BARMM generates P3.3-B more investments in Q4 of 2023

COTABATO CITY — The Bangsamoro region generated P3.3 billion worth of investments in the last three months of 2023, generating employment for 1,927 workers.

Records obtained on Tuesday from the Bangsamoro Board of Investments (BBOI) and the Ministry of Trade, Investments and Tourism (MTIT) indicated that besides the capital inputs by investors from across the region and from outside, entrepreneurs and merchants earned P16.9 million from last year’s 30-day Ramadhan Trade Fair at the capitol of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao in this city.

Mohammad Pasigan, chairman of the BBOI, on Tuesday said that there were incidents in the BARMM last year that hit the news, but did not at all dampen the region’s investment climate.

Of the P3.3 billion investments BARMM had in the past three months, P3.1 billion was contributed by investors through the efforts of the BBOI.

Up to P3.4 million more worth of investments were generated through the programs of the MTIT, according to the Bangsamoro Information Office.

“Businesses in BARMM are improving. Our focus now is to convince investors to put up viable agricultural projects in the region’s six provinces,” the lawyer-entrepreneur Ronald Hallid Torres, chairman of the Bangsamoro Business Council, said.

The Bangsamoro region covers the provinces of Maguindanao del Sur, Maguindanao del Norte, Lanao del Sur, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi and the cities of Lamitan, Marawi and Cotabato.

The MTIT, in a statement, said that 558,795 domestic and 1,394 foreign tourists visited BARMM during the last quarter of 2023.

BARMM’s Polloc Free Port in Parang town in Maguindanao del Norte had collected P20.6 million worth of shipping revenues in 2023, almost P4 million higher than its P16.8 million collections in 2022.