Philippine envoy to the United States Jose Manuel Romualdez expressed confidence that America's security assistance to the country will remain but emphasized the need to "be ready" following last Friday's confrontation between President Donald Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Romualdez believed that the US president "already has the policy that he has put forth that it has to end the US financial support that it has given to Ukraine."

In a forum of the Foreign Correspodents Association of the Philippines (FOCAP) in Manila on Monday, Romualdez said other countries, including the Philippines, will have "to be ready for that type of situation".

"It may be some other president in the future, but at the end of the day, each country now has to be ready to be able to beef up its own defense, beef up its own economic security," he said.

"That's always been what we have been doing, even during the time of President (Rodrigo) Duterte, that we would like to put up our own resources to be able to to modernize our armed forces and to be able to bring our economy to where we want it to be, so that we can be economic to be prosperous and have economic security to do that. That is the way the world should go," he added.

However, Romualdez expressed confidence that the US under the new administration will continue its military aid to the Philippines including its foreign military financing, freedom of navigation and overflight deployment and operations over the South China Sea and the nine Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) sites in the country.

"Realistically, I think all of that will remain. I am confident that it will and as you can see, that we were already given a waiver for the exemption of the 336 million (dollars) that was supposed to be part of our FMF, or the Foreign Military Financing assistance to the Philippines," he said.

"We're hopeful that the succeeding monies that will be made available to us in the next couple of years," the ambassador added.

Romualdez also noted that US Senator Bill Hagerty has "indicated that he would like to see an additional 2.5 billion (dollars) in the next four to five years for the modernization of the Philippine Armed Forces."

"We're pursuing that and I think that will continue, because it's not only it's good for the United States, but it's good for us as well, and the other like minded countries see that as a piece since we are right in the forefront of this push to make sure that the Indo-Pacific region remains free and clear," he added.

Romualdez said the intention of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to have a meeting with Trump was indicated during his meeting at the White House together with Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr.

"Definitely the White House is well aware of what we would like to do, and they've indicated that we put together some of the things that I think would be important for us, for the discussion to take place," he said.

"We're waiting for the White House to give us an indication on when this meeting will be, obviously, with what's happening right now, we probably may be able to expect some idea on having this meeting sometime around the spring of this year," he added. Robina Asido/DMS