Economic Survival and Growth Briefing: Navigating Economic Uncertainty Through Innovation and Collaboration

By Marga L. Taganas and Genevieve B. Kupang

Baguio City, Philippines — April 30, 2026

BCU Joins Baguio Business Club Briefing on Regional Economic Growth and Resilience

 The impact of the US-Israel-Iran conflict and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is severe and spreading. We feel it in the transport sector, in rising inflation rates, in the groceries we buy, and in the compressed work schedules both government offices and private companies have had to adopt just to keep operations viable.

It was against this sobering backdrop that the Economic Survival and Growth Briefing convened on April 30, 2026, at the Blossom Hall of Orchard Hotel along Legarda Road in Baguio City. It was organized by the Baguio Business Club (BBC) in partnership with the Department of Trade and Industry – Cordillera Administrative Region (DTI-CAR) and the Metropolitan Baguio-La Trinidad-Itogon-Sablan-Tuba-Tublay Development Authority (MBLISTTDA). The briefing gathered under the theme “Navigating Economic Uncertainty Through Innovation and Collaboration.” That theme felt more like a collective cry for clarity in a disorienting time.

Five Graduate School Faculty attended as representatives of Baguio Central University. They were honored to receive a formal invitation signed jointly by Asec. Ma. Monica C. Costales, PhD, Administrator of MBLISTTDA; Engr. Mark Joseph G. Lacambra, President of the BBC; and Atty. Raymond G. Panhon, Regional Director of DTI-CAR. That three senior officials from distinct but complementary institutions would together invite BCU speaks to a shared understanding: that the academy belongs in the conversation when a region is trying to survive and grow. We are deeply grateful for that trust, and we did not take it lightly.

We carry this reflection as educators, as program coordinator, as administrator, as an internationalization officer, and members of the WURI Global Rankings community where institutional accountability to crisis management and to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals is not just evaluated. It is lived.

The Weight of the Global in the Local Room

For Metro BLISTT, a collective place whose economy is overwhelmingly service-driven, global tremors are not distant abstractions. They arrive in the form of rising fuel costs that push up transport fares, shrink the margins of micro-entrepreneurs, and quietly but persistently erode the quality of daily life. When the world sneezes, Baguio and the surrounding municipalities, for all their cool mountain altitude, do not remain immune.

It is in this context that the BBC, DTI-CAR, and MBLISTTDA made a decision I find commendable: to bring together government, business, academe, and civil society in a problem-solving spirit. The briefing was an exercise in what WURI Category A5 calls institutional responsiveness to crisis. For me, as an educator, it was something I recognize more personally: the practice of solidarity in the face of uncertainty.

Voices That Shaped the Afternoon

Each speaker brought a distinct lens to the shared challenge.

Engr. Mark Joseph G. Lacambra, President of the BBC, framed resilience not as a passive waiting-out of difficulty but as an active, collaborative posture. His welcome remarks set the intellectual and moral temperature of the entire afternoon.

Governor Melchor D. Diclas, Chairperson of the MBLISTTDA Council, reminded the assembly that BLISTT is an administrative cluster and an interdependent human community whose parts rise or fall together.

The afternoon’s most far-reaching contribution came from Dr. Bernardo M. Villegas, renowned economist and founder of the University of Asia and the Pacific (UA&P). At 85, he carries his decades of scholarship with remarkable vitality. He identified three priorities for long-term national resilience: strengthening food banking initiatives to reduce wastage and support young children’s nutrition; scaling up urban gardens to ease pressure on food security; and promoting mini dams to address water shortage and energy deficits across the Cordillera. These three prescriptions map directly onto SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), and SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy). Dr. Villegas named these as moral urgencies. That is the kind of grounded, values-anchored economics the academe must engage with.

I should note that this encounter carried a personal dimension for me. My daughter is an alumna of the University of Asia and the Pacific (UA&P), the very institution Dr. Villegas founded. Meeting him in person, and feeling the force of his still-luminous mind at 85, was both humbling and quietly joyful.

Mayor Benjamin B. Magalong of Baguio City brought the discussion to the city’s own crisis management systems, speaking with the directness of a leader who has navigated public health emergencies and the constant tension of governing a city that is both mountain sanctuary and urban commercial hub.

Provincial Director Felicitas O. Bandonill of DTI-Baguio-Benguet presented the landscape of MSME support, trade, and investment opportunities within BLISTT, reminding the room that resilience lives at the micro-level: in the sari-sari store that survives, the small manufacturer that pivots, the digital entrepreneur who finds a new market.

Asec. Ma. Monica C. Costales, Administrator of MBLISTTDA, made clear that crisis management is structural, built into the planning DNA of the region’s governing bodies.

Mr. Angelo Madrid of Maya Bank presented digital financial services as a lifeline in an era of disruption, for individuals, for MSMEs, and for the wider regional economy. Digital inclusion maps squarely onto SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth) and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities).

Mayor Alfredo B. Dacumos Jr. of Sablan, Co-Chairperson of the MBLISTTDA Council, closed the forum by reinforcing the afternoon’s central thesis: that the path through uncertainty is paved with unified action and genuine collaboration.

Dr. Zorba Bautista, Director of the BBC, served as Master of Ceremony with the fluency and intellectual engagement that itself modeled the spirit of cross-sector dialogue.

The Academic Place in This Conversation

WURI’s Category A5 calls on universities to demonstrate genuine capacity for crisis management: to assess institutional risks, engage emergency response systems, and collaborate with government, industry, and civil society. The Economic Survival and Growth Briefing was that kind of collaborative infrastructure in action. BCU’s presence was a meaningful statement of institutional alignment with those values.

WURI’s Category A8 calls on us to demonstrate SDG- and ESG-based responses to global challenges. Every topic addressed in Blossom Hall that afternoon, food security, water access, clean energy, digital inclusion, MSME resilience, and regional governance, is a living SDG concern. The university that teaches these as concepts and being present in the room where they are being urgently discussed is fulfilling its own mission.

BCU carries a responsibility that goes beyond campus boundaries. That responsibility took a concrete form when representatives were in a room full of people genuinely trying to solve something, and I knew that the university I represent has a contribution to make to that work.

Lessons Learned

We left Orchard Hotel with several convictions more firmly held than when we arrived.

Resilience is always relational. No sector can navigate an economic crisis in isolation. The briefing’s multi-sectoral design was philosophically correct, not just logistically convenient.

Local solutions require global literacy. BLISTT cannot address its water shortage or energy vulnerability without understanding the geopolitical forces shaping energy markets. The university has a role in cultivating that literacy among its students, faculty, and leaders.

Sustainability and regeneration are a posture, not a policy document. It is the daily practice of asking: What are the long-term consequences of what we are doing today? Dr. Villegas modeled this beautifully, thinking across decades, from food banks to mini dams, from children’s nutrition to the energy independence of future generations.

And presence matters. Being in the room matters. Partnership begins with presence.

A Closing Word from Baguio Central University

To the BBC, DTI-CAR, and MBLISTTDA: thank you for opening the doors of this briefing to the academic community. You modeled what genuine multi-stakeholder dialogue looks like, and Baguio is better for it.

To my colleagues in the academe, these are the rooms we need to be in, as partners in building communities that are educated, economically resilient, ecologically responsible, and humanly dignified.

The economy is the material expression of our values, our choices, and our solidarity with one another. When it is endangered, we are all called to respond, with intelligence, with care, and with the courage to collaborate across every boundary we have previously accepted as fixed.

Pressenza Philippines