The Board of Investments (BOI), after missing its target in 2023, has set a conservative aim of P1.3 trillion to P1.5 trillion investment registrations in 2024, banking on renewable energy and equipment manufacturing, mineral processing as well as infusions from preferential trade and traditional partners like the United States, Japan, Korea and the European Union.
This early, the BOI has a pipeline of P930 billion investments for possible registration.
Ceferino Rodolfo, BOI managing head, said in a press conference over the weekend this year’s target represents a 10-percent increase from the actual registration in 2023 of P1.26 trillion, the highest in the agency’s 56-year history and a 73 percent increase from P729 billion in 2022.
But the BOI missed the P1.5 trillion target the agency set for the year but still hurdled the P995.59 billion submitted under the National Expenditure Plan.
Rodolfo said two projects with a combined value of P272 billion were filed and evaluated in 2023 but were not approved pending compliance with certain requirements.
These are a solar energy power project worth P200 billion and a combined cycle gas turbine power plant valued at P72 billion.
Ernie delos Reyes, director for the One-Stop Action Center for Strategic Investments of the BOI, in the same briefing said in the pipeline are P370- billion projects certified for green lane processing and P360 billion for evaluation. The P200-billion solar energy power project is an incoming application.
Trade Secretary Alfredo Pascual, BOI chairman, noted that a bigger proportion of the approvals are foreign investments rather than local investments, which historically dominated approvals.
Pascual said around 60 percent of P767 billion are foreign investments.
“In this context, we are really hopeful that at the end of the President’s term, we would be the second biggest destination of foreign direct investments (FDI) in Southeast Asia,” Rodolfo said.
Pascual has expressed support to the proposal to amend certain economic provisions of the Constitution but said it is difficult to do proceed with the plan.
“We’ve been talking about this for years,” Pascual said, when sought for comment on how critical the charter change in achieving the target of being the second largest FDI recipient in the region.
Pascual said as the Constitution remains the fundamental law of the land, the government highlights reforms undertaken in easing some ownership restrictions when they talk to foreign investors.
“The environment changes. For a short period of time, we can allow foreign investors to come in at 100 percent but once the industry gets saturated, you have to close the gate. By law, you can do that but when you put that in the Constitution, you can no longer change it. It removes the flexibility,” Pascual said.