Cebu logged P27.9B investments

By Mia A. Aznar

Sunday, March 25, 2012

CEBU benefitted from P27.904 billion in investments and 144,253 new jobs last year, a report from the Cebu Investment Assistance Network of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) showed.

The Board of Investments (BOI) registered around P12.237 billion for 19 projects while the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (Peza) recorded some P15.66 billion from projects in economic zones and IT parks and IT buildings.

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The DTI also registered 12,750 new business names for the year.

The 19 projects registered at the BOI include mass housing, tourism-related projects, steel bars and steel billet, cement and motorcycle assembly, providing 4,110 new jobs.

New mass housing projects totaled P5.9 billion and provided 3,026 jobs. Steel bars and steel billet investments cost P4 billion and employed 350 workers while cement manufacturing cost P1 billion and provided jobs to 431 workers.

Economic zones accounted for P8.837 billion in investments and 103,593 new jobs.

The electronics sector saw two new original projects, two expansions and four new projects by existing locators. As for the other manufacturing sectors, these brought in 12 new projects and companies, six expansions and 17 new projects by existing locators.

New projects

IT parks and IT buildings contributed P6.830 billion in investments, with the IT-BPO sector seeing 24 new projects, two expansions and five new projects by existing locators.

These 24 new projects include three in data encoding and transcribing, five in software development, three in engineering, architecture and other design services, six in business process outsourcing, four call centers, and three other IT-enabled services, which allowed for 36,550 new employees.

Peza reported P4.017 billion in exports and P3.380 billion in imports last year.

Economic zones accounted for P3.6 billion in export values, with 61.54 percent of the amount coming from the Mactan Ecozone I.

Of the 398.49 million in exports from IT parks and IT buildings, three IT parks contributed 71.31 percent while 16 IT buildings forked out 28.69 percent of the exports.

As for the imports, economic zones contributed P3.369 billion while the IT parks and IT buildings imported a combined P10.51 million.

Published in the Sun.Star Cebu newspaper on March 26, 2012.