An Australian company that deals with finance, technology, and risk management has expressed interest to invest in the Philippines' renewable energy, value-added mining, and digitalization.
Australia’s Macquarie Group Ltd. conveyed its intention to invest in the country during the meeting between President Marcos and Macquarie Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Shemara Wikramanayake at the sidelines of Marcos' participation in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-Australia Special Summit in Melbourne on Tuesday, March 5.
Wikramanayake said they are interested in investing in the Philippines due to its demographic profile for having “a young and growing population,” which is “a bigger opportunity in terms of growth and organization” of their company in the country.
“I am excited to talk about what more we can be doing in the Philippines because at the moment we do advisory work in investment bank, we bring our balance sheet to invest in,” Wikramanayake told Marcos during their meeting.
“The whole digitization process, we’re excited about. Also, the energy transition we’re excited about … we certainly invest in digitization and we invest in energy transition and in mining and building bigger advisory business,” she added.
Wikramanayake further said that they are keen "to partner with Southeast Asia particularly with places like the Philippines," stressing that the region is "proving to be very good to create that environment for the pension savers money here. To bring capital to health, investing in infrastructure, etcetera."
According to Wikramanayake, Macquarie Group provides sufficient funds not only in the US and Europe, but also in Southeast Asia.
Marcos, for his part, said that the Australian company's investment will be "a big help for the Philippine development especially in terms of digitalization process not only for the investors, but also for the locals."
“We somehow have fallen behind in that regard, and we’re trying to catch-up,” Marcos said, referring to digitization. “Digitization is a very important part of ease of doing business not just for investors, but for locals in their dealings with the government.”
The President also stressed there is a great deal with the Macquarie Group that the Philippines can explore more than what they have discussed on Tuesday.
“I don’t see any part of what we’ve discussed so far that is not applicable to what our ground plan for the economy of the Philippines. So, again, we’re very open to any insights you might have to improve investment terrain in the Philippines,” he said.
The Macquarie Group Limited has been operating in the Philippines for over 15 years now with more than 1,000 direct employees through Macquarie Offshore Services, which supports the company’s global business across operations, finance, technology and risk management.
In 2012, Macquarie won a bid to manage the first and largest infrastructure fund for the Philippines at P25 billion through the Philippines Investment Alliance for Infrastructure (PINAI) in partnership with the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS).
A Macquarie Asset Management (MAM) led consortium acquired a majority stake in Energy Development Corporation (EDC) – the Philippines' largest renewable energy company in 2017 to 2018.