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President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. (leftmost) joins other state leaders for a photograph during the 20th ASEAN-India Summit as part of the 43rd ASEAN Summit in Jakarta on September 7, 2023. (Photo by Adek BERRY / POOL / AFP)
MANILA, Philippines — The proposed budget for President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s local and foreign trips next year decreased by more than a fifth compared to last year, but the amount still breached P1 billion.
Based on the 2026 National Expenditure Program, the Office of the President (OP) requested P1.018 billion for local and foreign missions and state visits.
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The OP’s proposal was 21 percent lower than the P1.2 billion enacted budget for local and foreign trips for Marcos’ office in 2025.
The new proposal will most likely be enacted since this item is in the 2026 General Appropriations Act (GAA), with lawmakers historically citing parliamentary courtesy as the reason for their approval during budget deliberations for the OP.
Asked why Marcos still needs more than a billion pesos for his travels, Palace press officer Claire Castro, in a briefing on Thursday, said: “The President always go down to the communities to check the security and monitor what is happening in different parts of the country, especially when there’s flooding and other calamities.”
“And you can also see the president’s frequent travels, as he encourages other countries to invest in our country,” she added.
Should the budget proposal of the OP be enacted as part of the 2026 GAA, Marcos’ local and foreign missions budget for four years will exceed the same budget of former President Rodrigo Duterte’s full six-year term.
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Including the P1.018 billion proposal, Marcos’ budget for local and foreign travels will reach P4.6 billion from 2023 to 2026. Meanwhile, former President Duterte’s allocation for local and foreign trips reached P4 billion from 2017 to 2022.
Marcos’ latest foreign trip was during his state visit to India from Aug. 4 to 8. It was his 36th foreign trip since becoming president in 2022.
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According to Malacañang, Marcos’ state visit to India yielded actual direct investments worth $446 million and potential investments reaching up to $5.8 billion in key sectors including digital infrastructure, renewable energy, healthcare, manufacturing, information technology and business process management.
The agreements signed were expected to generate over 4,000 direct jobs and provide digital training to more than 26,000 Filipinos by 2026.
In February, Labor Secretary Bienvenido Laguesma said the foreign visits of Marcos had created more than 200,000 jobs for Filipinos, with power, renewable energy and electronics manufacturing as the first sectors to create jobs.
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According to Laguesma, approximately 201 investment-led projects valued at over $76 billion were generated from the president’s trips abroad since he took office in 2022. /apl
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