VOLUME 15 NUMBER 1 (January to June 2022)

Ernesto M. Pernia

Professor Emeritus, School of Economics, University of the Philippines
     Diliman, Quezon City Philippines
Secretary of Socioeconomic Planning & Director-General of the
     National Economic and Development Authority,
     Republic of the Philippines (2016-2020)

The Philippines has missed a number of opportunities toward long-term economic development. While the country was in pretty good shape in the 1960s through the late 1970s — and certainly highly competitive with other developing countries in Asia — it began to falter at the turn of the decade. By early 1980s it started to miss the boat in terms of sustaining its comparatively strong education and healthcare systems, besides introducing key economic policy reforms, which the four other founding members of ASEAN (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand) were beginning to undertake. Such policy reforms included ditching the well-worn import substitution industrialization strategy and in its stead opening up the economy to international trade and foreign direct investments (FDIs).