DTI exec: Investment pledges secured during Marcos’ foreign trips start to take shape
Investment pledges across multiple sectors secured during President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s official visits to various countries are now taking shape, a Trade official said on Saturday.
In a media forum in Quezon City, Lanie Dormiendo, head of the International Investments Promotion Service of the Board of Investments (BOI), said in terms of digital infrastructure, the Fiscal Incentives Review Board (FIRB) approved last Friday a project commitment by a Singaporean company for the operation of a 23-megawatt data center.
Dormiendo also said a US company is putting up two data centers—200 megawatts each, somewhere in Northern Luzon, following the President’s visit to the United States.
Elon Musk’s Starlink is also setting up its low-earth orbit satellite-based internet services in the country, which will make the Philippines, Asia’s first that would be having this type of service, Dormiendo said.
The DTI official said this project was the result of the President’s visit in New York in September last year.
The Philippines’ IT-BPM sector also gained a lot of interest, with eight projects actually being approved and half of those being worked out for registration with more than $23 million worth of investments.
In terms of manufacturing, Dormiendo said one European and one US FMCG are establishing state-of-the art manufacturing facility in the Philippines with one securing a registration with the BOI.
“P&G, [Procter&Gamble] I think na this came out in the news already so you may have read about the establishment of a new facility for diapers for export – P&G, and there’s another one that’s being registered with the BOI to be presented with FIRB for a Dutch-British FMCG naman po setting up state-of-the art personal care products,” Dormiendo explained.
She said there is also a lot of excitement in the Philippines’ hosting of a French ship builder in the country, which is just finalizing its agreement with the government for the establishment of a shipbuilding facility.
The French company has an existing domestic ship repair facility.
With regard to the President’s recent visit to China, one Chinese company will be setting up a $3.5-billion integrated steel mill in the Philippines through a tie up, Dormiendo said, adding, it will fill in the gap in terms of the country’s steel requirement.
“We also met last week a Chinese company that will be building EV facility. They plan to manufacture three types of e-vehicles in the country with more than one billion dollars’ worth of investments,” she pointed out.
Investments in electric vehicle (EV)-related industries are also gaining momentum, Dormiendo noted.
The BOI, she said, is registering Filipino-Chinese companies, which formed three companies, to set up three types of operations -- leasing and public utility servicing for e-vehicles, bringing in 10,000 e-vehicles for lease and for public utility use, as well as setting up charging stations.
“This is up for approval po with FIRB with almost one billion dollars of investments,” the BOI official said.
In terms of renewable energy, Dormiendo said officials of two Dutch companies they met in Europe on the sidelines of the President’s visit to Brussels, already visited the country for their waste-to-energy and micro hydro-power plant project in the Philippines.
Providing an update on the status of the investment commitments generated from the Presidential visits, Dormiendo said data shows the country generated around $63 billion in terms of investment commitments.
Those commitments comprised 116 projects in different stages in the approval process, with some having signed letters of intent (LOI) or memorandum of understanding (MOU), the DTI executive said. Presidential News Desk
