President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said it would be “futile” to use the Philippines’ foreign reserves to prop up the peso against the US dollar, stressing the need to “redraw” the country’s economic plan to meet its growth target by 2028.
“I think it would even be futile to try to spend all our foreign reserves on defending the peso,” Mr. Marcos told Bloomberg.
In the Bloomberg piece, the President said: “We also recognize that there’s only so much you can do because the dollar is going to move the way it does.”
President Marcos made the remarks as the Philippine peso earlier weakened to the P60 level against the US dollar.
On Monday, the peso closed at P60.30 to the dollar, its weakest level on record.
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported that the country’s gross international reserves rose to $112.5 billion as of end-January 2026.
“The latest GIR level provides a robust external liquidity buffer,” the BSP earlier said. It will be “tough” to achieve 8 percent economic growth by 2028, Mr. Marcos said, referring to the final year of his term in Malacañang.
“With the war in the Middle East, those have to be redrawn—everything has to be redrawn,” the President said.
“The impact of the war is really on middle-income and lower-middle-income countries,” he added.
The Philippines is among the most affected countries in Southeast Asia, as it imports about 90 percent of its petroleum requirements, while the domestic oil market remains deregulated.
Fuel prices have posted double-digit increases in recent weeks, with pump prices hovering near P100 per liter, putting pressure on motorists.
Mr. Marcos earlier certified as urgent a measure allowing the executive to suspend or reduce excise taxes on oil to help ease the impact of rising global prices, but the bill has yet to be signed a week after its passage in Congress.
The peso, however, rebounded on Tuesday, closing at P59.95, after US President Donald Trump said progress had been made in talks with Iran aimed at ending the conflict in the Middle East.
