Proposed budget to purchase frigates, surveillance planes, radars
The Aquino administration is proposing to spend a record P25 billion ($552 million) next year to purchase frigates, surveillance planes, and radars to improve surveillance and detection in the disputed South China Sea, officials said yesterday.
The funds to modernize the military are part of President Aquino’s P3 trillion ($66.24 billion) budget bill in 2016, his last year in office. Aquino is no longer eligible to run for a second term.
The budget proposal is 15.1 percent more than the current appropriation of P2.606 trillion, according to Budget and Management Secretary Florencio Abad, adding that about 80 percent of the proposed government spending “will be eaten up by the forward estimates or the cost of ongoing programs and projects.”
“In 2016, our proposal to Congress is 25 billion pesos for the modernization program,” Abad told Reuters, saying this would be the highest-ever spending for military modernization in two decades.
Abad said the government’s proposed budget, including the defense spending plan, would be submitted to Congress next week after the president delivers his last State of the Nation Address on July 27.
A senior military general, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the press, told Reuters the funds would be used to acquire two frigates, two twin-engine long range patrol aircraft and three aerial surveillance radars.
The rest of the money would be for annual amortization of 12 FA50 light fighters ordered from South Korea. Two planes are due for delivery this December.
WIDER MUTUAL DEFENSE
Meanwhile, the United States Congress has been urged to declare that the security of shoals and islands controlled by the Philippines in the disputed South China Sea falls within the scope of their Mutual Defense Treaty.
“I think we should change our position on the application of the US-Philippine security treaty to cover features in the South China Sea that are currently occupied by the Philippines and under its jurisdiction,” Walter Lohman, director of the Center for Asia Studies at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee during a recent congressional hearing. “Currently, we’re ambiguous in that regard.”
Lohman was referring to the US-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) under MDT Article IV and V wherein it was declared that the US will only come to the assistance of the Philippines if its metropolitan territory is attacked or if its Armed Forces are attacked in the Pacific area.
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