DAVAO CITY, 10 August — President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo yesterday said Mindanao is now ready to welcome fresh investments following the peace accord signed by the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
The president arrived in the southern city yesterday after a three-day state visit to Malaysia where she met with Prime Minister Mahathir Muhammad. She arrived in Davao with her Cabinet officials.
“As a daughter of Mindanao I want to see this place grow and reach progress,” she said before a group of investors and the media held at the Marco Polo Hotel this afternoon.
With the peace pact signed with separatist rebels, President Arroyo said, the road to peace and progress will be cemented.
Speaking before the Mindanao Forum on Investment Promotion, she said she is confident to achieve the government goals in creating jobs in the agricultural sector as she vowed in her first state of the nation address two weeks ago.
A prospective job-generating sector is the palm oil industry, the president said, of which jobs could be in the works. She is hopeful to revive the palm oil industry apparently impressed with Malaysia’s own experience during her recent visit.
President Arroyo also announced t the improvement of bilateral ties between Malaysia and the Philippines with Mindanao as the target for investments.
To lure and convince Malaysia, investors could fly directly to Davao from Kuala Lumpur, she said. There will be regular flights between the two cities, she said. “It will be short and cost effective to foreign investors,” the president said.
She also vowed to resume her weekly visits to Mindanao, which she started soon after sweeping to power in January.
President Arroyo said she is also confident for the success of the aborted but being revived East Asia Growth Area (EAGA) of which the Philippines is a member along with Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia.
She said she wants Mindanao to be the gateway to the Association of East Asian Nations (Asean).
Finance Secretary Jose Isidro Camacho said the president puts Mindanao in the priority list because of its potential as an island rich in natural resources. He said it is imperative for the government to develop Mindanao to finally tap the southern island’s various industries and provide more opportunities to its people.
Consulate in Sabah
Arroyo also announced that Manila will set up a de facto embassy in the Malaysian state of Sabah to protect hundreds of thousands of Filipinos there.
The philippines has a historical claim to oil- and timber-rich Sabah but both governments had put the issue on the backburner in recent years.
She said the government would set up “an economic and cultural office” in Sabah, similar to one Manila has in Taiwan which serves as a de facto embassy in the absence of diplomatic relations between Manila and Taipei.She noted that there were nearly half a million Filipinos working in Sabah, many of whom are undocumented and vulnerable to harassment by immigration officials.
She said many such Filipinos sent back by Malaysia to the southern Philippines “end up becoming boat people for a few days” since Filipino authorities also do not have records showing they are residents.
“It is a very big irritant, not only an irritant in our relationship (with Malaysia), but a great cause of suffering for those individuals,” she said. “It is time to stop the suffering of our brothers in Sabah. It is time to put an office in Sabah to protect them.”
The Sabah issue has for years been an irritant in bilateral ties with Kuala Lumpur. Arroyo’s father, the late president Diosdado Macapagal, revived a claim on the state in 1963. Manila lays claim to Sabah on the grounds that it was ruled by a southern Philippine sultanate in the 15th century.
But attempts by previous Philippine administrations to drop the claim have been shot down by the Philippine Senate.
