PEZA investments soars 89% to 1132.66 billion in 7 months
Committed investments registered with the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) went up by 89.43 percent in the January-July period this year as huge economic zone development projects took the slack from the continued negative growth in the IT sector.
PEZA Director-General Charito B. Plaza reported during a press conference that investments approved in the first seven months of the year reached P132.663 billion or 89.43 percent higher compared to the 170.032 billion registered in the same period last year.
“As of July, 2017, PEZA accomplished an unprecedented performance in investments generation,” said Plaza noting there were 363 projects that the agency approved in the January-July or 17.86 percent more than the 308 projects that registered last year.
The increase in investments was largely fueled by the registration of more economic zone projects, which contributed the bulk of 175.407 billion of total as of June this year or more than twice the 138.638-billion ecozone development projects registered in the same period last year.
Investments in the manufacturing sector reached 121.554 billion or 26.88 percent higher than the 116.988 billion in the same period last year, fueled by the growth in the electronics and semicon sub-sector investments.
The drop in IT investments was blamed by Plaza on the air of uncertainty that prevailed among American investors caused by President Donald Trump’s “America First” policy. Once, this has been clarified, Plaza expects more IT companies to locate here and those existing to resume expansion plans.
Despite the decline in the amount of investments, Plaza noted that the number of IT firms that registered in the first seven months of the year still managed to post a 6.56 percent increase to 130 from 122 last year.
Overall, Plaza said that direct employment at PEZA went up by 6.41 percent to 1,357,684 as of June this year from 1,275,842 last year. Of this employment, IT company workers reached 660,298 or 10.01 percent more from 600,164 jobs in the January-June period of 2016.
PEZA, however, estimated there were a total of 8 million more direct and indirect jobs combined from these investments because each PEZA job created will have the capacity to generate 8 more in terms of indirect workforce for drivers, janitorial services, haulers, canteen workers, among others.