Swift sale

Our friend, Mr. GoNegosyo Joey Concepcion recently sealed a deal with the Century Group for the sale of RFM Corp.’s Swift meat brand for P800 million making him awash with cash once again. Joey and his family left for the United States shortly after he closed the deal with the Po family (whose brand of canned products include the popular Century Tuna) for a vacation and perhaps look for opportunities abroad to reinvest in companies outside of the Concepcion family’s food business. 

Mr. GoNegosyo has been rather busy in the past few months tying up agreements with Dole Philippines and a US-based flour company, with the latest deal reminiscent of Joey’s decision in 2001 when he decided to sell their soft drink business (Pop Cola, Sarsi) to a Coca Cola-San Miguel Corp. joint venture for P14 billion – allowing him to focus on the company’s dairy and food business – which he successfully did, making Selecta Ice Cream a byword among Filipino households. 

Joey said the decision to divest the processing and canned meat business (though the RFM meat plant in Laguna was not part of the deal) will allow him to concentrate on other businesses, among them the Fiesta and White King brands as well as the Selecta and Sunkist products. 

NPO: Rewarding failure

The Commission on Elections under chairman Sixto Brillantes is working double time to make sure that the May 2013 elections will go as smoothly as possible, even to the point of “lecturing” Filipinos on their tendency to do things at the last minute, judging from the overly long lines in voter registration centers with people beating the Oct. 31, 5 p.m. deadline. The Comelec chief’s effort to clean up the Party List system (which he has described as a “big joke”) has earned for him both praise and criticism, but majority of Filipinos welcome the effort to purge the list due to the growing perception that the Party List system has been exploited and abused by certain vested-interest groups who do not really represent the poor and marginalized sectors. 

Filipinos are looking forward to the country’s second automated elections knowing how crucial it is in putting dagdag-bawas operators “out of commission,” given the fact that the 2010 national elections, despite minor hiccups, was widely viewed as successful and credible even by international institutions like the US-based Carter Center. Which is why it is disconcerting to hear about allegations of irregularity surrounding the bidding conducted by the National Printing Office for the P780 million contract to supply and print 55 million ballots for the May 2013 elections. 

According to sources, the NPO’s Bids and Awards Committee allegedly showed undue haste in disqualifying Smartmatic and the joint venture of Advance Computer Forms, ASA Colors and ePDS (a PLDT subsidiary) to award the P780 million contract to Holy Family that partnered with Canon for the bid. Both Smartmatic and the PLDT consortium are protesting the result, alleging that the members of the BAC disqualified their bids on weak and insubstantial grounds while conveniently overlooking the fatal flaws and defects from the winning bidder. 

Previously, the NPO disqualified all the three bidders during the original bidding scheduled last Sept. 5, then reset the bidding to September 12. During the said bidding, observers said they noted certain instances allegedly showing undue preference for the Holy Family group, with the most disturbing incident witnessed during the post qualification testing where the sample ballots supplied by the winning bidder got jammed, were rejected and smudged – failing nine out of 15 times during the testing. Worse, the sample ballots from the wining bidder were of the wrong size, and six out of the eight samples did not fit the machine. So is the NPO rewarding failure now? 

Worse, Holy Family allegedly lied about its credentials, claiming that it had previous contracts worth P100 million with the Maritime Industry Authority for the printing of the Seafarer’s Identification and Record Books (SIRB) – which the Marina had denied in a September 24 letter saying it has never entered into any transaction with Holy Family since it only contracts with recognized government printers (like the NPO) for its SIRB printing requirements. 

Clearly, there is something unholy about these allegations which the Comelec and perhaps the Ombudsman should look into. Can you just imagine what will happen if the ballots supplied by the winning bidder are of the wrong size and get rejected by the PCOS machines? That would disenfranchise millions of voters, not to mention it could cause a failure of elections. 

Incidentally, we were told that the NPO chief, retired Col. Manuel Andaya and some members of the Bids and Awards Committee were subjected to an investigation by the Ombudsman last year over alleged illegal “emergency” procurement of official receipt forms that resulted in the local government of Cebu buying overpriced OR forms. In 2010, the Ombudsman ordered the dismissal of eight NPO executives for conducting a highly irregular bidding in 2009 to subcontract printing job requirements by other government agencies. 

Spy tidbit

“Frankenstorm” Sandy could turn out to be a national disaster whose aftermath could surpass the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, or equal the destruction of 9/11 with the financial heart of the US most likely to suffer, with over 370,000 people ordered to evacuate the New York area. Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and other big financial firms have shut their New York offices in anticipation of the storm, while others directed their employees to work via remote and access the company’s system through the Internet. The super-storm could possibly set back the US economy by several billions.

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