West Philippines (South China) Sea Day of Prayer Worldwide

[photo from flickriver]

August 21, 2012: Over 300 cities and towns in the Philippines, United States, Canada, Europe, Australia and other Asian countries will conduct simultaneous prayer rallies today, Tuesday, for the peaceful resolution of the territorial disputes in the South China Sea or West Philippine Sea.

In a statement posted in the US Pinoys for Good Governance website, the organizers said the prayer rallies would be held as part of the Global Day of Prayer for Peace in the Scarborough Shoal.

The group is also calling on people to "boycott" all China-made products.

According to USPGG spokesman Ted Laguatan, the boycott was a "non-violent" way to dramatize their protest against China's "bullying" tactics towards the Philippines and other claimants in the South China Sea.

"In his State of the Nation Address on July 23, Pres. Aquino asked for solidarity from the Filipino people regarding the issue of China's illegal occupation of the Scarborough Shoal. He asked us to speak with one voice on this issue, and on August 21 we will,  with one voice, express our solidarity with the Filipino people and tell China not to dare invade the Philippines," Laguatan said in a statement released on Monday.

In the Philippines, Laguatan said, there were 200 Church leaders of all faiths and denominations as well as top political and business leaders who would join the prayer rally and express their united stand on the issue.

The prayer rally will be attended by different speakers, such as US Pinoys national chair Loida Nicolas Lewis, Rep. Walden Bello, Rep. Riza Hontiveros, Pastor Francis M. Nicolas, Bishop Leo Alconga of the Philippine for Jesus Movement, Bishop Chito Sanches of the Philippine Council for Evangelical Churches, Albay Gov. Joey Salceda and former Gov. Grace Padaca of Isabela.

In June, the USPGG held a rally in front of the United Nations headquarters calling for a boycott of Chinese products, urging Beijing to stop its "creeping aggression toward countries around the South China Sea."

China claims ownership of 90 percent of the South China Sea based on its nine-dash line, some of which are also being contested by the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Two months ago Beijing established Sansha City and built a military garrison to administer control of   the islands and waters in the South China Sea despite strong protests from Manila and Hanoi.

The city also established its own legislative body and elected members of the municipal government, while Beijing sent officers and soldiers from the People's Liberation Army's to man the garrison.

In an interview, Foreign Affairs spokesman Raul Hernandez said that Manila will try to resolve the issue through diplomatic means and through the application of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea or Unclos.

However, the Chinese government had said it preferred to settle the issue through bilateral talks with concerned countries.

Beijing is also at loggerheads with Tokyo over the Senkaku Island, which the Chinese call Diaoyu, and which both countries claim as their own.

Manila Standard Today

Continue reading

AFP to get ₱20 Billion from sale of Jusmag property - for Frigates MPAC Eurocopters

[Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Properties sold to upgrade the Armaments of the Philippines]

The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) is expected to receive a total of more than  ₱ 20 billion for its modernization program from the sale of one of its properties in Fort Bonifacio, Taguig City, a Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) official said Saturday.

BCDA Executive Vice President Aileen Zosa said the disposition of the 34.5-hectare Joint US Military Assistance Group (Jusmag) area in Fort Bonifacio to realty developers would help fund the military's modernization drive.

"The Jusmag area will generate for the Armed Forces of the Philippines more than ₱20 billion over the years," Zosa said.

The ₱20 billion is expected to fund the government's planned purchase of warships, jet fighters and other equipment to modernize the military in the coming years.

It intends to buy from the Italian Navy next year two Maestrale-class frigates armed with surface-to-air and surface-to-surface missiles and capable of antisubmarine warfare. The ships will cost ₱11.7 billion.

[ Purchase of 2 Italian Made Maestrale-class frigates armed with surface-to-air and surface-to-surface missiles and capable of antisubmarine warfare]

The Department of National Defense also plans to acquire 10 T-50 multipurpose supersonic jet fighters from South Korea to secure the nation's airspace.

This year, the military will also get two or four of 10 attack Eurocopters worth ₱3.2 billion from France; 21 UH1 helicopters worth ₱1.2 billion, two multipurpose attack craft (MPACs) and four Sokol helicopters.

Zosa announced the expected windfall from the Jusmag property sale during BCDA's turnover of 64 condominium units in Fort Bonifacio to the AFP for the use of soldiers and their families.

"The BCDA does not only help the armed forces expedite the implementation of its modernization and capability upgrade program, but also recognizes the sacrifices made by our soldiers through significant projects that help military dependents live a better quality of life," said AFP chief of staff Gen. Jessie Dellosa.

"In return for the continuous assistance and benefits from the BCDA, the AFP assures that we will be more enthused to perform our mandate of protecting the people and the state more efficiently and effectively," he added.

As of December last year, the BCDA has already remitted ₱15.1 billion to the AFP from the sale of its other real estate properties.

The House of Representatives has also approved a bill extending the AFP modernization law and providing it with a ₱75-billion budget over the years.

Undersecretary Fernando Manalo, who attended the turnover ceremony of the condominium units in behalf of Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin, said these would help boost the morale of soldiers.

[Attack eurocopter - photo from wikimedia] 

The AFP formally received the four residential condominium buildings. Each condominium unit has a total area of 100-square meters with three bedrooms. The five-storey buildings with 16 condo units each can house a total of 64 families of active Army soldiers.

This is part of the BCDA's Jusmag replication program, a ₱700-million project which aims to provide the AFP with 12 residential condominium buildings.

Of the 10 buildings being constructed at Fort Bonifacio, nine buildings are reserved for the Philippine Army and one building for the Philippine Navy. The two other buildings are located within the retention area of the Philippine Air Force in Villamor Air Base, Pasay City.

Inquirer 

Continue reading

Bangko Sentral called to Stick Piso at ₱42 - $1 Dollar for 10 years

ECONOMISTS on Friday called on the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) to set aside worries over meeting its inflation target, and instead tackle the problem of the continued appreciation of the Philippines peso (₱).

During a forum organized by the Philippine Exporters Confederation, economists from the private sector said the monetary authorities' efforts to stem the peso's rise are not enough, adding that more should be done to help exporters, business-process outsourcing companies and the families of overseas Filipino workers.

They said many instruments are at the disposal of the BSP if only it could temporarily abandon its mandate of inflation targeting, as other central banks in the world are doing.

University of Asia and the Pacific economics professor Victor Abola said the BSP's fear of expanding money supply accelerating inflation is unfounded.

Abola said money growth of above 20 percent in fast-growing countries did not result in high inflation, adding that there was no long-term relationship between the two.

"GDP [gross domestic product] growth in the Philippines is negative to inflation because you are able to supply the demand. So actually right now before they lowered the monetary policy rates, the monetary policy was tight because money growth was only at 7 percent, then economic growth at 6.4 percent," Abola said.

With inflation no longer a concern, the BSP is free to move and put a clamp on the appreciating peso by cutting its key interest rates further, to as low as 3 percent for the overnight borrowing rate. This would keep foreign capital seeking higher yields from entering the country, Abola said.

Last month the Monetary Board reduced its overnight borrowing and lending rates to 3.75 percent and 5.75 percent, respectively. Analysts said this surprise move by the BSP was not done to boost growth but rather to keep the peso from firming up against the US dollar.

Raul Fabella, University of the Philippines economist and national scientist, said the government must subsidize the BSP to the tune of ₱30 billion so it can absorb the losses when it buys dollars to defend the local currency.

"BSP loses when it purchases dollars using the pesos in the SDAs borrowed from local commercial banks, to sterilize inflow of dollars," Fabella said, referring to the special deposit accounts (SDAs).

"Money lost by the central bank for sterilization is a good use of the money. It is toward a very healthy foreign exchange," he added.

Sterilization is done to temper the value of the local currency against its foreign counterpart and, in the case of BSP, it is done by buying more dollars from the market to weaken the peso. Bankers had been saying the BSP was intervening in the market from time to time, to keep the local currency from rising too much.

HSBC earlier said the BSP may be prompted to cut interest rates rather than incur more losses with its purchase of dollars, if not for price pressures from food and oil.

Fabella said the reason the BSP would rather borrow from the SDAs than print more money is its fear of increasing money supply, which at a certain level is inflationary.

"So if BSP can't print money, then the [national government] subsidy is money well-spent," Fabella said.

Exporters, however, had been asking monetary authorities to take the drastic measure of keeping the exchange rate fixed at a certain level, just like what the Swiss central bank did. "If you want to keep exchange rate fixed, you are no longer inflation targeting, then you devalue the peso," Fabella said.

It would be easier for the BSP to let the currency stay at P42 for 10 years simply by buying huge volumes of dollars, higher than the amount monetary authorities are currently allocating for this.

This is where the P30 billion would come in, Fabella said.

But Ernest Leung, former finance secretary, said the BSP does not need the subsidy because when it buys all the dollars at ₱40 and the peso weakens to ₱45:$1, then it would have posted foreign-exchange gains.

"The BSP has a range of tools it can use but a good question is why is it not employing these? They're too beholden to foreign fund managers around them, telling them what to do," Leung said.

Filomeno Sta. Ana, Action for Economic Reforms executive director, said that all the moves of the central bank are in the right direction so far, with it intervening in the market every now and then.

It also loosened its monetary policy last month, on top of the announcement that it would keep foreign funds from getting into the SDAs.

"That is de facto capital control. It is already a form of capital control. They just don't want to announce it as such for fear of receiving negative reactions from foreign investors," Sta. Ana said.

Capital controls are installed by monetary authorities around the world to keep foreign money from coming in, to keep their own currency from rising too much.

"If we want to be competitive and grow, we need to undervalue the peso. For me inflation targeting is already secondary. There is a lot of debate about inflation targeting, and that is now discredited," Sta. Ana said.

"I think presently they have already abandoned inflation targeting. Even in the BSP charter, their real mandate is 'price stability' but now their definition of inflation targeting has become rigid, it's not really in black and white. But all over the world inflation targeting is no longer employed," he said.

To keep the peso undervalued, Sta. Ana said the BSP should print more money to buy the dollars. The BSP has enough room to do that since money-supply growth is only at 7 percent, way below the inflationary threshold of 20 percent.

(source: InterAksyon)

Continue reading