P344-billion investment leads in the pipeline: BOI

Trade Secretary Alfredo Pascual said Saturday the Board of Investments (BOI) has investment leads of PHP344 billion, which would allow the agency to hit its target before the year ends.

“So far, the agency has potential investment leads of around PHP344 billion that will still be processed, and more likely than never, we may have 80 to 90 percent of the target even before the middle of the year,” Pascual, who also chairs the BOI, said in a statement.

The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) is targeting to return to the PHP1 trillion level in investment approvals in 2023.

From January to Feb. 9 alone, the BOI approved PHP414.3 billion worth

Marcos admin bats for ‘innovative, sustainable’ manufacturing sector

The Marcos administration is making the manufacturing sector innovative and sustainable in an effort to entice more foreign investors and make the Philippines a prime investment destination, a Trade official said over the weekend.

Lanie Dormiendo, director for the International Investments Promotion Service of the Board of Investments (BOI), said manufacturing is one of the priority sectors that the administration intends to develop.

of projects, which is 142.9 percent higher than the PHP170.5 billion investment approvals in the same period last year.

Pascual added that some of these investment leads are offshoots of the

“We are really aggressively promoting innovative and sustainable manufacturing and services,” Dormiendo said, noting that the government is putting a premium on “high-value” manufacturing activities such as electric vehicle (EV) assembly, battery manufacturing and mineral processing.

“We want to attract foreign investors to do a higher value activity to do mineral processing, and then attract battery manufacturers and eventually the EV assemblers and EV manufacturers,” she added. Dormiendo said the country has “a lot of minerals” that can be processed to form part of batteries, not only for EVs but also for battery energy storage systems.

She also said the government wants to capitalize on the country’s available resources instead of exporting them to China and Japan as raw minerals.

In terms of sustainable infrastructure and services, the Marcos administration is “actively” promoting renewable energy (RE), Dormiendo said.

She noted that late last year, the Department of Energy amended the implementing rules and regulation of Republic Act 9513, otherwise known as the Renewable Energy Act of