THE Board of Investments (BOI) Cebu is urging companies to invest and put up businesses in far-flung provinces to spread the economic opportunities.
Ellorence Cruz, chief of the BOI Cebu office, said the BOI provides incentives like income tax holidays for a duration of time to qualified companies that are willing to risk and help generate jobs outside of the main cities.
Cruz said perks are given to projects that benefit the economy like agriculture, forestry and fishery which address food sufficiency and security as well as to mass housing projects that address the country’s huge housing backlog.
Cruz said they will prioritize projects under the 2017 Investment Priorities Plan (IPP), which is a list of priority investment activities that may be given incentives by the agency.
According to the website of the Department of Trade and Industry, the IPP “includes further emphasis on innovation-driven and job-generating businesses; inclusive business for agribusiness and tourism; broadened coverage of manufacturing; information technology (IT) and IT-enabled services for the domestic market and telecommunications services for new market players; environment and climate change-related projects; local government unit-initiated public-private partnership projects; drug rehabilitation centers; state-of-the-art engineering, procurement and construction services; and the lifting of geographical restrictions for most agriculture and tourist accommodation facilities.
In particular, the BOI hopes to see a resurgence of the country’s labor-intensive manufacturing sector.
“We want to develop manufacturing so many will invest in the Philippines. We support this industry because it’s really a driver for employment,” she said.
Moreover, because the country is blessed with vast agricultural lands, Cruz said they also prioritize projects that combine agriculture with either manufacturing or tourism.
“When you say agriculture, there is already manufacturing attached to it, like agri-processing,” she said.
Fourteen projects in Central Visayas with a combined estimated investment of P49.2 billion were granted fiscal incentives by the BOI in the first half of the year. These new projects are projected to generate a total of 5,590 jobs. JOB