The Department of Finance (DOF) has invited businessmen from Japan’s Kyushu Economic Federation (Kyukeiren) to take part in the development of the Philippines’s “fast-growing” economy, persuading them to invest in the cement and steel industries vital for the implementation of the “Build, Build, Build” (BBB) infrastructure program of the Duterte administration.
“We would like to invite Kyushu businessmen, under your leadership, to make some serious investments here,” Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III told Kyukeiren President Yutaka Aso at a recent meeting. Also present during the meeting was Japanese Ambassador to the Philippines Koji Haneda.
Dominguez informed Aso that besides focusing on three priorities—which are to reduce poverty, make Filipino citizens more law-abiding like in Japan and ensure peace within the country’s borders and with its neighbors—the Duterte administration is also committed to further open up the economy to foreign investments.
He also told Aso that opening up the economy, along with accelerating state spending on BBB, will help achieve the Duterte administration’s first priority of reducing poverty incidence to just 14 percent by 2022.
“[Through the BBB], we can create good jobs and interconnect regions so that far-flung areas can find major markets for their products here in the Metro Manila area,” the finance chief added.
On the administration’s second priority of making its citizens more law-abiding, Dominguez said the war against illegal drugs is only one aspect of achieving this goal, as the government has also embarked on a no-nonsense campaign against tax evaders and is now putting in place measures to ensure that foreign nationals working here pay the correct taxes.
To achieve the third goal of peace, he pointed out that the government pushed for, among others, the passage of a new Bangsamoro Organic Law to encourage Islamic separatists in Mindanao to return to the government fold, and enhanced
relations with its Asian neighbors, such as Japan, China and South Korea and with the Philippines’s fellow members in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean).
“I come here quite constantly, your economy, it is booming and flourishing. And very impressive, especially all the service industries, the standard of their quality is very high,” Aso said.
Kyukeiren is a regional, integrated economic organization in Japan with membership of about 970 companies, the federation was established in 1961 to spur Kyushu’s economy and unify its business community.