Local exporters confident of sustained growth in 2011

MANILA, Philippines - Exporters have expressed optimism they would sustain in 2011 the export sector’s strong recovery posted this year, with revenues estimated at $50 billion by yearend.

This would be a record-breaking comeback from last year’s $38.4 billion.

Total export sales from January to September 2010 already reached $38.298 billion, led by electronic products.

“Unless a shooting war between the two Koreas erupts this month, and our exports to both South and North Korea suddenly stop, the export industry shall have staged a full recovery to the 2007 record by the end of this year,” Philippine Exporters Confederation Inc. president Sergio Ortiz-Luis Jr. told Philexport members during their 4th general membership meeting. 

Ortiz-Luis said the peso-dollar exchange rate may not affect this year’s revenue forecast, citing the peso’s depreciation to 44 despite the influx of dollar remittances sent by the overseas Filipino workers for their families for the Christmas holidays.  

The peso closed at 44.15 to the dollar on Thursday from previous day’s 43.94.

The export leader said the high growth path may no longer come from Philippine traditional trading partners.

He noted that exports to the United States and Europe continued to decline until September this year, an indication that the economies of these countries have not yet recovered.

In contrast, sales to the ASEAN trade bloc have grown by 30 percent.

Ortiz-Luis sees bright market prospects in Asia, particularly China and India.

“China and India alone have a combined population of 2.5 billion people, millions of them getting more prosperous each day. We need to find out what we can produce in abundance that the Chinese and Indians may want to buy,” he said.

Ortiz-Luis said the government is helping industry players open and expand markets with these two huge markets, and as well as with other new trading partners like New Zealand and Australia.

“This new decade, more Asian countries are riding on the crest of the third and perhaps final wave of rapid development in the rest of Asia,” he added. “We now know where we are going to. We have mapped out how to go there. We must move in concert now and get there.”

To this end, Ortiz-Luis said the aggressive push in opening up new markets with the country’s trading partners in Asia plus the market for halal food in the Middle East was specifically spelled out in the new Philippine Export Development Plan (PEDP).

The PEDP for the years 2011 to 2013 is now being fine tuned in time for implementation starting next month.

Apart from this initiative, the export leader bared that another new strategy that has been added in the plan is the strengthening of the value chain.

This is through new investments and long-term partnerships for each of the export industries, particularly those that use indigenous raw materials like food processing, furniture, handicrafts, fine and fashion jewelry and Christmas décor.

“We saw that to ensure sustainable growth of these sectors, forward and backward linkages must be made stronger,” Ortiz-Luis further said.