growth

the cab and chassis and sell them to other vehicle body builders.

“Kagandahan nito, pwede silang magbenta ng cab lang at chassis. ‘Yong mga Philippine companies na nagbubuo, ‘yong mga gumagawa ay mabubuhay ulit (What’s good about it is they can sell cab and chassis only. Those Philippine companies that are into vehicle assembly, they will be revived),” he said.

The trade chief added this project will also support the Toyota’s mobility solutions that was launched last year.

from Korea,” Pascual said.

Although Marcos has been criticized by some groups for his successive travels abroad, Pascual said the trips have yielded billions in dollars of investment pledges.

His most recent working visit to Japan gathered some $13 billion or P700 billion in pledges that could materialize within the year, Pascual said.

“The beauty of the pledges is that many of them had discussions with partners in the Phil- ippines. It’s very proximate that we will have the investments happening within the year for many of them,” he said.

“It keeps us busy and trying our best to be good salesman for the country. The best salesman of course is our President who had the opportunity to declare that the Philippines is open for business and that we have an enabling environment to support our invitation to foreign investors to take a look at the Philippines,” he added.

During the official working visit of President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. to Japan last week, Toyota Motors Philippines (TMP) president Atsuhiro Okamoto presented the PHP4.4-billion investments of the company, which will involve bringing back the local assembly of Tamaraw.

TMP vice president Rommel Gutierrez said the PHP4.4 billion investments will cover vehicle production and parts localization.

Aside from the assembly of Tamaraw, Pascual said TMP will manufacture

Moreover, Gutierrez said TMP’s Toyota Mobility Light Commercial Vehicle (LCV) will be the new-generation Tamaraw, which is the first Asian utility vehicle introduced in the 1970s.

“There is a rising demand for LCVs and TMP sees this as an opportunity to provide a more suitable and affordable option for Filipino entrepreneurs. Localization of the model will also allow TMP to respond to the specific conversion requirements/specialized needs of Philippine customers,” he said.