The Philippine Economic Zone Authority (Peza) aims to establish more economic zones next year, with the investment promotion agency looking at new growth areas such as Central Luzon, Cebu and Mindanao.
“Ideally, we are looking at 30 economic zones that can be proclaimed by the office of the president,” Peza Director General Tereso Panga told reporters during a press briefing in Makati last week.
The Peza chief also said that they are looking to establish the planned economic zones in rural areas.
“The ones that are really making a big push for this are agriculture [firms] because agriculture [firms] are really into more resource-seeking types of investment,” he said.
Aside from that, Panga said that they also want to establish more IT parks.
According to Panga, each economic zone has a set minimum land area of 25 hectares, a property size that would need an investment of P1 billion to P2 billion to develop.
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Expansion
“Under the current administration, we are doing 16 proclamations [every year]. If we can double it, then that will definitely stimulate production as well as economic activities,” Panga said.
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A total of 27 new economic zones or expansions have been proclaimed so far under the Marcos administration.
To date, there are 427 operating economic zones in various locations across the Philippines.
This year, Peza approved P214.18 billion worth of investments inside their economic zones.
These newly approved investments are expected to create 72,469 direct jobs and to boost the country’s annual exports by $4.66 billion. INQ
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