Some online expert has suggested taking a closer look at the Luzon Development Bank, the implausibly small institution where Commission on Elections chairman Andy Bautista deposited implausibly large amounts that were implausibly omitted from his Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth.
This expert pointed out that most of LDB’s key metrics were unsatisfactory: high level of gross non-performing loans, low historical profitability, low capital adequacy ratio. In fact, pretty much the only positive trend was deposit growth, which took off during the years Mr. Andy became their most favorite customer.
Why then would Bautista, a well-regarded expert in international finance, entrust his funds to such an underperforming bank—more so if those funds, as he claims, included monies entrusted in turn to him by members of his own family?
One popular explanation is the longtime family friendships between his family and the Limcaocos, who control LDB. These include as well other classmates of theirs in a particular Ateneo high school class, I think that of 1982. I can only imagine some of the conversations that must have taken place during what should have been their 35th reunion earlier this year.
But an even more interesting explanation might be unearthed if our online expert goes farther and takes the trouble to look more closely into LDB’s loan portfolio, specifically the ones that are non-performing.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see the non-performers dominated by just a handful of delinquent borrowers. And I wouldn’t fall off my chair if those borrowers were connected one way or another to Bautista.
This is a time-honored stratagem for washing money through financial institutions, one that I have enough faith in Mr. Andy’s acumen to believe would not have escaped his attention.
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The recent outbreak of avian flu in some Pampanga chicken farms was the very first time our country has been hit by this disease. There was simply no way we could have averted its carriage here by migratory birds, Nature’s version of globalization.
To his credit, Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol has done all the right things. He ordered the culling of what may total up to a million birds. He stopped the distribution, not only of chicken meat, but also of day-old chicks, eggs, and semen from all of Luzon—not just Pampanga—to the rest of the country. Even imported poultry meat destined for Visayas and Mindanao cannot be offloaded in Manila for transshipment.
A quarantine zone has also been imposed around the affected farms, manned by quarantine officers. At the same time, government officials have been reassuring the public that this strain of avian flu is harmless to humans, provided the normal cooking precautions are taken.
But what will suffer real damage over the long term is the country’s reputation as perhaps the only Asian poultry exporter that could boast of being forever free of avian flu. We had a similar experience several years ago in our hog industry, when a swine flu outbreak decimated one-third of our backyard piggeries.
Both industries are export mainstays especially to Muslim-majority countries in Asia and the Middle East, where pork must still be made available to, say, non-Muslim tourists, while local demand for chicken is understandably high.
Our closest chicken competitor, Thailand, recovered from its own avian flu epidemics only by shifting from live fowls and raw meat to branded and already-processed chicken meat products. After we deal with this flu outbreak, the real job will begin: to recover the confidence of major import markets as well as international health agencies in Philippine poultry.
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The US State Department recently reminded the world of the continued existence of the US military’s freedom of navigation operations program. Under FONOP, US naval forces are directed to travel wherever they please in international waters, effectively challenging what they believe to be excessive maritime territorial claims.
Last year, they challenged 22 such claims by various coastal states, including their own allies and partners. And just last a week a US warship sailed up to within 12 nautical miles of a Chinese artificial island in the South China Sea.
We’re glad to see that the world’s most powerful country hasn’t exactly been left helpless by our refusal to press forward with the UNCLOS arbitral ruling, which would only be a hopeless battle for us whether in court or at sea.
I’m sure many of us are secretly or not-so-secretly cheering the Americans on. When you’re a small kid being pushed around by the school bully, what better solution is there than to just stand aside and leave the bully to the mercy of the biggest kid on the block?
Readers can write me at gbolivar1952@yahoo.com.