The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) still expects more jobs to be created from investment pledges made by Filipinos and foreign investors at the height of the COVID-19-induced lockdown during the first and second quarter of 2020.
Based on the approved foreign and Filipino investments through Investment Promotion Agencies (IPAs), investments of foreign and Filipino nationals that cleared the hurdle amounted to P691.2 billion (US$14.3 billion) in the first semester, higher by 81.3 percent than the P381.2 billion (US$7.9 billion) committed in the same period last year.
With the approved investments in the first semester of 2020, the government expects approximately a little more than 72,000 jobs to be created, a 0.4 percent increased compared to last year. The most number of jobs is expected to be created within the manufacturing sector.
“Manufacturing would absorb the most number of jobs for the period, with 26,667 or 36.7 percent of the projected total for the semester,” PSA said.
This would be followed by the transportation and storage sector, which in turn expects to raise a total of over 20,000 jobs; or 28.6 percent of the total jobs created from investment pledges.
Administrative and support services activities are another sector in which new jobs would be created by these investment pledges. It is speculated that these sectors will see an increase of about 17,000 jobs, or a share of 24.4 percent of total jobs.
For investments approved in the second quarter, PSA said around 36,572 jobs will be created. This is 21.4 percent higher than the 30,135 jobs expected from the investments approved in the same period in 2019.
PSA said of these anticipated jobs, around 21,000 or 59.7 percent would be generated by projects with foreign interest.
At the same time, of the total approved investments for the first semester, data has shown that up to 90.5 percent were provided by Filipino investors with an estimated investment value of P646.6 billion (US$13.4 billion).
