Investments seen to hit P610.4B

MANILA, Philippines - Investments are expected to hit P610.4 billion by 2014 after posting a P505 billion investment commitments in 2010.

In an interview, Board of Investments (BOI) managing head Cristino L. Panlilio said the government is expecting a P610.4 billion investment commitments from both the BOI and the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA).

For this year, combined investments from the PEZA and BOI are expected to hit P521.54 billion.

Panlilio explained that the reason why investments, especially for the BOI, will not be as robust as last year is because they have removed incentives for the IPPAs or the independent power producers.

He said they are hoping that investments from the public private partnership (PPP) will boost the figures.

Trade Secretary Gregory L. Domingo said that 2010 has been a banner year for the BOI as investments grew by 93 percent.

Domingo, meanwhile, said that the BOI target for this year is lower than the actual investment. He said the target of BOI is to grow 15 percent over their original 2010 target of P258 billion.

PEZA Director General Lilia B. De Lima said their target for 2011 is to grow investments, exports and employment by 10 percent.

“We want to be conservative because we are coming from a very high base. The target is 10-10-10 which means 10 percent growth in investments, employment and exports,” De Lima explained.

“There will be a tapering off of investments because we already got the big ticket investors,” De Lima added.

Investments in 2010 grew by 17 percent to P204 billion from P175 billion in 2009. “This is the highest investment since 2001,” De Lima said.  

“We are coming from a very high base. When others were posting a decline last year, we had a growth,” De Lima noted.

De Lima said they have exceeded their 2010 target of 15 percent growth because of the continued confidence of PEZA locators. Projects approved were 518 in 2010 from the 502 a year ago.

Employment and export data was only for November. De Lima said that average direct employment generated grew by 20.12 percent to 728,318 from 606,350 while export sales grew by 24 percent to $37 billion from $30 billion a year ago.