BY:CONG ART YAP
₱22.7 billion for ASEAN. Here is how we earn it back
Nov 14, 2026 · By Atty. Arthur C. Yap
ASEAN was born in Bangkok in 1967, when five foreign ministers, our own Narciso Ramos (father of President Fidel V. Ramos) among them, signed a two-page declaration. It now has eleven members and a free trade area. This week in Manila, its leaders are expected to sign a Digital Economy Framework Agreement that ASEAN officials say could lift the region’s digital economy to as much as US$2 trillion by 2030.
The media reports that ₱5.2 billion in the 2025 budget and ₱17.49 billion in 2026, about ₱22.7 billion in all, will be spent for our hosting ASEAN, against roughly ₱1 billion when President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo hosted the Cebu summit in 2007. Could the money have gone to fuel relief or farm insurance? Yes. Are the poor being hidden along motorcade routes? Critics say so. But the money has been substantially spent. The only question worth asking now is how we earn it back.
We can start with a benchmark. The Board of Investments reports ₱252 billion in approved projects from ASEAN neighbors since 2020. Our bill is about 9 percent of that. New projects worth one-eleventh of that total, actually built, would cover it.
I learned how a summit pays in Mrs. Arroyo’s Cabinet. As her Secretary ofAgriculture, I watched Cebu 2007 deliver a faster deadline for the ASEAN Community, an ASEAN-China agreement on trade in services, and an East Asia Summit declaration calling for large-scale biofuel investment, days after she signed our Biofuels Act. Her lesson stays with me: in every crisis there are tools; read the data hard, then decide and act fast.
This week the tools are sitting at the table. Here are five ways to collect.
1. Power and water for Pax Silica. In April we became the 13th signatory of the U.S.-led Pax Silica coalition, with a 4,000-acre AI hub planned in New Clark City. Ask President Trump’s team to finance power and water systems larger than the hub needs, so the surplus lowers costs for the homes and farms of Central Luzon.
2. Insurance lessons from Brazil. Brazil pays 20 to 40 percent of farmers’ insurance premiums while private insurers carry the risk. Our PCIC covers rice at only ₱25,000 a hectare against a production cost the Department ofAgriculture puts near ₱60,000, and a World Bank review calls it “totally un-reinsured.” Invite President Lula’s team to help design the agricultural insurance pool set to launch in January 2027. Every farm saved from a typhoon is output we do not lose. ₱22.7 billion for ASEAN. Here is how we earn it back.
3. The bank, not the club. Joining BRICS will not steady the peso; the bloc has no common currency. But its New Development Bank admits non-members such as Bangladesh, the UAE, Egypt, Algeria and Uzbekistan, and would add infrastructure finance without forcing us to choose sides.
4. China: we have many options. We hold our ground at sea, and we may have to agree to disagree. But trade, agriculture and tourism remain open doors. And the World Bank’s finding that extreme poverty in China fell by close to 800 million people in forty years is a lesson worth studying.
5. Send the leads to the provinces. Every investor lead from this week should reach provincial investment offices within a month. Bohol, which hosted ASEAN energy and finance meetings in Panglao this year, should get the energy and agriculture leads.
Four of these need no new agency, no large appropriation, and can show results within twelve months. The bank needs a capital subscription, which Congress should weigh against the financing it unlocks.
So I challenge Malacañang: by November 2027, publish a recoupment ledger setting COA-audited spending against the pledges that actually reached BOI or PEZA registration. And keep the North Star in view. The summit pays for itself only when a Filipino family eats better, earns more and pays less for power.
The ₱22.7 billion is spent. Now let us collect, not in photographs at PICC, but in factories, in insured farms and in cheaper power in the provinces. Put people first, and the investment will come back.