The Philippines is proposing to spend a record 25 billion pesos ($552 million) next year to purchase frigates, surveillance planes and radars to improve surveillance and detection in the disputed South China Sea, officials said on Monday. The funds to modernise the military are part of President Benigno Aquino's 3 trillion pesos ($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 2.606 trillion pesos, according to Budget and Management Secretary Florencio Abad, adding the about 80 percent of the proposed government spending "will be eaten up by the forward estimates or the cost of ongoing programmes and projects". "In 2016, our proposal to Congress is 25 billion pesos for the modernisation programme," Abad told Reuters saying this would be the highest-ever spending for military modernisation in two decades. Abad said the government's proposed budget, including the defence spending plan, would be submitted to Congress next week after the president delivers his last State of the Nation Address on July 27.
