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Shanghai’s post-lockdown ‘revenge spending’: beauty products, bubble tea, cake

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SHANGHAI — Mother-of-two Yang Zengdong, 40, is ready to take her family for a long-awaited outing to mark Shanghai’s grand re-opening from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) lockdown on Wednesday.

Her ambitions — head to a mall, see what is open and maybe buy a drink or some small toys for her young daughters — are modest, but even those simple pleasures were impossible during the gruelling two-month lockdown.

Unfortunately for retailers desperate for a quick, “vengeful” return of shoppers of the sort seen in 2020 when China enjoyed a “V-shaped” recovery from its initial battle with COVID-19, the excitement that is palpable on newly bustling city streets is tempered by wariness about the future.

Shanghai’s lockdown may be over, but China is sticking to its zero-COVID elimination strategy, fuelling worry in the city of 25 million that it could all happen again.

“A lot of my friends, people with families and kids, their idea is to buy a bigger fridge, or food — they aren’t interested in buying unnecessary stuff right now,” said Ms. Yang, who works as a teacher.

The focus on necessities echoes e-commerce giant Alibaba Group CEO Daniel Zhang’s remarks last week.

“In all those different tiers of consumers, demand for essentials has gone up and there’s been less price sensitivity. Whereas with respect to non-essential purchases, there has been more price sensitivity,” Mr. Zhang told analysts, adding consumers were also stocking up to prepare for future uncertainty.

Though Shanghai will inevitably see retail bounce-back, it will be coming off a low baseline, with retail spending in April plummeting 48.3% year on year.

Shopping is unlikely to be boosted by stimulus payments to consumers, as seen in other countries. China prefers to target such spending towards infrastructure and businesses, rather than consumers who are prone to saving.

Jason Yu, Greater China managing director of market research firm Kantar Worldpanel, predicts an initial spending recovery at food and beverage outlets suited to pick-up and delivery, with coffee, bubble tea, cakes and other “categories related to pleasure” set to come back strongly.

Beauty is also poised to benefit from a return to public life, Mr. Yu said, adding that the upcoming “618” shopping festival — in which all major Chinese e-commerce platforms and many major brands participate — could provide a sales boost.

“There will be some pent-up demand for skin care and beauty categories, especially if premium brands are marketing themselves more aggressively with discounts,” he said.

LUXURY HUB
As China’s largest and wealthiest city, Shanghai has long been a magnet for luxury retail and is home to 12% of luxury brand stores on the mainland.

The re-opening of high-end mall Plaza 66 last weekend saw lines snaking outside a Hermes store — a heartening sight for luxury brand executives in Paris and Milan banking on a return to form from Chinese consumers.

“Many shops are offering incentives to bring shoppers back, including tripling the points they can earn in their loyalty programs,” said Amrita Banta, managing director of luxury consultancy Agility Research and Strategy.

Still, she isn’t betting on business-as-usual for Shanghai luxury spending.

“I would expect the initial few days of the opening up to see a lot of crowds, but this will also have the effect of keeping other people at home who do not want to risk being in busy areas,” she said.

Teacher Yang said life in Shanghai remains tinged with a sense of risk.

“I’m not afraid of getting the virus, but I am afraid of a positive test result and centralized quarantine,” she said.

“I think for most people, this is a time to enjoy being outside but also to protect yourself and protect your money. This is not the time to spend and be wasteful.” — Reuters

Latest cyberattack in Costa Rica targets hospital system

A broken ethernet cable is seen in front of binary code and words “cyber security” in this illustration taken on March 8, 2022. — REUTERS

SAN JOSE — A cyberattack struck Costa Rica’s hospitals and clinics early Tuesday morning, the Costa Rican Social Security Fund (CCSS) said, the latest in a string of hacks targeting the Central American country in recent weeks.

The cyberattack forced the CCSS to shut down its digital record-keeping system, affecting some 1,200 hospitals and clinics and potentially impacting care for thousands of patients, according to the public health agency.

“It was an exceptionally violent attack, but we have no evidence that a critical database or system was compromised,” said CCSS President Alvaro Ramos in a news conference, adding that 30 of the 1,500 servers owned by the CCSS were affected.

The national health platform is expected to be down for several days, Mr. Ramos said.

Costa Rica reported that it has been recently targeted in dozens of cyberattacks, which have frozen some foreign trade and tax collection operations, prompting President Rodrigo Chaves to declare a national emergency on May 8, the day of his inauguration.

In early May, the US State Department attributed other recent attacks on Costa Rica’s government agencies to the alleged Russian-based ransomware group, Conti. No person or group has taken credit for the recent hit to the healthcare system, Mr. Ramos said.

Officials said the United States, along with the governments of Israel and Spain, have offered assistance to repair damages and to repel future attacks. — Reuters

Crisis-hit Sri Lanka hikes tax rates to maximize revenues

SRI LANKAN military officer lowers the national flag at the flag square in Colombo, Sri Lanka, March 23, 2021. — REUTERS

COLOMBO — Sri Lanka’s cash-strapped government on Tuesday announced a taxation overhaul to boost revenue amid the country’s crippling economic crisis, hiking value added taxes and corporate income tax, and slashing the relief given to individual taxpayers.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who took office this month and plans to present an interim budget within weeks, said measures were necessary as the current state of government finances was unsustainable.

“The implementation of a strong fiscal consolidation plan is imperative through revenue enhancement as well as expenditure rationalization measures in 2022,” Wickremesinghe’s office said in a statement.

Sri Lanka’s inflation rose to 39.1% in May, its statistics office said on Tuesday — a record level, compared to the previous high of 29.8% set in April.

An increase in Value Added Tax (VAT) to 12% from 8% with immediate effect is among the key tax increases announced on Tuesday, which is expected to boost government revenues by 65 billion Sri Lankan rupees ($180.56 million).

Other measures, including increasing corporate income tax to 30% from 24% from October, will earn an additional 52 billion rupees for the exchequer.

Withholding tax on employment income has been made mandatory and exemptions for individual taxpayers have been reduced, the statement said.

The island nation of 22 million people has been battered by its worst economic crisis since independence from Britain in 1948, with a severe shortage of foreign currency stalling imports of essentials, including food, fuel and medicines.

The roots of the crisis lie in tax cuts enacted by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in late 2019, which came months before the COVID-19 pandemic that battered the country’s lucrative tourism industry and led to a drop in foreign workers remittances.

The tax cuts caused annual public revenue losses of about 800 billion rupees, the prime minister’s office said in its statement.

The new tax regime and COVID-19’s impact, together with the pandemic relief measures, widened the budget deficit significantly to 12.2% of GDP in 2021 from 9.6% of GDP two years earlier.

In an interview with Reuters this month, Mr. Wickremesinghe — who also holds the finance ministry portfolio — said he would cut expenditures down “to the bone” in the upcoming interim budget and re-route funds into a two-year relief program.

The tax hikes are aimed at putting public revenues back at pre-pandemic levels and focused on fiscal consolidation as the country seeks a loan package from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), said Lakshini Fernando, a macroeconomist at investment firm Asia Securities.

“The tax increases are definitely a very positive first step, especially for IMF talks and debt restructuring,” Ms. Fernando said.

“This was required to take forward discussions and will also help the government in talks with bilateral and multilateral partners to secure more funding,” Ms. Fernando said. — Reuters

Ukraine’s giant seed bank at risk of being lost as war rages

LONDON — In underground vaults near Ukraine’s battlefields, the genetic code for nearly 2,000 crops is in danger of being permanently destroyed.

The risk came into sharp focus earlier this month when a research facility near Ukraine’s national seed bank was damaged, according to Crop Trust, a nonprofit organization set up by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

The facility and Ukraine’s seed bank are both based in Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine, which has come under intense bombing from Russia forces.

Reuters could not determine the cause of the damage and Crop Trust said only that the research facility had been hit, but declined to give further detail, citing security reasons.

It was a narrow escape. Only 4% of the seeds in Ukraine’s store, the 10th largest of its kind in the world, has been backed up.

“Seed banks are a kind of life insurance for mankind. They provide the raw materials for breeding new plant varieties resistant to drought, new pests, new diseases, and higher temperatures,” Stefan Schmitz, the executive director of Crop Trust, told Reuters.

“It would be a tragic loss if Ukraine’s seed bank were destroyed.”

The director of the seed bank could not be reached, Ukraine’s academy of science declined to comment and Russia’s defense ministry did not immediately reply to request for comment on the damage.

Researchers rely on the diverse genetic material that seed banks store to breed plants that can withstand climate change or disease.

They have become increasingly vital to ensuring enough food is produced each season to feed 7.9 billion people as the world’s weather becomes more extreme.

At the same time, the war between Russia and Ukraine, the world’s third and fourth largest grain exporters respectively, has added to food price inflation and the danger of food scarcity, with protests breaking out in developing countries that normally benefit from Ukraine’s grain.

SYRIA SAVED BY ARCTIC BACKUP
The war in Syria has provided a lesson in the importance of backing up seeds using the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, the world’s largest and most important seed backup or duplication facility.

In 2015, the Svalbard vault was able to send replacement samples of wheat, barley and grasses suited to dry regions to researchers in Lebanon after a seed bank near the Syrian city of Aleppo was destroyed.

In total, Svalbard preserves more than a million seed samples in a vault built in an Arctic mountainside.

These include 4% of Ukraine’s 150,000 seeds — representing more than 1,800 crops.

The German-based Crop Trust, which is the only international organization whose sole purpose is to safeguard crop diversity, has made funds available to Ukraine to copy seeds, but security and logistics issues linked to the war and natural cycles mean it is difficult to speed up the process.

Mr. Schmitz estimated that at best, about 10% of Ukraine’s seeds could be backed up within a year because they need to be planted, grown and harvested at the right time before the duplicates can be extracted and sent to Svalbard.

An emergency measure would be to forgo duplication and just ship the collection to Svalbard, but Mr. Schmitz said this might not be feasible in wartime.

The Syrian seeds were from the Fertile Crescent, the region where settled farming is believed to have emerged, and Ukraine also has a central place in agriculture.

“Agriculture in Ukraine has roots back in prehistoric times,” Grethe Helene Evjen, a senior adviser at the Norwegian Ministry of Agriculture and Food, said, adding many of the country’s seeds were unique.

Ms. Evjen said the ministry is ready to help Ukraine duplicate and store all its seeds at Svalbard, but has yet to receive a request from Ukrainian authorities. — Reuters

Prioritizing the Department of Health

BW FILE PHOTO

By July 1, it will be the Marcos II Administration’s responsibility to keep track of COVID-19 and other pandemics that may affect the country. This early, it should already be planning on ways, methods, approaches, and interventions to further improve and future-proof pandemic management locally. But, to date, a new Health secretary is still to be nominated.

Transition between administrations is a crucial period, and the remaining 28 days are barely enough to allow for effective turnover even during normal times. Fact is, despite the present lull, the Philippines is still enduring a public health crisis. The Department of Health (DoH) should have been given top priority in the Cabinet selection process.

At present, COVID is still manageable, although Metro Manila’s COVID positivity rate, reproduction number, and hospital care utilization rate have all been going up in the last few weeks. In Makati City, for instance, active COVID cases have gone up from a low of 13 on May 23 to a count of 35 as of May 31. This is a significant jump — the count almost tripled in over a week.

A DoH weekly bulletin stated that COVID-19 cases nationwide on May 23-29 were up by over 8% from the previous week. Cases totaled 1,317 as of May 30, with 22 cases with Omicron subvariant BA.2.12.1. Despite the uptick, however, Metro Manila remains in the low-risk category, and Alert Level 1 — the lowest level — is retained, for now.

A DoH official last week said it was up to the incoming Marcos administration if it would continue the National Task Force Against COVID-19 (NTF) and the National Vaccination Operations Center (NVOC). This matter would have been resolved already had a Heath Secretary-designate been named ahead, and transition meetings have been initiated.

DoH Undersecretary Myrna Cabotaje was quoted as saying, “We just await kung ano ’yung directions ng susunod na administration. Of course, we will also defer kung sino man ’yung bagong secretary.” She added, “So bahala na po ’yung susunod na administration kung ano po ’yung direksyon, kung magkakaron sila ng interagency, itutuloy ba ’yung parang structure ng NTF o gagawa sila ng panibagong structure.” (“We just await whatever directions come from the next administration.” She added, “So it is up to the next administration what the direction will be, if they will have an interagency, if they would continue the sort of structure of the NTF or if they will make a new structure.”)

And this, to me, is where the problem lies. Up until a new secretary is nominated, nothing will move at the DoH. Everybody will be waiting for direction and personnel changes before anything can get moving again. And this process can take days, to weeks, to months. An early transition would have allowed for the briefing of incoming officials and more planning with the transition team.

Meantime, so as not to be delayed, Cabotaje said DoH was already endorsing to concerned bureaus some of the tasks of the NVOC. The question is, will incoming officials opt to continue with the present administration’s initiatives or change them altogether? There are many ongoing activities related to monitoring, testing, and vaccination.

Add to the problem the emergence of Monkeypox, which is seemingly spreading globally. As far as I know, there are no known testing protocols and vaccines specifically for Monkeypox, and this situation severely limits the effectiveness of border control. Other than symptoms, the pox will have no outward manifestations that will allow for easier identification at the borders of those infected with it.

While it is far-fetched that Monkeypox will become another COVID-19, officials cannot be absolutely certain that it will not spread locally. Effective border control and bio-surveillance thus become more significant. Unlike with COVID, we cannot be just one step ahead of the virus at best. More viruses are sure to emerge, and more pandemics are sure to occur. We need to be two to three steps ahead.

In the case of COVID, we have always been just a step ahead of the next surge. In the near future, COVID mutations will continue to outpace medical advances intended to eliminate the virus. Medical science will continue to play catch-up at least until the end of 2022. We need to continuously study and innovate, as complacency was, is, and will always be the enemy.

Testing, contact tracing, localized lockdowns, physical distancing, and masks may be tried and tested interventions during COVID, but they will not always work in the future, particularly for non-airborne viruses. We should be preparing for future pandemics, after living through a very devastating one in the last two years. We need to review which ad hoc interventions will have to be made permanent, and what interventions may be required in similar events in the future.

More important, we should look into continuity and permanence of time-bound strategies and interventions that actually worked, and then perhaps improve on them. We also need permanent institutions devoted to dealing with pandemics and the like. Otherwise, as government restarts on July 1, so does our pandemic management. We cannot afford this.

The economy is not the priority but public health is. As the world saw in 2020 and 2021, a pandemic can drop humanity to its knees. A major resource required for economic development is human capital. But plagues, pandemics, and diseases all weaken human capital and impact people’s capacity and ability to be productive. Public health issues, depending on their scale, can quickly stunt economic growth and exacerbate poverty.

We are still to recover from the negative impact of COVID on the global economy since 2020. The pandemic is far from over locally and abroad. A new surge is ongoing in other parts of the world. A surge can reoccur here. Meantime, the war in Ukraine is exacerbating issues involving trade. Food and fuel inflation is now slowing down most economies, and making life more difficult for lots of people.

With many goods in short supply, and shortages driving up prices and thus inflation, people are already edgy. The least that the government can do for them is to make sure that another COVID surge — or problems with Monkeypox and other public health concerns — is effectively kept at bay. Early transition over at DoH is critical to ensuring this.

 

Marvin Tort is a former managing editor of BusinessWorld, and a former chairman of the Philippine Press Council

matort@yahoo.com

The virtue bubble is about to burst. Good riddance.

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THERE ARE COSTS to living a virtuous life; It requires going without. This is true psychologically, because sacrifice gives virtue meaning. But it’s also true mathematically. You pay a price when you constrain who you will buy from, who you will work for, and what you will invest in. When times are good, the costs of a virtuous life may not seem too high, but eventually the bill comes due.

That reckoning is now. We may be seeing the end of the virtue economy bubble. And that’s not necessarily bad, because the virtue economy wasn’t making the world a better place. It may have even been making it worse.

The idea of letting your values guide your financial life has been growing over the last decade, and really took off during the pandemic. The amount of money in Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) funds was expected to reach $41 trillion this year.

According to a recent survey from Charles Schwab, 73% of surveyed participants claimed personal values have become a bigger factor in how they make life decisions in the last two years; 82% say their values impact their investing; 76% said when they make a purchase “the values of the company who made the product are an important consideration,” and an astonishing 59% of respondents say they’d take a lower salary to work at a company that shared their values.

But how much those same people are truly willing to pay for satisfying their values is unclear. When it came to investing, a company’s performance was rated first among considerations in the survey; so did price when it came to shopping. Virtue may have been ranking so high in recent years because there wasn’t a big cost to virtuous economic decisions — stocks were rising and inflation was almost nonexistent. Times have changed.

Five years ago, hedge funder Cliff Asness caused a small stir in the ESG investment community when he pointed out an obvious truth. He argued that ESG investment funds will typically return less than funds that are free to invest anywhere.  He explained that constrained optimization will result in lower returns than unconstrained. It makes intuitive sense: if you need to turn down a good investment because it isn’t ESG compliant, that means you’ll earn less money than someone who is free to invest in it. The more constraints you put on yourself, the less you can expect to earn.  Asness was baffled that ESG was being sold as a good investment.

For a while, as ESG funds gained popularity among retail and institutional investors, it looked like their returns were higher than funds full of sin. Since 2010, a US ESG index fund (SXEIMUV) has outperformed the S&P 500.

But the true test of any asset class is how it performs in all markets. Once the market began to turn down this year, the S&P fund did better, or less bad, than ESG funds. An S&P fund is down 17.3% from the start of the year, while the ESG index is down 18.7%. A bull market covers many sins — or virtues. Now that the market is turning, even ESG industry insiders are voicing skepticism.

The same is true for where you choose to work or what you buy. You sell your labor, and if you limit the pool of buyers to firms that share your politics that means fewer offers and possibly turning down more money.  When the labor market is tight and you have many employers to choose from, odds are you don’t have to sacrifice much to make this choice. It may be one reason why firms were quick to take political stands on issues that may align with their workers’ values.

Workers may not be able to be so fussy if the labor market softens. Shared values may wear thin if you’ve got lousy managers or the job doesn’t pay so well. In a higher-inflation environment, taking a pay cut isn’t so easy.

Virtuous consumption is also getting more expensive. There is less scope to shop for the lowest price if you will only buy cinnamon from a spice dealer who hates the same politicians you do. As inflation goes up, virtuous shopping costs even more because the ability to substitute and comparison shop are your best defense against rising prices.

It’s hard to tell how many workers and consumers actually let virtue guide their decisions. It’s one thing to assert something on a survey; it’s another to take an actual pay cut, or choose to pay 20% more for groceries. Is it a coincidence that as the economy is looking more precarious, firms are starting to demur from taking a stand on contentious issues? Or could it be because they see less value in doing so as the economy gets riskier?

Virtue-based policies may bring more costs than benefits. Columbia Business School professor Vanessa Burbano studied how workers responded when their employer publicly supported gender-neutral bathrooms. She found that taking this political stance did little to motivate supporters, but it alienated and demotivated the workers who disagreed with the cause.

We needn’t mourn the fading of the virtue economy. It was horribly inefficient. It takes time to research every company you might invest in, work for, or buy things from. If you miss something in your research (how can you not) you’ll later have to sell stock (maybe at a loss), quit your job (and possibly get paid less elsewhere), or dispose of the goods from the offending company, perhaps by burning it and broadcasting the fire on social media (not only wasteful, it poses many other harmful externalities).

Obviously, these costs may be worth it if the offender supports truly abhorrent things like genocide or overt racism. But in these trying times, the moral and ethical standards we expect from each other have become way too high and there are too many causes to keep track of. Keeping up with who is pure and worthy of your money or labor is a full-time job — which is why it was so tempting to outsource the whole business to BlackRock. We were doomed from the start to be disappointed and at times hypocritical.

Don’t feel too bad. Odds are your virtue investing/buying/working wasn’t doing much good anyway. Because virtue became so complicated and arbitrary, it’s not clear it made much of a difference in anyone’s behavior. Many firms pulled out of Russia, but nearly all still do business in China. Besides, arguably the biggest problem we face today is polarization and the virtue economy makes that worse.

In these uncertain times we need more shared experiences, even if they include offensive TV, tedious workdays, and coping with a volatile stock market. So, if you want to save the world, it’s better to buy whatever you want, invest in whatever company looks profitable, and work for the employer that pays you the most. Then take all those extra savings and give them to charity. 

BLOOMBERG OPINION

Good riddance to dysfunctional elements in sports and physical education development

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The day after they cast their ballots on May 9, the bulk of the more than 600 athletes, coaches, and officials comprising the Philippine team to the 31st Hanoi Southeast Asian Games (SEAG) flew to Hanoi, Vietnam. The delegation left on board a chartered Philippine Air Lines flight to compete in the biennial Olympic-style multi-event championship. This main group was preceded by a smaller batch of athletes whose competitions started even before the opening ceremonies on May 12.

Several cities hosted the 30th SEAG in the Philippines in late 2019. The main center of competitions was, however, New Clark City in Capas, Tarlac, where swimming and athletics, the two mandatory Olympic sports, were held. The Philippines spent unprecedented amounts on operating and capital expenses to host the 30th SEAG and if one is to believe the grapevine, these expenses will merit closer scrutiny shortly by the powers-that-be. But if one were to be merely after one metric, the number of gold medals produced in any competition by athletes, as some sports leaders in the executive and legislative branches would want, the Philippine delegation in 2019 was a resounding success. It’s the medals that matter, they would say.

Packed with non-Olympic, indigenous sports and sports that still have to reach some acceptable level of maturity and popularity even within the country, these sports were included anyway in the 30th SEAG calendar in accordance with SEAG political dynamics and horse-trading. The Philippines then proceeded to dominate the unofficial overall championship with 148 gold, 111 silver, and 121 bronze medals or a whopping total of 380 medals, with outstanding performance in athletics, boxing, gymnastics, arnis, and weightlifting among others. Vietnam came in second with 98 gold, 85 silver, and 105 bronze medals for a total of 288. In terms of total medals won, the Philippines outperformed Vietnam by almost 100 medals.

Third overall was Thailand which displayed its latent strength and consistency of its elite sports program by winning more medals overall and silver and bronze medals compared to Vietnam. The Thais won 92 gold medals, six short of Vietnam, but captured 103 silver and 123 bronze medals compared to Vietnam’s 85 and 105 silver and bronze medals, respectively.

Vietnam deserves special mention. The Vietnamese joined the SEAG for the first time in 1989 in Kuala Lumpur, 13 years after a series of protracted wars — with the French from 1946 to 1954 and the Americans from 1960 to 1975 — resulted in the loss of thousands of lives, damage to infrastructure, and untold suffering. Certainly, Vietnam suffered a tremendous loss of personnel for all forms of development activities including sports but rebounded in about a decade.

The then North Vietnam fought the American-backed South Vietnamese regimes of Ngo Dinh Diem (who was assassinated in 1965) and Air Force officer Nguyen Cao Ky, in a war of unification. Saigon, the South Vietnamese capital, had fallen to communist forces in April 1975 and what followed was an arduous period of recovery and reconstruction.

Barely had the Vietnamese recovered from the ravages of the Vietnam war when the Vietnamese joined the SEAG for the first time in 1989 in Kuala Lumpur. The Vietnamese joined the SEAG again in 1991 when the Philippines was host. The participation of Vietnam in the Manila SEAG was considered a significant gesture from Manila that wiped out any fallout from the support the Philippines had given to the US war effort in Vietnam.

The Philippine 2019 SEAG victory was a “feel good” moment and we thanked our athletes, coaches, and the National Sports Associations (NSAs) which are the real and not the “optical” frontliners, and the Philippine Sports Commission which funded the participation of the Philippines, the private and government corporate sponsors, the other branches of government and Philippine Olympic Committee which represents the owner of the SEAG, the SEAG Federation.

Everybody got credit for the victory in 2019. Many more tried to get more credit than was actually due to them. Truly, victory has many fathers while defeat is an orphan.

In stark contrast, very few people of consequence have commented positively on our overall performance at the 31st SEAG in Hanoi a few weeks ago. Fewer still have claimed responsibility for an obvious dip in the country’s performance despite the blatant and unabashed posturing, the many shameful attempts at credit grabbing for the victories, and image management in Hanoi. Clearly, however, four NSAs — Gymnastics, Athletics, Dancesport, and Billiards — bore the brunt of the medal-winning effort despite all the difficulties these NSAs faced. These nonprofit volunteer groups accounted for 21 of the 52 gold medals won by the country. Each NSA has a story to tell on how they overcame the obstacles they confronted on their way to success.

There are of course reasons, and valid ones at that, for the dip: the pandemic, associated travel restrictions, and stringent and constantly training and competition protocols, sudden cancellation of competitions, budget issues as a result of lower government resources for sports, especially elite sports, etc. We can cite all these reasons — but so can the other countries, namely Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia which finished ahead of us in the overall medal standings in Hanoi a few weeks ago.

Malaysia and Singapore (and other countries) which ate into our gold medal output can say the same thing. Singapore won only one gold medal in athletics, courtesy of the Olympic veteran Shanti Pereira who prevailed in the 200 meters in the absence of the injured Kristina Knott. Shanti failed to defend her gold medal in the 100 meters she won in 2019 against Kayla Richardson in Hanoi.

The overall medal standings had Vietnam way ahead as expected. The battle-scarred and perpetually occupied country had indeed gone a long way on all fronts — the economy, agriculture, industry, and sports.

In the 1991 Manila SEAG, Vietnam sent a relatively compact delegation but left Manila with a total of 29 medals, seven of which were gold, 12 silver, and 10 bronze medals. The country placed 7th in a field of nine, behind Indonesia (92 gold), the Philippines (91), Thailand (72), Malaysia (36), Singapore (18), Burma (12), and ahead of Brunei and Laos.

What happened at the 2021 Hanoi SEAG after the wildly successful stints by weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz who won the country’s first Olympic gold medal, boxers Petecio, Paalam, and Marcial, and the near success of gymnast Carlos Yulo in Tokyo? Why the free fall from No. 1 in 2019 to No. 4 in 2022? In fairness, what occurred in Hanoi is worse than our drop from first in 2005 to fifth in 2007, Again, to be fair, the Philippine delegation suffered from an internal struggle between the POC and the Cycling NSA. There were also issues with respect to the non-participation of the Bodybuilding group after millions of pesos were incurred to bring the group to Hanoi.

To be sure, internal difficulties and politics is one of the causes of the instability in Philippine elite sports and its “feast and famine” performance cycle. The interesting thing however, is that the framework for sports and physical education development is in place. The 1987 Constitution calls for the promotion of sports and physical education. The Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) has been mandated to be the lead agency in sports development. The PSC however has to engage the Local Government Units and the Department of the Interior and Local Government, the Department of Education, and the Commission on Higher Education to coordinate the development of school sports which is part of the mass-based sports program. The Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police also play key roles in a well-coordinated sports development program.

As one can see, sports and physical education development is a multi-function/agency/discipline endeavor in the same way that food production and distribution, for example, is the responsibility of the Department of Agriculture which needs to work in close harmony with the Department of Agrarian Reform, Department of Public Works and Highways, and the Department of Transportation.

It is obvious that there are hundreds of moving parts in sports and physical education development. Elite sports development is dependent on grassroots sports and is best served by minimal government interference and meddling. Strong national leadership should be brought to bear on sports and physical education development so that petty tyrants and dysfunctional elements within what is basically a sound sports and physical education development framework can be permanently relieved of their duties.

 

Philip Ella Juico’s areas of interest include the protection and promotion of democracy, free markets, sustainable development, social responsibility and sports as a tool for social development. He obtained his doctorate in business at De La Salle University. Dr. Juico served as secretary of Agrarian Reform during the Corazon C. Aquino administration.

Urgent matters

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ESPECIALLY for one who never agreed to hard interviews (we want to talk directly to the people we know) or debates (we don’t like to disagree), the topics for discussion or needed attention could be selective. Once in charge, urgent matters can no longer be selective. Priorities are dictated by events and are no longer controllable.

One difference, for example, between staff and line functions deals with managing the “in-box.” These urgent issues that pile up for resolution and decision are not always planned for and the decision time required is dictated by events — Sir, the staff just walked out and are picketing outside.

The CEO may have his job description for what he is responsible for, but his value is determined by how he deals with the urgent matters on his desk: the irate customer, the threat from competition, or the failure of a product’s promise.

Staff positions (now called support services) generally pick the issues they will address and prioritize for the day. Their to-do list is largely self-determined — this month we will be looking at our supply chain efficiency. Of course, the line managers may also pull them in when a crisis arises. But support staff are always in the background — Sir, stick to the message.

This difference in managing the in-box is also found in government positions, with certain cabinet posts being mainly staff or line.

Staff positions deal with analysis, policy directions, and searching for best practices, often requiring some trips abroad to attend conferences or short seminars on transparency. Look at long-term challenges — we are studying the effects of climate change on food security.

While all cabinet portfolios have both staff and line components, most have a dominant dose of one or the other. NEDA, CHED*, and Budget and Management, for example, are mostly support functions dealing with long-term policies over their constituencies. They monitor the macro picture to guide other cabinet members, making pronouncements on budget surpluses and underspending in infrastructure or reporting on growth rates of GDP.

Transportation, Finance, Foreign Affairs, Local Government, Defense, and Public Works are mostly line units and implementors. They are considered successful when delivering projects on time and within budget.

Staff functions require skills related to analysis, the long-term view, and a fine sense of history and the interconnectedness of different variables, the ideal profile for such jobs is laid-back, cerebral, and research-oriented. Thus, shortlists for staff jobs tend to be from academe and think tanks rather than corporate management. For the line jobs, it is managers of large organizations that make the list of possibilities.

Not getting the fit of job to skills set can result in negative outputs. The academic and analytical individual thrust into a fast-moving line job can be overly cautious and too studied in his approach. He is dismissed as someone with “analysis-paralysis.” (We have to subject this to a Venn Diagram.)

On the other hand, matching an operational hands-on manager in a policy-setting position has him coming out as impulsive in his policy pronouncements. And his critics are bound to be academic types who now populate the talking heads on TV talk shows — he exhibits a superficial understanding of economics and fails to grasp the effects of his policy recommendations.

The mismatch between talent and job requirements can be unduly exaggerated with the media coverage of government by armchair analysts. Thus, while an ill-suited appointment in private corporations is bad enough, his bumbling is limited to a small group. The political counterpart is publicly pilloried for his failings and given a tag that haunts him permanently. A “teka, teka” (wait, wait) attribute of a staff type when heading a line cabinet position is bound to chase the unfortunate appointee.

Still, in real life, all jobs have analytical as well as hands-on implementation aspects. The wedding planner draws up the “big picture” and theme of the event (upbeat, hard rock, and contemporary) as well as the invitations and RSVP follow-ups, catering, video coverage, seating of guests, and souvenir gifts.

The fit between talent and job requirements, or “horses for courses,” is critical. Changing the company mission to fit the existing talents at hand is called “courses for horses.” Unfortunately, in government, the courses are set, so the horses must run them.

In the end, the most important skill in government is communications and the willingness to engage the critics without shutting them down — next question, please.

* National Economic and Development Authority and Commission on Higher Education

 

Tony Samson is chairman and CEO of TOUCH xda

ar.samson@yahoo.com

Data-driven marketing requires ‘forward tinkering’ — IMMAP

UNSPLASH

Marketers have to learn how to organize a wealth of consumer data or risk drowning information, said experts at a roundtable hosted by Adobo Magazine and Google. 

“The challenge for marketers now is learning and adapting quickly [to] platforms, technologies, and customers in the Philippines who are evolving faster,” said Digs A. Dimagiba, president of the Internet & Mobile Marketing Association of the Philippines (IMMAP), at the May 31 event.  

He encouraged “forward tinkering” — a combination of the terms “forward thinking” and “tinkering” — as a way of looking at new tools, learning about them, trying them out, and discussing them in a community of like-minded people and professionals. 

The mindset of being open to new tools, like automated machine learning (which Google offers to those who want to more audiences or customers via Google platforms), will prepare today’s era of marketers for the complicated future, he added. 

FINDING YOUR AUDIENCE
Google announced that Performance Max, a digital solution that expands on Search ads and allows marketers to showcase promotions across more surfaces, will be updated this year to include sales goals and audience insights, among other metrics.  

“[Performance Max] helped us find qualified leads in a more targeted way,” said Crisela Magpayo-Cervantes, Globe’s marketing communications head. 

The function, she added, allowed Globe to find leads more cost-effectively, bringing down the cost per lead by about 48%.  

New reports that Google will add to its insights page are: 

  • Attribution insights — how existing ads on platforms like Search and YouTube can drive conversions.
  • Budget insights — opportunities for budget optimization based on spending goals.
  • Audience insights — how various customer segments drive campaign performance.

This rapid increase in data is accompanied by the risk of drowning in it and not knowing how to navigate it properly, said Ms. Cervantes. 

“You have a lot of solutions now that allow you to automate and let the machine do the work in optimizing and driving efficiency. It’s a matter of using these wisely,” she said. 

For Dennis Perez, integrated marketing and commerce lead of Unilever Beauty & Wellbeing in Southeast Asia, digital requires an end-to-end perspective.  

Google provided Unilever with CODA (custom optimized designer audiences), a technology that provides customer insights and segmentation.  

When Unilever piloted CODA with Dove, the personal care brand’s reach doubled compared to previous broad-scale marketing efforts, said Mr. Perez. 

This increase was due to the unexpected connections CODA made, such as Dove buyers correlating highly with air conditioner buyers.   

“We are now getting a bit more controlled with the way we can target people,” said Mr. Perez.  

MORE PRIVACY
Google also announced at Marketing Live that global testing of its privacy-focused ad targeting tools — Google Ads and Display & Video 360 — would begin this year. 

It reaffirmed its commitment to phase out third-party cookie tracking, which involves leaving bits of code on a web visitor’s computer after being generated by another website.  

Mr. Dimagiba of IMMAP said that such moves are necessary due to data privacy becoming an increasingly important currency.  

“Because of the pandemic where we were forced to adapt, get online, and get digital, people suddenly realized they’re giving up quite a lot of information and privacy in exchange for getting services and convenience,” he said. “They’ve become increasingly conscious about who they’re actually going to trust.” 

Third-party cookies will be replaced by Google data on search topics or search interests instead of individual activity. — Brontë H. Lacsamana

‘Local is king’: Africa’s online platforms take on Silicon Valley

STOCK IMAGE: vector created by sentavio - www.freepik.com

DURBAN/CAIRO – Plan a funeral, call out corruption or start a business – tough jobs all now made easier by a generation of tech-savvy Africans tackling local problems beyond the grasp of Big Tech.

It was frustration that pushed Tanzanian engineer Maxence Melo to launch an anonymous, online whistleblowing platform after his appeals to media to investigate an array of questionable mega-project contracts were met with silence.

His JamiiForums website launched in 2006, unmasking the murky money trails of Africa’s rich and powerful, and now has more than 3 million visitors daily.

It is just one of dozens of African digital platforms that innovators say are doing what tech giants cannot – designing bespoke solutions for domestic needs.

“Local is king, we know what local solutions we need for our own contexts,” Melo told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by video from his office in Dar es Salaam.

Despite challenges such as scarce internet access, funding gaps and intermittent electricity, African entrepreneurs are harnessing the potential of digital engagement, from online funeral services in Egypt to voice-based messaging in Mali.

“Homegrown innovations reduce reliance on foreign technologies,” said Kathleen Ndongmo, a Cameroonian digital rights researcher and advocate, in a video interview.

“We have the local talent and these homegrown solutions help with job creation so talent can stay on the continent instead of leaving to work for the tech giants.”

 

DIGITAL MOURNING

Egyptian entrepreneur Ahmed Gaballah never thought he would work in the death business, but the stress of helping a friend plan a burial led him to rethink the funeral industry.

“It took us a lot of time to get the burial permit and we got lost on our way to the burial site. It was a frustrating experience,” Gaballah, 40, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

His funeral-planning website SOKNA, which means tranquility in Arabic, launched in 2019 as a one-stop shop that can ease some of the pressures after a death, be it arranging body preparation, shrouding, transport or the placing of obituaries.

Customer Noha Ibrahim, 55, said SOKNA had made the aftermath of her father’s sudden death more smooth and peaceful.

“They took care of every single thing starting from securing the burial permit, the new and well-equipped van, managing transportation from the hospital to the mosque then to the cemetery,” said Ibrahim, who read about SOKNA on Facebook.

While SOKNA now has about 3,000 customers and 76 employees, Gaballah says he has seen countless digital startups crash and burn, largely due to scant funding and poor internet connection.

“Tech giants like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have all the attributes required to have exponential growth,” he said.

But Gaballah says none has his local expertise or insight.

“Most local entrepreneurs solve problems that they have already experienced themselves,” he added.

 

ORAL CULTURES

Another factor driving local innovation is language, said Ndongmo, especially in a continent with more than 2,000 of them.

Malian developer Mamadou Sidibe witnessed the power of communication in indigenous languages when he launched his ‘vocal social network’ service, Lenali, in 2017.

It lets users message via voice notes that can be attached to images, helping informal traders consume news and information and sell products online.

A simple tool, it opened new horizons for many in Mali, helping the isolated and illiterate find a voice, and bringing opportunities to small businesses cut off from new markets.

“We have an oral culture and more than 100 dialects,” said Sidibe.

“One of the ways to be innovative is not to copy what is done in Europe or the U.S. – in general, we need to adapt everything to our own cultural reality.”

Fewer than a third of Malians can read and write, according to the World Bank.

Lenali has been downloaded 150,000 times in 118 countries from Brazil to Sri Lanka to Russia, Sidibe said.

“We also teach literacy courses on the app. Our goal is not to maintain low literacy – our goal is to make teaching, tech and business accessible,” Sidibe said of his ad-backed platform.

 

DATA SOVEREIGNTY

Big tech has come under fire for harvesting and selling users’ data by the world’s main central bank umbrella group, the Bank for International Settlements, as well as activists against algorithmic bias and racism.

This is an opportunity for local innovators to do things differently, said Melo, who has fought in court for over a decade to protect whistleblowers’ data despite the government repeatedly demanding JamiiForums hand it over.

Ndongmo said her biggest fear for the future of Africa’s innovation is government crackdown on online resistance.

“You cannot innovate around repressive policy,” she said.

Melo has racked up 159 court challenges by Tanzania’s government for exposing corruption. But his refusal to buckle has paid off.

New leadership in Tanzania has opened consultations with Melo to draft frameworks that will better protect free speech.

Creating room for digital innovation does not mean that platforms should go unmonitored, said Sidibe, who employs a handful of people to check every Lenali post to root out hate speech, porn or danger.

Like JamiiForums, Lenali follows strict policies to protect users’ data rights and ensure their privacy.

“Big tech companies are interested in big data so that they can do business with your data … they are interested in profit, not truth,” said Melo.

Nothing wrong with profits, he said, but not at users’ expense if Africa’s wave of startups is to endure, thrive – and take its place at the table alongside Big Tech.

“It’s about the content you create, not about how much we can generate from you. It’s about the kind of information you can put on the platform to help others,” Melo said. – Reuters

US agrees to send advanced rockets to Ukraine

Army soldier figurines are displayed in front of the Ukrainian and Russian flag colors background in this illustration taken, Feb. 13, 2022. — REUTERS/DADO RUVIC/ILLUSTRATION

KYIV – Russian troops fought to take complete control of the eastern industrial city of Sievierodonetsk on Wednesday as the United States said it will provide Ukraine with advanced rockets to help it force Moscow to negotiate an end to the war.

President Joe Biden said the United States would provide Ukraine with more advanced rocket systems and munitions so it can “more precisely strike key targets on the battlefield”.

“We have moved quickly to send Ukraine a significant amount of weaponry and ammunition so it can fight on the battlefield and be in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table,” Biden wrote in an opinion piece in the New York Times. Read full story

A senior Biden administration official said weaponry provided would include the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), which Ukraine‘s armed forces chief said a month ago was “crucial” to counter Russian missile attacks.

Addressing concerns that such weapons could draw the United States into a direct conflict with Russia, senior administration officials said Ukraine gave assurances the missiles would not be used to strike inside Russia.

“These systems will be used by the Ukrainians to repel Russian advances on Ukrainian territory, but they will not be used on targets in Russian territory,” the U.S. official told reporters.

Shortly after the U.S. decision was announced, the Russian defense ministry said Russia’s nuclear forces were holding drills in the Ivanovo province, northeast of Moscow, the Interfax news agency reported.

Some 1,000 servicemen were exercising in intense maneuvers using more than 100 vehicles including Yars intercontinental ballistic missile launchers, it cited the ministry as saying. Read full story

There was no mention of the U.S. decision to supply new weapons in the Interfax report.

The latest U.S. pledge of weapons for Ukraine – on top of billions of dollars worth of equipment already provided including anti-aircraft missiles and drones – came as Russia pressed its assault to seize the eastern Donbas region, having abandoned its earlier thrust toward Kyiv from the north.

Russian troops have now taken control of most of the eastern industrial city of Sievierodonetsk in Luhansk, one of two provinces in the Donbas, regional Governor Serhiy Gaidai on Tuesday.

Nearly all critical infrastructure in Sievierodonetsk had been destroyed and 60% of residential property damaged beyond repair, he said. Russian shelling had made it impossible to deliver aid or evacuate people.

A Russian victory in Sievierodonetsk and its twin city of Lysychansk across the Siverskyi Donets river would bring full control of Luhansk, one of two eastern provinces Moscow claims on behalf of separatists.

A pro-Moscow separatist leader said Russian proxies had advanced slower than expected to “maintain the city’s infrastructure” and exercise caution around its chemical factories.

“We can say already that a third of Sievierodonetsk is already under our control,” Russia’s TASS state news agency quoted Leonid Pasechnik, the leader of the pro-Moscow Luhansk People’s Republic, as saying.

Gaidai warned Sievierodonetsk residents not to leave bomb shelters due to what he said was a Russian air strike on a nitric acid tank.

The Luhansk People’s Republic’s police force said Ukraine‘s forces had damaged it. Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists traded accusations over a similar incident in April. Read full story

Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council aid agency which had long operated out of Sievierodonetsk, said he was “horrified” by its destruction.

Up to 12,000 civilians remain caught in crossfire, without sufficient access to water, food, medicine or electricity, Egeland said.

“The near-constant bombardment is forcing civilians to seek refuge in bomb shelters and basements, with only few precious opportunities for those trying to escape,” he said.

 

WEAPONS PACKAGE

Ukraine says weapons sent by the United States and other countries since the beginning of the invasion have helped fend off Russian gains.

The high mobility artillery rocket systems are part of a $700 million weapons package expected to be unveiled by the United States on Wednesday.

The package includes ammunition, counter fire radars, a number of air surveillance radars, additional Javelin anti-tank missiles, as well as anti-armor weapons, officials said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has called for more weapons while lambasting the European Union, which agreed on Monday to cut imports of Russian oil, for not sanctioning energy from Russia sooner.

The EU said it would ban imports of Russian oil by sea. Officials said that would halt two-thirds of Russia’s oil exports to Europe at first, and 90% by the end of this year.

Responding to the EU oil embargo, Russia widened its gas cuts to Europe, pushing up prices and ratcheted up its economic battle with Brussels. Read full story

Putin launched his “special operation” in February to disarm and “denazify” Ukraine. Ukraine and its Western allies call this a baseless pretext for a war to seize territory.

Ukraine accuses Russia of war crimes on a huge scale, flattening cities and killing and raping civilians. Russia denies the accusations. – Reuters

Australia PM Albanese appoints record number of women to diverse cabinet

REUTERS

SYDNEY, – Australia‘s new federal ministry was sworn into office on Wednesday, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese appointing a record number of women to a diverse cabinet team that includes religious minorities and Indigenous Aboriginals.

A total of 10 women were included in Mr. Albanese‘s 23-member cabinet, surpassing the seven in the previous Liberal-National coalition government led by Scott Morrison.

Industry Minister Ed Husic and Youth Minister Anne Aly became Australia‘s first Muslim federal ministers at a ceremony in the national capital, Canberra, while Linda Burney, wearing a kangaroo-skin cloak, became the first Aboriginal woman to hold the Indigenous Australians ministry.

Mr. Albanese formed an interim ministry, that included 4 other key members, two days after the May 21 election so he could attend a Quad group meeting in Tokyo, attended by U.S. President Joe Biden and the leaders of Japan and India.

Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles – who was part of the interim ministry along with Penny Wong in foreign affairs, Jim Chalmers as treasurer and Katy Gallagher in finance – has been assigned the defense portfolio.

Don Farrell is the new trade minister and Tanya Plibersek the environment minister, while Clare O’Neil will be in charge of home affairs and Chris Bowen takes energy.

Former Labor leader Bill Shorten will be minister for government services.

Mr. Albanese on Tuesday said Labor will govern in its own right, claiming 77 seats in the 151-seat lower house, letting it form a majority government without the support of climate-focused independents and Greens. Read full story

Securing a majority lowers the risk for Labor that it would have to negotiate with 16 crossbenchers to pass legislation, although it will still need to win additional support for legislation in parliament’s upper house. – Reuters

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