The Philippine Economic Zone Authority on Thursday reported a 14-percent increase in export receipts of economic zone locators in 2021 to $63 billion from $55.3 billion in 2020.
“Amid the slowdown caused by the pandemic in 2021, this is still good news,” said PEZA director-general Charito Plaza.
Employment inside the ecozones also rose 13.9 percent to 1,782,913 million from 1.5 million workers in 2020. PEZA said 217,700 new jobs were opened in 2021, following the expansion of some industries.
It said while the influx of investments remained slow, dropping 27 to P69.301 billion, investments would likely recover with at least 6-percent growth in 2022.
Plaza attributed the decrease in investments to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic with its Delta and Omicron variants and the recent impact of Super Typhoon Odette in the Visayas and Mindanao in December 2021.
“This phenomenon of decline in new investments is indeed unfortunate but expected, as investors are still coupling and making adjustments caused by the pandemic to the efficiency factors of production such as logistics and transportation costs, global supply chain, health conditions, and lockdowns limiting the production and movement of goods and services,” said Plaza.
She said the agency is committed and hopeful in attracting more local and foreign investments for 2022 despite challenges to FDI generation.
The PEZA board approved 326 approved projects in 2021, down by 39.6 percent from 540 in 2019.
The manufacturing industry generated P25.5 billion in investments while the IT industry contributed P7.32 billion.
Japan remained PEZA’s top country investor with 21.72 percent share in total investments in 2021. About 961 PEZA-registered Japanese companies invested P22.87 billion in 2021, or 190.2 percent higher than P7.88 billion in 2020.
Total approved Japanese investments from 1995 to 2021 hit 728.337 billion.
“Aside from Japan, majority of our investments are from South Korea, India, Hong Kong and China. We also gained investments from western countries such as Germany, Austria, the United States of America, Denmark, France and Canada,” Plaza said.
Meanwhile, the top-performing regions in 2021 are Region 4 with P25.26 billion in investments followed Region 1, Region 7, Region 8, Region 10 and the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
The PEZA board approved nine new and expansion projects valued at P3.48 billion in January which are estimated to yield $56 million in annual export revenues and provide 732 direct employment.