CONVERGE ICT Solutions, Inc. Co-Founder and President Maria Grace Y. Uy is part of Forbes Asia’s 2021 Power Businesswomen list, which recognizes 20 outstanding female business leaders in the Asia-Pacific region.
Announced on Tuesday, Forbes Asia recognized Ms. Uy for her role in growing Converge “into one of the largest fixed broadband operators in the Philippines.”
“I have always lived with the principle that to be successful, you need to put in everything you’ve got and always work to do it better,” Ms. Uy told Forbes in a statement.
“And we still believe that we have just started,” she added.
Ms. Uy is a certified public accountant. She held senior executive positions in several companies, including IBM Philippines, prior to Converge, according to Forbes.
The businesswomen honored this year were selected for their accomplishments in managing either a business with sizable revenues or a startup valued at over $100 million, Forbes said in an e-mailed statement.
This year’s list recognizes businesswomen “who managed to adapt and thrive in industries including technology, healthcare, banking and manufacturing,” said Rana Wehbe Watson, editor of the 2021 Asia’s Power Businesswomen list.
“They are leading the way as the world struggles with the post-COVID reality,” she added.
Forbes noted that Ms. Uy led the negotiations for a $250-million investment from Warburg Pincus, a global growth investor, in 2019, which was used for the expansion of Converge’s fiber network.
Last year, Ms. Uy and her husband, Converge Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder Dennis Anthony H. Uy, raised $522 million in one of the Philippines’ “largest-ever” initial public offerings, Forbes said.
“Shares have since risen over 70%, pushing Converge’s market cap to 233 billion pesos ($4.6 billion),” it added.
Other businesswomen on the list include Thailand’s Wallapa Traisorat, president and chief executive officer of real estate company Asset World Corp.; Helen Wong, the first woman to helm the 89-year-old Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp.; South Korea’s Lee In-kyung who became a partner at MBK Partners (one of the largest homegrown buyout firms in Asia) last year; and Meena Ganesh who co-founded Portea Medical, India’s largest home healthcare company by revenue. — Arjay L. Balinbin
ART historians have long used traditional X-rays, X-ray fluorescence or infrared imaging to better understand artists’ techniques. — METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
ART historians have long used traditional X-rays, X-ray fluorescence or infrared imaging to better understand artists’ techniques. — METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
PEOPLE tend to rejoice in the disclosure of a secret.
Or, at the very least, media outlets have come to realize that news of “mysteries solved” and “hidden treasures revealed” generate traffic and clicks.
So I’m never surprised when I see AI-assisted revelations about famous masters’ works of art go viral.
As an art historian, I’ve become increasingly concerned about the coverage and circulation of these projects.
They have not, in actuality, revealed one secret or solved a single mystery.
What they have done is generate feel-good stories about AI.
ARE WE ACTUALLY LEARNING ANYTHING NEW? Take the reports about the Modigliani and Picasso paintings.
These were projects executed by the same company, Oxia Palus, which was founded not by art historians but by doctoral students in machine learning.
In both cases, Oxia Palus relied upon traditional X-rays, X-ray fluorescence, and infrared imaging that had already been carried out and publishedyears prior — work that had revealed preliminary paintings beneath the visible layer on the artists’ canvases.
The company edited these X-rays and reconstituted them as new works of art by applying a technique called “neural style transfer.” This is a sophisticated-sounding term for a program that breaks works of art down into extremely small units, extrapolates a style from them and then promises to recreate images of other content in that same style.
Essentially, Oxia Palus stitches new works out of what the machine can learn from the existing X-ray images and other paintings by the same artist.
But outside of flexing the prowess of AI, is there any value — artistically, historically — to what the company is doing?
These recreations don’t teach us anything we didn’t know about the artists and their methods.
Artists paint over their works all the time. It’s so common that art historians and conservators have a word for it: pentimento. None of these earlier compositions was an Easter egg deposited in the painting for later researchers to discover. The original X-ray images were certainly valuable in that they offered insights into artists’ working methods.
But to me, what these programs are doing isn’t exactly newsworthy from the perspective of art history.
THE HUMANITIES ON LIFE SUPPORT So, when I do see these reproductions attracting media attention, it strikes me as soft diplomacy for AI, showcasing a “cultured” application of the technology at a time when skepticism of its deceptions, biases and abuses is on the rise.
These studies and projects also seem to promote the idea that computer scientists are more adept at historical research than art historians.
For years, university humanities departments have been gradually squeezed of funding, with more money funneled into the sciences. With their claims to objectivity and empirically provable results, the sciences tend to command greater respect from funding bodies and the public, which offers an incentive to scholars in the humanities to adopt computational methods.
Art historian Claire Bishop criticized this development, noting that when computer science becomes integrated in the humanities, “theoretical problems are steamrollered flat by the weight of data,” which generates deeply simplistic results.
At their core, art historians study the ways in which art can offer insights into how people once saw the world. They explore how works of art shaped the worlds in which they were made and would go on to influence future generations.
A computer algorithm cannot perform these functions.
However, some scholars and institutions have allowed themselves to be subsumed by the sciences, adopting their methods and partnering with them in sponsored projects.
Literary critic Barbara Herrnstein Smith has warned about ceding too much ground to the sciences. In her view, the sciences and the humanities are not the polar opposites they are often publicly portrayed to be. But this portrayal has been to the benefit of the sciences, prized for their supposed clarity and utility over the humanities’ alleged obscurity and uselessness. At the same time, she has suggested that hybrid fields of study that fuse the arts with the sciences may lead to breakthroughs that wouldn’t have been possible had each existed as a siloed discipline.
I’m skeptical. Not because I doubt the utility of expanding and diversifying our toolbox; to be sure, some scholars working in the digital humanities have taken up computational methods with subtlety and historical awareness to add nuance to or overturn entrenched narratives.
But my lingering suspicion emerges from an awareness of how public support for the sciences and disparagement of the humanities means that, in the endeavor to gain funding and acceptance, the humanities will lose what makes them vital. The field’s sensitivity to historical particularity and cultural difference makes the application of the same code to widely diverse artifacts utterly illogical.
How absurd to think that black-and-white photographs from 100 years ago would produce colors in the same way that digital photographs do now. And yet, this is exactly what AI-assisted colorization does.
That particular example might sound like a small qualm, sure. But this effort to “bring events back to life” routinely mistakes representations for reality. Adding color does not show things as they were but recreates what is already a recreation — a photograph — in our own image, now with computer science’s seal of approval.
ART AS A TOY IN THE SANDBOX OF SCIENTISTS Near the conclusion of a recent paper devoted to the use of AI to disentangle X-ray images of Jan and Hubert van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece, the mathematicians and engineers who authored it refer to their method as relying upon “choosing ‘the best of all possible worlds’ (borrowing Voltaire’s words) by taking the first output of two separate runs, differing only in the ordering of the inputs.”
Perhaps if they had familiarized themselves with the humanities more they would know how satirically those words were meant when Voltaire used them to mock a philosopher who believed that rampant suffering and injustice were all part of God’s plan — that the world as it was represented the best we could hope for.
Maybe this “gotcha” is cheap. But it illustrates the problem of art and history becoming toys in the sandboxes of scientists with no training in the humanities.
If nothing else, my hope is that journalists and critics who report on these developments will cast a more skeptical eye on them and alter their framing.
In my view, rather than lionizing these studies as heroic achievements, those responsible for conveying their results to the public should see them as opportunities to question what the computational sciences are doing when they appropriate the study of art. And they should ask whether any of this is for the good of anyone or anything but AI, its most zealous proponents, and those who profit from it.
Sonja Drimmer is an Associate Professor of Medieval Art, University of Massachusetts Amherst
THE more Filipinas perform early breast cancer detection, the higher the survival rate of the disease in the country will be.
At age 20, females are advised to learn and perform a breast self-exam (BSE) monthly. At age 30, an annual clinical breast exam by a doctor or a trained healthcare worker is recommended in conjunction with the monthly BSEs. At age 40, a low-dose X-ray of the breast called a mammogram is ideally added to the early detection equation.
“I can’t stress enough the importance of having a mammogram,” said Dr. Leya Suzette Evangelista- Espino, a radiologist from The Medical City, in an Oct. 30 webinar organized by the hospital. “A mammogram has the advantage of detecting breast cancer at the earliest stages. Even lumps that can’t be palpated can be detected in a mammogram,” she added in the vernacular.
The general symptoms of breast cancer are a lump or thickening of the breast; an alteration in the appearance of the breast; a dimpling in the skin of the breast, including the area surrounding the nipple; and/or a discharge in the nipple.
A survey published this October by Milieu Insight, a Singapore-based consumer data and analytics company, found that while 81% of Filipinas say they are familiar with breast cancer symptoms, less than half (or 45%) aged 30 years and above know the recommended frequency of a BSE. Only one-fifth (or 22%) of the same age group also know the recommended age for regular mammogram screening.
Inasmuch as screening tests are an important tool for finding breast changes that could be cancer before physical symptoms develop, no one test is infallible.
Menstruating women can have prominent fibroglandular breast tissue, and these dense areas of the breast make lesions harder to find in a mammogram, Dr. Espino told the webinar audience.
“[For these cases], it is usually advised to also have a breast ultrasound,” she said, noting that the ancillary procedure can tell whether a breast lump that was seen in a mammogram is fluid-filled or a solid tumor.
Dr. Espino added that a breast ultrasound is advisable for pregnant women as well, since it does not use radiation and is thus safe for the fetus.
Individuals with persistent abnormalities (or those that last more than a month) or patterns that suggest malignancy (such as calcium deposits called calcifications) may be advised to undergo further workups such as an ultrasound-guided needle biopsy of the breast.
This procedure entails administration of local anesthesia and an incision of around .2–.3 cm to insert the said needle, said Dr. Lea Angela Pineda-Peralta, a breast surgeon from The Medical City.
“We see the needle target the specific lump, and this avoids false negative results,” she said in the vernacular. The guided visualization also protects those with lumps close to the chest wall from having the needle prick an area outside of the lump, Dr. Pineda added. “We need to have the biopsy done so we can figure out how to help you.”
How to perform a breast self-exam
ICanServe Foundation, Inc., an early breast cancer detection advocacy group, outlines the steps to performing a breast self-exam:
Lie down with your back resting on a flat, comfortable surface. Raise your left arm and put a pillow or rolled towel below your left shoulder.
Use the three middle fingers of your right hand to feel for lumps, making sure they are pressed together. Use the convex of these three fingers together (not the fingertips) to feel for lumps.
Keep your fingers straight and press them together on your left breast.
Using vertical movements, begin from armpits and move fingers downward until below the breast. Move toward the middle and back up. Repeat through the chest and entire breast.
SOLAR PHILIPPINES wants to go public to help fund a 500-megawatt solar farm in Nueva Ecija. — SOLARPHILIPPINES.PH
SOLAR PHILIPPINES plans to hold an initial public offering (IPO) to raise a minimum of P1.3 billion, which will partly fund the construction of its unit’s 500-megawatt (MW) solar farm in Peñaranda, Nueva Ecija.
“We aim to raise at least P1.3 billion to fund the equity for the construction of the project’s first 225 MW, with the possibility of raising more to advance the expansion of the project,” Solar Philippines Founder Leandro L. Leviste told BusinessWorld through the firm’s corporate communications division in an e-mail on Tuesday.
The planned facility will be a project of Solar Philippines Nueva Ecija Corp., which is wholly owned by Solar Philippines.
Once completed, the solar farm will become Southeast Asia’s largest solar project to date, the company said.
“We’ve decided to make Solar Philippines Nueva Ecija our group’s first venture into the public markets because this is the asset that we are proudest to showcase: a site where will rise the largest solar project in the Philippines, with potential for further expansion given its proximity to Manila,” said Mr. Leviste separately said in an e-mailed statement on Tuesday.
The IPO will allow the public to invest in renewable energy efforts, and expand such initiatives in the Philippines, he said, adding that they will disclose the timing of the offer once it is firmed up.
Solar Philippines seeks to list the offer under the stock exchange’s supplemental listing and disclosure requirements for renewable energy companies.
The guidelines give development-stage project firms a chance to list on the local bourse as long as they fulfill certain requirements, such as securing a valid and subsisting service contract from the Energy department.
Solar Philippines said its Nueva Ecija unit aims to begin construction work for its 500-MW project by end-2021. The facility will help augment the Luzon grid’s reserve capacity and avoid rotating outages in the area.
Once operational, the Peñaranda solar farm will account for half of Solar Philippines’ first 1 gigawatt target.
Last month, Solar Philippines announced the creation of a new business called “Solar Energy Zones, Inc.” which aims to develop areas conducive to hosting solar facilities for power firms.
The company has said it was in the middle of finalizing deals to develop 10,000 hectares of solar energy zones, which will be mainly situated near its existing power projects in Nueva Ecija, Batangas and Tarlac. — Angelica Y. Yang with inputs from Keren Concepcion G. Valmonte
NONSTOCK SAVINGS and loan associations (NSSLAs) recorded a higher operating income in the first semester of the year as more loans were disbursed, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said.
In its Report on Philippine Financial System for the First Semester of 2021, the BSP said the total operating income of NSSLAs increased 5.8% year on year to P14.2 billion from the P13.4 billion seen in the January to June period in 2020.
The NSSLA industry’s return on assets declined to 6.8% as of end-June from 8.8% a year earlier, while return on equity fell to 10.5% from 13.5%. This, as equity and asset growth outpaced the increase in its earnings.
The industry’s core earnings were mainly driven by interest from lending activities, which stood at P15.4 billion as of June, increasing by 6.4% from P14.5 billion a year earlier.
Total assets held by NSSLAs saw a muted growth of 1.4% to P270 billion as of end-June as more funds channeled to lending and investment activities and sourced from members’ capital and deposits.
The NSSLA industry’s total loan portfolio, net of allowance for credit losses, made up the largest share of its assets at 81%, which was equivalent to P218.8 billion, the BSP said in the report.
Meanwhile, their nonperforming loan ratio (NPL) and nonperforming asset (NPA) ratio increased to 7.7% and 6.4% as of end-June, respectively. NPL and NPA coverage ratios for the same period were at 119.2% and 118.5%, respectively.
“Loan quality has remained manageable in spite of uptick in non-performing loans. The increase in bad loans was matched with high loan-loss provisions,” the BSP said.
The BSP in April released Circular No. 1115 Series of 2021, which streamlined the duties, responsibilities and qualifications of members of NSSLAs’ board of trustees, officials, and employees.
“The BSP will continue working on other policy enhancements involving NSSLAs, including those related to well defined group and compensation regulations,” the central bank said. — L.W.T. Noble
Heirloom showcases dance performances in online concert
HEIRLOOM, an online mini dance concert, celebrates the bond between creative dancers and the interconnections of art and dance as a passed-on heritage, on Nov. 6. The virtual showcase features a series of special performances with the goal of inspiring the next generation. They reveal the motivation, creative process, and meaning behind their respective pieces. Produced by Benilde Experimental Dance Company (BED) of the De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde, Heirloom was organized by the graduating batch of the Dance Program under the guidance of BED Artistic Director Christine Crame and Dance Program Chairperson Nina Anonas. The show hosts numbers from budding dance students Marie Erika Grace Arandez, Daniella Bondoc, Michaella Carreon, Florencio De Guzman IV, Stella Mee Estriber, Eduardson Evangelio, Emmerson Evangelio, Michelle Katherine Miranda and Rochelle Marian Santiano. Guest artists include Ronelson Yadao, Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) Professional Dance Support Program grantee, choreographer, and modern dance ballet master; and Denise Parungao-Phillips, Luva Adameit Awardee at the National Music Competition for Young Artists (NAMCYA) and Ballet Philippines principal dancer. Completing the roster are Carlos Serrano III, Team Elite director and Team Package Makers 2020 Choreographer of the Year; Monica Gana, CCP Dance Workshop artist and educator; and Elijah Mendoza, professional performer and creative collaborator. Heirloom is open to the public and will go live on Nov. 6 at 5 p.m. Tickets are available at P150 each. Register at https://forms.gle/B6RNm4ELtWQTQBkV8.For more information, visit https://www.facebook.com/BenildeExDance.
Literature webinar on women authors
ON THE occasion of the 150th birth anniversary of Italian writer and Nobel Prize Winner, Grazia Deledda, the Embassy of Italy in Manila, the National Library of the Philippines, the Philippine Italian Association, the Ateneo de Manila University, and the Italian Chamber of Commerce in the Philippines, are hosting a literature webinar on Grazia Deledda, from Sardinia, Italy, and Madgalena Jalandoni, from Iloilo, Philippines. The webinar, titled “Women Writing on the Margins,” will focus on the lives and works of the two women writers and parallels on the main themes that cross their works: women and society, self and country, identity and traditions, language and history, center and the margins. It will be held on Nov. 22, at 3:30 p.m. (Manila time), and will feature two presentations by Stefania Lucamante, Professor of Italian Contemporary Literature at the University of Cagliari, in Sardinia, and Alice Gonzalez, award-winning fictionist and faculty member at UP Visayas, followed by an open forum moderated by the Ateneo Institute of Literary Arts and Practices. To register, visit https://bit.ly/NLPPIAWWM.
Artbooks.ph accepting consignments
ARTBOOKS.PH is accepting consignments for art, culture, and history-related books, zines, postcards, posters (old and new) from non-publishers. Artbooks will assist in selling the titles online at their physical store at Pioneer Studios, 123 Pioneer St., Mandaluyong City. For inquiries and details, visit artbooks.ph | Facebook, contact 8632-7683, or e-mail infor@artbook.ph.
Artist dedicates art series to a lost loved one
ARTIST Ed Lorenzo’s recent work collection is a celebration of the life of a lost loved one and the sweet sorrow that fuels his passion moving forward. Mr. Lorenzo stopped creating art for two years after he lost his father in 2019, followed by the death of his closest brother due to an autoimmune disease in 2020. These events led Mr. Lorenzo to put everything away and shelve all his works. Recently, he found the courage to continue making art. “‘Di Magmaliw,” the name of his series, is a Tagalog term that means “not to forget.”Using colors that are sometimes monochromatic, analogous, or complementary, Mr. Lorenzo accentuates his works with a mix of other mediums to depict flow and movement matched with concentric circles and round textures in gold and bronze. To order a customized piece, contact Ed Lorenzo on Instagram at @thelorenzosart or e-mail at lorenzosart@icloud.com.
Vaccine makers must follow very strict scientific and health authority processes to bring a new vaccine to the public, even during the current pandemic.
With vaccine development moving so quickly, it is understandable that some people are asking whether a vaccine for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) will be safe and effective.
The people working on the research and development and manufacturing of vaccines are strongly committed to rigorous regulatory standards for approval of COVID-19 vaccines.
No matter how urgently action is needed against the coronavirus public health emergency, it is imperative that the highest standards of quality, safety, and efficacy are upheld everywhere.
They are also fully committed to transparency in reporting clinical trial results. They likewise support the need to inform the public of what they know, as well as what they don’t know about the vaccines in development.
These points were emphasized by Thomas B. Cueni, Director General of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA), the global body that represents the research-based pharma industry.
“We must prioritize thorough validation of the results of pre-clinical and clinical trials by independent expert bodies. Only the most rigorous application of science and openness in the regulatory process can ensure that everyone, starting with healthcare workers, has confidence in COVID-19 vaccines once they have been properly approved,” he said.
IMPORTANCE OF CLINICAL TRIALS As the foremost representative of the global research-based medicines and vaccines industry, the IFPMA provided information on how we know COVID-19 vaccines are effective and work well to prevent the virus.
It explained that Phase 3 clinical trials are the last and largest phase of vaccine testing before authorization or approval. These trials test how effective a vaccine is at preventing COVID-19 and are being conducted with tens of thousands of volunteers around the world.
During Phase 3, some volunteers get a COVID-19 vaccine and some get a placebo, a harmless injection with no active drug or treatment, for example, like normal saline.
To learn how effective a vaccine is at preventing a specific disease, researchers assess the vaccine efficacy rate which compares (a) the number of volunteers who got COVID-19 after getting the vaccine being studied; and (b) the number of volunteers who got COVID-19 after getting a placebo.
Thousands of people have volunteered to take part in different COVID-19 Phase 3 trials around the world. Some of these trials reported vaccine efficacy rates of over 90%.
All of the authorized COVID-19 vaccines go beyond the Food and Drug Administration’s minimum efficacy level of 50%.
This means that the FDA would not authorize a vaccine unless it prevented COVID-19 or lessened its severity in at least 5 out of 10 (50%) of people who got the vaccine. After a vaccine is authorized, health authorities continue to monitor its safety and effectiveness.
PROTECTION: HOW SOON, HOW LONG? After receiving a vaccine, your body’s immune system needs a little time to learn how to detect and fight the virus. This maturation of the immune system can vary but is usually around a few weeks. Each authorized or approved COVID-19 vaccine has different speeds for how quickly it protects you. The speed of response can depend on factors such as the dosing schedules or the number of doses.
Based on clinical trial data of the currently authorized or approved COVID-19 vaccines, optimal protection is reached within a few weeks of vaccination. For two-dose vaccines, some early protection is achieved after the first dose.
It is too early to know how long COVID-19 vaccines will provide long-term protection. More research is needed to answer this question.
The currently available data suggest that most people who recover from COVID-19 infection develop an immune response that provides at least some protection against reinfection (getting it again) — this is called natural immunity. We’re still learning how strong this natural immunity may be, and how long it lasts.
Health authorities will continue to monitor the clinical trial volunteers for many months to check how long they are protected. Both natural immunity and immunity from a vaccine are important aspects of COVID-19 that experts are trying to learn more about.
AFTER THE JAB, CAN YOU STILL GET COVID-19? Maybe. Clinical trials have shown that COVID-19 vaccines significantly lower the chance a person will have symptoms, including hospitalizations and severe symptoms.
However, none of the COVID-19 vaccines tested so far have been 100% effective at preventing COVID-19. So, some people who get the vaccine may still get the virus.
Furthermore, we still do not know if the vaccines will prevent someone who is infected (but doesn’t have symptoms) from spreading COVID-19 to others.
Research tends to show that a vaccinated person is less likely to spread COVID-19 to those who are more vulnerable (have a higher risk of severe COVID-19 infection), similar to what happens with vaccines for other respiratory infectious diseases such as influenza.
This is why it remains important to wash your hands, practice social distancing, and wear a mask even after you get vaccinated.
Teodoro B. Padilla is the executive director of Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Association of the Philippines (PHAP), which represents the biopharmaceutical medicines and vaccines industry in the country. Its members are at the forefront of research and development efforts for COVID-19 and other diseases that affect Filipinos.
AYALALAND Logistics Holdings Corp.’s (ALLHC) consolidated net income surged by 117% to P402 million in the first nine months of the year on the back of strong domestic demand for industrial lots.
ALLHC’s topline amounted to P2.6 billion at end-September, 12% higher than the P2.3 billion logged in the same period last year. Revenues from the company’s industrial lot sales jumped 126% to P1.1 billion from last year’s P511 million.
Clients taking up the gross leasable area of the warehouses ALLHC completed last year led to a 6% increase in warehouse leasing to P299 million from the P282 million logged in the same period last year.
Meanwhile, ALLHC said revenues from commercial leasing operations continued to decline due to the pandemic restrictions and as the company continued to provide rental assistance to its tenants.
For the nine-month period, rentals from Tutuban Center and South Park Center declined by 16% to P311 million from P369 million. The company said South Park Corporate Center’s office leasing operations, which posted a 100% lease-out rate, is “cushioning the impact.”
Tutuban Center forayed into the digital space via Tutubuy, which serves as an online business platform for the small, medium, and emerging enterprises based in the Divisoria mall.
ALLHC said it also recently reopened the Tutuban Night Market, hosting over 400 stalls from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m.
“We see signs of recovery in our business lines with industrial lot sales driving significant improvement in our overall performance this quarter,” ALLHC President and Chief Executive Officer Maria Rowena M. Tomeldan said in a statement on Tuesday.
“While the current business environment still proves to be challenging, we trust that our growing diversified portfolio of assets will keep ALLHC resilient amidst the ongoing crisis,” Ms. Tomeldan said.
ALLHC, a unit of Ayala Land, Inc., focuses on real estate logistics and industrial estate development.
The company is present in five areas across the country via its businesses in industrial parks, warehouses, cold storage facilities, and commercial leasing.
Shares of ALLHC at the local bourse went up by 1.72% or 10 centavos on Tuesday to finish at P5.90 apiece. — K.C.G. Valmonte
A VIEW of the city skyline in Singapore, Dec. 31, 2020 — REUTERS
SINGAPORE is seeking to cement itself as a key player for cryptocurrency-related businesses as financial centers around the world grapple with approaches to handle one of the fastest growing areas of finance.
“We think the best approach is not to clamp down or ban these things,” said Ravi Menon, managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), which regulates banks and financial firms.
Instead, MAS is putting in place “strong regulation,” so firms that meet its requirements and address the multitude of risks can operate, he said in an interview.
Nations differ vastly when it comes to how they handle crypto: China has cracked down on large amounts of activity in recent months, Japan only recently allowed dedicated crypto investment funds — though El Salvador has embraced Bitcoin as legal tender. In the US, while there are an abundance of options for investing in the burgeoning asset class, regulators are concerned about everything from stablecoins to yield-generating products.
“With crypto-based activities, it is basically an investment in a prospective future, the shape of which is not clear at this point,” said Mr. Menon, who has helmed the MAS for about a decade. “But not to get into this game, I think risks Singapore being left behind. Getting early into that game means we can have a head start, and better understand its potential benefits as well as its risks.”
The stakes are high for the small island nation, which has already earned a reputation as a global wealth hub. Singapore must raise its safeguards to counter risks including illicit flows, Mr. Menon said.
The city state is “interested in developing crypto technology, understanding blockchain, smart contracts and preparing ourselves for a Web 3.0 world,” he said, referring to the third generation of online services.
Singapore isn’t the only place with crypto ambitions. Locations as diverse as Miami, El Salvador, Malta and Zug in Switzerland, are also making efforts. It can be a fine line to tread, given the crypto industry grew up with few regulations, so many players balk at government officials’ attempts to impose guardrails.
BINANCE, GEMINI Singapore’s approach has attracted crypto firms from Binance Holdings Ltd., which has had a series of run-ins with regulators around the world, to Gemini, a US operator targeting institutional investors, to set up base.
Some 170 companies applied for a MAS license, taking the total number of firms seeking to operate under its Payment Services Act to about 400, after the law came into effect in January 2020.
Since then, only three crypto firms have received the much-coveted licenses, while two were rejected. About 30 withdrew their application after engaging with the regulator. Among those approved is the brokerage arm of DBS Group Holdings Ltd., Singapore’s largest bank, which is also a pioneer in setting up a platform for trading of digital tokens while offering tokenization services.
The regulator is taking time to assess applicants to ensure that they meet its high requirements, Mr. Menon said. The MAS has also boosted resources to cope with high volumes of prospective services operators, he said.
“We don’t need 160 of them to set up shop here. Half of them can do so, but with very high standards, that I think is a better outcome,” he said.
Mr. Menon said the benefits of having a well-regulated local crypto industry could also extend beyond the financial sector.
“If and when a crypto economy takes off in a way, we want to be one of the leading players,” he said. “It could help create jobs, create value-add, and I think more than the financial sector, the other sectors of the economy will potentially gain.” — Bloomberg
PHILIPPINE manufacturing activity inched up to a seven-month high in October as new orders stabilized and business confidence improved with the further easing of lockdown restrictions in the capital, IHS Markit said on Tuesday. Read the full story.
THE DECLINE in coronavirus infections in the Philippines has slowed, according to health authorities, even as the country remained at low risk from the virus.
Infections have declined by 49% nationwide in the past two weeks, Alethea de Guzman, director of the Health department’s Epidemiology bureau, told an online news briefing on Tuesday.
The daily infection tally fell by 14% to 4,183 cases on Oct. 26 to Nov. 1 from a week earlier, compared with a 26% decline in the first few weeks of October and 35% by the end of the month, she said.
“We have seen that the decline in new cases has slowed down,” Ms. De Guzman said in Filipino. “It is still going down but the decline is slower than in the previous weeks.”
The decrease in infections in the capital region, which is also at low risk from the coronavirus, had also slowed, she said.
The daily infection tally in Metro Manila fell by 14% to 770 cases on Oct. 26 to Nov. 1 from a week earlier, compared with a 36% decline on Oct. 19 to 25.
If the trend continues, coronavirus infections might start increasing again, Ms. De Guzman said, adding that local governments should continue their contact-tracing efforts.
The Department of Health (DoH) reported 2,303 coronavirus infections on Tuesday, bringing the total to 2.8 million.
The death toll rose to 43,404 after 128 more patients died, while recoveries increased by 4,677 to 2.7 million, it said in a bulletin.
There were 40,786 active cases, 71.2% of which were mild, 5.1% did not show symptoms, 7.5% were severe, 12.02% were moderate and 3.2% were critical.
DoH said 22 duplicates had been removed from the tally, 19 of which were reclassified as recoveries, while 106 recoveries were relisted as deaths. Eight laboratories failed to submit data on Oct. 31.
The agency said 46% of intensive care units in the Philippines were occupied, while the rate in Metro Manila was 40%.
Ms. De Guzman said the Cordillera and Cagayan Valley regions were still at moderate risk from the coronavirus.
Infections there have declined in the past two weeks, but their average daily attack rates were still above seven, which is considered high, she added.
Meanwhile, Metro Manila’s average daily attack rate fell to 5.97 for 100,000 people from Oct. 19 to Nov. 1 from 11.9 a week earlier, Ms. De Guzman said.
Business groups have been urging the Philippine government to further relax quarantines in Manila, the capital and nearby cities after a decline in its daily tally.
Metro Manila is now under Alert Level 3, which allows 50% capacity for outdoor services and 30% capacity for indoor activities.
The government started enforcing granular lockdowns with five alert levels in the capital region after the country struggled to contain a fresh spike in infections triggered by a highly contagious Delta variant.
Meanwhile, the Philippines was set to take delivery of 2.7 million Sputnik V coronavirus vaccines from Russia on Tuesday, according to the presidential palace.
The government had received more than 100 million vaccines doses as of Oct. 28, presidential spokesman Herminio L. Roque, Jr. told a televised news briefing on Tuesday.
He said 59.3 million doses had been given out as of Nov. 1. More than 27 million people or 35.47% of adult Filipinos have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, he added.
Metro Manila had the highest vaccination rate among regions in the country, Health Undersecretary Myrna C. Cabotaje separately told a televised news briefing.
Calabarzon, Central Luzon, Central Visayas, Western Visayas and Davao also had high vaccination coverage, she added.
Ms. Cabotaje said the half-a-million coronavirus vaccines were given out daily in the past few days. The government seeks to vaccinate at least 50% of its adult population by yearend.
Meanwhile, Mr. Roque said at least 100,000 doses of coronavirus vaccines were damaged in a fire that hit the Department of Health’s regional office in Zamboanga del Sur.
The government could replace the doses destroyed by fire since vaccine supply was no longer a problem, he said. — Kyle Aristophere T. Atienza
