Investment commitments double in January-February

MANILA, Philippines – Investment commitments in the country more than doubled during the first two months of the year as investments in the manufacturing sector poured in, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) said over the weekend.

One of the biggest investors is from a Filipino firm Petro Energy Resources Corp. which will infuse a total of P5.09 billion for wind power generation.

In an interview over the weekend, Trade Undersecretary Elmer C. Hernandez announced that investments for January and February stood at P29.95 billion, a 107-percent increase from the P14.45 billion recorded during the same period a year ago.

Of the two attached agencies of DTI, the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) contributed 67 percent of the investment commitments. PEZA recorded P20.04 billion for the first two months, 75 percent higher than the 11.47 billion recorded last year.

Meanwhile, the Board of Investments (BOI) recorded a 233 percent jump in investments when compared to January to February 2009 to P9.92 billion from P2.97 billion. For the month of February alone, BOI investments amounted to P2.88 billion, slightly higher than the P2.70 billion February 2009.

Hernandez said business optimism from foreign investors is slowly returning as evidenced by the 671 percent jump in foreign investments. Although there are still more domestic investors, foreign investments went up to P14.58 billion from the P1.89 billion recorded during the first two months of the previous year.

Most of the foreign investors were Japanese who invested P7.12 billion. They were followed by Singaporeans with P4.38 billion and the Americans with P1.18 billion.

Local investments likewise went up by 22 percent  to P15.38 billion from P12.56 billion. The number of projects committed also grew slightly or by three percent to 99 from 96. The employment generated by the investments is  20,837 from 16,956 jobs a year ago.

Most of the investments came from the manufacturing sector. “This is welcome news because the manufacturing sector is the biggest employer,” Hernandez noted. Investments in manufacturing grew 1000 percent to P14.7 billion from the P1.29 billion a year ago.

The second highest investment drawer is the real estate mass housing industrial estate sector. However, investments in this sector went down by 15 percent to P9.05 billion from P10.62 billion. The third is the power project sector which grew 3690 percent to P5.31 billion from only P140 million.

The top two biggest investors came from PEZA, Hernandez said. He said because of confidentiality agreements he cannot divulge who the investors are. The top investor is a Japanese firm involved in the manufacture of flip chip LAN grid array. This was followed by a Singaporean firm for photovoltaic panels. –Ma. Elisa P. Osorio (The Philippine Star)