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All-Star Game

There can be no doubting the National Basketball Association’s motivations when it comes to the All-Star Game. At heart, the annual spectacle is the league’s way of thanking fans for their support; its brightest stars take part in a series of exhibitions through an extended weekend. In turn, participation brings about tangible and manifest benefits; not counting the goodwill generated by leading lights, financial incentives come with attendance. For players, the most lucrative offshoots are generated by contractual triggers emanating from being one of 24 named to the featured match.

This year, however, is different — or, rather, was supposed to be different owing to the quick start of the season. Exactly 71 days separated the last game of the 2020 Finals and the first game of the 2020-21 campaign, half the time typically separating the two. Even so, the players association agreed to the compressed schedule in the understanding that it would transition to normalcy, but not yet. Part of the concessions included a week off midway through the calendar. As things have turned out, however, the All-Star break looks to be much of the same old, same old.

Evidently, the league and the union leadership have agreed to hold All-Star festivities early next month. Final details continue to be ironed out, but voting is already under way. Meanwhile, the very stalwarts on whose presence the event relies seem to be balking at the notion that they will be giving up their promised respite for more work. And, make no mistake, the proponents’ choice of venue, deemed crucial to maximizing returns, is likewise fueling resistance. State Farm Arena, which hosts the Hawks’ home outings, is one of only 10 in the NBA allowed under local health protocols to accept spectators — which may be good from a revenue standpoint, but nonetheless raises safety concerns.

Little wonder, then, that longtime marquee fixtures and probable All-Stars alike are lambasting the plan. From LeBron James to Giannis Antetokounmpo to Kawhi Leonard to De’Aaron Fox, the tenor of the opposition is the same; there is zero motivation to participate in it. Which is why the league’s top honchos need to act, and fast. Along with players association leaders that are dotting the Is and crossing the Ts of the agreement to hold the All-Star Game and establish rules for its smooth implementation, they would do well to explain its benefits to the general population.

Granted, the players know which side of the bread is buttered. When push comes to shove, they will be in the All-Star Game. But if their attendance is borne of contractual obligation and not of genuine interest, the product they are slated to showcase will be far from superior. Moreover, the absence of any downtime and the need to make up for all the postponed matches figure to affect even the contests that really count. And therein lies the rub. Going all in works only if victory is assured. Else, it’s a big risk requiring a big ask that carries an answer the league may ultimately regret.

 

Anthony L. Cuaycong has been writing Courtside since BusinessWorld introduced a Sports section in 1994. He is a consultant on strategic planning, operations and Human Resources management, corporate communications, and business development.

Chinese users flock to U.S. chat app Clubhouse, evading censors

BEIJING/HONG KONG – Private social audio app Clubhouse is attracting masses of new users from mainland China, where the U.S. app remains uncensored by authorities despite flourishing discussions on rights, national identity and other sensitive topics.

Western social media apps including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are banned in China, where the local internet is tightly censored to weed out content that could undermine the ruling communist party.

The Clubhouse app, launched in early 2020, saw explosive growth in user numbers earlier this month after Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev held a surprise discussion on the platform.

Its chat rooms are only accessible via invites from current members, and as of Sunday, invites to the platform were selling for between 50-400 yuan ($7.73 – $69.59) on popular Chinese e-commerce sites.

Reuters directly observed several Chinese-language ‘club’ conversations where thousands of users listened to wide-ranging audio discussions covering topics including Xinjiang detention camps, Taiwan independence and Hong Kong’s National Security Law.

China’s cyber authorities have become increasingly strict in recent years, widening the scope of apps, media outlets and social media sites banned in the country.

While Clubhouse remains uncensored, it is only available on iOS devices and is unavailable in the local Apple app store, both major barriers for its widespread use in China.

Mainland Chinese users can access the app by modifying the location of their app store.

It’s unclear why the app remains unblocked in China, though some foreign social sites with small Chinese followings manage to operate under the radar of censors, including 8kun, a central hub for QAnon followers.

In one club chat centred on Hong Kong politics, activists, journalists and artists discussed former U.S. president Trump and his support base in the former colony.

Another popular Chinese language club on the site as of Saturday involved a rare open exchange between netizens in mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong over heightened political tensions in the region.

The discussion became a hot topic on China’s own Twitter-like social media site Weibo on Saturday.

“I don’t know how long this environment can last”, said one user in a popular Weibo post that was liked over 65,000 times. “But I will definitely remember this moment in Internet history.” – Reuters

Biden administration suspends Trump asylum deals with El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras

WASHINGTON – The Biden administration said on Saturday it was immediately suspending Trump-era asylum agreements with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, part of a bid to undo his Republican predecessor’s hardline immigration policies.

In a statement, State Department Secretary Antony Blinken said the United States had “suspended and initiated the process to terminate the Asylum Cooperative Agreements with the Governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras as the first concrete steps on the path to greater partnership and collaboration in the region laid out by President Biden.”

The so-called “safe third country” agreements, inked in 2019 by the Trump administration and the Central American nations, force asylum seekers from the region to first seek refuge in those countries before applying in the United States.

Part of a controversial bid by former U.S. President Donald J. Trump to crack down on illegal immigrants from Central America who make up a large part of migrants apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border, the policies were never implemented with El Salvador and Honduras, the State Department said on Saturday.

Transfers under the U.S.-Guatemala agreement have been paused since mid-March 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, the statement added.

The moves announced Saturday came after U.S. President Joseph R. Biden unveiled a host of measures last week aimed at revamping the U.S. immigration system, including a task force to reunite families separated at the United States-Mexico border and another to increase an annual cap on refugees.

One of the orders called for Mr. Blinken to “promptly consider” whether to notify the governments of the three countries that the United States intended to suspend and terminate the safe third country deals. It also called on the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Attorney General to determine whether to rescind a rule implementing the agreements. – Reuters

Brazil gets first active ingredients for AstraZeneca vaccine from China

RIO DE JANEIRO – A first shipment of 88 liters of active ingredients to make AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine in Brazil arrived from China on Saturday, essential input to speed the country’s troubled vaccination program.

With those supplies flown into Rio de Janeiro on a cargo plane, the Fiocruz biomedical center can begin filling and finishing 2.8 million doses. The federally funded center expects to receive more ingredients this month to make a total of 15 million shots of the vaccine developed with Oxford University.

The Fiocruz production line, originally scheduled to start producing in December, has sat idle due to delays getting the first shipment of supplies from China.

The AstraZeneca Plc vaccine is the central pillar of Brazil’s national inoculation program and the federal government has ordered material for Fiocruz to make up to 100 million shots. To start inoculating its 210 million people, Brazil has relied initially on the Chinese vaccine developed by Sinovac Biotech Ltd and 2 million ready-to-use AstraZeneca shots imported from India last month.

Pfizer Inc applied on Friday for full regulatory approval in Brazil of its COVID-19 vaccine developed with BioNTech Se, the company said.

It is the second vaccine submitted for registration in Brazil. AstraZeneca applied on Jan. 29 for full regulatory approval of its vaccine.

President Jair Bolsonaro, who says he will not take any COVID-19 shot, is under pressure after a slow and patchy vaccine roll-out in Brazil, which now faces a second wave of infections.

Mr. Bolsonaro referred to the virus as a “little flu” but his government faces mounting criticism over its handling of the world’s second-deadliest coronavirus outbreak that has killed more than 231,000 Brazilians.

Sao Paulo’s Butantan biomedical institute said on Saturday it has begun to fill-and-finish 8.6 million doses of Sinovac’s vaccine called Coronavac with ingredients that arrived from China on Wednesday.

Butantan said it expects to receive another supply of ingredients on Wednesday to make an additional 8.7 million doses. – Reuters

Magnitude 6.3 earthquake strikes southern Philippines

MANILA – A strong earthquake with 6.3 magnitude struck the southern province of Davao del Sur in the Philippines on Sunday, with damage and aftershocks expected, the country’s seismology agency said.

The earthquake was initially recorded at magnitude 6 at a depth of 10 km (6.2 miles), the GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences earlier said.

The Philippines Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Philvolcs) said it recorded the depth at 15 km, adding that the earthquake was tectonic.

The Southeast Asian country is on the geologically active Pacific Ring of Fire and experiences frequent earthquakes, particularly in the south. – Reuters

Bank of Italy says country needs cohesion to grow and cut debt

MILAN – Italy’s central bank called on Saturday for cohesion as the country battles a government crisis, saying it was imperative to revive growth and reduce a public debt that the coronavirus pandemic has pushed to levels last seen after World War One.

Italy’s debt is expected to approach 160% of domestic output at the end of this year, posing a major challenge to an economy which stagnated over the past decade.

“We cannot cultivate the illusion that the public debt can increase indefinitely,” Bank of Italy Governor Ignazio Visco told a gathering of financial market participants .

Rome’s 2.6 trillion euro ($3 trillion) debt is set to drain almost 60 billion euros from public coffers in interest payments this year alone, despite record low rates.

“Italy must now find the cohesion it needs to return to the path of development,” Mr. Visco said at the annual Assiom-Forex conference.

The central banker flagged “very substantial risks” threatening the base forecast of a recovery in output starting in the spring, mainly due to the danger that containing the pandemic proves harder than expected.

As the immediate crisis recedes, Mr. Visco said it was important to keep in place support measures for firms and households while making them more selective over time.

After the collapse of a coalition government led by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, Italy’s President Sergio Mattarella has called on former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi to form a new government.

Mr. Draghi’s prospects of securing a majority in parliament advanced on Saturday when the two largest parties, the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement and the rightist League, both gave him their conditional backing.

Mr. Visco said Italy could not afford to waste the opportunity provided by the European Union’s pandemic response.

Political turmoil is hampering Rome’s efforts to draw up plans to spend 200 billion euros in grants and loans from the EU’s recovery fund, as an April 30 deadline to submit final proposals looms.

Only by returning to growth rates last achieved before the global financial crisis can Italy reduce its debt without excessively painful budget adjustments, Visco said.

But the “careful and targeted” use of EU funds risks proving insufficient to drive a lasting increase in Italy’s economic growth without structural reforms to foster private investment, he said. “This is no small challenge for the public administration.” ($1 = 0.8304 euros) – Reuters

Cuba opens door to most small business initiatives

HAVANA – In a major reform of the state-dominated economy, the Cuban government will allow small private businesses to operate in most fields, eliminating its limited list of activities, state-run media reported on Saturday.

The measure, coming as the Caribbean island seeks to recover from an economic slump, will expand the field from 127 activities to more than 2,000 Labor Minister Marta Elena Feito Cabrera was quoted as saying. She spoke at a council of ministers meeting that approved the policy.

She said there would be 124 exceptions, but the media reports provided no details.

Reform-minded Cuban economists have long called for the role of small business to be expanded to help jump-start the economy and to create jobs.

The economy has stagnated for years and contracted by 11% last year, due to a combination of the coronavirus pandemic that devastated tourism and tough U.S. sanctions. Cubans have been dealing with a scarcity of basic goods and endless lines to obtain them.

The crisis has forced a series of long promised but stalled reforms, from devaluation of the peso and reorganization of the monetary system to some deregulation of state businesses and foreign investment.

President Miguel Diaz-Canel said last year the country faced an international and local crisis and would implement a series of reforms to increase exports, cut imports and stimulate domestic demand.

He said the measures would include “the improvement of the non-state sector, with immediate priority in the expansion of self-employment and removal of obstacles.”

The non-state sector – not including agriculture with its hundreds of thousands of small farms, thousands of cooperative and day laborers – is composed mainly of small private businesses and cooperatives; their employees, artisans, taxi drivers and tradesmen.

The labor minister said there were more than 600,000 people in the sector, some 13% of the labor force. They are all designated as self-employed and an estimated 40% depend mainly on the tourism industry or work in public transportation.

Over the last six months the government has also moved to grant access to wholesale markets for small businesses and import and export, though only through state companies. – Reuters

PSE’s short selling plan to proceed, chief says

The Philippine Stock Exchange will allow short selling as soon as issues on borrowing and lending of securities before the Securities and Exchange Commission and tax bureau are resolved, President Ramon Monzon said.

“As soon as we get the approvals, we will launch our short selling product,” Monzon said in an e-mailed reply to questions. “The probability of a GameStop incident happening in the Philippines is quite small, if not nil.”

Short selling will be limited only to stocks in the benchmark index and will be capped at 10% of their outstanding shares, Monzon said. The Philippines still doesn’t have option trading, which he said contributed to the “extreme volatility” in GameStop Corp.’s share price.

The approvals for the use of offshore collaterals and the template for a global master lending agreement are stalling the start of short selling in the Philippine bourse, said Monzon.

“We are not considering any changes or adjustment to our short selling rules” for these “are adequate, reasonable and conservative,” he said. – Bloomberg

Inflation hits 2-year high on rising food prices

Consumer prices rose faster for the fourth straight month to a two-year record in January after food and transport costs spiked, according to the local statistics agency.

The Philippine central bank in a separate statement said inflation could be better tempered through non-monetary policies.

Headline inflation quickened to 4.2% last month, faster than 3.5% in December and 2.9% a year earlier, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said in a statement on Friday. It was also the fastest since 4.4% in January 2019.

January inflation was higher than the 3.6% median estimate in a BusinessWorld poll of 16 economists last week.

It also exceeded the estimate of 3.3-4.1% for the month and 2-4% annual target of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP).

“The projected uptrend in inflation is seen to be temporary,” BSP Governor Benjamin E. Diokno said.

“The sources of near-term inflation pressures are supply-side shocks in nature that should not require a monetary policy response unless they lead to further second-round effects,” he added.

The government should instead ease domestic supply constraints, Mr. Diokno said, adding that average inflation would probably settle within the central bank’s 2-4% target.

The statistics agency traced the faster increase to the heavily weighted food and nonalcoholic beverages, whose prices increased by 6.2% in January from 4.8% a month earlier.

Other major contributors were transport costs, which rose by 8.6%, and higher prices of restaurant and miscellaneous goods and services that grew by 3%.

Inflation was tempered by the slower increase in the prices of alcoholic beverages and tobacco, which eased to 11.7% from 12.2% in December; furnishing, household equipment and routine house maintenance, which slowed to 2.9% from 3.3%; and recreation and culture, which slowed to 0.7% from 0.6%.

“Our priority right now is to ensure that food supply is adequate so that households affected by COVID-19 and the quarantines will not be doubly affected by the increase in food prices,” Acting Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Karl Kendrick T. Chua said in a statement.

“In the interim, allowing more importation of key agricultural products, while adhering to strict safety protocols to prevent the entry of contaminated products, will help augment supply and manage inflation,” he added.
Core inflation, which excludes volatile prices of food and fuel, quickened to 3.4% last month from 3.3% in December and January 2020.

Food inflation accelerated to 6.6% from 4.9% in the previous month, buoyed by double-digit increases in meat and vegetable prices.

January inflation for meat was 17.1% from 10% in December, while vegetable prices surged by 21.2% from 19.7% in December.

Meanwhile, tricycle, jeepney and bus fares increased by 46.7%, 6.4% and 4.5, pushing transport costs up. On the other hand, fuel prices fell by 9.3% from 10.6% in December.

Inflation in the National Capital Region (NCR) quickened to 4.3% last month from 3.2% in December and 2.7% a year earlier.

Inflation for the bottom 30% income households hit 4.9%, faster than 4.3% in December and 2.3% a year ago. This was the highest in two years, or since 5.2% in January 2019.

NO RATE CUT

National Statistician Claire Dennis S. Mapa told an online news briefing the inflation uptick in the capital region and for the poor had been mainly caused by faster increases in prices of food especially fish, meat, vegetables and fruits.

Nicholas Antonio T. Mapa, a senior economist at ING Bank N.V. Manila, traced the continued increase in food prices to typhoons that devastated parts of Luzon in the past quarter, aside from the spread of African Swine Fever.

“This was the first breach since 2018 when inflation surged to a high of 6.7% driven also by rising food prices and higher transport costs,” he said in a note.

“We expect inflation to remain elevated in the coming months with base effects and persistent cost side pressures to force the headline close to or above the 4% level,” he added.

The central bank was unlikely to cut key policy rates at its meeting next week despite the faster inflation, Mr. Mapa said.

“We expect BSP to refrain from adjusting policy in the near term as Diokno provides monetary support to the economic recovery, with monetary authorities hoping to ride out this latest breach until supply conditions normalize in the coming months,” he added.

Inflation is likely to continue to rise while supply issues were being addressed and global oil prices rise, said Alex Holmes, Capital Economics’ economist for Asia.

He said this would force BSP to keep policy rates unchanged in the near term, but the easing cycle might continue toward the end of the year to support economic recovery.

“We still expect more rate cuts later in the year,” Mr. Holmes said in a note. “The rise in inflation should prove temporary. What’s more, the economy is still in need of more support,” he added.

“A failure to contain the virus, economic scars from the pandemic and lackluster fiscal support mean the recovery would continue to underwhelm in the quarters ahead,” Mr. Holmes said.

Michael L. Ricafort, chief economist at Rizal Commercial Banking Corp., said any second-round inflation effects in the coming months could trigger a rate hike.

“A new record-low local policy rate of 2% is now unusually below the inflation rate, which is currently higher at 4.2%, that results in net negative interest rates, thereby making any further cut in policy rates more challenging at the moment,” he said.

Factory output slips again in December

The country’s manufacturing output continued to decline for the 10th straight month in December amid a coronavirus pandemic, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported on Friday.

Preliminary results of the agency’s latest Monthly Integrated Survey of Selected Industries (MISSI) showed factory output, as measured by the volume of production index (VoPI), further declined by 2.8%, slower than the revised 8.6% drop in November and 7.3% decline a year earlier.

It was the softest decline in the 10 months since the government locked down many parts of the country to contain the pandemic.

This brought the average volume of production index to a contraction of 10.3% for 2020, worse than 8.4% drop in 2019.

The PSA traced the slower December decline to annual growth posted that month in five of 20 industry groups, namely paper and paper products (26.8%), chemical products (7.5%), electrical machinery (5.7%), food manufacturing (5.4%) and rubber and plastic products (4.9%).

Meanwhile, the value of production index (VaPI), a similar composite indicator in the survey, fell by 5.1% year on year in December from an 11.5% downturn in November. This was the 10th straight month for the contraction, though the slowest since January 2020.

The average value of production index shrank faster by 13.9% in 2020, worse than the 6.9% decline in 2019.
The average capacity utilization — the extent at which industry resources are used in producing goods — slipped to 72.8% in December from 75.6% in the previous month.

Only five of 20 industry groups posted at least 80% average use rate, namely machinery except electrical (88.3%), textiles (86.2%) and nonmetallic mineral products (82.7%).

The seasonal increase in spending and economic activities could have also helped the slower contraction in factory output in December, Michael L. Ricafort, chief economist at Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. said in a note.

A possible easing in Metro Manila’s lockdown could help further reopen the economy, which may lead to a pickup in manufacturing activities, he said.

Gov’t to sell P30B of retail bonds

The government will start offering three-year retail Treasury bonds next week to raise at least P30 billion from the local debt market, the Treasury bureau said on Friday.

In a notice posted on its website, the agency said it would sell at least P30 billion in three-year retail bonds for three weeks starting Feb. 9 until March 4, or if closed earlier.

The bureau also opened the bond exchange offer where bondholders of FXTN 07-57, FXTN 10-53, RTB 03-09, RTB-10-03 and FXTN 10-55 can swap their current securities with the new retail bonds.

With the scheduled three-week offer of the RTB-25 due in 2024, the Treasury canceled the upcoming auction on Feb. 16 for three-year Treasury bonds.

The government offers retail Treasury bonds annually to encourage small retail investors to invest with higher returns than prevailing market rates. These are also considered low-risk investments because they are backed by the state.

There would probably be strong demand for the retail bonds because the market remained awash with cash, a bond trader said in a Viber message.

The bonds would be sold in denominations of at least P5,000, the Treasury bureau said.

The coupon will be determined during the rate-setting auction on Tuesday, and interest payments will be made quarterly.

Last year, the bureau offered the retail bonds twice, raising P310.8 billion from the sale of three-year bonds in February and an all-time high of P516.3 billion from five-year securities.

The government is looking at raising P3 trillion this year from domestic and external lenders to help fund its budget deficit that is expected to hit 8.9% of economic output.

Meanwhile, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) fully awarded the P120 billion 28-day bills it offered on Friday on robust liquidity.

Total bids reached P148.81 billion, making the auction 1.24 times oversubscribed, the central bank said in a statement.

The short-term debt fetched a weighted average interest rate of 1.6124%, down by 1.27 basis points from 1.6251% last week.

“The results of the BSP bill auction reflect very ample liquidity in the financial system,” central bank Deputy Governor Francisco Dakila, Jr. said in the statement.

“Looking ahead, the BSP’s monetary operations will remain guided by its assessment of liquidity conditions and market developments,” he added.

The central bank had been making full awards since it started selling its own securities in September. Yields ranged from 1.6% to 1.6235%, narrower than 1.6 to 1.63% at the previous auction.

The rates continued to decline despite the faster inflation in January, Michael L. Ricafort, chief economist at Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. said in a text message.

Eight more people positive for COVID-19 strain

Eight more people have tested positive for a more contagious coronavirus strain, bringing the total in the Philippines to 25, according to health authorities.

In a statement on Friday, the Department of Health (DoH) said three of the eight new cases were from Bontoc, Mountain Province in the country’s north.

Two women aged 25 and 54 were close contacts of the case clusters there, while the link to the 31-year-old male was still being verified, the agency said. The 54 year-old woman had recovered, while the two were active cases.

DoH said two cases were from nearby La Trinidad, Benguet. One of them was a 15-year-old girl who did not show symptoms and is a relative of the first case reported there. The other is an 84-year-old male with no travel history and had not been in contact with a known patient with the new virus. He died on Jan. 24, the agency said.

Two more cases were returning migrant Filipinos who have recovered, DoH said. The first was a 29-year-old woman who arrived from the United Arab Emirates on Jan. 7 via a Philippine Airlines flight. The second was a 54-year-old man from Talisay, Cebu.

The eighth person reported to have gotten the virus strain is a 35-year-old man with mild symptoms from Liloan, Cebu, DoH said. His exposure and travel history were still being verified.

The Health department said case investigation, contact tracing and back tracing was under way.

“Biosurveillance activities shall likewise be sustained and the succeeding whole genome sequencing activities are expected to determine the extent of transmission in areas where B.1.1.7 variant cases have been detected,” it said.

Twelve of the first 17 people infected with the new strain originally detected in the United Kingdom were from Bontoc.

CASE TALLY

DoH reported 1,894 cases on Friday, bringing the total to 533,587. The death toll rose by 61 to 11,058, while recoveries increased by 397 to 488,274, it said in a bulletin.

There were 34,255 active cases, 89% of which were mild, 6% did not show symptoms, 2.3% were critical, 2.2% were severe and 0.51% were moderate.

DoH said six duplicates had been removed from the tally, while 47 recoveries were reclassified as deaths. Six laboratories failed to submit their data on Feb. 4.

More than 7.5 million Filipinos have been tested for the coronavirus as of Feb. 3, according to DoH’s tracker website.

The coronavirus has sickened about 105.5 million and killed 2.3 million people worldwide, according to the Worldometers website, citing various sources including data from the World Health Organization.

About 77.1 million people have recovered, it said.

Meanwhile, DoH traced the more than 800 coronavirus deaths in the past two weeks to “data harmonization” with the Philippine Statistics Authority.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario S. Vergeire three-quarters of the deaths were from March to October 2020.
DoH said 864 coronavirus deaths were reported from Jan. 23 to Feb. 4.

DoH and the Department of Transportation urged the public in a separate statement to observe guidelines on face masks inside vehicles.

A driver may only remove his face mask inside the vehicle when traveling alone.

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