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Monetary easing still ‘on the table,’ says BSP 

BW FILE PHOTO

THE BANGKO SENTRAL ng Pilipinas (BSP) is keen on keeping an accommodative policy stance to support economic recovery, but officials say further monetary easing is still “on the table.”

“Further monetary easing remains ‘on the table’ especially amid the recent COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) wave. But when a sustainable recovery is apparent, BSP will implement a gradual exit strategy, making sure that this exit is neither too early nor too late,” central bank officials told Nomura Global Markets Research in a session held on Sept. 3. A copy of the transcript was sent by Nomura to journalists. 

The BSP kept the key policy rate steady at a record low of 2% in August as it warned of the impact of renewed lockdown measures and a surge in COVID-19 infections on the economy’s nascent recovery.

Amid the impending policy normalization of the US Federal Reserve, the BSP stressed its monetary decisions will be mainly driven by domestic data, particularly inflation outlook.

Fed officials have already signaled they could start tapering down asset purchases within the year. Nomura in August said the Philippines is among the 10 “troubled” emerging markets that are vulnerable to changes in monetary policy in the US and slowing growth in China.

“In the past, BSP did not need to follow the Fed’s path, and this is likely to remain the same today, in view of some cushions such as high foreign exchange reserves — with more than a year of import cover — and a resilient banking system,” Nomura quoted BSP officials as saying.

The Monetary Board will have its next policy review on Sept. 23.

Central bank officials are optimistic that vaccine rollout has gained traction and the restriction measures will be supportive of economic rebound.

“Recovery is looking better with recent developments on vaccination, such as the increase in the pace of doses administered per day and the more diversified supply pipeline in coming months,” officials said.

“Lockdowns will also now become more ‘granular’ and should therefore be more supportive of mobility, consumer confidence and overall economic activity.”

Nomura analysts Euben Paracuelles and Rangga Cipta believe the central bank will keep policy rates steady for the remaining months of 2021 and at least until half of 2022, saying the BSP will mainly consider their inflation outlook for rate adjustments.

“This, in our view, continues to suggest that BSP will adhere strictly to its inflation-targeting mandate and that there is limited scope for policy rate cuts this year,” the analysts said.

The BSP expects inflation to breach their 2-4% target this year at 4.1% before easing to 3.1% in the next two years. — Luz Wendy T. Noble

Cavitex aims to start building P2-B link to CALAX

CAVITE-LAGUNA Expressway (Laguna section - Mamplasan entry) — LMP 2001

MPTC unit’s president says schedule is ‘late this year or early next year’

By Arjay L. Balinbin, Senior Reporter

CAVITEX Infrastructure Corp. (CIC), a subsidiary of Metro Pacific Tollways Corp. (MPTC), is aiming to start work “late this year or early next year” on a P2-billion toll road project that will link the Manila-Cavite Expressway (CAVITEX) to the Cavite-Laguna Expressway (CALAX) project, the company’s president said on Tuesday.

“At the moment, I think what is very definite in terms of the extension of the current CAVITEX is our connection to CALAX,” CIC President and General Manager Roberto V. Bontia said at a virtual briefing.

“The construction, hopefully, can start either late this year or early next year, and that is also in anticipation of the completion of CALAX, hopefully, by 2023,” he added.

The one-kilometer elevated toll road project will connect Kawit to the last interchange of CALAX.

The project cost is P2 billion, MPTC Chief Finance Officer Christopher Daniel C. Lizo said.

“We already have a loan facility with Banco de Oro to finance the construction of the CALAX-CAVITEX connection. This is part of the facility we secured also to build the CAVITEX C5 Link,” he noted.

CAVITEX C5 LINK
The 7.7-kilometer CAVITEX C5 Link project aims to connect CAVITEX R1 to C5 Road in Taguig.

The P15-billion C5 Link — comprised of Segments 2 and 3 — is now 20% finished.

“Since 2019, C5 Link segment 3A-1 connecting Merville to C5 Road has been operational, while constructions of Segments 3A-2 stretching from E. Rodriguez to Merville, and Segment 2 from Cavitex R1 Interchange to Sucat Interchange are underway,” CIC said in a statement.

“Construction of Segment 3B from Sucat to E. Rodriguez… is expected to begin in the first quarter of 2022,” it added.

The C5 Link project is seen to reduce travel time between CAVITEX to Makati and Taguig and vice versa by 30 to 45 minutes.

MPTC is the toll road arm of Metro Pacific Investments Corp., one of three key Philippine units of Hong Kong-based First Pacific Co. Ltd., the others being Philex Mining Corp. and PLDT, Inc.

Hastings Holdings, Inc., a unit of PLDT Beneficial Trust Fund subsidiary MediaQuest Holdings, Inc., has a majority stake in BusinessWorld through the Philippine Star Group, which it controls.

PNOC designates Barleta as officer-in-charge

STATE-RUN Philippine National Oil Co. (PNOC) has named Graciela M. Barleta as the energy firm’s officer-in-charge who will lead the entity until its board declares a new president.

Before her designation, Ms. Barleta served as PNOC’s senior vice-president for energy business.

She takes the place of Reuben S. Lista, who passed away on Aug. 31, while he was the company’s president and chief executive officer.

In an announcement posted on its website on Tuesday, PNOC said during a special board meeting on Sept. 3, the board of directors appointed Ms. Barleta as officer-in-charge (OIC) of the president and chief executive posts. It added that she will serve as OIC until the board elects its next leader.

PNOC was established in 1973 to provide and maintain a stable supply of oil. The firm has since then expanded to exploration activities related to indigenous oil and non-oil sources and ventured into petrochemicals when it set up the country’s first petrochemical industrial estate in Limay, Bataan.

On its website, the firm aims to “build an energy sector that will bring energy independence to the country.”

At present, PNOC’s upstream oil, gas and coal subsidiary, PNOC Exploration Corp., holds a 10% stake in the offshore Malampaya deepwater project. — Angelica Y. Yang

Arbitration tribunal denies NLEX Corp. claim for damages from tolls regulator

METRO Pacific Investments Corp. (MPIC) announced on Tuesday that the Permanent Court of Arbitration has denied NLEX Corp.’s claim for damages from the Toll Regulatory Board (TRB).

The tribunal ruled that the TRB is not accountable for “unreasonable delay” on petitions for toll rate adjustments filed by MPIC’s tollways unit NLEX Corp. in 2012 and 2014, the listed company said in a disclosure to the stock exchange.

“The Tribunal also noted that the TRB already decided on the 2012 and 2014 petitions when the TRB issued its resolution in 2018 approving an upward adjustment in the toll rates in NLEX, which have been implemented since March 2019,” MPIC said. “Based on the foregoing, the Tribunal also denied NLEX Corp.’s claim for damages.”

MPIC also said the rejection of the claim is without prejudice to further review by the TRB of the petitions.

Each party will bear an equal share of the arbitration costs and will bear their own costs of legal representation and assistance, it noted.

The company said it received notice of the ruling on Tuesday. It also received notice of the tribunal’s decision on Cavitex Infrastructure Corp.’s arbitration case against the TRB.

“The Tribunal issued its final termination order, considering that the claimants Cavitex Infrastructure Corp. and Philippine Reclamation Authority have earlier withdrawn both their claims for compensation arising from non-approval of their petitions for rate adjustment filed in 2011 and 2014,” MPIC said.

Cavitex, also a toll road unit of MPIC, is the joint venture partner of the Philippine Reclamation Authority for the Manila-Cavite Toll Expressway Project.

“The order thus terminated the Cavitex arbitration case. In the meantime, the said petitions are now being processed by the TRB,” it added.

MPIC is one of three key Philippine units of First Pacific, the others being Philex Mining Corp. and PLDT, Inc.

Hastings Holdings, Inc., a unit of PLDT Beneficial Trust Fund subsidiary MediaQuest Holdings, Inc., has a majority stake in BusinessWorld through the Philippine Star Group, which it controls. — Arjay L. Balinbin

Uy-led telco passes second technical audit, says DITO CME

DITO CME Holdings Corp. announced on Tuesday that its subsidiary DITO Telecommunity Corp. has passed the second technical audit on its committed coverage and speeds.

“With respect to item (a), the calculated National Population Coverage (percentage) is 52.75%,” DITO CME said, quoting a notice from the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC). This means that the new telco player has a capacity to cover more than half of the country’s population.

“With respect to item (b), the minimum average broadband speeds (Mbps) delivered are 89.13 Mbps and 853.96 Mbps for all 4G (fourth-generation) and 5G sites, respectively…” it added in its disclosure to the stock exchange.

DITO Telecommunity committed to cover 51.01% of the national population and render a minimum average broadband speed of 55 Mbps in its second year of operations.

If it fails, the government must recall the Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity and frequencies awarded to it and keep its performance bond of P25 billion.

In its first technical audit earlier this year, the NTC declared DITO Telecommunity compliant with its requirement to cover 37.03% of the country’s population and provide a minimum average broadband speed of 27 Mbps in its first year of service. R.G. Manabat & Co. conducted the technical audit. 

Shares in DITO CME, a holding firm led by businessman Dennis A. Uy, closed higher by 1.97% or 17 centavos at P8.79 each on Tuesday. — Arjay L. Balinbin

Red Cross, hospitals adapt as blood shortage continues  

PIXABAY

By Brontë H. Lacsamana  

BLOOD DONATIONS fell by around 29% to 365,000 units of blood in 2020 from more than 516,000 units of blood in 2019 due to on-and-off lockdowns and restricted mobility, according to Dr. Christie Monina M. Nalupta, director of the Philippine Red Cross (PRC) National Blood Services.   

At a recent hematology conference, she reported that PRC collected 218,578 blood units from January to July of this year.  

Dr. Nalupta hopes that the blood supply will bounce back from the past year’s difficult donor recruitment and decrease in staffing due to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).  

With mobile blood donations down to once a week (if at all), PRC’s contribution to the national blood requirement fell to just 3040% of the national blood requirement in 2020 from 50% in 2019, when blood drives were held two to three times a day yielding over 15,000 blood units daily. 

Dr. Nalupta also attributed the decrease to the loss of young donors, aged 16 to 25, as a major source of blood collection: “Suddenly, because of online education and no face-to-face engagement in schools, there was a 12% drop in blood collection of youth in 2020 from 2019,” she said.  

SUPPLY PROBLEM
Hospitals, too, are having trouble maintaining adequate blood supply, according to Dr. Rosalio P. Torres, president of the Philippine College of Hematology and Transfusion Medicine (PCHTM).   

“Healthy donors were worried and scared to go to the hospital to donate at the blood bank,” he said in a Viber call with BusinessWorld, pointing to the virus as the number one cause for concern among potential donors. “The demand for blood hasn’t really risen. It’s the supply that’s the problem. The number of donors has precipitously gone down.”  

Dr. Jesus A. Relos, hematologist at Makati Medical Center, quantified this as a 77% drop in blood donations in the second quarter of 2021 from the same quarter in 2020.  

“Definitely it was still because of the pandemic scare, but also this time, vaccination was rolled out with a protocol of waiting 28 days before donating,” he said.  

The Department of Health has since issued a circular this August allowing blood donation any time after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine if the donor is asymptomatic.  

BLOOD MANAGEMENT 
“Our strategy [to maintain blood supply] during lockdowns was to get blood from the network of different Red Cross facilities in the provinces,” said PRC’s Dr. Nalupta. “They share their blood supplies to the National Blood Center here in the National Capital Region, since we usually need more.” 

The same goes for hospitals and blood banks who are part of a nationwide network as well, so that extra supply can be given wherever needed, said PCHTM’s Dr. Torres.  

“Surgeries were canceled, deferred, or rescheduled around the start of the pandemic,” he said. “There’s no way you can ignore that problem. That led us to a call to action early on knowing this and anticipating this.”  

Other strategies include media campaigns calling for blood donors, as well as partnering with companies who can either help spread the word or commit to a number of donation drives per year.  

Still, the reliance on voluntary donors and blood drives leaves the blood supply in a precarious balance, forcing better ways to adapt, according to Dr. Ma. Angelina L. Mirasol, vice-president of PCHTM.  

She advocated the use of patient blood management (PBM), defined by the Society for the Advancement of Patient Blood Management as an evidence-based, multidisciplinary approach to caring for patients who might need a blood transfusion.  

Wasteful blood usage can be avoided with a perioperative plan of care to ensure all options are exhausted before resorting to surgery or transfusions, she said at a hematology conference this September. 

When appropriate, patients can instead be given intravenous or oral iron supplements, among other methods as determined by their doctors.  

PCHTM President Dr. Torres, on the other hand, recognized that the shift to a PBM approach would be difficult — albeit necessary — amid the pandemic: “Education is a very important part in the successful implementation of this program. It has to be a continuous dialogue with all the different departments in an institution.”  

The advantages of PBM have been shown in various studies during the pandemic, which found reduced mortality and morbidity, shorter hospital stays, and lowered costs, according to Dr. Mirasol.  

“Blood still saves lives, but we need to balance,” she said.  

Romero-led Fort Pilar Energy buys Alterpower Digos Solar for P1.5B

FORT Pilar Energy, Inc., a firm owned by the family of House Deputy Speaker Michael “Mikee” L. Romero, has spent P1.5 billion to acquire Alterpower Digos Solar, Inc. (ADSI), which runs a 28.59-megawatt (MW) solar plant in Digos, Davao del Sur.

ADSI is a joint venture of the South Korea-based Hanwha Global Asset Corp. and renewable energy firm Alterpower Specialist, Inc. It owns and operates a solar facility in Digos that produces up to 43 million kilowatt-hour annually.

“Our investment in a solar power plant in Mindanao reflects our firm belief that the growth of the Philippines lies in the development of our rural areas,” Fort Pilar Energy Chairperson Sheila B. Romero said in a statement issued on Tuesday.

The firm plans to spend an additional P500 million to expand the solar facility’s capacity to 40 MW.

“Expansion plans include the upgrade of its electrical systems, acquiring more powerful PV cells and increasing its footprint in the Digos area,” Fort Pilar Energy said.

Located in a prime area for solar irradiation, the facility can harness power from the sun using its 92,232 polycrystalline photovoltaic modules.

On Tuesday, Fort Pilar Energy also said it is in the process of constructing a battery energy storage system in Zamboanga, which is scheduled for commissioning in February next year.

In May, the company was declared as the winning bidder in the negotiated sale of the government’s 650-MW Malaya Thermal Power Plant (MTPP). It then transferred its right to buy the plant to its subsidiary Belgrove Power Corp.

Two weeks ago, Belgrove Power paid a otal of P4.19 billion to buy the plant and to pay for the remaining fuel in MTPP.

Fort Pilar Energy’s Chief Executive Officer Joseph Omar A. Castillo earlier said that the company was planning to apply for a deal with the grid operator that will enable MTPP’s second unit to provide ancillary services to the Luzon grid. — Angelica Y. Yang

Sta. Lucia Land plans expansion projects in Batangas and Rizal

CATALINA LAKE RESIDENCES

STA. Lucia Land, Inc. (SLI) continues to plan its expansion in Batangas and Rizal, where the company already has a “strong presence and high growth potential.”

On Friday, SLI’s board of directors gave the go signal for the acquisition of land parcels in Batangas spanning a total of 349,594 square meters (sq.m.) and 118,274 sq.m. in Rizal.

“The planned land acquisitions in Batangas and Rizal are [the] expansion of our Catalina Project [in] Batangas, Summit Point [in] Batangas, and a new project in Rizal,” SLI Chief Compliance Officer and Corporate Communication Officer Jeremiah T. Pampolina said in an e-mailed response to questions on Monday.

The property developer said the acquisitions will be partially funded by its follow-on offering (FOO) or through the issuance of debt.

SLI filed with regulators in July for a P9.87-billion FOO, where it will offer 2.5 billion common shares for P2.38 to P3.29 each and an overallotment option of up to 500 million common shares. The company said it will use net proceeds to partially fund capital expenditures for new and ongoing projects, land acquisitions, to refinance short-term debts, as well as for other corporate purposes.

The company’s board of directors also authorized the corporation to enter joint ventures to develop its projects in Rizal, which is around 13,515 sq.m., and Batangas-based projects spanning 30,518 sq.m.

Meanwhile, SLI said it will enter a joint venture with Sta, Lucia Realty & Development, Inc. to develop a 595,232.70 sqm. development in Rizal.

SLI believes the real estate industry is doing better compared with last year as the company’s growth prospects are “consistently rising especially in the provinces.”

“SLI likes to focus on regions with relatively high local GDP (gross domestic product) growth like Batangas and Rizal,” Mr. Pampolina said.

The company also has residential communities in Cavite, Laguna, Bulacan, Pampanga, Nueva Ecija, Pangasinan, Palawan, Cebu, Iloilo, Bacolod, and Davao.

“As more Filipinos value space for safety, mental well-being, and work-from-home arrangements, the provincial fringe has become an attractive investment for our customers,” Mr. Pampolina said.

Shares of SLI on Tuesday closed lower by 4.23% or 13 centavos to end at P2.94 each. — Keren Concepcion G. Valmonte

Sinovac booster shot reverses drop in antibody activities against Delta — study

BEIJING — A booster dose of Sinovac Biotech’s coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine reversed a decline in antibody activities against the Delta variant, a study showed, easing some concerns about its longer-term immune response to the highly contagious strain of the virus. 

The study comes amid concerns about the Chinese vaccine’s efficacy against Delta, which has become the dominant variant globally and is driving a surge in new infections even in the most vaccinated countries. 

Several countries which have relied heavily on the Sinovac vaccine have begun giving booster shots developed by Western manufacturers to people fully vaccinated with the Chinese shot. 

Neutralizing antibody activities against Delta were not detected in samples taken from vaccine recipients six months after they received the second dose of Sinovac’s CoronaVac vaccine, according to the study published on Sunday before a peer review. 

But recipients of booster shots showed over 2.5-fold higher neutralizing potency against Delta about four weeks after the third dose, compared with the level seen about four weeks after the second shot, researchers from Chinese Academy of Sciences, Furan University, Sinovac, and other Chinese institutions said in the paper. 

They did not discuss how specifically changes in antibody activity will affect Sinovac shot’s efficacy in preventing people from getting sick from the variant. 

The lab study involves samples from 66 participants, including 38 volunteers who received either two or three doses of the vaccine. 

The World Health Organization plans to ship around 100 million doses of the Sinovac and Sinopharm COVID-19 shots by the end of this month, mostly to Africa and Asia, in its first delivery of Chinese vaccines. 

But some countries rejected accepting the vaccines, citing lack of data on their effectiveness against Delta.  

Around 1.8 billion doses of the Sinovac vaccine have been supplied globally including China by the end of August, according to the company. — Reuters 

The story is in the clothing

A BOOK that tells the story of an era of Philippine culture through its clothing has won a major international scholarly prize.

The 550-page book, Clothing the Colony: Nineteenth Century Philippine Sartorial Culture, 1820-1896 by Stephanie Marie Coo, was awarded the IIAS-ICAS International Book Prize 2021 as the Best Book in Humanities-English Language Edition on Aug. 24.

The biennial ICAS Book Prize (IBP), which started in 2003, was established by International Convention of Asian Scholars (ICAS) which is a biennial meeting platform by the initiative International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) based in Leiden, the Netherlands. The IIAS is part of a global academic network that organizes a discussion among individuals and institutions on Asia and Asian Studies. With 600 books and 150 dissertations submitted for its 2019 edition, the IBP is the leading Book Prize in the field of Asian Studies.

Karina A. Bolasco, director of the Ateneo de Manila University Press, described the book as “ideal packaging of an academic and scholarly book” with “an interesting and popular subject as clothing, rigorous research given in readable language, a good number of archival but beautiful pictures.”

“The ICAS call for submissions was relayed to us by one of our authors, Nina Andersen, a Danish Philippine studies specialist (author of Labor Pioneers: Economy, Labor, and Migration in Filipino-Danish Relations, 1950-2015),” she said in an e-mail to BusinessWorld.

The university press submitted 10 Humanities and Social Sciences titles published after 2018. Out of 247 entries worldwide, Clothing the Colony was the only book entry from Asia that was nominated. It was longlisted, shortlisted, and finally awarded the book prize — besting books from the university presses of Yale, Columbia, Chicago University, and Oxford.

THE WINNING BOOK
Clothing the Colony is a function of the colonization of the mind and the heart,” Ms. Coo told BusinessWorld in an online interview. “Clothes are worn, and therefore, it’s about the story of the wearers who makes daily decision about how they want to show up into the world.”

Ms. Coo is a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow at the Departamento de Historia del Arte at the Universidad de Granada in Spain and NOVA School of Law – Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, in Portugal. She earned her PhD in History from Universite Nice Sophia Antipolis in France where she was conferred the highest distinction in the French university system. She also holds a Master of Arts in History, and Bachelor of Science degrees from the Ateneo de Manila, where she serves as Assistant Professor. 

Prior to its publication as a book, the research for Clothing the Colony was originally done for Ms. Coo’s doctorate dissertation in France. Ms. Coo said that the original idea for the study was Philippine textiles, however she switched the focus to clothing. “The real narrative is in the clothes. I was more interested on the psychology behind clothes,” she said.

For the book, Ms. Coo gathered text and a mass of photographs from libraries and museum archives including the Museo del Traje and Museo Nacional de Antropologia in Spain, Museu Nacional do Traje in Portugal, and the National Library, Filipinas Heritage Library, and Ateneo’s Rizal Library in the Philippines.

“I was not just looking at one image. I need to verify if this image matches with the text,” Ms. Coo said.

THE WAY WE WORE
The book focuses the evolution of clothing between 1820 and 1896. Clothing pieces, Ms. Coo stressed, each had to be looked at separately. “Each piece has to be treated separately because it has its own tempo but also, the whole ensemble has to be analyzed for its totality,” she said.

While doing her research, one of the many interesting stories Ms. Coo gathered pertained to the sleeves design in women’s clothing.

She explained that embroidery was a leisure activity among women, and they began to wear their art aside from displaying it at home. “To accommodate these new skills and designs, the sleeves became bigger,” she said. Then, the method of starching was incorporated to create more structural designs.

Ms. Coo noted that men’s clothing “delivered more exciting narratives” because men engaged in more activities in business, held positions in government, and had different attire for leisure and events such as fiestas.

“Men had more activities. Women were excluded from the usual avenues of power,” Ms. Coo said. “Women were excluded from ecclesiastical work unlike priests, unless they become a nun.”

At a time when information is very accessible, and often not very accurate, Ateneo Press’ Ms. Bolasco noted how important and urgent it is today to produce informative books.

“Academic or scholarly books are not just informative books, offering much more than what is on Google or on the worldwide web…,” Ms. Bolasco told BusinessWorld, noting that books which cover aspects of the country’s history, culture, politics, and economics are crafted from rigorous research and based on doctoral dissertations. 

“By situating our clothing practices in such a multi-ethnic, multicultural 19th century colonial society, we learn to appreciate more deeply our cultural interactions, colonial lifestyles, human relations, and social behavior,” she added.

“Quality work takes time and deep research. Whatever I produce, I make sure it’s new knowledge. So, between consumption and production of knowledge, I wanted to produce knowledge,” Ms. Coo said.

For details and book orders, visit http://ateneo.edu/ateneopress/product/clothing-colony-nineteenth-century-philippine-sartorial-culture-1820-1896-0. The book is also available at the Ateneo University Press pages at Lazada and Shopee. — Michelle Anne P. Soliman

Converge ICT joining FTSE GEIS small cap index on Sept. 18

LISTED fiber broadband provider Converge ICT Solutions, Inc. said on Tuesday that it will join the Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) Global Equity Index starting Sept. 18.

“Converge is the only Philippine company to be added to the Small Cap Index of the FTSE Global Equity Index Series (GEIS) in this most recent review. The index inclusion will take effect after the close of business on Sept. 17, 2021,” Converge said in an e-mailed statement.

Dennis Anthony H. Uy, chief executive officer and co-founder of Converge, said the company’s inclusion in the FTSE Global Equity Index “will lead to more exposure to passive and active investors.”

For Grace Y. Uy, Converge president and co-founder, the index inclusion is a testament of the company’s “growth and standing” in the country’s telecommunications industry.

“Securities are included in the Global Equity Index Series after passing the criteria on minimum voting rights, investability weight, liquidity, and trading history set by the FTSE,” Converge said.

“The GEIS was created by the FTSE to be used as benchmarks for investment funds, exchange traded funds, and other financial products. The indices, therefore, stand as proxy for the market they represent and the securities therein are considered as stable indicators for their respective industries. The GEIS – Global Small Cap Index, as of July, comprises more than 5,000 constituents worldwide,” it noted.

The company saw its attributable net income for the first half of the year surge 159% to P3.3 billion.

First-half total revenues increased 82% to P11.8 billion, as residential revenue jumped 105% to P10.2 billion and enterprise revenue slightly grew 4% to P1.6 billion.

Converge shares closed 1.59% higher at P32 apiece on Tuesday. — Arjay L. Balinbin

‘Infodemic’ still a public health concern  

PIXABAY

WHILE the Lambda and Mu coronavirus variants are not (as of now) a matter of concern among health experts, the ongoing infodemic is.  

“This is the first pandemic of its kind in the age of social media,” said former Health secretary Dr. Esperanza I. Cabral at a recent webinar organized by the Philippine Medical Association. “Misinformation can stem from our knowledge gaps. Disinformation is more insidious, with certain groups trying to sow seeds of distrust towards institutions.”  

An infodemic is a rapid and far-reaching spread of both accurate and inaccurate information about something, such as a disease.  

It’s very difficult to address disinformation nowadays, added Dr. Dominga “Minguita” B. Padilla, a co-convener of Doctors for Truth and Public Welfare. “Much disinformation is fallacy mixed with truth.”  

 To develop trust, Dr. Cabral suggested the following:  

  • Understand your audience — What are their ages? What is their communication style? Tailor your means of communication to accommodate these factors.  
  • Communicate uncertainty clearly — Stating that not all information is available is better than making claims.  
  • Watch social media — Monitoring social media is a way to understand what questions are being asked, as well as know what knowledge gaps are present, so these can be addressed.  

We need to identify where misinformation is coming from, so we can stop it at the source,” said Dr. Cabral. — Patricia B. Mirasol