PH First Mega Ecozone Eyed To Rise In Palawan’s Puerto Princesa

The Philippines is eyeing to build mega economic zones, a trend in Southeast Asia to attract big-ticket investments, with the country’s first such zone expected to rise in Puerto Princesa City in Palawan.

The PEZA chief said the mega ecozone will have its own power, water supply, and port.

He added that it will be fit to host the entire supply chain of the electric vehicle industry.

Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) Director-General Tereso Panga said this mega ecozone will have a land development of around 26,000 hectares. He bared, “We want to see a cluster of industry in an area where the ecosystem can be developed to facilitate the whole supply chain in manufacturing, a vertical integration.”

The PEZA chief said the mega ecozone will have its own power, water supply, and port.

He added that it will be fit to host the entire supply chain of the electric vehicle industry.

Panga said the PEZA is currently in talks with the Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) as the land development is eyed in Barangay Iwahig, where a penal colony is.

For PEZA’s use of the property, the agency will sign a memorandum of agreement with Bucor within this month.

This will be PEZA’s fifth public ecozone after Baguio, Pampanga, Cavite, and Mactan in Cebu, Panga said. He admitted, “There is no available privately-owned land in the Philippines of that scale.

Otherwise, you go to the IPs (indigenous peoples) -- big enough to accommodate those big-ticket projects,” as he explained why PEZA opted for the mega ecozone to be publicly-owned.

Panga said PEZA will be conducting a study for the project.

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