• The Philippine Economic Zone Authority recorded a 14% increase in export income in 2021
• Approved investments last year, however, dropped 27% from 2020 due to effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and impact of typhoon Odette
• Japan remains the top country investor with P22.870 billion worth of investments last year
• PEZA is eyeing a 6% investment growth in 2022
The Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) recorded a 14.016% increase in export income to $63.061 billion in 2021 from $55.309 billion in 2020.
Employment in registered-economic zones also rose 13.908% to 1.783 million workers in 2021 from 1.5 million in 2020.
But approved investments from 249 projects last year were down 27% to P69.301 billion from P95.03 billion generated from 326 projects in 2020.
The drop was attributed to effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact of typhoon Odette, the strongest to hit the country in December last year.
The approved investments in 2021 had a projected annual export sales of $2.138 billion generating direct employment of 35,245.
PEZA director-general Charito Plaza in a statement said the “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.”
PEZA deputy director general for policy and planning Tereso Panga said ecozone investors also “complained some provisions of the CREATE [Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises] Law on tax incentives, slow proclamation process, moratorium on IT center development in National Capital Region, and the late promulgation of the SIPP [Strategic Investment Priority Plan]” affected investment plans last year.
For 2022, PEZA is aiming for a 6% growth in investment.
As of January 2022, the PEZA Board has approved nine new and expansion projects worth P3.480 billion. Estimated annual export sales from these investments is $56.090 million with 732 expected direct employment.
In terms of sectors, manufacturing generated a total of P25.509 billion of investments while the information technology industry investments amounted to P7.322 billion in 2021.
PEZA-registered tourism as well as export enterprises engaged in technical testing and analysis, installation of system for factory automation, technical support, and quality control bounced back with P2.058 billion and P545.019 million in investments, respectively, in 2021.
Both enterprises’ performance are 100% higher from 2020
when the pandemic first entered the country.
Japan remains as the top country investor, cornering 21.72% of the total.
Japan’s investments reached P22.870 billion last year, a 190.20% jump from P7.881 billion in 2020.
From 1995 to 2021, total approved investments from Japan amounted to P728.337 billion.
As of November 15, 2021, there are 961 PEZA-registered Japanese companies.
Aside from Japan, most investments came from South Korea, India, Hong Kong and China.
PEZA also gained investments from western countries such as Germany, Austria, United States, Denmark, France, and Canada.
Region 4 was the top-performing region in 2021 with P25.263 billion investments.
Regions which improved in terms of investments were Region 1, Central Visayas, Eastern Visayas, Northern Mindanao, and Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
There are 415 ecozones in the Philippines to date.
