Foreign investment pledges plunge 37.9% in Q1

Investment commitments by foreign firms plunged by over a third to P14.2 billion in the first quarter, the Philippine Statistics Authority reported Thursday.

The PSA’s latest report on approved foreign investments showed that the first-quarter approvals of seven investment promotion agencies (IPAs) fell 37.9 percent from the P22.9 billion during the same period last year.

The PSA data reflected the foreign investments approved by the following IPAs: Authority of the Freeport Area of Bataan, Board of Investments, BOI-Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, Cagayan Economic Zone Authority, Clark Development Corp., Philippine Economic Zone Authority, and Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority.

IPAs give away fiscal and non-fiscal incentives to investors, which the Duterte administration wanted to rationalize under the proposed second tax reform package.

When these foreign investment pledges materialize, usually after a couple of years, they are then counted as foreign direct investment inflows.

Last year, foreign investment commitments slid 51.8 percent to P105.6 billion from P219 billion in 2016.

PSA data showed that foreign investors’ pledges declined year-on-year during six of the first seven quarters of the Duterte administration.

It was only in the third quarter of 2017 that foreign firms’ commitments jumped 61.1 percent year-on-year to P43 billion.