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, professor, and consultant for numerous development agencies and intergovernmental organizations.
A former economics professor at the University of the Philippines for three decades, Dr. Balisacan is presently a Cabinet member of the Philippine Government, serving as 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 and chief executive of the Philippine Competition Commission from 2016 to 2022.
In his current role as NEDA Secretary, he concurrently chairs the governing boards of various state agencies, but before his initial Cabinet appointment in 2012, he was Dean of the University of the Philippines School of Economics, Director-Chief Executive of the Southeast Asian Regional Centre for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA), and Undersecretary of the Department of Agriculture. Before joining the UP faculty in 1987, he was also a research fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, and an economist at the World Bank in Washington, DC.
Dr. Balisacan has served in various capacities in many academic and professional organizations, and advised and consulted with numerous development agencies and multilateral institutions. He has authored and co-edited seven books and published close to 100 academic papers and book chapters covering wide areas on development and political economy of policy reforms in the Philippines and East Asia.
For his research and other scholarly work in economics, he was elected a lifelong member (Academician) of the National Academy of Science and Technology in 2008. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Hawaii, an MS in Agricultural Economics from the University of the Philippines Los Baños, and a BS in Agriculture (Magna Cum Laude) from the Mariano Marcos State University.