Investments in electronics down sharply

Investments in the semiconductor and electronics industry have suffered a big drop.

Based on statistics released by the Semiconductor and Electronics Industries in the Philippines (SEIPI), the cost of project registered with the government from January to June this year amounted to only $92 million or about P4.622 billion.

Historically, the SEIPI said the annual average investment in the electronics sector during the past five years was $1.04 billion. With only $92 million invested in the first half of the year, the SEIPI is not optimistic that this year’s performance will match the annual average performance in the last five years.

SEIPI reported that from January to June this year, electronics projects registered with the Philipine Economic Zone Authority or PEZA amounted to P3.489 billion or $70 million.

Projected registered with the Board of Investments (BOI), the SEIPI said, were even lower at only P1.133 billion or $22 million.

However, the BOI investment figures covers only the period from January to May this year, the SEIPI clarified.

With low investment this year, the SEIPI expects exports to go down correspondingly. Normally, the SEIPI pointed, every $1 billion in new investment generates $3 billion in export revenues.

From January to May this year, SEIPI executive director Ernesto Santiago reported that electronics exports reached only $9.65 billion or just 0.22 percent more than the $9.08 billion in electronics exports for the same period last year.

SEIPI members include chip maker Intel, Texas Instruments, Epson, Amkor Anam, Hitachi, Ionics Circuits, Rohm and PSI technologies.