The five-day investment promotion mission of the Philippine Economic Zone Authority in Japan last month has secured a P10.8 billion investment commitment from various Japanese firms, the investment promotion agency reported Monday.

Broken down, the P10.8 billion expansion investments will come from Japanese companies namely the global medical device company, Terumo Corporation (P1 billion); Japanese materials and electronics company, Taiyo Yuden (P1.6 billion); electronic components company TDK Corporation (P7.2 billion), and manufacturing firm Almex Technologies (P1 billion).

According to PEZA director-general Tereso Panga, the latest addition of Japanese investments has further solidified the P111.207 billion in investments already approved by the PEZA Board for the first nine months of 2023, and expansion announcements by some of PEZA's biggest locators such as Knowles (Philippines) Electronics Corporation, Terumo, Wipro Philippines, Inc., and Isla Import Terminals, Inc.

Panga said Taiyo Yuden CO., LTD. has an investment plan to operate their business in Taiyo Yuden (Philippines), Inc., which has been operating as PEZA locator since 1989.

"The ongoing investment plan (Taiyo Yuden) covers the calendar year 2023-2024, with the total investment amounting to P1.6 billion. This signifies a continued era of trust and confidence in the country's investment facilitation climate,"

The Metal Power Inductor is Taiyo Yuden's newly patented product with cutting-edge technology, and the Philippine facility is the first manufacturing site aside from the facilities in Japan.

The new product is the world's first multilayer-type metal power inductor with the latest multilayer technology and its unique metal material characteristics.

On the other hand, the TDK Corporation, an electronics manufacturing company that uses leading magnetic technology will have its first expansion from 2023 to 2026 while its second expansion will begin in 2024.

TDK's new product is a biomagnetic sensor for monitoring heartbeats.

"2023 is proving to mark the significant rise of the semiconductor industry with several industry leaders proceeding with their expansion plans to address the projected demand in their products due to the rise of the electronic vehicle industry and steady technological advancements in the downsizing of gadgets and their parts," said Panga.

He added: "PEZA will make sure that the country will be poised to receive these investments as we have a small window to get the manufacturing of new high-tech products into the Philippines given the competitiveness of the industry." added the Director General.

Meanwhile, PEZA also explored new strategic areas of collaboration with Kiraboshi Bank, one of the leading regional banks in Tokyo, and with the Organization for Small and Medium Enterprises and Regional Innovation, JAPAN, a government agency under the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in charge of supporting the needs of Japanese SMEs.

Further, PEZA entered a Memorandum of Understanding with NEOJAPAN that will allow PEZA to use NEOJAPAN's desknet's NEO and Appsuite, free of charge to PEZA until the end of 2023.

"Our top country investor, Japan, has a total of P766.550 billion investments from 1995 to June 2023 making up for 27.37 percent of PEZA's overall investments by country. This investment comes from 877 Japanese locators with 339,751 direct employment as of May 2023 and exports of $6.370 billion from January to May this year," Panga said.