BOI approvals climbed 15% to P607.22B as of April

Sandra Marie Recolizado —PHOTO FROM WEBSITE OF BOI

The Board of Investment (BOI) has approved P607.22 billion worth of projects from January until the second week of April, marking a 15 percent increase in the government agency’s approvals made nearly a year ago.

Sandra Marie Recolizado, director of BOI, said last week that these investments span 117 projects, most of which are business ventures by local investors.

“Majority of the projects that we have approved came from renewable energy projects,” Recolizado told reporters during a media roundtable discussion at the Department of Trade and Industry’s (DTI) office in Makati.

She added that the biggest project in their list is the P296.98 billion pumped-storage hydropower project in Laguna of the Ahunan Power Inc., a business unit of the Razon-led Prime Infra Capital Inc.

The second largest project, according to her, is the P83.70 billion offshore wind project in Cavite by the Philippines-based Ivisan Windkraft Corp.

Recolizado said that there are more projects under assessment, but did not elaborate further on how many there are in the pipeline.

Trade Secretary Alfredo Pascual highlighted the significance in local investors making up most of the approvals during the period.

“Let us not belittle the domestic investments because those are what we want to encourage in the Philippines in that domestic investors commit their capital to projects in the Philippines rather that bringing out their money, their capital outside the Philippines,” Pascual said during the same event.

The DTI’s lead investment promotion agency is targeting to approve at least P1.1 trillion worth of investments this year, amid expectation that most of those will be in the renewable energy sector.

In 2023, the BOI approved P1.26 trillion worth of investments, breaking the record in its 56-year history as it recorded a 73 percent increase in its portfolio.

Meanwhile, the year 2022 saw the investment promotion agency arresting two years of decline as investment approvals climbed to P729 billion from P655 billion in 2021, P1.02 trillion in 2020, and P1.14 trillion in 2019.