The Philippines has won a $1 billion investment from Texas Instruments, beating out China and Thailand in the coveted bid. Texas Instruments will build a semiconductor test and assembly plant in the Clark Freeport Zone, former site of a U.S. Air Force base in Angeles, Pampanga.
The new TI facility will be located in a sprawling eight-hectare (20-acre) property and will employ more than 3,000 workers. Texas instrument also has an existing plant in Baguio City, north of Manila, which has been in operation for 28 years.
The TI plant in Baguio conducts final assembly and testing of semiconductors for TI’s customers in the computer, aerospace, telecommunications and automotive industries in the United States, Asia and Europe.
TI senior vice president Kevin Ritchie, photo above, said the Philippines was up against Thailand and China as possible sites of TI’s new plant. “At the end of the day, what brought us to the Philippines was really the performance of our site in Baguio. The quality of the people there, the quality of the operation gave us high confidence we would be able to set up a new site (in Clark),†Ritchie said.
Philippine President Glora Macapagal-Arroyo welcomed the TI investment praising it as a “sign of continuing confidence†in her country by foreign investors.
[Via: Inquirer.net, Forbes.com]
Photo: AFP/Jay Directo via www.inquirer.net