Philippines’ ICT Sector Investments Reach All-Time High

By Teresa Umali
October 8, 2019

The Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector became the top investment contributor in the Philippines with an outstanding increase from PHP 340 million (US$ 6.6 million) last year to PHP 308.8 billion (US$ 6 billion).

According to a recent press release, the ICT sector surged to the top of the Board of Investments (BOI) approvals.

The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Undersecretary for Operations Eliseo M. Rio, Jr shared that this is the first time in the history of the country that the sector became a top investment contributor.

Investments in ICT

The massive increase can be attributed partly to the entry of a third major player in the Philippine telecommunications market.

This major player had committed to invest PHP 275 billion (US$ 5.3 billion) into its rollout in the next five years.

According to the Undersecretary, the healthy competition that was fostered between the major telco players had translated into substantial investment by the two incumbent telecoms, which amounted to a combined PHP 120 billion (US$ 2.3 billion) annually.

Additionally, the Undersecretary claimed that common tower providers are also seen to have poured in an investment of PHP 3.4 billion worth of dollar investments for the rollout of 50,000 target cellular sites across the country in the next seven years.

Similar passive telecommunication infrastructure such as fibre optic cables, cable landing stations, submarine fibre optic cables and outside plants will contribute an annual influx of PHP 100 billion (US$ 1.9 billion) until 2022.

By 31 August 2019, more than half of the total investments approved by the BOI were contributed by the ICT sector alone.

This can be attributed to the aggressive actions of the Department in paving the way for the third telco as well as pushing for its common towers and other passive telecommunication infrastructure program.