DTI revises export goals for 2021, 2022

Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez disclosed on Wednesday that the country’s export target for 2021 and 2022 will have to be revised in order to keep abreast with changing demand.

“We have adjusted the export targets, taking into consideration impact of the pandemic and weaker global demand,” he said.

According to him, the revised targets will have to be lower than the original targets where export levels were originally projected to reach over $130 billion by 2022.

We have adjusted the export targets, taking into consideration impact of the pandemic and weaker global demand.

“In this revised set of targets, we will reach $105 billion by 2022, but still growing from $91.7 billion in 2021,” Lopez explained.

“Given the height of the lockdown and the pandemic in 2020, estimated exports decline for that year is at -13.5 percent,” he explained.

Meanwhile, Lopez said that the positive growth of two percent in September and three percent in November last year was not enough to totally offset the decline in the first half of 2020, which he said was the height of the lockdown.

But export numbers continued to improve month-on-month, reaching positive growth by September and November against the same months in the previous year numbers.

“We can write off the 2020 numbers, so to speak, but the rebound is expected this year 2021, where we expect to bounce back to a +12.5 percent in 2021 and +14.8 percent in 2022,” the Trade chief stressed.

Fighting targets
“We can consider these targets as fighting targets, after intensive consultations with each export sector and stakeholder and global market prospects per sector. This also means that we shall exert all efforts in terms of policies and support programs to assist the export sector and help them achieve these fighting targets,” he said.

“We expect the CREATE bill and other economic reforms to be passed in Congress, the “Build Build Build” and other investment and export promotion including digitalization programs to drive up more investment inflows to increase our export capacities, and unleash our potentials in higher value sectors such as in electronics, automotive, aerospace, IT BPM, copper and the creative industries, including the potential in Halal exports,” he pointed out.