Now, this is interesting. In 2006, the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) spent only P45 million out of its net income of P1.258 billion for worker loans and seminars. Last year’s numbers are not yet out although OWWA did put up another reintegration center in Intramuros grandly called the National Center for overseas Filipino workers (OFW) that not many people know about and whose leadership has see-sawed between OWWA and its mother agency, the Department of Labor.

During the same year (read: 2007), the Development Bank of the Philippines put up its own OFW reintegration program. The money set aside of P1 billion finances OFWs, who want to put up their own Internet café.

Oh yes, OWWA has P9 billion in trust funds accumulated from the collection of membership fees since 1995. Now, the interest from that trust fund alone is truly humongous and, uhm, largely unspent.

Did you know 1: With the $10,000 prize money as UPS’ Centennial Year winner for best out-of-the box small business in the world, Binalot Fiesta Foods Inc. president Rommel Juan now has the seed money to put up a non-government organization to further help 30 families in Laguna.

Right now, these families supply Binalot with banana leaves. The new NGO wants to teach them to make other things from banana such as catsup and chips.

Did you know 2: The Chinese government is looking for raw land equivalent to a plantation or two to plant cassava. The idea here is to export the entire harvest back to China.

Thanks to agrarian reform, however, there aren’t that many large tracts of land available, even in Mindanao.

Globe Telecom president and chief executive officer Gerardo Ablaza Jr. has probably never bothered to use his own company’s supposedly good-as-cash product called g-Cash.

Here are two horror stories.

One took place in the Globe Hub in Rockwell Center just before lunch.  It seemed the cashier had a cash inventory based on bill payments. Said another way, there was no available cash to disburse because nobody was paying his or her bills in cash. The cashier said optimistically there might be cash sometime in the afternoon (read: come back). Then again, when the store manager faced the irate customer, there was, after all, cash to disburse (read: the manager had already counted the money for deposit in Bank of the Philippine Islands and just didn’t want to have to do it all over again).

The second one took place in the Globe Hub in Greenhills at start of business at 10 a.m. This time, the cashier said she could not disburse cash because the hub was experiencing system downtime (read:  ho-hum, come back in the afternoon). No, she didn’t know whether other centers were experiencing the same problem nor was she inclined to post a sign outside that g-Cash transactions could not be completed as a service to future customers.  When pressed for a person or number to complain to, it turned out the transaction could be done manually but, hey, the cashier would have had to encode that in her records only when the system is working.

BROADCASTING giant GMA Network Inc. has accused long-time rival ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corp. of false and malicious allegations of television ratings manipulation in a civil suit and is asking for P15 million in damages and fees.

San Miguel completes Boag sale

FOOD and beverage giant San Miguel Corp. (SMC) has completed the sale of its premium Tasmanian brewer J. Boag & Son to Lion Nathan Ltd.

SANTIAGO-Owned Philippine Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (PT&T) said a frequency test it ran through its network may have caused the signal interference problem experienced by Sun Cellular.

FILIPINO IT startups can coax further growth by partnering with global software companies, an IT industry executive said.

STOCKS declined on Thursday, with the index posting its worst day in more than two months, on concern the US is headed for recession after manufacturing dropped the most in five years and oil prices reached a record.