02/12/2025
Peaceful BARMM town cited for good real property administration
Merchants welcomed the citation received over the weekend by the municipal government of the most peaceful town in Maguindanao del Norte for its efficiency in real property administration, saying it could further boost the area’s investment climate.
Barangay Pura, the municipal center of the Datu Blah Sinsuat municipality in the southwest coast of Maguindanao del Norte, is only about 40 kilometers from Cotabato City, where the regional capitol of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao is located.
The municipality is also touted as the most peaceful town in Maguindanao del Norte, one of the five provinces in BARMM.
Regional officials told reporters on Monday, December 1, that the local government unit of Datu Blah Sinsuat received a special citation from the Bureau of Local Government Finance-BARMM last week, in recognition of its extensive revenue-generating measures and efficient real property tax administration throughout the municipality.
Datu Blah Sinsuat, created only 12 years ago by the Regional Assembly of the now-defunct Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, has 13 beachfront barangays that originally belonged to the much older municipality of Upi, also in Maguindanao del Norte.
“We in the Bangsamoro region are happy with the citation received by the Datu Blah Sinsuat municipality from the Bureau of Local Government Finance in the Bangsamoro region. That is something we can use to attract investors from provinces around and from abroad to try putting up viable businesses in the area,” entrepreneur-lawyer Ronald Hallid Torres, chairman of the Bangsamoro Business Council, said.
Datu Blah Sinsuat, home to mixed Muslim Maguindanaon, Christian, and non-Moro ethnic Teduray communities, has had only four documented crime incidents since 2021, all of which were immediately resolved jointly by its mayor, Raida Tomawis-Sinsuat, her constituent barangay leaders, and the municipal police force.
The BLGF-BARMM commended the Datu Blah Sinsuat LGU for raising the market value of fully documented real properties in the municipality to P68.7 billion, based on complete on-field surveys and the local government’s taxation efforts.
“Most importantly, on top of that, there is remarkable peace and calm in the area,” Torres, president of the multi-sector Regional Advisory Group of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, said.
The BLGF-BARMM’s special citation for the LGU of Datu Blah Sinsuat was received by its municipal treasurer, the lawyer Abdul Wadud Salem and two others from the municipal assessor’s office, Rowena Ortuoste and Al-Raimen Adam, during a symbolic rite over the weekend in Cagayan de Oro City. (December 2, 2025)