Illustrative image (Source: images.businessweek.com) The Philippines’ export turnover reached 5.28 billion USD in June, down 3.3 percent year-on-year, a fall for the third consecutive month, announced the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) on August 11.
The PSA attributed the decrease to the lower volumes of exported agricultural and mineral products and a slowdown in world demands.
Receipts from agricultural products amounted to 347.91 million USD in June 2015, down 24.9 percent from 463.32 million USD of June 2014. Meanwhile, mineral products decreased by 26.2 percent from 496.58 million USD in June 2014 to 366.43 million USD in June 2015.
According to Socio-economic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan, weak global demand continues to negatively affect the country’s foreign trade affairs, particularly export activities. The country earned only 28.8 billion USD from export in the first half of this year, a year-on-year decrease of 4.7 percent.
He said that most big economies in East Asia and Southeast Asian, excluding Vietnam and China, saw bad export performance in June.
The economic recovery of the US will help increase demands for Philippine products in the time to come, he said, stressing the need to increase domestic demands to avoid imbalance.-VNA
