BWorld 316, MORE IPR protection

* This is my column in BusinessWorld on April 17, 2019.

Unlike physical property which is tangible, intellectual property rights (IPR) are intangible, like copyrights of songs, patents of newly invented medicine molecules, trademarks of known brands, and trade secrets. Thus, public appreciation of IPR protection is not as high as physical property protection.

A report in BusinessWorld, “Bill to be pushed strengthening intellectual property rights” (April 13, 2019) showed some data from the government Intellectual Property Office (IPOPHL) that piracy and counterfeiting of known brands were high in 2018:

“… pirated and counterfeit goods seized in 2018… worth P23.6 billion… Of the fake items seized in 2018, 85% were cigarettes.”

Compared to neighbors in the region, the Philippines ranks low in IPR protection in certain international reports. Numbers below are from three sources: (1) Property Rights Alliance’s (PRA, US) International Property Rights Index (IPRI) 2018 Report, (2) World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) 2018 report, and (3) IMF’s World Economic Outlook (WEO) 2019.

Notice the top seven countries and economies — they have higher global ranking in property rights protection (out of 125 countries), also in Patent and Trademark per million population ranking (out of 140 countries), and higher per capita income of at least $9,600 in 2018.

Middle of next month, the Geneva Network (UK) will hold a one-day seminar and meeting of some Asian free market think tanks and academics about IPR protection and trade to be held in Kuala Lumpur. And a week after, PRA (US) will hold a side event on IPR and investment promotion in Sydney during the bigger event, the 17th meeting of the World Taxpayers Association (WTA) conference.

IPR issues often crop up in public health policy debates. Like the continuing push in some Asian countries for compulsory licensing (CL) of newly invented drug molecules that are successful in controlling certain diseases. These are very expensive drugs to develop (many stages of clinical trials involving thousands of patients) and yet governments with the implicit aid of the WHO will quickly confiscate the patent and allow mass production by local generic manufacturers. This pours cold water on further medicines innovation that can help control existing and emerging diseases.

Then there are trademark-busting policies like plain packaging of certain products deemed “unhealthy” like tobacco, soda and sugary foods. Abolition of the many elaborate branding by competing companies and forcing only one generic packaging will make counterfeiting of these products so much easier. When cheap counterfeits come in, they will encourage, not discourage, more consumption of “unhealthy” products.

The “law of unintended consequences” often kicks in when the sanctity of private property is disregarded. The market-oriented reforms for efficiency (MORE) to promote public health, entice more investments and generate higher per capita income are also aimed at further protecting private property, physical or intellectual, not dishonor them.

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See also:  

BWorld 313, MORE international tourism, April 21, 2019 

BWorld 314, MORE de-bureaucratizing laws, please, April 22, 2019 

BWorld 315, MORE power supply needed: Attention ERC, April 23, 2019

Thoughts in 2006, an AFMF

In early November  2006, I suggested to some Asian free market friends the formation of an Asian Free Marketers Alliance (AFMA), or an Asian Free Market Forum (AFMF). These were my thoughts then. This image I got from a WSJ graphics, "the United States of Trade."

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The statists, politicians and bureaucrats in our continent and the rest of the world have their own formal alliances or associations, why can't free marketer groups and institutes form their own, especially in our continent?

Groups like APEC, ASEAN (now ASEAN + 6), ASEM (Asia-Europe Meeting), blocs within WTO, UN, etc., they have annual or bi-annual meetings. The politicians are spending our tax money for their expensive summit and meetings, and they decide how much trade and economic liberalization they can give or deny us.

So, why don't we form our own alliance? A formal alliance? Currently we are loosely connected through Atlas' Asian Liberty Forum, or some regional and international conferences and meetings where we bump onto each other.

If this is ok with you, here's what I have in my mind:

1) It will mainly be an alliance of organizations or institutes; for individuals who do not represent a free-marketer institute, we'll discuss their status of membership

2) it will have a board, and rotating presidency (say 1 term for a year).

3) contribution from each institute, or we'll ask "foreign aid" from Atlas or FNF or other big foundations to support a very lean regional secretariat office.

4) main activities: launch few and limited but coordinated political campaigns. for instance:

i) a coordinated campaign to pressure Asian governments and trade negotiators in the WTO for some unilateral trade liberalization.

ii) humanitarian campaign against persecuted free marketer individuals anywhere in Asia.

My friend from Delhi, Parth Shah, agreed. He said that "it's an idea worth serious thinking.  The World Social Forum (WSF) is hosting an India Social Forum this month in Delhi.  So they have WSF, the crony capitalists have the WEF, we need to start a World Liberal Forum!  Let it start from Asia and then spread to the rest of the world.”

One reason why I have thought of this is because the Philippines will host the 12th ASEAN summit this coming December. It is now regularly called "ASEAN + 6" summit – the 10 members of ASEAN + China, Japan, s. Korea, India, Australia, New Zealand.

And those summits are never cheap. They cost taxpayers of the host countries several million $ for their two-days summit, plus several days Ministerial summit on certain issues.

So I thought there is a need for a more coordinated alliance of free marketer guys and institutes from our continent, to issue at least 1 or 2 position papers, say on international trade and taxes (or migration, health, environment, etc.), that we shall raise during the ASEAN + 8 summit next month. We can disseminate our position papers to media, not only in the Phils. but in your respective countries as well.

No rallies and demos, only making our presence known and felt. No "parallel summit" either because that will be very costly too. Let the annual Atlas' Asian meeting and FNF's EFN conferences be our

loud "Asian Liberty Forum", which can possibly evolve to a "World Liberty Forum" -- in contrast with the various fora by the statists and politicians -- UN, WB-IMF joint meeting, APEC, WEF, WSF, and many others.

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Again, these were my thoughts in November 2006. We were not able to push it though. Just posting them here to retrace my thoughts more than a decade ago.

BWorld 315, MORE power supply needed: Attention ERC

* This is my column in BusinessWorld last week, April 15, 2019.

After the water shortage in many areas in Metro Manila last March, next is power shortage and brownouts in many areas of Luzon including Metro Manila this month.

Yellow alerts (insufficient and thin reserves) were issued early this month due to high electricity demand and unplanned, unscheduled outages of several power plants (boiler tube leak, piping leak, boiler slagging, other causes). Red alert (insufficient supply) was issued last Friday, April 12, and many areas in Luzon including Metro Manila experienced a 1-3-hours rotating power interruption. Below are the affected power plants, their commissioned/operation years and affected days.

Note that of the 11 power plants mentioned above, seven are above 19 years old, especially the huge Sual, Pagbilao, Masinloc and Calaca coal plants, and Malaya oil plant.

Many of our big power plants are old, especially the geothermal, oil and hydro plants: 74% of these plants in the Luzon grid are 15 years or older. Which makes them more prone to UFOs.

The Market-oriented reforms for efficiency (MORE) needed are to have more new power plants, especially the conventionals. We should depoliticize the approval process of many power supply agreements or PSAs (about 5,000 MW) that are languishing at the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC).

Last April 2, I participated in a roundtable discussion on “Challenges to the Philippines power sector” organized by the Arangkada Philippines Project (TAPP). Among the debate points was whether the Philippines has enough or insufficient generation capacity both in the short- and medium-term.

  

The series of yellow and red alerts early this month seems to suggest that there is indeed insufficient supply of stable power.

Attention, the following agencies and groups: (1) ERC, please hasten the approval process of new power plants’ PSAs. (2) Various agencies, please control your bureaucratism and hasten the permitting process of new power plants, DOE can use the new EVOSS law for this. And (3) environmentalist NGOs and anti-fossil fuel groups, you are barking at the wrong tree. Frequent brownouts will force the people to use the really non-clean power sources — candles for the poor and gensets for the rich and middle class. More candles means more fires while more gensets mean more air and noise pollution.

Stories of “collusion” among big power companies are comparable to the “Trump-Russia collusion” hoax and dishonesty.

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See also:  

BWorld 312, MORE price decline please, April 20, 2019 

BWorld 313, MORE international tourism, April 21, 2019 

BWorld 314, MORE de-bureaucratizing laws, please, April 22, 2019

Climate Tricks 79, Alarmism on 'Earth Day'

Hi environmentalists, planet saviours, tree huggers, fossil fuel haters, subsidize renewables lobbyists, etc. -- your batting average for correct prediction of climate gloom and doom for the past half century is zero. Time to calm down, ok? Cheers

Earth Day: Not a Single Environmental Prediction of the Last 50 Years Has Come True

Anthony Watts / 21 hours ago April 22, 2019

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/04/22/earth-day-not-a-single-environmental-prediction-of-the-last-50-years-has-come-true/

The original article was published here,

On Earth Day, gloomy predictions haven’t come to pass

By Nicolas Loris, Tribune News Service • April 20, 2019 10:00 am

https://bangordailynews.com/2019/04/20/opinion/contributors/on-earth-day-gloomy-predictions-havent-come-to-pass/

Population crisis, oil crisis/peak oil, food crisis/peak food, none. Population keeps expanding, but also oil, gas, coal, food production (and beer, hamburger, bacon,...) keeps expanding. We experienced global cooling, global warming, more flood, no flood, more storms, few storms, and we are fine.

Three more interesting papers:

18 spectacularly wrong predictions made around the time of first Earth Day in 1970, expect more this year

Mark J. Perry April 21, 2019 12:47 pm | AEIdeas

https://www.aei.org/publication/18-spectacularly-wrong-predictions-made-around-the-time-of-first-earth-day-in-1970-expect-more-this-year-3/

Mark J. Perry is a scholar at AEI and a professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan's Flint campus. He is best known as the creator and editor of the popular economics blog Carpe Diem.

Ending climate change requires the end of capitalism. Have we got the stomach for it?

Phil McDuff  Mon 18 Mar 2019 12.09 GMT Last modified on Mon 18 Mar 2019 12.11 GMT

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/18/ending-climate-change-end-capitalism

And a satire from Babylon Bee :-)

Al Gore Commemorates Earth Day By Using Private Jet To Write 'Save The Planet' In The Sky

April 22nd, 2019

https://babylonbee.com/news/al-gore-commemorates-earth-day-by-using-private-jet-to-write-save-the-planet-in-the-sky

Climate alarmism simply wants more government, more UN, more taxes, more regulations (environment, energy, transportation, agriculture, etc.). More global ecological central planning.

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See also:

Climate Tricks 76, Greenpeace deception model, December 23, 2018 

Climate Tricks 77, Stop human reproduction to 'fight' CC, March 05, 2019 

Climate Tricks 78, Catastrophe... Not, since 19 years ago, March 31, 2019

BWorld 314, MORE de-bureaucratizing laws, please

* This is my article in BusinessWorld last April 12, 2019.

From January to March 11 this year, Congress has created and passed 77 new laws, 28 of national application (table below) and 49 being local or franchise laws. The dates when they were approved by the President this year are also here.

From the perspective of tax-conscious taxpayers and regulations-wary entrepreneurs, five of the 28 national laws are good laws on lesser bureaucracies, lesser taxes required: RA 11203, 11231, 11232, 11234, and 11239.

There are 15 bad laws on more bureaucracies needing more taxes, more regulations: 11180, 11194, 11199, 11200, 11201, 11206, 11210, 11214, 11215, 11223, 11228 to 11230, 11235, and 11241.

And eight are somehow neutral laws: RA 11168, 11188, 11202, 11207, 11211, 11216, 11222, and 11227.

Laws of local application include: creating another legislative district, another barangay, high school, polytechnic institute, state university, sports training center, city prosecution office, creating or upgrading a district hospital, granting citizenship to foreigners, extending or renewing a franchise, recognizing an Academy, special provincial/city holidays, renaming a public school, etc.

Majority of these are certainly bad laws because they further expand bureaucracies and offices that require expanded taxes and fees. There is endless welfarism with no timetable at the local and national levels. Congressmen, Governors and Mayors create or convert new schools, news hospitals, new barangays in their locality without spending their local resources because they pass funding to the national government via the General Appropriations Act.

In this midterm election campaign, do we see more national and local politicians promising less burden to taxpayers and entrepreneurs? From their various campaign promises and legislative agenda, the answer is No. Bad.

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See also:  

BWorld 311, MORE ride-hailing competition, April 08, 2019 

BWorld 312, MORE price decline please, April 20, 2019 

BWorld 313, MORE international tourism, April 21, 2019

Top exports by selected rich countries

Original data is from the UN COMTRADE database on international trade, reposted in https://tradingeconomics.com/countries?g=exports-by-category.

1. USA. Good mixture of products, it is not highly dependent on just one or two major export products.

2. Japan. Known for exporting cars, buses, tractors, bulldozers, nuke tech.

3. China. There is no graphics shown, only table, here.

4. Germany. Somehow similar to Japan, exporting cars, buses, heavy machineries, nuke tech.

5. Russia. Nearly one half of its total exports are fossil fuel products -- oil, gas, coal.

Now if we go back to the "Trump is Putin puppet" aka "Trump-Russia collusion" hoax, the numbers above would show that it is an idiotic proposition. Russia is too dependent on fossil fuel exports and Trump campaigned to expand the US' fossil fuel exports. Why would Russia support Trump who can potentially cripple their main business? HRC, Obama and the Dems are the closer friends of Russia because of their "save the planet" and "keep oil on the ground" policy, explicit or implicit.

BWorld 313, MORE international tourism

* This is my article in BusinessWorld on April 11, 2019.

The Philippines, with more than 7,500 islands and islets, lots of white sand beaches, waterfalls and mountain resorts, has a huge potential in tourism yet we are not optimizing it due to certain policy and infrastructure bottlenecks like small airports and small number of airlines per airport.

The busiest airports in the world are those in the US and China. In 2018, of the top 50 busiest airports in Asia, China had 19; Japan, five; India, four; South Korea, three. The numbers on average daily airplane takeoffs are also presented here.

The Mactan-Cebu International Airport (MCIA) has 144 flights a day, #70 in Asia in average daily takeoffs. Last week I went to Cebu. The first thing I did upon landing was to feed my curiosity, check the new Terminal 2 for international flights. Since I was not an international passenger, I could not go inside but I took a peek and it is indeed beautiful — both exterior and interior, check in area — compared to the previous one. There is a new vehicle ramp going to the 2nd floor departure area and the hallway before entering the terminal is wide and huge.

I like the integrated PPP scheme of MCIA, the private sector shouldered the cost of construction then operation and maintenance (O&M), unlike the hybrid PPP scheme of Dutertenomics where construction is funded via foreign loans or the annual budget (i.e., paid by taxpayers) and the private sector only undertakes the O&M.

But the terminal fee here is expensive, P850 per departing international passenger, higher than P750 in NAIA. This is on top of P1,620 travel tax for Filipinos traveling abroad. Budget-conscious travelers then must endure paying P2,470 each and they have not left the country yet, the air fare with VAT and other taxes not included yet. This high cost of not-flying-yet should be one of the many reasons why the Philippines is not able to optimize its tourism potential. 

Among the Market-Oriented Reforms for Efficiency (MORE) in the country’s tourism and aviation sector are (1) abolition of the travel tax, (2) more airlines liberalization, and (3) lower terminal fee, perhaps only P400 or less via more budget terminals, less glitzy but fine, like the budget terminals in Changi-Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.

MCIA, NAIA are now more beautiful compared to their previous structures but they are not the destination of passengers, local and foreign. They stay at the departure lounge only one or two hours before their flights. The three suggested reforms will further enhance tourism and everything there that generates jobs — hotels and restaurants, airlines and shipping lines, malls and shops, travel guides and boatmen.

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See also:  

BWorld 310, MORE stable electricity and competition, April 07, 2019 

BWorld 311, MORE ride-hailing competition, April 08, 2019 

BWorld 312, MORE price decline please, April 20, 2019

Energy 123, Gasoline prices in selected ASEAN

Here are the recent gasoline prices in selected ASEAN economies, in US$ per liter. Domestic prices are affected by (a) exchange rate with the US$, (b) local subsidies or taxes, (c) local production if any, (d) other factors. Data is from https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/gasoline-prices.

1. Indonesia. I think they still retain the oil price subsidy until today although at a lower rate than before. While expensive oil is bad,f subsidized oil can also be bad because people would use more than necessary. Thus, instead of having only one car for the family, get two.

2. Malaysia. Also has oil price subsidy but not as high as those in Indonesia.

3. Vietnam. Perhaps they do not have oil subsidy, and neither distorting the price upwards via oil taxes?

4. Philippines. Distorted oil prices via TRAIN law, part 1 implemented in January 2018, part 2 in January 2019, and part 3 in January 2020. Diesel tax was zero until 2017, P2.50/liter in 2018, P4.50 this year, and P6.00 next year.

5. Thailand. Perhaps no oil subsidy too.

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See also:

Energy 120, US-Russia rivalry in oil-gas dominance, February 04, 2019 

Energy 121, US oil and natgas production, February 23, 2019 

Energy 122, TAPP roundtable on the power sector, April 07, 2019