Pandemic crimps investment pledges, says PEZA

The Philippine Economic Zone Authority (Peza) saw its investment pledges drop by around 25 percent over the past three quarters compared to the same period in 2020, reflecting the impact of the pandemic in the agency’s efforts to attract job-generating projects.

In a forum on Monday, Charito Plaza, director general of Peza, said their investment pledges had reached P51.202 billion from January to September this year. The latest figure represented a decline, although she did not disclose how this compared to last year’s performance.

Data from the Philippine Statistics Authority showed Peza had P68.49 billion worth of investment pledges from January to September 2020. Comparing this to Peza’s latest available figure showed a 25-percent drop in investment commitments.

This was also lower than Peza’s performance in the first year of the pandemic. Pledges from January to September 2020 marked a 22.4-percent decline from the same period in 2019 that registered P88.270 billion.

When asked why the commitments declined, Plaza said during the question and answer portion of the forum that the “impact of the pandemic was really felt this year.”

She said this during the event that featured Peza and the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the largest business group in the country.

Peza registered around P95 billion worth of investment pledges in 2020. Although this marked a nearly 20-percent decline from the P117.5 billion commitments in 2019, this was still beyond the agency’s initial expectations since the agency said back then that it was only expecting to get half of what it got in 2019.

For 2021, Peza is eyeing to grow total pledges by 7 percent from 2020. INQ