Most exports still growing despite electronics dive

MANILA, Philippines – Despite the continued dive in the overseas sale of electronics products for the fifth straight month this year, most Philippine export products continued to grow.

This was the little noticed fact in the latest report of the National Statistics Office on merchandise export performance for the first eight months of the year.

Leading the goods that continued to grow amidst anemic demand from the United States and Europe were garment products, hauling in $163.30 million in sales and growing by 11.4 percent in comparison to sales of the same goods in September last year. Garments ranks second largest export, next to electronics

Woodcraft and furniture, the third export winner, pulled off a 34.6 percent growth in the same month with revenues totaling $153.66 million while fourth place cathodes made of refined copper shoveled in $128,09 million and expanding 56.6 percent over the same month last year.

Metal spare parts kicked up 24.3 percent on sales of $66.88 million.

Agro-based products that made up 8.3 percent of total exports made a valiant growth of 32.3 percent over the same month last year with combined sales of $319.70 million.

As a single crop, bananas displayed the highest growth record among the top 10 export products, expanding 164.6 percent with sales proceeds of $42.58 million in just one month.

The valiant stand made by majority of the top 10 exports of the country did not, however, suffice to cover the heavy drubbing suffered by electronics and semiconductor, which made the deepest dive of negative 47.9 percent in September. Revenues dipped to $3.87 billion from $5.34 billion September of last year, its highest export performance in history.

Over the nine-month period since last January, total export performance plunged to the red line to negative 3.1 percent. Total exports sank from $38.123 billion last year to $37.18 billion this year. –Philexport News and Features (The Philippine Star)