Subic Bay opens to direct Korea, Taiwan trade

April 12, 2017

MANILA - Container terminals managed and operated by International Container Terminal Services, Inc. (ICTSI) at Subic Bay Freeport will help facilitate increasing trade between Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines, with Evergreen Marine Corp. launching a new direct service at key ports of the three trading economies.
Evergreen, Taiwan’s largest shipping company, is launching its new Korea-Taiwan-Philippines (KTP) service in Subic, adding the ICTSI-operated New Container Terminals 1 and 2 to its port rotation.

The inclusion of Subic is expected to boost growing markets in northern and central Luzon.  Aside from exports and imports, the service also offers trans-shipment for overseas cargo.
The first Evergreen vessel under the KTP service is scheduled to make its maiden call to Subic on April 19.
The Philippines is capitalising on Taiwan’s new “Southbound Policy”, which aims to strengthen trade and investment relationship between Taiwan and countries south of the latter’s territory. 
What ICTSI refers to as a “paradigm shift” opens the doors for the Philippines to capture business in Taiwan’s high-value manufacturing, innovation, logistics and trans-shipment, renewable energy, e-commerce, and financing sectors, it says.
Taiwan is the Philippines’ sixth biggest trading partner, facilitating around US$7.85 billion worth of bilateral trade in 2015.  Currently, the Subic Bay Freeport Zone hosts 52 Taiwanese companies with US$500 million worth of investments and more than 12,000 jobs generated.
South Korea was the Philippines’ fifth largest trading partner in 2015, with bilateral trade between the two countries expected to reach US$ 0 billion over the next five years.  This projection has triggered the increase of Korean investments in the Philippines in the recent years, with construction, cosmetics and food companies looking to invest.  www.ictsi.com (ATI).