PH medium-term export targets under review

The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) is reviewing to see if reaching at least $122 billion worth of exported goods and services in 2022 is still doable, as the global market copes with the pandemic.

Trade Undersecretary Abdulgani Macatoman said during the National Export Congress on Thursday that the government was currently studying the export targets under the Philippine Export Development Plan (PEDP).

“We are reviewing and assessing the PEDP’s strategies, indicators and export targets to see if such are still doable or not,” he said.

However, he said they “continue to be optimistic that we will be able to still achieve even the low-end target of $122 billion in 2022 hand-in-hand.”

Under the plan, exports of merchandise and services should hit a target range of $122 billion to $131 billion by the end of the Duterte admi­nistration.

It remains to be seen, however, if the present market conditions would lead to better days for exporters.

Back in 2017, Senen Perlada, director of the DTI Export Marketing Bureau, said achieving the 2022 target would mean having to meet a number of expectations. These, he said, were the recovery of global demand and the strengthening of the dollar against the peso.