A call to restore trust, pursue clarity

BusinessWorld Forecast 2026 highlights critical need for rebuilding investor confidence in response to heightened institutional distrust

- By Bjorn Biel M. Beltran

TRUST is more than sentimentality. In business and finance, trust is capital; and in matters of capital, losses do not mirror gains.

When you lose 50% of a P1,000 investment, you don't recover completely when you gain 50% of your remaining P500 back. You would need 100%.

The base shrinks, and everything that follows grows from a weaker foundation. More critically, losses choke off future potential. They make growth harder, costlier, and slower than any ordinary business disruption. Which is why systems built on trust, be it financial or political, treat losses as existential risks. A single breach changes the entire trajectory, demanding repairs far costlier than the damage itself.

"For the past many years, we have been talking about disruption in the context of technology and innovation — how breakthroughs are forcing our businesses to evolve and adapt," Miguel G. Belmonte, president and chief executive officer (CEO) of BusinessWorld, began BusinessWorld Forecast 2026, which discussed the Philippines' economic prospects in the coming year.

"This time, however, we grapple with a more sinister form of disruption: that is, a corruption crisis, which combined with political volatility is weakening the peso, dampening the country's growth prospects, dragging the stock market, and pulling down business confidence in general."

Citing official data from the Asian Development Bank and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), Mr. Belmonte argued that the Philippines is starting 2026 from a worse position than the year prior. This is because the country is never an isolated case, but one that struggles and thrives amid a global backdrop that is increasingly volatile due to geopolitics, climate change, and technological shifts like artificial intelligence.