BOI investment pledges surged by 140% in Feb.

Investment commitments approved by the Board of Investments (BOI) surged by 140 percent in February to P22.5 billion, boosted largely by the growing number of real estate and construction projects.

This brought the total BOI investment approvals to P30.24 billion in the first two months of the year, government data showed.

Of the pledges approved, the bulk, or P21.93 billion, came from domestic investments, while the remaining P572.7 million represented the value of projects funded by foreign equity.

BOI said that, in terms of sectoral investments, the real estate and construction sectors overtook the generally capital-intensive power sector, which dominated last year’s approvals.

The property sector comprised the bulk of total approved investments with P13.84 billion, representing a 61-percent share. It was followed by the electricity, gas, steam and air-conditioning supply sector with P5.57 billion (25-percent share).

Investment approvals for construction projects reached P2.55 billion, while the manufacturing sector accounted for P465.25 million.

The BOI identified the approved projects, which included the P5.57-billion Prime Meridian Powergen Corp.’s 115-megawatt (MW) San Gabriel Avion natural gas-fired power plant in Batangas City; SM Development Corp.’s low cost mass housing projects in Pasay City (P8.75 billion) and in Quezon City (P2.54 billion).

Bright Future Educational Facilities Inc. will also be receiving perks for a P2.55-billion public-private partnership (PPP) project for a school infrastructure in Region I.

The BOI expects at least a 10-percent hike in the investment commitments it will approve this year, roughly amounting to P443 billion.

Last year, the investment pledges approved by the BOI reached P403.17 billion due largely to the growing number of power generation projects in the pipeline.

A 10-percent growth “is reasonable for approved investments. What we aim for, however, is the impact of the growth in terms of stable and decent jobs-for a more inclusive growth,” Trade Undersecretary Adrian S. Cristobal Jr. said in an earlier interview.

Driving this growth in the domestic front, Cristobal had said, would be the strong consumption coming from the sheer size of the domestic market; reconstruction spending; the expected increase in infrastructure spending (to include projects under the government’s public-private partnership program); and the country’s stable macroeconomic condition.