NEW POPCOM CHIEF

Dr. Lisa Grace S. Bersales, PH.D (right) was sworn into office as the new executive director of the Commission on Population and Development (POPCOM) on Friday, January 13, 2023 by Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Arsenio M. Balisacan at the National Economic and Development Authority head office. Bersales will now concurrently serve as the Undersecretary for Population and development or POPDEV, banking on her expertise as a statistics development-partner of the country’s public and private sectors. Bersales brings into POPCOM her deep expertise from almost four decades of academic practice as a researcher and professor at the University of the Philippines, where she was dean and director of its Graduate Studies for the School of Statistics. As the first national statistician, she led the implementation of the Philippine Statistics Act of 2013 by setting up the Philippine Statistics Authority in 2014. Bersales actualized the Public-private Partnership for the Civil Registration System Information Technology Project-phase 2 of the Philippines in 2016, and chaired the Philippine Identification System working group that provided inputs to the Philippine Identification System Act enacted in 2018, where she formalized its Implementing Rules and Regulation in the same year. Her most recent significant engagement in the international arena includes being co-chair of the United Nations-statistical Commission’s Inter-agency and Expert Group on the Sustainable Development Goals’ indicators from 2015 to 2017, which developed its global framework. Bersales has also written and co-authored numerous publications on demography and economic growth.