Marcos foreign trips drum up P4 trillion in investments

MANILA, Philippines — President Marcos’ 11 foreign trips this year have drummed up over P4 trillion in investments or 148 projects as of Dec. 21, according to monitoring done by the Department of Trade and Industry.

The DTI described the investments as business investment promotion agency registered with operations worth P11.4 billion, business/IPA registered (P54.75 billion) and IPA registration in progress operations (P282.8 billion).

Meanwhile, investments that already have a signed agreement were valued at P544.152 billion, while those with a signed memorandum of understanding (MOU) of letter of intent (LOI) were valued at P1.588 trillion.

Finally, those confirmed but not covered by MOUs/LOIs and still in the planning stage are pegged at P1.522 trillion.

Aside from these, the DTI said it is monitoring about 20 projects – including those made on Marcos’ recent trip to Japan – that have been approved and registered with its IPAs, the Board of Investments (BOI) and the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA).

“These investments, realized and in the pipeline, are mostly in the sectors of manufacturing, IT-BPM (information technology and business process management), renewable energy, data centers and telecommunications,” the DTI said.

It also reported three signed agreements “with clear financial project value” from business engagements during the President’s visit to Japan for the ASEAN-Japan Commemorative Summit worth $85.07 million and six MOU/LOI valued at $178.01 million.

In its Dec. 14 update, the DTI said Marcos’ visit last month to the United States for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders’ Meeting was added to its monitoring, adding P37.2 billion to the total value and six to the total project.

These include a P2.2-billion investment in telecommunications, P110 million in artificial intelligence, P13 billion in manufacturing, P1.1 billion in health sciences/pharma manufacturing/health services, P16 million in energy and an undisclosed amount for another investment in health sciences/pharma manufacturing/health services.

These projects comprise signed agreements with clear financial values and MOUs/LOIs.