Influx of more investors in Lamitan City, Basilan towns expected

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Stakeholders and officials of the Bangsamoro region are anticipating an influx in the coming months of investors to a city now bouncing back from underdevelopment caused by decades of secessionist conflicts.

Ronald Hallid Dimacisil Torres, chairman of the Bangsamoro Business Council, told reporters Saturday they are keen on helping residents of Lamitan City improve the investment potentials of its 45 barangays, now connected to the capitol here of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao via a newly-established shipping route that traders and political leaders had wished for.

Lamitan City is in Basilan, a component-province of BARMM and is near Isabela City, one of the two cities in the island province that also has 11 towns.

Torres, and Omar Pasigan, chairman of the Bangsamoro Regional Board of Investments, separately told reporters Saturday the improvements in Lamitan City’s investment climate were ushered in by the joint projects in the area of Mayor Roderick Roderick Furigay and two BARMM officials, Naguib Sinarimbo and Eduard Uy Guerra, regional local government and public works ministers, respectively.

Torres, a lawyer-entrepreneur, said the newly-established sea route connecting the Polloc Port in nearby Parang town in Maguindanao del Norte and the Lamitan City harbor that the Furigay administration and the office of BARMM Transportation and Communications Minister Paisalin Pangandaman Tago had set up is a “magnet” that can attract investors in Basilan.

“It will make investors from outside realize it is safe now for capital-intensive agricultural and fishing ventures in Lamitan City, in Isabela City and in municipalities around,” Torres said.

He said traders in BARMM are confident of the capabilities and efficiency of the Lamitan City local government unit, covering 45 barangays, for having been awarded with five Seal of Good Local Governance by the central office of the Department of the Interior and Local Government in the past six years.

“It is, thus, easy for us to entice counterparts outside to invest there,” Torres said.

Pasigan said the joint peace and security programs of the Lamitan City LGU and the Ministry of the Interior and Local Government-BARMM is complementing the recovery of Lamitan City from the adverse effects of domestic security issues that hounded the area from the 1970s until the 1990s.

Lt. Gen. Roy Galido, commander of the Army’s Western Mindanao Command, said more than 300 members of the Abu Sayyaf in Basilan had surrendered in batches since 2013 via a local reconciliation program of Basilan Gov. Jim Salliman, the Army’s 103rd Brigade and the Basilan Provincial Police Office.   

“That project of the provincial government of Basilan is essential to efforts of packaging Lamitan City and other areas in Basilan as the new investment destination in BARMM,” Galido said.