SOME P133.47 billion in foreign investments have been approved in the fourth quarter of 2021, higher by three-fold compared with P36.49 billion in the same quarter of 2020, according to the latest report of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
These investment pledges were from five investment promotion agencies (IPA), namely: Board of Investments (BOI), BOI-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, Clark Development Corp., Philippine Economic Zone Authority and Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority.
No investment approvals from foreign nationals were reported by the Authority of the Freeport Area of Bataan and Cagayan Economic Zone Authority.
Singapore committed P79.30 billion worth of investments and accounted for 59.4 percent of the total approved foreign investments. The Netherlands and Japan pledged P24.54 billion and P1.44 billion, respectively.
Information and communication industry stands to receive P127.17 billion or 95.3 percent of the total pledges.
Manufacturing came in second with investment commitments valued at P2.13 billion, followed by administrative and support service activities with P2.08 billion.
Meanwhile, approved investments of foreign and Filipino nationals reached P406.97 billion in the last quarter of 2021, up 49.8 percent from P271.59 billion in the same period of the previous year.
Filipinos continued to dominate the investments approved during the quarter with a share of 67.2 percent or P273.50 billion worth of pledges.
According to the PSA, total approved projects of foreign and Filipino investors in the fourth quarter of 2021 were projected to generate 34,403 jobs. Of the total anticipated jobs for the period, approved projects with foreign interest were projected to generate 19,447 jobs based on reports of the IPAs.