A FULCRUM FOR CONVERGENCE

NO HOLDS BARRED (016) May 29, 2009
By Ike Señeres

A FULCRUM FOR CONVERGENCE

Without any real planning behind it, my TV show has become a fulcrum for the convergence of organizations and individuals who are working for national development in general and business development in particular. One way or the other, the show has become an enabling mechanism for organizations and individuals to get involved, and to get things done.

One of the main features of the show is a running ticker of stock prices, the modern equivalent of the old ticker tape. Pushing information is really a proven and tested way of promoting any product or service, and what I would like to do now is to find more ways of pushing information about stock exchange data, perhaps through mobile or outdoor means.

Basically, “Bears & Bulls” is still a stock market show in particular, but it is now evolving to be a business show in general. Since anything that is good for the country is also good for business and vice versa, it would be a good idea to use the show to build business, and to build the country along the way.

If we look at the developed countries around the world, we could see that their national economies grew because their local economies started to grow in the first place. This is the direction that we should take, to build our local economies so that we could build our national economy in the process.

I have not yet received any inquiries regarding my offer to help local governments in putting up their hazard mapping systems and hazard warning systems. It is a sad reality that very few local governments have these systems, even if these do not cost much. Anyone reading this column should relay this information to their local officials.

Perhaps its just plain coincidence, but I interviewed young scientist Roland Jay (RJ) Miguel a few days after I discussed hazard warning systems in my show. He turned out to be part of a team from the GSMetrix Corporation that has designed a solar powered multi-purpose sensor in cooperation with the National Institute of Geological Sciences. Now we are one step closer to affordable warning systems for local governments.

Since he is from UP Diliman, I gave RJ an assignment to go to the UP Marine Sciences Institute (MSI) to find out whether a database built by a Transfer of Knowledge thru Expatriate Nationals (TOKTEN) scientist that I assigned there many years ago is still in use. The database measures the amount of Escherichia coli (e.coli) in the water in terms of parts per million (ppm).

It may also be plain coincidence that the Philippines has practically become the text messaging capital of the world. Growing up in this environment, it has become easy for young scientists like RJ to think of inventions that are based on mobile technologies. Simply by making a missed call to the sensor, it will send back data about heat, moisture, motion or anything else that is programmed into it.

Based on the usual behavior of the more developed economies, scientists or inventors like RJ are initially funded by angels or venture capitalists before they are able to mature into initial public offerings (IPOs). Quite sadly, the number of IPOs coming out here are very low, a reflection perhaps of our low turnout in the global patents race.

I am aware that a venture capital group is operating out of the Asian Institute of Management (AIM), led by Mr. Ed Isidro. Kudos to his group for doing this, but I think the venture capital market in the Philippines has to grow much faster if we are to catch up with the rest of the world in product development.

I also interviewed Ms. Aleli Pansacola and Ms. Marlyn Kragh in my show, and I am amazed at the talent of these two Filipinas in developing world class health and beauty products. Quite sadly again, they do not seem to be getting the right exposures to the capital markets that they need badly.

Ms. Pansacola laments about the fact that the Philippines is now importing essences and fragrances when in fact better substitutes could be produced here. One thing good about these two ladies is that they are both helping local farmers who are producing their ingredients.

Watch my TV show “Bears & Bulls”, a daily coverage of the Philippine Stock Exchange. 9:00 am to 1:00 pm in Global News Network. Email iseneres@yahoo.com or text +639293605140 for local cable listings.

ENVIRONMENTAL THREATS

NO HOLDS BARRED (015) May 22, 2009
By Ike Señeres

ENVIRONMENTAL THREATS

Just when I was starting to think that development journalism was already a dying cause, I recently realized in-depth interviews with the right resource persons could bring out policy directions that could be suggested to the proper executive agencies or legislative bodies for appropriate action, for whatever these are worth. In some cases, the private sector could even act on these directions as possible program or project actions.

When I interviewed Dr. Roger Birosel in my TV show, I learned from him that most of our local government units (LGUs) do not have hazard mapping systems, even if the law requires it, and even if it is relatively easy to put these up. To add to that, Dr. Birosel also said that most of our LGUs do not have hazard warning systems, even if the law requires it, and even if it does not need high science to put it up.

I recently met with Ms. Nikki Meru, a program coordinator of Growth with Equity in Mindanao (GEM), a project of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). GEM has been helping Mindanao based small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and as a result of that meeting, I will soon be interviewing Mindanao business leaders in my TV show. I will also be receiving phoned in reports from Mindanao media about what is going on there.

I am very much concerned about the environmental safety of the people in Compostela Valley, the province of my birth. I was born in Compostela town when it was still a part of the old and undivided Davao province. The news about the mudslide deaths saddened me so much, but I was happy about what Dr. Birosel said, that he could help put up hazard mapping systems not only in that area, but all over the Philippines.

As far as I know, GEM is focused mostly on enterprise development, but what good would business assistance be if the security of the businesses in the area is always threatened by environmental damage? In the course of my interviews with the Mindanao business leaders, I hope to get some support for the installation of the hazard mapping systems, which do not really cost a lot of money.

A hazard mapping is one thing, a hazard warning system is another thing. What good can a mapping system do if there is no companion system that could warn the local people about the coming damage? Fortunately, it does not cost much to put up warning systems either, so I will also find a way to install this in Compostela, one way or the other.

In my article last week, I wrote about interconnection of Laguna Bay with Manila Bay, by way of the Pasig River. The area around Compostela Valley is interconnected with Butuan Bay, by way of the Agusan River. This subject is really close to my heart, because the Agusan River interconnects Compostela, the Valley of my birth, and Agusan, the Valley of my youth, where I grew up.

Sad to say, the actions of our government is very much media driven. I can understand the frenzy about the new influenza virus, but it is really just a new threat. In a way, it is good that the mudslide deaths has brought media attention to the dangers of this threat, but I really hope that it would not happen again, at least without the proper warnings.

In my TV program, I made an offer to all local governments that I would help them put up hazard mapping systems and hazard mapping systems, with very little startup costs to them. The costs should not even be an issue, because the benefit of saving lives is priceless. I wonder who is going to be the first to accept my offer.

Aside from mudslides, the people around the Compostela Valley are exposed to the dangers of mercury poisoning. This is no longer a threat, because its damaging effects are happening every day. To make matters worse, the mercury poisons are trailing down the entire span of the Agusan River, and are entering the food chain as these are eaten by the fish in the River and in the bays around Northern Mindanao.

Dr. Birosel says that these are also entering the food chain as the poisoned water is absorbed by the bananas that are planted around the region. Who is going to check on this problem? This is really a dangerous country.

Watch my TV show “Bears & Bulls”, a daily coverage of the Philippine Stock Exchange. 9:00 am to 1:00 pm in Global News Network. Email iseneres@yahoo.com or text +639293605140 for local cable listings.

THE POLITICS OF WATER

NO HOLDS BARRED (014) May 15, 2009
By Ike Señeres

THE POLITICS OF WATER

Believe it or not, we as an entire country might end up importing our water supplies not unless we will put our act together in conserving and protecting our overall environment as a whole. More often than not, we often talk about water conservation as if that is the only way to ensure our water supplies. The fact is, it is the entire environment as a whole that functions as a complete ecosystem, a system that includes not just the visually seen water sources, but also the land and the air around us.

Simply put, we need to integrate not just our water policies and practices, but also our policies that affect our land and our atmosphere. As if that is not difficult enough, we also have to integrate and coordinate our collective water, land and air policies as a whole, and to state the obvious, we must also integrate and coordinate the functions and services of all agencies and companies that are involved one way or the other in this triumvirate of natural resources.

During my visit to Israel many years ago, I found out that they only have ONE water agency that is responsible for anything and everything that has to do with WATER. That is in complete contrast to our present system of governance here where we have several, if not too many agencies that are responsible for managing our water needs for many purposes. To cite just a few examples, we have the National Irrigation Authority (NIA) for farm water, and the Local Water Utilities Authority (LWUA) for household water.

I also found out that in Israel, they are able to collect, recycle and distribute water for use in farms and households. Not only that, they are able to classify water for use in farms in a programmable and addressable way, meaning that they could distribute water as needed by ground crops and surface crops, complete with “pre-designed” fertilizers and insecticides.

When I interviewed many visiting scientists many years ago when I was still the head of science and technology at the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), they all told me the same thing: that we could not clean our bays not unless we clean our rivers, we could not clean our rivers not unless we clean our lands, and we could not clean our lands not unless we clean our mountains. Who is in charge of seeing to it that this integration and coordination is done properly?

As I understand it, the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) is supposed to be a planning and coordinating agency. It is their function to integrate the planning for the entire metropolitan area, and to coordinate the implementation and execution of these plans by the member cities and municipalities. What these means is that the MMDA is not supposed to be an operating agency, ergo it should not compete with and duplicate the functions of the other agencies that are supposed to do the actual operations.

It appears that the Pasig River Rehabilitation Commission was created with a good purpose in mind. But whatever good purpose there was in the beginning was apparently lost when it was placed under the supervision of the MMDA. By design, the Commission was supposed to be an operating agency as I understand it, but why was it placed under an agency that was supposed to be non-operating?

It also appears that the Laguna Lake Development Authority (LLDA) was created with a good purpose in mind. As it was created however, did it occur to the planners at that time that the lake could not be cleaned without cleaning the rivers? That the rivers could not be cleaned without cleaning the lands around it, and the mountains above it too? Did it occur to them that the Pasig River is connected to Laguna Bay and the Pasig River eventually leads to Manila Bay?

Several environmentalist groups are now fighting a plan to dredge the Pasig River with the intention of dumping the sludge into the Manila Bay. Is this not a way of getting rid of garbage from one end of the ecosystem only to dump it into another end of the system? And why are we talking only about cleaning the Pasig River with apparently no plan to synchronize its clean up with the clean up of Laguna Bay and Manila Bay?

And why is so much attention given only to the clean up of the Pasig River? Have we forgotten that there are so many other rivers in our country that are either dead or dying? Is it because the Pasig River is more popular?

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PLANTING SEEDS FOR THE FUTURE

NO HOLDS BARRED (013) May 02, 2009
By Ike Señeres

PLANTING SEEDS FOR THE FUTURE

I find it sad to say that in the present practice of reporting the news in the mass media, it seems that news is not reported if there is no blood, no sex and no violence. We could blame that perhaps on the law of supply and demand, because the market (the readers, listeners and viewers) seem to be accustomed already to the dark side of the news.

In “Bears & Bulls”, my television program at the Global News Network (GNN), I am starting to push the argument that green companies are good investments because if companies are not green, they are bad for the economy and are, therefore bad investments. This is not really a new idea, because even the companies that used to be polluters are now turning around, realizing perhaps that they would start losing their markets not unless they mend their ways.

Pursuing the same argument, I am also saying in my show that all actions that are good for the environment should be reported as news, not just as news, but as good news. Should environment news have a demand in the market? I think so, if only the readers, listeners and viewers would realize that the good news is for their own good.

Very few people have heard of the La Salle Institute for the Environment (LIFE). In fact, very few people know that the Christian Brothers are actively doing something about the environment, and are in fact supporting moves that would result in good news for the environment. Located in a small office in far flung De La Salle Araneta University in Malabon City, LIFE is now doing big things that could end up big in the news later on.

Among the other initiatives of LIFE is a study that they are conducting, on how to tie up the existing One Million Trees (OMT) project of the De La Salle Schools to the carbon credits scheme of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) as defined in the Kyoto Protocol. LIFE is no longer talking of ideas in this case, because as of now, the OMT project has already planted more than a hundred thousand trees in around their campuses. As of now, De La Salle has 17 schools in their system, including LIFE which was given the status of a school, just to show you how serious they are.

Come to think of it, La Salle was not even thinking of CDM when they started the OMT project. That means that they had the pure intention of helping the environment with their project, not realizing perhaps that there is real money that could be made in planting trees under the carbon credits scheme.

It could just be plain coincidence, but La Salle also has another project that has the objective of raising funds so that eventually, at least half of La Salle students would be scholars from needy families. This is like history and destiny turning full circle, because this was the original purpose of Saint John Baptist de la Salle, to give education to the poor.

Putting two and two together, LIFE is now working on the framework to implement a system wide program to plant more trees, perhaps over and above the one million target, so that more money could be raised for more scholarships, considering that there is real money that could be made by producing carbon credits that could be sold in international markets.

The mechanics still have to be worked out, but conceptually, the plan is for students to plant trees that they would legally own, complete with certificates of title, because these titles would form the backbone for a system of calculating the economic values of these trees for future trading purposes.

Conceptually, what is being worked on is a system that would take on the characteristics of a futures trading system, wherein students could enroll on the guarantee that their trees would eventually earn enough for them to pay for their tuitions and other school related expenses.

In a manner of speaking, this trees-for-scholarships program could turn out to be better than a college assurance plan. To me, this is good as good news could get, more so now that the educational pre-need industry has gone through difficult times. Probably the best news so far in this regard is the news that a private company is now being formed to make sure that the carbon credits that will be produced by La Salle will be sold and turned into cash.

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A SHOWCASE OF SELF-SUFFICIENCY

NO HOLDS BARRED (012) May 01, 2009
By Ike Señeres

A SHOWCASE OF SELF-SUFFICIENCY

To some extent, it could already be said that the white Americans have already paid their historical and cultural debts to the native American Indians, as they have given the Indians the means to practically become self-sufficient in their own Indian reservations, with their own means of livelihood. Perhaps we could not yet say the same thing in the Philippines, because until now, our indigenous peoples are still living miserable lives in places where they still live together in tribal communities.

Perhaps as a consolation to ourselves, we could at least say that the legal basis to make self-sufficiency possible for our indigenous peoples already exists, thanks to the Indigenous People’s Republic Act (IPRA), a bill that was sponsored by former Congressman Ronald Cosalan and is now part of the law of the land. Ronnie was imminently qualified to sponsor the law, being himself a member of a northern tribe and being formerly the head of what is now the National Commission for Indigenous Peoples (NCIP).

Sad to say however, up to now the IPRA is just as good as a diploma on a wall to a college graduate who is unable to find a job. Up to now, our indigenous peoples still have to enjoy the benefits that the IPRA promises, further compounded by the fact that there is no law that could stop the greed of the people who continue to exploit them.

Thanks to Divine Providence, I was fortunate to have met Datu Didilusan Arroyo, the Supreme Datu of the Talaandig tribe in Bukidnon. The good news is that they have already secured their legal titles to their ancestral domains, consisting of 200 hectares in Cabalansihan, Sinuda and 35 hectares in Talakag, Pangantukan, both in Bukidnon.

Datu Didilusan was introduced to me by my friend Ric Abian, a Moslem convert and a former Assemblyman who is now actively helping the indigenous peoples in Mindanao, the Talaandig tribe included. My meeting with Datu Arroyo was providential, but it was really bound to happen as Ric had really wanted us to meet, the three of us being fellow Directors of the Halal Foundation of the Philippines. I am proud to say that I am the only Christian in the Foundation.

The Halal Foundation has a dream, and I share that dream with them. We want to establish a sustainable source of livelihood for the Talaandig people by turning their ancestral domain into modern farmlands that would produce real certified Halal food for the Moslem population in the Philippines, and eventually for export to the Middle East and to other Moslem areas.

In the course of my long conversations with Datu Didilusan, I mentioned to him my idea about building self-sufficient communities within their ancestral domains, communities that would fully benefit from integrated area development (IAD), in line with the Human Settlements Approach (HSA). I also shared with him my idea of making these communities excel in the measurements of the Human Development Index (HDI).

To my delight, Datu Didilusan not only embraced IAD, HSA and HDI, he also took warmly to my suggestion of preserving the natural forest that they are now protecting, to the point that he actually agreed not to cut any more trees there, and turning it instead into a bio-diverse source of livelihood. At that point, our discussion moved over to the planting of more trees, for the purpose of claiming carbon credits through the international Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) as defined in the Kyoto Protocol.

As luck would have it, I was also fortunate to have met some CDM experts, and they are now in the process of looking into ways of enabling the Talaandig tribe, so that they could produce, document and sell their carbon credits to the international markets.

As one surprise came after the other, I also found out that Dr. Federico Macaranas, the one who baptized me into the field of development diplomacy is now the leading expert of CDM in the Philippines, in his capacity as Executive Director of the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) Policy Center. I am proud to say that he was my boss at the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) when he was an Undersecretary there.

Much more have to be done, but I could now say that the communities in the ancestral domains of the tribe could now look forward to a better future, due to the fact that the economic forces are now working in their favor.

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TOWARDS A BIGGER ECONOMY

NO HOLDS BARRED (011) April 30, 2009
By Ike Señeres

TOWARDS A BIGGER ECONOMY

Some of the best things that happen to me are not planned. I am now the host of “Bulls and Bears”; the daily coverage of local stock trading that is a joint project of the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) and Global News Network (GNN). The show runs daily from 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM in over a hundred cable networks nationwide. In Metro Manila, you can watch it Channel 7 of Global Destiny Cable. No, you can’t watch it in Sky Cable because they only run their own in-house productions.

The good news came to me after hearing a bit of bad news that my Friday night show “Ka Iking Live” also shown on GNN would be discontinued due to some programming changes. Not feeling any remorse, I thank the GNN management for the opportunity to broadcast for so many weeks, my gratefulness coming sincerely from my heart.

Upon learning that GNN was going to offer me a better and longer time, and at prime time at that, I learned a lesson in life that good things really come from good actions. I said that because I feel that GNN management really appreciated my peaceful attitude in accepting the cancellation of my Friday night show.

You might say that I have cheap thrills, because I was really thrilled to the max when the GNN crew applauded me after the last broadcast of “Ka Iking Live”. That really surprised me, because all along, I thought that most crew members are just there for their jobs, and could not care less if a show is good or not, or if a host is worth appreciating or not.

What am I doing in a stock market show? I am a product of the UP Political Science Department, and until recently, I was doing mostly political analysis in my newspaper columns. I do recall however that in my senior year in Diliman, the focus of instruction turned to the political economy and to linkage politics, and that was perhaps my starting point in the world of economics.

I would say that the old debate or sibling rivalry between Political Science students and Economics students in UP still continues, the debate on which of the two disciplines is really the prima donna of the social sciences. Of course my bias is for Political Science, but later on I acquired an interest in economics, inspired perhaps by my active involvement in economic development over the years.

Armed with a background in economic development, I wholeheartedly embraced the discipline of development diplomacy when I became a Foreign Service Officer (FSO), since it was coincidentally the dominant practice at that time. Sad to say, the interest in this discipline has waned over the years, and very few seem to be practicing it now.

My sadness for the apparent demise of development diplomacy is actually just a sequel of my earlier disappointment over the death of the human settlements concept in this country, I say death, because I know for a fact that the succession of several administrations after Martial Law had killed it, mistaking it perhaps as a political gimmick despite its actually being a profound economic development strategy.

What good could a stock market show do for a developing country like the Philippines? It is a well known fact that there will be no Silicon Valley or no Detroit today if not for the industrial capital that was raised in the American stock markets. Capital is the fuel of the economy, and stock markets are the venues where capital is raised.

Prof. Sonny Coloma, one of my guests last week told me in the show that in Japan, many of the stock market players are housewives and taxi drivers. Is that because the Japanese people have more disposable funds to invest, or is that because they have a better understanding of how the stock market works, how they could make money from it and help their economy in the process?

My show is just one of the many television programs on the air, but because of its unique focus on the stock market in particular and in business news in general, I am hoping that it could become the means for more capital to be raised for our big industries and small enterprises, so that by way of active development communications, we could have a bigger and better economy for the betterment of the lives of our people.

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