Economist warns PH industries could end up competing with Pax Silica for limited resources

According to Africa, Pax Silica will consume limited public resources—including government support, infrastructure, utilities, and other strategic assets—while remaining a foreign-dominated enclave dependent on imported technology and capital.

He said this means ordinary Filipinos and local businesses could end up competing with the project for scarce resources instead of benefiting from it.

“Pax Silica won’t industrialize PH,” Africa wrote, arguing that the investment will only deepen the country’s dependence on foreign technology while preempting an independent industrial policy.

He also questioned the project’s governance framework, saying terms such as “joint governance,” “enhanced operational certainty,” and investor protections disguise what he believes is a deal designed primarily to serve US interests.

“The truth? Pax Silica is there to advance the US’s national security, economic security, and reindustrialization self-interest,” he wrote.

Africa said genuine industrialization should focus on building Filipino-owned industries capable of producing advanced technology using local labor, science, skills, and natural resources.

Instead, he accused the Marcos administration of providing the United States with a strategic location, labor, natural resources, and government support “without doing anything for Filipino industry.”

“Pax Silica isn’t about us—it’s all about the US,” he said.

Africa is one of the country’s best-known critics of foreign investment-led development. As executive director of the IBON Foundation, he has consistently advocated for national industrialization built around Filipino firms, technological self-reliance, and domestic productive capacity rather than dependence on multinational corporations.

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