THE Board of Investments (BOI) will start accepting applications for government incentives under the new 2008 Investment Priorities Plan (IPP) today, confident that it will be able to publish the specific guidelines within the week.

Trade Undersecretary and BOI managing head Elmer Hernandez said investors who believe that their proposed projects would qualify for a host of fiscal and nonfiscal perks under the 2008 listing can now apply for registration as the agency has up to 20 days anyway to process their applications, long enough to give way for the publication of the required guidelines.

The new IPP, which was published by Malacañang on May 15, is set to become effective today. Technically, however, it still needs the accompanying specific guidelines to become valid. The guidelines becomes effective upon publication.

“So we are trying our best to publish the guidelines on Monday,” Hernandez told the BusinessMirror over the weekend.

Hernandez said the BOI had a hard time finishing the guidelines because the new IPP is a lot different from the previous listing, not just in the covered preferred types of investments, but also on the new policies on which projects will qualify for income-tax holidays (ITH)—considered as the most important incentive.

The 2008 IPP, described by Hernandez as a more focused listing to address both the administration’s fiscal consolidation thrust and the need to attract more investments in targeted areas, narrowed to only six the number of preferred activities from the previous 12.

The new IPP considers as preferred activities agriculture/agribusiness and fishery, infrastructure, tourism, research and development, engineered products, and strategic activities.

The strategic activities, which was proposed by the Foreign Chambers of the Philippines in earlier petitions, is the newest addition and covers activities with a minimum project-investment cost of $300 million, must employ at least 1,000 employees or will use high-level technology, and should be a major project of a global company that the Philippines fought against other countries for to become the regional hub.

Still covered in the IPP mandatory inclusions are export activities both for goods and services, industrial tree plantation, exploration, mining, quarrying, and processing of minerals; printing, publication and content development of books or textbooks; refining, storage, marketing and distribution of petroleum products; ecological solid- waste management, projects falling under the Clean Water Act, those for the development and self-reliance of disabled persons, and projects in the list of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Not all projects that are listed in the IPP will get ITH and the specific guidelines will detail which are these.

“The coverage of the ITH is really the problematic part, which is why we had a hard time finishing the guidelines,” Hernandez said.

THE Board of Investments (BOI) will start accepting applications for government incentives under the new 2008 Investment Priorities Plan (IPP) today, confident that it will be able to publish the specific guidelines within the week.

THE World Bank (WB) Group will allot an additional $6 billion in its next fiscal year to increase its support for global agriculture and food and will launch risk-management tools, as well as crop insurance for poor countries and small holders in developing economies.

A SENIOR House leader warned Sunday that if Congress fails to extend the land acquisition and distribution (LAD) component of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) before it expires on June 10, 2008, it would virtually kill CARP in violation of the Constitution.

PRODUCERS of processed meat such as corned beef, hot dogs and luncheon meat, face the possibility of having to pay more for imported buffalo meat due to a tightness in international supply.

ALTHOUGH endowed with the natural resources to become a top tourism spot in the region, Puerto Princesa City in Palawan could not go on a promotions campaign abroad because it lacks the needed infrastructure to accommodate the influx of tourists.

THE National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) has canceled over the weekend a compliance certificate it earlier gave to Platinum Group Metals Corp. (PGMC) and said it would reissue a new one to Citinickel Mines and Development Corp. on the nickel-rich Palawan mining concession, which the two firms are currently contesting.