The Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) is working on realizing the $65 million in investment pledges from the outbound investment mission held in Taiwan last year to boost the existing P33.165 billion worth of investments poured in by 109 Taiwanese firms in various economic zones.

PEZA OIC Deputy Director General Tereso O. Panga said that $65 million potential new investments were pledged by Taiwanese firms during the agency’s investment mission together with other government agencies, the Taiwan Economic and Cultural Office and Taiwanese Chamber of Commerce in October last year.

Panga also reported that PEZA briefed a Taiwanese business delegation last March 6 for investment opportunities in the ecozones.  

The Taiwanese group was composed of eight manufacturing and two logistics companies that are eyeing to register their export and domestic market-oriented projects under the PEZA and Board of Investments.

Other prospective Taiwanese investors are into manufacturing of consumer electronics, car brake pads, screws and other steel products, centrifugal fans, hardware materials, paper and packaging products.

Currently, the 109 Taiwanese locator companies registered with PEZA are generating over  $765 million in export revenues annually and employing 38,749 direct jobs.

The top Taiwanese ecozone investors are Sunon Properties, Tong Hsing Electronics, Kinpo Ekectronics, Acbel Polytech and Bojie Development Corporation.

PEZA, together with the BOI and BIR, also conducted an investment promotion pitch before a big delegation of Chinese investors from the Yiwu China Commodities City.

The China-Philippines Business forum held at the Manila Peninsula was organized by the Zhejiang-Philippines Chamber of Commerce and China-Philippines United Enterprises, Inc. Other forum participants included top officials from the Chinese Embassy in the Philippines, Chinese government agencies such as Zhejiang Department of Commerce, Yiwu Municipal People's government, Bank of China, Export-Import Nank of China, and reresentatives from various China-Philippines chambers of commerce.

Three companies also presented their world-class real estate development projects in Manila East Bay and Ilocos Norte, and e-commerce business opportunities in the Philippines.

“The economic cooperation with Yiwu will surely increase investment and trade for the country as we attract Yiwu small commodity manufacturers to set up their production facilities ideally in the ecozones,” said Panga.

Under the CREATE regime, PEZA may now register with incentives the SMEs and manufacturing companies that will locate in the ecozones to cater to the domestic market. These ecozone manufactured products can be readily made available to the domestic market, which are expected to be cheaper (as compared to imported products) and thus, benefiting the Filipino consumers. The entry of these small commodity producers will stimulate as well the tourism industry and economy in general with the integration of local SMEs into the ecozone value chain.