The Philippine Economic Zone Authority on Thursday guaranteed full support and assistance to IT-business process management companies in transferring their registration to the Board of Investments.
PEZA officer-in-charge Tereso Panga said the agency would retain its mandate to promote and facilitate investments and keep the separate customs territory status vested in the economic zones to ensure the competitiveness of the IT sector.
“We consider the IT locators’ paper transfer of registration from PEZA to BOI as an interim measure to preserve their export enterprise status as they avail of 100-percent WFH [work-from-home] arrangement with full incentives,” he said.
PEZA is optimistic that a new law or policy will be immediately enforced to institutionalize hybrid workplace for ecozone IT locators to avail of increased WFH threshold with incentives, he said.
Panga said PEZA, despite reservations, was mandated to abide by the Department of Trade and Industry’s issuance of guidelines on the seamless transfer of IT-BPM firms to the BOI under DTI MC No. 22-19.
The transfer of registration to the BOI will allow IT-BPM companies to practice work-from-home setup at full capacity.
The MC covers all affected RBEs in the IT-BPM sector with remaining incentives under Section 311 of the National Internal Revenue Code of 1997, as amended, or those with approved incentives on or before Sept. 14, 2022 under the Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises Act.
PEZA then issued MC No. 2022-067 to remind eligible RBEs that they have until Dec. 31, 2022 to transfer their registration. Under this arrangement, the BOI will issue a certificate of registration to the transferee RBEs while PEZA would continue granting fiscal and non-fiscal incentives.
PEZA will also retain its monitoring functions and performance reporting of transferee locators as these companies will still keep their registration with PEZA, the DTI said.
Panga asked transferee locators to maintain an office inside PEZA-registered buildings for them to keep the PEZA incentives.
“This is necessary in order for PEZA to retain its authority/jurisdiction over the transferee RBEs, which are required under the rules to operate inside the economic zone,” he said.
Firms that failed to comply with the requirement could face cancellation of registration with PEZA and subsequently, registration with BOI.
“With government’s role as enablers of business and facilitators of value creation, PEZA will continue to enhance its ease and cost of doing business. We in PEZA always strive to provide the best business ecosystem in the ecozones so we can continue to attract more investments and sustain the growth of this winner sector,” Panga said.