Tuesday, July 16, 2019

Palace says Duterte’s fourth SONA to be ‘short’

By Genalyn Kabiling

The upcoming State of the Nation Address (SONA) of President Duterte will just be “short” after his Cabinet members have already highlighted the government’s achievements in pre-SONA events, Malacañang said Tuesday.

“Because I asked him about the SONA this morning. He said, ‘Oh, it will be short,’” Presidential Spokesman Salvador Panelo said during a Palace press briefing.

“Ordinarily, the President will be discussing achievements of his administration on a particular year, and since the pre-SONAs are already doing that, so I do not think the President will have to repeat that,” he added.

The President is expected to deliver his fourth SONA before a joint session of Congress on July 29, Monday. The annual address is a venue for the President to highlight his accomplishments for the past year and present his plans for the coming year.

Prior to the SONA, concerned cabinet members conducted two public forums presenting achievements on the economy, infrastructure development, poverty alleviation, and other social protection programs.  The third and last pre-SONA event focused on the government’s environmental protection and peace and order efforts will be held in Davao City on Tuesday.

Last year, the President’s SONA lasted for 48 minutes, considered his shortest so far. Duterte, known for his long impromptu speeches, opted to read an expletive-free speech after a House leadership scuffle delayed the SONA activity.

His 2016 SONA lasted for one and a half hour, while his 2017 speech went on for two hours.

According to Panelo, the President may tackle the West Philippine Sea issue in his forthcoming public address this Monday.

“He will ‘educate’ those critics that say that he’s violating the Constitution,” Panelo said.

Duterte earlier drew criticisms after supposedly allowing China to fish in the country’s territorial waters following a mutual pact with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The verbal deal, forged in 2016, included China’s commitment not to block Filipino fishermen sailing in Panatag Shoal.

https://news.mb.com.ph/2019/07/16/palace-says-dutertes-fourth-sona-to-be-short/

Duterte signs law institutionalizing Seal of Good Local Governance

A law establishing an incentive program that recognizes local government units (LGUs) engaged in good local governance has been signed into law by President Duterte.

Republic Act No. 11292, signed by the President last April 12, institutionalizes the Seal of Good Local Governance (SGLG) for local government units in a bid to promote quality governance and delivery of public services. A copy of the law was posted on the government website Tuesday.

“It is hereby declared the policy of the State to recognize the good performance of local government units in transparency and accountability in the use of public funds, preparedness for challenges posed by disasters, sensitivity to the needs of vulnerable and marginalized sectors of society, implementation of health programs, investment and employment promotion, protection of constituency from threats to life and damage to property, and safeguarding the integrity of the environment,” the law read.

“In such recognition, the State hopes to encourage all LGUs to take on greater challenges, encourage outcome-based performance and to reward local governments for their effort in pursuing the general welfare of their constituency and in enforcing existing laws,” it added.

Under the law, the SGLC is now considered an award, incentive, honor and recognition-based program for all LGUs, as well as a continuing commitment for LGUs to continually progress and improve their performance.

The performance of LGUs will be reviewed in the areas of good fiscal administration, disaster preparedness, social protection and sensitivity programs, health compliance and responsiveness, education programs, business friendliness and competitiveness, public safety, environmental management, tourism and heritage development, and youth development.

A local government that qualifies and passes all assessment criteria will be conferred and awarded the SGLG and granted the corresponding incentive. The SGLG Incentive Fund has also been created under the annual national budget to bankroll the incentives wanted to winning lgus. It will be managed and administered by the Department of Interior and Local Government, the implementing agency of the law.

The new law has also created the Council of Good Local Governance that will serve as policy-making and advisory body to ensure the proper implementation of the SGLG. The council will be chaired by the DILG Secretary.

The members include the Department of Budget and Management, Department of Finance, Department of Health, Department of Social Welfare and Development, Department of Education, Department of Tourism, Department of Environment and Natural Resources, National Economic and Development Authority, Office of Civil Defense.

https://news.mb.com.ph/2019/07/16/duterte-signs-law-institutionalizing-seal-of-good-local-governance/

Explanatory Note on Multiply

Multiply Inc. was founded in 2004 by Peter Pezaris, Michael Gersh, and David Hersh. With headquarters in Boca Raton, Florida, United States, Multiply is the second largest social network in Southeast Asia, with millions of users in the US, Brazil, India and more. Multiply initially carried out the main function as a social network where users shared photos, blogs, videos, and others. In its development, Multiply changed its function to become an electronic trading site. On September 20, 2010, most of Multiply.com's shares were acquired by Naspers Limited (NPSN-JSE), an electronic trading expert company in Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa.

Multiply Indonesia

PT Multiply Indonesia, also known as MulpID, was established on December 15, 2010. The Multiply office in Jakarta has become the largest Multiply office. In 2012, Multiply in Indonesia has 90,000 sellers (with 2,000 new sellers each month). At the end of the social networking era, Multiply had 2.3 million registered accounts and 7 million unique visits each month.

Since its establishment, Multiply Indonesia aims to establish strategic and comprehensive business cooperation to educate the Indonesian market regarding electronic commerce activities while strengthening the network of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Indonesia. Multiply Indonesia is led by Country Manager Daniel Tumiwa.

Multiply Philippines

Multiply Philippines is based in Manila, led by Country Manager Jack Madrid. In 2012, Multiply Philippines had as many as 102,000 members.

Multiply social network

Multiply is a social networking site, where people share photos, writing, videos and even music. However, the exchange of music in recent years has been increasingly tightened due to encouragement from those who care about copyright.

Feature

On the Multiply social network, relationships with contacts are not only described as "friends", but users can choose a more suitable relationship, such as relatives, father, child, wife / husband, niece, professional contacts, online friends, and so on. Users can set content designation that is loaded on Multiply for certain contact groups. The contact group provided for the lowest authority is online buddy. Online buddy classification is usually applied to people who are just known online, so they cannot know each other too personally.

Some of the features available on the Multiply social network are:

Blog

Multiply provides word processing to compile a blog content in the WYSIWYG format. When sending blog entries to Multiply, users can automatically cross-post to Blogspot, Twitter, and or Facebook.

Photo

Multiply provides a means to share truly unlimited photos, both from the size of photos (in megapixels) and the size of photo files (in megabytes). There is no difference in quota in uploading photos whether users pay or not.

To facilitate photo uploading, Multiply also provides AutoUploader software. The photos uploaded via Multiply AutoUploader are stored in a place called Media Locker. Users who don't pay are given thirty days of saving photos in Media Locker. If the photo is not processed into a photo album shipment, the photos in Media Locker will be deleted automatically. While premium users can enjoy Media Locker without having to make a photo album while the premium membership period is valid.

Video

Users can directly upload videos to Multiply or retrieve from YouTube, Photobucket, Google Video, or Metacafe. Free users can upload up to 10 minutes of video or 100 megabytes. While premium users have a limit of 20 minutes or 200 megabytes.

Music

At first, Multiply allows users to upload music for up to ten song files in one upload. This ease increases Multiply's popularity. Many people are interested in using Multiply just to share music files.

As popularity increases, Multiply increasingly receives protests from parties who care about copyright. To counter the circulation of pirated music, Multiply then reduced the maximum upload limit to one in five, then reduced it to three. Multiply also revoked the ease of downloading, so music can only be played on the Multiply site. In the last year of the Multiply social network, uploading music was no longer possible by new users joining or in the newly formed group.

Development

In September 2005, or within 1 year and 5 months of its launch, Multiply gathered one million users worldwide.

In June 2007, Multiply staff through its blog stated that the number of users reached five million users.

In October 2008, Multiply was used by ten million members worldwide.

Based on the Alexa site record in December 2008, the majority of users of the Multiply site came from Indonesia, which was 21.7%. While the United States itself, where Multiply's head office is located, contributes 20% to Multiply's users.

On August 7, 2012, Multiply's CEO Stefan Magdalinski announced that Multiply's social network would be stopped, including hosting blogs, videos, photos and music, in order to focus solely on e-commerce.

Closing blog services and sharing files reaping protests from Multiply users. Users feel betrayed, mainly because Multiply's previous management guaranteed that these services will not be eliminated despite the changing focus on e-commerce.

Multiply at a glance (March 2013): 23 million members, 16 million photos and 33,000 videos

In March 2013, the Multiply International site was completely closed and inaccessible, after Multiply had previously only blocked access to Multiply.com from Indonesia's IP address. The promise of Multiply to repay Premium account holders was never fulfilled.

Many people see this decision as a big blunder, because Multiply's ability as an e-commerce site is still very doubtful. Users in Indonesia, for example, tend to prefer shopping on sites that provide a sense of familiarity between buyers and sellers, such as Kaskus for example. The beginning of the emergence of sellers on Multiply also originated from online friendships, and its main attraction was human interaction between buyers and sellers. This seems to be difficult for Multiply to understand. The security guarantee still looks weak on Multiply.

On the Multiply Indonesia Facebook account, this criticism was also conveyed. Many new buyers at Multiply do not understand what is a "Trusted Seller" and not. This happened because Multiply had been guerrilla on the social media outside Multiply without providing a complete explanation, so that many lay people were interested in shopping at Multiply. With secure shopping slogans on Multiply, laymen Multiply only knows shopping on Multiply without paying attention to the T (Trusted Seller) logo. While people who are accustomed to Multiply and understand the system, many even starts leaving Multiply because of various unilateral policies and making them disappointed.

Some "Trusted Sellers" who try to be able to understand Multiply and turn on sales at Multiply provide education to their buyers, something Multiply does not do themselves.

Indeed, many discount programs make many people interested and try to make a secure online shopping system, but not everyone understands how. Some parties suggest that Multiply does not need to provide opportunities to sellers who are not yet "Trusted Sellers" to make transactions if there is no guarantee of security. So, if indeed Multiply intends to become pure e-commerce, all sellers and buyers at Multiply should receive security guarantees without any distinctions on the T logo or not.

Facing these questions and complaints, Multiply can only delete comments or prevent people from sending comments through their Facebook page.

Beginning in April 2013, a group of ex-Multiply users in Indonesia created a like page on Facebook called AntiNewMultiplyMultilieIndonesia to accommodate the many complaints from users (both sellers and buyers) who felt aggrieved by Multiply.

On April 26, 2013, Multiply announced it will close Multiply Indonesia and Multiply International website as of May 6, 2013.

All business activities of Multiply will be terminated on May 31, 2013 at 11:59 p.m.

The cause of the closing of the Multiply site is because Multiply is expected to fail to reach the leading position in the e-commerce industry with a sustainable business model. Multiply CEO Stefan Magdalinski acknowledged that the total change of the Multiply business model from social networking to e-commerce sites was unsuccessful. That website no longer exists as a __________ in the _______.

It filed a petition to wind up the company to recoup his losses, told the court he was in discussions with an unnamed potential investor.

The hearing on the petition was adjourned until June 17, 2013 pending further discussion among the parties.

Multiply Investor Secretary Rong Rongbin pledged shares of Star Platinum Corporation, which holds 99% of its shares, to borrow HK$300 million from Xiesheng Xiefeng to save the Multiply website but did not repay on time; therefore, Xiesheng Xiefeng in July 2013, it acquired the full equity of Star Platinum. It was also reported that about HK$35 million in unpaid wages of 640 former employees and HK$18 million of Insolvency Fund were also paid after the company has acquired its majority stake.

Following years of closure and the announcement of the intent – which eventually fell through, Multiply's stock plummeted and its more than $11 billion in debt caused it to face bankruptcy in April 2016.

It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on April 21, 2016.

To continue its operations and pay staff, the company received $500 million in bankruptcy debt financing.

It will continue operations during bankruptcy.

The debt financing money came from first-lien and second-lien lenders. The bankruptcy court must approve the money.

The site will be fully reopened their operations 100 days after United States President Obama stepping down in the office on January 20, 2017 at 12 noon (EST) and keeping Facebook as the sole social networking site.

On April 30, 2017, the Indonesian Parliament approved the draft of re-opening Multiply.com, as well their operations, the international unit Multiply International and the social networking portion including 55 million users with hosted blogs, videos, photos and messaging would recover and also voted and approved the draft of re-opening this website.

It was set to be close down by the order of Securities and Exchange Commission.

It then began the arduous task of resuming their operations, when Stefan Magdalinski stays as owner and CEO of the website, and Jack Madrid is the country manager.

Many of former users who called for the website to reopen.

In January 2018, MediaQuest Holdings President and CEO Atty. Ray C. Espinosa stated in an interview that he would be willing to buy the old Multiply from Naspers and turned to became a independent, separate entity.

"Hi! Everyone we will announce soon the launching of the new Multiply! 😊😊😊" it said earlier, that the Multiply website will revert to it's original form as a social networking service and start to recover all hosted blogs, videos, photos and messaging.

"Sana nga maibalik sa orihinal na estado ang Multiply. Marami kaming naghihintay na bumalik ulit ang dating ganda ng Multiply."

Multiply inaugurated its Philippine office in Fort Bonifacio, Taguig City in 2028 and began test launch by the end of 2029, officially returning their operations.

Naspers will conduct a partial reopening of Multiply to former users by January 2029.

It said the dry run, scheduled from January 6 to 16, will allow the parent company to assess what else needs to be done before the website will be reopened to users on July 1, 2029 at midnight Manila time.

Remember that House Bill has to be signed into Law.

And it has to go through the Senate first (first reading, committee approval, 2nd reading and 3rd reading) before being signed into law.

Bicam pa.

Seems the two Great Houses of the Congress are fast these days. Let us see how fast they will approve this.

You missed a step, Committee Hearings on either Houses of Congress.

The company obtained its congressional franchise in April 2029 and was granted a provisional authority to operate a social networking service in May 2029.

How to Reopen a Dissolved Company

A business has its own life cycle, starting from the infancy of a budding, new idea to the day when it must close its doors. Some businesses have longer life cycles than others, while some may find new life after dissolving. You might decide to reopen a business after dissolution based on opportunities and the experiences you had when the business was open. Perhaps the business never quite got off the ground because it was established before consumers were ready. Reopening the business may require reestablishing the existing information or reforming a new entity under the old name.

1. Review your original bylaws, business plan and marketing program to find what worked and what did not within the business. Adjust all documents, as needed, to help the business reopen and succeed.

2. Call the Secretary of State in the state where the business was originally established. Look up the business by name to confirm that it was officially dissolved.

3. Ask what is required to reestablish the company in the state. Most states require that the business be in good standing, with updated officer's listings, franchise tax fees and recent board meeting minutes. If the business was dissolved because it was suspended for filing or fee issues, these must be rectified prior to reestablishing the business.

4. Call the Department of Revenue in your state and confirm that your state tax identification number is valid and in good standing.

5. Check with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to update and activate your old Employer Identification Number (EIN) by calling 800-829-4933. Even after a company is dissolved, the EIN remains assigned to the original entity, just as a Social Security number is still the number assigned to a deceased individual.

6. Open a new business entity under the same name if you are unable to reestablish old tax identification numbers or activate your company profile through the Secretary of State. This will require new bylaws and tax identification numbers, but you should be able to get the same name since your business was closed.

7.  Open your doors once all legalities are done. Secure work location leases, hire employees and market products and services to your target audience.

Things Needed:


  • Old bylaws
  • Employer Identification Number


Short-Term, Medium-Term & Long-Term Planning in Business

Business owners develop plans to reach their overall goals, and they usually find it useful to separate planning into phases. This allows you to track immediate improvements while evaluating progress toward eventual goals and targets. The different time frames of the planning process place the focus on time-sensitive aspects of the company's structure and environment. You can differentiate planning based on the time frames of the inputs and expected outcomes.

Strategic Planning Characteristics

Many businesses develop strategic planning within a short-term, medium-term and long-term framework. Short-term usually involves processes that show results within a year. Companies aim medium-term plans at results that take several years to achieve. Long-term plans include the overall goals of the company set four or five years in the future and usually are based on reaching the medium-term targets. Planning in this way helps you complete short-term tasks while keeping longer-term goals in mind.

Short-Term Planning

Short-term planning looks at the characteristics of the company in the present and develops strategies for improving them. Examples are the skills of the employees and their attitudes. The condition of production equipment or product quality problems are also short-term concerns.

To address these issues, you put in place short-term solutions to address problems. Employee training courses, equipment servicing and quality fixes are short-term solutions. These solutions set the stage for addressing problems more comprehensively in the longer term.

Medium-Term Planning

Medium-term planning applies more permanent solutions to short-term problems. If training courses for employees solved problems in the short term, companies schedule training programs for the medium term. If there are quality issues, the medium-term response is to revise and strengthen the company's quality control program.

Where a short-term response to equipment failure is to repair the machine, a medium-term solution is to arrange for a service contract. Medium-term planning implements policies and procedures to ensure that short-term problems don't recur.

Long-Term Planning

In the long term, companies want to solve problems permanently and to reach their overall targets. Long-term planning reacts to the competitive situation of the company in its social, economic and political environment and develops strategies for adapting and influencing its position to achieve long-term goals. It examines major capital expenditures such as purchasing equipment and facilities, and implements policies and procedures that shape the company's profile to match top management's ideas.

When short-term and medium-term planning is successful, long-term planning builds on those achievements to preserve accomplishments and ensure continued progress.

Noynoy to skip Duterte's SONA anew

Former President Benigno Aquino III has not confirmed his attendance to President Rodrigo Duterte's fourth State of the Nation Address (SONA) this July 22.

This was relayed to GMA News Online by the House of Representatives Task Force SONA 2019 - Committee on Invitations, Reception and Protocol.

The House has traditionally been sending out invitations to former Presidents and other government officials to attend the incumbent chief executive's SONA.

However, it is not the first time that Aquino would not be attending Duterte's SONA, as he also skipped the previous three.

Meanwhile, the Office of the Vice President has confirmed that Vice President Leni Robredo will attend Duterte's SONA this year.

Members of the two houses of Congress, as well as officials from the executive, judiciary and even local government units, are set to converge at the House of Representatives on Monday to hear the President's report to the nation. —KG, GMA News

https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/news/nation/701158/noynoy-to-skip-duterte-s-sona-anew/story/