AFTER declining to a 10-month low in March, net foreign direct investments (FDIs) surged 48.3 percent to a four-month high of $989 billion in April, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas recently reported. FDI commitments, meanwhile, totaled P8.98 billion in the first quarter, down 54.1 percent from a year earlier based on a May report by the Philippine Statistics Authority.
These figures came at the heels of amendments to the Foreign Investments Act, approved by then-President Rodrigo Duterte, that opened more business sectors to foreign investments. What augurs well for the future of FDI is that the current administration will work on making the country "an investment destination, capitalizing on the Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises or the Create Law and the economic liberalization laws, such as the Public Service Act and the Foreign Investments Act," as stated by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in his State of the Nation Address (SONA).
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