Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) Director General Tereso O. Panga is optimistic the country will receive more investors from South Korea with the signing of the Philippines-South Korea Free Trade Agreement (FTA) on the sidelines of the 43rd Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit and Related Summits in Jakarta, Indonesia.
DG Panga noted, “With South Korea’s status as the 10th largest GDP in the world and 2nd most technologically advanced nation (next to Germany), the Philippines stands to benefit from this FTA which opens more opportunities for investors, increased market access, foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows, higher value-added production and export diversification combined with deeper economic cooperation and innovation partnership.”
PEZA is also seeing an influx of FDIs coming from South Korea for the year. Panga said, “We are seeing an increasing trend with more South Korean investments coming in the country. Last year, we have approved a total of PHP1.019 billion investments from South Korean projects. And for our performance this year, we already generated a total of PHP1.413 billion investments from South Korea.”
As of June 2023, PEZA has a total of 246 registered projects from South Korea, generating PHP92.190 billion investments, USD736.454 million exports, and 40,688 employments.
Panga also reported, “We are on track to achieving our conservative target for the year. In fact, we have already achieved 72% of our PHP154.77 billion target investments for 2023.”
“We are confident we will exceed our conservative 10% growth this year given the increasing number of ecozone applications filed with our office as well as big ticket projects and long-term investments that we expect to register this last quarter of 2023,” he added.
On September 14, the PEZA Board approved a total of 27 new and expansion projects expected to bring in PHP14.044 billion investments, USD174.806 million exports, and 4,614 jobs.
Among the 27 projects, 11 of these are for export, five (5) for facilities, five (5) for IT, two (2) for logistics, two (2) for domestic, and two (2) for ecozone development. These projects will be located in Makati City, Pasay City, Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Cebu, Davao del Norte, and Occidental Mindoro.
With these new projects, PEZA’s investments for the year already totaled to PHP111.207 billion, which is 180.06% higher as compared to the PHP39.632 billion investments approved last January-September 2022.
The top five (5) FDIs for this year are of the Japanese, Singaporean, Caymanian, British, and South Korean.
“Our sound economic fundamentals, a whole of government approach coupled with the most aggressive promotion of the Philippines to global investors by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. through his various working and state visits to other countries have resulted in this significant development for PEZA,” Panga noted.
With PEZA’s role as an investment promotion arm and guided by the DTI’s Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) driven industrialization strategy, Panga expressed it is bullish to contribute in the attainment of this administration’s overarching goal of making the Philippines a more inclusive economy with an upper middle-income status by 2028.
