Investments in transpo and storage to surge by 2022

CEBU, Philippines — More investments into the transportation and storage segment is seen from 2020 to 2022, as the market moves into e-commerce and deliveries.

Experts from Colliers International Philippines projected that despite the pandemic, demand for industrial warehouses is seen to rise over the next 12 to 36 months due to the shift to online transactions and home delivery retailing.

“In our opinion, more modern warehouses are likely to be needed as manufacturing investments pledged in the past six to 12 months translate into space requirements,” Colliers market outlook stated.

Colliers encourages manufacturers of essential needs to look at the long- term government plans.

Earlier, the Department of Trade and Industry announced it will likely focus on domestic manufacturing of essential items such as food and healthcare supplies.

The agency is also luring more manufacturers of electronics with higher design components and features.

Colliers recommended that locators in industrial parks should look at the incentives that the government may provide and factor these into their expansion plans amid the pandemic.

Latest data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showed that foreign investments registered with the Philippines’ investment promotion agencies for the first three months of 2020 dropped by 36% to P29.4 billion (USD588 million) from P46 billion (USD920 million) in the same period in 2019.

“We attribute this to a weak global demand that started with the United States-China trade war and has since been exacerbated by the pandemic,” Colliers said.