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THE
government will focus its investment road shows in the
region as “it is where the money is right now” and also
to save on cost this year.
Trade
Undersecretary and Board of Investments (BOI) managing
head Elmer C. Hernandez said among the neighboring
countries they are looking at for aggressive investment
promotions are Taiwan, Singapore, Japan and South Korea.
“There’s
a lot of money in these countries and their businessmen
are really going out to invest so we have to tell them
more about the Philippines,” Hernandez told the
BusinessMirror.
Also,
Hernandez said based on their computations, the cost
they will be incurring in one investment promotion
sortie in
Europe will be equal to three road shows in
Singapore or Taiwan.
Aside
from this, the chances of luring investors from Europe
and from the neighboring countries to put up businesses
in the Philippines are just the same.
“Actually if you consider
Taiwan,
the opportunity is better because the renewed confidence
of the Taiwanese businessmen for the Philippines,”
Hernandez said.
Since
last year, Subic and Clark have been receiving big
investments from Taiwanese firms after the Philippines
and Taiwan signed their economic corridor agreement.
The deal
gives special concessions to Taiwanese firms, aside from
giving their products the opportunity to access the
Southeast Asian market with the lower Asean-Common
Effective Preferential Tariff rates.
However,
Hernandez said Europe and North America will continue to
be on the list of targeted countries for road shows.
“It will
still be business as usual for
Europe and
America. We will continue to go there every time the
need arises,” Hernandez said. |
