Monsod eventually brought her economic expertise to broadcasting, radio and print, becoming popularly known as ‘Mareng Winnie.’
Former Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Solita Monsod, with her long experience in public service and the media, believes public officials’ greed for government funds has been an albatross to progress.
Photograph courtesy of NEDA
For decades, former Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Solita “Winnie” Monsod has occupied a distinctive place in Philippine public life: economist, educator, government official, broadcaster, columnist and public intellectual — and, perhaps most notably, a persistent voice willing to call out what she sees as failures in leadership.
At 86, Monsod remains as outspoken as ever.
In a recent interview with DAILY TRIBUNE’s Straight Talk, the ex-chief of the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) delivered a blunt assessment of what she considers the country’s most pressing problem.
“What is wrong with the Philippines? Not that it has no resources, not that it has no money,” Monsod said.
Asked what the problem was, she gave an answer that has become emblematic of her no-nonsense style:
“Lousy leadership.”
The remark fit a career that has moved between the classroom, government, international institutions, and mass media — giving Monsod both the credentials and the platform to scrutinize how the country is governed.
Born on 29 July 1940, Monsod graduated from the University of the Philippines Diliman with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics, cum laude, in 1959.
She later earned a Master of Arts in economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1962.
Monsod has taught at the UP School of Economics since 1963, making the university classroom central to her professional life.
In 2005, she was nominated for the presidency of the University of the Philippines System, which oversees the university’s campuses nationwide.
Her influence as an educator became especially visible years later.
In October 2010, a video of Monsod delivering her last lecture in Economics 100.1, or Introduction to Macroeconomics, went viral online.
Her impromptu farewell to her students was characteristically direct.
She urged them to become “as good and as honorable as you should be,” to stay in the Philippines, or, if they left, to at least try to give back.
The moment captured something that has long distinguished Monsod — an economist who does not treat economics as merely an academic discipline, but as something tied to public responsibility.
Monsod’s expertise eventually took her from the university to the center of national economic policymaking.
She served as Minister of Economic Planning and later as Secretary of Socio-economic Planning and concurrent Director-General of NEDA from 1986 to 1989, during President Corazon Aquino’s administration.
The position placed her at the heart of the government’s economic planning during a period of political and institutional transition.
Her work also extended beyond the Philippines.
Monsod served on the United Nations Committee for Development Planning from 1987 to 2000.
She also served on the Board of Trustees of the International Food Policy Research Institute beginning in January 1996.
Earlier, she served on the Board of Advisors of the Human Development Report in 1993 and on the Board of Advisors of the South Center from 1991 to 1995.
Her public policy career was not confined to government institutions.
Monsod eventually brought her economic expertise to broadcasting, radio and print, becoming popularly known as “Mareng Winnie.”
She also entered electoral politics, running for the Senate in the 2001 national elections under the People Power Coalition, the administration coalition of then-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. She did not win a Senate seat.
Years after leaving government, Monsod remains a prominent critic of how public resources are managed.
In her DAILY TRIBUNE interview, she accused government leaders of treating public funds as though they were their own, arguing that corruption has reached what she described as “world-class magnitudes.”
“We have leaders that steal from us rather than help us go forward,” she said.
Monsod argued that the national budget — which she described as a vehicle for development financing — had been abused.
“Obviously, the budget, which is supposed to be the vehicle for development financing, has been totally abused,” she said.
“The Philippine government budget has become a business proposition on the part of some of our congressmen and senators,” she added.
For Monsod, the consequences extend beyond individual scandals.
She linked corruption directly to the country’s economic performance.
“It was not the flood control problem. It was the corruption that slowed it,” she said.
She described the scale of corruption as something far beyond what she had seen before, saying that “the corruption of yesterday was nothing compared to what’s going on today.”
Monsod has also turned her attention to the country’s dealings with China in the West Philippine Sea.
Reacting to concerns raised by retired Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio about the Department of Foreign Affairs’ “provisional understanding” with China concerning resupply missions to the BRP Sierra Madre at Ayungin Shoal, Monsod said she trusted Carpio’s assessment despite acknowledging that she had no personal knowledge of alleged corruption surrounding the arrangement.
Monsod warned that Philippine interests could be gradually eroded as China pursues what she described as a long-term strategy.
“They’re scraping away at all our interests in the West Philippine Sea because they have a vision and we don’t have a vision,” she said.
“If that arrangement has given away part of the wealth of the Filipinos to the Chinese, I will never forgive this administration.”
“They’ve stolen our rights,” she added.
Monsod was similarly uncompromising when discussing the impeachment proceedings involving Vice President Sara Duterte.
She criticized senators whom she said had stopped attending the hearings, specifically naming Alan Peter Cayetano and Loren Legarda.
“Cayetano is no longer attending the hearings. Legarda is no longer attending the hearings. What does that mean?” she asked.
Monsod warned that voting to acquit despite the evidence presented during the proceedings would damage the impeachment process.
“And if they vote for acquittal, binababoy nila ang proseso. Binababoy nila ang proseso (They are making a mockery of the process). That’s it,” she said.
Her criticism was ultimately tied to the same principle that runs through her assessment of government spending: accountability to the Filipino public.
“The Filipino, who gave that P7.2 trillion to the government? Not the Filipino people? Is it not our taxes that are trying to finance that?” Monsod said.
She accused some officials of treating Filipinos as servants rather than as the people they are supposed to serve.
“They treat the Filipino people like the Filipino people were their servants rather than their masters,” she said.
“And that is a thought process that should be changed completely.”
Perhaps the clearest thread connecting Monsod’s decades-long career is her insistence that Filipinos understand their role in public life.
The economist who once stood before UP students warning that she would haunt them from the grave has continued to make the same broader argument in a different setting: citizens should pay attention, question those in power and demand accountability for public money.
“We have to tell the Filipino people that they are the ones; it is their money that is being used, it is their money that is being stolen,” she said.
But Monsod also turned the criticism toward the public itself.
“We, the Filipino people ourselves, have a lot to answer for because we allow it to happen. We allow it.”
For her, the Philippines’ predicament is not fundamentally a question of whether the country possesses enough resources.
“If only the government officials themselves, meaning the legislative and the executive, just keep their hands out of that budget... We will be able to achieve all that we want to achieve,” she said.
Instead, she sees the country as being trapped deeper in the same problem.
“We are not in the same rut. We are in a deeper rut. Because the corruption has taken world-class magnitudes.”
And so Monsod continues to do what she has done across decades — teach, explain, criticize and challenge.
Her classroom may no longer be limited to the halls of UP.
Her students now include the broader Filipino public, and her lesson remains stubbornly simple:
“All we have to do is pay attention. What is going on? Because that’s our money.”
