In her performance report, Ms. De Lima said that the PEZA echoes President Arroyo’s "rallying cry for jobs and livelihood for every Filipino", and is committed to respond to the President’s challenge to create one million jobs annually. The PEZA, she said, has from last year’s figures, shown a 19.655 percent increase in employment, and that the first quarter exports from the PEZA economic zones likewise show an encouraging increase of 9.268 over last year.
As of last year, the country had 87 proclaimed economic zones, 56 of them locator enterprises operating inside them. What have been added to these are 72 more to the four public and 12 private economic zones existing at the end of 1994.
Included among the proclaimed and operating economic zones are 11 IT parks and buildings which are now hosting a rapidly increasing number of IT enterprises.
Economic zone enterprises, as of end of 2002, employed a total of 820,960 direct and indirect employees, or 112,303 more than the number as of the end of 2001’s 708,657.
Under the leadership of Trade and Industry Secretary Mar Roxas, the contribution of economic zone export producers to the total manufactured export revenues increased from 68 percent in 2001 to 72 percent in 2002. Said Ms. De Lima: "The demonstrated resiliency of economic zone export-producers confirms that government support for the development and operation of economic zones has, indeed, been yielding the desired socio-economic returns."
Three major reforms have helped in the growth of the Authority industries. One is the Automated Import Cargo Transfer System to semiconductor and electronic zone enterprises in economic zones in Luzon, Cebu, and Mactan. Another is the implementation of the Automated export Documentation System in four economic zones, which significantly reduces the processing time and reduces the cost of import and export documentation and clearing procedures and render transactions completely transparent, and with greater accountability for all parties concerned.
The third, with the cooperation of the Bureau of Internal Revenue, the pilot implementation of the E-Substituted Filing system, which involved the electronic submission of the Alphalist of the employees of the enterprises, thereby eliminating the need for their workers to file individual income tax returns.
Finally, the establishments of the PEZA-Customs Documentation Unit at the Port of Batangas has provided one-stop-shop facilitation services for import shipments landed at the Port of Batangas and Bauan International Port.
Indeed, if PEZA, at its eighth year, has yielded significant gains, Ms. De Lima has to be congratulated. Someone has said Ms. De Lima allows no hanky-panky, no corruption at PEZA. Congratulations, Ms. De Lima.
Topic of the kapihan was decided upon in recognition of SME being a vital engine of the Philippine economy as they constitute 99.6 percent of total firms, employ 69.9 percent of the labor force, and contribute 32 1/2 percent of value-added to the economy.