3 Japan firms infusing P14.5B in PH operations

The Department of Trade and Industry reported a total of P14.5 billion worth of new Japanese investments coming to the Philippines.

The projects, which would add tens of thousands of jobs, are the most recent addition to the lineup of projects that President Duterte brought home from his trip to Japan late last year.

Three companies account for these new investments, according to Trade Secretary Ramon M. Lopez, with one particular firm – which requested anonymity until the plan was made public— pledging half of the total value.

The trade chief, who went to Japan earlier this week to meet with his counterpart and the Japanese investors, said the two companies that shared their expansion plans were Tsuneishi Shipbuilding Co. Ltd. and Ichijo Co. Ltd.

Tsuneishi is planning to put up a ship recycling project valued at about P5 billion, which is expected to create 6,000 new jobs in the Philippines.

“Due to the very high quality of steel components of ocean going vessels, the steel-recycling project will not only meet the country’s requirements for inter-island vessels for transport and logistics but also cover the steel requirements of major infrastructure work,” Lopez said in a text message to reporters yesterday.

This would be the third project of the company under the Duterte administration, following two separate expansion plans that the firm committed during Duterte’s visit to Japan in October last year. The President brought home from Japan $19 billion worth of investment pledges and loans.

The previous two projects, said Lopez, amounted to P10.2 billion with the potential to generate 26,000 direct and indirect jobs.

Of this value, P5.2 billion is earmarked for the purchase and setting up of a skid barge and ship reuse center on a 120-hectare land in Negros Occidental, creating 6,000 jobs.

The remaining P5 billion will go to the company’s biomass plantation in Negros and Mindanao, wherein the biomass would be process processed in a new pelletizing factory for export to Japan and for use in local renewable energy projects. This is expected create 20,000 direct and indirect jobs.

“We shall continue to cooperate with Tsuneishi in the setting-up and operations of the three projects,” he said.

Lopez said he had met with Ichijo president Tsuyoshi Miyachi, who planned to expand its operations in the province of Cavite by investing close to P2 billion.

Ichijo manufactures prefabricated housing components which are then exported to Japan. Lopez said that the company currently runs five factories in Cavite Export Processing Zone in a lot area of over 100 hectares.

Ichijo, one of the largest employers in the country with about 25,000 workers, would expand and set up a two-story factory and warehouse in an additional 10 hectare lot in the province, adding 600 more jobs.

Lopez said he had requested the company, which has its only overseas manufacturing subsidiary in the Philippines, to survey the local market, noting that “they might also be marketable in the country.”