The Philippines will start building a marine base next month on its northernmost uninhabited island, near Taiwan, to boost defense arrangements and discourage poachers from its fishing grounds, a military spokesman said on Thursday. The two nations’ coast guard ships have confronted each other in the rich fishing waters where their exclusive economic zones overlap, and the neighbors nearly cut ties in 2013, after a Philippine vessel fired on a Taiwanese fishing boat, killing a fisherman. “We need to have a presence there,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Isagani Nato, spokesman of the Northern Luzon Command of the Philippines, adding that building work on Mavulis island would start next month.

Laude, J. (2018, March 23). Phl eyeing marine base on island near Taiwan. The Philippine Star, p. 10.