About the recently-enacted 2025 national government budget

December 31, 2024

Pres. Marcos Jr said that the newly signed General Appropriations Act for 2025 reflects the government’s commitment to “[transform] economic gains into meaningful outcomes for every Filipino.” The Php6.326-trillion national budget however only reinforces the country’s undemocratic politics and inequitable economy. It still has hundreds of billions of pesos for pork barrel projects, confidential and […]

IBON Executive Director Sonny Africa on enacted 2025 national government budget

December 31, 2024

The people have to beg and struggle for every precious peso for education, health, housing and ayuda that they’re entitled to as a matter of right, and that the government should give as a matter of obligation

IBON forum: People’s pressure crucial to hold erring public officials accountable

December 15, 2024

The move to impeach Sara Duterte should not be trivialized as just the falling-out of the Marcos and Duterte camps, but as a serious effort by Filipinos to collectively hold corrupt bureaucrats answerable. They agreed on the need for more forums and mobilizations to strengthen people’s solidarity on the impeachment move.

The Long Game of Development (3)

December 8, 2024

We can’t neglect the most important strategy of democratic mass mobilizations to shift the balance of power and policies towards the majority.

The Long Game of Development (2)

December 8, 2024

From the 18th century and the first industrial revolution, how much have great leaps in technologies really contributed to fixing social underdevelopment? The expanding poverty and vulnerability of billions of people gives an answer.

The Long Game of Development

December 8, 2024

The current era remains fundamentally neoliberal in essence, agenda and practice – state power over the economy is still systematically wielded for the benefit of a few. In particular, the so-called market reforms that have made capitalist elites so prosperous remain in place.

PH “upper middle-income status” is just a number and a fantasy

December 1, 2024

The measure of being an upper-middle income country refers to an average that completely obscures the conditions of the majority. UMIC doesn’t really mean development in its most important sense of the well-being of people.

Korea-PH free trade agreement: Even BINI does better

September 24, 2024

COMMENTARY

South Korea’s world class industries today were built on protectionist foundations – reason enough for the Philippine government and our economic managers to radically rethink the country’s obsolete free market globalization policies.

The pathetic Php64 food threshold

August 25, 2024

Government policymakers and economic managers are so privileged that they can only make mechanical estimates of a low food threshold that justifies their complacency in poverty eradication.