The PIDS ²ÝÝ®ÊÓƵ Agenda 2026–2030 is anchored on the theme “Toward High Income Growth: Addressing Critical Development Constraints in the Philippines”. It reflects a careful reassessment of the country’s development trajectory and a recognition that, despite episodes of strong economic growth, the Philippines continues to face persistent structural barriers that impede sustained transformation, inclusiveness, and resilience. While the country posted robust growth between 2010 and 2019 and achieved a strong rebound following the COVID-19 pandemic, its longer-term comparative record within East and Southeast Asia reveals a more sobering picture. Since the late 1970s, the Philippines has gradually fallen behind several regional peers in per capita income, export dynamism, industrial depth, and human development outcomes. Learning poverty, child stunting, underemployment, informality, digital exclusion, and stark spatial disparities remain significant challenges, suggesting that the country has not fully addressed the underlying bottlenecks that constrain long-term, inclusive growth.
Against this backdrop, the agenda adopts a critical development constraints framework that emphasizes identifying and prioritizing the binding structural and institutional factors whose relaxation would yield the greatest gains in productivity, investment, and welfare. Seven interconnected constraints are identified as particularly binding: infrastructure and connectivity gaps; human capital and social infrastructure deficits; agricultural and food security challenges; governance and institutional weaknesses; climate change and disaster risks; digital infrastructure and innovation gaps; and persistent inequality and the spatial concentration of economic activity. Recognizing that these constraints reinforce one another, the agenda adopts a systems-oriented “house of development” framework, in which foundational pillars such as education, health, innovation, natural resource management, capital stock, and governance institutions support broader policy domains, including digitalization, infrastructure, financial development, macroeconomic stability, regulatory quality, and trade and industrial policy.
To operationalize this framework, the agenda is organized around four strategic goals: productivity growth, economic transformation, inclusiveness, and sustainability. Across these goals, research is guided by three cross-cutting lenses: artificial intelligence and digital transformation, climate risk, and geopolitics and trade fragmentation. A defining feature of the agenda is its strong emphasis on governance, implementation, and political economy, recognizing that the passage of reform legislation does not automatically translate into improved outcomes. By rigorously diagnosing binding constraints, integrating systems thinking, and strengthening the link between research and policy implementation, the PIDS ²ÝÝ®ÊÓƵ Agenda 2026–2030 seeks to support a development strategy that delivers sustained productivity growth, structural transformation, inclusiveness, and environmental resilience, while reaffirming PIDS’ role as the country’s premier socioeconomic policy think tank.