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Friday, February 7, 2025

Cesar Virata, the quintessential finance secretary

Citizens who render exemplary services to the nation should be honored during their lifetimes, but oftentimes such citizens are accorded their honors when they have departed for the Great Beyond.

Posthumous honors are better than no honors, but they are of no value to the deceased honorees. Posthumous humors-giving should be avoided, and the obvious way to do that is to accord honors to deserving citizens while they are still in our midst.

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Millennials or Gen-Z members very probably are not familiar with the name Cesar Virata, considering that Mr. Virata figured prominently in our national life during the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. Cesar E. A. Virata goes around nowadays with a walker, but at 90, he remains physically fit and mentally sharp.

Virata is a perfect illustration of my firm belief that citizens who are deserving of national honors should be accorded those honors during their lifetimes. He should be able to savor the honors – and the underlying gratitude of his country – while he is still with us.

Except for a stint with this country’s leading management services firm – Sycip, Gorrez, Velayo & Co. (SGV) –Virata’s pre-1986 career consisted of service with the government. In the three government institutions that he headed – the Business Administration Department of the University of the Philippines (UP), the Board of Investments (BOI) and the Department of Finance (DOF), Virata served with distinction and exemplariness.

Virata was the youngest dean of the UP College of Business Administration. SGV’s Washington Sycip was so impressed by Virata that he invited him to join SGV’s management services division.

When Congress passed the Investment Incentives Act in 1967, President Ferdinand Marcos found himself having to find someone to head the Board of Investments that the law had created. Many people suggested Virata. Marcos heeded their suggestion and courteously told his friend Sycip of his desire to appoint Virata as BOI chairman. Sycip gladly agreed to let Virata go, knowing that he would be excellent for the newly-created government institution.

Under Virata’s leadership, BOI brought to reality the aspiration of the authors of the Investment Incentives Act. In time, the BOI became a highly effective government financial institution, respected by the foreign and domestic business communities. Virata set the template for the structure and operations of an institution mandated to oversee a country’s investment sector.

So firmly entrenched had Virata’s financial-manager reputation become that when Eduardo Romualdez resigned as secretary of finance in the midst of the 1970 economic crisis, the heads of the decision-makers turned in the direction of Virata. It was rumored that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank told President Marcos that a stabilization program would be approved for the Philippines only if Virata was placed in charge of the DOF. Virata was then appointed secretary of finance.

Working in close coordination with the newly-appointed Central Bank of the Philippines (CBP) Governor Gregorio Licaros, Virata saw to it that the terms and conditions of the IMF-WB stabilization program were strictly implemented. Stability could be said to have been restored to the Philippine economy by the beginning of 1971.

At the time he started his career in government, Virata almost certainly did not expect that his personal philosophy and public persona would be subjected to serious challenge down the road. The challenge materialized when President Marcos placed the nation under martial law – and assumed dictatorial powers – in September 1972.

Virata, a non-political professional, now faced a moral challenge. Should he resign from the martial-law regime of Marcos, or should he remain with the regime to ensure continued good management of the nation’s finances? Those who wanted Virata to resign said that by remaining in the Marcos Cabinet, he was providing legitimacy to a non-democratic government.

The majority of his countrymen wanted Virata to stay on, arguing that Virata was an internationally-respected secretary of finance and that his remaining in that position was a guarantee to foreign creditors that Marcos-regime fiscal policies would be sound, honest and fair. Virata was convinced to stay.

Today, Virata is vice-chairman of Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC), still active professionally and continues to be consulted by domestic and foreign financiers alike.

Let’s honor the man while he is still with us.

(llagasjessa@yahoo.com)

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