President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. identified on Wednesday, March 22, that Palawan will be one of the locations chosen for the proposed Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) sites between the Philippines and the United States.
“There are some in the north, there are some around Palawan, and there are some further south, so these sites are in various, different locations,” Marcos Jr. said at a press briefing held in the Philippine Army headquarters.
With the presence of US troops back in Palawan, the EDCA site will give the Western powers access to military bases and will also permanently give them the authority to conduct joint training, pre-positioning of equipment, and the building of facilities such as runways, fuel storage, and military housing.
Marcos Jr. said that the new sites were thoroughly selected by US and Philippine defense officials with a primary mission to defend the country’s coastal jurisdiction.
The president approved the expansion of five additional sites in February during the visit of US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in Manila.
The other four existing EDCA sites are located in Pampanga, Cebu, Nueva Ecija, and Cagayan de Oro.
The move comes after the increasing assertiveness of Beijing in the disputed waters of the West Philippine Sea and neighboring Taiwan.
Adding the four, the country now has a total of nine (9) EDCA sites scattered around the Philippines.