MANILA: The Philippines aims to tap into the global halal market, the Department of Trade and Industry said on Friday, as it seeks to create 120,000 new jobs in the next five years.
The predominantly Catholic Philippines has been lately looking to expand the market presence of its halal-certified products not only in the Middle East, but also in neighboring Muslim-majority Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei.
With the world’s Muslim population at about 1.8 billion people, the global halal market is estimated to be worth more than $7 trillion. A third of it is contributed by the halal food and beverage industry, but the market also covers recreation, travel, financial services, fashion, and many other sectors.
The DTI announced the Philippine Halal Development Plan in April, in accordance with the Halal Export Development and Promotion Act passed in 2016.
The strategy will aim at making micro, small and medium Filipino enterprises a part of the global halal ecosystem by the end of this year, and over the next five years “achieve 230 billion ($4 billion) Philippine pesos halal trade and investments, and generate 120,000 jobs,” the DTI said in a statement on Thursday evening.
“We are just now implementing it,” DTI Secretary Alfredo Pascual told Arab News.
“There are already halal producers in the Philippines but now we want to be able to go global and be able to tap the more than $7 trillion halal market globally.”
The department is going to lead an inter-agency task force to position the Philippines as the “most halal-friendly trade and investment hub in Asia Pacific.”
The task force will include representatives from the National Commission on Muslim Filipinos, the Philippine central bank, and the departments of agriculture, tourism, health, science and technology, and foreign affairs.
It will also involve the Mindanao Development Authority — the state agency promoting the welfare and development of the Mindanao region, which is one of the country’s poorest areas and home to the majority of about 7 million Philippine Muslims.
Pascual said that with the new strategy, the Philippines will be able to make the halal sector a major player and tap into foreign markets, making local enterprises “able to participate in the industry and contribute to the economic development of the country, particularly in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.”
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Philippines aims to create 120,000 new jobs in halal industry
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Philippines aims to create 120,000 new jobs in halal industry
- Manila eyes $4bn investment into the sector in the next 5 years
- Strategy aims at making Filipino enterprises part of the global halal ecosystem
Louvre heist probe still aims to ‘recover jewelry’, top prosecutor says
- Police believe they have arrested all four thieves who carried out the brazen October 19 robbery
PARIS: French investigators remain determined to find the imperial jewels stolen from the Louvre in October, a prosecutor has said.
Police believe they have arrested all four thieves who carried out the brazen October 19 robbery, making off with jewelry worth an estimated $102 million from the world-famous museum.
“The interrogations have not produced any new investigative elements,” top Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said this week, three months after the broad-daylight heist.
But the case remains a top priority, she underlined.
“Our main objective is still to recover the jewelry,” she said.
That Sunday morning in October, thieves parked a mover’s truck with an extendable ladder below the Louvre’s Apollo Gallery housing the French crown jewels.
Two of the thieves climbed up the ladder, broke a window and used angle grinders to cut glass display booths containing the treasures, while the other two waited below, investigators say.
The four then fled on high-powered motor scooters, dropping a diamond-and-emerald crown in their hurry.
But eight other items of jewelry — including an emerald-and-diamond necklace that Napoleon I gave his second wife, Empress Marie-Louise — remain at large.
Beccuau said investigators were keeping an open mind as to where the loot might be.
“We don’t have any signals indicating that the jewelry is likely to have crossed the border,” she said, though she added: “Anything is possible.”
Detectives benefitted from contacts with “intermediaries in the art world, including internationally” as they pursued their probe.
“They have ways of receiving warning signals about networks of receivers of stolen goods, including abroad,” Beccuau said.
As for anyone coming forward to hand over the jewels, that would be considered to be “active repentance, which could be taken into consideration” later during a trial, she said.
A fifth suspect, a 38-year-old woman who is the partner of one of the men, has been charged with being an accomplice but was released under judicial supervision pending a trial.
Investigators still had no idea if someone had ordered the theft.
“We refuse to have any preconceived notions about what might have led the individuals concerned to commit this theft,” the prosecutor said.
But she said detectives and investigating magistrates were resolute.
“We haven’t said our last word. It will take as long as it takes,” she said.
Police believe they have arrested all four thieves who carried out the brazen October 19 robbery, making off with jewelry worth an estimated $102 million from the world-famous museum.
“The interrogations have not produced any new investigative elements,” top Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said this week, three months after the broad-daylight heist.
But the case remains a top priority, she underlined.
“Our main objective is still to recover the jewelry,” she said.
That Sunday morning in October, thieves parked a mover’s truck with an extendable ladder below the Louvre’s Apollo Gallery housing the French crown jewels.
Two of the thieves climbed up the ladder, broke a window and used angle grinders to cut glass display booths containing the treasures, while the other two waited below, investigators say.
The four then fled on high-powered motor scooters, dropping a diamond-and-emerald crown in their hurry.
But eight other items of jewelry — including an emerald-and-diamond necklace that Napoleon I gave his second wife, Empress Marie-Louise — remain at large.
Beccuau said investigators were keeping an open mind as to where the loot might be.
“We don’t have any signals indicating that the jewelry is likely to have crossed the border,” she said, though she added: “Anything is possible.”
Detectives benefitted from contacts with “intermediaries in the art world, including internationally” as they pursued their probe.
“They have ways of receiving warning signals about networks of receivers of stolen goods, including abroad,” Beccuau said.
As for anyone coming forward to hand over the jewels, that would be considered to be “active repentance, which could be taken into consideration” later during a trial, she said.
A fifth suspect, a 38-year-old woman who is the partner of one of the men, has been charged with being an accomplice but was released under judicial supervision pending a trial.
Investigators still had no idea if someone had ordered the theft.
“We refuse to have any preconceived notions about what might have led the individuals concerned to commit this theft,” the prosecutor said.
But she said detectives and investigating magistrates were resolute.
“We haven’t said our last word. It will take as long as it takes,” she said.
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