Over a third of senators, representatives, and governors in office are part of just three political parties backed by the richest Filipinos, highlighting the government’s vested interests in business and industries, according to economic research group IBON Foundation in its 2025 Birdtalk Yearstarter.

The National Unity Party (NUP), Nacionalista Party, and Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC) are backed by top Filipino billionaires Enrique Razon Jr., Manuel Villar, and Ramon Ang, respectively. Forty-two percent of senators, 40 percent of representatives, and 38 percent of governors are under these parties:

• Nacionalista Party: five senators, 45 representatives, 11 governors
• Nationalist People’s Coalition: five senators, 36 representatives, 11 governors
• National Unity Party: 45 representatives, 9 governors

Villar is the president of the Nacionalista Party. Ang’s longtime business partner, the late Eduardo Cojuangco, was the founder of the NPC. Meanwhile, Razon has denied involvement with the NUP but has previously endorsed members of the party.

Notably, the three parties endorsed President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in the 2022 elections and have formed an alliance with his party for the 2025 midterm elections.

“Not coincidentally, the exact same period that [billionaires] had soaring profits was also when they had larger shares of the Senate, the House, and governorships, a clear example of political power translating to corporate power,” explained IBON Director Sonny Africa.

The number of officials from these parties grew from seven to ten senators and from 103 to 126 representatives after the 2022 national and local elections. Simultaneously, from 2021 to 2024, the combined wealth of their billionaire backers increased by 70 percent per Forbes’s data. 

The domination of politicians with corporate interests may explain the government’s reluctance to pursue certain industries, IBON discussed. Corporations of the richest Filipinos tend to pursue service-oriented industries like telecommunications, real estate, and finance, while sidelining agriculture and manufacturing.

This has contributed to services having the largest share of the Philippines’ gross domestic product at 50.5 percent last year. Meanwhile, manufacturing stood at a 75-year low of 17.3 percent and agriculture hit an all-time low of 7.8 percent.

This trend of sidelining productive industries has persisted since the start of the Marcos Jr. administration, belying promises it would prioritize agriculture.

But while services are profitable, the pursuit toward them has led to “economic backwardness,” said Africa. They do not develop technologies needed to achieve national industrialization, which is necessary for economic stability, he added.

Service industries like trade, accommodation, and food comprise a large part of job creation, with 923,000 new jobs in June 2024 since the previous year. But these sectors were severely underpaid, with daily wages of P470 in trade and P486 in accommodation and food being lower than the national average of P616.

Though billionaires like Razon, Villar, and Ang continue to profit from services—last year alone, their combined wealth grew by P294 billion—real wages have actually decreased by 23 percent since the establishment of regional wage boards in 1989. 

The service-oriented economy and unjust wages have contributed to poverty consuming Filipinos, IBON highlighted. Last year, 57 percent of Filipinos rated themselves poor in a Social Weather Stations survey—the highest rating in two decades. In the last quarter, nearly three in four Filipino households also had no savings, per the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ data.

To resolve long-standing poverty, IBON asserted the need to elect candidates in the 2025 midterm elections willing to move away from corporate-driven politics to pursue national industrialization.

“If we really do want to develop as a country … we do need industrialization. And if the government cannot even use those words as its focus on economic strategy, we will be where we are right now but in a worse place in the next few decades,” said Africa. ●