Peza-registered investments up 18.6%

Investment commitments approved by the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (Peza) grew by 18.6 percent to P48.8 billion in the first four months of the year.

In a briefing Tuesday, Peza Director General Lilia G. de Lima said the investment pledges involved 208 projects, 85 of which were IT-related. These IT projects account for P9 billion in investment commitment as of end April this year, a 129-percent increase from the P3.9 billion posted a year-ago.

The biggest investments were from real estate companies embarking aggressively on new projects.

According to De Lima, Daiichi Properties is investing P2.9 billion in a 42-story center in Bonifacio Global City, while the group behind Araneta Center will put up its second Cyberpark Tower worth P2.9 billion. Other real estate projects registered were ProFriend’s P2.64-billion Suntech IT park in Cavite; Eton Properties’ P1.86-billion business process outsourcing facility in Eton Centris along Edsa and its P1.028-billion E-West Pod, and the P1.55-billion expansion of Enchanted Kingdom by EK Holdings Inc.

De Lima said Peza was seeing new areas of growth such as the production of medical items/devices, including disposable syringes, catheters and transfusion machines.

Other investment commitments were in the manufacturing of rubber and plastics, electrical machinery, fabricated metals, motor vehicle parts, and food products.

“We are encouraging more finished products to be manufactured here for exportation worldwide, including Asia, United States and to Europe,” De Lima said.

New players from Singapore, Thailand and Taiwan have also started putting up manufacturing facilities in the Philippines, while the Japanese remained among the biggest foreign investors in the country.

According to De Lima, Peza will also be reviewing its policies, systems and procedures to ensure that it will not be left behind its peers in the region.

The target is to institute more reforms as what Peza has done in the past, to further improve systems and raise the standards to which Peza adheres. This was in keeping with the agency’s commitment to remain the best among the ecozones in the world.

In a related development, Peza signed Tuesday a memorandum of agreement with the Dangerous Drugs Board and Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency to help fast-track the application and registration processes related to the importation and exportation of certain regulated substances.