In an interview with Saudi newspaper Okaz, Dr. Jose Antonio "Ka Pep" Goitia argues the Philippine-Saudi relationship should expand from labor deployment into investment, food security, and renewable energy under Vision 2030.
A Relationship Built on Labor, and Its Limits
For decades, the economic relationship between the Philippines and Saudi Arabia has followed a familiar pattern. Hundreds of thousands of Filipino workers travel to the Kingdom, filling roles across healthcare, engineering, education, construction, and hospitality. They send remittances home, and those remittances have long been one of the most significant and stable contributors to the Philippine economy. It is a relationship that has generated real value for both countries across generations.
It is also, in the view of Dr. Jose Antonio “Ka Pep” Goitia, a relationship with an artificial ceiling. In a July 2026 interview with the Saudi newspaper Okaz, Ka Pep argued that the partnership between the two countries is ready to move into a different register entirely: one built on Filipino businesses, institutions, and entrepreneurs operating in Saudi Arabia alongside the Filipino workforce already there, rather than labor deployment standing in as the whole of the relationship.
“There’s a version of this partnership where the Philippines only ever sends workers,” Ka Pep told Okaz. “I think we can do more than that through our businesses, our institutions, our entrepreneurs, alongside the people who are already there.”
Trust as Infrastructure
Ka Pep’s argument rests on a distinction between what built the relationship and what the relationship can now be used for. Employment, he argues, was the bridge. But the trust generated across decades of Filipino workers living, working, and building community ties in Saudi Arabia is the real foundation, and that foundation can now support a different kind of structure.
This is a notable rhetorical move for someone speaking to a Saudi audience. Rather than asking for a new relationship, Ka Pep is arguing that the two countries already possess the hardest-won asset in any international partnership, which is genuine trust built through generations of lived, human connection. What remains, in his framing, is simply the work of converting that trust into new categories of cooperation.
“We already have the trust,” he said. “What we need now is to turn that trust into actual projects, things both countries can point to.”
Where Ka Pep Sees the Opportunity
Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 program has diversified the Kingdom’s economy well beyond oil, driving major investment in renewable energy, tourism, healthcare, logistics, digital services, and food security. Ka Pep’s pitch identifies these same sectors as the areas where Filipino participation could expand meaningfully beyond the current labor-centered model.
He points specifically to Filipino entrepreneurs, educational institutions, service providers, agribusinesses, and small and medium enterprises as the constituencies best positioned to take part in this expanded relationship. Food security, renewable energy, and advanced technology, he argues, represent some of the strongest opportunities for long-term collaboration between the two countries.
This is a meaningfully different framing than the traditional government-to-government diplomatic relationship, which Ka Pep does not dismiss but argues is no longer sufficient on its own. Stronger private sector engagement, in his view, is what will be required to translate decades of diplomatic goodwill into concrete, sustainable partnerships.
A Broader Pattern Among Labor-Sending Nations
Ka Pep’s pitch reflects a broader question that many countries with large overseas labor populations are beginning to ask: what does it mean to graduate from being a labor-exporting economy to being an investment partner in the same markets where your citizens have long worked? The Philippines is not alone in facing this question, and the answer is rarely simple. Labor relationships are politically and economically entrenched, and shifting them requires sustained private sector investment, institutional relationship-building, and a level of trust between governments and business communities that takes years to establish.
What makes Ka Pep’s position notable is that he is not speaking as a government official making a policy proposal. He is speaking as a businessman with an active stake in the outcome, chairing a holding company that is itself attempting to build precisely the kind of investment relationship he is describing. His credibility on this question rests less on abstraction and more on the fact that he is attempting to do the thing he is arguing for.
What Success Would Look Like
Ka Pep has been careful not to frame this as a rejection of the labor relationship that has defined Philippine-Saudi ties for decades. The generations of Filipino workers who have built lives, careers, and communities in the Kingdom remain, in his own words, the greatest strength of the relationship. His argument is additive rather than substitutive: the goal is not fewer Filipino workers in Saudi Arabia, but a broader range of ways Filipinos and Filipino institutions can participate in the Kingdom’s economic future.
Whether this vision translates into measurable outcomes will depend on the private sector relationships that follow from moments like the Okaz interview and the business meetings that accompanied it. But the argument itself represents a meaningful reframing of a relationship that has too often been discussed only in the language of remittances and deployment numbers. Ka Pep’s case is that the Philippines has more to offer Saudi Arabia, and itself, than that framing has allowed.