Trade Undersecretary Ceferino Rodolfo said Thursday that the new 2025-2028 Strategic Investment Priority Plan (SIPP) will be released during the first half of the year.
Rodolfo, who is also the Managing Head of the Board of Investments (BOI), said the investment promotion agency (IPA) is rationalizing the sectors that will be included in the new SIPP, noting that these will be anchored on the eight-point socioeconomic agenda of the Marcos administration.
The SIPP is a three-year blueprint listing key economic activities that can qualify for fiscal incentives under the Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises to Maximize Opportunities for Reinvigorating the Economy (CREATE MORE).
“In consultation with other IPAs, government agencies, and stakeholders, we are finalizing the 2025 SIPP, that projects identified have high impact on job creation, value creation to innovation, upgrading, moving up the value chain, and providing essential support to sectors critical to industrial development,” Rodolfo said at the launch of the Doing Business in the Philippines 2025 Guidebook of the European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines in Makati City.
“So for those who are not too certain whether their sector or project, activity, will be included in the next SIPP, I suggest that you work very hard and you work very fast to apply now under the current SIPP,” the BOI official said.
He added that there are also sectors requesting to be categorized into higher tiers to get more tax perks.
In the 2022 SIPP, preferred activities under Tier I include qualified activities against the coronavirus disease 2019; activities in support of government programs; all qualified manufacturing activities; agriculture, fishery, and forestry; strategic services; healthcare and disaster risk reduction and management services; mass housing; infrastructure and logistics; innovation drivers; inclusive business models; environment and climate change projects; and energy.
Export activities under Tier I include the production and manufacture of export products, services exports, and activities in support of exports, while those provided by special laws include industrial tree plantation; mining; publication or printing of books and textbooks; refining, storage, marketing and distribution of petroleum products; rehabilitation and self-development of persons with disabilities; renewable energy; tourism; and energy efficiency and conservation.
Meanwhile, Rodolfo said the Philippine government will embark on CREATE MORE roadshows this year, focusing on East Asian and European countries.
The senior trade official will be in Amsterdam, Netherlands this week for a trade and investment forum, wherein he is also set to promote the more generous tax perks under the CREATE MORE among Dutch investors.
The Netherlands has been the second largest source of foreign investment approvals in the BOI for the past two years. Last year, BOI-registered projects from Dutch companies amounted to PHP44.5 billion.
In 2024, investment pledges with the BOI increased by 28 percent to $1.62 trillion, a record high for the IPA.
PNA PHOTO
