Deregulation then and now

Cielito F. Habito - @inquirerdotnet 08/01/2023

It has been a year since the death of President Fidel V. Ramos, who introduced the boldest economic reforms the country had seen during his presidency in 1992-1998. Their guiding principle was deregulation—the fourth of five Ds…

A new national capital?

Cielito F. Habito - @inquirerdotnet 07/25/2023

Metro Manila is both exploding and imploding,” mused my environmentalist colleague Dr. Ben Malayang III, as members of our small chat group compared notes on traffic jam experiences two weeks ago, amidst widespread flooding in the city.…

Democratizing the economy

Cielito F. Habito - @inquirerdotnet 07/18/2023

The Philippine Long Distance Telephone (PLDT) Company used to have a monopoly on telephone services, and Philippine Airlines (PAL) on domestic airline services in the country. It took over six years from when my wife filed an…

Doing feeding right

Cielito F. Habito - @inquirerdotnet 07/04/2023

Child feeding programs have been around for decades, but today I see seemingly much wider interest in doing them and doing them right. Perhaps we’re all realizing that our society’s ills spanning the human, social, economic, political,…

Feeding hungry kids

Cielito F. Habito - @inquirerdotnet 06/27/2023

  Millie Kilayko, prime mover of the Negrense Volunteers for Change (NVC) Foundation since it started in 2010, had an epiphany of sorts upon seeing an unusually tall boy in a kindergarten class they had helped build…

Doing Masagana right

Cielito F. Habito - @inquirerdotnet 06/20/2023

Can the President resurrect his late father’s signature farm program and achieve unequivocal success this time around? Experts had described as both a success and a failure the 1970s Masagana 99 program that aimed for rice self-sufficiency…

The end of revenge spending

Cielito F. Habito - @inquirerdotnet 06/13/2023

As expected, the economy grew at a significantly slower pace in the first quarter of this year (6.4 percent) than it did a year ago (8.3 percent). There are several reasons for this. On the production or…

Imports are not the enemy

Cielito F. Habito - @inquirerdotnet 06/06/2023

I’ve heard people passionately speak about imports as if they are the most evil scourge on our economy, hence must be tightly controlled if not stopped altogether. When economists like me argue for more liberalized trade to…

When rules defy reason

Cielito F. Habito - @inquirerdotnet 05/30/2023

The most frustrating thing about dealing with government is when rules are so unreasonable that it feels like the only reason that they’re there is to deliberately make things harder for all of us. Often they defy…

Can big business be inclusive?

Cielito F. Habito - @inquirerdotnet 05/23/2023

Are our big business conglomerates widening the gap between rich and poor Filipinos? While big business empires in rich countries seem to have fostered growing economic concentration and widened inequality, the outcome need not be inevitable. But…

My LTO saga

Cielito F. Habito - @inquirerdotnet 05/02/2023

It has been eight years since I paid P450 to the Land Transportation Office (LTO) for new car license plates under its Motor Vehicle License Plate Standardization Program. Like me, millions have yet to see their plates.…

Leveling up

Cielito F. Habito - @inquirerdotnet 04/18/2023

Many of us who have traveled abroad have probably encountered obscure but talented Filipino bands providing the entertainment in a hotel lounge or nightclub in even the most unlikely places in the world. Over past decades, young…

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