Forbes' 16 Richest Billionaires in the Philippines in 2024

The 16 Richest Billionaires in the Philippines in 2024, According to Forbes

Story by Esquire Philippines

08 August 2024

With the Philippine economy expanding during the first quarter, slower growth has been observed across the board. This, combined with a weaker peso, resulted in less wealth for this year. The list is based on shareholding and financial information, which covers family fortunes, including assets shared by extended families.

In the Philippines, the Sy Siblings have now skyrocketed to the top of the list, surpassing the likes of fellow tycoons like Manuel Villar, Ramon Ang, the Ayalas, and Enrique Razon Jr. The group is worth $1.3 billion less this year as a result of the year-to-year six-percent peso difference. Enrique Razon Jr. and Manuel Villar, meanwhile take the second and third spot, respectively. Villar was ranked first in last year's list.

Of course, there aren't many new names on the list as most hail from the Philippines’ wealthiest families. Additional names from the Philippines' most prominent families such as Vivian Que Azcona, the Po family, and Soledad Oppen-Cojuangco, among others, have also made appearances for this year's dollar billionaires rankings. Noticeably out of the list is William Belo, who was at the 15th spot last year with a dollar net worth of $1.3 billion (he is now down to $895 million this year). Inigo Zobel would also slide down the rankings, with a net wealth of $845 at 21st place.

Here’s a breakdown of the 16 dollar billionaires in the Philippines in 2024:

1| Sy Siblings

Net worth in 2024: $13 billion

Net worth in 2023: $14.4 billion

Industry: Diversified

Businesses: SM Group, SM Development Corp., SM Investments Corp. 

2| Enrique Razon, Jr.

Net worth in 2024: $11.1 billion

Net worth in 2022:$7.3 billion

Age: 64

Industry: Logistics

Businesses: International Container Terminal Services, Inc., Bloomberry Resorts Corp. (developer of Solaire) 

3| Manuel Villar

Net worth in 2024: $10.9 billion

Net worth in 2023: $8.6 billion

Age: 74

Industry: Real estate

Businesses: Vista Land & Lifescapes, Golden Bria Holdings, Vistamalls

4| Ramon Ang

Net worth in 2024: $3.8 billion

Net worth in 2023: $3.4 billion

Age: 70

Industry: Food & Beverage

Businesses: San Miguel Corporation

5| Isidro Consunji and Siblings

Net worth in 2024: $3.4 billion

Net worth in 2023: $2.9 billion

Age: 74

Industry: Construction & Engineering

Businesses: DMCI Holdings, Inc., Semirara Mining and Power Corp.

6| Tony Tan Caktiong and Family

Net worth in 2024: $2.9 billion

Net worth in 2023: $1.2 billion

Age: 70

Industry: Food & Beverage

Businesses: Jollibee Food Corporation

7| Lucio Tan

Net worth in 2024: $2.65 billion

Net worth in 2023: $2.4 billion

Age: 89

Industry: Diversified

Businesses: LT Group, Philippine Airlines, Asia Brewery, Tanduay Distillers 

8| Jaime Zobel de Ayala and Family

Net worth in 2024: $2.6 billion

Net worth in 2023: $2.8 billion

Age: 90

Industry: Food & Beverage

Businesses: Jollibee Food Corporation

9| Lucio and Susan Co

Net worth in 2024: $2.3 billion

Net worth in 2023: $2.3 billion

Age: 69

Industry: Fashion & Retail

Businesses:Union Energy Corp., Puregold Realty Leasing & Management, Pg Holdings, Inc., 

10| Aboitiz Family

Net worth in 2024: $2.2 billion

Net worth in 2023: $3.15 billion

Industry: Diversified

Businesses:Aboitiz Equity Ventures, Aboitiz Power, Aboitiz InfraCapital, Aboitiz Land Inc.

11| Lance Gokongwei and Siblings

Net worth in 2024: $1.9 billion

Net worth in 2023: $1.4 billion

Age: 56

Industry: Diversified

Businesses: JG Summit Holdings, Robinsons Retail Holdings, Universal Robina Corporation, Cebu Air

12| Ty Siblings

Net worth in 2024: $1.85 billion

Net worth in 2023: $2.2 billion

Industry: Finance & Investments

Businesses: GT Capital Holdings, Metropolitan Bank & Trust

13| Andrew Tan

Net worth in 2024: $1.8 billion

Net worth in 2023: $2.5 billion

Age: 72

Industry: Diversified

Businesses: Alliance Global Group, Megaworld Corporation, Empire East Land Holdings, Emperador, Travellers International Hotel Group (Resorts World Manila)

14| Vivian Que Azcona and Siblings

Net worth in 2024: $1.7 billion

Net worth in 2023: $1.2 billion

Age: 68

Industry: Fashion & Retail

Businesses: Mercury Drug Corporation

15| Po Family

Net worth in 2024: $1.7 billion

Net worth in 2023: $ 1.4 billion

Industry: Food & Beverage

Businesses: Century Pacific Food Incorporated, Century Pacific Group

16| Soledad Oppen-Cojuangco and Family

Net worth in 2024: $1.8 billion

Net worth in 2023: $1 billion

Age: 86

Industry: Diversified

Businesses: San Miguel Corporation

3 Philippines firms among Forbes Asia’s ‘Best Under a Billion’

3 Philippines firms among Forbes Asia’s ‘Best Under a Billion’

Story by Richmond Mercurio
Phistar Global
08 August 2024

MANILA, Philippines —Three Philippines companies have been included in this year’s Best Under A Billion of Forbes Asia, a list of the top 200 small and midsized publicly traded companies in the region with sales under $1 billion.

Making it to the 2024 list were the Montinola family-led Far Eastern University (FEU), Lucio Co’s Philippine Bank of Communications (PBCom) and Tantoco-led SSI Group.

With reported sales of $88 million, FEU is a listed company that offers various academic programs and caters to different levels of education.

Established in 1928, the educational institution is headquartered in Manila, with FEU Manila as its main and oldest campus.

PBCom, with reported revenue of $163 million, is a commercial bank that offers a range of services, including deposit products, loans, trade finance and domestic and international fund transfers.

The bank was founded in 1939 and is headquartered in Makati City.

With $489 million in sales, the SSI Group manages a network of retail stores offering a wide range of goods from luxury to fashion, home decor, beauty and personal care products.

Founded in 1987, the company is regarded as the country’s leading specialty retailer, operating over 500 stores in malls across the country.

Forbes said the 200 companies in its Best Under A Billion list for 2024 were selected from a universe of more than 20,000 publicly traded companies in the Asia-Pacific region with annual sales above $10 million and below $1 billion.

It said the list features companies with a track record of long-term sustainable performance across a variety of metrics.

Philippines economy grows in Second Quarter

Philippines Q2 GDP rises 6.3% y/y, just above forecasts

The Star (Malaysia)
08 August 2024

MANILA: The Philippine economy grew 6.3% in the second quarter from a year earlier, driven by government spending and investment, the statistics agency said on Thursday, stronger than upwardly revised 5.8% growth in the first quarter.

That took first-half GDP growth to 6.0%, putting the economy on track to meet the full-year growth target of 6.0% to 7.0%, Economic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan told a news conference.

Inflation, which has hampered consumer spending, will revert to its longer-term downtrend, Balisacan said.

Economists in a Reuters poll had expected annual gross domestic product growth of 6.2% in the April-June quarter.

On a seasonally adjusted basis, the economy grew 0.5% quarter-on-quarter, below both the 0.9% growth forecast in a Reuters poll and the 1.3% pace in the first quarter. - Reuters

Ramon Ang's plan for the Philippines

This Billionaire Beer Baron Wants To Rebuild The Philippines

Ramon Ang’s food and beverage conglomerate San Miguel has loaded up on debt and is remaking itself into an infrastructure giant.

By Ian Sayson and Jonathan Burgos

Forbes Magazine Asia

08 August 2024

The opening photo on the website of San Miguel, best known for its eponymous 134-year-old beer brand, isn’t that of its brewery but of a 39-kilometer elevated expressway connecting Metro Manila with nearby provinces to its north and south. That pictorially depicts the biggest stakes for the storied conglomerate today. Under chairman Ramon Ang, the company has repositioned itself as a nation builder with an ambitious push into infrastructure, winning bids for airports, toll roads and power plants at nothing short of a frenetic pace.

In March, it won a 171 billion-peso ($2.9 billion) contract to upgrade and operate Manila’s aging Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA), the country’s main gateway, even while it’s halfway through constructing the new, 735 billion-peso Bulacan airport, roughly 40 kilometers north of the capital city. The same month, San Miguel Global Power Holdings announced a three-way partnership with the Aboitiz family’s Aboitiz Power and Meralco PowerGen—backed by Metro Pacific Investments, which is jointly owned by Indonesian billionaire Anthoni Salim’s First Pacific and Filipino businessman Manuel Pangilinan—to develop a $3.3 billion integrated liquified natural gas (LNG) facility in Batangas province, south of Manila.

This buzzing pipeline of infrastructure projects has made San Miguel the most indebted company in the Philippines today, with a staggering debt load of 1.5 trillion pesos—$26 billion—as of 2023. The company’s debt-to-equity ratio of 2.2 is more than twice the gearing of the country's biggest conglomerates such as Ayala Corp. and SM Investments, according to Bloomberg data.

But Ang, who’s also the company’s single largest shareholder and features among the country’s wealthiest with a $3.8 billion fortune, is undaunted. “San Miguel has the financial capacity to pursue these projects,” he says in a freewheeling, two-hour interview at the company’s headquarters in the Ortigas financial district, east of Manila. “Our investment plans are supported by a strong balance sheet,” he insists, adding that the company’s lenders would be comfortable even with a higher gearing.

Building Momentum

San Miguel’s infrastructure investments are gradually adding to the group’s top-line.

For Ang, 70, the pivot is a chance to cement his legacy—reengineering the food and beverage giant into an infrastructure colossus that is literally remaking the Philippines from the bedrock up. Over the next five years, Ang has earmarked capital expenditure of 1.4 trillion pesos, of which 86%, or 1.2 trillion pesos, will be deployed to expand the company’s infrastructure footprint.

The overarching goal behind this massive outlay—in a country where infrastructure gaps remain a big challenge, as per the Asian Development Bank—is to boost economic growth in the Philippines, he says, by making it a more attractive destination for overseas investors and tourists. That, in turn, will lift consumer spending, boosting San Miguel’s legacy food and beverages business. “When our economy is strong,” Ang says, “when more Filipinos are prosperous, all our businesses benefit.”

Gearing Up

The country’s top conglomerates are the biggest borrowers.

San Miguel beer is virtually synonymous with the Philippines, and its far-flung distribution system reaches the remotest corners of the archipelago nation. From a brewery founded in 1890, when the Philippines was a Spanish colony, San Miguel expanded into food and packaging through the last century. Ang, who joined the company in 1998 as vice chairman under the late, former chairman Eduardo Cojuangco Jr., orchestrated San Miguel’s expansion into more than a dozen new businesses, including oil refining, power generation, mass rail and cement.

In 2009, San Miguel embarked on its first toll road and power plant projects and took a majority stake in Petron, the country’s biggest oil refiner by revenue, the following year. Since then annual revenue has grown eightfold to 1.4 trillion pesos in 2023 from 174 billion pesos and total assets are up nearly sixfold to 2.5 trillion pesos. Much of this diversification was built on the cash flow from beer and food, says John Gatmaytan, chairman of Manila-based Luna Securities. “Ang did an excellent job of using and leveraging that to go into other businesses. San Miguel has undertaken capital-intensive and long-gestation projects that are essential to the progress of the Philippines.”

If San Miguel grew in the last century by selling beer and chicken, it’s now addressing basic national needs: reasonably priced electricity, better roads, modern airports and commuter trains. “If you look at the last 30 to 40 years, investments in these key industries have been slow,” Ang says. “That’s why we have been lagging behind many of our peers in Southeast Asia.”

Take electricity: U.S. tech giants Amazon, Google and Microsoft are pouring billions of dollars into data centers in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. The Philippines is missing out because electricity is expensive, notes Euben Paracuelles, a senior economist at Japanese brokerage Nomura in Singapore. At $0.17 per kilowatt hour, the cost of household electricity is among the highest in the region, according to Statista.

To boost the supply of cheaper and cleaner energy, San Miguel is modernizing its existing power plants that have a combined installed capacity of 6,595 megawatts. The new LNG joint venture announced in March will add another 2,500 megawatts to the country’s total installed capacity of 28,000 megawatts and moreover, explains Ang, will ensure “not just reliability but also cost-efficient power for many Filipinos.”

The 1,278-megawatt combined Ilijan cycle power plant in Batangas, south of Manila.Courtesy of San Miguel

San Miguel is already the country’s biggest tollway operator by revenue, but over the next five years Ang plans to build 1,100 kilometers of new toll roads connecting Metro Manila to far-flung provinces. This will cut travel time to the capital city and double the company's existing highway network. A proposed merger between San Miguel’s expressway business and Metro Pacific Tollways, a unit of Metro Pacific Investments, would extend the combined group’s operations across Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. “We should be able to work together,” Pangilinan, chairman of Metro Pacific, says of his partnership with Ang in a separate interview in early July. “I hope we draw on each of our strengths and accomplish what we both want.”

When it comes to airports, the Philippines so far hasn’t created a welcoming first impression for visitors. Manila’s NAIA has been consistently rated among Asia’s worst, most recently in a February survey of business travelers by U.K. online publisher BusinessFinancing. In 2023, fewer than 6 million tourists visited the Philippines, compared with over 13 million visitors to Singapore and more than 28 million to Thailand, government data showed. Ironically, the country was a tourist magnet in the 1970s and 1980s, with visitors drawn by the three S’s: Sun, Sand and San Miguel. “For us to grow to 30 million tourists a year,” Ang says, “we need a new airport and we need to solve the traffic problem.”

Ang first mooted the proposal for a new airport in Bulacan in 2017—to handle 100 million passengers a year—and eventually won approval in 2020 to build and operate it for 50 years. Slated to open in 2028, it’s rising on a 2,500-hectare site, previously occupied by fish ponds, that’s adjacent to an industrial park, residential estate, golf course and a motor racetrack. The industrial park is expected to generate enough air cargo to lure airlines away from the old airport, which last year handled 45 million passengers. Its upgrade by a San Miguel-led consortium, that includes the operator of South Korea’s Incheon International Airport, is expected to nearly double capacity on completion by 2028, with San Miguel taking over operations for 25 years.

Ang insists the country is big enough—and has adequate latent demand—to accommodate two international airports. Besides airport management revenues, San Miguel is counting on income streams from retail, logistics, fuel supplies and real estate development opportunities. “We select projects that fit well with our current portfolio, create synergies with our other businesses,” he adds.

Getting to the airport, or anywhere else in Manila, on time is another matter. Private developers are working with the government to build mass rail systems in and around the capital that will bypass its infamously gridlocked roads. The first stage of San Miguel's 77 billion-peso, 22-kilometer MRT-7 commuter line, which connects Bulacan province to Quezon City, is expected to start operations next year after missing a 2022 opening due to the pandemic and the delay in securing right of way from existing land owners. In its first year of operations, Ang expects the new railway line to transport 300,000 commuters daily, going up to 850,000 a day within a decade as it expands.

San Miguel’s multiple long-gestation infrastructure projects have fueled investor concerns about the company's burgeoning dollar-denominated debt and its impact on the company’s bottom line. In the first quarter of 2024, the company's net income halved to 8.9 billion pesos compared with the same period the previous year, mainly due to foreign exchange losses. With about 559 billion pesos, or 37% of its total borrowings in foreign currencies, the company hedges as much as 70% of its overseas loans.

“San Miguel has among the largest exposures to dollar-denominated debt [in the Philippines],” says Ian Garcia, an analyst at AP Securities in Manila. “So it’s a double whammy for the stock—the weaker peso and higher interest rates.” Shares have yet to recover to pre-pandemic levels, and are down 46% from the peak price of 183.70 pesos scaled in August 2019.

Ang brushes off such concerns. “We don’t look at the stock price as we have no intention of selling shares,” he says, adding that he’s more interested in building cash flow. Ang’s preferred measure of performance is Ebitda (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization), which he’s aiming to more than double to 411.8 billion pesos by 2028. Ang is also confident that San Miguel will deliver double-digit growth in both revenue and earnings over the same period. He expects revenue to touch 2.4 trillion pesos with net profit growing to nearly 100 billion pesos in 2028, as contributions from infrastructure projects start kicking in. He predicts that infrastructure will contribute 27% to San Miguel’s Ebitda in a decade, up from 13% in 2023. “Money generates money,” says Ang.

Ang learned about money at an early age growing up in Tondo, one of Manila’s poorest districts. A neighbour taught him how to soup up car engines and that grew into a lifelong passion for motorcycles and cars, which he can now afford to indulge in. (His car collection numbers over 300 and includes an Aston Martin Valkyrie worth at least $3 million. San Miguel also owns BMW and Ferrari dealerships.) In Tondo, he transformed his family’s automotive repair and spare parts business into an importer of surplus vehicle parts and industrial and heavy equipment. He made his first million pesos as a teen and then got a degree in mechanical engineering from Manila’s Far Eastern University.

Ang befriended fellow car collector Mark Cojuangco and his late father, Eduardo Cojuangco Jr., who was close to the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr., the father of the country's current president, Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. In 1983, Cojuangco wrested control of San Miguel from the Soriano clan after a proxy fight. Three years later, when Marcos Sr. was overthrown in the 1986 People Power revolution and fled the Philippines, Cojuangco decamped as well, entrusting his businesses to Ang though not San Miguel as the new government sequestered the shares and took control of the company.

Following the Asian financial crisis, Cojuangco, who had by then returned home to a more friendly government, was reinstated chairman of San Miguel in 1998 and he installed Ang as vice chairman. In 2007, Ang was made chief operating officer and started reviving the company’s struggling beer business by overhauling its distribution and introducing new products. In 2012, Ang, who had added president to his title, bought an 11% stake in San Miguel from Cojuangco at a one-third discount to the prevailing stock price.

Since then, Ang has gradually boosted his stake to 37%—and his net worth—partly from the proceeds of the sale of his long-held controlling stake in Eagle Cement to San Miguel in 2022 for $1.7 billion. Another key San Miguel shareholder is Inigo Zobel, a cousin of Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala, chairman of Ayala Corp., the country’s oldest conglomerate. (Cojuangco’s widow Soledad Oppen-Cojuangco and children retain a tiny stake.)

While he remains the hands-on boss, Ang has begun planning for succession. In June, his eldest son, the media-shy John Paul, 44, who previously was in charge of Eagle Cement, was elevated from San Miguel's board director to president and chief operating officer to assist Ang in running the company. “I won’t be taking a less active role,” Ang clarifies, adding that he would like to see the company’s big-ticket infrastructure projects, including the two airports, be completed before he retires.

The mechanical engineer in Ang can’t help but search for new technical challenges. He’s now studying carbon capture and the underground storage of carbon emissions. He’s also evaluating a copper mining project in the southern Philippines that has the potential to become the nation’s biggest copper mine. “It is very natural for me to learn how to make things work better,” he says, “to design solutions to problems.”

Heir apparent John Paul Ang.Courtesy of San Miguel

Beyond business, Ang is on a mission to clean up the polluted rivers of Metro Manila and the nearby provinces of Bulacan and Laguna. Since 2020, San Miguel has spent about 6 billion pesos from its corporate social responsibility budget to reduce flooding by removing 6 million tons of silt and solid waste. Ang is even looking at harvesting rain water and injecting it into aquifers to replenish groundwater and prevent land subsidence.

“Profits are important as they enable us to invest in new projects, but that has never been the company’s sole motivation,” Ang says in conclusion. “Our focus has been on driving economic growth, boosting local industries and creating jobs.”

Legacy Of Growth

San Miguel has evolved from a colonial brewery into one of the Philippines’ top conglomerates with operations in food, beverages, oil refining, toll roads, commuter rail, cement, power plants and airports.

1890: San Miguel brewery founded by Enrique Maria Barretto in Manila

1925-1938:

    · Enters food business with Magnolia Ice Cream

    · Starts bottling Coca-Cola in the Philippines

    · Begins glass manufacturing for packaging

1947-1953:

    · Starts brewing San Miguel beer in Hong Kong

    · Launches B-Meg feeds

1960-1987:

    · Partners with Nestlé

    · Enters poultry business

    · Buys stake in La Tondeña Distillers

1990s: Expands in China and Southeast Asia

1998: Buys Purefoods and sells Nestlé Philippines

2007: Divests stake in Coca-Cola Philippines

2009: Takes on first toll road, power plant projects

2010: Becomes majority owner of Petron

2017: Proposes Bulacan airport project

2019: Lists F&B unit

2020: Awarded 50-year Bulacan airport concession

2022: Buys Eagle Cement

2023: Launches nationwide battery energy storage system network

2024: Wins contract to modernize Manila’s airport

Source: San Miguel

Two-time Olympic medalists from the Philippines

Nesthy Petecio joins Carlos Yulo among ranks of two-time Olympic medalists from the Philippines

JUSTIN KENNETH CARANDANG

GMA Integrated News

August 8, 2024 

Filipina boxer Nesthy Petecio just became a two-time Olympic medalist, joining a prestigious list of athletes from the Philippines to have won more than one medal in the Olympic Games.

Petecio, who already held a silver medal from the Tokyo Olympics three years ago, secured a bronze in the 2024 Paris Olympics after a semifinal finish in the women’s 57 kg division.

Over the weekend, Carlos Yulo also joined the list following his historic two-gold feat in the men’s gymnastics competition in Paris.

Here is the full list of athletes with two medals from the Summer Games:

Photos (clockwise from top left): Nesthy Petecio at the Paris 2024 Olympics, photo: REUTERS/Peter Cziborra. Carlos Yulo at the Paris 2024 Olympics, photo: REUTERS/Hannah Mckay. Teofilo Yldefonso, photo: philippineolympians.org. Hidilyn Diaz at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics: photo: REUTERS/Edgard Garrido.

Teofilo Yldefonso

Swimmer Teofilo Yldefonso is the country's first Olympic medalist as he claimed bronze in the 200m breaststroke event in the 1928 Summer Games in Netherlands. He then notched another bronze in the next edition of the Olympics in Los Angeles.

Hidilyn Diaz

Weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz broke the Philippines’ Olympic medal drought when she claimed the silver medal in the 2016 Rio Olympics. Prior to this, the Philippines last claimed an Olympic medal in 1996 from Mansueto ‘Onyok’ Velasco.

After her silver in Rio, Diaz eventually won the country’s historic first-ever gold medal in Tokyo.

Carlos Yulo

Gymnast Carlos Yulo carved his own place in history in Paris becoming the first male Filipino athlete to win a gold medal, the first Filipino to win two gold medals, and the first to win two medals in a single edition of the Olympics.

He ruled the men’s floor exercise and the men’s vault events to claim his two golds.

Nesthy Petecio

In Tokyo 2020, the Filipino boxer claimed silver in the featherweight event.

Now in Paris, Petecio punched a ticket to the semifinals which guaranteed her at least an Olympic bronze. Despite falling short against 20-year-old Julia Szeremeta of Poland, she becomes one of the most decorated Olympians in the history of the Philippines.

—JMB, GMA Integrated News

Filipino Foods make waves in Hawaii

In Kahului, Balai Pata Is a Celebration of Filipino Fare

Crispy pata, malunggay noodles and shrimp ukoy attest to Maui chef Joey Macadangdang’s resilience.

Melissa Chang

Honolulu Magazine

06 August 2024

“Chang!” Lee Anne Wong yelled across the way at the Maui Agricultural Festival. “You gotta try Joey Macadangdang’s Balai Pata!”

“I just went last night,” I replied, proud of myself for being ahead of the curve.

 “Oh my God!” we yelled in unison. “The garlic noodles!”

What’s good enough for a Top Chef contender is good enough for me. Wong loves Balai Pata so much that she went there for her birthday dinner and got three orders of Macadangdang’s fantastic garlic butter malunggay noodles.

Macadangdang opened Balai Pata in Kahului last October, which would not be so remarkable except that he and his wife Juvy were displaced by the Lahaina fire in August. Their home was spared but rendered unlivable, so they slept at Joey’s Kitchen, their restaurant in Napili Plaza, for weeks. During that time, the Macadangdangs opened up that restaurant as a makeshift shelter for other displaced people and cooked and donated up to 1,500 meals per day. And they closed their more upscale restaurant, Macadangdang in Ka‘anapali.

Balai Pata’s food is delicious and by today’s standards, fairly reasonable. Go to eat. Definitely go to support. Either way, you will leave satisfied.

In Ilocano, balai means house and pata means leg, so the name literally translates to “house of leg”—a house standing on the legs of Macadangdang’s ancestors in Ilocos Norte, according to the restaurant’s website. But it can also refer to one of its signature dishes, the ginormous crispy pata ($32)—a pork knuckle that’s braised and then deep-fried, served with a slightly tangy sawsawan sauce to complement the extreme richness. You can get one to share and still have leftovers.

I had an array of signature appetizers, like lumpia ($15—you can’t go to a Filipino restaurant and not have lumpia); tocino pork belly bao buns ($15), which were among my favorite bites; pakpak ti manok inasal ($14), which are moist and flavorful chicken wings with atchara sauce; pinakbet ($16), a vegetable stew served with pork belly, though you can customize the protein; and of course, the garlic malunggay noodles ($12).

Two other dishes have Macadangdang’s twist on traditional. The shrimp ukoy ($15), normally served as a fritter, has the fritters attached to the shrimp head, which stands upright on a skewer for a more instagrammable presentation. The other is sisig BP style ($16): Normally served on a sizzling platter or skillet, Macadangdang’s comes with large butter lettuce leaves so you can eat it as a wrap. I love this because it gives the dish a fresher flavor and is more interactive, which is just fun.

If you still have room after all that pata, of course there’s halo halo and banana lumpia for dessert. I also highly recommend the freshly squeezed fruit juice of the day—I got to have melon, which was so nice with the more tart sauces.

If you’re unfamiliar with Filipino cuisine, there are also kale Caesar salad, beet salad, bouillabaisse, fried rice, ramen and steak. Plus, there’s ample free parking—the restaurant is in the Triangle Square strip mall near Kahului Airport.

Carlos Yulo claimed his second gold medal in Paris

Philippines' Carlos Yulo strikes gold again, claiming vault title

By Scott Bregman
Olympics.com
04 Aug 2024

Carlos Yulo is golden again.

The history-making Filipino gymnast claimed his second gold medal in as many days Sunday (4 August) in the men's vault at the Olympic Games Paris 2024.

Yulo used a combination of difficulty - his first vault, a piked Dragulescu, was only one of two 6.0 difficulty valued vault - and precision to earn a 15.116 average score.

His gold Sunday is the third-ever for the Philippines at the Games, after his win in Saturday's floor final and Hidilyn Diaz's weightlifting win in Tokyo.

Armenia's Artur Davtyan and Team GB's Harry Hepworth battled for the silver and bronze with Davtyan taking the slight edge for second, 14.966 to 14.949.

Budots taking over Tiktok

What to know about the ‘Emergency Budots’ taking over TikTok

By Harmeet Kaur
CNN
04 August 2024

“Paging Dr. Beat! Emergency! Emergency!”

Before budots became a TikTok style trend, it was a hit sensation in the Philippines. Some users are showing others on the platform how the dance is done. @b.snipe/@nurse.john/@kielzfics/TikTok

If you’re up on the latest TikTok dance trends, you may have heard this refrain looped over a wobbly electronic bassline punctuated by high-pitched noises. The disco remix has been used in thousands of videos across the platform, many featuring people showcasing a series of outfits while lightly swinging their shoulders and feet. Even the Kamala Harris campaign and singer Olivia Rodrigo have gotten in on the fun.

Pop star Olivia Rodrigo is among the participants in the latest TikTok trend, which involves using a budots remix to show off different outfits. Olivia Rodrigo/TikTok

But for those who know the context behind the song, the real emergency is that these users are doing the dance all wrong.

The track from DJ Johnrey, which samples Miami Sound Machine’s “Dr. Beat,” belongs to a Filipino electronic dance music subgenre called budots. And though many users participating in the recent trend are exhibiting subtle, stiff movements, dancing budots involves smoother, more exaggerated motions and getting way lower.

Well before budots became a vehicle to share fashion inspiration, it was a hit dance phenomenon in the Philippines and the stuff of memes and parodies.

Here’s the little-known history behind the genre.

Budots was born out of Filipino street culture.

Budots, slang for “slacker” in the Visayan language, is thought to have originated in Davao City on the Philippine island of Mindanao.

It first emerged as a dance and was associated early on with youth drug culture, per Fritz Flores, who wrote an undergraduate thesis on the dance craze. Some scholars have also linked budots dance moves to art forms of the indigenous Badjao people.

Sherwin Calumpang Tuna, known by the moniker DJ Love, is credited with transforming budots into a full-fledged musical genre. While working at an internet cafe in the late aughts, DJ Love — also a choreographer — began producing song and remixes corresponding with the dance seen on Davao City’s streets, as recounted in the short documentary “Budots: The Craze.” He also distanced himself from budots’ early iterations by including the slogan “Yes to dance, no to drugs” in many of his videos.

Like the “Emergency Budots” track that has recently taken off on TikTok, songs of the genre take electronic and house music and layer on boisterous beats and over-the-top sound effects such as vinyl scratches, sirens and whistles. They typically lack a verse or chorus, with vocals instead featuring as repetitive samples throughout the track.

“With 140bpm four-on-the-floor patterns, budots reanimates the corpse of eurodance, albeit stripped of the latter’s melodramatic singing and theatrical piano melodies, and discarding the expressions of emotional vulnerability in favor of obscene jokes and calls for riotous partying,” said writer and musician Dominic Zinampan, while describing the genre in a 2020 essay.

“Pulsating, thumping basslines accent the upbeat while chintzy synths, oft-described onomatopoeically as »tiw-tiw,« reminiscent of rayguns, sirens, and noisemakers, snake through high and low.”

Davao City radio stations were playing budots by 2007, according to Flores’ research, and the genre continued to grow in popularity. In 2008, budots was catapulted to the Philippines’ mainstream after Ruben Gonzaga performed the dance on the reality show “Pinoy Big Brother” (Gonzaga went on to win the season). The Philippines news show “Kapuso Mo, Jessica Soho” covered the phenomenon in 2012.

How the genre became a sensation

Budots was such a phenomenon in the Philippines that even politicians attempted to capitalize on its popularity.

In 2015, while the controversial Rodrigo Duterte — then the mayor of Davao City — was running for president of the Philippines, a video of him dancing budots with a group of teenagers circulated widely online, racking up millions of views and contributing to Duterte’s self-cultivated image as a populist everyman. In 2017, the electronic music collective BuwanBuwan appeared to parody the genre and then-President Duterte by setting clips from his speeches to budots beats.

Former movie star Ramon “Bong” Revilla Jr. also danced to budots in a campaign ad while running for the Philippines’ Senate in 2019.

Budots is now a cultural mainstay in Davao City and the Philippines more broadly. There are countless song and dance compilations of budots remixes on the internet, and budots Christmas remixes can be heard at holiday parties across the country.

“While some use it to get famous because of its virality, I also feel that for these people, this is a kind of identity badge they use to express themselves, and they’re proud of it,” Jay Rosas, the filmmaker behind “Budots: The Craze,” said in a 2019 interview with VICE News. “The fact that it’s even used in Christmas parties and played on the radio means it has achieved a certain level of acceptance as a culture and part of our identity in Davao.”

After years of being overlooked, budots finally appears to be achieving recognition and respect across the dance music industry. Last year, budots pioneer DJ Love played a Boiler Room set — showcasing the genre and its characteristic maximalism on one of the industry’s biggest and most influential platforms.

Though the initial TikTok craze was divorced from the history of budots and its signature dance moves, it also spawned a spinoff trend in which those in the know demonstrated the proper way to dance budots — shining a spotlight on a slice of Filipino culture.

“If you gonna dance it, dance it right baby,” creator John Dela Cruz, known on TikTok as Nurse John, captioned one of his videos.

“you will NOT catch me walking in place,” wrote user Michi Kollette on a video of her rhythmically moving her knees to the beat.

Philippines can achieve First World status in 2050 - Palafox

First World PH achievable in 2050 – Palafox

Story by Earl John Alfaro

Manila Times

04 August 2024

THE Philippines can achieve First World status in 2050, said world-renowned Filipino architect and urban planner Felino Palafox Jr.

Speaking at a joint luncheon meeting of the Rotary Club's Makati chapters on July 29, Palafox said this can be attainable if the country can address corruption, criminality, climate change, inequality, infrastructure and investments.

By addressing these challenges, he believes that the Philippines could be the 16th highest economy in the world by 2050, as forecasted by Goldman Sachs and HSBC.

Palafox claimed that the Philippines should be a First World country, as it ranks in various industries in the world.

"We're number one in the world in sailors, seafarers. We're now number one in call centers. We are, I'd like to believe, we're number one in nurses. We're now number two in BPOs (business process outsourcing). We're number three in geothermal energy. We're the third- or fifth-longest coastline," he said.

"We're number four in shipbuilding, next to the Japanese and the Koreans. We're number five in all other mineral resources," he added.

"We are in the top ten. So we should really be a first world economy," Palafox told The Manila Times.

He mentioned that the country has a demographic soft spot in terms of average age at 26. "Filipino expatriates are the preferred employees of most employers all over the world," he continued, referring to overseas Filipino workers.

For this to happen, Palafox also said this would also take "visionary leadership, strong political will, good representation, good urban planning, good design like architectural engineering and excellent management."

By 2050, the Philippine population will reach 150 million, and 100 million Filipinos would be living in urban areas or cities. Given this scenario, Palafox said that the country will need 100 new sustainable, smart, resilient and livable cities in order to support and sustain its increasing population.

He added that the country has a very high development and investment potential.

"The Philippines is 400 times the size of Singapore. In fact, Singapore can fit inside Laguna Lake. We are 350 times the size of Hong Kong, eight times Taiwan [and] three times South Korea. South Korea is about the size of Mindanao," Palafox said, referring to the country's size and how it could use it to its advantage.

"We're very rich. God has blessed our country. In demographics, in natural resources, in beautiful islands," he concluded.