BARMM lawmakers want tariff-free rice importation from Malaysia

COTABATO CITY — Three ranking members of the Bangsamoro parliament have drafted a resolution urging President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. to exempt the importation of rice from Malaysia to Tawi-Tawi from tariff regulations.

The three authors of the resolution, John Anthony L. Lim, floor leader and spokesperson of the parliament, and its two deputy speakers, Nabil A. Tan and Jose I. Lorena, stated that Tawi-Tawi is so near the commercial hubs in Malaysia compared to those in Zamboanga City, the reason why stores in almost all of its 11 island municipalities sell merchandise, including rice, supplied by Malaysian merchants.

The authors are optimistic that their fellow regional lawmakers will approve the resolution they intend to forward to the Office of the President and the central offices of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), the Bureau of Customs and the Bureau of Internal Revenue.

“We are hoping that President Marcos will listen to us, grant us our wish, via a parliament resolution from a regional lawmaking body,” Mr. Lim told reporters on Wednesday.

Mr. Lim hails from Tawi-Tawi, one of the five provinces in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), while Mr. Tan and Mr. Lorena are from Jolo and Siasi towns in Sulu in Region 9, respectively, both far from the Zamboanga peninsula.

They explained in their resolution that prices of rice procured by traders in Tawi-Tawi from suppliers in Zamboanga City are high owing to the cost of transport from there to the island towns in the province.

They asserted that prices of rice supplied by traders in Malaysia are cheap, affordable to marginalized residents of Tawi-Tawi relying mainly on deep sea fishing and propagation of marketable carrageenan seaweeds as sources of income.

Mr. Lim, Mr. Tan and Mr. Lorena separately told reporters that officials of the Ministry of Trade, Investments and Tourism-BARMM and experts in the DTI study the viability of the proposed exemption. “The national government can look deeper into the plight of Tawi-Tawi residents who are in an ordeal that can be resolved if our wish gets approved by the President,” Mr. Lim said.

Their draft resolution also pointed out that there seems no problem with the proposal, subject to approval by President Marcos, since Philippines is member of the Brunei Darussalam-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines East ASEAN Growth Area economic cooperation setup, established in 1994, aiming to spur economic development in less developed areas in its four member-states. — John Felix M. Unson