Cai Ordinario (Business Mirror)
The national government plans to double receipts from merchandise and service exports by 2022, according to the new economic blueprint of the Duterte administration, dubbed as the Philippine Development Plan (PDP).
Under the PDP 2017-2022 the government is targeting to increase merchandise exports to as much as $62 billion and service exports to $68.6 billion, from $32.8 billion and $24 billion, respectively.
This means the value of merchandise exports must increase to around $5.167 billion and $5.717 billion monthly by 2022, from $2.733 billion and $2 billion, respectively, recorded from January to September 2016.
“The government will focus on providing support and promoting products where the country has comparative advantage and has the potential for competitive advantage,” the PDP read.
This will be supported by the government’s efforts to pursue new and maximize existing bilateral, regional and global partnerships, and integration.
The government will encourage micro, small and medium enterprises to maximize export opportunities and increase the utilization of preferential trading agreements.
It also intends to intensify the promotion of Philippine goods and services, as well as market intelligence. The Duterte administration said it will explore new markets for local products.
The government is keen on minimizing the cost of production and delivery of goods and services by instituting reforms; improve the quality of goods and services; and encourage innovation.
These efforts will be supported by a legislative agenda that pushes for the tax-reform program; institutionalization of the extractive industry-transparency initiative; unified pension-reform bill; government rightsizing bill; budget-reform bill; and real-property valuation and assessment reform act.
The Duterte administration said it also supports the following measures: local government unit (LGU) income-classification bill; LGU property-insurance bill; amendment of the Local Government Code of 1991; proposed amendments to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas charter; enactment of the Payment Systems Act; amendment of the Anti-Money Laundering Act; enactment of Islamic banking; and the amendment to the provisions of Republic Act (RA) 1405 (Law on Secrecy of Bank Deposits) and RA 6426 (Foreign Currency Deposit Act).
The country’s total merchandise exports from January to November 2016 declined by 5.2 percent to $51.36 billion, from $54.16 billion in the same period in 2015.
In November 2016 merchandise exports amounted to $4.73 billion, 7.5 percent lower than the $5.11 billion recorded in November 2015.