by Bernardo Malvar Villegas, Ph.D.

The Philippine Economy Towards First World Status boldly predicts that one generation from now, the Philippine economy will reach First World status with a per capita income of at least US$12,000 in 2022 prices, poverty incidence close to zero and an equitable distribution of income. The author wrote primarily for today’s millenials who are the ones most likely to see the realization of this forecast.

Most of the chapters of this book were written during the period 2020 to 2021 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. As it sees print a few days after the inauguration of a new Administration on June 30, 2022, the Philippine economy was already being rated by the World Bank as the second fastest growing economy in the Indo-Pacific region, next only to India. The way it survived the pandemic was another proof that the country has acquired the strong fundamentals abundantly and accurately described by the author. All throughout the book, there is constant reference to these fundamentals: the demographic dividend, the geographic dividend, the temporal dividend, and strong financial institutions built over at least three decades by the best and the brightest who were appointed to positions of leadership in the economy.

The widely acclaimed appointments to these same positions of economic leadership by President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. bolsters further the optimism permeating this entire book that the “Ambisyon Natin 2040” mapped out by the previous government will be indeed achieved.

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