MANILA, Feb 11 (PNA) — The Philippines’ electronics industry has ended 2014 with exports revenue increasing by 8.1 percent to USD25.88 billion from full-year 2013’s earnings of USD23.93 billion, data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showed.
The industry shared 42 percent of the total merchandise exports value last year.
Growth in exports earnings of the electronics sector in 2014 was brought by increase in exports of eight out of nine sub-sectors of the industry.
Top export of the industry remained to be semiconductors with revenue amounting to USD17.83 billion in 2014. But, its increment was only by 2.5 percent from 2013’s value of USD17.4 billion.
Electronic data processing exports followed with exports value of USD5.68 billion which went up by 26.3 percent from USD4.5 billion in 2013.
Highest growth was posted by control and instrumentation electronics with exports surging by 138.3 percent to USD590 million in 2014 than 2013’s revenue of USD248 million.
Double-digit growth was noted in exports of office equipment at 33.8 percent to USD437 million last year against 2013’s USD326 million; consumer electronics at 14.8 percent to USD832 million from USD332 million; and communication/radar at 37.3 percent to USD283 million from USD206 million; and medical/industrial instrumentation at 96.2 percent to USD106 million from USD54 million.
Exports of telecommunication electronics also grew by 8.0 percent to USD352 million in 2014 from USD326 million in 2013.
Only automotive electronics’ export revenue fell by 59.8 percent to USD219 million from USD545 million.
The Semiconductor and Electronics Industries of the Philippines, Inc. (SEIPI), at the start of 2014, was conservative with the growth of the industry, projecting its industry’s expansion only at 5.0 percent.
But during the middle of the 2014, SEIPI expanded the range of its growth of up to 8.0 percent and further expected the industry to grow up to 11 percent at end-2014 during the organization’s briefing in December last year.
For 2015, SEIPI eyes electronics exports to expand by 5.0 to 7.0 percent.
Meanwhile, the World Bank has urged the Philippines to implement measures that will help the local electronics industry to rebound in order to support the country’s economic growth.
In its Philippine Economic Update (PEU), World Bank said only the Philippines has not yet fully recovered among major electronics exporting country in the region despite global demand has recovered.
“This strongly suggests that the problem lies in the country’s competitiveness,” World Bank said.
World Bank cited local industry’s top concerns which made the domestic electronics sector less competitive in the region including high electricity cost, insufficient infrastructure leading to high logistics cost, and cumbersome trade regulations. (PNA)