BARMM builds socio-economic connectivity with other regions

COTABATO CITY — Local executives and major business organizations in the Bangsamoro region welcomed the appointment of a regional coordinator tasked with strengthening peace and development linkages between the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao with cities and provinces outside the region.

Bangsamoro Chief Minister Abdulraof Macacua last week designated Mohammad Abqary Alon, deputy executive director of the region’s Unified Project Management Office, as  BARMM-Mindanao Development coordinator. 

The BARMM-Mindanao Development initiative is the first ever in the now seven-year Bangsamoro region. The BARMM government, a product of two decades of peace overtures between the national government and southern Moro communities, replaced in 2019 the then 27-year and now defunct Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Radio reports on Sunday, November 15, stated that Lanao del Sur Gov. Mamintal Adiong Jr., Vice Gov. Hadjiman Salliman and his constituent-mayor, Roderick Furigay of Lamitan City, and two governors in Region 12, Reynaldo Tamayo Jr. in South Cotabato and his counterpart in Cotabato province, Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza, had separately assured the public of their support for Alon's being BARMM-Mindanao Development coordinator.

“We in the business sector are ready to help the Bangsamoro government secure a durable socio-economic connectivity between the autonomous region and other Southern Mindanao regions via the BARMM-Mindanao Development efforts," lawyer-entrepreneur Ronald Hallid Torres, chairman of the Bangsamoro Business Council (BBC) which has chapters in the BARMM’s five provinces and three cities, said.

The BBC is a staunch supporter of the efforts of the Bangsamoro Regional Board of Investments in enticing investors from outside of BARMM and from abroad to put up viable capital-intensive businesses in the autonomous region, whose territory encompasses the provinces of Maguindanao del Norte, Maguindanao del Sur, Lanao del Sur Basilan and Tawi-Tawi and the cities of Lamitan, Marawi and Cotabato.

Mendoza, also the chairperson of the influential multi-sector Regional Development Council 12, covering four provinces and four cities in Region 12, said she would compel all of her constituent mayors to also support the autonomous region's BARMM-Mindanao Development facet.

Three lawyers, Ishak Mastura, Naguib Sinarimbo and Faizal Padate, newly appointed Bangsamoro agriculture, education and trade and investment ministers, respectively, had also separately acknowledged as positive their regional government’s focus on fostering development linkages between the autonomous region with the communities outside via its BARMM-Mindanao Development thrusts.

“Such pro-development initiatives augurs well with our mission of boosting commerce and trade in the autonomous region,” Padate said.

Alon, as coordinator of the BARMM-Mindanao Development activities, was tasked by Macacua to coordinate extensively with the Mindanao Development Authority, with national line agencies, local government units and with various business and peace-advocacy organizations in fostering strong ties with peace and socio-economic stakeholders in the autonomous region with communities outside.