RETIRED general Edgar B.Aglipay, chairman of the Philippine Retirement Authority (PRA), presents the PRA accomplishment report for 2006. For this year, the PRA is shifting from real estate-centric to health care-centric retirement services. Also in photo is Ernesto Ordoñez, president of the Philippine Retirement Institute. --Nonie Reyes

THE Philippine Retirement Agency (PRA) is targeting to attract at least 3,000 foreign retirees to settle in the country this year as the agency gives more effort in convincing multinational firms to make the Philippines the alternative destination for their retirees.

Retired colonel Fernando Francisco, PRA general manager, said a team from his agency recently went to Tokyo to meet with executives of big companies like Honda, Mitsubishi, Marubeni and Fujitsu and asked them to offer the Philippines as retirement location to their senior employees.

Should a good number of their senior personnel express their desire to retire in the Philippines, Francisco said these companies will also be the ones to build their own retirement facilities here.

Francisco said this strategy of wholesale corporate marketing is more effective than merely luring retirees to live here on an individual basis.

Other countries like Thailand, currently the top destination for retirees, are now also doing this corporate marketing strategy.

Last year, Francisco said the PRA registered 1,271 foreign retirees who secured the special resident retiree’s visa (SRRV), almost all of them coming here individually.

The trend, however, is expected to shift by the middle of next year to more corporate retirees as foreign firms have committed and are starting to build retirement facilities in the country.

Korean Sehyun Development Corp. is preparing the groundwork for its retirement village in Nasugbu, Batangas, while Asiana, a subsidiary of Marubeni, is spending $50 million for its retirement community project on Roxas Boulevard.

Aside from attracting new foreign retirees to settle here, Francisco said they are also trying to have the so-called underground retirees already living in the country to avail of the PRA program and secure their SRRV instead of using temporary visas.

Francisco said there is an estimated one million foreigners settling in the country, about 100,000 of them Koreans, but only 5,000 of them are registered with the PRA so far.

These underground retirees, he said, will find it more economical to secure SRRV if they really intend to live in the country than having to renew their temporary visas regularly and from time to time leave the Philippines as their visas expire.

THE Department of Agriculture (DA) disclosed Wednesday that Brunei is keen on investing at least P500 million for a plant that will manufacture halal foods.

THE Philippine Retirement Agency (PRA) is targeting to attract at least 3,000 foreign retirees to settle in the country this year as the agency gives more effort in convincing multinational firms to make the Philippines the alternative destination for their retirees.

UNLESS new power plants are built in Mindanao, the island-region could face a power shortage of 57 megawatts by 2009, which is enough to black out two of its provinces, Saidamen B. Pangarungan, chairman of Lanao Hydropower Development Corp. (LanaoHydro), told reporters Wednesday.

AUSTRALIAN mining firm Lafayette Mining Ltd (LML) has completed a $15-million convertible note issue, the first of a series of financial inflows that are expected to pour into the mining industry as a direct result of government’s decision to allow the company to resume the commercial operations of its Rapu-Rapu Polymetallic Project in Rapu-Rapu, Albay.

FIRE strikes anywhere and when it does, it devastates, taking away lives and property.  Fire does not discriminate – from the lowly citizen to the most influential man in the country—both have to reckon with its fury.