Alert up in Mindanao for BIMP-EAGA confab

DAVAO CITY – Authorities have been put on full alert as the week-long series of vital meetings of the top officials and business leaders of the Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines-East ASEAN Growth Area (BIMP-EAGA) geo-economic grouping started here yesterday.

“We have elevated the level from heightened to full alert after the Glorietta explosion,” Southern Mindanao police regional director Chief Superintendent Andres Caro II said.

Caro said additional security measures have been put in place following last Friday’s blast that ripped through the Glorietta 2 Mall in Makati City that claimed the lives of 11 people and wounded over 110 others.

He said certain adjustments were made to further tighten the security for the more than 300 foreign delegates and key ministers of the participating countries who are expected to converge here for the series of important BIMP-EAGA meetings that started yesterday with the BIMP-EAGA Investors Conference.

BIMP-EAGA, which has a combined market of over 50 million consumers, encompasses the sub-national economies of Brunei Darussalam, East Indonesia, East Malaysia with Mindanao and Palawan for the Philippines. The geo-economic grouping was formally created in 1994 in an effort to boost the development of the said areas, considered to be the backwaters of each of the four participating nations’ economy.

The two-day BIMP-EAGA Investors Conference shall also be followed by the BIMP-EAGA local government officials meeting until tomorrow which shall simultaneously be held with the annual BIMP-EAGA Senior Officials and Ministers Meeting (SOMM) that ends on Sunday.

“We have intensified security in the airports, seaports, malls as well as other tourist areas that the delegates would visit aside from the venue of their meetings,” said Caro.

According to the Mindanao Economic Development Council (Medco), no one among those who confirmed participation to the series of BIMP-EAGA meetings has backed out following the Glorietta blast.