DTI unveils new marketing drive

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has unveiled a new marketing campaign to position the country as an attractive and reliable place for trade and investments.

Priority investment areas being pushed under the campaign are the electronics, automotive, aerospace, copper and information technology - business process management (IT-BPM) sectors.

Speaking at the virtual soft launch of the “Make It Happen in the Philippines” campaign in Australia and New Zealand yesterday, Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez said the new international marketing campaign is the country’s first unified multi-sector and multi-market branding effort primarily designed to generate foreign investment leads.

While an international launch would be held for the campaign on Nov.24, it is already featured in the recently developed multilingual digital promotional platform www.philippines.business.

Lopez said the campaign has been developed and tested with international investors in China, US and the UK.

Apart from generating investor interest in the Philippines, he said the campaign would also highlight the country’s strength and adaptability to weather challenges brought by the coronavirus disease pandemic.

“We are confident that our new ‘Make it Happen in the Philippines’ campaign will promote our country’s ‘roll-up-your-sleeves’ and ‘make-it-work’ mindset. This attitude is what makes the Philippines a unique and attractive investment landscape for strategic sectors in the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) region for foreign investors,” he said.

He said there are opportunities available in the different priority investment areas.

In electronics, he said investment opportunities are available in manufacturing, chip design, original product design and development works for cutting-edge products and technologies in healthcare, automotive, and aerospace, as well as autonomous vehicle batteries and smart wearables.

While the Philippine automotive industry is already integrated with major global value chains, Lopez said the country would want to do more and to have a future-ready automotive sector.

Given the Philippines’ aerospace manufacturing capabilities which include flight control actuation systems, interiors, lavatories, galleys, oxygen systems, panel assembly, and product design engineering, and its maintenance, repair, overhaul operations, he said the country is ready to become a state-of-the-art hub for the sector.

As the Philippines serves as one of the world’s largest producers of copper with reserves of around four billion metric tons and has technical expertise in extraction, he said the country is well placed to manufacture and export a range of copper-based goods including copper ore, copper wires, cables and harnesses.