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Pledges to turn into actual investments in next 'couple of months' — PH envoy

Published Nov 21, 2023 05:24 am

Investment pledges secured by President Marcos during his recent trip to the US are expected to translate into actual deals “within the next couple of months,” Philippine Ambassador to the US Jose Manuel “Babe” Romualdez said Tuesday, Nov. 21.

Romualdez expressed his optimism about the pledges coming into fruition due to the past pledges that were already converted into actual investments.

“It’s not true that there's zero investments that came in from those pledges. There’s quite a bit already,” he said in an interview with ANC.

Aside from that, Romualdez said, the President already assigned Frederick Go, his new adviser on investment and economic affairs, to be in charge of looking at all the investments that are supposed to be coming to the Philippines.

“He's given more powers to oversee all the investments because you know, each economic manager has their own work to do, and I think Secretary Go would be the one in charge to precisely monitor all of this investment… follow up,” the envoy said.

Marcos secured about $672.3 million in investment pledges from various sectors during President Marcos' third and six-day visit to the US.

According to Malacañang, the investments are as follow: $400-million for the telecommunications sector; $250-million for semiconductor and electronics; $20-million in pharmaceutical and healthcare; $2-million for artificial intelligence (AI) for weather forecasting; and $0.3-million in renewable energy.

On the other hand, energy prices in the Philippines are also expected to decrease following the signing of 123 agreement between Manila and Washington—a deal that will facilitate and enhance the two countries' cooperation on clean energy security, Romualdez said.

"[The] 123 agreement will now set the tone on how quickly we can get those nuclear technology and can start working with the local partners to be able to jumpstart the nuclear program of the Department of Energy," he said.

"That is the most important alternative energy that we're looking at because once we have that going, we can put that all over the Philippines, and energy costs will start going down," he added.

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