Exports seen rising by 7% in 2017

Exports of goods and services may increase by 7 percent this year, assuming merchandise exports would maintain its favorable growth, a trade official said.

An official of the Export Development Council (EDC), a public-private partnership that regularly reviews export targets, said it was considering raising its high-end growth target for this year of 3 percent.

The target for this year was supposed to be the same as that for 2016, from flat to a 3-percent growth. However, latest data showed that prospects might be more optimistic for exports.

“Seven percent is the highest. That is if we continue the export performance in January, and sustain a double-digit growth in the next six months,” said Senen M. Perlada, director of the Department of Trade and Industry’s Export Marketing Bureau and EDC executive director.

Perlada told reporters on Friday that they were planning to announce the new target at the end of this month.

In January, exports jumped by 22.5 percent to $5.130 billion from $4.187 billion in the same month last year, according to the latest data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA). This is the first time that exports posted double-digit growth in over three years.

Merchandise exports last posted double-digit growth in November 2014, at 19.7 percent. This was the industry’s best performance since December 2013 when it grew 24.9 percent.

The latest merchandise exports report also marks the second time in a row that the rate of outbound shipments grew, following months of decline.
According to the revised PSA data, export of goods moved up 6.3 percent in December last year, higher than the preliminary report of 4.5 percent.

On the other hand, according to Perlada, the export of services ended 2015 at $29.22 billion mostly due to the Information Technology and Business Process Management (IT-BPM) sector which accounted for about 75 percent of total services.

He said total services was expected to have ended at about $32 billion in 2016.