MANILA – Philippine exports of goods and services should grow by 40 percent to catch up with the over PHP140-billion export revenues target for 2024 under the Philippine Export Development Program (PEDP), a Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) official said.
DTI-Export Marketing Bureau (EMB) director Bianca Sykimte said in a recent interview that the country’s export performance in 2023 is expected to fall short of target due to the uncertainties in the global market.
Under the PEDP, export revenues target for 2023 was set at USD126.8 billion and at USD143.4 billion in 2024.
Latest government data showed that January to November 2023 merchandise exports declined by 8.4 percent to USD67.03 billion from USD73.18 billion in the same period in 2022.
On the other hand, services exports from January to September 2023 jumped 28.4 percent to USD13.53 billion from USD10.53 billion in the first three quarters of 2022.
With the strong services exports, Sykimte was hopeful that outbound trade of goods and services last year grew by 5 percent.
“We're still looking at 5 percent for total exports. I think it's about less than the target of PEDP of USD127 billion. But it's still higher in terms of growth rate. In previous PEDPs, I think in our last PEDP, our average growth rate for exports, it's about 4 percent only. So this year, despite the uncertainty in the global market, we still managed to outperform the last six years of the PEDP,” she said.
Sykimte said that since the 40-percent growth in exports this year would be a “hard target”, export revenues in 2024 can still increase by 10 percent.
“Based on market projections, with business as usual, about 10-percent improvement. So definitely we'll try to achieve more than 10 percent for export,” she added. (PNA)
