How is PBBM managing the economy?

In my Oct. 29 column, written in the context of the investigation into flood control anomalies, I made the following observation: “As an economist who worries about the country’s economic future, I could be more forgiving of PBBM’s weak leadership if the economy was doing well. But it too is loosing steam.”

- ANDREW J. MASIGAN

I have since received numerous emails asking me to expound. In response, the most accurate way I can describe the state of the economy is through statistics. Numbers don’t lie, after all.

Suffice (and sad) to say that the economy has deteriorated under Marcos’ leadership. This is due to his failure to address structural defects in the system such as corruption, red tape, infrastructure shortfalls, fragmented digitization, etc.

Economists agree that the economy’s underwhelming state stems from PBBM’s leadership style — one without a guiding vision and with little intent to be transformative. His economic ambitions remain unclear, defaulting to the bare minimum (which is a modest improvement in poverty). He relies on government institutions despite their chronic inefficiencies — for instance, expecting the Bureau of Customs to solve smuggling on its own. The problem is, these inefficiencies are seldom addressed at its core. PBBM’s directives are mostly reactive, rarely anchored on a grand vision or driven by urgency.

Consequently, progress crawls and outcomes are of low-impact. No surprise, under his management, the Philippines is often bypassed by foreign investors. The FDI numbers prove it.

Exacerbating matters is the runaway corruption that festered under his leadership. Corruption has always been the country’s core problem and any good chief executive would have addressed it in the first month. He let it prosper for three years - even approving three of the most corrupt national budgets in history. His SONA rebuke came three years late with the damage done.

Let us compare how the economy has fared since President Marcos assumed office in 2022, up to the present.

Growth indicators