THE Philippine Economic Zone Authority (Peza) has logged approved economic zone investments of P8.141 billion in the first quarter of this year.
These investments came from 29 new and expansion projects with projected annual export sales of US$232.454 million and expected job generation of 3,168 direct employment.
Comparing the figures in 2021, Peza Director General Charito Plaza said export income and employment increased in the first quarter of 2022 by 10.93 percent and 13.72 percent, respectively.
“From $9.533 billion last year, our exports amounted to $10.575 billion. Likewise, from more than 1.5 million jobs in the first quarter of 2021, we now have 1,796,361 workers in our ecozones nationwide,” she said in a statement.
The majority of the investments came from various countries namely Australia, Austria, British Virgin Islands, China, Israel, Italy, Liechtenstein, New Zealand, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan and Thailand.
Meanwhile, for March 2022 alone, the Peza Board approved nine new projects.
Of the total, five projects fall under the export manufacturing enterprises, one for facilities, and three for ecozone development projects. These projects will be located in Laguna Technopark, Carmelray Industrial Park I, Cebu Light Industrial Park, Lima Technology Center and Cavite Economic Zone.
Plaza attributed the decline in investment pledges to the ongoing pandemic, the Russian-Ukraine war, and the May 2022 national elections.
“Usually during the election period, the investors would wait for the result of the election because they already anticipated that there will surely be new policies, laws and rules that will be adopted by the new administration,” said Plaza.
Nonetheless, she is confident that investments will improve once the election period is over. “We expect that after the election, our investments will bounce back and attain our seven to eight percent target growth for 2022.”
New admin to address WFH concerns
Meanwhile, Plaza is urging the incoming administration to address the work-from-home (WFH) concerns of most information technology-business process management (IT-BPM) companies located in ecozones.
“We hope the new administration will address these WFH concerns immediately so we can (finally) put a stop to all these worries and frustrations. This is our appeal together with our locators and workers,” she said.
Those companies that can’t return to office after April 1, 2022, will need to request a Letter of Authority (LOA) from Peza with the needed requirements.
“We are just going back to the regular ratio of our hybrid work model arrangement of not more than 30 percent WFH ratio,” she said.
Currently, Peza has issued 444 LOAs to registered IT-BPMs and registered business enterprises.”
“Our investors also put their decisions (temporarily) on hold to register with us because aside from the upcoming change in our administration, our government has yet to issue the Strategic Investment Priority Plan,” the Peza chief said.