The Philippine government has already spent P501M for President Duterte’s foreign trips
Foreign trips are part of the duty of a country’s leader of a certain nation and President Rodrigro Duterte has also been doing this part of his job.
Since Duterte assumed the presidency last year, he already been able to travel to several countries for official meeting with heads of other nations.
Through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request submitted by Inquirer to the Malacañang Records Office, it has been known that the President already had 19 trips to 17 different countries.
Accumulating all his foreign trips last year, President Duterte consumed a total cost of P277.387 million from his travel to Laos, Indonesia, Vietnam, Brunei, China, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Peru, New Zealand, Cambodia and Singapore.
This year, he went to China with the chartered flight amounting to P25.595 million and hotel accommodations expenses reached to P8.61 million.
On that single trip on May 2017, the government spent P48.801 million. President Duterte also had a trip to China last October 2016.
Another trip on the same month this year, he went to Russia but his trip was cut short because of the unexpected conflict that happened to Marawi City against pro-Islamic State extremists.
The President, along with his companions on the said foreign trip, only stayed in Russia just a bit more than 24 hours, however he still was able to talk with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
Based on the data from Malacañang, Duterte’s trip to Russia was so far the most expensive one among his foreign trips.
The government spent P65.087 million in total with the break down of P40.673 million for chartered flight and P11.141 million for hotel accommodation expenses.
From last year up to the present, President Rodrigo Duterte already spent a total of P501 million on his foreign trips, said in a report.
On the other hand, Malacañang said that among these trips, the administration already accumulated at least $38.6 billion or almost P2 trillion in investment pledges, loans and private corporate deals.