Where I am coming from: Backgrounder

Any person who offers his views on economic and social policies has to be open to skeptical review about his credibility. This is more so if those views veer away from the mainstream that people are accustomed to hearing.

A capsule of my background below gives the reader an informed judgment about my credentials. It is for the reader to judge them.

For years, I have been a student of the Philippine economy. As professor emeritus from the UP, an immodest claim to the wisdom of experience might be made because others have made such a judgment.

As a young student at UP, I had a good mix of training in politics, history, and the social sciences in general. In my confused earlier youth, I had a modicum of scientific backgrounds to help prepare for an abandoned early wish of a medical career track.

My parents came from the common stream of property-less Filipinos from Pampanga. They struggled in life to be able to send their children to public schools. They themselves had only limited education.

I was appointed in 1958 as instructor in economics at the University of the Philippines. In 1959, a generous foundation gave me a scholarship to study economics in one of the best schools in that discipline for the faculty development program of the UP. After three and a half years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, I returned home to my teaching post in 1963 with my advanced degree.

Even as I lived in the groves of academe, my work as an economist dealt with the nation’s actual problems of growth and development. In fact, at a young age my research often led me to be involved in the debate involving issues on economic policy change.

I made quite a few trips to hearings and requests for my views from some of the distinguished legislators of the land then, especially in the senate: I even shared sometimes the podium with them as a speaker on the same issue.

A memorable one for me were the contrasts of the views that I often expressed from those of then Senator Jose Diokno on the issue of creating economic incentives for investments in the country. Of course he was a more elegant speaker and he was more prominent and his views were popular and he steered the legislation.

By 1970, I found myself elevated to head the nation’s major agency for economic policy change – the National Economic Council (NEC). This cabinet position would, in 1972, be transformed into a more powerful National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) to which I would be appointed as the first director general. It was I who therefore organized the NEDA and who created its many regional development councils and offices. I led it up to 1981.

At age 35 then, I found it might have been premature to be involved in big responsibilities. But others, especially President Marcos then, had judged that I was ready for the big picture.

The challenge made me use my best judgment as my training and experience had prepared me. But I had great colleagues to work with in the government. Together, and with the guidance of Marcos who was at the helm of martial law from 1972, major social and economic reforms were undertaken. These reformed legal structures – in government, the economy, taxation, budgeting – still operate today.

The years when I worked in the government, I believe, were quite productive for the nation. There were many major social and economic reforms. Public investment financing rose. New infrastructure expanded in the nation’s coverage. But they were also turbulent and challenging years. And the nation’s politics became a cauldron of uncertainty.

By mid-1981, I was out of this job. My temperament and advice had already run counter against some major political players within the system. I was becoming an odd man out. Made to preside the meetings of a major Philippine bank (PNB), I could redirect my remaining energies on other important things.

That was when I focused on new things: the education of young economists and of young people in general. I wrote my textbook, Economics. To write the book from which Filipinos – both students and teachers could learn the economic problems of the nation –is an important mission.

When a friend and great Australian economist Heinz Arndt read the book, he suggested to me that he with other Australian and Indonesian scholars Indonesianize the examples. I agreed and as a result, the book even helped to introduce economics to Indonesians.

In 1985 I began work at the World Bank. During the turbulent months of the people power revolution, and subsequent years of further national reconsolidation, I worked in more serene settings in Washington DC.

My job required understanding the many problems of developing nations. The World Bank is a major development institution. It is also a rich source of multifaceted talents and expertise dealing with many countries of the world. Its work culture is knowledge based. It was like a university in that there was great diversity of views as debates flourished every time a country or sector economic report was reviewed. Thus, I have seen folly, success, and perseverance of many countries.

At the end of 1997, I retired from my second career and I returned to the country. I reinserted myself back into the Philippine picture but quietly. I was welcomed back at the UP School of Economics. There I began teaching hundreds of young students again. I revised my book and made it even more relevant to the study of current economic problems. I also went into an intense agenda of writing on development issues.

Among these works is a book on the 1960s to the 1980s, in which one of my colleagues in government, Cesar Virata, appears as the central figure. This book will come out next year, as it is virtually complete.

But I have devoted myself to the study of the economics of the nation’s economic development. I have immersed myself in the study of particular issues and occasionally had written on diverse topics.

But most important among these are a series of studies on the Philippine labor market – why our labor policies need reform because they emphasize high goals while helping to exclude many Filipinos from gainful employment.

Another set of studies are on the need to reform our capital market to remove major restrictions that hamper the expansion of private investments in expanding the country’s investment levels. Another set of concerns are regional development issues.