President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. on Thursday, May 11, called on the Brunei Darussalam-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines-East ASEAN Growth Area (BIMP-EAGA) to enhance their partnership because the development of the region would positively impact the future.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. (Photo from the Presidential Communications Office)
The Chief Executive noted the huge growth potential of the region.
“BIMP-EAGA provides our common sub-region, which has long been impaired by strife, with better access to viable economic opportunities,” Marcos said in his intervention at the 15th BIMP-EAGA Summit.
“So, let us continue this impetus for growth in BIMP-EAGA, and thereby position our very own sub-region as a well-connected, economically thriving, multi-country trade, investment, and tourism destination. There lies our future,” he added.
The President expressed the Philippines’ support for the increased focus of the BIMP-EAGA Vision 2025 on broad strategies to align sub-regional pandemic recovery and transformation efforts with the ASEAN Comprehensive Recovery Framework, particularly in the areas of food security, creative industries and E-commerce, tourism recovery, and green recovery.
He also noted how the pandemic and the conflict in Ukraine demonstrated the need to maintain the physical connectivity that maximizes the potentials of the region’s extensive and comprehensive logistics chain.
“Our collective effort towards rebuilding the air and sea linkages disrupted by geopolitical challenges and the pandemic, still remains the key towards our full economic recovery,” he said.
But physical connectivity would be complemented by making tourism an utmost priority during the pandemic recovery period.
“So, let us work together with our National Tourism Organizations and our private sector counterparts to breathe life into the Joint BIMP-EAGA and IMT-GT Tourism Recovery Communications Plan 2022-2024. Let us spread the tidings that a visit to the BIMP-EAGA sub-region is a safe, stress-free return to nature,” Marcos enjoined.
Increase in tourism would not only strengthen connectivity among nations, the President pointed out, because it would also reinvigorate the sub-region’s Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs).
Describing MSMEs as “the backbone of the economy,” Marcos stressed how these are fundamental to achieving sustainable economic growth and narrowing development gap, and instrumental in wealth and employment creation, rising standards of living, and poverty reduction.
He also called for support for “nano businesses”—dry cleaners, corner shop owners, single retail marketers, repairers, painters, among others.
“Though they constitute a large portion of all economies, viable, and play an important role across the country, they remain unrecognized … aiding them will contribute to our overall economic growth and will narrow those development gaps,” the President said.