Yesterday, I was guest speaker at Asia’s oldest Rotary Club, Manila where I have been a member for 27 years.
My topic was “The First 100 days of President Duterte.” I said it was passé because the 100th-day mark was last October 7, two weeks ago.
I decided instead to talk about the last 100 days, then the next 100 days, and moving forward, the next 1,000 days or the next three years of Duterte.
I told my fellow Rotarians the next 1,000 days will be good for them and good for the people.
There will be three consecutive years of 7 percent of GDP growth per year.
Four million Filipinos would have been rescued from poverty as Duterte reduces poverty at the rate of 1.5 percentage points (equivalent to 1.5 million Filipinos) per year.
Poverty incidence is 26 percent of the population—or 26 million Filipinos today. That is to be reduced to 17 percent by 2022 or to 17 percent (or 19 million) of a projected population of 112 million by the end of Duterte’s six-year presidency. No president has done it before—reduce poverty by nine percentage points (equivalent to nine million Filipinos today).
How will Duterte achieve such a sharp poverty reduction, something no president before him could do?
By spending so much money. Duterte will spend P25 trillion of taxpayers’ money in six years. Of that, P6 trillion will be spent on infrastructure to build or rebuild roads, build and rebuild railways, build airports and roads, and more school buildings than anyone before him has ever built. Hopefully, the administration would have also replaced the decrepit MRT3 spanning Edsa and would have prosecuted the criminal syndicate handling its maintenance or lack of it.
In the next three years, the country will be earning $30 billion per year from overseas remittances of 12 million Filipino expatriates abroad plus another $30 billion from call centers and business process outsourcing locally. That’s $60 billion of annual earnings the Philippines cannot possibly generate from exports of goods and services in a year or from foreign direct investments.
In the next three years, Duterte would have forged peace agreements with communist rebels (three of their leaders are already in the Cabinet) and with the Muslim separatists. (Duterte thinks the Abu Sayyaf, which is a criminal organization, is composed of patriots).
The one question I refused to answer, which was not asked by the way, is: Will Duterte still be the president of the Philippines after three years?
Anyway, I assured my audience that the Philippine economy is so strong that even a dog—or rat, can run this country and make the economy progress at the rate of six percent per year.
Fellow Rotarian Obet Pagdanganan asked: What is one advice I would give Duterte?
My advice: The President should stop listening only to himself. You cannot conduct foreign affairs declaring policy statements here and there shooting from the hip and on the run.
This country of 102 million is too big a nation to be run solely on the brains and wiles of one man. No doubt, Duterte has substantial leadership gravitas and thinking talent. But managing the world’s 12th largest country requires great team work, a lot of profound planning and focused execution.
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I got a copy of the Oct. 14 letter of the new Philweb Chairman, Greg Araneta III, to Securities and Exchange Commission Chairperson Teresita Herbosa. Bobby Ongpin had sold his majority holdings to Greg at P2.60, or for only P2 billion —a tenth of RVO’s Philweb holdings’ previous market value of P20 billion. SEC wants Greg to do tender offer, meaning, buy the holdings of the rest of the stockholders, also at P2.60. Why would they sell when the stock market price is P8.90 per share?
I reprint Greg’s letter here:
“I write in connection with my acquisition of Mr. Roberto V. Ongpin’s shares in PhilWeb Corporation, which was contractually completed on October 25, 2016. I attach a copy of the executed and notarized contract herewith.
“I have on several occasions confirmed my willingness to abide by the requirements of the Tender Offer at the earliest possible time. However, it should be obvious to all concerned that because the transaction price is P2.60 per share and the current market price is above P9.00, that no shareholder will tender his shares at P2.60 when he can dispose of those shares at the market at any time at the prevailing market price of P9.00 or better.
“In view of this fact, I request that the SEC permit the block sale to be executed at the soonest possible time, i.e. prior to the Tender Offer requirement. The Tender Offer requirement if required to be accomplished prior to the block sale, will only cause unnecessary expense on my part, e.g. fairness opinion, newspaper publications, etc.
“We at PhilWeb are also concerned about restarting our operations without delay since the network of e-Games cafes have been out of business for over two months now. As you know, it has been disclosed the PSE by the undersigned, together with Dennis O. Valdes, President that we personally submitted our application for renewal of PhilWeb’s license to PAGCOR earlier this week.
“We therefore ask your kind consideration to permit the PSE to effect the block sale prior to the execution of the tender offer. We again confirm that we ready and willing to comply with the Tender Offer requirement but after the block sale has been completed.”
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