Aside from President Xi Jinping, another APEC guest from China is stirring interest.
He is Jack Ma, founder and chairman of the Alibaba Group, the largest marketplace in the world which is expected to be worth over $150 Billion by next year, according to Forbes.com.
Ma is the second richest man in China (Forbes: $28.7 billion) and is the 18th richest man in the world.
He will be one of the speakers in the APEC2015 CEO Summit to be held on Nov. 16 to 18 at the Makati Shangrila in Makati.
By Theresa Martelino-Reyes, VERA Files
(Conclusion)
Business tycoon Manuel V. Pangilinan offered China’s state-owned oil firm access to the Spratly group of islands in the South China Sea over which the Philippines has a territorial claim, although he had no legal capacity to do so.
Pangilinan, chairman and chief executive officer of Philex Petroleum Corp, offered to include in his discussions with officials of the state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC) the Spratlys Islands, even if his company’s contract with the Philippine government is limited to Reed Bank, which is part of Palawan.
In an aide memoire addressed to President Benigno Aquino dated May 7, 2012, Pangilinan reported on his meeting with CNOOC officials led by its president Yang Hua and listed his 11 point proposal which, he said, the Chinese “received positively.”
By Theresa Martelino-Reyes, VERA Files
A state-owned Chinese oil firm has rejected the proposal of business tycoon Manuel V. Pangilinan to invest in a contract to drill in the disputed Reed Bank but welcomed “innovative” proposals on how it can participate, according to a memorandum Pangilinan submitted to President Benigno Aquino.
State-owned China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC) turned down the offer made by Pangilinan, chairman and chief executive officer of Philex Petroleum Corp, in a meeting on May 2, 2012.
“A Farm-In Agreement into SC 72 (which Philex previously suggested to them) is not acceptable given the sovereignty issue,” Pangilinan reported to Aquino in an aide memoire submitted to the President on May 7, 2012. The contents of the aide memoire, obtained by VERA Files, have not been made public since it was submitted to the President.
SC 72 refers to Service Contract 72, signed in 2010, in which the Philippine government awarded Forum Energy Plc. (FEP) exploration rights to a basin within Reed Bank. Philex owns 64.45 percent of FEP, a London-based listed oil and gas exploration firm focused on the Philippines. FEP in turn owns 70 percent of SC 72.
A farm-in agreement is a contract signed between the owner of the “farm” and its exploration partner. Accepting such an arrangement could be interpreted as CNOOC accepting the Philippines as “owner” of Reed Bank.
When the Jetstar plane I took from Singapore touched down at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport about 10 in the morning yesterday, I realized I haven’t filled up the Immigration and Customs Declaration forms that are usually distributed on the plane. I asked fellow passengers if the flight stewardess had distributed the forms while many of us were asleep and they replied, “None.”
When we got to the area before the Immigration Counter, we were told the forms were on the stands on both side of the room occupied by passengers dutifully filling up the form.
I thought I and my friends are the only ones who have not been showered with the financial blessings the government is boasting of.
Then even as international financial firms continue to hail the Philippines as “s the strongest performing economy in Asia today, “reports came out of a Triple whammy: Exports and Foreign Direct Investments down and unemployment up.
President Aquino is discrediting the report of his own government agency- National Statistical Coordination Board which says the much-vaunted impressive economic growth has not trickled down to the teeming poor in the country.
The NSDB official release said: “Poverty incidence among population was estimated at 27.9 percent during the first semester of 2012. Comparing this with the 2006 and 2009 first semester figures estimated at 28.8 percent and 28.6 percent, respectively, poverty remained unchanged as the computed differences are not statistically significant.”
In simpler terms, life for the Filipino poor has not improved in the past six years.
Update: Recto quits as ways and means chair: http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/business/10/15/12/recto-quits-ways-and-means-chair
In one of the lectures,Dr. Anthony Leachon, cardiologist and consultant on non-communicable diseases of the Department of Health, said recent studies have shown that smoking causes erectile dysfunction.
“You may not die of erectile dysfunction but some men die for it,” quipped Leachon, who is leading the campaign for the passage of the Sin Tax, not the Recto-fied version but the one that the authored by Sen. Miriam Santiago. He also supports the version passed by the House of Representatives authored by then Cavite Representative (now Secretary of Transportation and Communication) Joseph Abaya.
At the Coke museum (The World of Coca-Cola) on Baker st. in Atlanta, Georgia, they show a replica of the process of producing their beverages, which number 3,500 under 500 brands.
What I found fascinating was the “Bottle Inspector”. All the empty bottles pass through the Inspector that takes a picture of the inside of every bottle. Any bottle not meeting the quality standard of Coca-Cola is taken out of the assembly line.
This process not only ensures the high quality of every single product put out by Coca-Cola in the market but also protects them from scammers who claim of finding foreign objects inside Coca-Cola’s bottle of softdrinks, hoping for a hefty settlement fee. In their dreams!
Coca-Cola last week celebrated it’s 125th year anniversary in festivities that intelligently combined fun, business and social relevance.
Sa mga interaksyun sa media na ginanap sa 125 na taong anibersaryo ng Coca-Cola, nagkaroon ng sesyun sa kalusugan (Health and Well-Being). Mahalaga ito dahil halos lahat na mga eksperto sa pangkalusugan nagsasabi na masama ang coke dahil marami daw artipisyal na kemikal.
Ang panel na binuo ng para sa topic na ito ay sina Rhona Applebaum, chief scientific and regulatory officer; John Reid, vice president for corporate responsibility; at Ed Hays, vice president for Science.
Kahit umaabot sa 3,500 na iba’t-ibang produkto nila (Sprite, Minute Maid, Fanta, Powerade, at marami pang iba), kapag sinabi nating Coca-Cola ang nasa-isip natin ay Coke.
by Jenny S. Santiago VERA Files If you gather all the Philippine coins circulating in the market today, their combined weight would be equivalent to…