The Philippines "squandered" its opportunity to put the equivalent of $29 billion worth of Japanese reparations to good use.

Albay 2nd district Rep. Joey Salceda aired this regret on Friday, March 10 as he commented on the case of Filipino comfort women during the Japanese occupation of the country in World War II (WWII).

"Just to put historical context to this issue (comfort women), Japan paid an equivalent of 8 percent of GDP (gross domestic product) in 1956 to the Philippines in cash and goods as reparations, and another 3.5 percent of GDP in concessional loans," he said.

"This, in today's terms, would be equivalent to USD 29 billion in reparations -- which significantly exceeds the country's USD 22 billion infrastructure budget this year," noted Salceda, an economist.

"With that amount, we could have rebuilt much of our war-damaged economic sectors and provided support to victims of war when it was still timely to do so. We were the largest recipient of Japanese reparations," he said.

"We clearly squandered our opportunity -- and also failed to fully acknowledge the wrongs committed by the Japanese in the Philippines," Salceda went on to say.

Around 1,000 women were enslaved as comfort women during WWII, he said. He called this a "historical injustice".

"It will not cost the government too much to rectify a historic wrong by providing the necessary support to these survivors and their descendants. Still, I wouldn’t call it reparations — after all, the sin of commission still lies with abusers. But it should be a genuine attempt to rectify a historic wrong," he said.

"I do not think it will hurt our relations with Japan, for that country has since changed its relationship with us to one of sincere cooperation — as our largest trade partner, source of foreign investment, source of foreign aid, and one of our closest allies,"Salceda added.