July 11, 2024 (Taguig City) – Speaking before the Management Association of the Philippines (MAP) General Meeting on Wednesday, Secretary of National Defense Gilberto C. Teodoro, Jr. urged enterprise executives and managers to develop “creative financing solutions to help the national government ease the burden that an honest-to-goodness modernization will create in the fiscal position of the government.”
Noting the significant resources needed to fund the continuing modernization of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), Secretary Teodoro said the government has to balance the economy and the spending for infrastructure, social services, education, and various other priorities.
“We need to find off-budget, non-traditional financing sources for modernization but not (based) on the model of the old BCDA (Bases Conversion and Development Authority), where land was traded for modernization,” said the Defense Chief. “Therefore, I ask your help for creative financing for us where we can spread out the terms of whatever financial arrangements we can make to limit the size of amortizations that the national government will make to make it more palatable.”
Secretary Teodoro expounded on the need for resources to build up the country’s defense posture amid “geopolitical problems worldwide” such as the situation in Ukraine, the Red Sea, and the tensions in the West Philippine Sea that “have affected the business cycles in the Philippines” and “caused some lack of confidence in the geopolitical stability of the region.”
“However, these are realities that we need to face, we need to address, as a country. Volatility is the only constant in geopolitics and the world will continue to be that way,” he stressed. “The only way we will be able to steel ourselves and to deal with it is to harden our own credible deterrent posture, which we are very busy doing.”
The Defense Secretary shared that under the new Comprehensive Archipelagic Defense Concept, the Philippines “will project our defensive capabilities to secure not only the land base of the Philippines but its exclusive economic zone and other areas where we have jurisdiction.”
“We will project our strategic basing outwards to the baselines, which (are) the foundation of the measurement of our exclusive economic zone (EEZ), and try to protect these as best as we can from intrusion, and from illegal changing of narratives that these belong to anyone else but the Philippines,” he added.
Secretary Teodoro likewise addressed the malicious insinuations of the increase in the tempo of the AFP’s bilateral and multilateral training as a preparation for war or provoking conflict.
“No, that is not true. That is scaring our people. The truth is the Armed Forces of the Philippines has never trained to the level that it should train. It has never used or tested the equipment that it has bought in the level that will make you determine whether what you bought is effective for you or not,” said the DND Secretary.
Secretary Teodoro also thanked the members of the MAP and the private sector for their continuing expression of support for the AFP troops following the June 17 aggressive actions by the Chinese Coast Guard in Ayungin Shoal.
“Our troops in LS-57, contrary to some naysayers, exercise the highest degree of professionalism and mission focus. Had there been any indiscipline on their part, then something catastrophic could have happened,” said Secretary Teodoro. “However, they kept to the mission, they stuck to what they needed to do, they stuck to their training. Thank you very much, MAP, for recognizing their professionalism.”
He emphasized the importance of the support of the private sector in the “quest” to develop a self-reliant defense posture “in order to deter – in order to prevent – those that would poach or appropriate the resources that rightly belong to future generations of Filipinos, not only us.”
“We will need your support in the future because this is a continuing struggle for our territorial integrity, sovereignty, and sovereign rights amidst significant challenges to try not only to make our EEZ and other areas where we have jurisdiction smaller, to constrict it, but also weaken our resolve to stand up and resist attempts to change the narrative of what international law is and what belongs to the Filipinos,” Secretary Teodoro said.
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