COTABATO CITY, Philippines – Foreign institutions helping the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) governance should give more focus on economy-enhancing activities based on agro-industry potentials to achieve more life-changing impact on the ARMM’s majority marginalized populace.

ARMM officer-in-charge (OIC)-Governor Mujiv Hataman pointed this out in a media forum here Wednesday when asked about his administration’s policy towards ongoing multi-billion-peso interventions in the region of foreign agencies of the United Nations (UN), the European Union (EU), the United States (US) and Australia, and the financial institutions of the World Bank (WB), and the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

Unlike his predecessor ARMM acting Regional Governor Ansaruddin Adiong, who conducted a brainstorming forum with foreign donor-agencies several days upon assuming office on December 14, 2009, Hataman said he would sit down with officials of the international community upon the creation of his pool of planners to be tasked to design a comprehensive package on economic-building mechanisms.

Hataman said he would organize “anytime next week” a local network of planners he wanted to craft “big impact” programs and projects based on the ARMM’s great potentials in agro-industry.

He said that after the formulation of the economy-boosting plan, he would then bring it to a meeting within his first 100 days in office with Philippine-based officials of foreign donor-agencies as a reference in his desired paradigm shift in the receipt of assistance from the international community.

At the Tapatan sa ARMM media forum here Wednesday, Hataman acknowledged the trailblazing intervention of foreign institutions in the autonomous region’s concerns on bureaucracy enhancement by JICA, education and health by UN agencies, and the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID), and peace and security by the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

The World Bank has expanded last year its services in the ARMM with additional $30 million financing on small-scale community-based infrastructure projects, JICA extended its assistance period to four more years in capability-building and education infrastructures, and the AusAID granted last year a P3.9 billion aid for the region’s education and health concerns in six years, records showed.

But in his analysis, Hataman said that while the current mode of foreign interventions bring about some betterment in the region, the empowerment of the ARMM’s majority poor sector in agriculture remains a dream.

He expressed hope that the foreign donor-agencies would take cognizance of the untapped potentials of agro-industry in the region as manifested in the vast track of fertile lands and aquatic resources dismally tapped.

Hataman particularly underscored the need for intervention in the receding ecology and water level of Lake Lanao, a major source of hydro-electricity and cultural heritage in Mindanao, and the vast tracks of alienable and disposable lands in Maguindanao, so with the under-tapped marine and aquatic resources of the island provinces of Basilan, Sulu, and Tawi-Tawi.