Fresh from a yearlong PCED@50 celebration, The Philippine Center for Economic Development opened the year 2025 with a series of important forums and events. These activities were in line with PCED’s mission to support the UP School of Economics in providing opportunities for discussions of relevant and vital national and international issues.

As early as January 10, 2025, the UPSE-PCED Friday Seminar on A Holistic View on Privatization was held with Dr. Qian Sun as speaker. Prof. Sun is a Professor of Finance and Chair of the Department of Finance at the School of Management, Fudan University.   His presentation sought to answer the question – is deprivatization a decision mainly aiming to mitigate or remove the limitations associated with private ownership or is it largely similar to a decision to sell a significant portion of ownership to another private entity.

UPSE Assistant Professors, Dr.  Gabriel Angelo B. Domingo, served as the Discussant, and Dr. Anthony G. Sabarillo, moderated the discussion.

The PCED hosted the Asian Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee (ASFRC) Meeting on January 11-12, 2025, at the UP School of Economics. ASFRC is a group of independent country members whose expertise are on economic policy issues relating to financial markets and the financial industry of the Asia-Pacific region. ASFRC tries to translate concepts obtained from academic literature into concrete policy recommendations. This meeting in Manila focused on What a Trump Presidency means for the US and the rest of the world, Asia in particular. Attending the meeting in Manila were eight of its regular country members: Prof. Martin Young (Massey University), Prof. David K. Ding (Singapore Management University), Prof. Sun Qian (Fudan University), Prof. Aekkachai Nittayagasetwat (National Institute of Development Administration), Prof. Kridsda Nimmanunta (National Institute of Development Administration), Prof. Fukuda Shin-ichi (University of Tokyo), Prof. Tokuo Iwaisako (Hitotsubashi University), and Prof. Ma. Socorro G. Bautista (University of the Philippines).

Following the ASFRC Meeting was the UPSE-PCED ASFRC Forum held on January 13, 2025, at the E. Gokongwei Lecture Room. The output of the ASFRC meeting was the 39th Asian Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee Statement – What a Second Trump Presidency Means for the US and Asia (link to the official statement:           ) and was released to the media and the public during the forum. The host-Moderator was Mr. Paolo Antonio Azurin, Director, the Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines (FINEX), and President & Chief Executive Officer, of CLSA Exchange Capital Inc.

The UPSE-PCED Friday Seminar on Optimizing Tech Tutoring Programs for Scale: Evidence from 10 Randomized A/B Tests was held on January 21, 2025, with Prof. Noam Angrist as the speaker. Prof. Angrist is the Academic Director of What Works Hub for Global Education and a Senior Research Fellow at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford.

The Graduate Brown Bag Seminar was revived starting with the lecture on Accessing and Utilizing Firm-Level Data from the PSA Data Enclave Center by UPSE PhD candidate, Ms. Irene Jo Azarcon. This was held on January 31, 2025.  This was followed on February 7, 2025, by the lecture of Dr. Christian Joy Pattawi Cruz on Introduction to the Longitudinal Study of Ageing and Health in the Philippines Dataset. Dr. Cruz is an Assistant Professor at the UP Population Institute (UPPI).

A major event is the 3rd Ruperto P. Alonzo (RPA) Memorial Lecture Series on The Energy Trilemma, An Analysis of the Philippine Situation,  held on February 7, 2025.  Known personalities from the power/energy industry were invited to present and sit on the panel. The Panel of Discussions was composed of Representative Mark Cojuangco;  Mr. Albert Dalusung of the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities; ACEN President, Mr. Eric Francia; and Department of Energy Undersecretary Rowena Guevara.  Atty. Jay Layug, Senior Partner of Divina Law Offices, served as the host/moderator. The lecture was attended by over 135 onsite and over 150 online participants. The RPA Lectures are organized by the Program in Development Economics Alumni Association (PDEAA), together with the UPSE and PCED, in honor of the late Prof. Ruping Alonzo, a respected UPSE faculty who dedicated himself to the enrichment of the PDE.

The PDE Alumni Reunion 2025 followed the RPA Lecture.  This provided the opportunity for the PDE alumni to meet and discuss important issues relating to the association and re-establish the bonds among economic development practitioners specially trained in UPSE.

Forthcoming forums and trainings and in the pipeline and these will be announced via the PCED website.