The Philippine Economic Zone Authority said yesterday that it ended 2020 with P95.03 billion worth of investment approvals, or a decline of 18 percent, from P117.5-billion in projects approved the previous year.
Some 326 projects got PEZA Board’s nod last year, of which 217 projects were from the manufacturing sector and 109 projects from the information technology and business process outsourcing (IT BPO) industry.
In terms of value, investment commitments in the manufacturing sector amounted to P34.44 billion, 13.4 percent higher than 2019’s pledges of P30.34 billion.
For the IT BPO industry, investment pledges slipped by less than one percent to P17.41 billion last year, from P17.58 billion worth of projects in 2019.
Investment pledges from foreign sources increased by 21.3 percent in 2020 to P59.73 billion from P49.26 billion the previous year.
Top foreign investors in PEZA in the previous year were from the United States, United Kingdom, Belgium, Ireland, Spain, China, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Saudi Arabia. Investments from local firms plunged by 68.3 percent to P35.3 billion last year, from P68.29 billion in 2019.*PNA
