Marcos: Chinese vessels just tail, no longer block Filipino ships
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Tuesday said fishing talks between the Philippines and China have progressed, despite recent reports of Filipino fishermen being blocked by Chinese vessels off Pag-asa Island, and the latest incident in which a Chinese military ship tailed a government patrol boat.
“These things do not come very quickly… But we are slowly making progress because the key to that is the improved communication between the Philippine government and the Chinese government,” Marcos said on the sidelines of the Department of Agriculture’s 125th founding anniversary celebration in Diliman, Quezon City.
Addressing the latest incident, Mr. Marcos said unlike before, the Chinese vessel just tailed the BRP Francisco Dagohoy.
“’The latest report was the ship was just followed, it’s not blocked like before, so there’s a little progress there,” the President said.
The Philippines has filed hundreds of protests with Beijing over China’s aggressive and bullying activities in the West Philippine Sea.
In 2022 alone, 193 protest notes were served on Beijing, including 65 by the Marcos administration.
But Mr. Marcos said the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) has even projected a bigger haul for Filipino fishermen due to the improved situation in the area.
“That is because we are continuing to talk to the Chinese government, President Xi [Jinping], in every way,” Marcos said.
The President also said that when he met with President Xi last January, he focused on the issue of fisheries instead of the territorial dispute involving the West Philippine Sea.
“I said let’s prioritize fisheries because it affects innocent people,” Marcos said.
President Marcos also has directed the Department of Agriculture (DA) and the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) to come up with comprehensive studies on the rehabilitation and maintenance of the country’s marine habitats to address illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing (IUUF).
As the concurrent DA secretary, Mr. Marcos has emphasized in a meeting on June 13 the need for the Philippines to comply with its international commitments, particularly to the European Union on preventing IUUF. He also highlighted the importance of addressing the concerns of fishery stakeholders by using a science-based approach in managing marine resources.
With this, the DA and the BFAR were directed to work closely with the Office of the Executive Secretary to ensure the enforcement of an administrative order requiring all commercial fishing vessels to install monitoring systems.
Earlier, the government said it would launch its “Layag WPS” project or the Livelihood Activities to Enhance Fisheries Yield and Economic Gains (Layag) from the West Philippine Sea aimed at protecting Filipino fishermen as well as state floating assets amid continuing incursions of Chinese vessels in the area.
Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources spokesman Nazario Briguera said the government has about P80 million to give comprehensive support to fishermen in the West Philippine Sea.
“BFAR will launch our Layag WPS project in the next few days. We are planning to package this as a special project for this year,” he said in a press briefing over the weekend.
Briguera’s announcement came days after a Chinese Navy ship tailed a BFAR multi-mission vessel, BRP Francisco Dagohoy, in an area six nautical miles southwest of Pag-asa Island, which is well within the country’s 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone in the West Philippine Sea.
The rare encounter with China’s “gray” or military ship after BRP Dagohoy carried P4.95 million worth of fishing and post-harvest equipment to fisher groups in Pag-Asa Island.
Briguera, in an earlier interview, said fisheries production in the West Philippine Sea has dropped by 7 percent between 2021 and 2022.
Based on Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) data, production was down to 275,872 metric tons of fish in 2022, from 295,332 MT in the previous year.
“When we say total production in the West Philippine Sea, we are not just talking about Pag-asa Island. We are referring to the total production of provinces fronting the West Philippine Sea,” he said.
There are at least 373,733 fishers that depend on the West Philippine Sea, BFAR data showed.
While the drop in fish production was attributed primarily to the frequent visit of typhoons in the country, Briguera admitted that removing “hindering factors” such as the presence of Chinese vessels could help boost output.
“[If there is no Chinese activity], is it possible to increase fish production in the WPS if there are no issues like this? I would say yes. If we remove these hindering factors, we can better take advantage of the resources in the West Philippine Sea,” he said during a press briefing,
Citing data from the UP Marine Science Institute, Briguera said “the value of fisheries resources in WPS could be billions of pesos.”
China claims almost the entire South China Sea, and has rejected an arbitral ruling in favor of the Philippines that invalidated its massive maritime claim.