GTH, fashion exports show signs of upturn

CEBU, Philippines - PhilExport-Cebu has noted a recovery in Cebu’s exports from the gifts, toys and housewares sector as well as for fashion accessories.

PhilExport-Cebu executive director Fred Escalona said that shipments of these particular products have shown encouraging growth in the last few months of this year.

"We have seen remarkable increase of shipment volumes from the fashion accessory sector," said Escalona adding that the GTH sector is also well catching up.

Escalona said PhilExport will soon release more concrete figures of the sectors' recovery in the next few days.

In a separate interview with Russian Federation honorary Consul Armie L. Garcia, who also maintains a fashion accessory export business in Cebu, she said that there is a promising market for Cebu-made products especially the fashion accessory and GTH sectors, amid the lingering slump in the export market.

Garcia said she is planning to partner with the government through Philippine-Russia Business Assembly in pushing for an intensive marketing effort to promote Cebu-made products as it has a tremendous potential to gain strong interest from the wealthy Russian market.

"It’s just a matter of tapping government funds in promoting our products to Russia," said Garcia in an interview.

Garcia said the concern now is more on the unrecovered furniture export sector. She said unified promotion on this sector is important, saying "I don’t want the skill to be wasted."

According to Garcia, PBRA will soon organize a promotional event to showcase these good products once again to the Russian market.

She mentioned that there was an attempt by the exporters and her office three years ago to tap the Russian consumers, however it was not sustained.

Garcia said the previous promotions were successful because it was done under "diplomatic cover," but consistency was not sustained because it was all private-sector led initiative.

Thus, she said there is a need to involve the government in this bid, in the name of saving the good furniture brand of Cebu.

Former president of Cebu-GTH Exporters Foundation Incorporated and fashion accessories exporter Ramir Bonghanoy said that  wearable products for exports are expected to sustain its high momentum in spite of the unpredictable market movement, because these products don't cost much and consumers can easily afford to buy and change their accessories, home accents, bags, and jewelries based on the fast changing trends. (FREEMAN)