Suspending Disbelief Only For "Captain America"

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Last night, my family and I watched "Captain America."  It was true to its comic book nature-- meaning,  I had to suspend my disbelief right   at  the theater door.  As a consequence, I found the movie  entertaining.

Now cut to  my recent  post on PAGCOR Coffee....  A friend from one of my  Facebook groups provided a link to an article  by Mr. Ramon Tulfo  in the Philppine Daily Inquirer entitled "P1 billion on coffee a reasonable amount."


Here is an excerpt of what Mr. Tulfo wrote:

"But if you take another look at it and do honest-to-goodness arithmetic—minus the emotions—you will see that P1 billion spent on coffee over a period of nine years was quite reasonable, according to my source at Pagcor.


Pagcor has 13 branches all over the country which operate on a 24-hour basis all year round, except on Good Friday and Black Saturday.


If you divide P1 billion by nine years—the period covered by the audit—you get P111,111,111.11.  The amount of P111,111,111.11 will be divided by 13—for the number of Pagcor branches—and the dividend amounts to P8,547,008.55.

Dividing P8,547,008.55 by 365—the number of days in a year—gives you P23,416.46.

P23,416.46 divided by 24—the number of hours in a day—is P947.68.

The P947.68 is equivalent to nine cups of coffee which an average player (gambler) consumes in 24 hours.

That’s only P105.29 per cup." (Emphasis mine) 

After examining the assumptions made by Mr. Tulfo's source at  PAGCOR, here are my questions:

• Were there already 13 casinos  9  years ago?
• If the casinos are closed 2 days in a year (Good Friday and Black Saturday) why use 365 days as divisor?
• What is the source of the study showing that the average consumption of a regular PAGCOR player is 9 cups over a period of 24 hours?
• Is it realistic to assume that a cup of coffee on the average cost more than  Ps 100 for the past 9 years? 
• In the first place, why did PAGCOR use a concessionaire for its coffee requirements?

Now, if I were to recompute the figures given the assumptions made by Mr. Tulfo, this is how I would do it:

• Ps 1 billion divided by 9 years= Ps 111,111,111.00 per year
  
• Ps 111,111,111 divided by 13 casinos= Ps 8,547,008 per casino
• Ps 8,547,008 divided by 363 days= Ps 23,545  per day
• Ps 23,545 divided by  24 hours= Ps 981 per hour

The farm gate price of coffee is only Ps 100 per kilo based on this Manila Bulletin article http://www.mb.com.ph/artic​les/309037/da-identifies-c​lose-60000-has-coffee. Assuming that one uses 10 grams of ground coffee per cup-- that would be about 100 cups per kilo. That translates to about Ps 1 per cup of coffee. 

Even if  the cost of 10 grams of  coffee were to be multiplied 10 times to   Ps 10 per cup in order to include  hot water, sugar, cream, labor, cups, saucers and overhead; and if  PAGCOR took the initiative of serving its own coffee-- straight from the coffee machines or the percolators--  the government would have saved  millions of pesos.  

That is a thought I can not leave at the  door if and when I visit a PAGCOR casino. To me, suspending disbelief  does not and will  not  apply in this case.