THE Philippine Economic Zone Authority (Peza) ended 2021 with US$63.061 billion in export income and recorded a total of 1,782,913 million workers in its registered ecozones.
“Amid the slowdown caused by the pandemic in 2021, there is still good news. Our exports attained a 14.016 percent increase last year from $55.309 billion in 2020,” said Peza chief Charito Plaza.
New jobs last year grew 13.9 percent. Some 217,700 new jobs were generated in 2021 from more than 1.5 million workers in 2020.
The investment promotion agency also reported a total of P69.301 billion in approved investments last year.
Plaza said the projected annual export sales from these investments stood at $2.138 billion with an expected job generation of 35,245 direct employments in 249 new projects.
Peza logged P95.03 billion in approved investments in 2020.
Decline in FDIs
Plaza noted that the decline in foreign direct investments in 2021 was due to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic with its Delta and Omicron variants and the recent impact of super typhoon Odette (Rai) in the Visayas and Mindanao regions in December 2021.
But the decline in investments was a global challenge.
“As cited by World Bank, the global economic slowdown is projected to last until 2023 due to the continuous challenges and effects of new Covid variants and supply-chain bottlenecks, especially in developing countries,” said Tereso Panga, Peza deputy director-general for Policy and Planning.
“This phenomenon of decline in new investments is indeed unfortunate but expected as investors are still coupling and making adjustments caused by the pandemic to the efficiency factors of production such as logistics and transportation costs, global supply chain, health conditions, and lockdowns limiting the production and movement of goods and services,” Plaza explained.
“Everyone is trying to survive and is learning how to live and work under this new normal,” the Peza chief added.
The manufacturing industry generated P25.509 billion in investments while the information technology industry investments amounted to P7.322 billion last year. Tourism and export enterprises captured P2.058 billion and P545.019 million in investments, respectively, in 2021.
Japan remains Peza’s top country investor with investments at P22.870 billion last year, a 190.20 percent increase from P7.881 billion in 2020. Besides Japan, majority of the country’s investments were also from South Korea, India, Hong Kong and China.
Calabarzon got the most investments last year worth P25.263 billion. Other top-improving regions were Ilocos, Central Visayas, Eastern Visayas, Northern Mindanao and Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.