Will Boracay be RP’s new summer capital?

I was in Boracay Island for the weekend to cover the Panay-Boracay Interconnection Project (PBIP) of the Department of Energy and the National Transmission Corporation (TransCo) at the Boracay Regency Beach Resort and Convention Center last Saturday.

This underwater cable interconnection is part of the Small Island Submarine Interconnection Development (SISID) program of TransCo, aimed at connecting the entire Visayas into one power grid. This interconnection increases the power transfer capacity to Boracay by 30MVA through a 1.6-kilometer, 69-kilovolt line, thus the island’s economic development will certainly be enhanced because after the new power substation is built on the island, Boracay will finally be "brownout-free."

The ripple effect of this project is immeasurable because henceforth all those beach resorts, stores and restaurants would no longer need generators. As of last count, Boracay has 166 big generators, which, according to TransCo’s Dr. Alan T. Ortiz, spew a noticeable amount of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere of Boracay. That also means less pollution to this tourism jewel of Panay Island… not to mention the incessant noise that generators behind those resorts make.

During the inauguration ceremonies, we were able to meet the big names in the power family — Ortiz; Rodolfo B. Albano, chairman of the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC); Fr. Francisco "Paking" Silva, presidential adviser on rural electrification; Mrs. Edith Bueno of the National Electrification Administration (NEA); Ed Mañalac of the Philippine National Oil Company (PNOC); Secretary Jess Dureza, presidential adviser on the peace process; Felix Guanzon, presidential adviser for the Visayas; and Augusto C. Tolentino of the Aklan Electric Cooperative (Akelco).

Boracay was teeming last weekend with foreign and local tourists and business was brisk not only during the day, but throughout the night. I haven’t been back here in five years and Boracay has grown by leaps and bounds. The Boracay Regency, for instance, has expanded four-fold from its original size with many other hotels sprouting like mushrooms. Yes, pardon me if I raise this question for you to ponder: will Boracay, sooner or later, replace Baguio City as the Summer Capital of the Philippines?

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Last Feb. 22, I read a story in The STAR that Negros Navigation (Nenaco) sailed to profitability in 2005. I questioned that report because the hub of the country’s domestic shipping industry is in Cebu and most of the CEOs of these shipping companies are friends of mine and when I asked them to comment on that news item, the comment I got was… that’s all hogwash!

Just to refresh your memory, this is what we wrote last Feb. 24: "Pardon me if I smell something fishy… but yes, Corporate Good Governance dictates that we should tell the public the whole truth about the condition of the corporation… not half-truths or even plain lies! It’s about time that government regulators stop corporations from bragging to the public that they’re making money… yet they still have to account for a huge ton of debts. It would seem in this case that Nenaco used the Court of Law to keep its creditors from foreclosing on them."

Indeed, the year 2005 was a tough one for the shipping industry because of record highs in the cost of bunker fuel. But not for Nenaco, according to its chairman and CEO Sulficio Tagud Jr., who claimed that they had a net profit of P17 million for that year! Of course, we questioned that figure; after all, the same report gave an account of how much Nenaco owed its creditors.

Again, sound business practice dictates that one can only declare a profit when his company is already cleared of debts. But then, Tagud isn’t really using sound business practices. In fact, this is the first time he ever handled a shipping company and yet, he beat even the old-timers in the shipping industry by supposedly turning his company into the black.

Last March 29, another Nenaco news release was reported in the Manila Times, about its plan to offer lower rates in order to compete with the rest of the shipping industry. In the same article, it finally revealed the truth, "Nenaco, the shipping unit of Metro Pacific Corp., posted a net loss of P126 million in 2005." Wait a minute! Didn’t The STAR just come out with a story only last Feb. 22 that Nenaco posted a profit of P17 million? What happened to that profitability story for the year 2005, which was just two months ago? Was this mere media propaganda?

If there’s anything that makes the day for a columnist, it is when you wrote something and later you can say, "I told you so!" If there’s anything I can say for Jun Tagud, he has a lot of friends in the media who blindly peddle his lies! But when it is the time for telling the truth… the story is even buried under the heading of their scheme to lower their fares.

Let me point out that we have a sick nation, made sicker by greedy politicians. Thanks, though, to the private sector for balancing things out. However, the private sector, too, has its share of bad eggs and what pains me so is that Nenaco has used our courts to protect itself from its creditors and I don’t know why Monico Jacob has kept his silence on Nenaco’s shenanigans! Perhaps, he is not aware that the government also lost P400 million in unpaid taxes to the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR). Surely this raises a lot of eyebrows!

Perhaps the final nail in Nenaco’s embarrassing chapter is Tagud’s plan to sell four of the company’s vessels so they could refleet. But how can they even pay this refleeting when they are cutting fares just to grab market share? In a March 24 news report, Nenaco was planning to set aside P120 million for drydocking. Let me point out that the drydocking industry is a very small industry… shipyard owners talk to each other and surely they know that Nenaco did not pay its drydocking debts to Tsuneishi Heavy Industries in Balamban, Cebu to the tune of P158,289,753. Perhaps, they were making great scores in media management, but zero on integrity!

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.thefreeman.com. He also hosts a weekly talkshow, "Straight from the Sky," shown every Monday, at 8 p.m., only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 of SkyCable.