Davao City — To celebrate the 30th founding anniversary of the Brunei-Indonesia-Malaysia- Philippines East ASEAN Growth Area, or BIMP-EAGA, the Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA) will conduct an information drive across different sectors to showcase the milestones and achievements of the regional cooperation initiative.
Jonathan Miral, International Relations Division head of MinDA, said the 30th-year celebration activities will be held for one year.
“We’re planning rounds of consultations with the academe; we’ll do briefings in various universities and colleges all over Mindanao to inform them on Mindanao development and development in the BIMP-EAGA,” Miral said.
He added that the activity will be a caravan that will travel across Mindanao. Also planned is a series of media blitzes to focus on BIMP-EAGA, noting, “We will be making feature stories, success stories about successful projects in BIMP-EAGA.”
The celebration will coincide with the 14th anniversary of the Mindanao Development Authority which will be held on Feb. 16 in Davao City.
He said the February 16 event will just involve the stakeholders and partners, saying, “It’s a gathering of partners among Mindanao partners like the MinDA board, local government officials, private sector representatives, and members of the diplomatic community, which will include Indonesian Ambassador to the Philippines Agus Widjojo.”
Miral said the current efforts include establishing connectivity between Mindanao and EAGA focus areas.
“Currently, we have the private sector, which is very interested in mounting the Davao-Manado flight. We are doing initial talks with our Manado or North Sulawesi counterparts to be able to launch the Manado-Davao City direct services. This is very important because in BIMP-EAGA, the most critical component for the development of international trade is connectivity,” Miral said.
He stressed that MinDA, being the Philippine coordinating office for the BIMP-EAGA, is doing its best to ensure the establishment of direct connections with the EAGA counterparts.
The only existing transport linkage between Mindanao and EAGA is the Zamboanga-Sandakan shipping service.
Accomplishments
The BIMP-EAGA was established to spur development in the remote and less developed areas of the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei. The program was formally launched on March 24, 1994, in Davao City.
It covers the entire sultanate of Brunei Darussalam, the provinces of Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Maluku, and West Papua of Indonesia, the states of Sabah and Sarawak, and the federal territory of Labuan in Malaysia, the island of Mindanao, and the province of Palawan in the Philippines.
With the strong support and commitment put in by the respective governments, the BIMP-EAGA has grown stronger economically since its founding in 1994.
In 2022, the BIMP-EAGA economy grew by 7.7 percent, and the gross domestic product (GDP) was valued at $392.1 billion, which is 18.9 percent of the combined GDP of the four countries. Total trade in goods last year increased by 34.7 percent to $198.7 billion, comprising exports valued at $141.8 billion and imports amounting to $56.9 billion. PIA DAVAO