Electronics industry warns of export decline in 2009
Agence France-Presse | 11/05/2008 4:08 PM
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The Philippine electronics industry, the country's single largest export sector, warned Wednesday that it would likely see a decline in 2009 due to the worldwide financial turmoil.
"It doesn't look like we will have positive growth this year in terms of the electronics industry. It looks like it will be negative," said Arthur Young, president of the Semiconductors and Electronics Industries of the Philippines Inc. (SEIPI).
He said SEIPI, the industry association, had originally forecast flat growth in exports in 2008 with five percent growth in 2009 but the projections were discarded in the face of large cancellations of orders in recent months.
"It is definitely going to be a very bad fourth quarter because of the steep decline in demand," he said, declining to give specifics.
"In October, the orders from our customers dropped tremendously and they continue to drop," he said.
SEIPI had initially hoped that exports to non-traditional markets like China, India and Eastern Europe would make up for lower demand from the United States or Western Europe but the fall in demand spread to those markets as well, said Young.
The first quarter of 2009 would also be tough but Young was hopeful electronics exports would improve in the second half of that year, once consumer confidence returned and credit began flowing again.
"On the medium to long term, we are fairly confident that the industry will be solid," he said.
In the meantime, electronics companies would try to cut costs and even reduce work days to avoid laying off workers during the financial crisis.
Electronics shipments for the first eight months of 2009 slipped by 1.65 percent to 20.228 billion dollars, the government earlier announced.
Electronics accounts for more than 50 percent of the country's exports.
