The challenge for the new Lucena City Mayor Don-don Alcala

Dear Mayor Alcala:

First of all congratulations. The city is now finally will put behind the question of who is really the right Mayor. As a long-term Vice Mayor you know that Lucena City is facing huge challenges in order to make our hometown competitive and the people to find decent jobs.

In your first week as a Mayor may I present to you the big developmental challenges our hometown is facing: economic growth of the city has not been enough and it has not been inclusive.

Poverty reduction in the city is slow and we are not experiencing high growth compared to other CALABARZON Chartered cities, From 2000 to 2010 the proportion of poor Lucenahin seemed to be in an upward trend.

In addition, opportunities remain scarce in terms of access in decent jobs, health services and capital market. Our city's unemployment rate is not available for the public and if it is, only few people has accessed to it . I assume it is 7% comparable to the country in general.

You need all the help to make our beloved hometown address the unemployment. Here is my viewpoint for your to consider:
1. The city is not creating jobs fast enough.
2. The jobs available maybe considered as belonging to less quality job.
3. The city need to create inclusive growth that will include the poor and the marginalized.

As a concern constituent, may I suggest the following strategies for inclusive growth of Lucena City:
1. Require your think-tanks to submit recommendation for infrastructure development in the city and make sure that the marginalized barangays will be connected to city proper. Fight tooth and nail to acquire budget.
2.  Strengthen human capital development. The City should create pool of skilled persons and include the poor with a lot of potentials.
3. Provide assistance to the poor, Your think tank should provide your office a program for poverty reduction focusing on the marginalized barangays.
4. Can you provide temporary employment to unemployed Lucenahin? Please do. Have them work in your infrastructure projects NOT a pencil pusher in offices. When they work in your infrastructures they will learn skills that will make them employable later on. As I said, the poor should be part of the growth.

I see no problem in your governance because I believe it will be good. I will always pray for your success. When you transform Lucena you will also transform the future of my future grandchildren. That will be enough motivation to write you as frequently as possible.

Good luck and God bless you!

Yours truly,

Arnel L. Cadeliña

0906-2530824
arnelcadelina@gmail.com

Six Ideas for the Working Filipinos

There are lot of books that suggest that we can be happy in our chosen line of work. Some of them trumpeted that our skills and values should be aligned to our jobs in order to be happy. I have no argument on the theory but after working for two decades I came to a  conclusion that we can all be happy while doing our job. The ideas are simple and daily we are experiencing them. We can love our work and we are happy if:
  1. The people around us are nice and respectful.
  2. We are productive because our work interests us.
  3. We are not idle because we need to accomplish the tasks given to us.
  4. The monotony that envelop us is frequently broken after work by doing something else that is not align to our field,
  5. Our income commensurate to our contributions to the company.
  6. We know that we can leave a legacy that other people may benefit.

Foreign books frequently tell us that we should follow our desires in order to be happy but their circumstances are entirely different from us. The 6 ideas that I mentioned are fit for Filipinos, can be align to our temperament and can be shape by the realities of our culture.
Have a very merry November to all of my blog readers!

Arnel L. Cadeliña

MVP versus the Ateneo: How Physics works

Manuel “Manny” V. Pangilinan has severed his ties with the Ateneo de Manila University after the Jesuit-run private school issued a paper opposing mining in the country.
                                                                                 -Manila Times September 22, 2012

     Principles frequently clashed because two people or two groups are devoted to their beliefs. Mr. Pangilinan, being the CEO of PHILEX mining,  is committed to deliver excellent value to its investors, employees and other stakeholders hence he passionately espouse that mining can change the country and can contribute in creating jobs while the Ateneo calls for strengthening governance, transparency and capacity in the mining sector and for applying a moratorium on approving new mining projects until specific governance conditions for responsible mining are in place, Naturally these two principles will collide because the most basic physics principles are at work. 

      
       The mechanics of the collision between Mr. Pangilinan and the Ateneo can be described as a contact force wherein principles touch each other and the forces of both players not only have magnitudes but directions as well. We call it vectors. This brings the mining discussion as net forces. Because there is more than one force acting on the system between the two players and the mining issue, the net force is a vector sum of all the forces acting on the system. 

      
       The interesting thing about the collision of mining principles is that it involves many agendas acting as  different objects, all of which have different force vectors. According to Newton's Second Law, if Mr. Pangilinan and the Ateneo were traveling in the same speed and in this case, toward the mining issue, the players would collide and both travel in the opposite direction, this is without the consideration of the Ateneo basketball team whose small mass contributed slim to no effect on the collision.

     Mr. Pangilinan and the Ateneo are not alone in experiencing the basic Physics law. Harvard alumnus Ted Kaczynsk ( the unanbomber) versus Harvard University as well as Cornell University versus Adidas. They also collided because of principles.
    
        Mr. Pangilinan severed ties with the Ateneo to reduce or terminate the collision velocities while Fr. Nebres resigned from the PLDT board to help the force spread over a greater time and  make the change in momentum much smaller.  

(Mr. Arnel L. Cadeliña is an MBA alumnus of Ateneo) 

Thank you for picture from http://www.ucd.ie/physics/lhcb/lhc/lhc.html

Online stock buying

    It's been several months since my last blog. I am too busy writing researches and only last night I squeezed some time to write about this article.
    Many researches confirmed that in general we as a people possessed low savings and an openness to incur consumer debts. Only a small percentage of Filipinos are aware that we need to save more and cut down on credit card debts and instead look for an  opportunity to obtain passive income. One avenue of earning aside from our salary is to trade stocks online. The number of individual investors who trade stocks online has significantly increased in recent years. One company that recently introduced their online investing is First Metro Securities, the subsidiary of Metrobank.
    
    
First Metro Sec is offering a free seminar on on-line stock buying in the following dates:


Oct. 1, 2, 8,  9, 15, 16, 22, 23, atTraining Room of First Metro Securities, 18th floor, PSBank Building, 777 Paseo de Roxas Avenue, corner Sedeno street, Makati City.

Good luck!

The Ateneo President's message on the Ateneo professors and the RH bill

 The Ateneo President's message on the Ateneo professors and the RH bill

date posted: 2012-08-21 12:30:09

20 August 2012

Memo to:       The University Community

Subject:          HB 4244

Together with our leaders in the Catholic Church, the Ateneo de Manila University does not support the passage of House Bill 4244 (The Responsible Parenthood, Reproductive Health and Population and Development Bill).  As many of these leaders have pointed out, the present form of the proposed bill contains provisions that could be construed to threaten constitutional rights as well as to weaken commonly shared human and spiritual values.

Now that the period for amendments is about to begin, I enjoin all in the Ateneo community to continue in-depth study of the present bill, and to support amendments to remove provisions that could be ambiguous or inimical from a legal, moral or religious perspective.

In connection with this, I call attention to the 192 members of our faculty who have grappled with the underlying issues in the context of Catholic social teaching, and who have spoken in their own voice in support of the bill.  Though the University must differ from their position for the reasons stated above, I appreciate their social compassion and intellectual efforts, and urge them to continue in their discernment of the common good.  As there is a spectrum of views on this ethical and public policy issue, I ask all those who are engaged in the Christian formation of our students to ensure that the Catholic position on this matter continues to be taught in our classes, as we have always done.

Should the bill with whatever amendments be passed, we should neither hesitate to bring to the judiciary whatever legal questions we may have nor cease to be vigilant in ensuring that no coercion takes place in implementation.

If there is no easy answer to the concerns that the proposed bill raises or no facile unanimity among divergent views, this only proves the complexity, depth, and sensitivity of these concerns.  Nevertheless, Catholic tradition has always taught that reason and faith are not enemies but allies in the service of God’s truth.  From this tradition, we can draw strength and compassion in our often tortuous journey as persons in community toward the greater glory of God and the service of God’s people.

Jose Ramon T Villarin SJ

President

see original link below:

Ateneo de Manila University

FOR THE LOVE OF THE COUNTRY : JUNK THE RH BILL

This is my position paper in the proposed RH bill which is now near approval. I am stating here my objections many of which concerns economics:

 1. Population and economic growth has insignificant association. As early as 1966, the 1971 Nobel Prize winner Simon Kuznets studied 63 developed and developing countries from the early 1950s to 1964 and concluded that there was little empirical association between growth rates of population and output per capita, especially within the developing country bloc (Kuznets 1967, 1973). Kuznets saw the basic obstacles to economic growth as arising from delays in adjusting social and political institutions, and viewed population growth, though an impediment, as of secondary importance (ibid., p. 39). 

       

2. Even without the RH bill the fertility rate in the country is falling. According to the study of Costello and Casterline, the total fertility rate of the Philippines has shown a small but steady decline from 1950s to the present. Women are having fewer children; the birthrate is currently at an average of 3.19, a figure that has held firm for several years.

3. Economic growth shaped the desired family size without intervention from the government. The study of Orbet and Pernia (1999) conclude that further declines in desired family size may require well-targeted human capital investments along with employment-generating economic growth especially formal sector employment for women. On this premise, if the Philippine economy will offer more opportunity and security we can expect families to desire on average not to have more than two children.

4. People face trade offs. This is the first principle of economics according to Mankiw. The scenario of limiting the population the trade-offs will be that labor cost would become costlier due to increasing the cost of production. There will be more elders to tend, straining the medical and pension systems. Japan is a classic example wherein by 2025, it is expected that there will be two dependents for every three workers.  The dwindling Japanese work force would result in lower purchasing power and reduced demand for goods and services. The domestic market will shrink, production will fall, as will the Government’s revenue, forcing it to manage higher medical and pension expenses with a lower income.

5.  Natural law is superior to the law of the land. Today our country is being shaped to be liked the westernized countries whose churches are empty and who has settled for a hedonistic life of maximized pleasure and minimized pain. Once this RH bill becomes a law, the promotion of assisted suicide and euthanasia are not far behind. In the west there are clinics who practice abortions and euthanasia legally. They have perfected the negative attitude about life  As person with faith, the writings of Pope Paul VI, in Humanae vitae, stated that, “If, then, there are serious motives to space out births, which derive from the physical and psychological conditions of husband and wife, or from external conditions, the Church teaches that it is then licit to take into account the rhythms immanent in the generative functions for the use of marriage in the infecund periods only and, in this way, to regulate births without offending the moral principles which had been recalled earlier.”(5) Pius XII (1938-58) taught that unless some serious circumstances arise, spouses are obliged to have children. However, he also taught that it is moral for the spouses to limit their family size, or even to refrain from having children altogether, if they have sufficiently serious reasons.

JUNK THE RH BILL!

For the love of our country,

ARNEL L. CADELIñA

SOURCES:
http://www.eilatgordinlevitan.com/pinsk/pinsk_pages/pinsk_stories_ss_kuznets.html
 http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/completingfertility/RevisedCOSTELLO-CASTERLINEpaper.PDF
 http://catholicinsight.com/online/features/article_917.shtml
 http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/upiansonrhbill/signatures

LUCENA CITY INCOME

 In our continuation of dissecting the National Statistical Coordination Board report, the "Filipino Investor by Arnel L. Cadeliña " focuses on the income data and % share of each Calabarzon Cities and then applied the necessary statistics.


Here are the findings:


1. The CALABARZON city with the highest income is Calamba City.
2. The CALABARZON city with the lowest income is Tayabas City with a rank of 11 out of 11.
3. Lucena City ranked 6th out of 11.
4. Batangas City who ranked 3rd has income of 45% more than Lucena City.
5. Sta. Rosa City who ranked 2nd has income of 58% more than Lucena City.

.This data will help policy makers and researchers interested in Lucena City

Lucena City Population by 2015

The recent statistics on the Philippine economy was released last May 2012 by the National Statistical coordination Board and  “The Filpino Investor by Arnel L. Cadeliña” culled the data that focuses on Lucena City and applied the necessary statistics   

By focusing on Lucena City and compare it with other cities in the CALABARZON, here are the findings that are useful locally:

    1.  In CALABARZON selected cities, Lucena City ranked fifth in

            terms of population.

    2.   The average increase of population in Lucena City is 1.66% per

          annum.

     3.   By 2015, Lucena City is projected to have a population of 254,

           215.

     4.   In 2015, the Lucena City  population of 254, 215 will live in

           an area of about 8,316.90 hectares or 83,169,000 square 

            meters. This means 327 square meters per person. 

This data will help policy makers and researchers interested in Lucena City.

Arnel L. Cadeliña

World Education Congress confers Business Leadership Award on Ateneo Graduate School of Business (AGSB)

 World Education Congress confers Business Leadership Award on Ateneo Graduate School of Business (AGSB)
date posted: 2012-07-17 09:27:13


For the second time in a row, AGSB received another accolade for business leadership given in Mumbai, India last June 29. This award was given by the World Education Congress Global Awards for Excellence in Education, Leadership, and Teaching.

 This is in recognition of AGSB’s pre-eminence and leadership in the offering of dynamic and responsive MBA programs to its practitioner-based constituents, adult learning teaching methods, and state-of-the-art facilities for both online and classroom teaching.

Dr. Mansibang, APS Registrar received the award in the form of a Trophy and a Citation for AGSB held at Taj Lands Mumbai Ends Hotel. The international gathering saw many global university and education leaders congregate in this Indian City to recognize the achievements of universities, education officials, and teachers.

Last year, AGSB also was also awarded as the Best Business School in Innovation Leadership held in Singapore under the auspices of CMO Asia Best Business Schools Awards.

 
Ateneo de Manila University

Amando M. Tetangco,Jr.

Laurence Neville said that the origins of a country's growth are political and social forces- and possibly luck in having the right leaders.  

The Philippines is being lucky to have   Amando M. Tetangco, Jr. at the helm as Governor of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas since July 2005.
He was cited in 2011 as having the highest grade of A in the Global Finance Annual Central Banker Report Cards. No head of Central Banks from The Americas and Europe received a Grade of A. The recognition validates his expertise on controlling inflation, achieving economic growth goals, stabilizing the Peso, manage interest rates and standing up to political interferences.


Under his term the Philippines as an emerging market was recognized as possessing  the characteristics necessary to join the elevated heights of of the BRICs ( Brazil, Russia, India and China). Two leading financial institutions have devised new groupings of countries , Goldman Sachs invented the Next Eleven (N11) Citi coined 3G or the Global Growth Generators both include the Philippines (Global Finance, December 2011).

The GDP of the Philippines grew 7.7% to P2.42 trillion  and the inflation from January-March 2012 was a low 3.1% (Business World (June 2, 2012).


Mr. Tetangco said yesterday that "BSP is ready to make adjustments as needed to ensure a non-inflationary growth environment.mindful of the external rsiks, particularly the weakness in the Euro zone, tentative growth in the US and slowdown in China".

The noise of politics are always in the headlines but the good news as recognizing Mr. Tentagco for his outstanding work of stabilizing our financial system and for making difficult and controversial decisions under trying circumstances we rarely heard in the evening news.

Am I who belong to the only few who noticed his miracle work?

Arnel L. Cadeliña
Director-Research and Development
Sacred Heart College-Lucena City
email: lenra1967@yahoo.com
blog: nelcadelina.blogspot.com