The Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) has remitted P898 million in dividends into the government coffers for the year 2021, its director-general reported Friday.
According to PEZA chief, Charito “Ching” Plaza, the agency remitted a total of P898,471,582.39 dividends to the national government last 12 April 2022 through the Bureau of Treasury.
“PEZA continues to remit high dividends brought by our existing and new investments, projects, and expansions from 2017 to 2021. Amid the pandemic, operations in our ecozones are unhampered and we continue to remit 50 percent of our net income as dividends to the national government,” she said.
Plaza also stressed that PEZA had a steady increase in dividends from 2017 to 2020, airing her confidence that PEZA is headed towards bouncing back this year.
From 2017 to 2021 under the Duterte administration, PEZA has already remitted P5,611,028,918 of dividends to the national government, which is 8.05 percent higher than the P5,193,111,137 the agency has remitted from 1996 to 2016.
In total from 1996 to 2021, PEZA remitted P10,804,140,055 of dividends for 26 years.
Meanwhile, on the remitted Corporate Income Tax (CIT), PEZA Chief Plaza shared, “In just five years under the Duterte administration, we have exceeded half of PEZA’s remitted CIT from 1996 to 2016 pre-Duterte’s term.”
From P4,962,747,570 covering 1996-2016, PEZA has reimbursed P2,889,464,497 from 2017 to 2021, part of the total of P7,852,212,067 CIT from 1996 to 2021.
“Side from the dividends of P810,263,800.18 remitted in 2020, PEZA also shared P1.190 billion to the national government for its Covid-19 response which was the requested contributions from Government-Owned and Controlled Operations (GOCCs) for that year. This totaled P2 billion in dividends in 2020,” she shared.
Overall, PEZA’s payments to the national government from 1996 to 2021 were composed of dividends and CIT amounted to P18,656,352,122.
The PEZA Director General proudly mentioned that as PEZA does not receive any subsidy from the government, “we really have to be more aggressive and innovative in attracting new investments, creating employment, and generating exports. This is one of our ways of contributing to the goals and legacy of the Duterte administration especially in reopening the economy and rising from the effects of the pandemic.”
Recently, the Fiscal Incentives Review Board (FIRB) of the Department of Finance (DOF) shared that while investment promotion agencies (IPAs) received PHP 58 billion of budgetary support from the national government in the last five years, “PEZA and the PHIVIDEC Industrial Authority received no budgetary support at all. The two IPAs were listed as self-sufficient through the fees and other charges they demand from their locators.”
Last year, PEZA reported a 14.016 percent increase in export income of $63.061 billion from $55.309 billion in 2020. Employment inside the ecozones also increased by 13.908 percent having 1,782,913 jobs in 2021 from more than 1.5 million jobs two years ago.