I’m not writing this to scare you. I’m writing this because I think most of us are looking at the headlines, feeling the weight of it, and then scrolling past because it feels too big to hold.
But we need to hold it. All of it. Because the decisions we make — or refuse to make — between now and 2028 will define what kind of country our children inherit. And right now, we are not on the right track.
Let me show you where we actually are.
The Numbers Don’t Lie, Even When We Want Them To
GDP growth slowed to 4.4% in 2025. That’s the weakest we’ve seen since the pandemic. And before anyone says “at least we’re still growing” — growth without distribution, without resilience, without institutional strength is just a bigger number on a fragile foundation. The IMF doesn’t think it gets better anytime soon either. They just cut our 2026 forecast by 1.5 percentage points, down to around 4.1%. The ADB projects our growth could fall further — from a base of 4.6% down to 3.4% if the Middle East conflict drags on into next year.
And it is dragging on.
Inflation hit 4.1% in March 2026 — the highest reading since July 2024, already above the BSP’s 2-4% target band. UA&P economists say it’s likely to exceed 5% because of second-round effects from the war. HSBC put out a scenario where, if the Strait of Hormuz conflict persists through July 2026, we could see inflation peak at 8%. FocusEconomics pegs a full-year 2026 average of 5.5%.
Eight percent inflation. Think about what that means for a family of five in Cavite trying to make ₱18,000 a month work.
We import more than 95% of our oil from the Persian Gulf. When that supply line shakes, everything in this country shakes with it. Diesel went from ₱48 to ₱130 per liter. Every truck moving goods in this country felt that immediately. Every product on every shelf absorbed it before it ever reached you. Transportation costs surged 9.9% — from a baseline of -0.3% in late 2025. Fertilizer prices doubled because the Strait of Hormuz also handles roughly one-third of globally traded fertilizer. Rice, vegetables, fish — they all got more expensive before they ever reached your table.
The peso didn’t help. We depreciated from ₱58 to ₱60 against the dollar in early 2026. For a country this import-dependent, that isn’t just a number in a financial report — it’s the difference between affording school supplies or not. The ADB estimates that a prolonged Middle East conflict could raise inflation across developing Asia by 3.2 percentage points over 2026 and 2027. We are not insulated from that. We are squarely in the middle of it.
Nearly 6 out of 10 Filipinos are one bad month away from poverty — and most of them are already in the middle of a bad month right now. And the lifeline that has always kept us from falling — OFW remittances — is now itself under threat.
In 2025, there were 1.11 million Filipino land-based OFWs in the Middle East. Nearly 2.5 million Filipinos total working in that region. In 2024, Middle Eastern remittances made up 17.77% of total cash remittances — ₱6.13 billion out of the US$34.49 billion our OFWs sent home. Cash remittances were 7.5% of GDP in 2024. Already, that figure fell to 7.3% in 2025. That’s not a rounding error. That’s millions of Filipino families receiving less money from family members who are now watching a war escalate around them, wondering if they’ll have to come home before they’re ready — and before their families can afford for them to.
We cannot keep building an economy on the backs of sacrifice that we never protect.
₱118 Billion. Gone. And No One’s Angry Enough.
I need to talk about the flood control scandal — not because it’s politically convenient, but because it is one of the clearest examples of institutional betrayal I have ever seen in my lifetime.
Between July 2022 and May 2025, the government allocated ₱545 billion to flood control projects across the country. That’s a massive national commitment to protecting Filipino communities from the typhoons and flooding that kill dozens of people every year. Typhoon Tino alone, in November 2025, killed more than a hundred Filipinos and caused over $60 million in crop and farmland damage. Flooding kills us. We knew that. We allocated the money to stop it.
And then someone stole it.
Finance Secretary Recto confirmed that ghost projects — infrastructure listed on paper, never built on the ground — cost ₱118 billion between 2023 and 2025. About ₱100 billion of the total flood control budget, almost 20% of it, was awarded to just 15 contractors. Fifteen. The Court of Appeals issued a freeze on a ₱1.665 billion Forbes Park property and 35 bank accounts linked to former House Speaker Martin Romualdez. An additional 25 bank accounts and 10 insurance policies belonging to another legislator were frozen on top of that. Total frozen assets: ₱24.7 billion. The Sandiganbayan issued arrest warrants against a former House representative and 15 others. DPWH officials and contractors face malversation and graft charges. New DPWH Secretary Vince Dizon walked in and ordered courtesy resignations from all senior officials, then blacklisted the contractors.
But here’s what I want you to sit with: those flood walls were never built. The pumping stations were never built. The drainage systems were never built. And when the next typhoon comes — and it will come — Filipinos will die in floods that should have been preventable. That’s not negligence. That’s murder by paperwork.
This is not politics. This is theft. And we need to stop letting our outrage expire after two weeks of Facebook posts. The investigation is ongoing. The institutions are doing the work. We need to stay on it with them — because the moment we stop paying attention is the moment impunity exhales and starts planning its next heist.
A House Divided, and Some People Want to Watch It Burn
The political situation has gone from unstable to genuinely dangerous.
The Marcos-Duterte coalition — the alliance that swept the 2022 elections — collapsed. Vice President Sara Duterte was impeached by the House in December 2024. By April 2026, the House justice committee found probable cause to impeach her again, this time on charges of misuse of confidential funds and unexplained wealth. And in response, voices from the Duterte camp have raised threats of Mindanao secession and military coup.
Let that sink in. Threats of secession. Threats of coup.
This is what political instability looks like when it goes beyond Twitter arguments. The Bertelsmann Transformation Index’s 2026 report cited “serious political instability” as a contributing factor in our economic slowdown. When Q4 2025 GDP growth printed at 3.0%, that wasn’t just a bad quarter — it was a signal that investors, business leaders, and markets are watching our politics and hedging.
And beneath the headline drama, the structural problems persist. The Philippines ranked 99th out of 142 countries in the 2024 World Justice Project Rule of Law Index. Human Rights Watch documented 471 drug-related killings under the current administration as of November 2024. Red-tagging of activists and journalists continues. In 2024, 5,457 police officers faced administrative charges, involved in 3,751 cases. These are not isolated incidents. They are patterns. And they will not change by wishing them away.
We have 52% of our population without access to safe water. Thirty-eight percent without safely managed sanitation. More than 5,000 schools without electricity. Ten thousand schools without water. A teacher shortage of 144,789 as of 2023-2024. These are children sitting in classrooms with no lights and no water, in communities whose flood walls exist only in someone’s fraudulent accounting file.
We can talk about economic growth all we want. But if the foundation underneath it is this broken, we’re building on sand. And this isn’t just about national policy — when the system consistently fails ordinary Filipinos, from farmers who can’t get fair prices to communities without basic infrastructure, the cost is carried by the people who can least afford it.
The Sea That Could Change Everything
And then there’s the South China Sea — the issue that doesn’t get enough serious attention from ordinary Filipinos because it feels distant until it isn’t.
More than $5 trillion in global trade passes through the South China Sea annually. On January 12, 2026, China and the Philippines traded accusations of “provoking trouble” in waters we have every legal right to. Earlier that month, the US and Philippines conducted joint exercises near Scarborough Shoal — frigates, aircraft, helicopters — a visible statement about who we are aligned with and what we are willing to defend.
We increased our defense budget by 6.4% for 2025. We’re strengthening alliances with Japan and France. France deployed the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle for joint drills with Filipino forces — a remarkable signal of how seriously our partners are taking this.
The same conflict destabilizing global energy markets — the one driving our diesel prices and threatening our OFW remittances — is happening in a neighborhood that overlaps with our own backyard. We live at the intersection of every major global flashpoint right now. And our internal house is on fire at the same time.
So What Do We Actually Do?
I’ve been praying about this for months. Not at the end of my thinking — at the beginning of it. Because I genuinely believe that the clarity we need right now doesn’t come from political analysis alone. It comes from being anchored in something that doesn’t shift with the news cycle.
But prayer without action is just wishing.
First: we have to hold our standards for leadership. 2028 is coming faster than we think. The campaigns will start before the ballots are even printed. And we will be tempted — again — to choose based on names, on faces, on viral moments. Don’t do it. Demand a track record. Demand verified accomplishments. Demand people who have actually done something with the power they were previously given — and done it cleanly. If they can’t show you that, they don’t deserve the next opportunity. I’ve written before about what happens when leadership hides behind position instead of serving through it — and it never ends well for the people who trusted those leaders.
Second: we have to protect our livelihoods from dependence. If 2.5 million Filipinos in the Middle East have to come home because a war makes it unsafe or unviable — and that’s not a hypothetical anymore — we need something here waiting for them. Buy local. Support Filipino farmers and producers. Build the skills our workforce needs to compete in a digital economy: not just for OFW export but for building things here, for each other. The remittance model kept this country afloat for decades. It may not be enough for the next decade. We need to build the alternative now, before the crisis forces our hand.
Third: we have to stay in the fight on accountability. ₱118 billion in stolen flood control funds does not just disappear from public consciousness because a new scandal replaced it. The Sandiganbayan cases, the asset freezes, the DPWH reorganization — support the process. Pay attention. Share the facts. Don’t let the noise bury what matters. The people who steal from us count on our short attention spans. Prove them wrong.
We Are Not a Weak People. But Survival Isn’t the Goal.
I believe this country was built on faith. Our families run on faith. And the unity we need right now — the kind that crosses political lines, economic classes, and regional divides — only comes when people are anchored in something bigger than themselves. I’ve talked about the importance of keeping faith and purpose at the center of everything we build — not just in business, but in how we show up as citizens and neighbors.
So pray. Not as a closing line but as a starting point.
Pray for the Philippines. For wisdom for the people in power and for the people who will replace them. For the Filipino family stretching every peso right now wondering how much longer they can hold on. For the OFWs in the Middle East watching the news every night hoping they don’t have to come home before they’re ready. For the farmers, the drivers, the teachers, the small business owners who keep this country running with nothing but grit and faith.
We’ve survived worse than this. But survival isn’t the goal. Building something better is.
Three years. Let’s not waste them fighting each other. Let’s spend them building something our children will thank us for.
United in prayer. United in vision. One nation under God.
