The Philippine Economic Zone Authority (Peza) is confident that investment approvals could reach a new high in 2026, having already secured nearly three-fourths of its P300-billion full-year target with four months to spare.
At its current pace, the investment promotion agency could surpass the record P312 billion in investment approvals registered in 2012, according to Peza Director General Tereso Panga.
‘That will allow us to reach the highest [investment approvals] based on our historical performance,’ Panga said, pointing to the agency’s performance as of August.
Peza had approved P216.46 billion worth of investments in the first eight months, equivalent to 72.16 percent of its full-year target.
Breaking the P312-billion record would bring investment approvals back to levels last seen during what Panga had described as Peza’s ‘heydays’ under the administration of President Benigno ‘Noynoy’Aquino III.
From 2011 to 2015, the agency approved an average of about P290 billion in investments annually.
Panga is drawing confidence partly from big-ticket projects already in Peza’s investment pipeline.
The agency is also seeing heightened interest from foreign investors in Philippine ecozones, where qualified enterprises can avail themselves of fiscal and nonfiscal incentives, including income tax holidays and duty-free importation of capital equipment and raw materials.
‘We’re getting a lot of heightened interest, because this time, not only are investors coming from China, there’s also from Taiwan,’ Panga said. ‘We see also some movements from companies putting up redundancies in the Philippines out of Vietnam.’
Panga said investments from Japan were likewise ‘bouncing back.’
Japan was Peza’s largest source of foreign investment pledges in 2025, accounting for P32.6 billion out of the P107.06 billion committed by overseas investors that year.
As of August this year, Peza identified the Netherlands, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan among its biggest foreign sources of investments.
‘Probably it’s because of restored confidence in the Philippines,’ Panga said, pointing to Japan’s participation in the Luzon Economic Corridor, which began as a trilateral initiative among the Philippines, Japan and the United States before expanding to include more international partners.
Manufacturing will also be crucial to Peza’s bid for a banner year, Panga said.