Despite the 9-percent drop in the value of exports in August, the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) revealed that the Philippines is among the few economies

among selected Asian countries that registered positive exports growth in the first eight months of 2012.

In a statement on Thursday, NEDA said that the country’s merchandise exports for the first eight months of this year grew by 5.4 percent to $35.3 billion from $33.5 billion of the same period in 2011.

According to NEDA officer in charge Emmanuel Esguerra, country data suggested that the Philippines is next only to Vietnam and China, which posted 18.7-percent and 7.1-percent growths, respectively, for the said period.

Other countries with positive growths were Japan, 1.1 percent; Singapore, 0.3 percent; and Hong Kong 0.1 percent.

NEDA also said that export contractions were experienced in Indonesia with -5.9 percent;
Taiwan, -5.6 percent; Korea, -1.5 percent; and Thailand -1.3 percent, also from January to August of this year.

Latest data from the National Statistics Office (NSO) showed that merchandise exports from the Philippines declined by 9 percent in August 2012 to $3.8 billion from $4.2 billion in the same month of 2011.

NSO reported that lower overseas sales of minerals, -62.4 percent; total agro-based products, -43.7 percent; manufactures, -1.3 percent; petroleum, -99.7 percent; and forest products, -49.8 percent, dragged down export earnings in August.

Moreover, earnings from minerals dipped, as revenues significantly declined for copper metal, -100 percent; gold, -88.5 percent; and chromium ore, -21.8 percent.

In terms of volume, NSO data also showed that exports of copper metal, gold and chromium ore fell by 100 percent, 67.6 percent and 47.1 percent, respectively.

“This decline in volume of minerals owes mainly to reduced demand from China and Europe, which weighed down international market prices,” Esguerra added.

On the other hand, total agro-based exports in August 2012 contracted year-on-year because of lower sales of coconut products, which posted a 51.7-percent drop.

“Lower receipts from coconut oil [-50.5 percent] and desiccated coconut [-82.3 percent] greatly affected exports for coconut products. This can be attributed to both low volume of outward shipments and declining prices in the international market,” the NEDA official noted.

Furthermore, overseas sales of manufactured goods slightly fell by 1.3 percent in August 2012, a turnaround from the sustained growth recorded since January 2012.

“The decline in the export of manufactured goods partly reflected the steeper-than-expected downturn in global manufacturing as a result of declining levels of new businesses and excess capacity,” Esguerra explained.

As for petroleum products, exports fell by 99.7 percent to $83,100 in August 2012 from $24.5 million in the same month last year.

“Even with its negligible share in total export receipts during the month, the reduction of revenues from petroleum products pulled down merchandise exports by 0.58 percentage points,” Esguerra said.