COTABATO CITY (November 6, 2025) — Members of big business groups are certain of more improvements soon in the investment climate in this city, the capital of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, with the continuing reduction of crimes in its barangays.

Mayor Bruce Matabalao, chairman of the multi-sector Cotabato City Peace and Order Council, stated in his State of the City Address (SOCA) on Tuesday, November 4, that there were only 21 crime incidents in different barangays under his administration in the past 12 months, compared to almost 40 the year before.

“With the cooperation of the police, the military and the local communities, we’ve been having an apparently continuing decline of crimes in the city. The five-minute response policy of the police in responding to incidents is functional in Cotabato City,” Matabalao, now in his second term as mayor of Cotabato City, said then.

BARMM’s police director, Brig. Gen. Jaysen De Guzman, and his subordinate, Col. Jibin Bongcayao, director of the Cotabato City Police Office, separately told reporters that it was for the support of the local Muslim, Christian and non-Moro indigenous Teduray communities to the city government’s peace and security thrusts that crime incidents in the 37 barangays under its jurisdiction had dramatically reduced in the past 10 months.

“There were shooting incidents in the city but most, if not all, involved victims and perpetrators who are outsiders, virtually not residents of this city,” De Guzman said.

De Guzman said they are grateful to officials of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division in nearby Camp Siongco in Barangay Awang in Datu Odin Sinsuat and the Marine Battalion Landing-6 securing the city’s 37 barangays for actively supporting Bongcayao and Matabalao’s joint law-enforcement activities.

Members of business blocs in Central Mindanao, among them the lawyer-entrepreneur Ronald Hallid Torres, chairman of the Bangsamoro Business Council, said the improving security situation in in Cotabato City augurs well with their efforts to entice more investors from other regions and abroad to put up viable businesses its 37 barangays and in nearby towns in BARMM’s Maguindanao del Norte province.

“Our contacts outside always check, first and foremost, the security situation in areas where we ask them to establish capital intensive business that can generate employment for local residents. We can tell them now that there has been a dramatic reduction of crimes in Cotabato City in recent months,” Torres, president of the multi-sector Regional Advisory Group of the BARMM police, said.

Two prominent Chinese traders, operating hardware stores in Cotabato City, said extortionists threatening to harm them if they refuse to shell out “protection money” have stopped sending them extortion letters some three months after the May elections in 2022 owing to the high visibility of military and police forces in strategic spots in the city, operating with the help of the city’s local government unit.

Four extortionists identified with the now defunct Dawlah Islamiya and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, Khalid Madsid Salik, Badruddin Monib Banuan, Aliman Bento Mandi and Alimudin Sakib Dunding, also known peddlers of shabu and marijuana, were reported by their relatives to the police to have mysteriously disappeared in Cotabato City one after another between late 2022 to early 2024 and have never been found since.

A Maranao rice trader, Saleem Saripada Mansur, who operates in three towns in Lanao del Sur and in Pagadian City in Zamboanga del Sur, said he plans to expand his grains trading business in Cotabato City and in nearby Sultan Kudarat town, the seat of the provincial government of Maguindanao del Norte, created just three years ago by 80-seat Bangsamoro parliament.

Mayor Rolando Sacdalan of Midsayap in Cotabato, also a businessman long before he was elected mayor in 2022, said he will ask members of the different business organizations in their municipality, touted as the most progressive in the province, which is under Region 12, to expand their businesses in Cotabato City and in Maguindanao del Norte.

“We are outside of Cotabato City but we have extensive and strong connections with the business communities there. Cotabato City, for us, is a trading hub for the first district of Cotabato province. Our constituents go there to buy supplies that aren’t available in our establishments,” Sacdalan said.

Photo shows that despite inclement weather, personnel of the Highway Patrol Group in the Bangsamoro region and other police units and soldiers from the 6th ID are together guarding the entry and exit routes connecting Cotabato City to Maguindanao del Norte province as part of a security scheme to prevent crimes in both areas.