That’s what’s been told to me many times. When Marcos was in power, my dad used to work for Shell Oil SE Asia and he was in the RP multiple times, when Marcos was president. Told me he opened the Daily Bulletin on Sundays and the jobs section was 20 pages. I’m not sure I remembered it correctly but he mentioned that the RP peso was pegged closed to the US DOLLAR, that not even his successors could duplicate that economy even 50 years later.
I was there off and on in ‘69, ‘70 and ‘71 with the last time when I flew from Clark AFB to Travis on a C-141. The RP peso was stable at about 5p per 1 USD on the official bank exchange rate. Of course we could walk a couple of blocks farther into town and get 8p for each buck.