THE Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) is creating a technical working group to explore new income streams, the agency said in a statement Wednesday.
PEZA Director Charito B. Plaza said the new income streams will support the Department of Finance’s (DoF) revenue efforts to finance the government’s infrastructure program along with other projects in its economic agenda.
“It’s not just creating new sources of revenue but (it is also) enhancing PEZA’s ‘good governance’ goals that provides efficiency, effectiveness, responsiveness and credibility to investors, the national government, the local governments and the people in general as PEZA’s stakeholders,” she said.
“We remain steadfast in our mandate to generate investment, employment for Filipinos, and export income for our economy.”
She said that she has written to Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III for his support in evaluating potential revenue sources, and for enhanced services to be provided by the DoF’s Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), the Bureau of Customs (BoC), and the Bureau of Local Government Finance (BLGF).
PEZA said it generated P109.193 billion worth of investment in the 11 months to November, creating more than 1.5 million jobs. Its locators accounted for $45.34 billion worth of exports in the 10 months to October.
There are 404 economic zones in operation in the Philippines, with 74 classified as manufacturing economic zones, 286 IT parks and centers, 22 agro-industrial economic zones, 19 tourism economic zones, and three medical tourism parks. — Jenina P. Ibañez
