ZAMBOANGA City –Authorities arrested a suspect and seized over P3.9 million worth of smuggled cigarettes in an anti-smuggling operation here on Wednesday. Col. Alexander Lorenzo, city police director, said Mhadzmar Tantung was arrested by police operatives around 9 a.m. in Barangay Maasin. Tantung, 38, was arrested while in the act of unloading the

contraband in front of the house of a certain Hadji Amir in the same village, Lorenzo said. Lorenzo said Tantung yielded some 113 master cases of smuggled cigarettes worth P3.955 million. The confiscated smuggled cigarettes were turned over to the Bureau of Customs (BOC) while Tantung was placed under the custody of the police’s Regional

Special Operations Group-9 (Zamboanga Peninsula) for further investigation and filing of appropriate charges. The confiscation of smuggled cigarettes was the second for the month in this city. On May 5, joint police and BOC operatives also arrested two suspects and seized P4.4 million worth of smuggled cigarettes in the waters of coastal Recodo village. (PNA)

AVAO City – The country’s gross domestic product in the first quarter of 2023 stood at 6.4 percent, or 1.9 percent lower than the 8.4 percent reported for the same period last year, according to a report released by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) on Thursday.PSA said the recent figure was the lowest GDP after seven quarters when the country showed signs of recovering from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the second quarter of 2021.

It said the major sectors largely contributing to the first quarter growth were wholesale and retail trade, repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles at 7.0 percent, financial and insurance activities at 8.8 percent, and other services at 36.5 percent.

Inflation rate in BARMM down by 1%