COTABATO CITY, June 26(PIA)—In a move to boost business confidence in the region, the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) regional government welcome the establishment of the trilateral maritime patrol (TMP) arrangement between Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.
Regional Board of Investments (RBOI) chair Ishak Mastura acknowledges the significance of the arrangement in boosting the cross-border trading in the ARMM’s island provinces.
“This (TMP) is an important development for the ARMM because people from our island provinces have been doing cross-border trading since time immemorial and even before there were borders to cross,” Mastura said.
ARMM Regional Governor Mujiv Hataman considers the arrangement a security assurance for traders in the ARMM who are engage in business in Malaysia and Indonesia enhancing trade and commerce including the small-scale enterprises in the region.
Traders in ARMM, Hataman said, have been doing barter trading for centuries, stressing tighter security measures in the Sulu Sea that would help the regional government’s effort to revive barter trading to curb smuggling activities in Southern Philippines.
The TMP was agreed upon by Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines during the last quarter of 2016 following the noted cases of piracy and attack on international vessels and kidnapping of sailors by the Abu Sayyaf. To date, five (5) Vietnamese sailors remain in Abu Sayyaf captivity.
“The incidents of piracy and lawlessness in the Sulu Sea did not prevent traditional cross-border trade but international transshipment was affected by it. By conducting trilateral border patrols we believe that transshipment wherein bigger volumes of cargoes are safely moved among the three countries, can make a comeback,” Mastura said.
Under the TMP, the defense departments of the three countries agreed to step-up security measures in the roughly one million square-kilometer tri-border area in the Sulu-Sulawesi Seas, among the major trade routes in Southeast Asia.
The area is also the fishing ground of commercial fishery operators specifically those into tuna and sardines operations. Indonesian suppliers of coal for power plants in Mindanao use this route notably in the transshipment of major goods between Sabah in Malaysia and the island provinces of Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi.
Brig. Gen. Custodio Parcon, Joint Task Force Tawi-Tawi commander who also overseas the operations of the Maritime Command Center in Bongao, Tawi-Tawi under the Joint Task Force IndoMalPhil, said the initiative is also aimed to combat the present threat of jihadist groups which use this route in setting up cells in the three neighboring countries. (PBChangco-PIA with report from BPI-ARMM)
