BOI investments soar 218% in 1st 5 months

The Board of Investments (BOI) is in a strong position to exceed its P50-billion investment target for this year, with actual inflows from January to May soaring by a dramatic 218.3 percent to P33.31 billion from only P10.464 billion in the same period last year.

The BOI said the latest capital inflow generated employment for 12,189 workers nationwide.

For the five-month period, total equity approved by the BOI amounted to P17.6 billion, a whopping 371-percent increase over the P3.75 billion posted in the same period last year.

The bulk of this amount, or P15.53 billion, according to the BOI, was contributed by local investors, while the remaining P2.15 billion came from foreign investors.

The top foreign investors were from Japan, Australia and Singapore.

Sources said the increase in investment was mostly in the area of information and communications technology (ICT).

They said that based on the actual investments that came in during the five-month period, government is more optimistic that it will be able to hit its P50-billion investment target for the whole of 2001.

There have been fears that investments in the country will be adversely affected following the political upheaval at the start of the year and the renewed kidnappings in the south.

But the government’s thrust of promoting the ICT sector, sources said, had created the much needed impetus to attract investor interest.

Aside from ICT, government had also been trying to generate interest in small and medium enterprises (SMEs).