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By now,
everybody knows that the 40-hectare Entertainment City
of Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor) has
been renamed The Nayong Pilipino Manila Bay Integrated
City.
Fifteen
hectares of that project will be the relocated Nayong
Filipino theme park started more than 30 years by then
First Lady Imelda Romualdez-Marcos. The balance of 25
hectares will host gaming and resort complexes such as
the one signed by Pagcor chairman Efraim Genuino with
Alliance Global chairman Andrew Tan.
For sure
Alliance Global’s project will include a McDonald’s
branch or two, considering that Alliance Global is also
partly owned by McDonald’s master Philippine franchisee
George Yang.
****
Now
here’s a work-while-you-study program for those
interested in earning Australian dollars.
There
are two or three Davao-based learning centers that have
tied up with Australia-based companies, which provide
three-month courses on health care for the aged. The
tuition is P170,000. After the program, the graduate
applies for a student visa to
Australia
which is, mind you, readily granted.
The deal
here is the graduate will be channeled to health care
organizations in Australia that take care of the old.
And whatever he/she is paid is enough to cover the
tuition in a two-year course on community health care.
Oh yes,
one of these learning centers is now looking for office
space in Metro Manila.
****
OFW 1:
There’s
fear that what’s happening to
India’s overseas workers will also happen to our own OFWs
(overseas Filipino workers) pretty soon.
You see,
India’s workers are now choosing to stay home if the
proposed foreign work pays the monthly Philippine
equivalent of P16,000 or less. The logic here is that
kind of compensation isn’t worth the resulting family
dysfunction.
OFW 2:
There’s
talk the country cannot meet the humongous demand in
Saudi Arabia for skilled construction workers. As it is,
close to half of the one million who left last year for
Saudi Arabia were rehires and a fourth were in sea-based
industries.
Said
another way, government agencies such as the Technology
Education and Skills Development Authority, or Tesda,
have either been unable to attract young people to these
skilled jobs that are much in demand or their programs
do not meet global standards.
****
Not that
it’s unusual but the 2008-2009 officers of the Bankers
Association of the Philippines all cut their teeth at
Citibank.
Ex-Citibankers
describe BAP president and concurrent Bank of the
Philippine Islands president Aurelio Montinola III as a
wild child, once arriving to a company event in a
private helicopter, before he mellowed with age and
wife.
BAP vice
president (read: following tradition, the next president
after Gigi Montinola steps down in a year or two) is BDO
vice chairman Jesus Jacinto Jr. Sonny Jacinto is said to
be the architect behind BDO’s goal to be number one,
with the full support, of course, of chairman Teresita
Sy Coson.
BAP
corporate secretary is Philippine National Bank Omar
Byron Mier (yes, his dad loved poets Omar Khayyam and
Lord Byron), who might, sooner than later, become head
of the country’s fourth largest bank PNB after a merger
with Allied Banking Corp.
BAP
treasurer is JP Morgan Chase Philippine head Roberto
Panlilio, who is often mistaken for Montinola and who
was the protégé of the late Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas
Governor Rafael Buenaventura. Bobit Panlilio claims he’s
still working because he has a daughter taking up
medicine and another daughter in college, both of them
in the
United States. |
