Three-car convoy

Bank notes 1: Philippine National Bank special assistant to the president Jose Vicente Cuizon was at the Australian Embassy a week before it closed indefinitely.

No, Bobby Cuizon wasn’t applying for an immigrant visa. He was working out the papers prior to the bank’s opening a remittance center in Sydney, its first in Australia. Since the bank is also opening its 31st US branch – this time, in Florida – next year, don’t get any ideas if you see Mr. Cuizon at the US Embassy either.

Like its 80 foreign branches/remittance centers (this first one, in New York, was set up in 1917, a year after PNB opened for business in Manila), the one in Sydney will employ Filipinos with legal papers to work in Australia and will, of course, service the growing number of Filipino working in that country.

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Bank notes 2: Strange, former Finance Secretary Edgardo Espiritu still goes around town in a three-car convoy – for security reasons, you understand.

Ed Espiritu has been security conscious even before he volunteered as the current treasurer of President Macapagal-Arroyo’s political party and even before he served for a year as Finance Secretary under President Estrada.

He’s been that way since he was president, first of the Philippine National Bank and then of Westmont/United Overseas Bank. (At that time, of course, that affectation was paid for by the banks he worked for).

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Bank notes 3: Nobody’s surprised that Bureau of Internal Revenue Commissioner Guillermo Parayno has been overshooting his collection targets.

The way Willy Parayno sees it, he isn’t so much squeezing blood out of dried turnips as going after plumb, occasionally overripe tomatoes.

Mind you, there are very few brave souls willing to argue with Mr. Parayno (who was shipped to Mindanao after he graduated from the Philippine Military Academy) when he tells you – quietly, at that – that you owe him money.

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Bank notes 4: Finance Secretary Jose Isidro Camacho disappointed many of his fans when he didn’t say anything nice about National Economic Development Authority director-general (and a fellow member of the Economic Team) Dante Canlas after Mr. Canlas submitted his resignation for a problem that is Mr. Camacho’s. Hey, at least the President praised Mr. Canlas before she accepted his resignation.

Then again, Lito Camacho has been taking a low profile these days after insisting that this year’s fighting target for the budget deficit stays and then having to admit that, uh, the deficit was indeed going to be wider.

And, of course, investment bankers still guffaw about that joke that foreign investors have stayed away because of the prospect that Mr. Camacho might leave government (his courtesy resignation was not accepted by the President) rather than because of that bothersome budget deficit.