Subic Bay Freeport – Nidec Subic Philippines Corp. will soon open about 5,000 jobs from its expansion in this Freeport, a top executive said Thursday.
Nidec Subic president Takeshi Yamamoto disclosed this during a simple awarding ceremony of the certificate of registration with incentives under the Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises Act for the company’s P4.2-billion expansion project.
Nidec Subic has a workforce of 622 employees, but the expansion project is expected to generate close to 5,000 job opportunities until the final incentivized year. The expansion project, dubbed as Project Kinematix, involves production and assembly of gearboxes for industrial robotics gears.
Yamamoto said the company chose Subic Bay Freeport for its expansion because of its strategic location, making it possible for them to market their products to the European Union, the United States, Brazil, Korea and China.
Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority chairman and administrator Jonathan Tan led the simple ceremony, together with senior deputy administrator for business and investment Renato Lee III and business and investment department for manufacturing and maritime manager Karen Magno in awarding the COR to Yamamoto and general manager Marissa Tamayo.
Tan said Kinematix is a new product that is a high-accuracy gearbox used as base, arm or shoulder for industrial robots for auto tool changer/ loader of machines. He said the aim of the expansion of Nidec Subic Philippines is to produce these gearboxes outside Japan.
“This is certainly a milestone for Subic Freeport as this new product will be solely manufactured by Nidec Subic,” he said, adding that these gearboxes would be “Gawang Pinoy.”
He said this is the first expansion of the company outside Japan which was made possible due to the CREATE law.
Lee said the CREATE law enabled the granting of the tax incentives including a six-year income tax holiday, ten-year special corporate income tax, 16-year Customs duty exemption on importation of capital equipment, raw materials, spare parts and accessories; 16-year value-added tax zero-rating on local purchase and a 16-year VAT exemption on importation.
Tamayo said the company decided to expand its operations in the Philippines because of its highly-skilled and resilient Filipino labor force and the English proficiency of its workforce.