Sectors in BARMM back planned suspension of terminal fees

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May 11, 2026 | 7:08pm

COTABATO CITY — Influential groups of merchants and cause-oriented organizations have expressed support for efforts by Bangsamoro regional lawmakers to temporarily suspend the collection of airport and seaport terminal fees from passengers across the autonomous region.

Five members of the Bangsamoro Parliament, Jet Lim, Jose Lorena, and Nabil Tan, who are all lawyers, along with Nuredha Misuari and Haber Asarul, have filed a resolution for deliberation by the region’s lawmaking body recommending the suspension of the collection of seaport and airport terminal fees in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM). The fees range from P10 for seaports and P100 to P200 for airports.

Lim, the main proponent of the resolution, earlier told reporters that if approved by Bangsamoro Chief Minister Abdulrauf Macacua, the proposal would ease the burden on poor seafarers and air passengers who have been affected by rising fuel prices amid the conflict in the Middle East.

He added that the measure would not significantly affect the overall revenue of the BARMM government, noting that the terminal fees collected by the Bangsamoro Ports Management Authority and the Bangsamoro Airport Authority are relatively small and primarily implemented as a government policy.

"It shall only be a temporary suspension of collection of seaport and airport terminal fees anyway," Lim said.

The lawyer-entrepreneur Ronald Hallid Dimacisil Torres, chairman of the Bangsamoro Business Council, which has members in BARMM’s five provinces and three cities, told reporters on Monday, May 11, that they support the proposal. The proposal, filed via resolution by Lim and four other regional lawmakers, is now pending before the 80-member Bangsamoro Parliament.

“We in the business sector in the Bangsamoro region, our employees and our field workers are now burdened seriously by the high cost of petroleum products as a consequence of the tension now besetting the Middle East,” Torres said.

Torres is also the president of the multi-sector regional advisory group of the Police Regional Office–Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, whose members include representatives from human rights, pro-labor, peace-advocacy groups, and BARMM’s business sector. The group has also expressed support for the resolution filed by Lim and four other regional lawmakers, which has been submitted to the Parliament for approval.

BARMM Labor and Employment Minister Muslimin Sema said on Monday that he and officials of various agencies and divisions under his office are hoping that the Chief Minister of the Bangsamoro region and members of the Parliament will approve the proposal filed by Lim and his four colleagues last week.

“Officials and employees of our offices in the Bangsamoro provinces and cities have been seeing the bad effects now on the labor sector of the high cost of petroleum products in the autonomous region,” Sema said.

Sema, chairman of the central committee of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), said the group’s Bangsamoro Party, one of the four largest among 16 partisan blocs in the autonomous region, backs the recommendation for a temporary suspension of the BARMM government’s collection of seaport and airport terminal fees.

The Ministry of Labor and Employment–BARMM, which Sema heads, also separately urged the regional parliament last month to allocate P1.4 billion in relief support for seven months for private sector workers in the autonomous region, to help ease the impact of the ongoing fuel crisis.

The proposed Formal Workers Cash Subsidy, drafted by officials of the MoLE–BARMM, has been endorsed to the office of Chief Minister Abdulrauf Macacua and to members of the 80-seat regional parliament in Cotabato City for deliberation and approval.