Forlorn Hope

Like most of you, I am deeply concerned about the present bad state of our country today. This feeling draws me to collect my thoughts about this sad condition, and I decided to express them in this commentary.

For sure, the conditions I have identified in this commentary have been written about in the past as a single subject or group of subjects by many learned authors. What I am trying to accomplish is to portray a usable topside picture that, perhaps, may trigger some actions by some of us who deeply lament the present state of the Filipino nation. Or, if that does not happen, leave such a picture in the minds of the readers for contemplation.

Let me start with the economy.

Current reports indicate clearly that our economy is not in good shape. The various predictions for the 2026 GDP growth rate do not vary much - almost all are in the low 3% range, which represents a drop from last year’s growth rate of 4.4%, and which, by itself, is lower than the growth rate the year before. To put this predicted low 2026 rate of growth in perspective, the expectation for Vietnam’s 2026 GDP growth rate is about 10%. Such comparison also clearly indicates a widening difference between the higher per capita GDP of Vietnam and the lower per capita GDP of the Philippines.

Despite this expected low Philippine GDP growth rate, inflation is high, at 7.2%, as reported recently. These two conditions appear to be in contradiction, but they do pair sometimes, a reality that is known as stagflation, but which I would rather call a double whammy to emphasize its effect.

The amount of foreign direct investments (FDI), which drives higher employment and economic growth, is very much wanting. As reported by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), the Philippines' FDI is about US$8 billion in 2025. Comparing this amount with the corresponding amounts pertaining to certain ASEAN countries as shown in the UNCTAD Investment Report 2026, the Philippines' FDI is lower than Malaysia’s by US$7.4 billion, Vietnam’s by $12.4 billion, and Indonesia’s by US$13.4 billion, not to include a similar comparison with Singapore’s which is much higher. When translated into per capita terms, such lowness of the Philippines' FDI becomes much starker.

The peso exchange rate with foreign currencies, particularly with the US dollar, continues to move weaker and therefore contributes to higher cost of local production and, hence, to higher inflation.

Another major driver of economic growth is the existence of adequate and efficient infrastructures. There are several classes of these infrastructures, of course. The more significant of them are those relating to transportation, information technology and communications, power and agriculture. It is generally assessed that our present infrastructures are inadequate, and many are in less than good condition. 

Let’s take transportation as an example. This is an area that has not been given adequate and close attention that it deserves.

We keep on forgetting that we are a country of many islands and therefore the entire geography is discontinuous in many places, resulting in higher cost of transporting people and economic goods, making our produce less competitive in the world market. To substantially reduce this disadvantage, we should have given priority to connecting these islands as extensively as possible. Unfortunately, we did not. Moving forward, to correct this condition, we need to build more bridges and undersea tunnels, where feasible, ports and ferries to connect these islands.

Land transportation also has been neglected. I remember in the 50s and 60s of the last century, I traveled the railroad from Manila to La Union and the railway from Manila to Legazpi. But this railroad system was neglected and then abandoned. I also recall that there used to be a railroad in Panay. That, too, was abandoned. Now that we are rebuilding the railroads in Luzon, we must also give a sense of urgency to build railroad systems on the other major islands, particularly in Mindanao, to help grow both the national and local economy faster. A significant factor in the rapid economic development of China is its continuous building of tens of thousand miles of railroads. We must learn from China’s experience.

We only have one long road system, the Pan-Philippine Highway, that runs from North Luzon to North Mindanao, which was completed in the late 70s or early 80s of the past century. Some months ago, I saw a picture of a segment of this road that shows both sides now dense with houses. Many other segments of the road may be in a similar condition, which means that vehicle traffic cannot move fast anymore. This old road may now need to be replaced, or many of its segments relocated, and the whole system widened and fenced off to provide much faster travel time.

But more than this, if we want to achieve a higher level of economic development, especially in the countryside, we need to focus on developing fast and reliable systems of roads in, at least, the major islands, particularly a form of circumferential coastal road that feeds into the major towns.

In information technology and communications, the acquisition and use of state-of-the-art applications in private business located in our major cities is considered par with those of our peer countries. What we lack in this sector to spur higher and wider economic development is to improve and extend communication connectivity adequately to the countryside. Doing so will need public funding as private business will only go so far when expanding is profitable. Government subsidies cannot therefore be avoided in this connection.

The current use of modern technologies in our education sector and local government units is below par. In our public school system, we generally do not even provide a computer for each of our students. We need to improve this condition to produce better educated young people which is a major driver of economic growth. And so, with our LGUs, in order for them to provide efficient and prompt service to our citizens and private business and, thus, contribute to a higher level of national productivity.

The cost of power for industrial and commercial use, as well as for residential consumption, continues to be very high as compared with those of our ASEAN neighbors, except Singapore whose cost rate is a little higher. As use of power constitutes a significant factor in economic activities, our cost of doing business goes comparatively higher and makes our economic goods less competitive. Moreover, such high power cost contributes to the higher cost of living of Filipino citizens, both in terms of their own power consumption and the economic goods that they buy.

In rice production, based on data from the Philippine Statistics Authority, the country’s rice production is significantly insufficient such that we imported in 2025 21.9% of our rice food requirements which is equivalent to 3.39 million metric tons, a quantity that feeds tens of millions of Filipinos annually. We are therefore always vulnerable to the possibility of lack of or inadequate access to foreign rice supply.

On social condition, the poverty rate is still high—15.5% in 2023 as reported by the Philippine Statistics Authority. This rate is equivalent to 1 in 6 Filipinos who are very poor. Based on the 2026 SWS survey, 22.6% of Filipinos, or 1 in 5, experience involuntary hunger.

The rate of child stunting continues to be high—23.6% in 2023 as noted in a UNICEF/Philippine Institute for Development Studies Report. As we know, this condition has very serious future consequences for these children. They will have difficulty in learning, produce low work productivity, and in many cases, they become a burden to society rather than contributors to the uplifting of the general welfare.

The education system continues to be poor as can be clearly gleaned from the performance of our 15-year-old students in the PISA international assessment of knowledge and skills in reading, mathematics and science. Averaging the rankings in these three subjects, our students ranked 78 out of 78 countries in the 2018 assessment and 77 out of 81 countries in the 2023 assessment. These results are not only disgraceful and humiliating, but more distressingly, they foretell a continuing low productivity of Filipino labor and a general inability in the long term of the Filipino to exploit knowledge for scientific, technological and similar developments.

There are other factors that contribute to the poor condition of our country today, such as the massive corruption by quite a number of the members of our Congress that were discovered in recent times and, as evident in this particular instance, the slowness of the application of justice. I will no longer add these other factors into the picture as the one that has already been drawn is clear enough.

It should be noted that all these conditions are interrelated. We only need to pick and choose and then push the few levers that will produce the widest favorable and most effective responses. It will be nonsensical to dwell on each of these bad conditions all by itself and not giving due and sufficient attention to their interrelationships. But this kind of high-level orchestration can only be done by a great leader—someone who understands the problems very well, knows the solutions, and has the will, courage, determination and strength of character to get the solutions done—efficiently and effectively.

Unfortunately, the existing electoral process cannot produce that great leader, in my opinion. The present electoral process is controlled by power- and wealth-seeking political dynasties that tightly hold the majority of our voters as captives by using the power of the extraordinary amount of money that they extract from government finances by various means. When a political dynasty pools the takings of their elected members, they create a formidable weapon to stay in power. Worse, a political dynasty does not work in isolation. They combine or coordinate their actions with other political dynasties and, thus, form a powerful political cartel. That is why in the election for president and vice president, the election usually becomes a contest between two political cartels, sweeping away the stand-alone do-gooders.

A political cartel may use its power in other ways. I anticipate the use of such power in connection with a very important political process happening in our country today—the Senate trial of the Vice President of the Philippines, who was impeached by the House of Representatives. The use of such power would swing the result of the trial from the expected to the unexpected. We would then lose a huge chance to start getting things done right. 

We got ourselves into a state of forlorn hope, a desperate or extremely difficult situation.

If we cannot achieve the desperately needed change by way of the existing electoral process, we need to do something else.

And if we also are not able to do any of that either, then the only thing we can do is to just sit around and wait for the arrival of a deus ex machina, some person or thing that appears suddenly and unexpectedly and provides a solution to an apparently insoluble difficulty.

It is going to be a long wait. Indeed!

As published in BusinessWorld, dated 06 November 2026