PH-hosted Asean presummit meetings go online to save costs
The Philippines will proceed with its hosting duties for the 48th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Summit on May 8-9 in Cebu City, but will conduct the preparatory meetings online following President Marcos’ order to “recalibrate” resources to cushion the impact of the Middle East conflict.
In a memorandum issued on Friday, the Office of the President announced that the 650 Asean ministerial and senior official meetings would now be conducted virtually.
Earlier on Friday, Mr. Marcos said the May summit would just be focusing on the regional bloc’s most pressing concerns at the moment, such as fuel supply, food prices, and migrant workers.
“The consensus that we came to is that it is precisely now that we must coordinate our efforts. So, that is what we are going to do. We will proceed with the Asean Summit, but this will be … the way that we described it, is a bare-bones Asean Summit,” Mr. Marcos said in a media interview in Silang, Cavite.
“We will be talking about three main subjects: The supply of petroleum and petroleum products; the supply of food and the price of food; and migrant workers,” he said. “It will be over a period of maybe a day and a half instead of the multiple days that we had planned.”
Malacañang said the decision to pare down the summit activities is expected to generate significant savings, without giving a specific amount.
The government has allocated a total of P22.9 billion across two fiscal years for the Asean events: P5.4 billion, drawn from the 2025 national budget, for initial preparations; and P17.5 billion, under this year’s budget, for the pre-summit, ministerial-level and main summit meetings, as well as related activities.
The various meetings are scheduled to be held in Manila, Cebu, Bohol, Boracay, Laoag, Iloilo and Tagaytay.
November event ‘tentative’
Aside from the May summit that will gather the bloc’s 11 member states, the country will also host the 49th Asean Summit on Nov. 10-12 with dialogue partners such as the United States, China, Japan, South Korea, and the European Union. This will be held in Pasay City.
“[T]entatively, the one in November should push through because it’s important as other world leaders will be coming here—from Europe, from China, from Korea, from Japan. We really need to deal with certain issues with their leaders. So, it’s going to be very important,” President Marcos said.
“But before we do that, maybe by September, October, we will ask what these leaders would want to do once they arrive, etc.,” he added.
According to Mr. Marcos, the decision to scale down the meetings was in response to House Resolution No. 911, which was filed on Thursday calling on the government to cut the budget for the Asean meetings to not more than P10 billion.
The Philippines last hosted the Asean summit in 2017, when the government allocated P16.747 billion. Of the amount, only 51 percent, or P8.572 billion, was disbursed. —WITH A REPORT FROM PNA
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