Speech
Ferdinand Marcos Jr.  ·  2026-09-12 00:00

Secretary's Note: Director General Dr. Gay Jane Perez

comprehensive, no, comprehensive discussion on possible cooperation between the Philippines and India on space. At the coming if you recall last year next state visit see president and elevate cooperation nothing with India into a strategic partnership. So I mean we build on that and the discussion earlier India is row in your counterpart in Philippines space agency nothing with this in India. They presented no their capabilities. They have their one of the countries in my advanced space capabilities and not not to win Makita that they're very open to collaborate with us during the meeting the president articulated very well why why we want to do this. So he identified the problem and issue that we are facing the Philippines at the related climate change president articulated how important this is to us and there are two words that he used no can you know in describing the the issue and one is immediacy and accuracy of our forecast. So this is something very urgent something that we need immediately and we also need to get it right and that is where space technology can help. The president is very interested to have Philippine India partnership in terms of satellite design that will address or that will help contribute to something uh uh uh weather monitoring not just weather but hazards in in general no. And as a consequence of the changing climate so we're looking at having business matching with Indian space industry with the Philippine space industry which right now is very nascent or not going to be so bad long. So it with this partnership we can accelerate you not important to say president at the young problem at the gusto nothing is solved. India has a satellite up there it's called nice are it can measure how water one one of the many things that it can measure is how water is retained in soil or by different types of soil. So in the past few days long or weeks may cases rainfall induced landslide. And flash floods because landslide not accumulate young lupa. At the young my impound water eventually the ragasa the bar. Very practical use we want to demonstrate how we we can apply nice are so that is something that we nothing immediately next is using young ground station at then so we nothing my data from nice are direct using our ground station. And third, we will be starting the discussion with India on a possible joint mission. Something that is similar to NISAR but a Philippine India satellite mission with a complimentary capability. So we are very excited about that. Um, so you can imagine that in within the next two years. So we are very grateful to the president know because solid your support this is something that we're building capability. We're not building band-aid solutions. We are building something that would be beneficial to future generations. So far you feel so good in the beginning of the year. We're laying the foundation of a space program that will serve the future generation.