The Board of Investments (BOI) has approved P734 billion investments from January to September, up by 102 percent from P362 billion during the same period last year, according to Ceferino Rodolfo, undersecretary of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).
Rodolfo, in a briefing after the sectoral meeting presided by President Marcos Jr. in Malacanang yesterday, said 80 percent of the approved investments or P427 billion are foreign direct investments (FDIs).
Rodolfo said many of these FDIs resulted from the foreign trips of the President.
Rodolfo said there was a 4,150 percent increase in FDIs from January to September this year compared to last year.
He said FDIs now account for 60 percent of the total direct investments, up from 20 percent last year while the share of local investments has gone down to 40 percent from 80 percent last year.
“It’s not that we don’t value our local investors. It just means that investments in general are increasing,” Rodolfo said.
Rodolfo said many of the FDIs are from European countries, including from those that have yet to be visited by Marcos.
He said an example is Germany which invested heavily on renewable energy in the country. The President has yet to visit Germany but has met German investors during a roundtable meeting with European investors at the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian nations-European Union Summit in Brussels in December last year.
Rodolfo said around 90 percent of the approved FDIs are in the development of renewable energy (RE). Of the RE investments, 80 percent are from Germany, followed by East Asian countries like Japan and South Korea.
He said the other investments are in telecommunications, mineral processing and high-technology manufacturing projects.
Rodolfo said investors from China, Korea and Japan are keen on mineral processing, particularly nickel.
Of the 130 project commitments generated from the presidential visits, 9 have so far materialized.
Rodolfo expects four to five more projects are expected to be realized in the coming months.
