While industry players are confident the decline in exports in February is temporary, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) vowed to focus its attention in attracting investments and in developing industry sectors where the country has established capabilities that would lead for export growth and are well-positioned to seize opportunities in emerging trends. The DTI identified these as industrial, manufacturing, and transport, technology, media, and telecommunication, and health and life science.
The Philippine Statistics Authority’s (PSA) preliminary data recorded that the February export sales amounted to $5.1 billion, an 18.1 percent decline.
The DTI attributed the decline to the cooling down of global demand for electronic products, which account for 52.7 percent of total exports.
“Evidently, we need to diversify our export basket, and investments play a key role in developing Philippine capabilities to produce and export more of higher value products.
Industry players expect decline in exports to be temporary as global investments in semiconductor manufacturing have been increasing significantly. Thus, we need to position the Philippines to take a greater share of this increasingly important global value chain,” said DTI Secretary Alfredo Pascual in a statement.
The DTI continues to pursue initiatives to strengthen the country’s semiconductor industry through participation to the Consumer Electronics Show early this year; the trade and investment promotion activities in Japan in February and; an Outbound Business Matching Mission to the Gulf Cooperation Council.
“To unlock the export potential of the Philippines, we need to better understand the needs of our clients, utilize our preferential trade arrangements such as Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), make our products and services more visible in international markets thru trade promotion, and more importantly, invest and expand our production capabilities to meet the demands of foreign markets” Pascual said. Irma Isip
