|
THE world’s biggest producer of chips for mobile
telephones said Thursday that it is investing a billion dollars to
expand its operations in the Philippines.
President Arroyo and senior
officials of United States-based Texas Instrument (TI) said the new
investment on an assembly and test site will double the output of
the company’s 28-year-old production unit in the northern
Philippine resort of Baguio.
TI said work on the
77,000-square-meter site would begin in July or August at the Clark
Economic Zone, a former US air base north of Manila, with
construction and the installation of equipment to be completed by
the end of next year.
“It is expected to eventually
employ about 3,000 workers and will double the capacity that TI has
in the Philippines,” a company statement said.
“Once built, we expect to
quickly ramp the site [up] with the help of our experienced team in
Baguio, where we’ve had assembly/test operations for almost three
decades,” Kevin Ritchie, TI senior vice-president for technology
and manufacturing, said in the statement.
Initial production is set to
start in the second half of next year.
“The competition for this
investment was fierce but we are thankful that Texas Instruments
finally chose the Philippines,” Mrs. Arroyo said.
Ritchie later told reporters that
the company looked at “various countries and various locations”
based on the availability and quality of the labor force as well as
investment incentives offered by the potential hosts.
“At the end of the day, what
brought us back to the Philippines was really the performance of our
site in Baguio,” he added. “The Baguio site is one of the best
sites we have . . . The quality of the people there, the quality of
the operation give us high confidence that we’d be able to start
up a new site and have a successful new site.”
Mrs. Arroyo said TI’s expansion
is the single biggest business venture in the country, adding the
company would incorporate in its new site many environment-friendly
features first used in the US.
She said TI officials told her
that the Clark production site “will not just be an expansion of
the Baguio operations, there will be new and more sophisticated
products produced there as well.”
TI officials did not elaborate
Its Baguio operation conducts
final assembly and testing of semiconductors for the computer,
aerospace, telecommunications and automotive industries.
Assembly and test operations are
the final step in semiconductor manufacturing before the chips are
shipped to customers.
--AFP and Sam Mediavilla
|
