DTI urges SEIPI members to add value to products

MANILA, Philippines - The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) is urging electronics and semiconductor manufacturers in the Philippines to add value to their products to be competitive in free trade areas.

Director Senen Perlada of the DTI Bureau of Export Trade Promotion (BETP) called on members of the Semiconductor and Electronics Industries in the Philippines Inc. (SEIPI) to add value to their products by improving the design and innovation of their products and increasing compliance to international standards.

SEIPI is the largest organization of foreign and local semiconductor and electronics companies in the Philippines. To date, it has 240 members. 

“In order to provide value to whatever we manufacture or assemble in the Philippines, we have to make a decision to which part of the value chain we want to move,” said Perlada during a recently-held Doing Business in Free Trade Areas (DBFTA) session hosted by the department.

The DBFTA is an advocacy program of the DTI that seeks to inform local manufacturers and would-be exporters of the benefits of free trade agreements.

During the session, Perlada urged semiconductor manufacturers to increase the local value content of locally manufactured electronic and semiconductor products to at least 50 percent from the current 30 percent.

“We either go more into design, research and development, innovation, standardization, or we move more into logistics, marketing and brand or a combination of those to add to whatever we are doing now,” Perlada said.

The Philippines is a signatory to several free trade agreement such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) FTA or AFTA as well as with China (ACFTA), India (AIFTA), Korea (AKFTA), Japan (AJCEPA), and Australia and New Zealand (AANZFTA) as well as the Japan Economic Partnership Agreement (PJEPA).

SEIPI earlier urged the government to address the power woes in the country to encourage investment inflows into the sector.