IBON Foundation: Bigger solutions needed for Philippines’ economic woes

This is AI generated summarization, which may have errors. For context, always refer to the full article.

Calling President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. economic policies performative governance, the think tank says projects such as food stamps and job fairs fail to address persistent issues such as hunger and high underemployment

MANILA, Philippines – The Philippines’ current economic policies are unfit for the magnitude of the problems it faces, think tank IBON Foundation said.

In a press briefing on Friday, July 25, IBON Foundation’s executive director Sonny Africa said President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s economic policies are merely performative governance.

Instead of introducing bold reforms that address the root causes of economic issues, the Marcos Jr. administration has instead implemented what Africa described as “micro-solutions” that are too small to solve these concerns.

As an example, Africa cited the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s Walang Gutom 2027 food stamp program, which transfers P3,000 in food credits that can be used in the government’s Kadiwa stores.

“Clearly it looks like it’s a step forward, but because it fails to address the bigger problem of hunger, it tends to be tokenistic,” he said.

While the number of self-rated poor has since dropped from the peak of December 2024, it still grew from 12.2 million Filipinos at the beginning of Marcos’ term to 14.1 million in April.

IBON Foundation also pointed to the economy’s job generation capability, which has been hampered by the decline of the country’s agriculture and manufacturing sectors in their share of the gross domestic product (GDP) and in employment.

Image from World Bank

Africa said that the agriculture and manufacturing sectors are supposed to be creating high-quality jobs that pay well and protect Filipinos from economic volatilities.

“And when you talk about trying to resolve joblessness, it won’t be fixed by job fairs. It won’t be fixed even by a better educational system. The problem of joblessness is rooted in an economy that is not creating enough high productivity, high paying work. And it can only happen if the economy’s industrial base is actually strengthened,” he said.

Because the Philippine economy grew through household expenditure instead of job creation and better productivity, ordinary Filipinos do not often feel this prosperity.

Image from IBON Foundation

For IBON Foundation, two fundamental changes need to happen if Marcos wants to solve economic issues, such as lack of jobs and high living costs, in the long run. 

First, the government needs to speed up agrarian reform and rural development. This entails allocating more funding for agriculture to support local farmers, as well as genuine agrarian reform.

Africa pointed out that the agriculture’s share of the national budget actually fell from 4.1% in 2024 to 3.9% in 2025.

“It’s not really indicating any real intent to support agriculture, despite many, many programs being rolled out, despite supposedly too many millions of beneficiaries of those programs,” Africa said.

Second, the government must also create its own industrialization policy and build domestic industries. For Africa, building industries entails a business environment favoring Filipino firms and helping them grow.

This doesn’t necessarily mean closing off the country to foreign companies entirely, but instead building Filipino firms’ capacity to learn and compete with its foreign counterparts.

“So the key point is to balance the opening up, we should have government support for Filipino firms and Filipino farms. Because without that government support for Filipino firms and Filipino farms, we will have exactly what happened in the last 45 years. Filipino firms could not compete, hence the decline as a share of the GDP, and hence the structural decline,” he said.

– Rappler.com