BIZ BUZZ: Wellex will have to wait
Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, who heads the Senate committee on finance, no longer knows what weekends are, given the volume of work related to, among others, ferrying “a more transparent” 2026 budget through the upper house.
Gatchalian, however, is not one to complain that he spends almost every waking moment working on the Senate’s priority bills.
After all, efforts are bearing fruit as the Senate has passed its version of the budget on Tuesday, and he promises the Filipino public that the P6.793-trillion spending bill will not have the ills that plagued the 2025 budget that had been branded as “the most corrupt” in the nation’s history.
Not to say, however, that he does not catch himself thinking about life after politics.
Gatchalian tells Biz Buzz that if he ever decides to no longer run for public office, he will immediately pick up where he left off at the family-run Wellex Group, which has interests in the hospitality, real estate development, oil, mining, aviation, trading and banking sectors.
He worked there from 1997, soon after graduating from Boston University in the United States with a degree in finance and operations management, until 2001 when he became representative of Valenzuela.
Gatchalian has no timetable yet on when he will return to the private sector as he believes that he still has a lot to accomplish as a politician.
But will he consider running for higher office? Vice president or even president? Abangan!
