The US-backed plan to build an AI and supply-chain hub in the Philippines now has a number attached: about $10bn in initial investment, with more to follow, according to the official leading the Philippine side. It also has a striking term on the table, a lease to the United States of up to 99 years.
Joshua Bingcang, president of the state-owned Bases Conversion and Development Authority, told Bloomberg that Manila aims to sign an initial agreement with the US State Department this year, and that the $10bn would be “just the start” of investment in the 4,000-acre site, which the Philippines hopes to turn into its own version of Silicon Valley.
He said he has been on the phone with US embassy officials almost daily.
The site, near the former US air base at Clark north of Manila, is the first physical facility under Pax Silica, Washington’s alliance to build AI and semiconductor supply chains outside China’s grip. It is meant to host data centres, chip and logistics projects, and green energy, with longer-term ambitions in mineral processing and higher-value semiconductor manufacturing.
A number, a 99-year lease, and a sovereignty problem
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Both the figure and the lease sharpen a tension TNW flagged when the plan surfaced: the deal asks a country that spent decades negotiating the closure of US bases at Clark and Subic to hand Washington long-term control of a 4,000-acre industrial zone.
A 99-year lease is an unusually long commitment, and a politically loaded one given that history, and it lands as the US and China compete to control the AI supply chain. Bingcang’s agency had earlier rejected a US request for diplomatic immunity at the site.
For Manila, the pull is economic. The Philippines’ import-reliant, consumption-driven economy was hit hard by the oil shock from the Iran war, and Bingcang frames the hub as a way to “catch up in terms of industrial activity” after years as a service economy.
He is candid about the risk investors care about, the country’s history of policy reversals between administrations: “We want this contract to stand the test of time. It should transcend several administrations.”
The urgency shows in how the deal began. Bingcang says he pitched it in an April letter after a colleague asked whether he had 5,000 acres to offer the US. “I don’t have that space, but tell them ‘yes,’ let me worry after,” he recalls. “Otherwise they will have to scout in Vietnam or in Malaysia.”
Last month, Under Secretary of State Jacob Helberg toured the site with executives from more than a dozen companies, including Foxconn chairman Young Liu, though Bingcang said the US, not Manila, is courting investors.
For now, the $10bn and the 99 years are an official’s projections and an option, not a signed deal, but the direction is set.
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