Ecozone investments up 161% in January

Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) Director-General Lilia B. de Lima, in a memorandum to Trade and Industry Secretary Manuel Roxas II, reported that as of January this year, the PEZA board has approved P1.8 billion in new investments in the country’s special economic zone.

De Lima said this represents an increase of 161 percent over the comparable approvals for January last year of only P704 million.

De Lima said the P1.8 billion is expected to generate annual average export sales of $186.637 million and provide direct employment for 3,367 workers.

The top three ecozone investment for January this year are Kyushu Matsushita Electric Corp. of the Philippines (PKME), ICT Marketing Services of the Philippines (IMSP) and Matsushita Electric Philippines Corp. (MEPCO).

PKME is a wholly-owned Japanese export enterprise operating in the Carmelray Industry Park II special economic zone.

It is engaged in the manufacture of slim CD-R/W drive and slim DVD combination drive.

The PEZA board approved last Jan. 16, PKME’s application for its new project to manufacture DVD multi disk (DMD) drive in which the company is investing another P847.49 million.

The PKME project is expected to generate annual average export sales of $88.56 million and provide direct employment to 199 workers.

IMSP is a wholly-owned Singapore firm which will engage in the operation of a customer support center.

IMSP is investing P230.03 million and is projected to generate annual average export sales of $8.002 million and provide direct employment to around 460 workers.

MEPCO, which has been registered with the PEZA since 1993, is pouring in another P204.687 million to expand its production of air conditioners.

At the same time, De Lima said PEZA approvals for information technology (IT) investments for the month of January reached P265.9 million.

The P265.9 million in IT investments for January, de Lima said, is about eight times more than the P32.9 million that was approved in January last year.

The increase, de Lima said, "indicates a significant prospective growth for the IT industry."

In the same memorandum, de Lima reported on actual economic zone exports and employment last year.

Total exports from special economic zones, de Lima reported, reached $22.776 billion, increasing 16.8 percent from only $19.498 billion for the whole of 2001.

Total employment generated by the economic zones, de Lima revealed, provided livelihood for 820,960 workers, showing an increase of 14.5 percent over the total employment for 716,990 workers for the whole of 2001. – Marianne Go