MANILA - Philippine electronics manufacturers believe they have seen the worst of the global downturn as hard-hit companies are hiring again and new investments are made, industry officials said Wednesday.

The development has immense implications for an economy teetering on recession because the sector accounts for more than half of its exports.

"There are signs that we've bottomed out," Dow Jones Newswires quoted Semiconductor and Electronics Industries of the Philippines Inc. president Ernie Santiago as saying.

"Our latest growth guidance for the whole year is a negative 20 percent. Before it was negative 30 percent," he added.

The government earlier reported that although electronics exports were down 33.9 percent from a year earlier to 1.619 billion dollars in March, the figure was up by nearly a fifth on February.

Santiago said that while electronics shipments have contracted year-on-year in each of the first three months of 2009, they have steadily grown month on month.

He said the industry also attracted 40 million dollars of investment in the five months to May, which though down from 200 million dollars in the same period last year, was an achievement in "this bad time for business."

Before the global crisis struck last year, the industry group projected annual investment in the industry of around a billion dollars. Last year, total investment reached only 400 million dollars.

"We're seeing some glow at the end of the tunnel," said Lilia de Lima, head of the Philippine Economic Zone Authority, which oversees the export-oriented industrial enclaves where most of the electronics firms are located.