The experience of upskilling, reskilling, and retooling personnel at the Center for Research and Communication (CRC) with industrial and business economists encouraged Jess Estanislao and those of us who teamed up with him to identify other professional manpower gaps that existed in the late 1960s...
Because higher and professional education in the Philippines has focused for decades on college degree-oriented programs, resulting in what I've called the cultural disease of “diplomitis,” the recent passing of the EBET Law might give the impression that enterprise-based education and training...
The Pambansang Pabahay Para Sa Pilipino Program, also known as the 4PH Program, is the national housing program of the Philippines . It was launched in September 2022 with the goal of having zero informal settlers by 2028. It is no brainer for any Government to determine priorities in...
From the review and critique of the book "Why Nations Fail" by Acemoglu and Robinson—along with Simon Johnson, a Nobel laureate of 2024—which appeared in the last six articles, we can conclude that the Philippines' failure to achieve high-income status over the past twenty to thirty years can...
Part 6 Another case of "technocrats" saving the day for countries that suffered from long stretches of extractive political institutions, which Acemoglu and Robinson completely ignored, was Chile. Chile suffered under the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet from 1973 to 1990. After the 1973...
At the 2024 Asian CEO Awards held on October 8, the esteemed Lifetime Achievement Award in the Public Sector was presented to current Finance Secretary Ralph Recto. As Chairman of the Board of Judges, I had the honor of handing him the award. In my brief remarks, I noted that the Honorable...
Now that the time for filing is over for all those seeking to be elected to public office in May 2025, I would like to share with all the aspirants some words of advice from Pope Francis. These ideas come from the social encyclical that he wrote during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. It...
The coconut sector should be the vanguard in the ambitious plan of the present Administration to improve the production and productivity of the entire agriculture sector. As reported by Julie Aurelio in a leading daily, while Indonesia is now the top producer of coconuts, producing an average of...
The second role model of a Senatoriable is Atty Gilberto (Gibo) C. Teodoro, currently the Secretary of the Department of National Defense (DND). He serves as the principal assistant and adviser to the President on defense matters, overseeing various DND offices and bureaus. Gibo graduated from De...
Without my affirmative vote in the Philippine Constitutional Commission of 1986 that drafted the Philippine Constitution of 1987, we would probably have no Senators in the Philippine Congress today. We would have a unicameral Legislature. Thanks to my surname name being Villegas which made me...
A recent article in the Financial Times by A. Anantha Lakshmi reported that the Philippines is pressing the U.S. (and Japan, I may add) to boost trade and investment in the country as escalating tensions between Manila and Beijing spark fears of a broader economic fallout. In an interview...
Part 3 Up until now, the arguments against divorce have been based on empirical scientific findings. There has been no reference to religious doctrine or beliefs. On non-religious grounds alone, we can show that absolute divorce is bad for society as a whole, whatever the predominant...
