Officials see rise of Polloc Port as `Bangsamoro shipping hub’

PARANG, Maguindanao - Officials are rushing to refurbish the Polloc Port in Parang, Maguindanao in anticipation of expansion in shipping activities after the replacement of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao with a new Bangsamoro political entity.The Polloc Port southwest of Maguindanao is the ARMM’s largest seaport, a major export-import transshipment point for consumer goods, farm products and petroleum supply from abroad.Records obtained from the office of port manager Mimbalawag Mangutara, Jr. indicated that despite the security problems that rocked isolated areas in Central Mindanao in 2013 and 2014, the facility generated P24.4 million worth of revenues during the period.The port earned P11 million in 2014, about 18 percent higher than its P9.4 million income in 2013.Officials have just facilitated the construction of the port’s perimeter fence encircling a 119-hectare territory and are now rehabilitating its transit shed, power facility and water system.The port’s mooring bollards and rubber fenders along its berthing sites had been replaced with new ones too.Mangutara said all of their port rehabilitation activities are parallel with the socio-economic thrusts of incumbent ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman.Hataman is a staunch supporter of President Benigno Aquino III’s diplomatic dealings with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.Mangutara said Hataman, just like the rank-and-file personnel of the Polloc Port administration, also sees an imminent increase in shipping activities once the Bangsamoro entity is established based on a government-MILF peace deal. There are very clear signs now showing that the initial dividends of the peace process are indeed helping improve the local business climate,” Mangutara said.A local cornstarch producer, the Lamsan Trading, has lately been exporting periodically from Indonesia 30,000 metric tons of corn via the Polloc Port to meet market demands in the Middle East and Europe.The firm’s cornstarch processing plant is located near Camp Darapanan, the MILF’s main headquarters, northeast of Maguindanao’s Sultan Kudarat town.Past ARMM governors had failed to efficiently manage the port, causing the suspension for about six years now of services by big passenger vessels sailing the Maguindanao- Zamboanga-Iloilo-Manila route.The office of Hataman had spent huge amount of infrastructure funds for the improvement of all ports in the region, including wharves under the Regional Ports Management Authority (RPMA).The Polloc Port is operating under a separate management, but is still under the ministerial control of Hataman, ARMM’s chief executive since 2012.Mangutara and his most senior staff, Eshan Mabang, are both certain of Polloc Port’s becoming a vital link to traders abroad and local business blocs once the Bangsamoro entity is established.The enabling measure for the ARMM’s replacement with such entity, the draft Bangsamoro Basic Law, is pending in Congress. These foreseeable developments are what we are preparing for,” Mangutara said.Mangutara said capitalists from countries actively supporting the government-MILF peace efforts, among them member-states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, will surely put up business projects in the proposed Bangsamoro core area once the draft BBL is approved by the two chambers of Congress.