Filipino billionaires and their COVID-19 response

The story of the banana and the hard-boiled egg in the time of the new coronavirus pandemic could morph into a thousand and one imaginings.

Perhaps the banana could be the miraculous cure from the evil virus that the court jester was talking about. The long wait would have been over.

Or maybe the hard-boiled egg is a golden egg in disguise and anyone who would take a bite would someday be the country’s richest man. Who was it who said that anything given by a billionaire is a piece of lucky gold?

The possible stories are endless. But one thing is certain – that viral photo of the relief goods is turning out to be among the most unforgettable images of billionaires’ response to the coronavirus disease 2019 or COVID-19 pandemic.

It is, therefore, fitting to see how Filipino billionaires have responded to the pandemic especially those in the recent Forbes list.

Global billionaires

In the latest list of global billionaires published by Forbes, two Filipino billionaires joined the top 1,000 club.

Manuel Villar Jr., a self-made billionaire and former politician with close ties to President Duterte, emerged as the richest among the Filipino tycoons on the list with a net worth of $5.6 billion. He is 286th on the global list.

The contribution of the Villar Group to the relief effort was more than a banana and a hard-boiled egg packed in a transparent plastic bag bearing the names of the family’s representatives in politics.

The Villar family, which built a fortune developing real estate, helped in the conversion of the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) Forum Halls 1 to 3 into a much-needed facility for the treatment and health monitoring of COVID-19 patients. It also installed disinfecting apparatuses in nine hospitals.

Earlier, the Villar family donated face masks, drinking water to schools and government hospitals, food and accommodation to frontliners, among others.

The second richest Filipino is ports and casino magnate Enrique Razon, Jr., who took the 565th spot in the global ranking with a net worth of $3.4 billion.

Razon’s group is retrofitting the Ninoy Aquino Stadium within the Rizal Memorial Sports Complex for it to become a Level 2 COVID-19 emergency facility. The Bloomberry Cultural Foundation, the social responsibility arm of listed casino operator Bloomberry Resorts Corp., is funding and overseeing phases 1 and 2 of the project.

“We feel it our duty to provide as much support as possible to the inter-agency task force and to the Filipinos to respond to this crisis,” Razon said.

Together with the Consunji-led DMCI Group, Bloombery Foundation also helped retrofit two wards of the Philippine General Hospital to become COVID-19 facilities. It, likewise, donated P60 million worth of personal protective equipment for health workers through the Department of Health.

From business to relief operations

Other billionaires have gone as far as turning their businesses into massive relief operations as the government ordered a lockdown in an effort to contain the spread of COVID-19.

Among them are San Miguel Corp.’s president and COO Ramon S. Ang and chairman Danding Cojuangco, who have been responding continuously to the fight against COVID-19.

To date, the company behind the country’s biggest food and drink brands has donated over 100,000 liters of ethyl alcohol to various frontliners to different hospitals.

Food donations have amounted to over P100 million and reached provinces as far as Marinduque and Sorsogon.

The LT Group Inc., the listed conglomerate of another Forbes billionaire Lucio Tan, was also among the first to respond. It has repurposed its facilities to produce ethyl alcohol for frontliners.

Project Ugnayan

Other Filipino billionaires have supported Project Ugnayan, a fundraising initiative of top business groups in cooperation with the Philippine Disaster Resilience Foundation (PDRF) and Caritas Manila.

So far, Project Ugnayan has raised P1.62 billion and reached 985,000 families or 4.9 million individuals. It targets to help 7.5 million individuals in up to 1.5 million families.

Supporting the initiative are the Aboitiz Group, Lopez Group, Alliance Global Group, Ayala Group, Yuchengco Group, Bench, Century Pacific, Concepcion Industrial, DMCI Group, Gokongwei Group, Razon’s ICTSI, Jollibee, Mercury Drug, Metrobank, Nutri-Asia, Liwayway Marketing, the MVP Group, Puregold, Ramon Ang, SM Group, Sunlife of Canada and Unilab.

Project Ugnayan also received support from Roberto Ongpin’s AlphaLand.

I’m sure there are more initiatives being done quietly without the press releases and these donations will no doubt go a long way in helping the country respond to COVID-19. The government would not be able to fight the virus without the help of our Filipino billionaires.

But could the billionaires afford to give more given the wealth they have accumulated and when spending millions would not be a problem? Only our Filipino billionaires know for sure.