President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Tuesday urged voters to choose a well-rounded leader with a strong grasp of economics in the 2028 presidential elections, following the early pronouncement of Vice President Sara Duterte that she intends to run.

“Well, number one, somebody who understands economics, that's the first thing. That's the life of the person. Who understands how to create jobs, how to keep the inflation rate down, and who understands how to make food supply a given, something that you can assume? And someone who thinks about productivity, because growth is about productivity,” the President said during a fireside chat at the ASEAN Editors and Economic Opinion Leaders Forum at the Fairmont Hotel in Makati City.

Marcos stressed that the next president must focus on strengthening the working population and improving productivity.

“How do you fix the education system so that they are better trained. How do you make sure that they are healthier? How do you make sure that they don't have to worry about food? Those are the kind of people that we need—are the people who are actually thinking about not politics but how to make the country better,” he said.

The President added that the country needs nation builders—“people who want to make the Philippines better, people who actually love the Philippines and love Filipinos and want to make things better.”

“It boils down to this...it might sound a little sentimental or emotional, but that's what you need, and of course, there has to be that element of competency, you know, love goes a long way, but it's not enough. You also have to know how to do it. You have to have some training, or at the very least, you have to listen to people who have that training,” he elucidated.

‘People in mind’

While Presidential Communications Office Undersecretary Claire Castro earlier said Marcos has yet to choose a standard bearer for 2028, the President admitted he already has potential candidates in mind.

“We have some people that we are talking to and have in mind. And some of them said ‘No, I do not want’,” he said, declining to name them.

Marcos acknowledged that elevating someone with no political background to the presidency would be difficult.

“It happens, but it’s not that easy, especially in the highly political atmosphere that we have here in the Philippines. And we have exceptional people in government,” he said, adding that he will not be endorsing any candidate soon.

Fixers, red tape hurt investments

Marcos also cited corruption and the persistence of fixers in government agencies as key reasons foreign direct investments have declined.

“We have developed a very strange system in the Philippines where you have ‘fixers’ wherein instead of waiting for two to three hours in line, and going from one office to another, wasting three days of your life trying to get the simple permit, they’ll have somebody who will sign up and say you have to give an ‘X’ amount and I’ll fix it. And they are in cahoots with the bureaucrat who will say you rush this one. And they will split the money. And that’s what we want to completely remove,” the President said.

He noted that in 2024, ASEAN attracted $230 billion in investments, while the Philippines received only $10 billion.

“Digitalization is going to be a key for us. Because on these processes, we are trying to remove as much discretion from the civil servants as possible,” he said, adding that some agencies are now fully digitalized and that he aims to digitize all government offices before the end of his term in 2028.