Almighty and loving Father, As we, bishops, businessmen and other associates gather in this hall to confer with one another and collaborate in the best possible way we can glorify your name, we ask you to send us the Holy Spirit that we may be enlightened in seeking your will. We are aware that you have entrusted to us the task of serving you by serving our fellow men. As we emerge from the celebration of the Jubilee Year of Mercy and the World Apostolic Congress, may we be guided by the zeal of portraying your Face of Divine Mercy through our concerted effort of acts of mercy in building our nation on peace and justice. May we be strengthened to go to the periphery and outskirts of our centers in order to reach out to the lost, last and least sectors of our society. 1 I would like to invite the people in front to take their places. I am Bishop Broderick Pabillo, and I will be your emcee this afternoon. Thank you very much and you are welcome to this 41st General Assembly and Annual Meeting of the Bishops-Businessmen’s Conference for Human Development. Thank you to the bishops who are here. They are a big number. Thank you to the businessmen and women, our guests and most especially to our guest speakers. I would like to call on the National Executive Committee members who are here. This is will be our pursuit for Inclusive Growth for Human Development and Social Justice. The EXCOM members are the following: Bishops sector: 1. Bp. Jose Collin M. Bagaforo - Bishop of Kidapawan 2. Bp. Arturo Bastes - Bishop of Sorsogon 3. Bp. Pablo Virgilio S. David - Bishop of Kalookan 4. Abp. Antonio J. Ledesma - Archbishop of Cagayan de Oro 5. Bp. Roberto C. Mallari - Bishop of San Jose, Nueva Ecija 6. Bp. Victor C. Ocampo - Bishop of Gumaca 7. Bp Broderick S. Pabillo - Auxiliary Bishop of Manila 8. Bp. Antonio R. Tobias - Bishop of Novaliches Business sector: 1. Cecile L. Ang - President, Diamond Hotel 2. Alejandro TevesEscano - Founding Chairman/President of TEVSAPHIL. 3. Victoria P. Garchitorena - Consultant, Ayala Corporation 4. Doris Magsaysay- Ho - President, Magsaysay Maritime Shipping Corporation 5. Jose Victor P. Paterno - President, Philippine Seven Corporation 6. Menelio J. Carlos, Jr. - President, RESINS, Inc. 7. Christian S. Monsod - Consultant 8. Peter Angelo V. Perfecto - Executive Director of Makati Business Club 2 Treasurer - Meneleo J. Carlos, Jr. Assistant Treasurer - Vinchu M. Lapid Vice President, Vemaval Corporation I ask your prayers because her father Mr. Jacinto Mantaring who was also a former member of the BBC has passed away and as of the moment they have the wake in Quezon City. Our Executive Director, Belle Beluan, who will retire from BBC on May 31, 2017 after twenty three years of faithful service to our group. We have some changes in our meeting today. First, the timing of the meeting, before we would have our General Assembly in July but now we have it in January. And we have it within the week when the bishops meet for their semi-annual meeting. We just finished our seminar yesterday and this morning and we now have our meeting with BBC. And starting on Saturday, we will have our Plenary Assembly. Somehow this change came about in order to facilitate the attendance of the bishops. Thank you to the many Bishops who are here. In our election of our ExCom, we have changed it in such a way that half of the member bishops and half of the businessmen and businesswomen would be elected in the sixteen-man board so that every time half will be new and half will remain in order to have continuity in the BBC EXCOM. As we all know, BBC has been organized in order to facilitate the meeting of Bishops and Businessmen for Human Development. We are having here it now in Metro Manila but there is also a move that the BBC meetings can also be done in different parts of the country so that there can be meeting of hearts and minds between the bishops and the businessmen. BBC is also a venue for dialogue not only between bishops and businessmen but also with the government, the poor, workers, academe and other sectors of society. This kind of dialogue is a way of responding to the call of Pope Francis to create the culture of encounter with the different groups of people for the sake of Human Development. So, thank you for responding to the call of the meeting and hopefully this meeting would be a lively one. We will be hearing inputs from several people and then after the inputs there will be a workshop between the bishops and the non-bishops, businessmen and the guests so that we will have an exchange of minds among us. This is the way of bringing about the kind of dialogue. So, I highly encourage everyone to stay behind up to the end so that the meat of our meeting will be sustained amongst us. 3 We will now call the meeting to order. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF THE MEETING You have in your kits the Minutes of our previous Meeting, of the 40th BBC General Assembly and Annual Meeting held last July 11, 2016. Can we please go through it and then we have a motion for approval? There being no questions, the minutes/Proceedings of the 40th General Assembly & Annual Meeting of July 2016 are approved as presented. As I have said, we have elections during this time. Among the business group, there is no need for an election because I think there are only four who accepted the nominations, namely: 1. Roberto Ansaldo 2. Alejandro Escano 3. Victoria Garchitorena 4. Mediatrix Villanueva These are now new members of the ExCom. Let us accept them as new members. For the bishops, we have seven (7) who have accepted the nominations, namely: 1. Bishop Arturo Bastes 2. Bishop Joel Baylon 3. Bishop Victor Bendico 4. Bishop Buenaventura Famadico 5. Archbishop Antonio Ledesma 6. Bishop Roberto Mallari 4 Thank you Bishop Pabillo. Good afternoon Excellencies, viable for our fund trustees to carry out in a Trust ladies and gentlemen. Account. Last year, the Trustees already gave us the full amount We have the slides for the Treasurer’s Report. of the remaining funds. The accelerated draw-down happened when we started to shift to actual activities First, our members are dwindling. A few years ago, we like chapter formation, participation in the oversight of decided that we will ask the Corporate Members to bidding functions in government procurement. In that handle the bigger share and they agreed to increase their regard, it was during the time of the late DILG Secretary annual dues to Twenty-Five Thousand Pesos (PhP Jessie Robredo when he opened the door for us to 25,000.00). participate in the oversight functions in the bidding functions of the local government. That incurred some Nonetheless, we have been depending really on our expenses for us to be able to participate and we had to members to help us carry the expenses for BBC . At hire extra people for this activity present, we only have 8 Corporate Members and the number of the Individual members were reduced this For the final slide: We are in the survival mode at this year. point. When I reported last time, I think we are already approaching that and we are there now. Hopefully, we Among the Corporate Members are: have in our action programs and projects that will 1. De La Salle University encourage business to participate. And we do hope that 2. First Philippine Holdings Corporation in the forthcoming period, enough interest would be 3. Magsaysay Maritime Corporation generated interest among businessmen to participate in 4. Philippine Seven Corporation projects. We usually can derive some administrative 5. PunongBayan & Araullo CPAs funds from that. 6. Shelmed Cottage Treasures 7. Phinma Enegy Corporation As to the Retirement benefits of our Executive Director, 8. Resins, Inc. who has indicated to retire after 23 years of service, we will try to solicit funds from our members, in that regard. We hope that we will be able to increase the interest of That ends my report. Sorry to say that it doesn’t look very the other corporations in the projects that will be bright but I hope that with the activities and projects forthcoming. where we can really have the business sector participate We have also been depending a lot on the Cardinal Sin in a more concrete way, we will do better. Trust Fund for Business Discipleship which unfortunately Thank you very much. has gone down to the level where it can no longer be 5 Bp. Pabillo: Are there questions about the report? So, as Mr. Carlos has told us, we need more members, maybe this is an invitation to our business members and even to our bishops, if you know people who could join us either as Corporate members or as Individual members of BBC. This will also strengthen us. Last year, we had discussed about the BBC, here in the assembly among the bishops and it was the common sentiment among the bishops that BBC is still relevant. So, we want it to continue, but then we have also asked the business community since this is a partnership and they also find it relevant. It is a call that we need from each other and this help is increasing our membership and also supporting the Programs who will give us the Program today about how we can help as BBC for the Human Development in our country.