An American company is planning to invest up to $1 billion for the expansion of its Clark and Baguio City facilities in the country, Malacañang announced.
American microprocessors manufacturer Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) is set to submit in two weeks an application covering the expansion of its Clark and Baguio City sites that may reach the $1 billion CREATE (Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises) threshold.
This was announced during the United States-Association of Southeast Asian Nations (US-ASEAN) Business Council’s meeting with President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. on Wednesday, Aug. 9.
According to the Palace, TI’s investment plans are in line with the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 signed into law by US President Joe Biden last year, aimed at building and making historic investments that will poise US workers, communities, and businesses to win the race for the 21st century.
The law is seen to strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology, and the workforce of the future to keep the US the leader in the industries of tomorrow, including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence.
Marcos welcomed TI’s investment plans, saying, “These (are) areas and sectors in the economy that we would like to be involved in.”
“And we have a great deal of [dependence] already… of our exports. We do not see why we should not further support and enhance the sector of the economy because it has (done) well,” he said.
The President further said that there is good potential on the Philippine side because “we have a workforce that is accustomed to working to foreign corporations.”
And on the technological side, he added that the Philippines has undertaken a very comprehensive program of upskilling and reskilling its workers to be able to take advantage of the new niches in the labor demand and the labor market.