THE Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) said it has surpassed its 2022 target, recording P140.7 billion worth of investments from January to December.
“We are proud to report that PEZA has approved a total of 198 projects from January to December 2022 which are expected to bring in P140.7 billion worth of investments. This is a 103.03-percent increase compared to the same period last year,” PEZA Officer-in-Charge Tereso O. Panga said on Monday.
Meanwhile, in terms of employment and exports, the investment promotion agency unveiled in a statement on Tuesday that it was able to create 1,850,842 direct jobs and generate $54.239 billion in exports as of October 2022.
PEZA said the 13 new and expansion projects which were approved last December 15 by the PEZA Board, presided over by Trade Secretary Alfredo E. Pascual, are expected to bring in P83.65 billion in investments.
This amount for December alone is larger than the P57 billion recorded investments from the 181 projects approved in January to November 2022.
Of the 13 newly approved projects, three are by ecozone developers while 10 are by ecozone locators. Of the 10 ecozone locators’ projects, there are four export manufacturing enterprises and six IT service enterprises.
PEZA said it recently approved four additional projects but these are subject to further evaluation.
The 13 new and expansion projects, PEZA noted, will be located in Taguig City, Pangasinan, Cavite, Batangas, Laguna, Cebu and Negros Occidental.
The investment promotion agency said these investments came from Japan, Singapore, Netherlands, United Kingdom, USA, India, South Korea, the Republic of China, the British Virgin Islands, and Taiwan.
While investment approvals under PEZA declined by 29.85 percent in the first semester of 2022 compared to the same period in 2021, Panga said, “we never lost hope that we will recover.” The PEZA OIC attributed the increase in investments to the “big-ticket investments that were prequalified by the Board for endorsement to the [Fiscal Incentives Review Board] FIRB.”
He added: “At the rate we are going now, PEZA has achieved this year the level of annual investments approved in 2018. That means that the country’s ecozones and high-performance investments are back to the pre-pandemic, even surpassing the 2018 level.”
Based on the data trend presented by PEZA from 2018 to 2022, the investment approvals for 2022 have exceeded its four-year annual performance with P140.2 billion recorded in 2018.
PEZA explained the downward trend in investment approvals from 2018 to 2021, citing the pandemic, the war between Russia and Ukraine, and the ensuing global supply chain disruptions as reasons.
Moving forward, Panga said PEZA is banking on the increasing gross domestic product (GDP) of the country, which he sees attracting more investments.
“With the increasing GDP growth rate of the Philippines, we can expect more [foreign direct investments] FDIs to register with PEZA. What is important is we keep building and sustaining the confidence of investors and the country’s competitiveness in investment promotions and facilitations,” Panga said.