Exporters eye double-digit growth

Export industry leaders aimed at a fighting growth target of between five and nine percent last year when the government forecast was a modest four percent.

When all the numbers came in, exports shot up by nine percent for the whole of 2002 on sales of $35 billion, only a billion short of the record high of $36 billion in sales the other year. The exporters aimed high and hit the bulls-eye.

Encouraged by the rapid rebound in the last three quarters of the previous year, industry leaders have set their sights to a higher growth rate between six and 11 percent this year.

"If we hit the low-end target of six percent for the year, we shall have coaxed the industry back to full recovery. And if we hit the double-digit target, we shall have nurtured it back to its high growth rate," explained Sergio R. Ortiz-Luis, Jr., Philippine Exporters Confederation (Philexport) president.

He said the industry is adopting this year a two-pronged strategy to meet the higher end of its growth target: Innovative packaging and product design plus aggressive marketing.

Philexport has tied-up with the Packaging Research and Development Center of the Department of Science and Technology and the export promotions arms of government in promoting the adoption by small and medium enterprises of more creative packages for export products.

This will wean them, especially the processed food sector, from using recycled packages that projected the image of inferior quality. This has remained a barrier to the faster growth of the country’s indigenous export products.

The packaging research and development center went on full operations late last year but most exporters have not yet learned of the services it offers. The program of popularizing the use of creative packaging materials is expected to boost the sale of non-traditional exports that have performed well since last year.

Product design especially in the furniture, home furnishings, handicrafts and holiday décor industries, on the other hand, have established their niches in the global marketplace due to superior design.

In the marketing front, the export sector has shifted its sights from its traditional markets that include Japan, the United States and Europe to the East Asian economies. Ortiz-Luis noted that the strong performance of the sector last year was brought in by spectacular growth in export trade with ASEAN countries and China.

He said that to further expand the country’s share in the huge Chinese market, 117 export firms have enlisted to join the Solo Trade Fair for the Philippines in the City of Shanghai later this month.

Aggressive marketing like the on to be shortly held in the port city of Shanghai are being jointly planned by industry players, and their partners in government.

Barring another calamity of the magnitude of the September 11, 2001 bombing of the Pentagon building and the World Trade Center in the US, the country’s export industry is bullish it will be back to its double-digit growth track record for straight nine years since 1992, the export leader said. – Abe P. Belena, Philexport News and Features