Will Pax Silica industrialize the Philippines and create millions of jobs?

Okay, stop – take a deep breath. You’re not even industrializing—you’re de-industrializing; you’re in survival mode. The Philippines is in Pax Silica, foreign investments are said to be rolling in, jobs will be created, they say, and honestly? There’s growth.

But whose growth is truly developed in this initiative?

Since the 1970s, the Philippines has been strategically positioning itself as a rich ocean of opportunities for foreign investors in semiconductors and tech-driven industries. Despite being an old industry that serves as the backbone of technology advancement, semiconductor manufacturing recently boomed amid the surge of artificial intelligence (AI) use—but how come the Philippines seems to struggle in keeping up?

That old tune

Pax Silica presents itself as a lifeboat for the Philippines. The United States (US)-dominated international initiative aims to secure a global semiconductor supply chain through global development of AI, energy, and transportation to directly compete with China’s growing economic presence. Last April 16, 2026, the Philippines signed into the alliance.

This signing was unlike any other, as the Philippines is the first country to offer concrete resources to the initiative. Under the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA), the Philippines offered 1,620-hectares of land in New Clark City to be a meeting point of foreign-owned AI-enabled firms. The Philippines stands to receive millions of dollars in foreign assistance for critical mineral extraction through the Pax Silica Fund and even attract foreign private sector investments of up to US$100 billion.

As a part of the Luzon Economic Corridor (LEC) that boldly claims to generate 1 million jobs, many Filipinos are attracted to the prospects of a robust economy through job opportunities generated by Pax Silica.

This prominent AI-shift will also introduce new ripples across sectors. The initiative proposes Israeli digital technology transfers that may improve manufacturers’ ability to keep up with global market trends. More prominently, the initiative will demand an upskilling to be inevitably initiated by the education sector.

But these sirenic promises have already been sung by previous foreign investors. Rather, abandoned.

Failed refrain

Intel was one of the first American semiconductor companies to operate in the Philippines. After 34 years of operations with over US$1.5 billion investments, Intel decided to pull out entirely, stating issues with insufficiently skilled workers and failures of technology transfers atop global economic fluctuations. This exit left behind approximately 40,000 of its direct and indirect employees without a job.

In the heavy manufacturing industry, Korean shipbuilding company Hanjin Heavy Industries Inc. operated in the Philippines for 13 years. Former investor giant turned into “biggest corporate bankruptcy,” Hanjin exited the country owing the government nearly Php6 billion in revenues, forcing halted operations and reducing its workforce from once over 30,000 to a measly few hundred.

Other foreign semiconductor companies—such as Onsemi, Texas Instruments, and Nexperia—continue to operate in the Philippines, employing thousands of Filipinos with reports of union busting and frequent waves of unjust layoffs every year under reported cases of operational cost cutting.

Multiple companies have seen the births and rebirths of their operations—from Onsemi’s acquisition of Fairchild to Hanjin’s reconstruction as Agila Subic—all controlled by foreign demands and interests.

This foreign domination of the Philippine electronics manufacturing industry has sunken local Filipino manufacturers far below.

Promises in a minor key

Electronics and manufactured goods dominate Philippine trade, contributing 47.7% and 72.7% of total exports, respectively. These exports are primarily received by the US, the country’s major trading partner, who is also a consistent leading source of foreign direct investments primarily channeled into the manufacturing industry.

However, the Philippines still isn’t in the top 10 of global semiconductor exporters. What the numbers don’t show is the grim reality of Filipino workers behind giant foreign investments.

The Philippines has seen no true development in its domestic Filipino-owned semiconductor manufacturing after over five decades of foreign investments. The manufacturing subsector having the third highest rate of part time workers partnered with the 15.2% underemployment rate suggests one obvious thing.

The jobs created by foreign investments are not of quality.

Thousands of temporary to indirect jobs—construction needs or contractual workers—provide no real job security nor space for union organizing. Moreover, the promised technology transfers and upskilling are dependent on the foreign company’s needs for profit maximization, not rooted in an interest in developing the Filipino economy.

On top of these factors, Pax Silica aims to integrate AI into Filipino manufacturing. Beyond the glamor of advanced technology, this step forward eliminates the need for real human workers once machines are fully AI-enabled; there may be no need for workers at all. Filipinos are slowly being pushed out of their own workplaces, their own land, their own economy. Whose economy will Pax Silica truly be serving?

When the price of critical minerals, land, water, energy resources, and sovereignty is priced at exploited cheap Filipino labor, the Philippines remains caged to the lowest value added in the semiconductor supply chain.

Pax Silica is not an effort to develop the country’s economy; it’s to take advantage of it.

Asserting counterpoints

Filipinos are known for having the endurance for menial jobs worldwide. Oftentimes, Filipino labor comes at a cheap cost in favor of foreign interests that are just enough to get workers by.

Pax Silica taunts the calamity that will come: how many Filipinos will remain barely afloat on rotting wooden pieces of part-time manufacturing work while foreign billionaires spectate on glimmering yachts?

We must sail against the wind: assert that foreign investments must be used to support domestic industries to drive true national industrialization forward, not for the fleeting profit-driven interests of foreign corporations. Only then will the Philippines sing a song that is truly its own.