President Ferdinand Marcos Jr clarified that the Maharlika Investment Fund was not put “on hold”, saying he would be promoting it to the Middle Eastern countries and the rest of the world during the summit.

In a speech before he left for Saudi Arabia to attend the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Marcos said: '' I was a bit alarmed by the news reports early this morning that I read in the newspapers that we have put the Maharlika Fund on hold. Quite the contrary.”

“ The organization of the Maharlika Fund proceeds a pace. And what I have done though is that we have found more improvements that we can make specifically to the organizational structure of the Maharlika Fund,” he said.

On Wednesday, the Palace released a copy of Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin's memorandum suspending the implementation of the implementing rules and regulations.

Marcos added that the government is committed to pushing forward with the implementation of the MIF.

“We are still committed to having it operational before the end of the year,” Marcos said. “So we should not misinterpret what we have done as somehow a judgment on the rightness or wrongness of the Maharlika Fund.”

“ On the contrary, we are just finding ways to make it as close to perfect and ideal as possible. And that was what we have done. This has been in consultation not only with our economic managers but also with the people, the personalities who will actually be involved in the fund. And that’s why their inputs had been very important and that is why we are going to now utilize them to make it a better organization,” he said. Jaspearl Tan/DMS