Not a case of ‘revenge travels’

For the past two days, the Presidential Communications Office (PCO) trumpeted about the gains from the foreign trips embarked on by President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. (PBBM). The PCO first reported PBBM’s 11 foreign trips for this year alone brought about P4 trillion worth of total new investments to the Philippines.

Obviously though, the bulk of these reported foreign investments are still in “pledges” yet. “Pledges,” in the sense these are just signed commitments entered into either in the form of memorandum of understanding (MOU), or in memorandum of agreement (MOA).

Quoting the report of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), investments that already have a signed agreement were valued at P544.152 billion; and those with a signed MOU of letter of intent (LOI) were valued at P1.588 trillion. Finally, those confirmed but not covered by MOUs/LOIs and still in the planning stage are pegged at P1.522 trillion.

The PCO issued another press statement that sought to highlight the creation of more than 200,000 job opportunities from the P294 billion worth of actualized investments. The estimated P4 trillion investments represented 148 projects as monitored by the DTI as of Dec. 21, the PCO explained.

Actually, PBBM has undertaken a total of 19 overseas trips since assuming office in June last year. Many of these trips are obligatory state visits, especially with our neighbors and fellow member-states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as well as the “must attend” international events like the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders’ Summit.

The other overseas travels are classified as “official” visits like the two “official visits” to the United States (US) of PBBM. The first was in New York for the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in October last year. It was there PBBM had his first four-eyes meeting at the sidelines with US President Joe Biden. The second trip to the US was in May 2023 when PBBM finally had official meeting with President Biden at the White House.

PBBM flew again to America just last month to attend the APEC Leaders’ Summit hosted by the US held in San Francisco, California. After which he flew to Los Angeles and Hawaii one after the other. Malacañang billed the US trips from Nov. 15 to 17 as “working visits” of PBBM.

Singapore is also a favorite foreign trip destination of PBBM and his wife, First Lady Lisa Araneta-Marcos, along with their eldest son, Ilocos Rep. Sandro Marcos. After the state visit last year, the Marcos family returned quietly to Singapore in October to join and watch the Formula 1 race. They went back to Singapore again in September for the 2023 Formula 1 Grand Prix.

Originally, PBBM was slated to fly to Dubai last month. He was supposed to participate and deliver a speech in this year’s 28th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change or COP28 hosted by the government of the United Arab Emirates. But just a few hours before his scheduled departure on Nov. 30, Malacañang announced PBBM cancelled his trip to Dubai. It was at a time that the fate of 17 Filipino seafarers hangs in the balance after abduction by helicopter-borne Houthi rebels last Nov. 19 while their cargo ship was at the Red Sea.

“You know there are things that need to be attended to immediately…17 of our fellow Filipinos have been taken hostage and we are doing everything possible to bring them home,” the President explained. As of this writing, the Department of Migrant Workers learned the information the 17 Pinoy seamen remain safe after being taken to Yemen on board their cargo ship as hostages.

Unfortunately, PBBM’s back-to-back official activities that likewise took him to undertake travelling around the Philippines weighed so much on the state of health of the 66-year-old Chief Executive. He contracted COVID-19 for the third time. After getting isolated for five days, PBBM got back to work last Dec. 9 looking none the worse of his third bout with the highly infectious virus.

Although the Houthi hostaging of the 17 Pinoy seamen remain unresolved, it did not stop PBBM from proceeding to Japan, his last overseas travel this year. PBBM flew to Tokyo where he led the Philippine delegation to the 50th anniversary of the Japan-ASEAN Friendship and Cooperation held from Dec. 15 to 18.

Actually, PBBM first flew to Tokyo on a five-day state visit in February this year. The President described his meetings in Japan as “very fruitful,” including his bilateral talks with Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio.

“I think there was – all of the projects that were in the pipeline, I think we were able to finalize all of them on this trip. So that’s a good result, I think, from this trip,” PBBM declared.

Undersecretary Ceferino Rodolfo of the DTI’s Board of Investments (BOI) attested the P294 billion worth of “actualized” investments went into projects that have already been registered with the investment promotion agencies like the BOI and the Philippine Economic Zone Authority. “These investments, realized and in the pipeline, are mostly in the sectors of manufacturing, IT-BPM, renewable energy, data centers and telecommunications,” the DTI noted.

These include a P2.2-billion investment in telecommunications, P110 million in artificial intelligence (AI), P13 billion in manufacturing; P1.1 billion in health sciences/pharma manufacturing/health services, P16 million in energy; and an undisclosed amount for another investment in health sciences/pharma manufacturing/health services. These projects are comprised of signed agreements with clear financial value and MOU/LOI.

This should translate to bigger foreign direct investments (FDI) recorded for the same period. But approved FDI reached only P27.30 billion in the third quarter of 2023, according to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas. Or, are there separate category for these official figures?

Given such very productive haul from these presidential travels abroad, there should be no quarrel on the importance of in-person salesmanship of no less than PBBM himself as the head of such investment missions. So much so, the Office of the President (OP) got two-fold increase in its travel budget for 2024 (P1.15 billion) compared to 2023 (P671 million).

Critics have accused PBBM of traveling too much. But his overseas trips cannot be called as “revenge travels” simply because his immediate predecessor hardly left the country. And for good reasons, the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic.