AT least 30 percent of the workers of food and handicraft exporters have been retrenched due to the continued appreciation of the peso against the dollar, Philippine Exporters Confederation (Philexport) president Sergio Ortiz-Luis said.

Aside from this, Ortiz-Luis said about 75 companies have already shut down operations since the exchange rate hit the P47 to a dollar level.

These firms, he said, are the small indigenous exporters that are labor-intensive.

Easily, Ortiz-Luis said these exporters have retrenched about 10,000 of their work force.

“In terms of revenues their contribution is small, but the effect is really on employment,” he said.

This, Ortiz-Luis said, is saddening since these should be the kind of companies that the government should be helping to be able to foster in the midst of the tight competition globally.

However, Ortiz-Luis said, it appears that the government is sacrificing their welfare just to save on interest payments by not taking more proactive initiatives to control the rise of the peso.

“The government is sacrificing the exporters in its drive to save on interest costs. In the end, the government will also end up as the loser because the collections of the Bureau of Internal Revenue and the Bureau of Customs will also go down,” he said.

Ortiz-Luis said exporters believe that the government can do a lot outside of direct market interference to control the peso appreciation.

For instance, Ortiz-Luis said, the government can beef up further the country’s foreign reserves and borrow more from local banks, instead from abroad, to check the inflow of dollars.

“The government can actually dictate the exchange rate depending on its policy,” he said.

Ortiz-Luis said the government should give a strong signal that the exporters will not be left on its own, and this will make the speculators think twice of toying with the money market.

He said the ideal level for them is P47.50.

At this time, Ortiz-Luis said the small exporters are either scaling down operations or are already shutting down because their pricing is no longer competitive after the exchange rate breached the P47 to the dollar level.

TRADE Secretary Peter B. Favila suspects that the cement giants in the country are probably bloating their financing charges to justify their relatively high prices.

AT least 30 percent of the workers of food and handicraft exporters have been retrenched due to the continued appreciation of the peso against the dollar, Philippine Exporters Confederation (Philexport) president Sergio Ortiz-Luis said.

THE Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) has picked the amendments to the antismuggling law to become its second priority legislation for lobbying in Congress.

PTT Philippines Corp. (PTTPC), the local subsidiary of Thailand’s largest petroleum company, said Monday that it has opened its first fuel depot on Mactan Island, Cebu.

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CHANGES and improvements in the country’s Monthly Integrated Survey of Selected Industries (MISSI) will be implemented by 2008, the National Statistics Office (NSO) said.

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THE National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) Investment Coordination Committee (ICC) has improved monitoring of projects funded by official development assistance (ODA) and now requires all implementing agencies to submit more detailed information on projects with cost overruns.