Ongpin's desk is never clear
Jaime Ongpin has lost 14 pounds in weight since he became Finance Minister of the Philippines.
Former chairman of Benguet Corporation, one of the country's largest mining companies, the Harvard-trained Ongpin is working hard at a tough job: getting cash to stimulate an economy that's hit rock-bottom, and negotiating a new programme with the IMF to replace the SDR615 million facility that ended prematurely with the overthrow of Marco.
"Some of the problems are very difficult and seem intractable," he admitted. "When I was in the private sector, at the end of the day my desk was clear and I could go home. But a $26 billion debt -- how do you solve that with a budget deficit and two years of negative growth?"
Nonetheless, Ongpin has a plan, and Euromoney talked to him about it last month, just after his return from preliminary talks with the IMF in Tokyo. At that point, Philippine central bank officials were claiming that they had been promised a total of close to $800 million from a variety of sources toward their 1986 target of about $1 billion.
How are the discussions with the IMF progressing?
This week we're focusing on the budget; the discussion at the moment is on tax reform.