MANILA, Philippines—If President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was at all bothered by the fourth impeachment complaint against her in four years, it did not show—at least in the eyes of some Southeast Asian leaders she hosted dinner for Wednesday night.

During the open forum, moderator Datu Timothy Ong, a leading businessman from Brunei complimented Arroyo for her looks, saying “you never seem to age.”

“What is the secret of your youthfulness?” he asked on stage to cap off a brief question-and-answer with delegates to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) 100 Leadership Forum.

It’s all in the genes, a game Arroyo replied.

“My mother looked young. My father looked young. My brother looks young. My children look young,” she said, drawing laughter from the crowd gathered at Malacañang’s Rizal Hall.

The brief exchange lightened the mood at the gathering where Arroyo gave delegates ample serving of her tough economic policies that were supposedly shielding the country from the raging global financial turmoil.

“The Philippines appears in relatively good shape, thanks to our fiscal reforms that manifested in a seven-percent-plus GDP growth last year,” she said. “We took decisive action a few years ago to fundamentally alter our economic fortunes.”

Amid her recitation of good fortunes, one delegate asked her about the toughest decision she had ever made as president. She promptly replied: “To raise taxes.”

“Nobody wants to raise taxes,” she said. “It's very unpopular especially such a large amount of taxes in one stroke as we did with the VAT. We raised them at a time when oil and gasoline prices were going up,” she recalled.

Arroyo maintained that it was this “tough” decision -- which was roundly condemned by critics and several sectors -- that was seeing the economy through the financial turmoil.

She said revenues from the expanded Value Added Tax allowed the government to provide subsidized rice for the “poorest of the poor.”

“It was very tough and I wouldn’t have wanted to do it but it had to be done,” she said. “It is now what is helping us weather this global storm.”

ASEAN 100 delegates were also curious about her leadership style.

To respond to one query, she referred to her former Finance secretary Lito Camacho who once described Cabinet meetings as like “corporate board meetings.”

“So I’m very business-like,” she said. "I am very strategic in my thinking. What I learned in economics was very important, but it is also very important to see how it affects the people on the ground,” she explained.

While local banks appeared strong enough to withstand the credit crunch, she said she has been more concerned about the impact of the crisis on individual citizens.

“Our growth rate is still pretty decent, but still I have to think what it means to ordinary Filipinos who experience the high price of fuel and the high price of food. That's always very, very important,” she said.