Philippine total merchandise exports expanded by 5.5 percent to $3.551 billion in November 2012 from $3.366 billion recorded a year ago, as manufactured goods recorded higher earnings during the month.

“The positive performance can be traced to the observed improvement of business sentiment indicators globally, which may have prompted the increased foreign purchases,” according to Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan.

Meanwhile, data from the National Statistics Office noted that the growth can be attributed by the increase in value of shipments of commodities such as metal components; woodcrafts and furniture; electronic products, cathodes and sections of cathodes, of refined copper and ignition wiring set; and other wiring sets used in vehicles, aircrafts and ships.

On a monthly basis, exports contracted by 19.4 percent from $4.408 billion posted in October 2012.

Also, cumulative merchandise exports for the first 11 months of 2012 recorded a positive growth of 7 percent to $48.026 billion from the $44.898 billion posted during the same period of 2011.

On the other hand, total volume of outward shipments showed a year-on-year increase of 1.8 percent, and a month-on-month decrease of 42.1 percent compared to same month last year and last month’s outward shipments, respectively.

Electronic products
The NSO data reported that exports of electronic products in November 2012 went up by 13.3 percent to $1.734 billion, and emerged as the country’s top export as it shared 48.8 percent of the total exports revenue.

Month-on-month, electronic products as well as semiconductors showed a drop of 8.8 percent and 10.4 percent, respectively.

“The growth in semiconductors sales followed the 2-percent annual increase of global chip sales in November 2012. This marks the electronics industry’s recovery following a series of contractions in the initial months of 2012,” Balisacan added.

Other top exports were woodcrafts and furniture, $271.32 million; metal components, $129.05 million; and apparel and clothing accessories, $113.70 million; ignition wiring set and other wiring sets used in vehicles, aircrafts and ships, $109.70 million; cathodes and sections of cathodes, of refined copper, $71.56 million; coconut oil including crude and refined, $42.90 million; gold (extracted from copper ores and concentrates), $36.29 million; pineapple and pineapple products, $28.79 million and bananas, $20.20 million.

Total receipts from the top 10 exports reached $2.557 billion, or 72 percent of the total exports.

Furthermore, the NSO data showed that the exports receipts from major commodity groups such as manufactured goods was estimated at $3.141 billion; total agro-based products went down to $164.74 million; mineral products with $152.58 million and forest products with $3.49 million.

The data further showed that Japan emerged as the country’s top export destination in November 2012 with revenue amounting to $740.21 million. It took up a 20.8-percent share of the total exports for November, higher by 2.5 percent compared with $722.30 million recorded a year ago.

Japan was followed by United States with export earnings worth $458.37 million; Hong Kong, amounting to $373.81 million; China with $371.66 million; Singapore with export earnings worth $291.00 million; Taiwan with $199.36 million; South Korea with $167.56 million; Thailand with $132.75 million; Germany with $118.02 million and The Netherlands with $98.30 million.

Total export receipts from the country’s top 10 markets for the month of November 2012 amounted to $2.951 billion, or 83.1 percent of the total.