THERE’S a lobby for the Bangko Sentral to look into the 3-percent to 5-percent remittance fee charged by remittance companies, including banks.

You see, these remittance companies already make money from the float and again from the foreign exchange differential when they handle the money of overseas Filipino workers.

As it is, overseas Filipino workers also have to pay the usual documentary stamp tax on their remittances.

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Health notes 1: The country’s sanitation laws require that a person who dies of a communicable disease must be buried within 12 hours.

Under these laws, the influenza variant A(H1N1) is considered a communicable disease even though the virus becomes inactive after a person’s death. You see, unlike tuberculosis (which is an airborne disease and can continue to wreak havoc even after death), A(H1N1) is spread only through droplets coming from a living person’s saliva, tears, mucus and such.

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Health notes 2: There are only 800 licensed embalmers in the country. The minimum requirement for licensing is a high-school diploma and (pretty much like the chicken or the egg conundrum) at least three years’ work as an embalmer.

The license is currently given by the Department of Health after taking certain written tests. The idea here is for every funeral parlor in the country to have at least one licensed embalmer, in much the same manner as a drugstore needs to have a licensed pharmacist to stay in business.

Oh yes, the license is good for three years, renewable if the applicant shows that he/she has taken the required refresher courses.

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Many backyard producers of virgin-coconut oil (VCO) have closed shop since every Juan and Pedro decided to get into the business five years ago. The reasons are clear. One, production quality is not standardized. Two, supply is higher than demand because of the VCO’s high retail price. Three, VCO is considered a food supplement (read: no therapeutic value), not a medicine.

Those who have survived are integrated producers or those located near their source of raw material and those which produce not just VCO but other coconut products as well such as coconut flour and coconut-based skimmed milk.

On average, an integrated VCO processing facility requires a P30-million investment.

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The PinoyME Social Investment Fund will be launched next month during the annual corporate social responsibility expo of the League of Corporate Foundations.

Basically, PinoyME is a campaign hatched up by Dan Songco and others to borrow money from the private sector for relending to high-risk clients (read: those with great ideas but no track record), payable without interest after a year.

The concept is pretty much like borrowing from a relative or friend. It’s a loan without collateral, without interest, no strings attached (read:  no equity position); just a lot of good wishes that the startup business does well.