More than P140 billion in fresh investments and close to 189,000 jobs — that is the payoff the Marcos administration is projecting from its expanding roster of proclaimed economic zones, most of them planted outside the country’s urban core.
The Office of the Executive Secretary said the count of ecozones covered by presidential proclamations has climbed to 46. Only three sit in Metro Manila, a split the office tied to the administration’s aim of steering investment into the countryside. Luzon holds 29 of the zones, the Visayas 12, and Mindanao five.
Executive Secretary Recto cast the strategy as a way to keep Filipinos earning without uprooting them. “With these, businesses can go to where local talent is, boosting local economic activity, without workers having to leave their hometowns for costly and crammed urban centers,” he said in a statement. Singling out three provinces, he added: “More jobs and more opportunities will come to Cavite, Batangas and Negros Oriental. The economy of the provinces will be stronger and the lives of our countrymen will be uplifted continuously.”
The four newest issuances are expected to account for nearly P9.7 billion of that total. Two enlarged existing zones in Southern Tagalog, while the other two established new ones in Batangas and Negros Oriental.
Signed July 6, Proclamation No. 1337 absorbed parcels in Barangays Punta I and Sahud-Ulan in Tanza, Cavite into the Suntrust Ecotown Tanza-Special Economic Zone, where 62 PEZA-registered firms already employ 6,322 people. The expansion is pegged to draw about P851 million and open some 2,200 jobs.
Also dated July 6, Proclamation No. 1338 widened the Light Industry & Science Park IV-Special Economic Zone in Malvar, Batangas, home to 43 PEZA-registered firms and roughly 1,769 workers. Recto’s office called the move central to unlocking P8.5 billion in committed investments and adding 200 jobs while sustaining the province’s standing as a manufacturing hub.
Proclamation No. 1340 stood up the Robinsons Dumaguete I.T. Park in Negros Oriental, which the office said already has a prospective locator prepared to invest P288 million and hire 1,500 workers.
The last of the batch, Proclamation No. 1385, designated the Biz Hub at LIMA Estate in Lipa City, Batangas as an information technology zone, with a prospective locator seen putting in P52.5 million for 110 hires.
Ecozones serve as designated areas where firms can tap fiscal and non-fiscal incentives, calibrated to a business’s location and the government’s priority industries.
