Peza investment pledges surge 94% to P196.46B

The Philippine Economic Zone Authority (Peza) nearly doubled the investment pledges it registered in the first nine months of the year compared to that of 2016, an increase that was mainly attributed to commitments to develop more economic zones.

Official data showed that pledges reached P196.46 billion from January to September this year, a 94.12-percent increase from P101.2 billion registered in the comparative period last year. More than half of the pledges so far have been driven by commitments for economic development, which reached P151.84 billion.

Peza Director General Charito Plaza told reporters yesterday that the latest growth figures of the agency was brought about by their “aggressive marketing” targeting both local and foreign investors to develop more economic zones.

“Peza is really aggressive in its marketing and promotion. What I’m doing now is I conduct briefings and dialogues with business chambers, local government units and big private land owners. We are telling everybody to turn their land properties into economic zones,” she said.

A breakdown of the Peza data showed that there were three main sectors that accounted for the 438 projects that registered under the agency in the first nine months of the year.

She said economic development, the biggest among the three, included the initial project by a newly established company called First Pangasinan Property Development Corp., which has links to Taiwan’s economic fugitive Chen You-hao.

The project would initially cover 400 hectares in Pangasinan with a project cost of P20.97 billion. This is part of a long-term investment that would span 30 years with a $360-billion (about P18 trillion) project cost. Plaza said that the project was still in the prequalification stage, which meant it was not yet declared an economic zone.

Amid the controversy of entertaining a project linked to the economic fugitive, Peza promised that it would do a due-diligence audit to make sure the investment was coming from legitimate sources.

Plaza said the focus on developing more economic zones was in line with Peza’s goal of having “no more idle lands.”

Following economic development, manufacturing locators had P45.09 billion worth of pledges while the information technology-business process management (IT-BPM) industry had P11.39 billion.

Peza did not provide a comparative figure for the manufacturing sector. However, the year-to-date pledges in the IT-BPM industry fell 21.88 percent from P14.58 billion in the same period a year ago. While still a decline, this was an improvement when compared to the 30.9-percent drop in the first half of the year.

“No BPO company left the country. It’s still status quo, but only a few new ones came in,” she said in a mix of English and Filipino.

This comes as Plaza marked her first year on the job earlier this month. Peza ended 2016 with P218.18 billion worth of investment pledges. While the pledges nearly doubled year-to-date, this was still far from the targets that Plaza had set. With a growth target of 200 to 300 percent, she previously said that Peza aimed to close the year with at least P654.54 billion and even as much as P872.72 billion.