Trilateral event at Indo-Pacific forum to eye Luzon corridor investments

Trilateral event at Indo-Pacific forum to eye Luzon corridor investments

WASHINGTON, D.C., United States—A trilateral event will be held on the sidelines of the upcoming Indo-Pacific Business Forum to call for more investments in the Philippines, particularly in the newly launched Luzon Economic Corridor. President Ferdinand “Bongbong” R. Marcos Jr., United States President Joe Biden, and Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio said the trilateral event intends to enhance the three countries’ economic cooperation and “deliver tangible investments.”

“Together we intend to hold a trilateral event promoting investment in the Luzon Corridor on the margins of the Indo-Pacific Business Forum in Manila in May—the premier U.S. commercial event in the region,” the three countries’ leaders said in a joint statement released by the White House on Thursday.

“The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation also intends to open a regional office in the Philippines to facilitate further investments across the country,” they added.

The announcement comes in line with the formal launch of the Luzon Economic Corridor, an initiative of the three countries to connect major hubs in Luzon like Subic Bay, Clark, Manila, and Batangas.

“Through this corridor, part of the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment-IPEF Accelerator, Japan, the Philippines, and the United States commit to accelerating coordinated investments in high-impact infrastructure projects, including rail; ports modernization; clean energy and semiconductor supply chains and deployments; agribusiness; and civilian port upgrades at Subic Bay,” the leaders said.

“The Luzon Corridor is a demonstration of our enhanced economic cooperation, focused on delivering tangible investments across multiple sectors. Japan, the Philippines, and the United States are also partnering to expand cooperation and investments in other areas of the Philippines,” they added.

Semiconductors

Aside from the trilateral event, the three leaders also announced intentions to “pursue a new semiconductor workforce development initiative”, where students from the Philippines would be trained in US and Japanese educational institutions.

Such a move, the leaders said, would help boost the Philippines’ standing as a semiconductors hub.

“We intend to pursue a new semiconductor workforce development initiative, through which students from the Philippines will receive world-class training at leading American and Japanese universities, to help secure our nations’ semiconductor supply chains,” the three leaders said.

“This initiative complements the expansion of semiconductor investments in the Philippines that would strengthen supply chain resiliency among our three nations. Furthermore, through the CHIPS and Science Act’s International Technology Security and Innovation Fund, the United States and the Philippines plan to coordinate our efforts to develop and expand the Philippine semiconductor workforce to strengthen the global supply chain.”

Last Wednesday, Philippine Ambassador to the US Jose Manuel Romualdez said that the Philippines is set to receive US$100 billion worth of investments from the US and Japan in the next five to ten years.

A huge part of securing these investments, Romualdez said, is through getting a share in the US semiconductor industry, which is worth US$80 billion just in the Asean region.

American companies recently announced investments amounting to more than US$1 billion in the Philippines.

US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said during an official visit to Manila last March for the trade and investment mission that the US aims to be the economic partner of choice in the Indo-Pacific region.