BARMM lawmakers seek 'tariff-free' rice importation from Malaysia

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January 14, 2026 | 7:32pm

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Three ranking members of the Bangsamoro parliament have drafted a resolution urging President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. to exempt from tariff regulations the importation of rice from Malaysia to Tawi-Tawi, Mindanao’s remotest province in the south of the country.

The three authors of the resolution, Jet Lim, floor leader and spokesperson of the parliament, and its two deputy speakers, Nabil Tan and Jose Lorena, together 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 three of them, all lawyers, 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, 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,” Lim told reporters on Wednesday, January 14.

Lim hails from Tawi-Tawi, one of the five provinces in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, while Tan and Lorena are from Jolo and Siasi towns in Sulu, respectively, also 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.

Lim, Tan and Lorena separately told reporters that officials of the Ministry of Trade, Investments and Tourism-BARMM and experts in the central office of the Department of Trade and Industry can together study, as guidance for the President, the viability of exempting from tariff regulations the importation of rice from Malaysia to Tawi-Tawi.

“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,” 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 set-up, established in 1994, aiming to spur economic development in less developed areas in its four member-states.