COTABATO CITY, Philippines  - The Regional Board of Investments (RBOI) of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) announced Wednesday that regional investments have surged in the first quarter by 1,650 percent as a result of the freshly approved entry of the EA Trilink Corporation’s P1.5 billion telecommunications project in the region.

The project seeks to set up and franchise 2,000 Internet–ready mobile tele–kiosk with at least three employees each so it promises to generate at 6,000 jobs, RBOI-ARMM chairman Ishak Mastura said.

Last year, he said, the RBOI had registered only P91 million investments in a bio-mass power plant in Maguindanao and in a construction project in Tawi-Tawi.

Mastura described the feat as a “remarkable turnaround of the investment climate” in ARMM considering that “last year investors’ confidence in the region was negatively affected by the Maguindanao massacre of November 2009 and their uncertainty was magnified by the delayed resumption of the government peace talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).” (Ali G. Macabalang)