16 pounds in five weeks

Trade Secretary Juan Santos has lost 16 pounds in five weeks, the result of a low-carbohydrate diet, silly, not the job.

Mind you, Johnny Santos lost those pounds without exercise. He hasn’t played golf since he joined government. Too many things to do, you see.

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As chairman of the Philippine National Oil Co., former Energy Secretary Vicente Perez Jr. has remained an industry heavyweight, with all the perks but without the aggravations of being a public official.

The job also gives Vince Perez more time to enjoy El Nido, the Palawan-based resort managed by the company of wife, Leigh Talmadge.

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How long does it really for a member of the Social Security System to get his/her so-called ‘smart ID card’?

The standard promise is a month, inclusive of mailing through the postal system. In practice, it’s two months and counting.

Uhm, it’s not exactly clear whether the backlog is at the SSS (where the process of having your photo taken and encoding personal data is tedious and incredibly long) or at the post office.

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Many retirement funds of major local companies invested in SM Investment Corp., largely on the hype before the Holy Tuesday listing of its initial public offering.

Why, even the children of Henry Sy, led by Teresita Sy-Coson went on several foreign roadshows to drum up interest for the IPO that tanked from day one despite the so-called oversubscription from foreign investors.

Said another way, the only winner of this IPO so far – and a big winner at that – is the Sy family.

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First, it was the shoe makers. Next month, it’s the turn of Christmas dÈcor makers.

You see, Small Business Guarantee Corp. chief executive officer Zorayda Amelia Alonzo has agreed to put up a P600,000 counterpart funding for a P1.2-million relending facility that will extend credit of between P20,000 and P100,000 to Christmas dÈcor makers and their suppliers.

While admittedly peanuts, the credit is payable in six months at a competitive interest to the end-borrower equivalent to the 91-day Treasury bill rate plus three percent.

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Two days into the international buyers show Manila FAME (organized twice a year by the Center for International Trade Expositions and Missions) that ends today, the number of buyers who has been looking at the best that Philippine exporters can offers is 31 percent higher than last year.

Now, that could mean that buyers on this particular Asian swing are looking for good bargains (read: cheap buys) or for unusual products (read: great designs that cannot be easily mass-produced by China) to tempt end-consumers in the United States, Europe, and Japan.