Promises made, promises kept–and broken

In Philippine politics, presidential candidates promise abundance with ease. Governing, on the other hand, tests how much of that abundance can survive contact with fiscal arithmetic.

The promises that matter most are, therefore, not campaign flourishes but commitments made after a president-elect has seen the books, assembled a Cabinet and begun to govern from inherited conditions rather than applause lines.

Economic promises

Taking office after the pandemic and after the fiscal damage it had left behind, President Marcos made five economic pledges against which his administration can now be judged:

The Philippine economy would grow at a sustainable and rapid rate of between 6.5 percent to 8 percent from 2023 to 2028.
Reduce poverty incidence to single digits by the end of his term, specifically 9 percent or lower by 2028
Reduce the national government debt-to-GDP (gross domestic product) ratio to 51.1 percent by 2028 from 61.8 percent in 2022 and reduce the fiscal deficit-to-GDP ratio from -7.6 percent in 2022 to -3 percent by 2028. (The debt-to-GDP ratio was 39.6 percent before the COVID-19 episode. These twin goals underpin his fiscal consolidation program.)
Ensure high-quality public spending by investing 5 percent to 6 percent of GDP in public infrastructure. This is the essence of the ‘Build Better More’ program, a continuation of the previous administration’s ‘Build, Build, Build’ program.
Bring down the unemployment rate to around 4 percent to 5 percent from 2022 to 2028 and generate 1 million jobs per year.

The verdict: mixed

Economic growth: The administration started out strong. Output exceeded the target in Mr. Marcos’s first year. However, it slowed markedly over time: growth fell from 8.1 percent in the first quarter of 2022 to 2.3 percent in the second quarter of 2026. The government’s forecast of 3.5 to 4.5 percent growth in 2026 and 5 percent to 6 percent annually in 2027-28 now looks hopeful rather than hard-headed. Rating: 3.0 (Passed).
Poverty alleviation: Reducing poverty is the administration’s strongest claim. Mr. Marcos promised to lower poverty incidence to single digits, possibly to 9 percent or less by 2028. On this measure, he is ahead of schedule: according to the Philippine Statistics Authority’s Family Income and Expenditure Survey, poverty incidence among individuals fell to 9.7 percent in 2025 from 15.5 percent in 2023.

That decline reduced the number of Filipinos below the poverty threshold from 17.5 million in 2023 to 11.1 million in 2025. The national poverty threshold in 2025 was P14,634 a month for a family of five, or about P97 per person per day. Rating: 1.0 (Excellent).

Fiscal consolidation: This tells a gloomier story. The administration promised to lower both the debt-to-GDP ratio and the fiscal deficit-to-GDP ratio. It has missed both. The original target was to bring debt down to 51.1 percent of GDP by 2028; the revised target is now 64.2 percent. Since 2024, the actual path has trailed steadily behind the Medium-Term Fiscal Framework.

The deficit has followed the same pattern. It was close to plan in 2023, but from 2024 onward the actual deficit moved progressively above the target path.

National government debt reached a record P19.07 trillion at the end of June 2026, of which P12.84 trillion was domestic and P6.23 trillion was external. This does not signal a crisis, but it is an increasingly costly constraint. In the proposed 2027 budget, P1.1 trillion, or 15.5 percent of total spending, is earmarked for the debt burden—money that could otherwise have been spent on infrastructure, health, education and social protection.

Interest payments make the warning clearer. They are rising as a share of revenues just as slower growth threatens collections and global uncertainty risks keeping borrowing costs high. By 2028, interest payments are projected to absorb 22.4 percent of revenue, almost twice the planned 12.5 percent. Fiscal consolidation therefore needs more urgency, not further postponement. Rating: 4.0 (Conditional failure).

Across the three tests of fiscal discipline—debt, deficits and interest payments—the administration is off course. There is still time to correct the slippage, but the adjustment will become more painful the longer it is delayed. Rating: 4.0 (Conditional failure).

Quality of public spending: The infrastructure case is straightforward. The Philippines still trails its Association of Southeast Asian Nations-5 peers—Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore—after decades of underinvestment. Over the past half-century, the country spent only about 2 percent of GDP on public infrastructure, far too little for an economy that wants to grow faster and compete regionally. Spending 5 percent to 6 percent of GDP was therefore a sensible goal, first under “Build, Build, Build” and now under “Build Better More.”

Roads, bridges, railways and airports are not mere ornaments; they are the plumbing of commerce. The administration did meet its 5 percent to 6 percent spending goal in the first half of its term. The problem is quality. Too much of the capital budget appears to have been misallocated, mismanaged or lost to corruption.

The response has been to shrink the public construction budget to 4.03 percent of GDP in 2027 and 3.96 percent in 2028. That is the wrong cure. Corruption should be met with better procurement, stronger implementation, greater transparency and credible punishment, not with less investment. The Philippines needs cleaner infrastructure spending, not a smaller ambition.

Actual infrastructure spending as a percent of GDP was within target during the first three years of the Marcos Jr. administration. How much became real construction remains unclear. Planned spending for 2026-28 is disappointingly low, though still above the historical average. Rating: 3.0 (Passed).

Employment generation: This remains the most defensible part of the record after poverty reduction. The target of 4 percent to 5 percent unemployment rate is attainable and creating 1 million jobs a year remains possible. But the risks are accumulating: weaker growth could squeeze micro, small and medium enterprises; wage increases above inflation and productivity could slow hiring; and global uncertainty, from wars to trade tensions, could reduce deployment of overseas Filipino workers.

The jobs market ultimately depends on economic growth. As output slowed in 2025, unemployment rose. Sustained job creation therefore requires not only labor-market programs but a stronger economy. Rating: 2.0 (Good).

Final words

The record is uneven. Mr. Marcos can claim real progress on poverty reduction and a broadly defensible performance on employment, but growth has weakened, fiscal consolidation has continued to miss the mark and infrastructure policy has been pulled down by poor execution and corruption concerns.

The lesson is not that the original economic promises were misplaced, but that they now require harder choices: faster growth, cleaner public spending and a more credible return to fiscal discipline.

The author is a member of the Monetary Board and a former Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas governor as well as budget and finance secretary.