Former ecozone chief, PETA to get Magsaysay accolades

Lilia de Lima, who brought in P3 trillion in investments to the Philippines as director general of the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) for 21 years, is one of this year’s recipients of the Ramon Magsaysay Award, Asia’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

De Lima, 76, was cited for “single-mindedly pursuing a program of reform” by halving the bloated 1,000-person bureaucracy she had inherited from a “system of political patronage.”