Exports of economic zone locators grew 3 percent as of August this year bolstering confidence of the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) it could hit its revised higher target of 11-11-11 percent growth for its investments, exports and employment this year.
Elmer San Pascual, Philippine Economic Zone Agency spokespersons, said that exports reached $27.83 billion posted in the same period last year.
San Pascual said that 50 percent of the exports registered in the first half of the year came from the electronics sector and 27 percent from the general manufacturing sector.
Exports from the It sector contributed 13 percent and the transport sector with the remaining 4 percent.
Definitely, we can achieve in investments and 11 percent in employment,” he said.
PEZA’s total direct employment in 2010 was also over 20 percent to 728,318 from 606,350 jobs in 2009.
He, however, hinted some difficulties for the exports in the last quarter of the year is expected to offset the slowdown in growth earlier in the year.
“So, we are optimistic that we will gain in the last quarter of the year,” he said. Traditionally though the last year has the highest growth in the year.
Early this month, PEZA Director General Lilia B. De Lima has decided to revise growth target this year to 11-11-11 percent for investments, exports and employment on back of strong growth in the past months.
De Lima told reporters they have decided to adjust the target after hitting P113.603 billion in investment approvals in the January-August period this year or 60 percent higher than the P70.958 billion a year ago.
The investment generation represented the project cost of a total of 426 export-oriented projects. The number of projects, De Lima said, was 28 percent higher than 332 projects as registered in the same January-August period last year. These projects are expected to generate $23.941 billion in annual exports once they go into full commercial operation. The exports projection was 2 percent higher than the $23.394 billion estimated exports from the 332 projects approved last year.
Employment in PEZA also increased 14 percent to 808,735 in the first eight months of the year from 711,839 a year ago.
Originally, PEZA had set a conservative 10-10-10 percent growth targets for 2011 for investments, jobs and exports over 2010.
In setting the original growth targets, De Lima said they have to tame their projections because they were coming from a very high growth base in 2010 of P204.394 billion or 16.55 percent higher than 2009.
In terms of exports, the agency reported a 24.05 percent increase in exports sales to $36.996 billion for the January-November period of 2010 year compared to the full year 2009 exports of $29.824 billion.
According to De Lima, investments growth driver would still be electronics and It. The country’s booming tourism sector is also expected to give a boost to the tourism ecozones while investments in agrizones are also expected to contribute in 2011.

Source: Manila Bulletin - October 2, 2011