Planned BARMM operation of new airline welcomed

COTABATO CITY — An apparent vote of confidence was how sectors enticing capitalists to venture into viable projects in central Mindanao interpreted the plan of a new airline to operate in the region.

Representatives of the Leading Edge Air Services Corporation (LEASCOR) were at the Cotabato City Airport in nearby Barangay Awang in Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao del Norte on Wednesday for a study tour related to the firm’s plan to serve the air routes interconnecting the Bangsamoro provinces.

Led by Abelardo Rodrigo, the visiting LEASCOR team was briefed on the technical and security intricacies of the Cotabato City Airport by Carmencita Salik, an official of the Bangsamoro Airport Authority, operating under the supervision of the lawyer-accountant Paisalin Tago, who is transportation and communications minister of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

“We are giving that move by LEASCOR two thumbs, a tacit sign of support from us. That will improve the region’s business atmosphere more,” Mohammad Pasigan, chairman of the Bangsamoro Regional Board Investments (RBOI), said Thursday.

The LEASCOR, which is a virtual stranger to the Bangsamoro region, is a cooperative airline company established in 2016 and has since been operating in several provinces in the Visayas and in Mindanao.

Major. Gen. Alex Rillera, commander of the Army’s 6^th Infantry Division based in Camp Siongco, less than 200 meters away from the Cotabato City Airport, said that they have enough personnel to support the police’s aviation security unit guarding the facility watch over the safety of LEASCO’s aircrafts and employees if its plan pushes through.

The runway of the Cotabato City Airport has just been rehabilitated by a private engineering firm the national government had contracted and the facility was, in fact, closed from June to September for the repair works.

“We are hoping that the LEASCOR will operate in BARMM soon. That would be a strong 'vote of confidence' for the investment climate of BARMM and that will prove to investors from outside that they are safe inside the autonomous region,” the entrepreneur-lawyer, Ronald Hallid Torres, president of the Bangsamoro Business Council, said.

Torres, speaking on behalf of all members of their council in Maguindanao del Norte, Maguindanao del Sur, Lanao del Sur, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi, said that they are as ready to host a familiarization dialogue with LEASCOR officials and even help introduce the firm, as confidence-building effort, to residents of BARMM.

Records from three Chinese business blocs in the autonomous region, the RBOI, the BBC under Torres and the provincial offices of the Bangsamoro trade and investment ministry indicate that the six provinces in the autonomous region and its three component-cities, Cotabato, Lamitan and Marawi, had posted P7.2 billion worth of investments since Malacanang and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front together established the BARMM in 2019.

The replacement of the 29-year Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao with BARMM through a 2019 plebiscite in areas comprising its core territory now is a result of 22 years of peace talks between the government and the MILF.