PRESIDENT Ferdinand Marcos Jr ‘s state visit yielded investment pledges whose value is “thousands of times” the travel budget of the Office of the President (OP).

This was the assessment of Deputy Speaker and Batangas Representative Ralph Recto to the maiden foreign trips to Indonesia and Singapore.

The P805-billion-worth of investment commitments Marcos brought home dwarfed the P157 million local and foreign travel allocation of the OP from June to December of the year.

“Yung isang byahe pa lang, bawing bawi na, Maliit lang ang share ng OP under President BBM sa total government travel budget this year of P20.22 billion. Mga 77 centavos lang out of 100 pesos,” he said.

As Covid-19 retreats and borders open, Recto said “zoom diplomacy should shift to face-to-face engagements – unless one is a fan of North Korea.”

He said the president is better off promoting the country’s interest “across the table, in a room, than remotely via a TV screen.”

As the country grapples with the combined blows of the pandemic and the food and fuel shocks unleashed by the war in Ukraine, “many of the solutions to these problems lie outside our shores.”

Recto cited the country’s need for fertilizers which “the President’s trip to Jakarta gave him the opportunity to personally ask Indonesian President Widodo to allocate more for the Philippines.”

One in six sacks of fertilizer sold in the country come from Indonesia, Recto said.

Because global prices for fertilizer have skyrocketed by as much as 300% over the past year, our “fertilizer vulnerability” could cause rice harvest to plunge, triggering the need for more rice imports, Recto said.

“Kaya yun ang pakiusap ng ating Pangulo kay Widodo, kasi alam nya kung gaano kahalaga ang fertilizer sa ating bansa ngayon,” he said.

President Marcos told reporters in Indonesia that he had talked with Widodo “about the possibility of them supplying us with fertilizer, with urea.”

This is one proof, Recto said, that state visits “should not be viewed as getting-to-know-you junkets, but are important, if not critical, missions.”

Recto said the price of a 50-kg bag of Urea had gone up to P2,642 last August 22-26 from P1,079 during the same period two years ago.

When fertilizer becomes too expensive for farmers that they begin scrimping it, that nutrient denial will reduce harvest, Recto said.

Echoing warnings of agricultural experts, Recto said dark clouds are looming over our agricultural horizon “so we must support the President’s plan on how to ensure our food supply.”

One, the country’s rice imports in January to August have reached 2.719 million metric tons (MMT) and are on track to top the 2.777 MMT imported last year, Recto said.

But if our paddy output is lower than forecast, then the traditional ease of sourcing the deficit from abroad is no longer there, Recto added.

Thailand and Vietnam, on the other hand, have recently agreed to cooperate in raising the price of rice in the global market.