News Room - Business/Economics

Posted on 12 Dec 2007

Philippines’Oct exports up 10.5% to $4.65B

The country’s export receipts rose 10.5 percent to $4.648 billion in October from a year ago, reflecting a rebound in electronics shipments, the National Statistics Office (NSO) said yesterday.

Electronics exports, which accounted for 61.8 percent of total revenue for the month, rose 9.4 percent to $2.873 billion after suffering a 0.2 percent decline in the previous month.

For the 10 months to October, exports receipts are up 5.44 percent from a year earlier to $41.849 billion, still below the government’s latest full year growth forecast of eight percent.

The government had previously projected a growth of 11 percent for 2007, but the sector has suffered after the peso appreciated by more than 10 percent against the dollar this year.

“After suffering two consecutive months of negative growth rates, exports of electronic products led by semiconductors increased by 9.4 percent to $2.9 billion. The increase may be attributed to the customary increase in orders of electronic devices for the coming holiday season. In particular, consumer electronics increased by 111.6 percent to $92.4 million,” Acting Socioeconomic Planning Secretary and National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) Director-General Augusto B. Santos said.

Other electronic products also posted strong growth for the month such as office equipment (35.2 percent), control and instrumentation (78.5 percent), medical and industrial instrumentation (117.3 percent), and automotive electronics (65.3 percent), according to the NSO.

The NEDA chief also noted that shipments of total agro-based products increased by 51.0 percent due to  strong  growth of coconut products, which continue to benefit from improved prices of coconut oil in the world market. Other agro-based products such as abaca fibers, tobacco, and shrimps and prawns  also contributed to the strong growth of total agro-based products.

“Shipments reached $4.6 billion, the highest single month level for the year so far. This trend was also observed in other parts of the region as Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, Korea, Thailand, and Singapore experienced strong exports during the month, which is traditionally the start of heightened business activity in preparation for the build up in consumer spending during the holidays,” Santos observed.

However, exports of garments continued to drop, declining by 18.8 percent from a year ago level.So far, garments shipments managed to post only one month of positive growth for the year.

The United States remained the country’s top export destination with a 17.7 percent share followed by Japan with 14 percent. Hong Kong (12.8 percent), the Peoples’ Republic of China (12.4 percent), and the Netherlands (7.7 percent) round up the top five.