At the end of its first three years in office, the Marcos administration produced no significant changes in the kinds of figures that indicate sustained economic improvement.
The half mark of the term of office of a high official—be he a government official or a corporate chief executive officer—is the point preferred by most people for evaluating the official’s performance in the earlier part of his term. On June 30, 2025, Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.—better known nationally as BBM—reached the mid-point pf his presidency, and his three-year performance is now the subject of much evaluative activity.
How did Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. perform during his first three years in office? More to the point, is this country better off today than on June 30, 2022, when the term of the previous administration ended?
The most generous evaluation that one can make of the BBM administration after its first years in office is that this country is no worse off today than three years ago. If anything, it probably is slightly worse off.
Easily the foremost achievement of the Marcos administration’s first three years in office was the pivot of Philippine foreign policy away from the pro-China position to which the previous administration had brought it (“The arbitral award is just a scrap of paper,” the former President had said.) and the strengthening of this country’s external defense posture with the signing of defense arrangements with a number of friendly countries.
On the domestic political front, the situation was far less felicitous. The Uniteam alliance that brought the combined Marcos and Duterte forces to victory in the 2022 election broke up in 2024 and then turned into open warfare, with Vice-President Sara Duterte resigning from her Department of Education (DepEd) secretaryship.
The national political environment became even more poisoned with the Malacanang-sanctioned hand-over of former President Duterte to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the impeachment of Sara Duterte by BBM’s Congressional allies for, among other charges, her alleged misuse of DepEd and Office of the Vice-President funds.
The conviction of the Vice-President – an outcome that would disqualify her from running in the 2028 Presidential election – has been placed in doubt by the victory of a number of pro-Duterte candidates in the May 2025 Senatorial election.
At the end of its first three years in office, the Marcos administration produced no significant changes in the kinds of figures that indicate sustained economic improvement – poverty rate, fiscal-policy space, employment and underemployment, foreign investment external trade, agriculture and food, infrastructure, manufacturing and education, health care and other social services.
Despite the passage over the years of legislation intended to increase the ease of doing business in this country- such as the law to cut red tape – foreign direct investment (FDI) continued to elude the Philippines during the Marcos administration’s first three years in office. This country continues to lag badly behind Association of Southeast Nations (ASEAN) member-countries like Vietnam and Thailand.
Whopping merchandise trade deficits continued to be a part of this country’s economic way of life during the past three years. And the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) did not come up with a program to alter that state of affairs.
The Build Better More (BBM) infrastructure program was launched with much fanfare early in 2022, but three years later not one major railway or road project had been completed. In its place the Marcos administration offered privatization of existing government infrastructure assets and an attempt to ramp up Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) projects.
In the fiscal policy area, the BBM administration struggled continuously to keep the fiscal benchmark ratios (deficit to debt, debt to gross domestic product (GDP)) at internationally acceptable levels. Toward that end, the Marcos administration and Congress looked hard for means with which to expand the tax base.
Perhaps the best example of the Marcos administration’s failure to come to grips with this country’s most serious economic problems was the fact that the Philippines remained the world’s No. 1 rice importer. The worst part of the situation has been the Department of Agriculture’s inability to offer a sustainable answer to this country’s rice supply-deficit problem. Every thoughtful Filipino knows that the P20-per-kilo rice program is fiscally unsustainable.
The first three years of the BBM administration saw no breakthrough out of this country’s massive education problem, which has long manifested itself in very low rankings in the international education evaluation systems, especially the Program for International Scholastic Assessment (PISA). Sara Duterte’s appointment as Secretary of Education was a huge mistake and a big setback for Philippine education.
Filipino economists had hoped that the World Bank would elevate the Philippine to a middle-income country during the Marcos administration’s first years in office. Undoubtedly considering the structural and operational deficiencies discussed above, the World Bank has decided to defer such elevation to 2026 or 2027.
(llagasjessa@yahoo.com)
