THE electronics industry, which contributes about 60 percent of the country’s merchandise exports, is still maintaining a glimmer of hope that it will recover from a 2.15-percent drop in exports in the first half of the year and go flat for 2008.

However, Ernie Santiago, president of the Semiconductor and Electronics Industries of the Philippines Inc. (Seipi), said going on a positive growth will be an uphill climb, especially since the second-quarter shipments did not deliver the results they had hope for.

“The second quarter was not really as good as we expected. It just moved a little,” Santiago told the BusinessMirror.

Santiago said the industry was hoping that the global market would start to pick up considerably in the April-to-June period and provide the momentum for a stronger second half.

But as the latest report from the National Statistics Office showed, the industry was still down by about 2.15 percent from the same period last year, even with a strong 6-percent increment in the electronics and semiconductor shipments in June.

Santiago said they will wait until the third quarter of the year to determine if there is still a possibility that the industry would have a positive growth for the whole of 2008.

“But as of now, we are still looking at a flat growth,” he said.

Santiago said the industry is hopeful that the global market will pick up already, since it has been on a slump for a long time.

One positive sign, he said, is the downtrend in crude prices, which already dropped from $146 per barrel to the current $123.

Santiago emphasized that the problem is not with the local industry, but the slowdown in the market.

He said in the industry’s meeting in Cebu late last month, the participants outlined several cost-cutting and productivity improvement initiatives that will make up for reduced sales.

“We have to work on something, improve on productivity and save on cost. This is how we should manage the downturn,” Santiago said.

Aside from this, Santiago said Seipi decided to be more active in its marketing campaigns to promote the Philippine industry abroad.

The industry will also lobby for the grant of more incentives to research and development and the adoption of semiconductor engineering courses in several universities as ways to spur the industry’s growth.

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