Fear of jail

Did you know 1: No, Philippine Stock Exchange chairman Alicia Morales Arroyo and director Vivian Yuchengco have not made up even if they were recently seen amicably chatting while waiting for the building elevator to open after a meeting.

Aleli Morales Arroyo made the overture, and, being a well brought-up lady, Ms. Yuchengco politely responded to her "creation" – the code word wickedly used by friends when talking to Ms. Yuchengco about Ms. Morales Arroyo.

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Did you know 2: Internal Revenue Commissioner Guillermo Parayno Jr. will be releasing next week a revenue regulation that will again tax-exempt FCDU transactions of banks.

Here’s the catch, though. Transactions from 1998 to 2003 are still subject to taxes, every centavo of which Willy Parayno intends to go after even if he has already exceeded his first quarter target.

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Did you know 3: Newly elected POTC Holding Co. board member Guy De Leon isn’t expected to show up anytime soon. You see, Mr. De Leon’s wife, Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office chairman Livia Singson De Leon, just suffered a stroke.

POTC Holding is the mother company of Philippine Communications Satellite Corp., which has some shares sequestered by the Presidential Commission on Good Government.

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Fear of jail is a major factor behind the 98-percent collection success of Quedan & Rural Credit Guarantee Corp., which currently has a base of 500,000 borrowers nationwide. Here’s why.

Under the model set up by president Nelson Buenaflor, micro-borrowers are each extended clean business loans of up P15,000 in exchange for post-dated checks. As everybody knows, nobody can go to jail because he/she cannot pay his/her debut but not everybody knows that an issuer of a bouncing check can be imprisoned.

What normally happens though is that Quedancor drops the case (and condones the penalties) once the issuer of the bouncing check promises to pay within a pre-agreed period of time.

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Monday will be the first time Edward Go and Lorenzo Tan will be working together since leaving United Coconut Planters Bank. Eddie Go, who is now very active in NAMFREL, and Yayi Tan, who is president and chief executive officer of Philippine National Bank, will be launching a fund-raising campaign to help NAMFREL run a vote counting program parallel to that of the Commission on Elections.

In this project, PNB – as an institution – will donate a seed money of P100,000. Bank employees nationwide are being asked to donate at least P10, small compared to the P10,000 Mr. Tan will be pledging.