Trade group wants PEZA chief retained

The Philippine Exporters Confederation Inc. (Philexport), the country’s largest and dominant trade organization, called for the retention of Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) director general Tereso Panga amid a wide-scale revamp in government.

Panga was instrumental in luring locators to ecozones, according to the business group.

Panga reportedly received a letter from Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin last week, mandating government-owned and controlled corporations and investment promotion agencies, including PEZA, to vacate their posts by tendering courtesy resignations at the order of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

“He is just following orders, but we find him very effective and very good at running PEZA. We hope that he will stay because he is doing a great job. The locators are pleased with him, and he is receiving a lot of referrals. He should be retained,” Philexport president Sergio Ortiz-Luis Jr. said in a phone interview on Wednesday.

“I think all the business organizations would agree to that, especially the electronics sector. PEZA is successful in attracting locators in that sector,” Ortiz-Luis Jr. said.

As of April this year, a total of 27 new and expansion projects worth P6.014 billion were approved by PEZA under the helm of Panga, which is 110.66 percent higher than the P2.855 billion approved in the same period last year.

These projects are seen to generate $223.497 million in exports and directly employ more than 4,500 Filipino workers.

Under the helm of Panga, and since the start of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s tenure, 27 ecozones have been created, 16 of which were established in 2024, for a total of 427 operating economic zones.

This year, another 30 new ecozones are targeted with an estimated development cost of P60 billion.

Panga, a career official who has spent 28 years within PEZA, has led the agency through three straight years of growth in investment approvals, reversing the post-pandemic slump and reinforcing PEZA’s role as a driver of national economic recovery.

Billionaires club

Aside from significant strides within the ecozone, PEZA has officially joined the ranks of top-performing government-owned and controlled corporations (GOCCs) that have remitted over a billion pesos in dividends to the national government for two consecutive years, a first in 30 years.

From 1995 to 2002, PEZA remitted a total of P10.82B in dividends to the national government, representing an impressive contribution over 15 years

Moreover, for the last three years, PEZA contributed P3.688 billion, including over P1.3 billion in both 2023 and 2024.

PEZA is a non-financial investment promotion agency operating with just over 600 employees, managing over 400 economic zones nationwide and supporting more than 4,000 locator companies, all while remaining fiscally self-sustaining.

The agency’s performance aligns with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s directive during his first State of the Nation Address to make special economic zones a pillar of national growth.

PEZA has since doubled down on its mission, streamlining services, digitizing operations, and actively courting investments in manufacturing, IT-BPM, and emerging technologies.

The US State Department has cited PEZA as a model of good governance and regulatory clarity in the Philippines — an endorsement that reflects the agency’s professional reputation.