The Philippine Economic Zone Authority asked the national government to expedite the approval of P72.3 billion worth of special economic zones awaiting presidential proclamation.
Peza director-general Charito Plaza said 42 applications were pending with the Office of the Executive Secretary, including five that were not acted upon by the previous administration.
“The office [OES] promised to release more. Hopefully by January [2018] we’ll have more projects approved so our industries can start constructing and operating,” Plaza said.
She said Peza had a productive meeting with the OES together with the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Plaza said nobody was willing to accept who was at fault, “but as far as we are concerned, we have a chart detailing the aging of projects and when they were applied. We are hoping that everything will work out fine for the industries that are excited to get started.”
Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea invited Peza and PCCI for a dialog after the chamber included Peza’s concern regarding the slow release of proclamation in its annual set of resolutions submitted to the president during the 2017 Philippine Business Conference.
The number of pending economic zones ballooned to 78 in October 2017, but the OES has since then released 22 projects.
The OES proclaimed 35 projects as of December 2017. Peza expects more economic zone developers to register more projects with the launch of the Philippine Economic Zone Map before the holding of the Global Economic Zone Convergence on April 4 to 6, 2018.
Among the economic zones that took form recently are the agro-forestry economic zone and the minerals processing economic zone.
Peza met with Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu to forge cooperation on the agro-forestry economic zone. It also signed a memorandum of agreement with the Philippine Mining Development Corp. for the creation of mineral processing economic zones.
PMDC is currently the steward of about 60,000 hectares of mining areas.
A Russian company recently expressed interest to create a mineral processing industry in Mindanao.
“So far, this is just one. There are many Japanese and Chinese companies interested with the new scheme. Even the Coral Bay Nickel project of Sumitomo Metal Mining Co. is interested to expand because of this new partnership with PMDC,” Plaza said.
Meanwhile, the agro-forestry economic zone will include tree plantation, paper mills, furniture and wood-related industries.