The Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) said it expects more investments from South Korea, following the signing of the Philippines-South Korea Free Trade Agreement (FTA).
“With South Korea’s status as the 10th largest GDP [gross domestic product] in the world and second most technologically advanced nation [next to Germany], the Philippines stands to benefit from this FTA which opens more opportunities for investors, increased market access, FDI inflows, higher value-added production and export diversification combined with deeper economic cooperation and innovation partnership,” said PEZA director-general Tereso Panga.
PEZA said it is seeing an influx of FDIs coming from South Korea in 2023. The investment promotion agency said investments from Korea amounted to P1.4 billion as of to date, breaching the P1.09 billion recorded in the same period in 2022.
The amount was also 28.4 percent higher than the full-year investment of South Korea into the Philippines last year.
PEZA said that as of June 2023, it had 246 registered projects from South Korea with exports of $736.454 million and 40,688 jobs.
Panga said PEZA was on track to achieving its targets for the year. The agency already achieved 72 percent of its P154.77-billion goal for 2023.
“We are confident that we will exceed our conservative 10-percent growth forecast this year given the increasing number of ecozone applications filed with our office as well as big ticket projects and long-term investments that we expect to register this last quarter of 2023,” he said.
PEZA approved in the second week of September 27 new and expansion projects which are expected to add P14.044-billion investments, $174.806 million in exports and an additional 4,614 jobs.
Among the 27 projects, 11 are export-oriented enterprises, five are facilities, five IT projects, 2 logistics, 2 domestic projects and 2 ecozone developments. These projects are in Makati City, Pasay City, Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Cebu, Davao del Norte and Occidental Mindoro.