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Not all priority workers required to undergo swab tests

Priority workers are not required to undergo regular real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests, according to a circular issued by the Trade and Labor departments. — PHILIPPINE STAR/MICHAEL VARCAS

BUSINESSES are not required to regularly test all workers in government-identified priority industries for the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), according to a new advisory from the Trade and Labor departments.

In advisory No. 20-01 dated Aug. 17, the agencies clarified that priority workers may undergo a real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test, revising an earlier circular that required testing.

Trade Secretary Ramon M. Lopez in a radio interview on Tuesday said guidelines require the use of the PCR test for workers who show symptoms of COVID-19. Asymptomatic employees need not undergo testing, he said.

“’Yung pagkasulat pala ng ‘shall,’ they are referring to ‘shall use the PCR test.’ Ibig sabihin, hindi ibang test, hindi rapid test,” he said. “Hindi mandatory ’yung i-te-test mo sila, PCR test, lalo na kung walang sintomas. Mandatory po ang test pagka-symptomatic.”

The new advisory said workers and employees in hospitality and tourism at El Nido, Boracay, Coron, Panglao, Siargao and other tourist zones identified by the Tourism department may be tested every four weeks.

Workers in manufacturing and public service providers in economic zones at “special concerns areas” may be tested every three months. Some areas are placed under “special concern lockdown” if they have a high number of COVID-19 cases.

Frontline workers and economic priority workers, or those who work in high-priority sectors that interact with the public and live in special concern areas, may also be tested every three months.

The Trade and Labor departments also said all testing facilities must use Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) benefits or any benefits provided by health maintenance organizations or private health insurance to reimburse the cost of the COVID-19 test.

Employers Confederation of the Philippines (ECoP) President Sergio R. Ortiz-Luis, Jr. said in a radio interview on Tuesday private sector-led testing cannot be done because about 90% of employers run small businesses.

Pag ni-require mo kahit nag-GCQ (general community quarantine) tayo mas maraming mawawalan ng trabaho dahil hindi masusunod ’yan,” he said, adding that half of micro-businesses have closed. Requiring tests would force more to shut down, he added.

Micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises accounted for 99.5% of total businesses in the country, employing 5.7 million people or more than 60% of total employment, according to 2018 government data.

Under the additional government workplace guidelines, employees experiencing COVID-19 symptoms must undergo RT-PCR testing, and employers must inform the local government units at their workplace and the worker’s residence.

Employees working on site must be screened for symptoms. The government does not require or recommend rapid testing of asymptomatic employees returning to work.

The RT-PCR test checks for the presence of the virus in people, while rapid tests check for the presence of antibodies. — Jenina P. Ibañez

BIR sets unlisted shares’ fair market value

By Beatrice M. Laforga, Reporter

THE Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) has revised the rules on the imposition of tax on the sale, barter or other disposition of shares of stocks that are not listed in the local bourse to clarify how the fair market value (FMV) of shares will be determined.

BIR Commissioner Caesar R. Dulay issued on Monday Revenue Regulations (RR) No. 20-2020 amending RR No. 6-2013’s provisions on taxes imposed on the disposition of shares of stocks that are not publicly listed.

The new rules state that for the common shares of stock, the book value will now be based on the latest financial statements as the prima facie fair market value of the shares.

“This is a welcome development (long overdue). Prior to the RR, in determining the FMV of the shares, there is a requirement to use the adjusted net asset (ANA) method where all assets and liabilities are adjusted to FMVs,” said Maria Lourdes P. Lim, the tax managing partner of Isla Lipana & Co., PwC Philippines, in a mobile phone message on Tuesday.

The new rules also determined the preferred shares of stock to have the liquidation value, which is equal to the redemption price of the shares as of the nearest transaction date, as the fair market value.

“In case there are both common and preferred shares, the book value per common share is computed by deducting the liquidation value of the preferred shares from the total equity of the corporation and dividing the result by the number of outstanding common shares,” the document read.

The BIR also said that the book value of the common shares or the liquidation of the preferred shares do not need to include the appraisal surplus from any property of the corporation that was not reflected in the financial statement.

“The latest audited financial statements shall be sufficient in determining the fair market value of the shares of stock,” it said.

The move is “more reasonable since it does not result in an overstatement of the FMV,” said Romeo H. Duran, president of Tax Management Association of the Philippines, Inc., in a text message.

Ms. Lim said before the RR 20-2020 was issued, the fair market value of the shares was usually higher, particularly for companies owning real properties as the “ANA method results in the upward adjustment of the value since the incremental increase in property is taken into consideration in determining the value of the shares.”

“For capital gains tax purposes, if the consideration for the sale of shares is lower than FMV, the difference is generally subject to donor’s tax unless it can be established that the transfer is made in the ordinary course of business, bona fide and [at] arm’s length,” she added.

The issuance will take effect 15 days after its publication in a newspaper.

Be strict on BPOs breaking safety rules, workers tell gov’t

By Jenina P. Ibañez, Reporter

BUSINESS process outsourcing (BPO) workers are asking the government to impose stricter penalties on companies that violate workplace health safety.

The BPO Industry Employees Network (BIEN) in a press conference on Tuesday said that government monitoring is not enough to ensure the safety of employees.

Hindi sapat yung monitoring. Kapag nagkamali yung company, sasabihin lang nila na gawin itong tama. Walang pagbibigay ng penalties, kaya di matatakot yung mga company (Monitoring is not enough. A remiss company is simply told to do right. Penalties are not meted, thus companies will have no fear),” BIEN Vice-President Sarah Prestoza said.

Under government guidelines, private establishments that fail to comply will be temporarily closed until they follow the protocols. The Trade and Labor departments have not responded to questions about the implementation of temporary closures or additional penalties.

Ms. Prestoza said that the government should offer mass testing against the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) to workers, and should implement extensive contact tracing. It must also tell businesses to give workers devices for work-from-home measures, she said.

She said that outsourcing companies told BIEN that they are only following government guidelines.

Pero kung yung gobyerno, mahina ang pagtulak, walang maayos na proseso kung paano ito ginagawa… ginagawa man ng kumpanya ang best nila, limitado pa rin yung kakayahan (But if the government is lax, and has no process to follow, even if companies do their best, their capability will remain limited).”

She said workers are often checked for their temperature, but not tested. Neither is there any contact tracing, she added.

Employees experiencing COVID-19 symptoms must undergo PCR (polymerase chain reaction) testing under government workplace safety guidelines.

Employees working on site must be screened for symptoms, but the government does not require rapid testing of asymptomatic employees returning to work.

Nadia de Leon, executive director of the Institute for Occupational Health and Safety Development, said in the press conference that the government workplace safety guidelines are “weak” and “lax” and the supplemental guidelines issued last week are not enough to stop the spread of the virus.

Hindi nito ina-address ’yung (The guidelines do not address the) major reasons for the spread of the disease,” she said, noting that testing guidelines are vague.

“Mass testing ay naka-depende pa rin sa mga (still depend on) employers. Walang (There is no) clear provision that the government will shoulder the expense for mass testing for workers.”

Contact tracing, she said, is still slow and inefficient at workplaces.

E-payment firm Paynamics eyes wider SME market share

PAYNAMICS TECHNOLOGIES, INC. aims to add a third of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) into its client base as businesses transition to a more digitized environment brought about by the pandemic.

“With Paynamics Biz, we are targeting to register over 100,000 merchants over the next three years,” Paynamics Chairman and Founder Ronald Gerald P. Magleo said in an online briefing on Tuesday, noting that the target is equivalent to a third of the over 300,000 SMEs in the country.

The firm will be banking on consumers’ shifting mindset as they are getting more comfortable with digital transactions because of the restrictions caused by the coronavirus disease 2019.

“For example, online school learning, food ordering, or online retails or paying for online bills and remittances — they’re now doing it online because of the fear of going out to transact or carry out their errands,” said Paynamics Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder Mylene C. Magleo.

The firm’s platform called Paynamics Biz allows payment transactions through links and QR codes. It will soon launch an Android point-of-sale device for businesses with the facility.

Using the platform is free of charge, but businesses pay a 2.5% fee based on the gross amount of every successful payment transaction.

Mr. Magleo said the company is planning to enable SMEs to transition to more digital solutions. Cash ledger features may be introduced in the platform for small businesses that continue to manually track transactions via pen and paper, he said.

He said the system has security features to guard transactions.

“We prioritize investments on compliance so we always allot between 8%-12% of our revenues to business development, this is related to cloud, the security and all of that,” he said.

Ms. Magleo said that while the focus is on facilitating local payments, Paynamics is looking at processing international payments made through Visa and Mastercard “very soon.” — Luz Wendy Noble

Three local firms join Forbes Asia’s list of best small firms

THREE Philippine firms have been cited in Forbes Asia’s latest list of top-performing small and mid-sized listed companies in the Asia-Pacific region.

The annual list ranks 200 publicly listed firms out of 18,000 companies within the region with sales below a billion US dollars.

It, however, did not fully reflect the impact of the coronavirus pandemic-induced recession on those firms as it only referred to their latest full-year financial results as of July 7.

Asia United Bank Corp., pipe supplier Crown Asia Chemicals Corp., and Cebu-based power firm Vivant Corp. are among these firms, which “have track records of exceptional corporate performance.”

These firms are scored based on their record for debt, sales, and earnings-per-share growth, measured over both the most recent one and three-year fiscal periods, as well as their one-year and five-year average returns on equity.

The list excludes companies with serious governance issues, questionable accounting, environmental concerns, management issues, or legal troubles.

The geographic diversity of companies was also considered. — Adam J. Ang

A life’s work shattered: Stained glass artist counts cost of Beirut blast

BEIRUT — Two decades of Maya Husseini’s work to restore stained glass windows destroyed in the Lebanese civil war was lost in an instant in the seismic port explosion in Beirut.

“I can say that in this blast, 20 years of my professional life was on the ground,” said Husseini, 60, who has worked on historic landmarks including many of Beirut’s churches.

“Part of me has gone.”

The Aug. 4 detonation of a massive quantity of explosive chemicals stored unsafely at Beirut port killed at least 178 people, injured some 6,000 and damaged buildings across a swathe of Beirut, carpeting streets in broken glass.

Damaged buildings included the Sursock Museum, a modern and contemporary art museum reopened in 2015, whose vibrant stained glass had been painstakingly restored by Husseini.

Its windows, which were particularly eye-catching at night when they were illuminated, were blown out by the blast.

At least 10 of the projects Husseini has worked on since the 1975-90 civil war have been destroyed. “Every day I am getting phone calls,” she said at her workshop on the outskirts of Beirut.

Husseini learnt her craft in France, sent by her father, a church engineer who used to order stained glass from overseas as leaded, stained glass was not common in Beirut prior to the war.

One of the projects in which she took greatest pride was the 19th century St. Louis Capuchin Cathedral in the Bab Idriss district of Beirut’s historic city center, an area where she recalls going to drink lemonade with her friends as a child.

The windows of the church, which was destroyed in the war, were restored by Husseini over two years in a project completed around four years ago.

“I had tried, as much as possible, to feel the history of this church,” she said. “At that point I broke down, it was as if I was injured, certainly not physically, but emotionally.”

Husseini said she had been thinking about stopping work in two years but her plans had now changed.

“Even if 20 years of my work has gone — and perhaps I won’t last in this work for another 20 years … we will rebuild.” — Reuters

Gov’t fully awards Treasury bills at higher rate before BSP meet

THE GOVERNMENT made a full award of the Treasury bills (T-bills) it offered on Tuesday even as rates inched up ahead of the widely expected pause in monetary easing and as investors await for new catalysts.

The Bureau of the Treasury (BTr) on Tuesday raised P15 billion as planned via the 35-day T-bills. The offer was nearly twice oversubscribed with P29.313 billion in tenders.

The debt papers yielded an average rate of 1.163%, inching up by 0.6 basis point (bp) from the 1.157% fetched in the Aug. 4 auction.

This was also higher than the 1.125% quoted at the secondary market.

National Treasurer Rosalia V. de Leon said after the auction that rates moved sideways as the market expects the Monetary Board (MB) of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) to keep its policy rates steady.

“There remains good demand with P118 billion maturities. Rates (remain) flat as the market sees (that) BSP’s decision is to hold,” Ms. De Leon told reporters via Viber.

The MB will review its policy settings on Thursday. In its June meeting, it cut policy rates by 50 bps, bringing rates on the BSP’s overnight reverse repurchase, lending and deposit facilities to record lows of 2.25%, 2.75 and 1.75%, respectively.

Eleven of 16 economists in a BusinessWorld poll said they expect the central bank to keep rates steady this week after BSP Governor Benjamin E. Diokno last week signaled a pause in easing.

Meanwhile, a bond trader said T-bill rates “will remain steady until the BSP bills/bond issuance or another major catalyst” emerges.

“Nothing spectacular in this (auction). Looks like investors are just rolling over their 35-day T-bills for liquidity management,” the trader said via Viber.

The BSP targets to launch its maiden securities offer this quarter as it moves to widen investor options for safe-haven assets and help with liquidity management. Mr. Diokno said in July that the central bank plans to offer small volumes of short-tenored instruments.

The trader said the slight pickup in rates of government securities may continue as investors seek to extend the tenors of their bond holdings amid the grim economic outlook.

The economy is projected to contract by 4.5-6.6% this year. Gross domestic product (GDP) slumped 16.5% in the second quarter, plunging the economy into recession.

The government has set a P170-billion borrowing program for August. It will auction off P110 billion in T-bills weekly and P60 billion in Treasury bonds fortnightly.

It plans to borrow P3 trillion this year from local and foreign lenders to plug its budget deficit seen to hit 9.6% of GDP this year. — Beatrice M. Laforga

Oil losses weigh on PetroEnergy’s profits

PETROENERGY RESOURCES CORP. posted a 19.6% drop in attributable income in the first half of 2020 as it incurred losses from its oil business.

In a regulatory filing, the listed petroleum and electricity generation company said it booked P161.30 million in attributable profit between January and June, while it recorded P1.08 billion in total revenues in the period, or lower by 3.2%.

Its attributable income in the second quarter fell to P35.26 million, down 49% from P69.10 million in the same period last year.

“The decline is mainly due to the losses incurred from the oil operations during the period due to lower crude oil prices resulting from the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic,” it said.

In the second quarter, electricity sales of its 32-megawatt (MW) Maibarara geothermal project and 70-MW Tarlac solar project fell by 1.1% to P456.78 million due to the repricing of Maibarara Geothermal, Inc.’s (MGI) electricity price in mid-2019.

Including first-quarter sales, the company booked P912.08 million, down 2.6%.

The power firm’s oil revenues were down 29.2% to P69.45 million in the April-June period on lower average crude oil prices, leading to a first-half figure of P171.12 million, lower by 6.1%.

As of end-June, PetroEnergy recorded an increase in oil output by over 40% to 3.42 million barrels, coming from operations in the Etame petroleum block in Gabon, West Africa.

The company is part of a consortium that is involved in the exploration, exploitation and production of the 307,360-hectare Etame Marine under a contract with the Gabonese government. PetroEnergy owns a 2.53% minority stake in the project.

In the Philippines, it is also involved in the exploration of three potential oil blocks in northwest Palawan.

The power firm on Tuesday said its renewable energy projects were not “seriously affected” by the global coronavirus pandemic.

“We are pleased to report that our existing renewable energy (RE) projects have not been seriously affected by this pandemic as our facilities continued to perform very satisfactorily,” said PetroEnergy President and Chief Executive Officer Milagros V. Reyes during the company’s annual stockholders’ meeting.

The company runs five green projects through PetroGreen Energy Corp., its renewables arm, which owns and manages MGI, PetroSolar Corp., and PetroWind Energy, Inc.

The Department of Energy on May 13 awarded PetroWind a certificate of confirmation of commerciality for its 14-MW Nabas-2 wind power project, which will begin construction once the company finalizes its investment in the project.

PetroSolar has yet to determine its target commercial run for the 20-MW second phase of its Tarlac solar project, which has yet to secure a compliance certificate from the Energy Regulatory Commission.

PetroGreen said the meteorological mast installation work for its San Vicente wind hybrid power project had been delayed due to pandemic-induced travel restrictions. The project was given a certificate of non-coverage from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources on May 7. — Adam J. Ang

Social climbers

By Joseph L. Garcia, Reporter

BOOK REVIEW
Some are Smarter than Others
By Ricardo Manapat
Published by the Ateneo de
Manila University Press

I FIRST read Some are Smarter than Others, a book detailing the excesses of the Marcos Regime, as a freshman in an “elite” private university. It was out of print then, and the only copies to be had were in university libraries, at a few hundred dollars on Amazon, or a very battered copy at the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ gift shop. Now with an annotated reissue, it will serve me now, as it did then, as an anti-Social Register. The last names in that book either directly assisted or collaborated with the plunder of the country, and were now sitting next to me in class. These are the last names I had to avoid. In the same classroom, there would be girls from indigent families who just so happened to be smart enough to be granted scholarships, while another set were there because, well, their parents and grandparents were “smarter than others.”

The book is in five parts: The Worship of Baal (a look at the wealth amassed by the Marcos Family), The Development of Crony Capitalism, The Relatives and the Cronies, The Overseas Empire (how the Marcos Family bought properties abroad through shell corporations managed by the individuals and families in Chapter Three), and finally, In Lieu of a Conclusion, written by its author Ricardo Manapat in the post-Marcos years.

You see, the story has always been told in fragments. Its first incarnation was a 48-page pamphlet in 1979 called The Octopus, written by Mr. Manapat who was an activist. Over 2,000 copies were made, photocopied day in and day out in an apartment, and disseminated by hand in offices and universities. Then, as now, it detailed the excesses of the Marcos family and their associates using receipts and documentary evidence. Mr. Manapat had to flee to the United States the following year due to threats to his life. His sister, in a webinar to launch the reissue of the book, recalled that even in the US, her brother was hounded by government forces, accusing him of terrorist activity via the April 6 Liberation Movement.

The webinar, “Oligarchy Then and Now: Manapat’s Some are Smarter than Others Reissued,” was organized by the Ateneo de Manila University Press and the Ateneo de Manila University School of Government, through the Ateneo Policy Center, and was held on Aug. 14. The speakers and reactors at the webinar, held over Zoom and available on YouTube, were Ms. Manapat; Calixto V. Chikiamco from the Foundation for Economic Freedom; Dr. Julio Teehankee from the Department of International Studies, De La Salle University; Dr. Paul D. Hutchcroft from the Department of Political Science and Social Change, Australian National University; Dr. Lisandro E. Claudio from the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley; and J.R. Gomez and Kara Angan, youth leaders from Ateneo de zamboanga University and Ateneo de Manila University, respectively.

Mr. Manapat returned to the Philippines from exile, publishing a longer book, no longer a pamphlet, in 1991, and was later appointed Director of the Records Management and Archives Office of the Philippines by President Fidel V. Ramos. He died in 2008.

The book’s title supposedly comes from a quote from Ferdinand Marcos’ wife, former First Lady Imelda Marcos. Responding to a question about her family’s meteoric rise to the top of society (despite being a poorer relation of the politically influential Romualdez family), she is said to have answered: “Sometimes you have smart relatives who can make it… My dear, there are always people who are just a little faster, more brilliant, more aggressive.” This quote was paraphrased by Mr. Manapat as the book’s title. It sounds almost like a shrug, a lazy response by the powers-that-be as to why they got to be there, and why everything moves this way.

The contents of the book explained why some lovely young ladies and gentlemen bristled during Political Science classes during my college years. As Honore de Balzac said, later popularized by Mario Puzo’s The Godfather: “Behind every great fortune, lies a great crime.” The book doesn’t just incriminate the Marcos family, but serves as an indictment of the upper class itself, which arguably, created the Marcos family’s rule.

There’s a funny story in Chapter 1, about the contents of the mansion Imee Marcos occupied before dropping out of Princeton: very expensive books had been relatively untouched, but a racy card game had seen some use. There’s an appendix including the jewels confiscated from Mrs. Marcos, and diagrams detailing the Manhattan skyscrapers the Marcoses owned. But then, the very next chapter details the movements of the  pre-Marcos elite, just a degree lower than Mrs. Marcos’ own spending sprees. Mr. Manapat argues in the book: “Marcos’ corruption was not an aberration from the normal political traditions of the Philippines but was merely the best developed example of that tradition.”

Mr. Manapat, using archival evidence, goes back to the Spanish Occupation, the immediate postcolonial period, and the aftermath of World War II to find evidence of deep-seated roots of corruption. During the webinar marking the book launch, political economist Mr. Chikiamco even blamed what he calls the rise of the “rent-seeking oligarchs” (rent-seeking here defined as economic activities that bring income to an individual, but not to society in general) pre- and post-Marcos on the Bell Trade Act of 1946. More importantly, the book’s final chapter details a list of incompetencies and shortcomings by the Aquino government in relation to its failure to recover the wealth of the Marcos family, as well as other missteps by the Aquino government.

Incidentally, Mrs. Aquino’s maiden name, Cojuangco, appears in the book due to her cousin, the late Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco (whose dealings and association with the Marcos government are detailed in the book) but also because of her family’s extensive holdings. Mr. Chikiamko argues against Mr. Manapat’s own quote, “Is the fault in human nature?” when he confronts the persistence of corruption after the Marcos Years. Mr. Chikiamko said, “The fault lies not in ourselves, but in our history. We are just path-dependent. We are the creatures of our past.”

It’s been years since I graduated from college. The last names that were in that book are still very much out and about, in the galas and dinners I have to attend. I give them air kisses now, because I can argue with myself that their last names were in that book not through a fault of their own, but through those of their grandparents (or parents). Still, it doesn’t erase the fact that the Philippines isn’t in any better shape after all that. Mr. Chikiamko gave a reason for the continued suffering of the Philippines: “The rent-seeking system persists.” In the webinar, he detailed the country’s inward-looking economy, a protectionist constitution,  the lowest percentage of exports to GDP, an oligarchy present in “mainly regulated service industries such as power, telecommunications, shipping, ports, and in other non-tradeables where their interest is in regulatory capture.” He spoke about the continuing dominance of monopolies, and continuing rural poverty, despite land reform. “In the political sphere, we only have formal democracy, but political institutions are controlled by political dynasties.”

The descendants of the ladies and gentlemen whose last names were in that book weren’t necessarily bad people. I’ve been to gatherings where avowed activists have to kiss a sister-in-law, a daughter of one the last names in Some are Smarter than Others. Still: with how business is run in the country, in the same way that a good person can come from a bad family, is there such a thing as a good oligarch? Dr. Julio C. Teehankee from the Department of International Studies, of the De La Salle University said at the webinar, “It’s not a question of good or bad political families. It’s always a question of good or bad systems. A system that allows for the monopolization of political power in the hands of a few families for centuries is actually a bad system. It’s all about building [good] public institutions.”

He ended: “Walang magsasalba sa ating sarili kung hindi tayo rin. Ang solusyon ay nasa kamay ng taumbayan; ito ay nasa kapangyarihan ng sambayanang Pilipino (No one will save us except for ourselves. The solution is in the hands of our people; it is within the power of the Filipino people.”

Some are Smarter than Others is available for P790 in physical and e-formats on the Ateneo University Press website (ateneo.edu/ateneopress/), Shopee, and Lazada. The webinar for the book’s launch is also available on Youtube: https://youtu.be/xooYMF8pC5A.

Arts & Culture (08/19/20)

Philippine Pastel Artists organize first online art auction and raffle

THE Philippine Pastel Artists (PPA) group has assembled 39 of their best works for PPA’s first online raffle and auction which is ongoing until Aug. 22. The public is invited to participate by purchasing a raffle ticket (P5,000 per ticket) which entitles the holder to a painting and the opportunity to bid on a painting of their choice. Abstract painter Salvador “Buds” Convocar leads the auction with paintings portraying a spectacle of color and chaos in his Permutation  series. There are also works by PPA founder Julius Legaspi, Grandier Bella, Alvin Montano, Celeste Lecaroz, Phoebe Beltran-Almazan, Roland Castro, Glenn Perez, Tessa Punzalan-Brodeth, Iris-Babao Uy, Rosanne Hugo and Nell Belgado. To view the works and take part in the auction and raffle, log on to philippinepastelartists.com or visit www.facebook.com/groups/ppaartauction

CCP’s WifiBody [Virtual Body] 2020

FOR the first time, the bi-annual choreographers competition can be watched for free on Aug. 28 on the CCP YouTube Channel. The Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) Choreographers Series launches its solo-duet competition WifiBody [Virtual Body] 2020 exclusively online. A platform that discovers and launches new talent in choreography and contemporary dance, WifiBody [Virtual Body] 2020 will feature six- to 10-minute dances on video of 10 up-and-coming Filipino dancer-choreographers from across the country. The dancer-choreographers were chosen through online video auditions and participated in a specially designed program that would meet the challenges brought about by the global pandemic. They were guided by choreographic mentors Myra Beltran, a pioneer for independent dance; Denisa Reyes, the Gawad CCP award-winning choreographer; and Asianist choreographer Raul Alcoseba. In order to translate the experience of live dance to video, award-winning filmmakers Sherad Sanchez and Ruello Lozendo also mentored the choreographers. The competition will be judged by Nes Jardin and Basilio Esteban Villaruz, with Shinji Ono, director of the Yokohama Dance Collection Ex, who participates courtesy of the Japan Foundation Manila. The winner will receive a cash prize and the WifiBody medal in bronze designed by Leeroy New. Another prize will be awarded to the audience’s choice, with voting happening on the Facebook Page. WifiBody [Virtual Body] 2020 will be streamed for free on the CCP YouTube Channel (bit.ly/CCPChoreo) on Aug. 28 starting at 2 p.m. (Competition Set 1), and 4 p.m. (Competition Set 2). Winners will be announced on Aug. 30. For more information, go to www.culturalcenter.gov.ph.

Kwago hosts Zoom art performances

In response to the global pandemic, Kwago bookstore hosts Bad connection or subtitles to silence — a series of 20-minute art performances at Zoom featuring various artists and poets across Asia. “To confront and examine how digital technology is affecting the ways we express, connect and live during this period of crisis and great change, we developed Bad Connection prompting a diverse group of artists to explore the online space as an exhibition platform different from the material world,” a Kwago statement explained. Bad connection doesn’t announce who’s performing each gathering to give room for surprise, serendipity and spontaneity. Co-curated by Kwago co-owners Czyka Tumaliuan and Roy Voragen, Bad connection or subtitles to silence has grown into a community and is now run with a team of young female artists, writers and designers: Dyem Carreon, Karishma Etong, Rai Hamid and Niña Sherizze De Sagun. The Bad Connection series opened on May 18 with visual artist-musician Datu Arellano. It was then followed by Singapore-based artist Ila and most recently, poet Nerisa del Carmen Guevara. The next online gathering is on Aug. 21, 8:30 p.m. The event is free. Follow the link to join Bad Connection/3: https://bit.ly/joinbadconnection3. Visit the Facebook event page for more details https://bit.ly/bcfriday3. To have a glimpse of the past gatherings, visit Kwago’s Youtube page: bit.ly/kwagoTV.

Student-artists open YouTube channel

Young artists from student-artist groups of De La Salle-College of Saint Benildehave launched their own YouTube channel Named Art Is Here , which features documented award-winning live performances during national and international competitions. The performances are available for free and are accessible to the general public.  To be showcased are performances by the Karilyo Shadowplay Team, Dulaang Filipino, Coro San Benildo, and Saint Benilde’s Romancon Dance Company. The platform will likewise offer a series of annual recruitment workshops and online tutorials ideal for students who wish to explore various performance arts as well as the fundamentals of stage design and make-up. It will likewise host short films, taken from their very own repertoire. Visit Art Is Here at https://www.youtube.com/artishere_oca.

Tanghalang Pilipino streams Heneral Rizal on Youtube

After the successful premiere of Heneral Rizal at the recently-concluded Cinemalaya 16: Stream Consciousness, Tanghalang Pilipino (TP( in cooperation with Voyage Studios makes the short film even more accessible to everyone by streaming it on Tanghalang Pilipino’s official Youtube page. Heneral Rizal, written by Floro Quibuyen and directed by Chuck Gutierrez, provides a closer look at General Paciano Rizal, the brave general and a loving older brother of National Hero, Dr. Jose P. Rizal. The short film sheds light on the real story of Paciano. TP Artistic Director Fernando “Nanding” Josef plays the titular character. Watch Heneral Rizal at this link: https://bit.ly/PansamanTanghalanHeneralRizal. TP is raising funds via Pantawid Ng Tanghalan in order to be able to continue creating relevant artistic presentations during these trying times. To donate, visit KTX via https://bit.ly/KTXPantawidNgTanghalan.

Vinyl on Vinyl opens 2 exhibits

Vinyl on Vinyl opened two exhibits on Aug. 15, Not Quite Here by Pin Calacal and Forging Ahead by Ranelle Dial. Calacal’s paintings were inspired by her reactions to the months of COVID-19 quarantine. Dial, on the other hand, puts sports, exercise, and what she calls “moving meditation” as the subjects of her works. The exhibits are for private viewing. To make an appointment, call 0917-802-2984. The gallery is at 2241 Pasillo 18, La Fuerza Compound 1, Chino Roces Av.e, Makati.

Buwan ng Wika at the BGC Arts Center

The BGC Arts Center is celebrating Buwan ng Wika with a series of events. On Aug. 21, 2-5 p.m., it will host the #YouARTNotAlone Art Workshop “Baybayin for the Modern Filipino. There is a P400 fee to access the workshop which will be conducted by Zoom. To join, go to the Facebook event page https://web.facebook.com/events/293236398663339/. Meanwhile, the BetterWorld Cafe, a series of science and art talks which is a collaboration of The Mind Museum and the BGC Arts Center, presents “Saving Indigenous Languages and Species” on Aug. 22, 3-5 p.m. on FB Live. The talk is free and open to the public. For details, go to the FB event page https://web.facebook.com/events/318932416189171/. There will also be a #YouARTNotAlone Art Workshop “CalligraFilipino” with Taipan Lucero on Aug. 28, 2-5:30 p.m. There is a P400 fee to access the workshop which will be conducted by Zoom. To join, go to the Facebook event page https://web.facebook.com/events/981203002321079/.

Silverlens’ Searching Sanctuary returns

Searching Sanctuary, an exhibit at Silverlens featuring the works of 21 artists including Raffy T. Napay, Wawi Navarroza, Jigger Cruz, Patricia Perez Eustaquio, and Dina Gadia, was abruptly concluded when the COVID-19 quarantine was imposed in March. The exhibit has now gone exclusively online. Curated by Gregory Halili, the exhibition displays a diverse range of artistic styles and practices – drawings, paintings, sculptures, and photography – to express the language of conservation amidst the decline of the natural world. Meanwhile, there are also shows ongoing in the non-virtual gallery. Patricia Perez Eustaquio presents Hoarding Fossils in Blankets, which is ongoing until Sept. 5. In it the artist invites viewers to reconsider and reinterpret paintings by Philippine masters as she transposes them into the medium of tapestry. In addition to textiles, the artist features soft sculptures from her series, Endless Summer, as well as paintings from her previous series, Boom in this exhibition. Also ongoing until Sept 5 is the premier exhibition in Asia of Los Angeles-based artist Dashiell Manley. He presents works from two series: Elegy, as well as an extension of his previous series, Newspaper Paintings. The artist expanded the latter, specifically for his eponymous show with Silverlens by transcribing text from the Philippine news site, Rappler onto his canvases. Viewing of the exhibits is by appointment from Tuesday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 pm. The gallery is at 2263 Don Chino Roces Ave. Ext., Makati City. For appointments contact 8816-0044, 8816-0044, 0917-587-4011, or e-mail info@silverlensgalleries.com.

Open call for Curatorial Development Workshop

The Japan Foundation, Manila (JFM), the Philippine Contemporary Art Network (PCAN), and the University of the Philippines Vargas Museum announce an Open Call for proposals for a free online Curatorial Development Workshop to be held on Oct. 21, 23 and 24 via a digital platform. The Workshop, the sixth in the series since 2009, seeks to reflect on the relationship between the social context of the public health crisis brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic and the kind of curatorial mode responsive to the ecology of production. Speakers for the forthcoming Curatorial Development Workshop are Patrick Flores (Director, PCAN and Curator, UP Vargas Museum), Tessa Guazon (PCAN), Renan Laru-an (PCAN), Roberto Paulino (PCAN), Taufik Darwis (Co-Founder, Bandung Performing Arts Forum, Bandung), Chuong-Dai Vo (Researcher, Asia Art Archives, Hong Kong), and Kamiya Yukie (Director, Japan Society, New York). This call for proposals coincides with the launch of the digital version of the catalogue titled Curatorial Development Workshop Exhibitions held from Dec. 7, 2019 to March 7, 2020 at the Vargas Museum. The curators of the project – Karl Albais, Pristine de Leon, Jay Nathan Jore, Carlos Quijon, Jr., Cristian Tablazon – were selected from the Curatorial Development Workshop held on Oct. 5-6, 2018.

RCBC to issue Tier 1 notes to boost capital

RIZAL COMMERCIAL Banking Corp. (RCBC) has secured regulatory approval for an offering of Tier 1 notes as it looks to beef up its capital.

The bank received approval from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ Monetary Board to issue offshore non-cumulative subordinated additional Tier 1 capital securities qualified under Basel III standards, it said in a filing on Tuesday.

Credit Suisse Group AG is the sole global coordinator and sole bookrunner for the transaction and arranged a series of fixed- income investor calls starting Tuesday.

“A Reg[ulation] S only dollar-denominated perpetual non-call five-year non-cumulative subordinated Additional Tier 1 Securities offering may follow subject to market conditions,” RCBC said.

Moody’s Investors Service has assigned Ba3 rating to the proposed issuance, taking into consideration factors such as “the mandatory and/or discretionary coupon suspension on a non-cumulative basis; its contractual principal write-down feature, and the issuance’s subordinated claim in liquidation.”

RCBC Senior Executive Vice- President and Treasurer Horacio E. Cebrero III said earlier this month they are pushing back a planned dollar bond issuance and will likely tap the local debt market again within this semester through medium-term papers.

The bank raised P16.616 billion from its issuance of two-year bonds in July that carry a coupon rate of 3.25%. Proceeds from the transaction will be used to support RCBC’s lending activities and refinance its debts.

DISKARTECH
In a separate statement, RCBC said it has onboarded 8 million sari-sari stores, market vendors and informal home-based micro-businesses to its digitization drive in a partnership with the Department of Trade and Industry launched in October.

The Negosyantech program under the bank’s DiskarTech initiative allows small businesses to tap digital transactions and sachet banking services.

The bank’s DiskarTech app allows sari-sari stores to accept digital payments for electricity, bills, fund transfers, insurance purchase and cash-outs, among others.

RCBC’s net profit plunged 40.9% to P802 million in the second quarter from P1.356 billion a year ago as higher loan loss provisioning offset better trading gains. Despite this, its net income in the first half of the year climbed 17% to P3.11 billion.

The Yuchengo-led lender’s shares ended trading at P16.40 apiece on Tuesday, down by 20 centavos or by 1.2% from its previous close. — L.W.T. Noble

Closed malls hit Altus Property with second-quarter loss

SHUTTERED MALLS caused Altus Property Ventures, Inc. to incur losses in the second quarter, although the newly listed company managed to end the first semester with a positive bottom line.

In a regulatory filing, the real estate firm recorded a 55.7% decrease in earnings before interest and taxes to P18.92 million in the first semester. Rental revenues were lower by 38.3% to P41.93 million from P67.95 million in the same period a year ago.

The company recorded a loss of P972,109 in the April-June period, affecting its first-half profits, which stood at P13.87 million, a contraction of about 57% from P32.56 million previously.

“The significant decrease was due to the temporary and partial closure of the mall except those areas that are occupied by tenants providing essential services such as the supermarkets, bank and pharmacies; and waived rental for non-operational tenants during the community quarantine period,” it said.

It saw a 17.1% uptick in costs of rental services in the first half to P13.34 million as newly acquired fixed assets depreciated. General and administrative expenses and income expenses were both down by 30% and 35.7%, respectively, to P13.45 million and P4.64 million.

The company said its financial footing “remains solid” with total assets at P691.13 million and total equity at P599.04 million by end-June.

The former unit of Robinsons Land Corp. debuted on the local bourse by way of introduction on June 26. JG Summit Holding, Inc. holds 60.97% of its outstanding capital stocks.

Shares in Altus Property increased by 1.51% to close at P13.42 each on Tuesday. — Adam J. Ang