Pinoy soap in Kenya

Did you know 1: If we are importing TV soaps from Taiwan, Korea, and Mexico, we are also exporting our own to Africa.

Why, that telenovela (I forget which one because they all have similar titles hinting of unrequited love) with actress Kristine Hermosa in it is now being shown on Kenyan TV.

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Did you know 2: Sales of cement – a quick indicator of construction activity – has grown by 15 percent, year-to-date.

Mind you, the increase is not due to government pump-priming projects but to individual homes largely funded by dollar remittances.

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Every chance he gets, Energy Secretary Vicente Perez Jr. flies to El Nido in Palawan to visit his environmentalist-wife. More often than not, National Power Corp. has been very kind in lending their executive jet to Vince Perez for these frequent trips.

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Bank notes: Call it hair-slitting but government (through Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp. president Ricardo Tan) is now entitled to eight nominees in United Coconut Planters Bank and government (through Presidential Commission on Good Government chairman Haydee Yorac) is entitled to seven nominees.

Before the bank's recently approved rehabilitation program, PCGG nominated all 15 directors to the board.

And that's now become a, uh, slight problem because some of the current directors have been asked to resign and are taking their sweet time doing it.

The timetable is for two directors to resign ASAP so that PDIC senior officers Rosalinda Casiguran and Noemi Javier can join the board by the end of the month.

The next batch involving three directors will, hopefully, give way soon, certainly before the end of the year, to former Education Secretary Armand Fabella, former Bankers Association of the Philippines president Deogracias Vistan, and former Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. senior officer Ruben Almendras.

The five will join the three PDIC nominees already on board. These are Edward Go, who was at one time the industry's youngest president when he got the job at China Banking Corp.; Norberto Nazareno, who was a former PDIC president; and Jose Querubin, who was the former regional head for corporate services of Bank of America.

Of the eight PDIC nominees, only Mr. Fabella is a non-banker.

Sonny Vistan, Boy Nazareno, Eddie Go, and Jojo Querubin cut their teeth at Citibank.

At one time, Mr. Nazareno was the boss of Rose Casiguran and Ms. Javier.

Before that, Mr. Nazareno succeeded Mr. Go as president of the Laurel-owned Philippine Banking Corp., which was then purchased and absorbed by Global Business Bank, a subsidiary of Metropolitan Bank and Trust Co. Mr. Go moved to Asian Banking Corp., which was also eventually purchased by Global Bank.

As everybody knows, Global Bank has since been absorbed by Metrobank and no longer exists. So has SolidBank, whose last president was Mr. Vistan.