by Julito G. Rada
The Board of Investments on Wednesday said it would rely on big-ticket projects from other sectors to meet its investment target for 2012 after the energy sector was delisted from the proposed 2012 Investment Priorities Plan.
Trade Undersecretary Cristino Panlilio said that with the delisting of energy from the IPP, the agency was looking at tourism, shipbuilding, mass housing, mining and agriculture. Energy was among the high-performing sectors that generated significant investments last year.
“This year will be a challenging year for us especially after the energy sector was removed from the IPP list. We must take note that we came from a big base last year after the BoI posted P368 billion worth of investments,” Panlilio told Manila Standard.
The BoI, however, still favors giving incentives to renewable energy which was in the mandatory list under the Renewable Energy Act.
The 2011 investment haul was 35 percent higher than the P302 billion recorded in 2010. Panlilio said earlier the agency was eyeing at least P400 billion worth of investments in 2012.
Top-performing sectors that generated majority of the BoI investments last year were low-cost mass housing at P72.688 billion with net value added of 85 percent to 99 percent. It included raw materials such as bathroom and kitchen fixtures as well as elevators and generators.
Other high-performing sectors were energy, with total approved investments of P87.785 billion; mining, P63.286 billion; tourism projects, P10.832 billion; and agriculture, P1.917 billion.
The biggest chunk of BoI investments for 2011 went to Central Luzon at 22 percent generating P82.851 billion. The others were in the National Capital Region, at 20 percent; Region 4 (Southern Luzon), 13 percent; Region 13 (Caraga), 13 percent; and Region 11 (Southern Mindanao), 10 percent.
Panlilio said the BoI “should work [extra] hard now because of these latest developments” to meet its investment target in 2012.
He said the agency would be conducting intensified investment promotions overseas to attract more foreign investors into the country.
(Published in the Manila Standard Today newspaper on /2012/february/23.)
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