Philippine Foreign Policies major concerns

August 16,2010, we discussed the major concerns of the Philippine Foreign Policies namely the regional arrangements and multilateral organizations, territorial rights: Spratly’s and the South China Sea, Direct Foreign Investements, Tourism, and the Overseas Filipinos. First is about the regional arrangements and the multilateral organizations, where we can promote our national interests through developmental diplomacy.

The second major concern is the territorial rights on Spratly’s and the South China Sea. Besides the Philippines, there are a lot of countries claiming Spratly’s islands and South China Sea as their territories which are China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan. As a member of ASEAN, the Philippines decided to settle the territorial disputes in a peaceful and friendly manner and without use of any force. I think that it is right to resolve this conflict through friendly and peaceful means, however I believe that their ways of resolving this is not effective because it has been so much years since this territorial dispute started, so I think, these countries must think of a more effective way on how to resolve this issue peacefully.

Next are the direct foreign investments. I can say that foreign direct investments are very important to our country because these foreign investments provide a lot of jobs to Filipino. China, USA, Japan, and countries from Europe and ASEAN are considered as major sources of our foreign direct investments, technology transfer, as well as trade.

Fourth is tourism. There are a lot of places in our country that can be enhanced to be very good tourists’ spots, some of these are Cebu, Bohol, Tagaytay, Palawan, Ilocos, Davao a long with these, the airline industry here in our country must be also improved. Filipinos, known as being hospitable plus the enhancement of these places and the airline industry will improve our tourism to encourage not only foreigners but also us Filipinos to visit our own finest places and that can be a very good help to our economy.

Lastly is the concern for the overseas Filipinos. Now, they are considered as modern day heroes for being the largest contributor to our economy because of their remittances. As a support for them, the government is committed to abolish one of the factors that the life of the OFW’s lives will be in danger that is terrorism, also the government continuously provides assistance to Filipinos overseas through the Department of Foreign Affairs and other government agencies such as the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration and the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration.

Also, August 16, 2010 is our last day of meeting in PHIFOCY wherein I was surprised because time flies so fast, I just seem that the term had just started.