BIMP-EAGA Friendship Games slated Dec. 8-11

MANILA, Philippines - Saranggani and General Santos City will host the seventh Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines-East Asian Growth Areas (BIMP-EAGA) Friendship Games set on Dec. 8-11 for athletes aged 21 and below.

The event was finalized in a meeting hosted by Philippine Sports Commission and chaired by PSC commissioner Chito Loyzaga, representing BIMP-EAGA Council and PSC chairman Ritchie Garcia.

Events to be played are athletics, lawn tennis, badminton, sepak takraw, swimming and table tennis.

The Games, which will be jointly hosted by the province of Saranggani, headed by Gov. Miguel Rene Dominguez, and General Santos City, with lady Mayor Darlene Antonino-Custodio, is part of BIMP-EAGA’s program of promoting relations between the member countries of East Asia growth areas through sports. More than 500 athletes and officials are expected to come for the three-day competition. A 3K, 5K and 10K friendship run was also held last week to launch the event.

The Philippines will be fielding athletes from Mindanao and Palawan while Indonesia’s participating focus areas are in Sulawesi, Kalimantan, Papua, and Gorontalo. Malaysia will have athletes from Sabah, Sarawak, and Labuan while Brunei, which hosted the last edition of the games in 2008 also confirmed its attendance.

“We had a very productive meeting and right after this council meeting, we will already start working on the details of the event, including tournament format and rules and regulations. We will have a technical working group meeting in Manila by April and a final meeting by the ministers’ group in September prior to the staging of the games in December,“ said Loyzaga.

The meeting also named Ismail Hashim, Deputy Permanent Secretary of Brunei’s Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports, as next BIMP-EAGA chairman.

To help promote the event and generate more participation from the focus areas, there are plans to hold roadshow presentations to be jointly handled by the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) and the city of General Santos.