Of tortellini and T-bills

Former National Treasurer Eduardo Sergio "Boy" Edeza has many things he can be proud of aside from whipping up mouth-watering tortellini which has become a special attraction during his birthday celebrations.

As the national treasurer, Edeza had raised the nation’s funding requirements at minimal cost, earning for himself a reputation as a savvy negotiator for the government.

Edeza is also known in the financial market for his toughness, especially against financial institutions that have tried to push the cost of the government’s domestic borrowings.

Edeza’s stints as a regulator and a market mover prepared him well for his role as national treasurer which he assumed on Feb. 16, 2001, replacing Prof. Leonor Briones.

As national treasurer, Edeza instituted reforms in the Bureau of Treasury.

Under Edeza’s watch, the Bureau of Treasury’s income performance improved considerably, especially in 2003. The Bureau of Treasury has also consistently been awarded by the Bureau of Internal Revenue as the top tax payer of its division. The Bureau of Treasury’s operating cost has also been kept down; in 2002 it saved around P20 billion in interest payment.

A De La Salle BS Commerce graduate, Edeza is also a certified public accountant. He took up an advanced bank management program at the AIM and chalked up an MA in Business Administration at De La Salle. He was accepted in 1997 at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University for an 11-month Master’s Degree Program in Public Policy and Administration.

In November last year Edeza was re-elected to a two-year term as president of the World Association of Debt Management Offices (WADMO). WADMO is an international organization based in Geneva and is funded by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

Because of the reforms he instituted at the Bureau of Treasury and his work at the Bangko Sentral, Edeza has been nominated in this year’s search for outstanding public officials and employees by the Civil Service Commission.

Today, Edeza faces an altogether different challenge as president and CEO of the Philippine Export Import Credit Agency or PhilExim. He hopes that with the full support and endorsement of lawmakers, he can convert this into a full-fledged eximbank authorized to open up letters of credits and other lending facilities to help the country’s exporters and small and medium enterprises.

Despite a hectic schedule, Edeza still finds time to whip up his favorite tortellini pasta. For Edeza, after all, life is no good unless one can have one’s tortellini and eat it, too.

Bocelli: A Postscript

I received the following letter from a reader named ‘Raymond’ who watched Andrea Bocelli’s concert at the Araneta Coliseum Friday night, and in the interest of fairness (I can’t presume that everyone had the same grand experience that I had), I am printing it in full.

I read your column regarding the Bocelli concert and would like to share the experience of those in the P500 section. While I likewise commend Rose Marie Arenas for putting her reputation and personal fortune on the line in order to ensure that the world-class tenor perform in the Philippines, those who could only afford to buy the cheapest tickets to the concert did not have such an enjoyable experience as that described in your column. Aside from the horrendous traffic within the Araneta Center due to the lack of any traffic rerouting scheme to accommodate the thousands of people flocking to Cubao in time for the concert, many other snags were evident in the P500 section. Ironically, security was lax for this section, wherein cell phones and even food were allowed into the stadium. No marshals were present in the area to discipline those in this area. If someone had planned to launch a terrorist attack during the show, such as to hurl a grenade toward the stage, he would have succeeded if he had been in the P500 section.

As a result of the lack of regulations for the P500 section, people were noisily eating and slurping on their drinks during the concert as if what we were watching were a PBA game. One person seated near me was making noises with his mouth and teeth as he strove to rid his tooth of the bits of the hotdog he had just ate, ignoring the irritated stares of the people around him. Drinks were spilled and food wrappers were littered all over the concrete bleachers. There were also two people next to me talking during most of the songs as well as the pieces of the orchestra, and they were also texting and talking on their cell phones.

Instructions were likewise not given to refrain from applauding during the songs and instead to only do so between songs so as not to spoil the experience for the other people. If Rose Marie Arenas truly wanted the show to appeal to the masa crowd, she should have educated them as to the proper behavior to be observed during an opera concert.

While I knew I couldn’t expect that the P500 section be as comfortable as the more expensive sections, what I did expect was that the quality of the experience as a whole would at least be comparable as to those watching closer to the stage. But instead, it seemed as if some of the people in the P500 section couldn’t care less about what they were watching. Many of the articles describing the preparations for the event stressed that Arenas made sure that the sound quality reaching the cheapest section would be the same as those in the front. This was clearly not the case as the sound was rather muffled to those in the P500 section. As someone who enjoys listening to Bocelli but couldn’t afford to buy the P2,000 tickets (the next cheapest ticket) for me and my girlfriend with whom I watched, I was extremely disappointed with how the organizers neglected the P500 section. I guess I’ll have to wait till I earn enough money to watch Bocelli live from an appreciable distance.

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In fairness to Rose Marie "Baby" Arenas, who moved heaven and earth (and about P100 million of her own funds) to bring Bocelli to Manila, the conduct of the audience during such a concert should no longer be her concern. Parents, teachers and media should help cultivate finesse in concert and theater-goers. Baby had enough problems of her own prior to the concert and they were major problems!

"I did not get support from big business and not much help from government," she said at a thank you lunch for the press yesterday at the Mandarin Oriental in Makati City, whose general manager Helmut Gaisberger laid out the red carpet for Bocelli and his entourage during their five-day stay. Baby had hoped government would have helped secure Bocelli, for after all, if anything had happened to the world-renowned tenor during his stay here, it would have been a black eye for Philippine tourism.

"Imagine what that would have cost us!" Baby exclaimed. She had to call on her friends in the military to help her secure Bocelli. Jaguar, on the other hand, took care of Bocelli’s transportation while in the country. (Other sponsors include ABS-CBN, Globe Telecom, the Mandarin Oriental, Stores Specialists, Ralph’s, Segafredo and Nestle.) Baby also had hoped for some expression of hospitality from the Department of Tourism, especially since Bocelli wanted so much to "experience" the country’s various attractions, especially Pagsanjan Falls.

"He so loves the feel of wind and water against his face," Bocelli’s assistants told Baby. The morning after his concert, Bocelli was off on a Jaguar to Pagsanjan with his manager and a staffer of the Mandarin Oriental as instant tour guide.

According to Baby Arenas’ niece Marilen, Bocelli so enjoyed shooting the rapids and was thrilled that even the bangkeros and the children loitering by the falls kept shouting, "Bocelli! Bocelli!"

He stayed the whole day in Pagsanjan, his companions were afraid they would be late for their dinner with the Italian ambassador.

And that’s not all. The following day, a Sunday, Bocelli was off to Nasugbu, Batangas, where Baby Arenas hosted an all-Filipino picnic lunch in her beach house.

The minute he got off the car, he knelt on the beach, scooped some sand with his hand and smelled it. Clad in red swimming trunks, the 6 ft. 3 in. blind tenor then rushed to the waters, shouting to his companions (including his girlfriend Veronica), "Wait for me, wait for me!"

Before he left the country, he told Baby, "I don’t usually like traveling far (it took him 16 hours of non-stop flying to get to Hong Kong from Rome, and another two hours from Hong Kong to Manila), "But this was worth the trip!"

(You may e-mail me at [email protected])