Shipbuilding, auto parts eyed to fuel Visayas

Officials prepare to deliver the newly-built Cape Sampaguita to a Japanese company at the Tsuneishi Heavy Industries in Balamban town in this Sept. 21, 2011 file photo. (CDN FILE PHOTO)

The Philippine Economic Zone Authority (Peza) is strongly pushing for more investments in shipbuilding and car parts manufacturing in the country which is seen to help create more jobs for the Filipinos.

Most of the investments coming in the economic zones are in electronics and semi-conductors which generate employment especially to those who did not finish a college degree, Peza Director-General Lilia de Lima said in an interview last week.

“We are pushing more, however, from the shipbuilding and car parts sector because we have the capacity here with many skilled Filipinos,” she said.

In Cebu, Tsuneishi Heavy Industries located in Balamban has built many ships and has shown that they are capable of producing high quality ships that companies around the world use in their operations.

Every year, according to De Lima, there are at least a million Filipinos who reach working age thus underscoring the  need to create more job opportunities to cater to this number.
About half of these are college graduates which are already well taken care of by the outsourcing sector employing them for IT (information technology) and other voice and non-voice processes.

De Lima said, the other half will then need opportunities that will land them skill-based jobs like in manufacturing and shipbuilding and car parts manufacturing which are among the sectors that they feel Filipinos are very competitive.

“In Tsuneishi alone they have at least 8,000 regular employees and they sometimes reach 15,000 to 20,000 including the contractual workers. This is the kind of job volume we want to get and because we have the available talent pool for shipbuilding and car parts, we are confident that investors will find it wise to really come and invest here,” she said.
Aside from Tsuneishi, other shipbuilding companies in the country include large Korean shipping company Hanjin Shipping Philippines and Singaporean company Keppel Corporation which has two shipyards in the country located in Batangas and in Subic.

“For every person that’s hired, we create a multiple effect of seven more indirect employees which means that if you hire about 15,000 people you create jobs for 120,000 people which helps both the local and national economy,” said De Lima.

With the Philippines now being seen as the “darling of investors” De Lima said they are working overtime and harder to get the investors to come and  invest in any of the 297 economic and industrial zones in the country now.

REGISTERED FIRMS

“As of last year, there are 673 companies registered in the economic zones, a growth of 106 companies from only 567 in 2012. Almost half of these companies are into electronics and semi-conductors and 80 percent to 85 percent are foreign investors,” she said.

De Lima said that with regards to talent, the Filipinos are considered the best in the world with most of the best welders Filipino women.

“For shipbuilding we ranked fourth after Korea, Japan and China. We have a huge opportunity to still make it to a higher ranking because we have the talent. Our only drawback is the cost of power but still investors find us more cost-efficient because we don’t have blackouts,” she said.