Fil-Malaysian oil company seen to boost Mindanao's economy

MAGUINDANAO, Philippines - The local business community is certain of improvements in Central Mindanao’s business climate with the entry of a Filipino-Malaysian petroleum firm that started supplying the area with fuel from Sabah last month.

The operation of the Iron Blaze Petroleum, Inc. is backed with permits from the Department of Trade and Industry, the Bureau of Customs, the Department of Energy, and the Regional Board of Investments in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (RBOI-ARMM).

The firm brought in its initial supply of premium gasoline to Polloc Port from Sabah, Malaysia last December 2013 using a 260,000-liter oil tanker.

Ishak Mastura, chairman of the RBOI-ARMM, said Iron Blaze also plans to put up a modern 9 million-liter petroleum depot in Parang, Maguindanao.

Key members of the city’s business community were elated with the coming in of the Filipino-Malaysian petroleum firm into Maguindanao and Cotabato City, where prices of gasoline and diesel are P2 to P4 higher per liter compared to those sold in surrounding provinces and cities in Region 12.

Local traders blame the absence of petroleum depots in the coastal areas in Cotabato City and Maguindanao for the high prices of fuel sold by retailing outlets that gets their supply from either of the very far cities of Gen. Santos, Digos and Davao.

The Iron Blaze has been enjoying special trading privileges through the ARMM’s Special Economic Zone, which is connected to international trading routes by the Polloc Port in the west of Parang town.

The Iron Blaze facilitated its second shipment of petroleum products from Sabah to the Polloc Port last week.

The volume of the first and second shipments were, however, not enough to immediately lower the selling prices of fuel in Central Mindanao, according to planners of the RBOI-ARMM.

Mastura, who had studied international petroleum trading laws in the United Kingdom in 2004, said it is important to increase the volume of shipments of petroleum products in the region using big oil tankers for prices of fuel in the area to go down.

He said the RBOI and the executive department of the ARMM made sure that the Iron Blaze’s depot project in Maguindanao are covered by corresponding clearances from the government.

The office of ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman, which exercises ministerial authority over RBOI, and the Regional Ports Management Authority, has been closely been monitoring the activities of the Iron Blaze.

Hataman said he will personally initiate representations to the national government if the Iron Blaze will need anything that is beyond the authority of the ARMM to provide.

Pete Marquez, a senior official of different business organizations in Central Mindanao, said the coming in of the Iron Blaze created a “good picture” of the investment climate in Maguindanao and Cotabato City, at a time when the government’s Southern Mindanao peace process is gaining headway.

Marquez said the ARMM government must do everything to assist and protect the Filipino-Malaysian firm for other prospective investors to realize it is now safe to put up viable ventures in Maguindanao.