August, the PSA said. Severe Tropical Storm Jolina (Conson) and Tropical Storm Kiko (Chanthu) hit parts of the country in September, which coincided with the end of harvest season.
Meanwhile, the quality of jobs slightly improved as the underemployment rate, representing those under the labor force who are already working but are looking for more work or looking to work for longer hours, went down to 14.2% equivalent to 6.18 million Filipinos in September from 14.7% or 6.48 million in August. — BADA
WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve threw its weight back behind the drive for a full US jobs recovery on Wednesday, restating its belief that current high inflation is “expected to be transitory” and, despite risks to that view, arguing that price pressures will ease and pave the way for stronger employment and economic growth in the months to come.
Even as the US central bank announced it was tucking away one of its main pandemic-fighting tools, by trimming its massive bond-buying program beginning this month, its latest policy statement and Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s remarks in a news conference signaled it would stay patient — and wait for more job growth — before raising interest rates.
“Supply and demand imbalances related to the pandemic and the reopening of the economy have contributed to sizeable price increases in some sectors,” the Fed said in its latest policy statement, adding that “an easing of supply constraints [is] expected to support continued gains in economic activity and employment as well as a reduction in inflation.”
Mr. Powell emphasized what he said is the Fed’s intent to push labor markets further with low interest rates, and to withhold judgment about the limits of job creation until further outbreaks of the coronavirus have been contained.
“Ideally, we would see further development of the labor market in a context where there isn’t another COVID spike. And then we would be able to see a lot. To see how does [labor] participation react in the post-COVID world,” he told reporters. “We are going to have to see some time post-COVID, or post-Delta anyway, to see what is possible,” Mr. Powell said in reference to the coronavirus variant that was largely responsible for a coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) surge and economic slowdown over the last three months.
Yet inflation was uncomfortably high, Mr. Powell acknowledged, blaming it on “turmoil” in global supply chains that is likely to last until perhaps the second half of next year, posing a challenge in the meantime to families on fixed incomes or those earning lower wages.
Inflation for the last five months has been running at twice the Fed’s 2% target, and moving in a way Mr. Powell said could well satisfy the central bank’s benchmark for a rate increase — once maximum employment is reached.
But for now, he said, the Fed would be “patient” in deciding when to raise its benchmark overnight interest rate from the near-zero level, a counter to rising bets in financial markets that inflation would prompt the central bank to end its pandemic-era support for the economy sooner than later.
The Fed last year said it would allow higher inflation in hopes of encouraging more job growth, but as prices rose this year so did skepticism about the depth of the central bank’s commitment to that new approach.
“We don’t think it is time yet to raise interest rates. There is still ground to cover to reach maximum employment,” Mr. Powell said, adding that he thought that goal could perhaps be met late next year.
END OF ASSET PURCHASES
The Fed, as widely expected, announced on Wednesday that it would begin reducing its $120 billion in monthly purchases of Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities (MBS) at a pace of $15 billion per month, with a plan to end the purchases altogether in mid-2022.
That bond-buying “taper,” the source of market turbulence when the Fed plotted its exit from a similar asset-purchase program that was rolled out to fight the 2007-2009 recession, this time came off without a hitch
The central bank’s message of ongoing accommodative policy helped push the S&P 500 index and the Nasdaq Composite to record closing highs.
Treasury yields ended the day higher, but the move was more pronounced on longer-dated maturities that are more sensitive to inflation expectations. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note ended the session back above 1.60% for the first time in a week, while the yield on the 2-year Treasury note, a proxy for Fed interest rate expectations, ticked fractionally higher to about 0.46%.
Indeed, investors in recent weeks had focused less on the bond-buying taper and more on the Fed’s reaction to a surge in prices that promises to last much longer than anticipated when it first took root in the spring.
Mr. Powell’s response was to acknowledge the uncertainty, but argue that was part of the reason the Fed should not rush into a rate hike when it was still possible inflation would ease on its own and allow workers more time to navigate into jobs.
“As the pandemic subsides, supply-chain bottlenecks will abate and job growth will move back up,” he said. “And as that happens, inflation will decline from today’s elevated levels. Of course, the timing of that is highly uncertain.”
‘HEDGING THEIR BETS’
The Fed instructed its market agents at the New York Fed to begin executing the reduced bond purchases in the middle of this month, but only laid out that plan for November and December. Starting in mid-November, it will buy $70 billion of Treasuries and $35 billion of MBS per month, a pace that will drop to $60 billion of Treasuries and $30 billion of MBS per month in mid-December.
Policymakers, the Fed said, judge that “similar reductions in the pace of net asset purchases will likely be appropriate each month, but (are) prepared to adjust the pace of purchases if warranted by changes in the economic outlook.”
If the economy continues to progress as expected, the Fed could finish tapering those purchases by the middle of next year, Mr. Powell said. He stressed that officials have the flexibility to speed up, or slow down, the taper based on what happens in the economy.
“They’re hedging their bets, but that’s not anything new, because we’ve heard publicly they’re a little less confident that things are going to come down as quickly on the inflation side as they thought,” said Joseph LaVorgna, Americas chief economist at Natixis in New York.
“Along with supply disruptions, things just drag on a bit longer and the statement reflects those realities,” Mr. LaVorgna said. — Howard Schneider and Ann Saphir/Reuters
BTS danced its way through the United Nations — SCREENSHOT FROM YOUTUBE.COM/UNITEDNATIONS
Hybe Co., the agency managing K-pop sensation BTS, will team up with South Korea’s largest crypto exchange operator to sell non-fungible tokens related to the band, ahead of plans to also release a video game co-produced by BTS.
The agreement involves Hybe buying a 2.5% stake in Dunamu, which runs the Upbit crypto exchange, for 500 billion won ($423 million). Separately, Hybe will issue 700 billion won of new shares to Dunamu, the company disclosed in regulatory filings Thursday.
Photo cards of BTS members will be released as NFTs on Upbit, which would be available to share on virtual spaces. Physical photo cards are commonly released in limited quantities and collected and traded by fans who meet in person.
“We are working with Dunamu to create a way to expand the fan experience,” said Hybe founder Bang Si-hyuk in an online briefing. The goal is providing secure card ownership and “allowing them to be collected, exchanged, and displayed in a global fan community where instead of a single photo, it can be turned into a digital photo card with moving images and sound.”
Hybe shares were up as much as 7.5% in Seoul on Thursday.
Aside from the NFT announcement, Hybe also plans to launch original stories starring members of its K-pop boy bands from January, which will be released in web cartoon and web novel format via Naver Webtoon Co.’s platform. The company also said there’ll be a BTS game, developed with input from the band, in the first half of 2022.
NFTs have soared in popularity in recent months, with caricatures of monkeys and lions commanding prices that scale up into the millions of dollars and sports clubs and prestige automakers are among those getting into the business. BTS would be one of the biggest brands to join in the nascent trading business, which is based on blockchain technology to authenticate unique ownership tokens attached to otherwise easily reproducible digital goods. Music, photography and digital art are among the popularly traded genres of NFT.
Upbit is one of the four Korean exchanges that are allowed to offer won-based trading as well as crypto-to-crypto trading services after a regulatory clampdown in September. The country’s cryptocurrency market is dominated by the four biggest exchanges and Upbit accounted for about 88% of trading volume in the country as of September, according to data from ruling party lawmaker Noh Woong-rae. — Bloomberg
Digital technologies have become part of the numerous ways of doing business at present. As brands continue harnessing such innovations to build their future, they must know how to properly navigate the multidimensional digital space.
Providing insights to envision this digital future for brands, the Digicon POP 2021 gathered leaders, experts, and creators from various industries all over the world to discuss what a future further shaped by digital holds.
Organized by the Internet & Mobile Marketing Association of the Philippines (IMMAP), the five-day virtual conference — held on Oct. 11 to 15 — employed a framework of four programming tracks, namely Disruption, Expansion, Emerging, and Possibilities.
Day One: Rethinking ahead
The management of ABS-CBN, which now calls itself a “content company,” began the first day of Digicon by sharing how they disrupted the country’s largest entertainment and media conglomerate through digital channels.
Melissa Henson, vice-president and chief marketing officer of Manulife, followed the discussion by talking about resetting, restructuring, and revisiting priorities for the new normal to make every day better.
The Disruption track, which covered discussions to learn from innovators from different fields, gathered Pablo Gomez, head of Creative and Media Singapore and Regional Media Lead for APAC at Kantar; Michael Patent, founder of Culture Group; and Rushit Jhaveri, head of Content Solutions & Sponsorship (SEA) at Google. They talked about media and digital trends; the metaverse marketing ecosystem; and maximizing content reach, respectively.
Meanwhile, speakers at the Expansion expounded on the new growth areas and opportunities from digital technologies. The track’s first speaker on Day One was Nicholas Kontopoulos, head of Growth Market APAC at Adobe, who explored the future of customer experience. The next talk centered on rewriting the brand narrative with Wattpad, discussed by Twila Bergania, head of Fandom & Community Engagement at Culture Group, and Walter Demesa, senior account manager at Wattpad. The last session on Day One under the Expansion track was a panel discussion that answered the question of whether brands can go “Glocal.”
The Emerging leg, where speakers shared the emerging digital trends and tools, started its first day with Akshat Jain, country manager at Facebook, discussing “Making conversations deliver more for businesses;” followed by a panel discussion on the topic titled, “Your audience is listening. Are you missing out?;” and finally with Philip Tnee, country head for Global Business Service at TikTok, talking about “How Brands can Succeed in the Age of Participation.”
Recognizing new potential markets and underserved needs were the goal of Digicon’s last track, Possibilities. Its Day One speakers included Alasdair Gray, strategy director at BBH; Ash Mandhyan, former CEO of Quanta Digital; and Benjamin Burne, director of product strategy at Nielsen. Their respective talks dealt with learnings brands can get from games; the next step for retail with e-commerce; and transformation in audience measurement.
Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist and best-selling author
Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist and best-selling author, culminated the first day of Digicon with a reminder of the importance of rethinking or “thinking like a scientist” for businesses.
According to Mr. Grant, thinking like a scientist would free entrepreneurs from falling into the trap of escalation of commitment to a losing course of action where instead of rethinking a choice that did not go as hoped, they double down and invest more time, energy, and money on this failing claim.
“Rethinking does not always mean you have to change your mind. It means you’re open to reevaluating and reconsidering,” he said. “When you think more like a scientist, you take people who disagree with you not as a threat to your ego or image, but as people you can learn from.”
“The pandemic last year forced us to do a lot of rethinking, to question our assumptions or decisions,” he added. “I hope for 2021 and beyond, we do our rethinking more deliberately and proactively.”
Day Two: Meaningful connections and partnerships
The second day of Digicon POP was kicked off by Bretman Rock, sharing his thoughts about content creation and connecting with the audience as well as his advice for influencers.
The social media sensation shared that content creating is mentally draining at times, which some people do not talk about much. “Sometimes the pressure of content creating — the numbers, likes, views — could create so much problems,” he said. “This creator world is very taboo [and has] a lot of unspoken things.”
“If anyone out there struggling with their mental health, joining social media will not help them,” he added. “Having fame will not fix your mental health. Sometimes it’s better to not post today; it’s okay to not get as much likes on a post.”
He also expressed that he loved seeing “real” people on Philippine commercials today, also telling marketers that their audience and demographic now want real things. “I think that’s what the world is craving right now. That’s why I feel like the world loves me because I’m a real person.”
He also reminded his fellow and aspiring influencers about false self-entitlement. “Sometimes people want to have fame or start influencing to get the perks. But it should never be about that. People can see your intentions,” he said. “If you want to be an influencer for the perks of it, don’t.”
Laurent Ezekiel, chief marketing and growth officer at WPP, continued the second day of Digicon through a conversation with Gill Zhou, chief marketing officer of IBM APAC. They talked about IBM’s marketing transformation with agency partners.
Ms. Zhou shared that their needs and expectations evolved from their agency partners. First of which is they need “an agency partner that helps push the boundaries to find and test new and engaging formats across all channels.” Next is they need “a very diverse and inclusive talent pool to ensure the best work.” And lastly, they also need to “work seamlessly as one team driving one, shared outcome.”
“As the marketing transformation is ongoing at IBM, I think we will rely even more on the agency partners. If we elevate this relationship into business partner relationship, then I think that kind of mutual accountability and mutual reliance on each other for mutual success is just becoming inevitable,” Ms. Zhou said.
“I’m doing the work every day in my part of the world to get on this transformation journey with all my teams and agency partners over here to create that future that is quite foreseeable.”
Dhruv Vahra, Facebook’s director of Small and Medium Businesses in Southeast Asia, presented the digital adoption and consumption growth, among others, in the region. He also highlighted that Southeast Asia leads the digital transformation in the Asia-Pacific.
Day Two of Digicon’s Disruption track covered the key influencer marketing trends for 2022 in a panel discussion of the Content and Influencers Council of the Philippines. It was followed by Beia Latay, CEO of HealthNow, who shared what can be learned from the healthtech boom.
The Expansion track started with a discussion about mothers as consumers, led by Bela Gupta, founder of Edamama. Afterward, Jay Jenkins, tech strategist and evangelist for APAC at Google Cloud, talked about building a digital workforce.
Chris Schimkat, regional analytics director for APAC at Reprise, began the second day of Emerging with a talk about data science and getting the right data. Mehul Mandalia, co-founder of Moving Walls, followed with a topic on programmatic digital out-of-home.
The Possibilities track covered radio and podcasting. The Manila Broadcasting Corp. shared the story of radio amid the pandemic, including the innovations. Ron Baetiong, CEO and co-founder of Podcast Network Asia, then explained why podcasting is the new word of mouth.
Digicon’s second day ended with Ken Mandel, Grab’s regional marketing director for GrabAds and Brand Insights, talking about brand as a service.
Day Three: Striking balances
Starting Day Three of Digicon was a fireside chat on growth with Alex Tsering and Crystal Widjaja, Kumu’s respective chief growth officer and chief product officer. They were followed by Chandan Deep, head of Emerging Business for SEA at Twitter, discussing brand safety. Ragde Faicis, CEO of ChatGenie, subsequently talked about hyper-convenience in the time of the rising presence of super apps.
The third day of Disruption track opened with Bea Atienza, IBE Leader at Colgate Palmolive, speaking on the topic “Designing Customer Experiences that Pop.” Paula Abjelina, AdColony’s country manager for the Philippines and Thailand, and Memo Moreno, a managing partner at Mindshare, afterward talk over gaming as a new channel for marketing.
Esports was the central topic on the Expansion track, beginning with ONE Esports CEO Carlos Alimurung elucidating how this form of gaming builds fan engagement. The next topic dealt with esports going from the influencer to creator economy, a discussion led by Brian Dacanay, associate vice-president for Tier One’s Commercial Partnerships.
The first session on Day Three of Emerging was about “Marketing to Women,” discussed by Lucille McCart, comm’s director for APAC at Bumble. Marty Buaragay and Lian Capati, the respective country lead for Video and Head of Agencies at Facebook Philippines, then talked about “Rising in the era of social video.”
Gen Z, meanwhile, was the focus in Possibilities. Grace David, CEO of Edukasyon, and Isabelle Yap, special projects officer, SAVP at East West Bank, fulfilled the track’s third day by talking about exploring the said generation in the workforce and creating a banking solution for them, respectively.
The day ended with a discussion on balancing technological innovations with the human factor. “A great brand understands how to balance the automatic, the low friction, and the efficient with the human,” argued Rory Sutherland in his keynote talk at Digicon. “When you automate something, you also need to invest in the opposite.”
The vice-chair at Ogilvy UK underscored the issues with looking at technologies exclusively through the lens of efficiency, explaining it through the “doorman fallacy.” It is an idea in which one replaced a hotel doorman with an automatic door-opening, considering it to be cost-saving and efficient. “We get so excited by things that can be automated, that we tend to ignore the downside,” he commented.
Applying the concept to marketing, Mr. Sutherland thus encouraged to “start acknowledging that advertising works in multiple, different ways. And some of them are not best captured by the narrow-minded pursuit of accountability and efficiency.”
“It changes social context and meaning,” he added. “Sometimes it works at the individual level, sometimes at collective.”
Day Four: Potential pivots
Digicon Day Four commenced with “Starting Fires: An Ambition of our Post-Digital Education,” led by Peachy Pacquing, MA programme director at Hyper Island. SHAREit executives then shared how the platform can help accelerating user acquisition as well as monetizing and accepting payments.
The Disruption track was opened by Karl Mak, co-founder and CEO of Hepmil Media, with an exploration of this decentralized media age. Nina Dizon, CEO of Colourette Cosmetics, talked about building a beauty brand via digital means. The track’s fourth day ended with Shoppertainment Live sharing how to engage before, during, and after a livestream.
Edouard Leo, head of Performance and Ecommerce at Havas Media, led the first session of Expansion by showing the function of offline commerce in one’s e-commerce strategy. Anurag Gupta, Ada’s COC for APAC, afterward explained “Why Brands Need Partners and Not Agencies.” Patrick Gentry, CEO of Sprout, finished the track by elucidating how HR transformed for the future of work.
The Emerging track started its fourth day with Weldon Fung, social solutions director at MeltWater, discussing the topic “Experience Marketing 2.0: Moving at the Speed Culture with Social Data.” A panel discussion followed, focusing on “Brand Suitability: Striking the Right Balance for Your Brand.” Arshan Saha, APAC CEO of Xavis and Specialty Businesses, completed the track on the topic, “The Future You & I.”
Meanwhile, Daniel Hughes, chief data officer at Publicis Groupe APAC and MEA, opened Possibilities by discussing “Successful Pivots through Marketing Technology.” Brankas CEO Todd Schweitzer and Tonik CEO and founder Greg Kasnov followed with the topics on open banking and reinventing banking, respectively.
The fourth day of Digicon was wrapped up by Budjette Tan, the creator of Trese, and his words about storytelling.
Day Five: Profound opportunities
Digicon’s fifth and final day started with Scott Galloway, a marketing professor at New York University Stern School of Business. The best-selling author and entrepreneur shared four points during his keynote talk.
Mr. Galloway believed that COVID-19 will be seen as an accelerant more than a change agent.
He then talked about companies that he called “The Four” — Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google — and shared how their market capitalization soared in the last five years. Topping the four was Apple, which went from having $740 billion to $2.48 trillion. Amazon followed with $1.84 trillion, jumping from $221 billion. “These companies now have market capitalizations that are greater than the GDP of many G20 nations,” he noted.
“Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google are monopolies or duopolies and their unfettered markets creating tremendous negative externalities in our society in the United States and also globally,” he added.
Mr. Galloway’s next point was his projection that 2022 could be the best or the worst year for the world. “I think it’s up to us, what kind of investments do we want to make. Do we want to have more global cooperation or superpowers?”
He finished with the meaningful and profound opportunities that came from the pandemic. “There’s a meaningful opportunity professionally, and that is if your company provides you with the technology, the culture, and the support to work remotely and work through this pandemic at full tilt,” he explained. “The profound opportunity is more personal, [which] is for the repair and the cementing of key relationships.”
Following Mr. Galloway’s keynote talk was a discussion on “Collaboration for Impact” led by Margot Torres, managing director at McDonald’s Philippines.
The last day of Disruption started with the topic “Exploring TikTok Verticals,” explored by Alex Soon, a community operations manager at the social networking company. Melanie Norris, head of Planning at BBDO Knows, completed the track by discussing the emotional drivers that currently influence the market.
Yang Yang Zhang, managing director at Xendit, began the Expansion through “Regionalization through Localization.” IMMAP Advocacy on MIX (Meaningful Internet Experiences) finished the Expansion.
The Emerging track was started by Rain D. Balares, INCA Lead for the Philippines at GroupM, who talked about the “New rules of engagement for influencers.” Andrew Nicholls, co-founder and managing director at Carma Asia, subsequently shared how businesses can maximize data to unlock new opportunities.
Two panel discussions were held under the Possibilities track. The first was about “Escaping the Stereotype Trap” led by Investing in Women on Diversity & Inclusion. It was followed by the topic, “Planning for a Post-Cookie Future.”
Concluding the Digicon POP 2021 was a panel discussion that envisioned the future of digital skills.
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The Philippines’ digital adoption journey has paved the way for more prevalent use of the internet, but along with its advancement is also the risk of abuse. An example of this is fake news, an issue that the country has been battling with for several years.
Among the difficult topics that are prone to fake news is the ongoing vaccination efforts of the national government. Fake news triggered hesitancy among a number of Filipinos and caused confusion to many regarding available vaccines in the country.
Some of the most alarming false claims being circulated are:
Microchips are inserted into those vaccinated by COVID-19, making them susceptible to 24/7 tracking
COVID-19 vaccines contain COVID-19 virus
COVID-19 vaccines will cause health hazards
These false claims are spread quickly through social media and other digital channels. Without discernment, the public can become easily scared to get vaccinated due to its supposed ill effects.
With its Truth In Action campaign, Globe is supporting the private sector’s INGAT ANGAT Bakuna Lahat program in an effort to educate the public on the safety of vaccines and encourage everyone to do their part in ending this pandemic. The campaign takes a different approach, using a series of videos illustrating the erroneous claims people have shared about the vaccines. It also includes a pledge that encourages the public to become responsible digital citizens and avoid spreading malicious and fake information online.
“As a digital solutions provider, we hope to educate the public on the hazards of fake news especially at a time of pandemic. We are calling for responsible digital citizenship among our fellow Filipinos, especially vital at this time where proper dissemination of information is crucial to achieve national recovery,” said Yoly C. Crisanto, Globe Chief Sustainability Officer and SVP for Corporate Communications.
In these times of uncertainty and confusion, Globe reiterates the importance of getting critical information only from credible news sources and how we as digital citizens must practice freedom of expression responsibly. Think, research, and think again before clicking and believing everything said online.
The Truth in Action campaign is part of Globe’s commitment to two United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. SDG No. 9 highlights the roles of infrastructure and innovation as crucial drivers of economic growth and development. SDG No. 17 aims to strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize global partnerships for sustainable development. Globe is committed to upholding the United Nations Global Compact principles and 10 UN SDGs.
Spotlight is BusinessWorld’s sponsored section that allows advertisers to amplify their brand and connect with BusinessWorld’s audience by enabling them to publish their stories directly on the BusinessWorld Web site. For more information, send an email to online@bworldonline.com.
A commuter of PN Roa Canitoan Transport Cooperative in Canitoan, Cagayan De Oro taps in for fare payment via FILIPAY card
When the Omnibus Guidelines on the Planning and Identification of Public Road Transportation Services and Franchise Issuance, also the PUV Modernization Program (PUVMP), was first launched in Tacloban City, Leyte in 2018, the project has since emphasized new vehicle standards promoting improved regulation, environmental impact, employee benefits, safety, security, and convenience. The broad objectives comprising PUVMP is primarily based on, according to the Department of Transportation and its allied agencies, the varied concerns facing the Philippine public transport system—congested traffic situations, small-scale vehicles, fuel consumption and greenhouse gases emissions, and consolidation of the existing transport franchise holders.
FILIPAY Pioneered Tap In/Tap Out system
Service Economy Applications, Inc. (SEAi), through FILIPAY, its automated fare collection system (AFCS), is the first in the Philippines to implement the Tap In/Tap Out contactless fare payment system and is now operating in Canitoan, Cagayan De Oro, Dasmarinas City, Cavite to PITX, and Marikina City to Cubao, Quezon City.
This year, FILIPAY also started to roll out its interoperable devices in modern jeepneys following the Philippine National Standard for transportation while its team of developers and transport innovators led by Janice Arino, CEO and President of SEAi further develop the FILIPAY Mobile Application for fare payment via QR code.
Below are the current features of the FILIPAY Automated Fare Collection System:
Fare Collection via FILIPAY Card KM Distance-Traveled Fare Collection Temperature Screening Screen and Sound Notification Ticket Printing via Driver’s Monitor FILIPAY Credits Reloading via Distributor App Time Tracker Fire-proof, dust-proof, shock-proof, oil-proof, and anti-static material
For more information about FILIPAY, visit filipay.com.ph.
SEAi also provides partner transport cooperatives with a free fleet management system to further help transport cooperatives facilitate transparent, reliable, and real-time tracking of a multitude of transaction data and determine KPIs for decision-making and designing corporate objectives.
FILIPWORKS is complete with the eight ranges of Fleet Management:
Dispatch Management Tracking and Diagnostic Management Fuel Management Vehicle Management Financial Management Personnel Management Health and Safety Management The paper-less entrepreneurial solution aims to reduce costs and improved efficiency across the entire fleet operation.
From Automation to Decentralization in Transportation
AFCS and FMS in general, however, are not exempted from reviews following the PUVMP. For example, one of the early concerns when the Philippines started to restructure its public transportation system is the need for a unified fare collection system. For AFCS alone, the existence of several providers exposed the many concerns of both transport cooperatives and commuters on the use of varied cards and devices per route per transport service type.
The DOTr has proposed the formulation of the AFCS National Standards to ensure interoperability and EMVCo contactless payment specifications. Service Economy Applications, Inc., on one hand, also recognizes the need to address the concerns of its multi-sectoral stakeholders through the development of additional advances in transportation technology. Thus, in November 2020, the company relaunched FILIPCOIN, a decentralized network for transportation.
Decentralizing management of data delivers improved accessibility of data, less service failures, and lower transaction costs as compared to centralized and distributed systems. Such advantages will help aid automation and interoperability of payment systems. Additionally, the FILIPCOIN (FCP) token, powered by Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain, promotes the adoption of the digital currency trend for fare payment in most modes of transportation across the globe. It aims to develop its own blockchain ecosystem and further integration with already available services FILIPAY, FILIPWORKS, and other service economy applications to increase its demand and value.
There is still a need to reassess and standardize the existing policies of the PUVMP to ensure the public transport system in the country is geared towards higher operational efficiency. As for Service Economy Applications, Inc., the company is open to collaborate with the government, other AFCS providers, transport operators, drivers, and commuters to secure just implementation of the project specially during a lockdown prompted by a global pandemic.
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