Joint Foreign Chambers revises FDI projection from $50b to $128b
Showing confidence in the Philippine economy’s growth trajectory, the 7-body Joint Foreign Chambers (JFC) recently revised its foreign direct investment target of $50 billion to $128 billion by 2023.
JFC which is composed of trading partners in Europe and the United States said it revised its 2020 target of $50 billion in foreign direct investments to $128 billion by 2030. JFC added $78 billion to account for the “current levels of competitiveness.”
In 2021, the Philippines attracted a net inflow of FDI of $10.52 billion surging by 54.2%.
During the same year, the country garnered a total of P192.34 billion FDI pledges.
Ebb Hinchliffe, executive director at American Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines, said that this was only possible due to the legislative performance in the past year. The former Duterte administration passed legislation such as the Public Services Act, which eased foreign ownership restrictions on certain sectors.
“I spent a summer in Washington, DC for three weeks just telling people that the Philippines is open for business.” he said noting that $128 billion is an “under-estimate.”
The JFC also reaffirmed its previous target of generating 3 million jobs in the country between 2021 to 2030.
“We saw a lot of foreign investment into the BPO industry, what we need now is investments into the manufacturing sector and some of the other sectors,” he said.
