Tawi-Tawi emerging as BARMM’s 'new investment frontier'

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December 29, 2025 | 6:21pm

COTABATO CITY —One province in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) is increasingly being highlighted by merchants and regional officials as the region’s "new investment frontier." Known for being the most peaceful among BARMM’s five provinces, it also benefits from its strategic proximity to Malaysia and Indonesia, making it an attractive destination for commerce and trade.”

The island province of Tawi-Tawi in the country’s far south, comprised of scattered island towns, is the farthest from Cotabato City, the capital of BARMM, which also covers Maguindanao del Sur, Maguindanao del Norte, Lanao del Sur and Basilan and the cities of Lamitan and Marawi.

Lawyer-entrepreneur Ronald Hallid Torres, chairman of the Bangsamoro Business Council or BBC, which has members across BARMM, told reporters on Sunday, December 28, that they are supporting the efforts of Tawi-Tawi Gov. Yshmael Sali and a member of the Bangsamoro parliament, lawyer Jet Lim, in boosting the investment climate in their province via essential interventions that both of them and different BARMM agencies are together pushing forward.

Reports obtained from high officials of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro-Autonomous Region in Camp SK Pendatun in Parang, Maguindanao del Norte and the military's Western Mindanao Command in Zamboanga City on Friday, December 26, indicate that many of the 11 towns in Tawi-Tawi did not have even just a single heinous crime incident since the replacement in 2019 of the then 27-year Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao with a more empowered BARMM, a product of 22 years of peace talks between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Regional lawmaker Lim, spokesperson of the 80-seat BARMM regional parliament, said many merchants in Tawi-Tawi have connections with business circles in Malaysia and other parts of Mindanao. He added that these networks could be persuaded to invest in capital-intensive trading ventures, as well as agriculture and fishery projects in the province.

 “We don’t have problem creating a good image of Tawi-Tawi as an investment frontier in the Bangsamoro region because it is peaceful there and there are no deep-seated hostilities among politicians there belonging to different political blocs," Torres, also figurehead of the multi-sector Regional Advisory Group of the Bangsamoro police command, said.

 Two city mayors in BARMM, Bruce Matabalao and Roderick Furigay of Cotabato City and Lamitan, respectively, both booming in commerce and trade, separately said on Sunday that they will encourage their constituent-traders to study the viability of expanding their businesses in Tawi-Tawi.

Tawi-Tawi is popular for the pristine white sand beaches in its capital, Bongao, and island towns around, according to Lim, who, besides being a member and spokesperson of the Bangsamoro parliament, is also a ranking official of the inter-agency and multi-sector Bangsamoro Economic Development Council, whose chairperson is BARMM Chief Minister Abdulrauf Macacua.

Tawi-Tawi’s island town closest to Sabah, Malaysia, is Taganak, also known as "Turtle Island," for its beaches that serve as nesting sites for large sea turtles. Merchants in the town sell goods sourced from traders in nearby Malaysia, which is more accessible to them than the trading hubs in the provincial capital or the Zamboanga Peninsula.

The tranquil island town of Mapun in Tawi-Tawi now has hundreds of hectares of coconut plantations, guarded tightly by local executives and barangay leaders, according to officials in BARMM’s trade and agriculture ministries and the Bangsamoro Board of Investments, which is the regional government’s conduit to local and foreign investors.

 The BOI’s chairperson, Mohammad Pasigan, and Macacua separately said Tawi-Tawi generated more than P8 billion worth of new investments in the past five years.

“We in the Bangsamoro Board of Investments are cooperating extensively with the efforts of the members of the Bangsamoro parliament and provincial officials in Tawi-Tawi in accelerating the socio-economic growth of the province,” Pasigan said.

During an October meeting, Department of Transportation Secretary Giovanni Lopez committed to regional lawmaker Lim that the airstrip in Mapun would be upgraded and a community seaport constructed in Barangay Jakarta, Languyan, one of Tawi-Tawi’s 11 towns, sometime in 2026.

“These two projects that the Department of transportation are to implement will boost the investment climate in our province,” Lim said.