The P1.2-B settlement that hasn’t been paid

Chowking Food Corp. president Rufino dela Rosa and marketing manager Virgilio Ajero have been grinning from ear to ear since flying back last Sunday from Jakarta.

Raffy dela Rosa and Jojo Ajero attended the opening of the first store in Indonesia under wholly owned subsidiary, PT Chowking International, which is headed by Froilan Manotok (whose wife just gave birth in Manila). System-wide, that’s the 320th in the Chowking chain.

So far, the numbers from Jakarta aren’t bad, even by Philippine quick service restaurant standards.

Opening day sales on March 2 totaled 10.8 million rupiah (including the value of some gift vouchers handed out to family and friends of the service crew). By March 6, daily sales climbed to 18.9 million rupiah or the equivalent of P113,500 – all from paying customers.

Based on PT Chowking’s timetable, a second store will be opened in May and a third in July. By end-2006, the Indonesian-registered company will be operating 10 stores, all company owned.

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After close to four years, the thousands of people who lent a total of P1.2 billion to Power Merge Corp. have yet to be repaid even though a settlement between Power Merge and Westmont Investment Corp., which brokered the loan for Power Merge, was signed last year.

Why, Wincorp and Power Merge even sent letters to their individual creditors, asking them to indicate their conformity to the settlement before end-October 2004.

As everybody knows, Wincorp was once chaired by John Anthony Espiritu, the former president of Westmont Bank before it was purchased by the Singapore-based United Overseas Bank. At the time of the loan, Power Merge was chaired by Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. corporate vice-chairman Cesar Virata.

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Asian Institute of Management president Roberto de Ocampo called yesterday to say that an audit committee made up of members of the faculty have looked into the Noe Ravalo case and have "found nothing anomalous or irregular". The committee completed its audit two weeks ago but have yet to formally present its findings before the entire faculty.

Bobby de Ocampo said Noe Ravalo was a service provider of the Asian Development Bank Institute in AIM-ADBI seminars. As such, how much he was paid was between him and ADBI and was not limited by the AIM compensation ceiling.

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Last week, Magsaysay Maritime Corp. president Doris Magsaysay-Ho writes that her company is looking into accredited medical clinics which require a second test for some seaman-applicants. Magsaysay Maritime, which deploys Filipino seaman to other shipping companies and cruise liners, pays only for the first medical exam of applicants.

During the same week, a lawyer representing an accredited medical clinic threatened to sue.

The day after the Feb. 22 column, the owner of the accredited medical clinic, a certain Dr. Abesamis, called and, right away, dropped the names of very important neighbors in North Greenhills.

In gist, Dr. Abesamis said the following:

Owning more than one clinic issuing a clean bill of health to workers is common in the industry; the second test, which is personally shouldered by the seaman-applicant, is done because the blood tests are tricky (e.g., if you take a soda before the test, your blood sugar naturally goes up); Dr. Abesamis personally signs all the clean bills of health addressed to Magsaysay Maritime.

In turn, I made two suggestions to Dr. Abesamis. One, that a second test might not be necessary if it is made clear to the seaman-applicant that taking certain kinds of food 24 hours before the test might negatively affect the test. Two, that she makes it clear to seaman-applicants that her office or a designated officer will entertain complaints from seaman-applicants, should they be feel that a second test is being forced upon them.