Open for business, closed to media

This one is for Ripley’s Believe It or Not.

- TONY LOPEZ

The Investor Relations Office of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) and the Department of Finance conducted a three-hour “Big, Bold Reforms” forum for investors yesterday at Shangri-La BGC. But media was banned.Why? Three reasons: 1) Probably because both the BSP and the DOF do not subscribe to what is called transparency in governance; 2) BSP and the DOF do not consider the Filipino people, you and I, ordinary people, investors; and 3) There is no such thing, as “Big Bold” reforms. Nakakahiya conducting an open-to-media forum talking about lies.

I texted the above to Finance Secretary Frederick Go, a former business reporter in his teenage days, and a property mogul by the time he joined the BBM government. His reply: “We wanted the event to be candid and for people to talk freely and openly.”

Deck’s worry is that some media people (actually many) don’t have a functional understanding of how the economy operates in terms of GDP (growth rates), inflation, and investment incentives, and other abstruse terms. Like during the post-forum presscon, a newsman wondered why achieving a five percent GDP growth rate is very good, given global standards.

The World Bank's January 2026 World Economic Forecasts reports East Asia and the Pacific (EAP) possibly posted 4.6 percent economic or GDP growth in 2025. “Weather-related disruptions dampened growth in the Philippines,” says the bank, noting however, “Industrial production increased, especially in Malaysia, the Philipines, and Vietnam, largely owing to artificial intelligence (AI)-driven demand for semiconductor exports.”