Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said Wednesday the foreign trips of President Rodrigo Duterte in his first year in office generated $59.3 billion in economic benefits to the country.
Dominguez, who heads the government’s economic team, said the trips “resulted in various deals such as $37 billion worth of investment pledges between business to business through the signing of memorandum of understanding/letter of intents.”
The trips also yielded $18 billion in official development assistance funds and $4.3 billion in trade.
Dominguez, citing data from the International Finance Group of the DoF and the Trade Department, said the countries visited by Duterte included Indonesia, Vietnam, Brunei, China, Japan, Malaysia, Cambodia, Singapore, Myanmar, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and Russia.
Earlier reports said Duterte had the most number of foreign trips by a president in his first year in office and incurred large travel expenses during the period.
Presidential Communications Secretary Martin Andanar said in a radio interview earlier that the president spent more than P300 million in his 21 trips. But he said these trips generated investments for the country.
National Economic and Development Authority director-general and Economic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia, a member of the economic team, said Senator Franklin Drilon “insisted” on his view about the status of foreign direct investments in the country but missed the facts on FDI.
Drilon at the Senate plenary on Friday expressed concerns over what he said “a significant deceleration in the influx of new investments,” particularly in the first half compared to a year ago.
“Senator Drilon narrowly looks at so-called ‘new’ FDIs only. Fact it with reinvestments reckoned as well, drop in total FDIs was only 14 percent by the second quarter, not 90 percent. Reinvestments are just as good as expansion of operations does create employment multipliers too,” Pernia said.
“This is the standard method of measuring FDIs. But at the hearing on the Neda budget last Friday, Senator Drilon would have nothing of this and insisted on his view,” Pernia said.
Net inflows foreign direct investments declined 14 percent in the first half to $3.6 billion from $4.2 billion a year ago because of the 90.3-percent decrease in net equity capital to $141 million from $1.4 billion.
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas said net inflows in June surged 182.7 percent to $674 million from $238 million a year earlier, on sustained positive outlook of investors on the Philippine economy.
Data showed that FDIs surged last year, following the completion of the strategic partnership and receipt of Security Bank Corp. in April 2016 of the P37-billion from Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. as payment for the 20-percent stake in the bank. This was considered one of the biggest investments by a foreign financial institution in the Philippines.
FDI net inflows reached $7.9 billion last year, surpassing the target of $6.7 billion. The 2016 figure was also 40.7 percent higher than $5.72 billion net inflow in 2015.
Neda earlier made an assurance that foreign investors remained confident about doing business in the country despite the 14-percent decline in FDIs in the first half.
Neda said the present administration’s economic team was pushing to strengthen the country’s macro-fundamentals through the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion bill, which was expected to have a tax yield of P133.8 billion.
The tax reform package is a crucial component of the government’s “Build, Build, Build” infrastructure program.