The Philippine Economic Zone Authority said 1,325 projects from 452 registered business enterprises passed the assessment for registration transfer to the Board of Investments.
Acting PEZA director-general Theo Panga said, however, there was no feedback yet from the Department of Justice on the work-from-home policy of PEZA.
“We are expecting the DOJ may issue its opinion within this month of January,” he said Tuesday.
He said many RBEs wanted to be covered by the 30-percent WFH policy of PEZA as most companies were also monitoring the national state of calamity and the chance of extending the paper registration to BOI.
“We requested for that extension to give way to last-minute filing of applications for paper transfer by our RBEs. Whatever it takes to keep the competitiveness of our IT locators, we are all for it. As our IT locators expect a seamless paper transfer to the BOI, we hope that all ease of doing business measures under the existing PEZA one stop facility will be retained,” Panga said.
The agency is also hopeful the government with extend the national state of calamity, so that the rules on WFH policy maybe relaxed to allow IT locators to avail the same WFH privileges without the need to transfer to the BOI, he said.
Panga said while many IT-BPM locators wanted to stay with PEZA, they were apprehensive of the sustainability of the agency’s WFH policy.
“This is the preferred arrangement by our IT locators. Moving forward, we pray for the institutionalization of WFH, including amendment of Section 309, where both BOI and PEZA RBEs will be put on an equal footing following the objectives of the CREATE law and the Telecommuting Act,” Panga said.