V. Bruce "Bruce" Jularbal Tolentino, is a Filipino economist, [1] author, professor, and economic policymaker.
V. Bruce "Bruce" Jularbal Tolentino, is a Filipino economist, [1] author, professor, and economic policymaker.
Born on June 2, 1953, in Baguio, to father, Toots, a salesman, and mother Florence, who managed the family's photo studio. Bruce graduated from Saint Louis High School and proceeded to the institution's university. There he was editor-in-chief of the SLU White and Blue.
Bruce left his boyhood home after the declaration of Martial Law in 1972. Pursued by the martial law military, he escaped to Marawi in Mindanao where he found his interests shifting from communications to economics as he became more and more involved in rural development.
After graduate school at Xavier University in Cagayan de Oro, Mindanao, and University of Hawaii in Honolulu, Bruce returned to the Philippines and began work in the government with a focus on policy-reform processes. He was part of the group that put together the Philippines' membership in the World Trade Organization. He was also on the team that developed the initial draft of the Agri-Agra Reform Law as well as that of the Local Government Code of 1992 Archived 2018-03-18 at the Wayback Machine .
In the 1980s, Bruce was appointed first executive director of the Agricultural Credit Policy Council (ACPC) jointly appointed by former Central Bank Governor Jobo Fernandez and former Agriculture Secretary Ramon Mitra Jr. His function was as lead technical adviser for a rehabilitation program for all of the rural banks that had been organized, and subsequently failed, during the Masagana 99 era of subsidized loans for rice and corn production.
He served as Assistant Secretary, then Undersecretary of Agriculture (for Policy, Planning, and International Trade) of the Department of Agriculture of the Philippines from 1986 to 1993.
From 2007 to 2012, he served in various positions within The Asia Foundation, including Chief Economist and Country Representative for Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. [2]
From 2012 to 2018 he served as Deputy Director-General of the International Rice Research Institute, based in Los Baños, Laguna, and also elected Secretary IRRI Board of Trustees. [3] As of 2018, Bruce is the newest member of the Monetary Board, the central bank's highest policy-making body. [4]
In 2021, the Agricultural Credit Policy Council launched Enabling Rural and Agricultural Finance for Inclusive Development in the Philippines. Split into three volumes, the book is a collection of Bruce Tolentino's papers, memos, and reports that span four decades of work. It contains "... a record of the challenges, responses, successes as well as failures in rural finance and intermediation" over the course of his career.
With more than 35 years of progressive experience in governance, management, analysis, and planning socio-economic development reforms and initiatives, Bruce has been the go-to guy for many agri and food security related projects. [5]
According to Bruce, food security is a regional, even international effort. "Agriculture—which produces food—cannot be confined to the artificial borders of countries. Food is a product of human ingenuity applied to natural resources—land, water, sunlight, rainfall—that also spill across borders. Some countries, especially the large countries like the US, China, India, have more than enough food. Many other, smaller countries—such as Singapore, Malaysia, Korea—are largely dependent on food produced by others. With worsening climate change and resource degradation, as populations continue to grow, open international trade and global cooperation is becoming even more imperative to ensure that all populations of all nations share in the bounty of the earth as a whole." [6]
Bruce is married to Rory Francisco-Tolentino, former director of Philippine Business for Social Progress and Ayala Foundation and current consultant for various nonprofit management projects. He has two children.
John Harold Williamson was a British-born economist who coined the term Washington Consensus. He served as a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics from 1981 until his retirement in 2012. During that time, he was the project director for the United Nations High-Level Panel on Financing for Development in 2001. He was also on leave as chief economist for South Asia at the World Bank during 1996–99, adviser to the International Monetary Fund from 1972 to 1974, and an economic consultant to the UK Treasury from 1968 to 1970. He was also an economics professor at Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (1978–81), University of Warwick (1970–77), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of York (1963–68) and Princeton University (1962–63).
The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) is an international agricultural research and training organization with its headquarters in Los Baños, Laguna, in the Philippines, and offices in seventeen countries. IRRI is known for its work in developing rice varieties that contributed to the Green Revolution in the 1960s which preempted the famine in Asia.
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Yujiro Hayami was a Japanese agricultural economist, widely considered to be an authority on the subject. He was a Rockefeller fellow at Iowa University, a winner of Purple Ribbon Medal and a Lifetime member of the International Association of Agricultural Economists. He is credited with the development Hayami Development Economics, an agricultural philosophy on the relationship of a community to the market and the state. He died on 24 December 2012.
Werner Doppler (born December 15, 1941 in Oberlustadt, Germany is an Agricultural Economist. His areas of teaching and research have been Farming Systems, Rural Development and Socioeconomics in the Tropics and Subtropics. He was Dean of Faculty at the University of Hohenheim.
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Gerald Shively is an American economist and Professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Purdue University. He teaches and publishes research articles and books related to contemporary policy-related issues in economic development. His specializations are in poverty, food security and sustainable development.
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