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More funds for AFP modernization program: Sen. Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa appeals to the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) to allocate additional funds for the Department of National Defense (DND) as he notes the P10-billion reduction in the 2025 proposed budget of the defense department, particularly from the Armed Forces' modernization program. “What can we do to increase the funding for our defense sector, and where can we obtain funds to finally modernize the armed forces especially now that the DND has adopted the comprehensive archipelagic defense concept?” Dela Rosa said during Thursday’s budget deliberations, November 7, 2024. “In an eventuality, our immediate reaction is always like this: we condemn in the highest term this incident and we have to see to it that we have to modernize our Philippine Navy. This is the line that we always said as a politician or legislator. And now here comes the budget deliberations... we are reducing P10-billion from the budget of the national defense. There is always a contradiction in what we say and what we do,” the senator pointed out. Dela Rosa said the original P50-billion proposal of the DND for the AFP modernization program was reduced to P40-billion by the DBM. (Senate Public Relations and Information Bureau)