SINGAPORE – Singaporean businesses are strengthening their tie-up with Philippine counterparts given the attractiveness of the Philippines’ energy sector, an official of the Sustainable Energy Association of Singapore (SEAS) said Wednesday.

SEAS Executive Director Kavita Gandhi, in an interview on the sidelines of the Singapore International Energy Week (SIEW), said there are “some investors that are looking at (the) Philippines actively.”

“(The) Philippines is a very attractive market. Your tariffs are very high, you know, one of the highest in Asia. I guess, almost similar to Singapore. So that gives room for renewables to play,” she said.

Gandhi, however, said some of the investors worry about the regulatory challenges in the Philippines.

“But despite that, the interest is very strong,” she said.

Since SEAS is a Singapore-based group, Gandhi said they do not lobby for any changes before government officials, “but what we do is we try to encourage interaction between Singapore companies and Philippine companies.”

Asked for the amount of investments that Singapore-based business plans to place in the Philippines, Gandhi said they do not have data on this but stressed that the investors are “looking for the best projects.”

“That is green capital, sustainable capital, looking for bankable projects. So, it's definitely a business-to-business commercial arrangement. Whenever they find that the opportunity is good, they go ahead and do the investments,” she added.

During the visit of Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong in the Philippines last June, he and President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. announced greater bilateral and regional relations to achieve the goals of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Power Grid (APG), and Singapore’s plan to invest in the Philippines renewable energy sector, particularly on solar and wind projects.

PNA PHOTO