Many heads of state and a lot of other people are "very eager" to meet President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. during his trip to New York to participate in this year's United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), Philippine Ambassador to the US Jose Manuel "Babe" Romualdez said Friday.
Romualdez' pronouncement came after the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) confirmed the President's attendance in the largest gathering of world leaders, which will start on Sep. 20.
Among state leaders who wanted to have bilateral meetings with Marcos Jr. are Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Malaysian Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob and one of the presidents of the European Union, the envoy said.
There are also two others as well as leaders from Latin America and Africa who are just awaiting confirmation, he added.
"So he'll probably have at least six to eight meetings with heads of state," Romualdez said in an interview with CNN Philippines, noting "there are a lot of people who are actually very eager to meet him" and "many head of states have implicated that they would like to have bilateral meeting with the President."
"Like I said, there are a lot of moving parts in these meetings with the United Nations. There are over a hundred who are wanting to meet with each other," he added.
On the other hand, Marcos Jr.’s meeting with US President Joe Biden is still being worked out.
Romualdez maintained both sides wanted to meet each other after Biden became the first head of state to invite the President after he won the elections. The US leader also even sent a personal letter, through one of his friends, Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff, extending his invitation.
"So those are indications that there is eagerness from President Biden to meet our new president. And of course, our President Marcos is also eager to meet President Biden," he said.
On the other, the President is also set to meet with the executives of some of the biggest American firms as part of his roundtable meeting with the CEOs.
Romualdez said Marcos Jr. will meet with executives of Cargill, a food, agricultural, financial and industrial American conglomerate that also has operations in the Philippines, as well as with Boeing, which seeks to source agricultural waste from the country to provide "clean energy" for their aircrafts.
The President is likewise expected to meet with NuScale, another company pushing for clean energy, he said.
"There's also an infrastructure forum that I think is being set up by the DTI (Department of Trade and Industry) where we will have several companies interested in the infrastructure program of the Philippines," he added.
Marcos Jr.'s meetings seek to promote his administration's vision to boost the agriculture sector and to shift to clean energy, the envoy said.
Romualdez said Marcos will also attend other forums, including a Philippine economic briefing as well as an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Business Council meeting, which is a "very important institution in Washington D.C."
" hosting a forum for heads of state. More particularly, they're very interested in President Marcos because he just got newly elected," he said.
"We have so many who want to attend that. In fact, I think we're having difficulty in trying to accommodate as many as people and many companies," he added.
The envoy wished that Marcos could stay longer in the US to accommodate not only businessmen but also Filipino communities spread across the US and even as far as Guam.