Even if the country’s imports grew 10.4 percent in August, an economist said the government might not hit its target of 17-percent to 18-percent growth this year.
Moreover, former Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno said the August figure indicated that the decline in the country’s exports will likely continue in the next few months.
The National Statistics Office (NSO) on Tuesday said the growth in the country’s import bill reached $4.926 billion in August. However, on a month-to-month basis, this was actually 1.5 percent lower than July’s figure.
For the first eight months of the year, imports posted a double-digit growth of 13.8 percent to $40.426 billion from $35.526 billion in the same period last year. Exports, however, only slightly inched up by 0.9 percent to $33.308 billion in January to August from $33.021 billion in 2010, resulting in a trade deficit of $7.118 billion in the period from only a $2.505-billion deficit a year ago.
“The likelihood that imports will grow by 17 percent to 18 percent this year is fading fast. With the August imports number, imports have to grow by around 25 percent for the rest of the year for the government to meet its 2011 imports forecast of 17 percent to 18 percent,” Diokno said.
The main drag was again electronics, which declined 15.2 percent to P1,394.53 billion from a year earlier. Electronics account for 28.3 percent of total imports.
However, on a month-to-month basis, electronics actually grew 19.5 percent from July.
Year-to-date, electronic products grew 3.8 percent from January to August from the same period last year.
Overall, the biggest losers in terms of import growth were cereals and cereal preparations, which plunged 34.63 percent, mainly because the country has not imported rice during the period. But Diokno said this is not necessarily be bad news.
“Imports of cereals and cereal preparations have shrunk by 49.6 percent, year to date. But such trend will have to be reversed soon. Rice imports will have to resume as a result of the damages to crops during the recent typhoons, not only in the Philippines, but for a large part of Southeast Asia. The costs of rice imports may inch up because of massive damages to crops in the rice exporting countries like Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia,” Diokno said.
University of the Philippines economist Ernesto Pernia and National Economic and Development Authority Assistant Director General Ruperto Majuca both expect import growth to be sustained in the coming months, heading into the holiday season.
But Pernia said the risk to this outlook is likely the “further weakening” of the US and European economies.
The top three import sources of the Philippines in August were Japan, which accounted for 11.8 percent of total imports; China with 10.6 percent; and the United States with 9.9 percent.
Imports from Japan, which is still struggling from the twin disasters in March, declined 3.2 percent from a year ago, although products sourced from China climbed 41.1 percent.
