PH good for business
THERE’S truth to observations that investments in the Philippines won’t be affected by the current political noise in the country.
As a matter of fact, the Business Expectations Survey (BES) showed a higher confidence index (CI) for the second quarter of 2025.
Leveraging on this development, the government is urging businessmen to pour in more investments to the local economy.
The BES survey showed that business firms are more upbeat, with the overall CI increasing to 45.4 percent from 40.3 percent in the last quarter of 2024.
“That’s good news. Maganda pong pangitain po iyan, maganda po na nakikita po na dumadami pa rin po ang may tiwala sa ating pamahalaan, sa ating administrasyon para ang mga investors po ay maglaan ng kanilang mga investment sa ating bansa,” Castro said.
“The administration will try its best to maintain the status or to be better than that so that we can encourage more investors to invest in our country,” Castro said.
As confidence levels improved, the Philippines’ business community turned more optimistic for the second quarter. At the same time, optimism for the next 12 months remained steady, according to a report from the BSP survey.
For the next 12 months, the BSP said the business outlook remained buoyant, with the overall CI holding steady at 56.4 percent, unchanged from the fourth quarter 2024 survey.
Meanwhile, investment pledges in the Philippine Economic Zone Authority from January to March 2025 hit PHP58.95 billion, 249 percent higher than the PHP13.95 billion project registrations in the same period in 2024.
PEZA reported Wednesday that the pledges came from 66 projects that registered with the investment promotion agency (IPA) in the first quarter of the year.
These new and expansion projects are expected to generate 15,815 direct jobs and contribute an additional USD497.46 million to export revenues.
“PEZA’s continued upward trajectory reflects our strong commitment towards investment promotion and facilitation, coupled with our most generous fiscal incentives under the CREATE MORE, and the other advantages placing the Philippines in a sweet spot for economic growth and development,” PEZA Director General Tereso Panga said.
“PEZA continues to play a vital role in advancing the country’s economic resilience through sustained job creation, increased exports, and enhanced investment attraction,” he added.
Twenty-four projects that were registered with PEZA in Q1 2025 are manufacturing activities and another 24 are in information technology and business process management.
Ecozone development and domestic enterprises got seven projects each, while utilities and facilities activities registered two projects each.
A big chunk of PEZA-approved investment in Q1 2025 are for Calabarzon (32 projects), followed by National Capital Region (12), Central Luzon (eight), Central Visayas (eight), Davao Region (two), Ilocos Region (two), Northern Mindanao (one), and Western Visayas (one).
To date, PEZA approved PHP49.81 billion worth of big-ticket projects, or those with investments exceeding PHP1 billion.
For March alone, the PEZA board approved 27 projects with total investments of PHP6.01 billion.
Two big-ticket projects were also approved last month with aggregate pledges of PHP2.62 billion for a water treatment facility in Batangas and a coconut milk manufacturing facility in Misamis Oriental.
“We are bullish that we will sustain this upward trajectory coming into the 2nd quarter of the year as we intensify our investment promotion initiatives partnered with the CREATE MORE incentives, the most generous fiscal incentives among ASEAN to date,” Panga said.
He added that it is organizing a number of investment missions this year, including those led by the Office of the Special Assistant to the President for Economic and Investment Affairs.
“We already received several inquiries and hosted inbound delegations from US, Japan, China, Taiwan, and Spain who are interested in investing in the ecozones. We are anticipating the influx of more investors looking into the Philippines for their offshore operations in Asia,” Panga said.
