Marcos Jr.’s leadership draws global attention

[Photo by Han Joo-hyung]

Modern day South Korea and the South Korea from half a century ago coexist in the Philippines in 2024. One can use the smartphone app ‘Grab,’ which combines Korea’s leading food delivery platform Baemin and Kakao T, a Korean transportation service app, to order food and groceries and hail taxis in the country, but you will also find plenty of shantytowns with loosely woven slate roofs just a block away from high-rise buildings.

This stark disparity between rich and poor has long plagued the Philippines, a country of 120 million people.

“I want to build a Philippines where no one goes hungry, where everyone can get the education they want, and where everyone can get the job they want,” Philippine President Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos Jr. stressed multiple times during a recent interview with Maeil Business Newspaper. The Philippines, which aims to hit a national income of $4,000 per capita, recently emerged as one of the world‘s most promising growth economies by participating in the U.S.-led containment strategy against China.

Marcos Jr., now in his third year in office, has shifted the country’s diplomatic focus from pro-China to pro-U.S. and is driving reforms, which analysts note is creating a virtuous cycle of improving the country’s economy by building and upgrading infrastructure, attracting investment from global manufacturers, and strengthening manufacturing.

He is particularly enthusiastic about national sales to the extent of being called ‘the Philippines’ top salesperson.‘