Marcos, Polish envoy discuss food security, defense cooperation

President-elect Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. on Friday discussed food security and enhanced defense cooperation with Poland's Chargé d’Affaires Jaroslaw Szczepankiewicz.

“Mostly, we arrived at the questions of food security in the Philippines and the contribution of Poland to assure food security, especially in the meat sector,” Szczepankiewicz said in an interview after his courtesy call on Marcos.

Szczepankiewicz also said that they discussed the possible extension of cooperation in the defense sector between the two countries, noting that Poland manufactures Black Hawk helicopters for the Philippine Air Force.

Marcos also took note of the importance of digitalization in the Philippines during the discussion, with Szczepankiewicz mentioning that Poland was the first digitalized administration in the European Union.

“Opportunities for the development of cultural and scientific cooperation and mainly in terms of the Polish scholarship for Filipino students. So we hope that some decision will be taken soon and very quickly and the President knew about some problems," Szczepankiewicz said.

"Some of them were new to him, but he promised to clarify some issues and he expressed the feeling that we could do more. I would say that there are a lot of untapped opportunities," he said, adding that Marcos made "very important commitments" during the discussion.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict was also brought up during the meeting in light of its economic impact. 

“I informed him that around or more than 70 Filipinos crossed the Polish border from Ukraine [since] the beginning of the conflict and that we are working hard to assure the export of Ukrainian wheat that it's creating a big problem in terms of the increase of the prices of bread and some commodities,” he said.

Apart from Szczepankiewicz, Marcos also met with Ambassador of Bangladesh Borhan Uddin.

The ambassadors of Nigeria, New Zealand, and Australia were also scheduled to pay courtesy call on Marcos on Friday. —VBL, GMA News