Won in a million

To the bright boys of our leader Benigno Simeon (aka BS), when we get some good news from foreign credit rating agencies, such as the recent “investment grade” given by Moody’s Investor Service, all the credit belongs to our leader, BS.

Listen to one of the Palace lackeys: “It (the Moody’s rating upgrade) is a continuation of the confidence that the international community has in the fiscal management of President Aquino and his team.”

In the business community, however, everybody knows that our leader BS hardly bothered with economic policies since the time he occupied Malacañang three years ago, much less dirty his hands in “fiscal management.”

To be sure, the credit upgrades given to the country in succession in the past six months by the “big three”—namely, Standard & Poor’s in March, Fitch Ratings in May, and Moody’s recently—elicited positive feed backs from the business sector.

But, except for a few sycophants of our leader, BS, many are not ready as yet to bite the line from Malacañang that our leader, BS, and his economic team, on their own, actually brought about the good economic prospects for the country.

Look, boss, the boys of our leader BS already declared his economic policies as a “success.” Well, we already got those credit upgrades. Wow!

In the business sector, economic analysts are already starting to wonder if our economic growth figures are accurate, as they did more than 7 percent annual growth.

One distortion in the figures, for instance, should be the effect of the massive smuggling on the GDP computation.

Never mind also that the business community has been dying to see even just a little progress in all those infrastructure projects that the Aquino (Part II) administration proudly paraded in the past three years.

Question: will those good credit ratings actually bring this country anywhere? From what I gathered in the business sector, business confidence is hardly won through credit ratings alone, because there are actually a million and one things that can put down such confidence.

The rating upgrades might boost business confidence, but influential business groups noted that some “negative developments” were starting to discourage big business ventures in the country.

In the energy sector, everybody is anticipating a power shortage in Luzon by 2016. People are now thinking of the total paralysis of the metropolis due to monstrous traffic jams—every day. Fear now hovers in business over the worsening water crisis due to the brilliant measures of the MWSS to kill its own concessionaires.

The social media, meanwhile, continues to show the wide and deep frustrations, both here and abroad, top-level graft and corruption in this administration that still brandishes its straight-and-narrow-path propaganda.

Indeed, the boys of our leader BS are still trying to deflect the flak in mainstream media over the pork barrel scandal away from the Palace. It seems the administration has indeed reasons to worry about this public anger over the so-called “disbursement acceleration program (DAP).”

This is the pork-style fund release done by Malacañang, which was actually concocted by the Department of Budget and Management, or the DBM, which the business sector saw as the issue that could puncture the anti-corruption sloganeering of our leader, BS.

Even retired Chief Justice Reynato Puno publicly talked about it for the “One Million People March Movement,” which certainly would fuel public disgust, particularly over what Puno called “the evils of PDAF and DAP.”

From what I gathered, organizers of the “million march” are linking up with other civil society sectors to mount joint protest activities throughout the year, to pressure Malacañang and Congress to give up their separate “pork,” whatever they are officially called.

One influential group, the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines-International Trade Union Confederation (Tucp-Ituc), backed Puno in his call to abolish all forms of “pork.”

In Cebu City, a group called the Cebu Coalition against the Pork Barrel System—which claimed to have some 70 member-organizations—said it would solicit at least 5.7 million signatures nationwide against the pork system in the legislature and the executive branches.

Yet the boys of our leader BS insisted that the “pork” issue (i.e. both the PDAF and the DAP) would not hurt him, although we already see posters in the streets portray our leader, BS, Senate President Franklin Drilon and Budget Secretary Florencio Abad, as wanted criminals.

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In this country, the crooks try to smuggle all sorts of things—even fake items like signature handbags and medicine.

So, during the Christmas season, which in this country is normally celebrated for four months, Customs Commissioner Ruzzano Rufino Biazon promises that the Bureau of Customs, or BOC, would take extra effort to curb smuggling of flour, onion, garlic, chicken and meat products.

According to Biazon, these products are among the favorite items smuggled into the country by big-time syndicates, and they happen to be sensitive items, bringing with them possible risks to public health.

For instance, while the customs bureau put up systems to check outright smuggling of the infamous sub-standard flour from Turkey, the importers simply asked their principals abroad to slash prices even way below production cost.

It meant that the importers could engage local flour makers in a price war and expect to win. By the time the local companies would be dead, the suppliers of flour from Turkey would have close to a monopoly of our market.

Now in his campaign for stricter BOC monitoring of those imported food items during the holidays, Biazon is also taking risks. For one, in the clampdown on the smugglers, he must ensure not to delay the release of legitimate shipments of those food items. Look, boss, food items are highly perishable.

In the past, Biazon met with legitimate meat importers, detailing to them the entire process at the BOC for the release of their products.

“We shall handle the entry processing of imported meat products with utmost speed, care and attention as we know that these items have to get to the market as soon as possible,” he said.

Then there is the matter of health. Biazon also said the BOC must also “ensure that these are all properly documented, the corresponding taxes paid and, most importantly, these are fit for human consumption.”

Remember, ladies and gentlemen, “fit for human consumption” was also one of the big issues against the substandard flour imported from Turkey, and the Bureau of Food and Drugs (Bfad) actually made a lot of noise about the possible harm from contaminated food items like the Turkish flour.

In Cebu, by the way, the BOC recently caught a big haul of imported fake blue pills called “Viagra,” which were sold at only P150 per box of four pills, although the real ones made by multinational drug firm Pfizer cost P3,500 per box of four.

Guess what—just a couple of months ago, Biazon and his boys also caught a businessman (based in Caloocan City) trying to smuggle a submarine from South Korea into the country.

Really, what will those crooks think of next?