Many foreign investors want to dig deep into the soil for precious metals and minerals needed by industries.

And since most parts of the country are highly mineralized, it should be no surprise that more and more mining companies want to dig.

But since the country is also rich in natural and geothermal gas and has potentially rich oil deposits, exploration firms are also into the drilling business.

But many foreign firms just want to settle on land to set up their manufacturing sites or as bases for their service operations in the case of business process outsourcing firms.

Either way, both the state and the private landowner wins. The government can collect more taxes, and private property owners make money from rent or long-term lease on the otherwise idle land.

Not only that: More jobs are created even as allied industries thrive around new business hubs.            

Thus, it is comforting to hear that, despite the economic woes of the US and the Eurozone debt debacle, foreign investors are on the lookout for land in the  country.

In fact, the Philippine Economic Zone Authority said a number of foreign manufacturing companies are looking for bigger areas of land for their operations this year, indicating the magnitude of investments they want to bring into the country.

“This year, they want to reserve 80, 100, to 200 hectares. By this, we see that the caliber of investors this year are really big,” PEZA Director-General Lilia de Lima said, noting that manufacturing companies in previous years reserved between two and five hectares.

De Lima said most of the potential investors are in the electronics sector.

“I always told them that this government is transparent and with strong campaign against corruption,” she was quoted by  a broadsheet as saying.

She said firms choose locations where they could avoid unnecessary operational costs, citing the expansion of Japan’s Murata in Laguna, one of the biggest investments in the country last year.

“Murata came in with P3-billion investments and they looked for 22 hectares,” she said.

According  to the lady PEZA chief, she expects the Japanese to be the leading investors this year just like in 2011.

Meanwhile, the Department of Agrarian Reform has awarded lands to about 105,000 farmers in the Cordillera region.

Franklin Cocoy, DAR regional director, said some 89,000 hectares have been given out in 85 communities.

“When the extension of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program ends in 2014, we will be able to distribute the balance to the more than 20,000 farmer-beneficiaries,” he said.

Aside from getting the land that they can call their own, Cocoy said the agency also packaged farm-to-market roads, irrigation as well as post-harvest facilities to sustain the productivity of the beneficiaries.

The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law mandates that landless farmers be given at least 3 hectares for economic viability.

Cocoy said Mountain Province, Abra, and Benguet are expected to be covered by the end of this year with distribution in Ifugao, Kalinga and Apayao to be completed before 2014.