MONEY GO ROUND...
UNDP to become the project manager for Pipol Konek. After being questioned by the Commission on Audit for having farmed out his department’s functions with government funds, Rio claimed that the DICT “lack(ed) capacity to undertake the specific procurement project,” among other reasons.
As it turned out, UNDP itself lacked the technical capacity and boots on the ground to actually install the target 3,000 WiFi sites. After taking five percent in “service fees” from the project cost, UNDP then hired SpeedCast as contractor, which in turn farmed out the jobs to Philippine subcontractors, directing the local hires out of SpeedCast’s Hong Kong offices.
The UN agency also contracted a Filipina civil engineer from the Department of Agrarian Reform, Imelda Lamboon, as project manager to oversee the day-to-day operations. And just before Christmas, UNDP was also looking to hire another a local consultant to conduct a mid-term review of the project’s roll-out.
Despite the coronavirus restrictions, UNDP resident representative Titon Mitra had committed to finish the project by “the middle of 2021,” according to his letter to the Philippine Star last year, a rather tall order given UNDP’s admission on its website that only 389 sites out of the target 3,000 WiFi sites had been installed as of last November.
Mitra, incidentally, has since been replaced and moved to Myanmar. And because of the Customs investigation, SpeedCast, according to the grapevine, has had to fire seven employees, including a senior vice president.
SpeedCast itself was acquired and taken over last month by Centerbridge Partners, after the US private investment firm pumped $500 million in equity into the debt-laden company.
Money talks
• Former senator Bam Aquino is by all indications set to run for the Senate again by next year.
Proof? His office has started sending out news releases to the mainstream media, ostensibly to popularize his company-developed PasaJob employment app.
• San Miguel chief executive Ramon S. Ang and his management team are extending their pay cuts by another year for 2021, with their combined compensation having been reduced by the coronavirus pandemic by nearly 44 percent from the 2019 levels.
The good news is the country’s largest conglomerate had actually increased hiring despite the lockdowns, ending 2020 with 45,522 employees from 2019’s 44,079.
• They may be still frenemies after all these years, but stockbrokers Vivian Yuchengco and Robert Coyiuto apparently see something in ABS-CBN’s future, perhaps after June 2022, that their brokerages, either for their account or their undisclosed clients, have increased their modest shareholdings in the franchise-less broadcast network.
Heard through the grapevine
Do not be surprised if Davao’s Dennis Uy has found religion again amid these trying times.
If you have an accounting background, then the following numbers of Chelsea Logistics and Infrastructure Holdings should offer a snapshot of the financial health of his logistics empire as of end-2020: current ratio, 0.3; acid test ratio, 0.19; debt-to-assets ratio, 0.75; debt-to-equity ratio, 2.94; asset-toequity ratio, 3.94; interest rate coverage ratio, 0.16.
E-mail: moneygoround.manila@yahoo.com