EDITORIAL - Where’s the AFP’s share?

In the past 26 years, the Bases Conversion and Development Authority remitted P45 billion as the share of the Armed Forces of the Philippines in BCDA earnings.

That’s less than P2 billion a year, according to Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro, who is pushing for an accounting of BCDA revenues. If the accounting will not push through, he said he would resort to the legal process, pointing out that even AFP personnel are demanding the audit.

The BCDA may dispute the figures, but a thorough audit would be reasonable, considering the urgent need for resources to upgrade AFP capabilities especially for external defense.

After the country shut down the US bases in 1992, the government needed to find sources of financing to develop national self-defense capability. It was decided that large portions of military reservations could be converted for commercial or economic purposes, with the proceeds to be used for AFP modernization.

Republic Act 7227 or the BCDA Act of 1992 established the agency as a corporate body for the conversion of former military reservations such as Clark, Subic, John Hay as well as Fort Bonifacio in Taguig, into centers of economic activities.

Under the law, 35 percent of net proceeds from sale transactions and 50 percent of net proceeds from leases, joint ventures and other non-sale transactions are supposed to go to the AFP Modernization Trust Fund.

Since the country left the US security umbrella in 1992, there has been talk about the need to develop minimum credible self-defense capability. To this day, this has not yet been attained.

With the country now seeing its maritime entitlements and exclusive economic zone being routinely violated by its giant neighbor, the need to attain that level of capability and threat deterrence has gained urgency.

While the country remains a US treaty ally and Washington keeps harping on its “ironclad” commitment to the Philippines under the Mutual Defense Treaty, the US under Donald Trump has also sent a message to all its allies that they need to invest more in their own self-defense.

The defense establishment needs the proper share from BCDA earnings for the AFP Modernization Fund. Teodoro should push for that audit, or else proceed with his Plan B and take the issue to court.