Trade

MANILA, Philippines – The country’s foreign debt rose by 9.5 percent to $60.1 billion in 2010 on the back of higher government and private sector borrowings as well as upward foreign exchange revaluation, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported yesterday.

THE Philippines suffered net outflows of foreign exchange in February, as it registered a balance of payments (BOP) deficit during the period.

MANILA, Philippines – The country’s trade deficit narrowed last year as exports rose faster than imports, the National Statistics Office reported on Friday.

GROWTH in the Philippines’ retail and consumer sector is forecast to drop by half this year, the sharpest fall in Southeast Asia, according to a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). In a report titled “Strong and Steady: 2011 Outlook for the Retail and Consumer Products Sector in Asia,” PwC said the Philippines’ retail and consumer industry…

MANILA, Philippines – The Philippines should shift its focus to addressing non-tariff barriers (NTB) and sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) which are being used by importing countries to deter competition and act as disguised restriction to market access.

Yokohama — Pacific Rim leaders meeting in Japan this weekend will pledge not to introduce new trade and investment barriers until 2013, according to a draft Apec statement.

MANILA, Philippines — The World Bank has urged the Philippines and other countries in the Asia Pacific to jump-start talks on integrating their labor markets, saying opening up employment opportunities within the region will further help member-countries weather shocks from the West.

The Philippines gained more foreign exchange in the first nine months of the year that the balance of payments (BOP) surplus widened to $6.54 billion.

My Alyansa Tigil Mina (ATM) colleagues were in Brussels for the 8th Asia-Europe Peoples Forum (AEPF) this week. The AEPF is an interregional network of progressive civil society organizations across Asia and Europe. It emerged in the 1996 from a common desire and need among organizations across the two continents to open up new venues…

THE Supreme Court (SC) has declared constitutional Republic Act 8762, or the Retail Trade Liberalization Act signed by then-President Joseph Estrada in March 2000, which allows foreigners to engage in the retail-trade business in the country.

GENEVA — The World Trade Organization raised on Friday its forecast for growth of global commerce to 10% this year, with its director general saying that even this might yet “turn out to be too low.”

GENEVA — A controversial plan to allow developing countries to raise tariffs temporarily to cope with a destabilizing flood of food imports or drop in food prices would actually have little impact on trade flows, a new study shows.

MANILA, Philippines – The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported yesterday that the country’s balance of payments (BOP) posted a surplus of $255 million in March, a complete reversal of the $472-million deficit registered in the same month last year.

MANILA, Philippines – The country’s current account surplus posted a more than two-fold increase last year due to higher remittances from overseas Filipinos as well as higher investment inflows, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported.

MANILA, Philippines – The Philippines ranked an impressive 44th in a new World Bank logistics survey that covered 155 economies worldwide.

Despite the global economic crisis, trade between China and the Philippines would take off again and China was even expected to overtake Japan as Manila’s second-largest trading partner soon, officials said. After growing more than 30 percent annually for seven years since 2000, bilateral trade dropped by 6.7 percent in 2008 to $28.28 billion, Chinese…

MANILA, Philippines – The International Monetary Fund (IMF) sees the country’s balance of payments (BOP) surplus surging to $6 billion this year from $89 million last year due to the impact of the global financial crisis.

MANILA, Philippines – The country’s gross international reserves (GIR) reached a new record high of $42.3 billion in September as a result of government foreign borrowing and the increase in the price of gold, the central bank reported yesterday.

American garment buyers have placed an initial order of $35 million worth of garments following the filing of a bill in the US Congress that seeks to allow duty-free and preferential tariffs to locally-made garments into the US market.

NEW DELHI (AFP) – A swift conclusion to a new world trade pact could serve as a powerful stimulus for recovery from the global financial crisis, WTO chief Pascal Lamy said in an interview published Tuesday.

GENEVA (AFP) – The contraction in trade in response to the economic crisis appears to have begun bottoming out, with Asia already showing a rebound, World Trade Organisation chief Pascal Lamy said Friday.

SIX Philippine products, including the country’s century-old export, abaca hemp, will enjoy duty-free access to the American market under the US Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) said on Wednesday.

MANILA, Philippines – The country’s gross international reserves (GIR) reached a new record high of $39.319 billion in May as a result of government foreign borrowing and the increase in the price of gold, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported yesterday.

HAMBURG, Germany: From Yantian to Hamburg, world trade is in the doldrums and Christian Blauert, who heads the largest container terminal in Germany’s northern port of Hamburg, needs only check the webcams to know things aren’t getting better.

MANILA, Philippines – The country’s balance of payments (BOP) slipped into a deficit level of $472 million at the end of March as government debt payments used up foreign exchange, paring down the first quarter balance to a $1.732-billion surplus.

The gross international reserves of the Bangko Sentral dropped to $38.87 billion at the end of March from $38.92 billion at end-February on huge foreign debt payments, the central bank said yesterday.

MANILA, Philippines – The country’s current account surplus narrowed to $4.2 billion in 2008 from the $7.1-billion surplus recorded in 2007, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported yesterday.

MANILA, Philippines – Citigroup expects the Philippines to post a budget deficit of P197 billion this year or 2.4 percent of the country’s total economic output.

The country’s balance of payments (BOP) surplus thinned to a four-year-low of $88 million in 2008, a small fraction of the $8.557-billion surplus in 2007 due to the inexorable outflow of foreign exchange from the country.

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said the country’s balance of payments (BPO) would fall below the projected $2.3-billion surplus this year.