BWorld 407, NCoV, IPR and WHO

* My article in BusinessWorld last January 30, 2020.

The Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) is new and hence, no existing vaccine and treatment can fight and control it. As of noon, Jan. 29, some 132 people have died and 6,000+ people are ill.

The good news is that some innovator pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies are quickly developing vaccines and other treatment. Among these companies and groups are Johnson and Johnson, and Hong Kong researchers.

The bad news are: it could take up to a year before the vaccines becomes available to the public after a series of clinical trials; and, the virus is already mutating, becoming “more easily spreadable” so that by the time the vaccines become available, new strains would have already emerged, requiring another set of vaccines and treatment.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is the main global agency that monitors and finds ways to control the virus. Their top officials have already met China PM Xi Jinping.

On Feb. 3 to 8, the WHO Executive Board (EB) will meet in Geneva, Switzerland. The EB is the decision-making arm of the WHO and it sets the agenda for the year’s work.

From what I gathered, the EB this year is considering a plan of work to weaken intellectual property rights (IPR) in order to improve access to new medicines and vaccines. These plans would be inimical and disruptive to innovation while doing little to improve access to medicines. The real reasons why access is poor in many countries is related to weak healthcare systems, regulatory barriers, taxes and tariffs, etc. and not IPR like patent protection.

Last September, the Geneva Network (UK) plus five independent think tanks in the ASEAN including Minimal Government Thinkers (Philippines) launched their report, “The importance of IPR in progress: reform agenda for ASEAN countries” in Makati. The Philippines and many ASEAN countries do not rank and perform well globally in IPR protection (see Table).

  

Our report on IPR in the ASEAN noted that in the health sector, life science patents are becoming more difficult to obtain and there are concerns that compulsory licensing (CL) of famous, patented drugs may become more widely used by governments. CL is driven by envy more than desire for public health. Many pharma companies would not spend on very expensive and risky R&D (patients under clinical trials may suffer serious side-effects) but when the new drug molecule is later proven to be safe and effective in killing or controlling certain diseases, various lobbies to issue CL becomes louder. When CL becomes a norm, the likelihood that newly invented, more powerful medicines will be launched in developing countries like the Philippines will grow thin, which will also undermine the availability of generic medicines of the same molecule someday.

For now, the WHO has three important challenges.

One, set aside its itch for IPR-busting policies like CL. The evolving nCoV and other viruses will require evolving medicines and vaccines. IPRs like patents for newly developed treatments should be encouraged, not discouraged and demonized.

Two, encourage member-countries to speed up the examination of patents, do not discriminate against specific technologies in the granting of patents, restrict the use of CL of patents to true emergencies, and provide sufficient terms of regulatory data protection for medicines, veterinary and agricultural biotechnology.

Three, step back from producing and encouraging more regulations and restrictions in fighting non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and refocus its resources and research on really killer communicable and infectious diseases. There are many, past and present like ebola, SARS, MERS-CoV and nCoV.

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See also:

BWorld 404, Asian universities and UP Diliman chancellorship, January 24, 2020 

BWorld 405, Coal, gas, renewables, and growth, January 29, 2020 

BWorld 406, GDP growth and Fidel Nemenzo support growth, January 30, 2020

Big La Nina coming

After the big El Nino of 2015-2016, we are headed to a big La Nina of 2020-2021. US NOAA forecast (as of Feb. 9) for Nino region 3.4 shows neutral by April this year, La Nina by June and dip further by July onwards. So by middle of this year, we should burn more fossil fuels, drive our cars and fly more often to expand CO2 emissions and induce Gorebal warming, control bad global cooling.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/enso-forecast-page/

BWorld 406, GDP growth and Fidel Nemenzo support growth

* My column in BusinessWorld, January 28, 2020.

The good news about the Philippines’ GDP growth of 5.9% in 2019 is that it is high by global and regional trends. The bad news is that growth is decelerating since 2016 and our GDP size remains small. With a low economic base, if we keep growing by just 5-6% yearly, it will take us many decades to be at par with the per capita incomes of our neighbors Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Thailand even if they grow only 2-3% yearly. (See Table 1).

  

And an ironic thing about growth in 2019 is that while government consumption was sizzling at 10.5% growth, capital formation or private investments was contracting at -0.6%.

Obviously, more politics, more government taxation and interventions were among the big reasons why private investments are contracting and overall growth is decelerating: 6.9% in 2016, 6.7% in 2017, 6.2% in 2018, 5.9% in 2019. High inflation and decline in household consumption (which makes up about 65% of GDP) immediately followed when various tax hikes were implemented under the TRAIN law of 2017.

Now we see the selection of the UP Diliman Chancellorship being colored by more politics. There are only two nominees — Dr. Fidel Nemenzo, Professor at UP Institute of Mathematics and known regionally for his research output and Math leadership, who is also the current Vice-Chancellor for Research and Development, and Prof. Ferdinand Manegdeg, Dean of the UP College of Engineering, who has no PhD.

UP Diliman (UPD) would have the highest concentration of PhD faculty per 100 students in the whole country. Having a PhD is the minimum requirement to be an Associate Professor. So if UPD is at the forefront of advancing academic excellence in many disciplines, how could a would-be head, an aspiring Chancellor of UPD, be non-excellent academically? That is a lousy situation. Only more politics, not more academic achievements, would push this kind of situation.

That is why many units and faculty members are alarmed and they take explicit positions of supporting Dr. Nemenzo. A letter by UPD faculty members submitted to the UP Board of Regents (BoR) had 452 signatories including at least five Professors Emiriti, 70 Professors, 65 Associate Professors, 182 Assistant Professors, 89 Instructors, and 28 Lecturers. The growth of his support base is accelerating — unlike the Philippines’ GDP growth which is decelerating.

Consider also my alma mater, the UP School of Economics — 100% of its faculty members are PhD holders and I cannot see anyone there supporting someone who is not excellent in academics as UPD Chancellor.

Recently two pieces of fake news were being spread by desperate groups who cannot cite academic excellence as an important factor for UPD Chancellorship.

One is red-tagging, saying that Dr. Fidel Nemenzo is a communist and if he becomes the Chancellor, lefties and commies will have a grand time in UPD. Garbage. The Chancellor would be busy positioning UPD in the forefront of advance science and technology research, and teaching to help prepare the country in the current Fourth Industrial Revolution (FIRe) and artificial intelligence (AI) advances. Outmoded claims of commie ideology would be far from his concerns.

The secondpiece of fake news has been dragging former UP President Francisco “Dodong” Nemenzo, Jr. — Fidel’s father — into the UP-Ayala Technohub deal. They say that a “leftist UP President” has produced an “onerous” deal.

I will quote UP College of Law Professor Jay Batongbacal in debunking this. Jay wrote in his public post on Facebook on Jan. 26: “The contract was signed upon authority of the Board of Regents by UP President Emerlinda Roman… These liars and idiots then rely on innuendo, implying that since the process of converting the former idle lands of UP began during the term of UP President Francisco Nemenzo, it was the Left that selected Ayala, and therefore the contract is by the Left.”

More politics, more government taxation and policy reversals midway have resulted in the country’s growth deceleration. We hope that UPD will not be dragged into more politics. Academic track records and vision by the nominee, support and respect by the academic faculty, alumni, non-academic staff and students, should guide in the appointment of the next UPD Chancellor when the BoR meet and decide next week.

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See also:

BWorld 403, Smoking, vaping and the nanny state, January 23, 2020 

BWorld 404, Asian universities and UP Diliman chancellorship, January 24, 2020 

BWorld 405, Coal, gas, renewables, and growth, January 29, 2020.

Makati government and police vehicles with no plate

I took these photos last January 28, 2020. Makati City government vehicle, no plate. Govt exempts itself from its own "No plate, no travel" policy that govt strictly implements vs civilian motorists and drivers.

Below, I took this picture last Nov 20, 2019. If it's a civilian motorist, that motorcycle must have been towed/clamped by Makati City Hall people already for obstruction of pedestrian path.

Last August 2019, this Makati policeman was in front of me in a gas station. Motorcycle with no plate.

Government, national and local, make many laws and prohibitions. Then government people themselves violate those laws. Lousy.

BWorld 405, Coal, gas, renewables, and growth

* My column in BusinessWorld, January 22, 2020.

Recently it was reported that the growth rate of Germany, Europe’s largest economy and the world’s fourth largest, fell to only 0.6% in 2019. This caught my attention because it is a significant drop from 1.5% in 2018 and 2.2% average for 2014-2017. The UK and France managed to grow 1.4% in Q1-Q3 2019 so far, while Italy has crawled to only 0.1% growth (see Table 1).

From 1998 to 2018, or two decades, China, India, and South Korea have managed to expand their GDP size from four to 13 times while others have expanded only by 2.3 times at most. So we may ask, what are the “secrets” of China, India, and South Korea for the big expansion of their GDP sizes?

There are a dozen plus factors, but for this paper, I want to test the hypothesis that “stable, cheaper energy is stable growth.” Thus, I will leave out other factors (rule of law, property rights protection, global openness, lower taxes, etc.) for now.

First I checked the consumption of fossil fuels coal and natural gas — stable, predictable, dispatchable on demand — in power generation, units in million tonnes oil equivalent (mtoe).

China, India, and South Korea have indeed expanded their coal capacity by 2.4 times to 2.9 times while the four Europeans and the US have decreased their coal consumption. But the US has increased its already high consumption of natural gas while China and South Korea have also expanded their gas use but not at the level of the US (see Table 2).

Then I checked their consumption of intermittent, unstable, and non-dispatchable energy sources like wind and solar. China, the US, and Germany are the world leaders, with India, Japan, and the UK trying to catch up (see Table 3).

The total consumption of wind and solar, despite their rapid expansion in recent years, remain very small compared to use of coal and gas for many countries. For instance, the wind and solar of China (123 mtoe), India (20.6 mtoe), and South Korea (2.6 mtoe) in 2018 were only 6.4%, 2.8%, and 2.9% respectively of their coal consumption. The US’ wind and solar (84.8 mtoe) in 2018 was only 12.1% of its natgas consumption.

It is safe to say that the reason why China, India, and South Korea have expanded their economies faster than the other seven large economies is partly (or largely) because they relied more on stable and cheaper fossil fuels especially coal, and never relied on intermittent, unstable wind and solar in their continuing march towards modernization and industrialization.

The US has escaped the anemic growth pattern of the Europeans because it increased its reliance on natgas, also a fossil fuel, even though its coal use has declined.

US President Donald Trump is correct in his opening speech at the ongoing 50th World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, that US will pursue its energy independence (and dominance) in fossil fuels and not be swayed by climate scare and doom stories, and embrace the energy of low and anemic growth — wind and solar and other variable renewables.

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See also:

BWorld 402, Taal, Cadiz City and Tapaz, Capiz, January 17, 2020 

BWorld 403, Smoking, vaping and the nanny state, January 23, 2020 

BWorld 404, Asian universities and UP Diliman chancellorship, January 24, 2020.

On PH's growth 2019

Before, the main driver of high growth like 2016's 6.9% was household consumption (C, about 65% of GDP) growing high. Now the main driver of low growth like 2019 is high government consumption (G, about 12% of GDP) with double-digit growth in 2018-2019 but at the expense of C and investments (I) suffering low growth.

Indeed, capital formation or private I experienced contraction in 2019 while net exports (exports less imports) was crawling.

Philippines GDP growth by expenditures, %

Expenditure type	2016	2017	2018	2019
Household Consumption	7.1	5.9	5.6	5.8
Government consumption	9.0	7.0	12.8	10.5
Capital Formation (Investments)	24.5	9.4	13.9	-0.6
Exports	11.6	19.5	11.5	3.2
Less Imports	20.2	18.1	14.5	2.1
GDP	6.9	6.7	6.2	5.9

Source: Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA)

The last time there was contraction in private investments were in 2009 (-8.7%) and 2012 (-4.3%). So the 2019 growth is ironic: government spending was sizzling at +10.5% while private investment was contracting at -0.6%.

The Duterte administration’s high spending, high taxes, policy reversals in certain sectors is good for government but bad for private investment. This is clear in 2019.

This 2020 and beyond, we hope that government will step back from these economically regressive policies. Instead of more taxes, government should initiate tax cuts in many sectors. Like reducing the corporate income tax (CIT) to 20% in first year of implementation of the proposed CITIRA bill. And cutting VAT rate back to 10%, even 8% with little or zero exemption except raw agriculture and fishery products. Also abolish the travel tax, among others.

BWorld 404, Asian universities and UP Diliman chancellorship

* My article in BusinessWorld last January 21, 2020.

Philippine universities do not seem to fare well even compared to many of their ASEAN neighbors. The Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) world university ranking is a good annual report, its scoring is based on six indicators: Academic peer review, 40%; Faculty/Student ratio; 20%, Citations per faculty; 20%, Employer reputation; 10%, and International student ratio and International staff ratio, 5% each.

I checked the QS ranking of 2020 — many Asian universities have improved their global ranking from the 2015 to 2020 reports. The University of the Philippines (UP) ranked only #356 and the three next famous schools in the country ranked 600+ or lower (see Table 1).

Then I checked details of the top universities in the ASEAN. In terms of research output, they have high to very high output while the four Philippine universities have either medium or low output (see Table 2).

Clearly there is problem in the quality of Philippine universities, especially the other state universities and colleges (SUCs), taxpayer-funded with a budget of P51 billion (excluding UP) in 2019 and none of them in the global top 1,000.

For UP in particular, it seems to be spreading out thinly. UP’s 38,000+ students are the total in its many campuses: Diliman, Manila, BGC, Los Baños, Baguio, Clark, Cebu, Iloilo, Mindanao, and the Open University.

Now there is a big issue in UP Diliman (UPD), the main campus in the UP System. In February, the UP Board of Regents (BOR) will choose the next UPD Chancellor, the highest official in the campus. There are only two candidates and they seem to be worlds apart in terms of academic achievements.

Dr. Fidel Nemenzo is a Professor of Mathematics and currently UPD Vice-Chancellor for Research and Development. He got his BS Math degree from UP, his MS and PhD Math from Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan, specializing in pure mathematics. He is well-respected in mathematical academic circles here and abroad. Nemenzo was also a former President of the Mathematical Society of the Philippines, and the Southeast Asian Mathematical Society and has received awards in his discipline such as the Achievement Award in Mathematics from the National Research Council of the Philippines (NRCP).

The other candidate is Prof. Ferdinand Manegdeg, current Dean of the UP College of Engineering, the largest college in the university in terms of faculty and student population. He has a masters degree from the University of Leeds, but has no PhD, unlike many in his faculty. In the top universities in the region and the world, a PhD is the minimum requirement for acceptance into the faculty.

The campus Chancellor has two main functions — to further advance academic excellence, and address various community issues. UPD hosts the College of Science disciplines — Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Biotechnology, Geology, etc. — that provide the basic theories behind continuing technological modernization like the Fourth Industrial Revolution (FIRe), artificial intelligence (AI), and robotics.

So someone with expertise in the basic science and math and not just applied science, someone with higher regional and global academic exposure and leadership, is the most appropriate to head UPD.

I hope the BOR will choose Dr. Nemenzo as the next UPD Chancellor. As he envisioned, UPD will become an inter-disciplinary hub working with other government agencies, industry, and civil society, and become a strong graduate university especially in the basic sciences.

There is too much politics and government intervention in many sectors of our country. I hope the selection and appointment of UPD Chancellor will be guided by academic leadership and not by more politics.

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See also:

BWorld 401, Inflation, transportation, and production, January 16, 2020 

BWorld 402, Taal, Cadiz City and Tapaz, Capiz, January 17, 2020 

BWorld 403, Smoking, vaping and the nanny state, January 23, 2020

Energy 132, US crude oil production now 13 mbpd

Yesterday and today, oil prices dropped significantly. WTI went down to $54+ per barrel. Until last Monday January 20, prices were $58+ a barrel. And days after the killing of Soleimani, "WW 3" and related hashtags became famous and oil prices went up to $64+ a barrel.

Now, war alarmism has faded. The US public's attention went to the impeachment, corona virus, etc.

More global oil-gas production, more supply stability, and lower oil prices. That's what we need.
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See also:

Energy 129, Fault in OPEC supply cut and oil price decline, September 04, 2019 

Energy 130, US crude oil and natgas productionoduction, October 31, 2019 

Energy 131, Labor productivity by power sources, November 19, 2019