The Department of Finance said Friday big-ticket investments approved under the Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises (CREATE) Act reached P1.1 trillion as of April 2024.
These investments also generating over 142,294 new jobs for Filipinos, it said in a Facebook post.
The DOF said the Fiscal Incentives Review Board (FIRB), the agency created by the law, approved 56 applications, representing a total investment capital of P873.9 billion, which is expected to generate 38,304 jobs.
Meanwhile, the various investment promotion agencies (IPAs) approved 1,102 applications, with a combined committed investment capital of P263.7 billion. These are anticipated to create an additional 103,990 jobs.
Major IPAs include the Philippine Economic Zone Authority, Board of Investments, Clark Development Corp., Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA), Authority of the Freeport Area of Bataan (AFAB), Aurora Economic Zone and Freeport Authority (APECO) and Cagayan Economic Zone Authority (CEZA).
The DOF earlier said that with the Philippines poised toward economic transformation, the CREATE law continues to play a crucial role in positioning the country as a global investment hub.
“As CREATE establishes a performance-based, time-bound, targeted and transparent tax incentives regime in the country, incentivized projects or activities under the key structural tax reform are to achieve performance metrics to ensure that the grant of fiscal support to Registered Business Enterprises (RBEs) leads to higher economic returns,” the DOF said.
The CREATE law took effect in April 2021 and reduced the corporate income tax from 30 to 25 percent. For domestic companies with a taxable income of P5 million and below, and with total assets of not more than P100 million, their corporate income tax was reduced from 30 to 20 percent.
