Philippine industrial policies such as those bearing on the manufacturing sector are a critical element of the country’s development strategy. Manufacturing creates opportunities for higher value-addition and extensive employment owing to forward and backward linkages with other sectors of the...

The ASEAN Economic Community Blueprint targets an ASEAN single market in 2015. This is an ambitious reform agenda that seeks to ensure the free flow of services, investment, and skilled labor along with the free flow of goods and the freer flow of capital in the ASEAN region. For logistics...

This paper discusses governmental fiscal support for financing long-term infrastructure projects in ASEAN countries. More specifically, it discusses the role of guarantees and subsidies in promoting public-private partnership (PPP) projects. It draws on case studies of Philippine and Indonesian...

As 2015 draws near, assessing ASEAN's progress toward the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) defined by the AEC Blueprint is necessary and instructive. This paper constitutes the Mid-Term Review (MTR) of the AEC Blueprint for the Philippines. The Philippines Country Report presents the results of...

It has only been in the recent years that developing countries are increasingly decentralizing the provision of health care to their local governments. This paper explores some key issues related to health decentralization in the Philippines identified in literature and in course of interviews...

The slow progress of the Cadastral Survey Program in the Philippines has been associated with implementation issues that have affected the effectiveness and efficiency of the program. A review of the processes, procedures, and existing institutional set-up in the conduct of cadastral surveys...

This study assesses the sources and levels of infrastructure financing in the Philippines for the last five years (2008-2012). The mapping of fiscal resources showed that there had been underinvestment in infrastructure. To illustrate, in 2008-2012, public infrastructure spending as a share of...

The study looks at the rarely studied customs brokerage activity in the Philippines and its role in facilitating trade given the ongoing push to modernize customs administration. It analyzes how the customs brokerage profession is being regulated and synthesizes insights on opposing views on the...