US Military Bases in the Philippines; Angering China; Philippine Inflation Slowing, But Still a Prob
Here’s where US military will open bases in the Philippines in move to counter China
Brad Dress
Tue, April 4, 2023 at 4:18 AM GMT+9·
The Defense Department on Monday announced the locations of four new naval bases in the Philippines, securing three of the spots in the northeastern part of the island to better counter Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific.
Locations of new U.S. military bases in Philippines
The U.S. will create two naval bases in the Cagayan province covering Luzon, the northern portion of the Philippines archipelago that lies directly across from Taiwan in the South China Sea.
Naval Base Camilo Osias will be located near the municipality of Santa Ana, Cagayan. The other base in Caguyan will be near the Lal-lo Airport. Another military base, called Melchor Dela Cruz, will be located in Gamu, Isabela, also on the Luzon point. A fourth military base will be located at Balabac Island in the province of Palawan, located in the western part of the Philippines near the Spratly Islands, a major archipelago in the disputed South China Sea.
Tensions between the US and China are high over fears that Beijing will seek to take control of Taiwan in the coming years. China has also angered its regional neighbors with aggressive efforts to assert control over the South China Sea, which is crucial to global trade.
America’s new bases in the Philippines will provide a major boost to the U.S. presence in the region, as part of efforts to neutralize China’s influence.
Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said the expansion in the Philippines “makes our training more resilient. It is about creating regional readiness but also being able to respond to any type of disaster or any type of humanitarian disaster that could arise in the region,” she told reporters at a Monday briefing.
Beijing has reacted angrily to the expansion of the U.S. military in the Philippines. A spokesperson for China’s embassy in the Philippines said the agreement will “seriously endanger regional peace and stability and drag the Philippines into the abyss of geopolitical strife and damage its economic development. Creating economic opportunities and jobs through military cooperation is tantamount to quenching thirst with poison and gouging flesh to heal wounds,” the spokesperson said after U.S. Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland traveled to the Philippines last month.
Washington already operates five military bases in the Philippines on a rotational basis, meaning they cannot station troops there permanently. Those camps are located near Manila and in the south and east of the Philippines - but none were in the northern Luzon province, which is more strategically located. The U.S. reached an agreement for the bases with the Philippines in 2014 called the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced the four new military bases in February during a trip to Manila, the capital of the Philippines, but did not disclose the planned locations. Austin at the time called it a “big deal” and a sign of the “ironclad” partnership with the Indo-Pacific nation.
The U.S. has already pledged $82 million for improvements at the existing five bases in the Philippines and intends to invest more funds to get the new camps up and running.
https://news.yahoo.com/where-us-military-open-bases-191847448.html
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Philippines' defence shift towards US risks China's fury
Allison JACKSON
Wed, April 5, 2023 at 7:22 PM GMT+9·
Bongbong Marcos - President of the Philippines since 2022
Ferdinand Marcos - President of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986
Rodrigo Duterte - President of the Philippines from 2016 to 2022
The Philippines has pulled off a diplomatic U-turn, reviving its traditional defence ties with Washington years after spurning it in favour of Beijing. The pivot appears to indicate Manila believes a robust partnership with Washington can help it stop China from trampling on its rights in the South China Sea, analysts said.
But the rapprochement also risks putting Manila at odds with Beijing -- and sparking a backlash at home.
After former president Rodrigo Duterte trashed the Philippine-US alliance while seeking closer ties with China, his successor Ferdinand Marcos Jr has sought to strike a more balanced approach -- describing Manila as a "friend to all, an enemy to none".
But Marcos has also expanded defence ties with Washington, announcing this week the location of four additional military bases to be used by US troops. While there are no indications he will seek to cut Beijing off -- he met President Xi Jinping there in January -- analysts said the shift in policy is clear.
Manila thinks that "there's basically nothing the Philippines can do to appease China", said Greg Poling, director of the US-based Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative. "If a Philippine government wants to defend Philippine rights, the only possible recourse is deterrence and that means strengthening the alliance with the Americans," he added.
- 'Doing the right thing' -
Relations between Washington and Manila began to improve towards the end of Duterte's six-year term, as he came to understand his pivot towards Beijing had failed to put the brakes on its bid to expand its control in the South China Sea.
Beijing claims almost the entire waterway, deploying hundreds of vessels there to patrol the waters and swarm reefs. It has also ignored a 2016 international court ruling that its claims have no legal basis.
Marcos's visit to Beijing in January, where he and Xi called for the "friendly" handling of maritime disputes, did little to prevent a row erupting weeks later when Manila accused a Chinese security vessel of using a military-grade laser light against a Philippine patrol boat.
Since the start of his presidency, Marcos has received several top US officials, including Vice President Kamala Harris. They have pledged the United States' "unwavering" and "ironclad" commitment to defending the Philippines under the countries' decades-old mutual defence treaty.
"There is a sense of optimism that (the Philippine) government... is doing the right thing now," said Jay Batongbacal, director of the University of the Philippines' Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea. "Beijing may try to punish the Philippines, but the truth is the Philippines' economic relations with the US, Japan and other traditional partners still far outweigh China's."
- 'China's maritime ambitions' -
The Philippines' proximity to Taiwan, a self-governing democratic island that Beijing claims as its own, could potentially make it a key US partner in the event of a Chinese invasion.
In February, Manila and Washington struck a deal to give US forces access to more Philippine military bases under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, or EDCA. The EDCA was signed in 2014 under Duterte's predecessor, Benigno Aquino, and allowed US forces to rotate through five bases and use them to store defence equipment and supplies. But it stalled under Duterte, who threatened to cancel the accord.
Marcos has sought to accelerate its implementation and, to China's chagrin, agreed to give US forces a bigger footprint in the country, particularly in the north.
The news of the expanded base access prompted China to accuse the United States of "endangering regional peace and stability".
"I think the message we want to convey is Luzon Strait and the northern provinces are ours," said Rommel Jude Ong, a former vice commander of the Philippine Navy. "And we have the right to take measures to defend these strategic areas and insulate them from China's maritime ambitions."
- 'On the front line' -
The United States has a complex history with its former colony the Philippines, and its military presence in the archipelago remains a sensitive issue. It previously had two major military bases on the main island of Luzon, but they were closed in the early 1990s after years of protests, and not everyone supports giving US troops access to Philippine bases. "The US is dragging us into its war with China," said activist Liza Maza, 65, who campaigned against the US bases more than 30 years ago and feels like she has been "transported back in time" with the EDCA.
Manuel Mamba, governor of Cagayan, just south of Taiwan, has opposed hosting EDCA sites in his province for fear of jeopardising Chinese investment and becoming a target.
For his part, Marcos appears to have accepted the inevitability of his country's involvement in the event of a war in Taiwan. "It's very hard to imagine a scenario where the Philippines will not somehow get involved," he told Japanese news outlet Nikkei Asia in February. "We feel that we're very much on the front line."
https://news.yahoo.com/philippines-defence-shift-towards-us-102210189.html
-------------------------------------------------
Philippine Inflation Loses Speed in Relief to Central Bank
Andreo Calonzo and Ditas Lopez
Wed, April 5, 2023 at 12:27 PM GMT+9·
Philippine Inflation Loses Speed in Relief to Central Bank
(Bloomberg) -- Philippines’ overall inflation cooled to the slowest in six months in March while the month-on-month measure fell, suggesting that the central bank has scope to ease up on its most aggressive tightening cycle in two decades.
Headline consumer prices rose 7.6% year-on-year last month, slowing from a near 14-year-high of 8.6% in February and the lowest since September. The print was below all 21 estimates in a Bloomberg survey where the median was for an 8% gain. The central bank forecast was for 7.4% to 8.2%.
Compared to February, the price index last month declined 0.2%, the first contraction since September 2021. The core gauge, which strips out volatile food and fuel costs, accelerated to 8% from a year ago to a fresh 24-year high. The mixed signals from diverging trends are keeping the central bank cautious.
“The balance of risks to the inflation outlook for 2023 and 2024 also continue to tilt significantly towards the upside,” Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas said in a statement. Food supply shortages and higher transport and power costs point to the “broader-based nature” of price pressures, it said. The BSP has raised its benchmark rate by 425 basis points since May 2022, among the most aggressive tightening in the region. Governor Felipe Medalla said last week that it may be “too early” to pause the BSP’s tightening cycle at the May meeting unless prices fall month-on-month while Finance Secretary Benjamin Diokno, a member of the BSP’s policymaking monetary board, made a case for a pause.
Diokno said Wednesday that the latest inflation data “supports my view that the monetary authorities have done enough to tame inflation.” He believes the “focus now should be on the supply side of the equation, of which the national government authorities play a bigger role,” Diokno said in a mobile-phone message. The central bank also said on Wednesday that it will “continue to adjust its monetary policy stance as necessary” to prevent further broadening of price pressures, and called for an “effective implementation of non-monetary government measures” to mitigate the impact of supply-side pressures on inflation.
The peso climbed for a second day against the dollar, along with other regional currencies, as the main stock index rose.
The BSP can pause its rate hike cycle at the next meeting on May 18 given the month-on-month decline in inflation, said Michael Ricafort, chief economist at Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. in Manila. But there’s still a possibility the Philippine central bank can match the next rate decision by the Federal Reserve to maintain “comfortable interest rate differentials” to help stabilize the peso, import costs and overall inflation, he said.
The easing in food price gains and transport costs helped drive overall inflation lower last month while those of alcoholic beverages and tobacco and restaurants ticked higher, the Philippine Statistics Authority said.
While inflation is starting to slow down, it remains the “most pressing issue that the government must monitor and urgently address,” said National Economic and Development Authority Secretary Arsenio Balisacan.
--With assistance from Cecilia Yap.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/philippine-inflation-eases-7-6-010123635.html
Brad Dress
Tue, April 4, 2023 at 4:18 AM GMT+9·
The Defense Department on Monday announced the locations of four new naval bases in the Philippines, securing three of the spots in the northeastern part of the island to better counter Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific.
Locations of new U.S. military bases in Philippines
The U.S. will create two naval bases in the Cagayan province covering Luzon, the northern portion of the Philippines archipelago that lies directly across from Taiwan in the South China Sea.
Naval Base Camilo Osias will be located near the municipality of Santa Ana, Cagayan. The other base in Caguyan will be near the Lal-lo Airport. Another military base, called Melchor Dela Cruz, will be located in Gamu, Isabela, also on the Luzon point. A fourth military base will be located at Balabac Island in the province of Palawan, located in the western part of the Philippines near the Spratly Islands, a major archipelago in the disputed South China Sea.
Tensions between the US and China are high over fears that Beijing will seek to take control of Taiwan in the coming years. China has also angered its regional neighbors with aggressive efforts to assert control over the South China Sea, which is crucial to global trade.
America’s new bases in the Philippines will provide a major boost to the U.S. presence in the region, as part of efforts to neutralize China’s influence.
Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said the expansion in the Philippines “makes our training more resilient. It is about creating regional readiness but also being able to respond to any type of disaster or any type of humanitarian disaster that could arise in the region,” she told reporters at a Monday briefing.
Beijing has reacted angrily to the expansion of the U.S. military in the Philippines. A spokesperson for China’s embassy in the Philippines said the agreement will “seriously endanger regional peace and stability and drag the Philippines into the abyss of geopolitical strife and damage its economic development. Creating economic opportunities and jobs through military cooperation is tantamount to quenching thirst with poison and gouging flesh to heal wounds,” the spokesperson said after U.S. Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland traveled to the Philippines last month.
Washington already operates five military bases in the Philippines on a rotational basis, meaning they cannot station troops there permanently. Those camps are located near Manila and in the south and east of the Philippines - but none were in the northern Luzon province, which is more strategically located. The U.S. reached an agreement for the bases with the Philippines in 2014 called the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced the four new military bases in February during a trip to Manila, the capital of the Philippines, but did not disclose the planned locations. Austin at the time called it a “big deal” and a sign of the “ironclad” partnership with the Indo-Pacific nation.
The U.S. has already pledged $82 million for improvements at the existing five bases in the Philippines and intends to invest more funds to get the new camps up and running.
https://news.yahoo.com/where-us-military-open-bases-191847448.html
-------------------------------------------------------
Philippines' defence shift towards US risks China's fury
Allison JACKSON
Wed, April 5, 2023 at 7:22 PM GMT+9·
Bongbong Marcos - President of the Philippines since 2022
Ferdinand Marcos - President of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986
Rodrigo Duterte - President of the Philippines from 2016 to 2022
The Philippines has pulled off a diplomatic U-turn, reviving its traditional defence ties with Washington years after spurning it in favour of Beijing. The pivot appears to indicate Manila believes a robust partnership with Washington can help it stop China from trampling on its rights in the South China Sea, analysts said.
But the rapprochement also risks putting Manila at odds with Beijing -- and sparking a backlash at home.
After former president Rodrigo Duterte trashed the Philippine-US alliance while seeking closer ties with China, his successor Ferdinand Marcos Jr has sought to strike a more balanced approach -- describing Manila as a "friend to all, an enemy to none".
But Marcos has also expanded defence ties with Washington, announcing this week the location of four additional military bases to be used by US troops. While there are no indications he will seek to cut Beijing off -- he met President Xi Jinping there in January -- analysts said the shift in policy is clear.
Manila thinks that "there's basically nothing the Philippines can do to appease China", said Greg Poling, director of the US-based Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative. "If a Philippine government wants to defend Philippine rights, the only possible recourse is deterrence and that means strengthening the alliance with the Americans," he added.
- 'Doing the right thing' -
Relations between Washington and Manila began to improve towards the end of Duterte's six-year term, as he came to understand his pivot towards Beijing had failed to put the brakes on its bid to expand its control in the South China Sea.
Beijing claims almost the entire waterway, deploying hundreds of vessels there to patrol the waters and swarm reefs. It has also ignored a 2016 international court ruling that its claims have no legal basis.
Marcos's visit to Beijing in January, where he and Xi called for the "friendly" handling of maritime disputes, did little to prevent a row erupting weeks later when Manila accused a Chinese security vessel of using a military-grade laser light against a Philippine patrol boat.
Since the start of his presidency, Marcos has received several top US officials, including Vice President Kamala Harris. They have pledged the United States' "unwavering" and "ironclad" commitment to defending the Philippines under the countries' decades-old mutual defence treaty.
"There is a sense of optimism that (the Philippine) government... is doing the right thing now," said Jay Batongbacal, director of the University of the Philippines' Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea. "Beijing may try to punish the Philippines, but the truth is the Philippines' economic relations with the US, Japan and other traditional partners still far outweigh China's."
- 'China's maritime ambitions' -
The Philippines' proximity to Taiwan, a self-governing democratic island that Beijing claims as its own, could potentially make it a key US partner in the event of a Chinese invasion.
In February, Manila and Washington struck a deal to give US forces access to more Philippine military bases under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, or EDCA. The EDCA was signed in 2014 under Duterte's predecessor, Benigno Aquino, and allowed US forces to rotate through five bases and use them to store defence equipment and supplies. But it stalled under Duterte, who threatened to cancel the accord.
Marcos has sought to accelerate its implementation and, to China's chagrin, agreed to give US forces a bigger footprint in the country, particularly in the north.
The news of the expanded base access prompted China to accuse the United States of "endangering regional peace and stability".
"I think the message we want to convey is Luzon Strait and the northern provinces are ours," said Rommel Jude Ong, a former vice commander of the Philippine Navy. "And we have the right to take measures to defend these strategic areas and insulate them from China's maritime ambitions."
- 'On the front line' -
The United States has a complex history with its former colony the Philippines, and its military presence in the archipelago remains a sensitive issue. It previously had two major military bases on the main island of Luzon, but they were closed in the early 1990s after years of protests, and not everyone supports giving US troops access to Philippine bases. "The US is dragging us into its war with China," said activist Liza Maza, 65, who campaigned against the US bases more than 30 years ago and feels like she has been "transported back in time" with the EDCA.
Manuel Mamba, governor of Cagayan, just south of Taiwan, has opposed hosting EDCA sites in his province for fear of jeopardising Chinese investment and becoming a target.
For his part, Marcos appears to have accepted the inevitability of his country's involvement in the event of a war in Taiwan. "It's very hard to imagine a scenario where the Philippines will not somehow get involved," he told Japanese news outlet Nikkei Asia in February. "We feel that we're very much on the front line."
https://news.yahoo.com/philippines-defence-shift-towards-us-102210189.html
-------------------------------------------------
Philippine Inflation Loses Speed in Relief to Central Bank
Andreo Calonzo and Ditas Lopez
Wed, April 5, 2023 at 12:27 PM GMT+9·
Philippine Inflation Loses Speed in Relief to Central Bank
(Bloomberg) -- Philippines’ overall inflation cooled to the slowest in six months in March while the month-on-month measure fell, suggesting that the central bank has scope to ease up on its most aggressive tightening cycle in two decades.
Headline consumer prices rose 7.6% year-on-year last month, slowing from a near 14-year-high of 8.6% in February and the lowest since September. The print was below all 21 estimates in a Bloomberg survey where the median was for an 8% gain. The central bank forecast was for 7.4% to 8.2%.
Compared to February, the price index last month declined 0.2%, the first contraction since September 2021. The core gauge, which strips out volatile food and fuel costs, accelerated to 8% from a year ago to a fresh 24-year high. The mixed signals from diverging trends are keeping the central bank cautious.
“The balance of risks to the inflation outlook for 2023 and 2024 also continue to tilt significantly towards the upside,” Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas said in a statement. Food supply shortages and higher transport and power costs point to the “broader-based nature” of price pressures, it said. The BSP has raised its benchmark rate by 425 basis points since May 2022, among the most aggressive tightening in the region. Governor Felipe Medalla said last week that it may be “too early” to pause the BSP’s tightening cycle at the May meeting unless prices fall month-on-month while Finance Secretary Benjamin Diokno, a member of the BSP’s policymaking monetary board, made a case for a pause.
Diokno said Wednesday that the latest inflation data “supports my view that the monetary authorities have done enough to tame inflation.” He believes the “focus now should be on the supply side of the equation, of which the national government authorities play a bigger role,” Diokno said in a mobile-phone message. The central bank also said on Wednesday that it will “continue to adjust its monetary policy stance as necessary” to prevent further broadening of price pressures, and called for an “effective implementation of non-monetary government measures” to mitigate the impact of supply-side pressures on inflation.
The peso climbed for a second day against the dollar, along with other regional currencies, as the main stock index rose.
The BSP can pause its rate hike cycle at the next meeting on May 18 given the month-on-month decline in inflation, said Michael Ricafort, chief economist at Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. in Manila. But there’s still a possibility the Philippine central bank can match the next rate decision by the Federal Reserve to maintain “comfortable interest rate differentials” to help stabilize the peso, import costs and overall inflation, he said.
The easing in food price gains and transport costs helped drive overall inflation lower last month while those of alcoholic beverages and tobacco and restaurants ticked higher, the Philippine Statistics Authority said.
While inflation is starting to slow down, it remains the “most pressing issue that the government must monitor and urgently address,” said National Economic and Development Authority Secretary Arsenio Balisacan.
--With assistance from Cecilia Yap.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/philippine-inflation-eases-7-6-010123635.html