Multi-billion Sulu airport project mulled

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Merchants are pleased with the joint drafting soon by provincial officials in Sulu and experts in the Bangsamoro government of a feasibility plan for a multi-billion Sulu airport to boost the investment potentials of the province.

Sulu Gov. Hadji Abdusakur Tan Sr. and two representatives of the Bangsamoro government, the lawyer Ranibai Dilangalen and Engineer Amil Abubakar, signed on Thursday, August 29, at the Sulu Area Coordinating Center in Bangkal, Patikul a Memorandum of Understanding, or MOU, binding their offices to jointly plan the setting up of a large new airport in the island province.

Dilangalen is a senior official of the Bangsamoro Airport Authority under the region's Ministry of Transportation and Communications while Abubakar is deputy director of the Bangsamoro Planning and Development Authority.

The lawyer-entrepreneur Ronald Hallid Torres, chairman of the Bangsamoro Business Council, told reporters on Sunday that they will support the drafting of the Sulu airport development plan, for them a big help in sustaining the now flourishing investment climate in the province.

Torres said Sulu, now markedly peaceful and progressive, needs such a facility to attract more investors from regions around and from abroad into putting up viable businesses in the province.

“That Sulu airport project study is something so good, an effort we in the Bangsamoro Business Council, whose members are engaged in businesses in the six provinces and three cities in the autonomous region, shall support,” Torres said.

Bangsamoro Transportation and Communications Minister Paisalin Pangandaman Tago told reporters on Sunday that they aim to establish a new airport, based on international standards, at the border of Talipao and Maimbung towns in the province, long cleared from presence of the Abu Sayyaf via joint peacebuilding programs of local executives, the local communities, the police and the military.

The regional government of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao shall bankroll the project, according to Tago.

“We are thankful to the provincial officials of Sulu for hosting the symbolic signing of the Memorandum of Understanding related to the project and for its utmost reciprocation with our efforts to have it done for the good of the province,” Tago said.

The old small airport in Jolo, capital town of Sulu, is being managed together by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications and the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines.

The symbolic crafting of the MOU for the study on the setting up of a new airport in Sulu last Thursday was done in the presence of Bangsamoro Parliament Member Hadji Nabil A. Tan, Sulu Vice Gov. Abdusakur Tan, Jr., the 19 mayors in the province, provincial planning and development officials and representatives of different sectors and officials of police and military units in the province.