President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has secured the commitment of a Spanish conglomerate to invest in the Philippines’ renewable energy sector.
Malacañang said Marcos got the pledge of the power and infrastructure firm Acciona to launch a local project after the Department of Justic ruled that the renewable energy sector is not covered by the 40% foreign ownership limit.
Acciona is looking to put up solar and offshore wind power sources. Company chairman Jose Manuel Entrecanales said he plans to make its future Manila hub as Acciona’s headquarters in Southeast Asia.
In an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald posted last July, Entrecanales said a robust and working justice system is one of the factors which attracted him to investing in Australia.
“I mean, you are a legally binding country. Which is, in fact, a show of legal maturity because people need the resources of law and legal arbitration because it is very efficient. In other countries you cannot do that because, in the first place, it is not fair and, secondly, it is not efficient. So that is, to me, one of the biggest assets you have, that you are naturally a very solid democracy,” he said in the article titled, “Why this Spanish energy tycoon is Australia’s fortune teller.”
Entrecanales, who’s one of Spain’s richest men with a net worth of $5 billion, plans to invest $26 billion for renewable energy projects in Australia over the next few years.
