The paper seeks to take stock of some of the key APEC documents/reports relevant to social protection and safety net programs, and also of the experience of APEC member-economies, with special focus on the Philippines, in implementing social protection measures. In particular, it attempts to...

The Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program has been much maligned and dismissed as a "dole-out" program. Critics have focused on the fact that it provides cash grants directly to poor families, believing it would promote the culture of mendicancy and dependence. Others believe that the grants would...

Poverty simulations suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures implemented by the government to contain the spread of the virus will increase the number of poor in the country. As such, various social safety nets were implemented by both the national and local government agencies to...

The Philippines recently introduced two distinct but related large-scale social protection programs that, first, provides conditional cash transfers (CCT) to poor households, and, second, automatically enrolls them into the government's social health insurance program. This has resulted to...

The main economic justification for government provision of social protection is to redistribute income to the poor, marginalized and vulnerable in society. In a developing country such as the Philippines, social protection has been a consistent priority of government. In the recent decade,...

APEC 2015 provides an opportunity for the Philippines to advance its economic interests in services and contribute to regional integration by focusing on global value chains (GVCs) which are now believed to account for more than 50 percent of global trade. This paper looks at the GVC phenomenon...

The study focuses on the transport of vegetable and fruit produce from Mindanao, a major food producing area, to particular regions in Luzon and Visayas to meet increasing market demands. The estimated gravity model showed the key determinants of interregional trade. Economic growth in both...

Small, and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are important in many developing countries, including the Philippines. However, this sector remains much less productive than their large counterparts. One factor that can help SMEs achieve higher productivity is internationalization by connecting them...

Services are critical inputs in manufacturing production, and this is likely to intensify with the advent of new technologies. Based on the trade in value-added data of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the share of services embodied in Philippine manufacturing exports...