Secretary, National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), Philippines
Dr. Arsenio Balisacan is an economist with extensive development policy, governance, and administration expertise acquired from over 35 years of professional work as a government official, non-governmental organization executive, economic adviser, researcher, and professor. Dr. Balisacan is presently the Secretary of the National Economic and Development Authority, a post he had previously held from 2012 to 2016. He also served as the inaugural Chairperson of the Philippine Competition Commission from 2016 to 2022. Previous to his Cabinet appointment in 2012, he was Dean of the UP School of Economics, Director-Chief Executive of the Southeast Asian Regional Centre for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA), and Undersecretary for Policy and Planning of the Department of Agriculture. Dr. Balisacan was also a Research Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu and Economist at the World Bank in Washington, DC. He has written extensively on various development issues in books and academic papers, both locally and internationally. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Hawaii, MS in Agricultural Economics from the University of the Philippines Los Baños, and BS in Agriculture from the Mariano Marcos State University.
