Musical chairs

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February 13, 2026 | 12:00am

Amid the serious problems we have in our economy today, BBM’s response is somewhat like playing musical chairs on the Titanic’s deck.

BBM just created a new Office of Economic Affairs (OEA) via Executive Order 108, to operate under the Office of the Executive Secretary. It absorbed the functions of the abolished Office of the Special Assistant to the President for Investment and Economic Affairs.

The abolished office was created by BBM only to give the current Finance Secretary, Deck Go, an office. The office didn’t exist before and no one really knows what Deck’s responsibility was while he headed the office.

Deck dabbled in tariff negotiations with the Trump administration and spoke on economic and trade matters which Sec. Arsi Balisacan and the Trade Secretary could have handled. Luckily, a vacancy at DOF happened when Ralph Recto moved to Malacañang as Executive Secretary.

Don‘t get me wrong. Deck is good. His first few weeks at DOF were productive. With the instincts of a former journalist still intact, Deck moved quickly to deal with the meat of the story. He suspended LOAs of the BIR and moved to clean up the process with a new BIR chief.

But BBM had to create a new office just for him. Not a very good thing to do, given that the bureaucracy is big and complicated enough with many agencies and offices with overlapping functions. We should be reducing offices, not creating new ones.

As Deck’s old office was abolished, it was immediately resurrected as another new office under Ralph Recto who probably missed being the leader of the economic team.

And Recto is the new chairperson of the Semiconductor and Electronics Industry Advisory Council, as embodied in EO 108. This is a DTI matter. Matters involving investments and industries belong to DTI. This fragments sectoral authorities and responsibilities.

It isn’t as if there aren’t enough committees and agencies giving the President economic advice. There is the Economy and Development Council, the highest policy-making body on economic matters, chaired by the President and composed of various cabinet secretaries. This used to be the NEDA Board.

There is also an Inter-Agency Committee on Inflation and Market Outlook that is supposedly focused on monitoring food and energy prices. And even if the BSP is independent, BBM can always call on those extremely highly paid economists for advice.

In theory, DEPDev is supposed to be the macro planner. It used to be NEDA until last year. DEPDev is the “primary policy, planning and monitoring arm” for the entire country.

Some say it is the economic ivory tower that is responsible for things like AmBisyon Natin 2040 which hardly anybody other than the economists in government and the academe have read. But it is good reading. It reads like a long fairy tale that has little to do with our real lives.

Now, the OEA is supposedly going to be the President’s “Enforcer.” It is supposed to “streamline” and “robustly monitor” the president’s specific investment initiatives and ensure a “cohesive approach” to immediate economic challenges. Good words but don’t expect much. That’s how the bureaucrats and technocrats make their jobs seem important.

Curiously, despite having all those advisers around him, BBM decided to crowdsource suggestions. He urged the public to share policy proposals that would ease the nation’s problems.

The problem, however, is not a dearth of proposals but execution of programs. There is already a thriving industry doing studies and project proposals for the government and the ODA agencies.

The government has historically struggled with translating good sounding policies into tangible results. Execution and governance remain primary challenges.

A four-kilometer extension of LRT2 with no right-of-way problems took DOTr over ten years to implement. The Cebu BRT is still struggling after 13 years so the World Bank gave up on it.

Senators and congressmen love to pass laws but do not follow up on the implementation. The Personal Equity and Retirement Account Act of 2008 is a good example. It was signed into law Aug. 28, 2008 and was finally implemented in 2016.

“Execution” has always been the defining problem for the Philippine economy.

In the third quarter of 2025, government infrastructure spending contracted by 26.2 percent, the worst performance in nearly 14 years. This was attributed to stricter validation procedures enforced to curb the misuse of funds following corruption allegations.

Balisacan has admitted to “implementation gaps.” He noted that agencies often work in “silos,” preventing them from achieving desired outcomes.

Even when projects move forward, they often suffer from poor coordination. For instance, road widening activities are frequently out of sync with the relocation of utility poles or water pipe laying, leading to traffic jams and roadside hazards.

Future growth can slow if investors wait for clearer signals and more consistent implementation of reforms like the Ease of Doing Business Act.

There is evidence to support the sentiment that plans and studies often fail to move from paper to reality.

The Philippine Institute for Development Studies has noted that the policy system is full of well-meaning but ineffective policies that lead to corruption and waste of resources.

Balisacan has pointed out that while administrations change, the “long-identified constraints” to growth — such as raising productivity and creating higher-quality jobs — have remained largely unchanged across different administrations.

Many social sector reforms, while critically important, were not yet fully implemented as of the latest midterm updates. Examples include delays in the full rollout of the Philippine Identification System and the need for more coordinated responses in our health system.

Faced with challenges, our officials tend to increase budgets, throw money at problems, offer half-baked solutions, create new offices or rename an old one and pass more new laws. They play musical chairs on the Titanic deck. And we let them.

Boo Chanco’s email address is [email protected]. Follow him on X @boochanco