BOI targets P1.1-trillion investment approvals in 2024

The Department of Trade and Industry’s (DTI) lead investment promotion agency is targeting P1.1 trillion worth of investments this year, with expectations that most of the investments will still come from Europe and will pour into the renewable energy sector.

“P1.1 trillion is the official commitment or target of the [Board of Investments] for approvals of investments in 2024,” Trade Secretary Alfredo Pascual told reporters last week during a press briefing in Makati.

Despite this year’s target being lower than 2023’s actual posting of P1.26 trillion— which is the highest record in the government agency’s 56-year history—Pascual said they would still work toward reaching at least that much in 2024.

The BOI’s investment portfolio last year marks a 73-percent increase from the P729 billion worth of investments recorded in 2022.

Decline arrested

The investment promotion agency’s 2022 performance arrested two years of decline given the approved investments of P655 billion in 2021, P1.02 trillion in 2020, and P1.14 trillion in 2019.

Meanwhile, Trade Undersecretary and BOI head Ceferino Rodolfo said that they expect last year’s investments trends to continue where most of the investments came from Europe and were invested in the energy sector, particularly in renewable energy.

Ceferino said that based on the government’s green lane list, there is indeed great interest from foreign groups to invest in the renewable energy sector, including renewable energy equipment manufacturing and mineral processing.

The government’s roadmap shows it expects renewable energy to have a 35-percent share in the country’s power generation by 2030, with plans to increase it to up to 50 percent by 2040.

Most of the Philippines’ power plants today are coal-fired and diesel-fed, tying the cost of its electricity to the volatile global market prices of coal and oil.South Korea

Ceferino added that the country still expects a big chunk of the potential investments to come from Europe.

“And for other countries, we are also expecting investments to come in from [South] Korea),” he added, noting that the country recently signed a free trade agreement with Korea that should spur more investments. INQ