The Philippine Economic Zone Authority asked Malacañang Palace to speed up the approval of 40 investment projects worth P54.6 billion.
Peza director-general Charito Plaza said these projects were pending at the Office of the President for nearly a year now.
“This is so uncomfortable for us. Peza has registered so many locators only to be held at the Office of the President. My frustration is that the president has been aggressive on inviting investors. If we keep doing this, we might lose their [investors] confidence in the Philippines,” Plaza said.
She said the bottleneck was occurring at the Office of the President which was supposed to endorse the projects.
Plaza said Peza sent four letters to Executive Secretary Salvador Medaldea to work on the proclamation. Of the total, 40 projects were submitted for presidential proclamation in the first year of the Duterte Administration while six were submitted in the last few months of the Aquino administration.
The investments included five information technology parks, 27 IT centers, one medical facility, one agriculture project, one tourism estate and 11 manufacturing enterprises.
The three biggest projects pending at the Office of the President were the P16.4-billion Veris North IT Park along Edsa in North Triangle, Quezon City; the P5.6-billion Philippine Defense Industrial Complex in Bataan; and the P4-billion High Street Corporate Plaza building, an IT center in Bonifacio Global City, Taguig.
“In Peza, we provide investment pledges especially during state visits. These investors, they want to put up industries but they cannot because the proclamation is not released,” Plaza said.
She said some investors were thinking of putting their investments elsewhere if the current situation in the Philippines would not improve.
“In fact, an investor has threatened to pull out investments if the project it is working will not see proclamation in the next three months,” she said.
“In fairness to the Office of the President, it has successfully proclaimed 16 economic zone projects from October 2016 to June 2017,” Plaza said.
She said these included 14 IT centers, an agro-industrial economic zone and a manufacturing enterprise.