OP asks for P1-B travel budget

The Office of the President (OP) is asking for P1.018 billion to fund local and foreign trips, including state visits, next year, an amount lower than this year’s allocation.

Based on the 2026 National Expenditure Program, the OP’s proposal is 21-percent lower than the P1.29 billion enacted budget for local and foreign trips for President Marcos’ office in 2025.

Asked why Mr. Marcos still needs more than a billion pesos for his local and foreign trips, Palace press officer Undersecretary Claire Castro in a briefing on Thursday said: “The President always goes 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.

P4B in 4 years

Should the OP’s proposal go untouched in the 2026 General Appropriations Act (GAA), Mr. Marcos’ travel budget over the last four years since he took office would already exceed the amount former President Rodrigo Duterte got in his full six-year term.

Including the P1.018-billion proposal, Mr. Marcos’ budget for local and foreign travels will reach P4.611 billion from 2023 to 2026. Meanwhile, Duterte’s allocation for local and foreign missions reached P4.063 billion from 2017 to 2022.

Mr. Marcos’ latest foreign trip was his state visit to India from Aug. 4 to Aug. 8. It was his 36th foreign trip since becoming president in 2022.

Asean expenses

Meanwhile, the Department of Budget and Management has proposed a P17-billion budget for the Philippines’ hosting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) summit to be held in Manila next year. This amount would be handled mostly by the OP, which will get P10.7 billion.

This is in addition to the P5.2 billion that the OP already requested to be part of the 2025 GAA so the country could prepare for its chairmanship of the international summit, the largest international event in the country next year.

The rest of the amount will go to the Department of the Interior and Local Government and its attached agencies, particularly the Philippine National Police (P1.9 billion), the Presidential Communications Office (P807 million) and the Bureau of Fire and Protection (P739 million).

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In his budget message, Mr. Marcos said the P17-billion amount would fund, among others, 231 cluster meetings and 695 subcluster meetings in the summit.

The President accepted the regional bloc’s request last year to host a year earlier than scheduled, following the ongoing civil war in Myanmar, which was supposed to host the 48th and 49th summits.

The Asean chair is responsible not just for the leaders-level summits but all the other gatherings for the bloc.

In his recent podcast, Mr. Marcos said he wanted the Philippines’ hosting of the regional bloc’s meetings to showcase the country’s beauty and its people’s warmth and sincerity “as it is.”