Exporters focus on capability building

CEBU, Philippines- Cebuano exporters are now intensifying their capability advantage following major developments in the industry -- the ASEAN integration and the expansion of European Union-Generalized System of Preferences (EU-GSP+).

PhilExport-Cebu president Nelson Bascones said that the organization will focus mainly on the exporters' capability building at least in the next two years.

With these two developments, aside from the increasing competition in the global market, Bascones said the organization will look for opportunities to strengthen exporters' capabilities, in order not to be overtaken by the competition.

Updated market monitoring on trends and customers' preferences among others, are just few of the support tools that the organization will be providing to its members,

Efficiency on production, and maintaining lowest cost of operational expenses, are also seen to improve exporters' capability and competitiveness.

Support on these issues is very vital nowadays as he said the industry is confronted with a lot of cost-related issues such as production, logistics, raw materials, among others.

In the next few months, PhilExport-Cebu will be introducing more seminars and workshops that are expected to provide solutions of these concerns.

"Our inclusion in the EU-GSP+ is a good news for us but until we can see our products reaching that market, the figures like market potentials remain just numbers. We need help from government to also help us on how we can satisfy all the requirements of the European market," Bascones, who owns a company that exports processed seafood.

Likewise, Bascones said that the food sector is among the sectors that are at risk with the ASEAN integration happening because there are other member countries like Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand who are also producing the same products.

Thus, the Philippines' defining factor in this cutthroat export competition is efficiency.

If capacity building for exporters in the Philippines will be implemented, local exporters may increase its production level to achieve and exceed growth of US$120 billion by 2016, a figure that was aspired by the government.

Based on World Bank’s report, it mentioned that in terms of export survival, the Philippines scores the lowest among comparable ASEAN countries.

The WB report pointed out that despite being an open economy, the Philippines’ openness to trade is lower than its neighbors and its exports have been growing slower than its gross national product.

Another example of capacity building measures the government should also address is the compliance of local exporters to technical barriers to trade and sanitary phytosanitary measures from the developed countries like the United States, European Union, China and Japan.  (FREEMAN)