MANILA, Philippines - Some Japanese electronics and semiconductor companies in Japan, whose operations were affected by the quake and tsunami disasters, are temporarily transferring some of their production capacities to their Philippine subsidiaries located in the local economic zones.
Elmer San Pascual, group manager of Promotion and Public Relations of the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) said, this belies reports of possible retrenchments of workers by Japanese companies following the Japan disaster.
"There is no retrenchment at all. In fact, they are temporarily transferring some of their production to the Philippines until such time that the situation in Japan has normalized and stabilized," San Pascual said.
According to San Pascual, these companies have informed PEZA director-general Lilia B. de Lima of their plans. At least three big Japanese electronics and semiconductor firms have already transferred here or actually doing some of the production of their parent firms.
San Pascual, however, said that these additional capacities may not necessarily hire additional people but they may if they decide to make the temporary transfer permanent.
These are companies with operations in the northern portion and are worried about power supply following the crisis on their nuclear power plants. They are still undergoing rotating brownouts, San Pascual said.
Their local units have also capacities as they are just operating between 85 to 90 percent of capacity.
There are 618 Japanese firms out of the 2,272 PEZA-registered enterprises and the bulk of that is electronics, semiconductors, autoparts, shipbuilding and machinery. These firms directly exports to their markets in the US, Japan and Latin America, among other markets. "This means we are going to have higher exports this year," San Pascual said.
Of the $40-billion PEZA exports in 2010, the semiconductor and electronics exports accounted for 59.45 percent or $24.1 billion.
In terms of employment, this sector alone contributes 221,531 employment or 30% of the 735,672 total PEZA employment in 2010. (BCM)
