Gov’t eyes export growth despite dismal 2015 data
The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) targets to increase exports by 9 percent this year, Undersecretary Nora K. Terrado said in a statement.
“Our exports performance takes into account the work that we have been doing in recent years to expand market access as well as the ground we have covered to prepare our industries to gain competitive and comparative advantage,” she said.
Under the recently approved Philippine Export Development Plan for 2015-2017, Terrado said the strategy is to take advantage of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) as well as the tariff-free scheme for more than 6,000 Philippine-made products offered by the European Union’s Generalized System of Preferences Plus system.
Senen Perlada, director of the Export Marketing Bureau of DTI, said they expect a deceleration in the decline of merchandise exports “until the trend shifts to a growth path this year.”
“We expect merchandise exports to get back on a growth track in 2016. Electronics exports can be expected to post moderate growth while non-electronics could snap back with the waning effects of El Niño on agricultural production and exports,” he said in a separate statement.
“We also expect the robust services exports in 2015 to somewhat lift total exports to a lower single-digit figure,” he added.
Under the PEDP, merchandise exports are projected to grow between 5.4 percent and 8 percent this year and between 6.7 percent and 10 percent in 2017.
Services exports are estimated to increase between 9 percent and 10.3 percent this year and between 9.9 percent and 12 percent in 2017.
Total exports are seen to expand between 6.6 percent and 8.8 percent this year and between 7.7 percent and 10.6 percent in 2017.
Export sales remained in the red in December 2015, amounting only to $4.660 billion. This was a 3.0 percent decrease from $4.802 billion in December of 2014.
For the entire year, total exports went down by 5.6 percent to $58.648 billion from $62.102 billion in 2014.
The top five destinations of Philippine exports are Japan, US, China, Hong Kong, and Singapore.
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