The Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) approved P111.2 billion of committed investments from January to September 7, which is 180.6 percent higher than the P39.71 billion investments generated during the same period in 2022.
“We are on track in not just realizing our target for the year, which is a 10 percent increase in investments and where we expect also the Philippines to achieve a 6 to 7 percent GDP growth rate,” said PEZA director general Tereso Panga.
He said the PEZA target is all aligned with the targets of the other key industries such as the electronics and semiconductor sector, IT-business process management, and the real estate sector.
PEZA reported that investments in August 2023 reached P14 billion, by 65 percent from P8.48 billion in the same month in 2022.
The investment promotion agency (IPA) noted that almost all of its growth indicators are positive when it comes to investments, number of projects, and additional jobs, except for export sales which dropped 2.12 percent to $63.99 billion from $65.37 billion, one year since the new administration took over.
However, fresh data will show that exports from July to September will reflect positive growth, Panga said.
In the first half of 2023 exports the country’s total exports amounted to $34.94 billion. Of this figure, PEZA exports accounted by 59.23 percent of total exports during the period or about $20.69 billion, which was higher the the 56 percent share of PEZA exports to total in 2022.
Among the IPAs, PEZA also had the highest share in foreign direct investments of 60.5 percent, contributing P35.75 billion out of the 59.9 billion in the second quarter of 2023.
Japan led the list of top countries with the highest investments, accounting to 27.334 percent, followed by local investors with 23.19 percent, US firms with 14.82 percent, Dutch with 11.68 percent and British companies with 6.84 percent.
Semiconductor and electronics remain the top sector when it comes to investments followed by IT services and fabricated metal products.
“This year we see a strong potential in metals as well as transport because of the entry of investments into the EV (electric vehicle) sector,” Panga said.
Ecozone investments have benefited host local government units (LGUs) through taxes paid by the locators.
In 2022, PEZA contributed 16.58 percent to the county’s gross domestic product (GDP), 56 percent to Philippines’ exports of commodities and goods and 51 percent to service exports in 2022.
To date, there are 422 registered economic zones – 288 are IT parks and centers, are manufacturing ecotones, 24 are agro-industrial parks, 17 are tourism ecotones and 3 ecozones are dedicated medical tourism ecotones.
