MANILA -The Philippine Economic Zone Authority (Peza) on Monday said it had secured a fresh P10 billion worth of new investment commitments from Japan.
Peza said these investment commitments resulted from the five-day trade mission in Japan last Aug. 28 to Sept. 2.
The largest of these is a P7.2-billion investment commitment from electronics company TDK Corp., which is looking to have its first expansion beginning 2023 until 2026.
The company, which manufactures biomagnetic sensors for monitoring heartbeats, will have a second expansion next year, according to Peza.
The next biggest investment commitment is the P1.6 billion expansion plan of materials and electronics firm Taiyo Yuden, a company which has been registered with the Peza since 1989 and currently manufactures metal power inductors.
Similarly, medical device company Terumo Corp. and plating machine manufacturer Almex Technologies each made a P1-billion investment commitment, said Peza.
“Our top country investor, Japan, has a total of P766.55 billion investments from 1995 to June 2023, making up for 27.37 percent of Peza’s overall investments by country,” Peza Director General Tereso Panga said in a statement.
Panga added that there are also 877 Japanese firms located in Peza’s economic zones, which have generated 339,751 direct jobs and produced $6.37 billion worth of exports during the first five months of the year alone.
High-tech manufacturing
Amid these new investment commitments, Panga noted that this year marks a significant rise for the local semiconductor industry.
“Peza will make sure that the country will be poised to receive these investments as we have a small window to get the manufacturing of new high-tech products into the Philippines given the competitiveness of the industry,” said Panga.
Last week, the Peza said that its approved investments during the first nine months of the year reached P111.2 billion, 181 percent more than the P39.6 billion recorded during the same period in 2022. INQ