THE Philippines needs stronger institutions and mechanisms to sustain investments in education, health and human capital beyond political cycles, experts said at a Philippine Institute for Development Studies press conference.
PIDS senior research fellow Valerie Gilbert Ulep said investments in health and education often take years to produce measurable results, extending well beyond a single political term.
“The horizon that we’re [looking] at if we invest in health and education will have to happen 10 years down the line,” Ulep said.
He warned that short-term thinking can hinder progress when policymakers focus on immediate service indicators instead of long-term improvements in health and human capital.
Ulep also stressed the need to strengthen the institutional workforce responsible for planning, implementation and resource allocation.
“If hindi tayo nag-i-invest sa back-end workforce sa mga institution natin, hindi malakas yung mga agencies natin (If we do not invest in the back-end workforce in our institutions, our agencies will not be strong),” Ulep said.
Professor Dynah Avigail Basuil of the Asian Institute of Management said human capital development is an interconnected process that starts with children’s health and nutrition and extends to education, workforce capabilities and business productivity.
“Everything contributes—the health, the education, and the health of businesses,” Basuil said.
She said this systems perspective has become even more important as businesses adapt to rapid technological changes, including artificial intelligence.
“If you’ve got AI, what happens to the industries? What kind of capabilities [are needed] in the workforce? And then what kind of education system do we need for that?” Basuil said.
But sustaining these investments remains difficult when government programs operate within shorter political cycles.
Professor Maria Victoria Raquiza of the University of the Philippines National College of Public Administration and Governance said the country’s political cycle can complicate programs and projects whose benefits take years to materialize.
“While we understand why it’s there, because it’s how the system is built, and people are reelected, government officials are elected every three years. It is a condition that we must live with. It also invites a lot of pathology in our governance system,” Raquiza said.
She said uncertainty over whether leaders will remain in office long enough to see long-term projects through can discourage strategic planning.
“Short term is, I think, a fundamental challenge that we must face institutionally speaking, because it’s embedded in our institutional processes,” she said.
PIDS Senior Research Fellow John Paolo Rivera said one way to address the problem is to rethink how political leaders are evaluated.
He said key performance indicators could recognize not only leaders who launch long-term projects but also those who complete initiatives started by their predecessors.
“[Perhaps] part of the evaluation of our leaders would be [whether] they instituted or started some long-term projects or were they able to complete previously implemented projects,” Rivera said.
Dr. Michael Caampued, president of the Philippine Society of Public Health Physicians, meanwhile, said institutional strengthening should be built on trust, starting with a shared understanding grounded in data and evidence.
“You can have a shared reality with data, evidence, but we also have to deepen that from experience,” Caampued said.
He said sustained collaboration also requires principled leadership and credibility rooted in an understanding of communities’ actual conditions.
“The leaders have to have a set of principles; principled leadership is very important for accountability,” he said. “Your credibility is bound by your immersion with the reality of the people.”
The need for continuity becomes even more important as the Philippines undergoes a demographic shift.
PIDS Senior Research Fellow Michael Ralph Abrigo said the country has moved from a relatively high fertility rate to a much lower one. The total fertility rate — the average number of children a woman is expected to have over her lifetime — has more recently fallen to about 1.7, he said.
With fewer children in each generation, Abrigo said families and society have an opportunity to invest more resources in each child.
“And we know when we have fewer children, we invest more in them. And this is where my hope is coming from,” Abrigo said. “When we invest more in children, eventually, when they grow up, they’ll be more capable than us.”
He said the next generation may also demand more from government and public institutions.
“That generation, I think, they’d be better than us,” he said. “They’d expect more from our government, they’d expect more from everyone, because we deserve to have these good institutions … we deserve a good society where we could live and flourish together.”
The 2026 Development Policy Research Month (DPRM) is observed throughout September under Malacañang Proclamation No. 247 (s. 2002), with PIDS serving as the overall coordinator and convenor of the annual celebration.
PIDS and its partners organized a monthlong series of discussions on how institutions can better support human capital development and the country’s broader economic transformation. PR
