Manila, Jan. 30 -- The Philippines has been boosting its defense expenditures to enable its military to foster stronger cooperation with allies, a ranking National Security Council (NSC) official said.

NSC Assistant Director General Jonathan Malaya made this remark after United States President Donald Trump called on allies, including members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), to beef up their defense spending to at least 2 percent of their gross domestic product.

"I think we have (shown) to the United States that we have been ramping up also our defense spending, we now have a very clear Comprehensive Archipelagic Defense Concept (CADC) which really requires enormous sums of money in investment into Philippine defense, m...