BWorld 804, Greenfield investments and growth

Greenfield investments and growth

June 26, 2025 | 12:02 am

My Cup Of Liberty

By Bienvenido S. Oplas, Jr.

https://www.bworldonline.com/opinion/2025/06/26/681380/greenfield-investments-and-growth/

 

Last week, on June 20, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) released the World Investment Report (WIR) 2025. I downloaded the Excel files for inflows, outflows, instock, outstock of foreign direct investments (FDI) of all countries, mergers and acquisitions by country and by sector, and so on.

 

One table that caught my attention was “greenfield FDIs by country destination.” Greenfield investments are new (thus “green”) facilities like office buildings, manufacturing facilities, etc. cross-border from the ground up.

 

The Philippines has been catching up with some East Asian neighbors in this since 2023 — it was larger in this metric than South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Thailand in 2023. But in overall FDI inflows including expansions for “brownfield” (old, existing) investments, these economies are ahead of the Philippines.

 

Global greenfield FDI from 2022 to 2024 was generally flat at $1.3 trillion. But for some Asian nations — India, China, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines — there was a big jump over the last two years. Those with flat or declining trends were Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, South Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Taiwan (see the table).

 

 

Except for Japan and Thailand in the list of top countries when it comes to attracting FDIs, many Asian nations had seen fast growth of 4.4% and above in 2024.

 

The Philippines’ economy has gained momentum between 2023 and 2024 and likely into 2025 to 2028 or beyond. The government economic team is on the right track despite what the detractors and pessimists say. The hike in greenfield FDIs in the last two years was several times higher than from 2020 to 2022.

 

The economic team — led by Finance Secretary Ralph Recto, Presidential Investment Adviser Frederick Go, Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman, Economics Secretary Arsenio Balisacan, and Trade Secretary Ma. Cristina Roque — should continue with economic and business liberalization, with increasing the ease of doing business, and investment promotions abroad especially in Europe where degrowth has become the trend and not the exception for many countries there.