President Marcos Jr. yesterday sought the support of members of the United States-Association of Southeast Asian Nations (US-Asean) Business Council in the Philippines’ bid to avail itself of the incentives under the US Inflation Reduction Act, a climate legislation passed in 2022 offering funding, programs, and incentives to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy and will likely drive significant deployment of new clean electricity resources.
Marcos said the incentives will “ allow us to strengthen the global supply chains of critical (minerals).”
Marcos during the courtesy call by the US-Asean Business Council relayed the Philippines’ interest to make the US a partner in terms of processing critical minerals for battery applications, such as those used for electric vehicles and power storage.
“We hope to move the Philippines from the upstream to the midstream in battery development and supply chain,” he said.
The President said the country is also pushing to increase the number of power sources that lean towards clean energy including nuclear power.
Marcos said the discussions are ongoing between the Philippines and the US about the 123 Agreement, which will provide the legal framework for civil and nuclear-related investments, particularly nuclear power in the Philippines.
He also vowed to build the necessary infrastructure to help power a growing economy, as the Philippines transitions to clean and renewable energy.
Marcos also called for stronger trade relations between the US and the Philippines especially in other critical sectors such as infrastructure, agriculture, clean energy, information technology and business process outsourcing (IT-BPO), and semi-conductors.
Marcos urged the Council members to continue being valuable partners of the Philippines, and to “push for greater economic engagement between our two countries, for our mutual benefit, for the prosperity, especially of the region.”
He also looks forward to more engagements involving both the government and private sector, especially in mobilizing financial resources for investments in key areas such as critical infrastructure, research and development, and human capital development.
Ted Osius, president and CEO of the US-Asean Business Council, said American businesses are looking forward to deepening its engagement with the Philippines.
“We look forward to deepening our engagements with your government and to create more partnerships with companies here in the Philippines. We’re very much focused and you highlight these themes on sustainable development, transformative digitalization, innovative healthcare solutions, supply chain resilience, and ease of doing business. We are determined that we come here not just to talk but also to bring a lot of action to create real partnerships and to show our commitment in the form of investments,” said Osius.#
