PH improves standing as world trade destination
MANILA, Philippines—The Philippines continued to improve its standing as a viable business destination as it advanced eight notches in the World Economic Forum’s enabling trade index, to rank 64th of 138 economies.
The current rank is better than the country’s position in 2012, when it ranked 72nd of 132 economies. In 2010 it ranked 92nd of 125 economies rated, results of “The Global Enabling Trade Report 2014” showed.
Among members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), the Philippines trailed behind Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia, but placed higher than Vietnam, Cambodia, Lao DPR and Myanmar.
The Global Enabling Trade Report 2014 assesses the performance of 138 economies, in four main areas: market access; border administration; infrastructure; and the operating environment.
It uses a methodology that measures the extent to which economies have in place institutions, policies, infrastructure and services facilitating the free flow of goods over borders and to their destination.
These trade-enabling factors were organized in seven more specific pillars: domestic market access; foreign market access; efficiency and transparency of border administration; availability and quality of transport infrastructure; availability and quality of transport services; availability and use of ICTs; and operating environment.
“The Philippines ranks 64th on the ETI, and 5th within Asean. The country does well on the domestic market access (ranking 19th) and foreign market access (26th) pillars, but room for improvement remains with respect to the other five pillars of the index,” the report stated.
“Border administration (where the Philippines ranked 71st) is mired by corruption and red tape, two factors also contributing to weakening the general operating environment (82nd). Like many countries in the region, the Philippines’ biggest weakness is the lack of adequate transport infrastructure (96th). The shortcomings are the most severe in the airport (105th) and port (107th) infrastructure. To make things worse, the availability and quality of associated logistics services remains largely insufficient (84th),” it further reported.
Singapore, meanwhile, took the top spot of the Enabling Trade Index 2014. Hong Kong placed second in the scale, followed by New Zealand, Finland, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Chile, Sweden and Germany, which rounded up the index’s top 10 countries.
Peter V. Perfecto, executive director of the Makati Business Club, said that despite persistent challenges, the Philippines enjoys competitive advantages in 15 areas of the 56 indicators, namely “specific tariffs, tariffs faced, cost to export, cost to import, tariff dispersion, ease and affordability of shipment, available international airline seats in kilometers per week, customs services index, access to finance, share of duty-free imports, number of distinct tariffs, efficiency of clearance process, tariff rate, number of days to import, and ICT use for business to business transactions.”
Makati Business Club noted that, regarding difficulties in facilitating inbound and outbound trade, the Global Enabling Report identified the top five export problems of the Philippines. These include high costs or delays caused by domestic transportation, access to imported inputs at competitive prices, technical requirements and standards abroad, identifying potential markets and buyers, and difficulties in meeting quality/quantity requirements of buyers.
On the subject of importation, the top five problems were burdensome import procedures, corruption at the border, tariffs, high cost or delays caused by domestic transportation, and high cost or delays caused by international transportation.
