INVESTMENT pledges made by foreign and Filipino firms in Investment Promotion Agencies (IPAs) grew 20.7 percent in 2019, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
Data showed foreign and Filipino firms pledged a total of P1.31 trillion in 2019, higher than the P1.08 trillion posted in 2018.
PSA data showed that foreign investment pledges surged 112.8 percent to P390.11 billion in 2019, from P183.35 billion in 2018.
Filipino investment pledges, which accounted for 70.2 percent of total pledges last year, grew 2 percent to P918.98 billion from P900.81 billion in 2018.
In the fourth quarter, total approved investment pledges from foreign and Filipino firms contracted 31.9 percent to P412.2 billion in 2019, from P605.07 billion in 2018.
During the year, total approved investments peaked in the third quarter at P515.71 billion, which was 187.7 percent higher than the P179.26 billion in the third quarter of 2018.
In the last quarter of 2019, foreign investments grew 17.3 percent to P112.11 billion from P95.55 billion in the same period in 2018.
Employment creation
In terms of projected employment creation, PSA data showed jobs that would be generated from these investment pledges contracted 6.96 percent.
Data showed jobs to be created from these investments reached 178,954 in 2019, lower than the 192,335 jobs projected to be created from pledges made in 2018.
In the fourth quarter, PSA data showed total projected job generation contracted 23 percent to 55,946 in 2019 from 72,630 in 2018.
In terms of foreign investment pledges for 2019, these would generate around 129,610 jobs. This was an 8.8-percent contraction from the 142,091 jobs projected to be created from 2018 investment pledges.
Jobs created from foreign investment pledges approved in the last quarter of 2019 contracted 9.3 percent to 44,082 jobs from 48,590 in the same period in 2018.
Foreign investors
PSA data showed the largest share of foreign investment pledges came from Singapore, China and South Korea.
In 2019, Singapore investors pledged P176.36 billion, which accounted for 45.2 percent of the total foreign investment pledges in 2019.
PSA data showed this represented a surge in growth of about 732.6 percent from P21.18 billion in 2018.
Other major investors in 2019 came from China and South Korea, accounting for 22.7 percent and 10.6 percent, respectively, of the total pledges last year.
China posted a 74.9-percent growth in investment pledges to P88.67 billion in 2019 from P50.69 billion in 2018.
South Korea, meanwhile, posted a growth of over 2,000 percent in its investment pledges to P41.48 billion in 2019 from P1.88 billion in 2018.
Image credits: Nonie Reyes