00:00The law has been passed to strengthen the local production of weapons and equipment for the defense of the Philippines.
00:10Jonathan Andal has the story.
00:16For a long time, in other countries, the Philippines has been buying military equipment.
00:22But now, because of the new law, the Self-Reliant Defense Posture Program Revitalization Act,
00:28signed earlier by President Bongbong Marcos, the Philippines will become a self-reliant defense industry.
00:34It's a logical move forward for a country that finds itself at the fulcrum of geopolitical shifts and volatilities.
00:43Under the law, the government will favor the purchase of military equipment from the local supplier.
00:49The manufacturers of weapons and other defense equipment will be given incentives
00:53for them to build factories here in the Philippines.
00:57To the private sector, it is an invitation to build an enduring defense industry.
01:02To our esteemed research institutions, let your innovation shape our future and propel us towards self-reliance.
01:11To our armed forces, understand this.
01:14We pledge that the Filipino soldier will be bolstered by the ingenuity and the expertise of the Filipino innovator.
01:23The military is pleased. They've been waiting for this law for a long time.
01:27We've been making our own guns, our own bullets, our own radios.
01:34We even manufactured our own rockets, what we call bongbong rockets.
01:39But it's gone. It's gone.
01:41We are given hope that our defense industry will be good
01:46and therefore, we will be able to modernize our armed forces more effectively and faster.
01:56The law prohibits the sale of Philippine-made weapons to the private sector.
02:02It is only used for military purposes.
02:04This guarantees that the weapons, the equipment, and technologies that we build
02:09will never be turned against the very people that they were designed to protect.
02:15For GMA Integrated News, I'm Jonathan Andal.
02:1824 Hours.
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