“The Senate chief used the occasion to express gratitude to everyone who helped the Philippines recover from the pandemic and post a robust economic rebound.”
On November 25, 2022, at the 21st anniversary of BizNewsAsia, the Philippines’ largest weekly business and news magazine, Senate President Juan Miguel “Migz” Zubiri and House Speaker Ferdinand Martin G. Romualdez were the guests of honor and speakers, with some 250 top tycoons and taipans in attendance.
The two speakers recited paeans for BizNewsAsia. I was floored.
Speaker Martin said BizNewsAsia has earned that essential element vital for any publication’s endurance and survival—“the precious trust of its readers”.
Martin added, “(its success) was in a large part due to the vast experience and exceptional journalistic acumen of Tony, as well as his leadership attributes that contributed to the rise of BizNewsAsia to its enviable position as the country’s largest weekly news and business magazine.”
During the anniversary night, BizNewsAsia awarded trophies to distinguished individuals for management excellence. Migs Zubiri and Martin were the awardees for public service.
Migz Zubiri’s citation on his trophy reads: “In 20 years as a legislator, including 9 years as a congressman and 11 years as a senator and now as Senate President, he has brought to public service an extraordinary sense of mission and purpose, diligence and hard work, decency and affability that resulted in 650 reformist laws, boosted people’s confidence for a bright future, and reaffirmed their faith in their leaders and in their democracy.”
Martin’s trophy citation says: “As the fourth highest official of the land, leads Congress in helping fiscal balance, curbing corruption, economic dynamism, national digitalization, disaster resilience, taxation, consumer protection, pension reform, and the national budget, among landmark reforms. He is a steadfast ally of President Marcos Jr. in national transformation, robust economic growth, inclusion, and unity.”
Speaker Martin is the principal author of the Maharlika Investment
Fund which seeks to raise billions for key infra and investment projects to accelerate the Philippines’ rise to upper middle class status during Marcos’s presidency.
In his inspirational speech before the elite of business and the professions during the night, Senate President Migz thanked “Sir Tony, for gathering, in this one room, 80 percent of the country’s GNP.”
“This is by far the greatest concentration of wealth I have seen in a long time, under one roof,” Migz enthused.
The Senate chief used the occasion to express gratitude to everyone who helped the Philippines recover from the pandemic and post a robust economic rebound, especially, “the business sector, who responded to the call of the times with everything they’ve got.”
“Above all, you kept your businesses open, because people need to buy food, drug prescriptions must be filled, utilities must run, and factories must continue to churn out essentials,” he told the tycoons gathered that night.
Migz noted the role played by media like BizNewsAsia in that uplift, noting that “one of the weapons in our arsenal in the war against the coronavirus was information. Truth was as important as wearing masks in a small crowded van. As fake news was as fatal as not wearing any.”
He elaborated: “Crisis creates fear which in turn incubates misinformation. And there was not a lack of opportunists who, out of the desire to make money or mayhem, trafficked fake news.
“And this is where the likes of Mr. Tony Lopez came in, who shielded the public from the harm of wrong, dangerous information, like a deworming medicine peddled as a wonder drug that can annihilate the virus.
“Tony’s work was and is like a monitoring machine plugged to the economy.
“His magazine BizNewsAsia is like a dashboard of needles which gauge the health of our economy, and as such an early warning device that screams what sectors are about to flatline.
“Business magazines and newspapers report on the numbers that truly matter.
“Vital statistics like GNP, employment, investments, poverty incidence, corporate incomes, fiscal performance, these are what constitute the essential, and not the ‘likes,’ ‘shares,’ or ‘reach’ of social media posts.
“The true state of the nation is not found in the hifalutin speeches by government spokesmen, but in the statistics, in business pages, because these are hard to spin or slant.
“This is perhaps one reason why economic journalism is an area trolls do not dare tread because it requires analytical mind and impartial judgment of which BizNewsAsia is an exemplar.”
Zubiri took time to inform his audience on what the upper chamber has been doing as “A Senate for National Reconstruction.”
He enthused: “Whether they are the budget or bills, our work falls into two genres:
“Providing safety nets to the those who–not by choice, but by circumstances—continue to fall in between the cracks.
“And providing the scaffolding on which citizens, companies, and communities can climb up from the craters of the pandemic.
“We’d like to congratulate the House as well as the Senate for approving the budget in the fastest-ever time.
“This double-barrel approach is manifested, for example, in the health budget next year.
“While we will be sending more medical students on scholarship to school and improving hospital facilities, financial aid to families who are one sickness away from bankruptcy will be retained.
“While libreng sakay will remain, billions are appropriated for rail, so more trains can bring more people to more places through our mass transport systems.
“While we will be giving away fertilizer and fuel to farmers in a targeted manner, there will be measures that will unlock ownership restrictions on farmlands, to allow for corporate farming.
“While rationalizing tax measures, and removing some in fact, are on the table, this will be coupled with initiatives that will continue to ease the conduct and the burden of doing business.”
