The Philippines is in a good position to take advantage of opportunities in emerging markets such as Brazil, Russia, India, and China or BRIC.
Of these, China is proving to be the most promising after the Association Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has become that country’s largest trading partner resulting from the creation of the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area (CAFTA).
China is expected to import more from ASEAN to meet required inputs for its production processes to support its economic expansion, according to Center for International Trade Expositions and Missions supervising trade industry development specialist Romleah Ocampo.
In her report on the recent China-ASEAN Economic and Trade Relations seminar held in Nanning, China, Ocampo said China is expected to have increasing demand for imported goods considering the country’s rapidly growing middle-class market and more affluent lifestyles. She identified agriculture, furniture, and garments sectors as offering tremendous opportunities.
Also increasing popularity among the Chinese are Philippine crab paste, laing (spicy vegetable dish cooked in coconut milk), banana chips, polvoron (sweet snack made from powdered milk), mango, calamansi, coconut juices, purees, and concentrates.
Bright prospects are also seen for Philippine farm and fishery exports like tuna, lapu-lapu, shrimps, and virgin coconut oil and other coconut products.
A real estate boom and the growing affluence of its population also make China a robust market for furniture despite being acknowledged as the world’s biggest exporter of this product, Ocampo said.
Meanwhile, the Philippine garment sector has an advantage to target the upscale medium to high-end Chinese garments market. This, as China’s garment industry is weak in terms of sophistication and design development.
CAFTA, which became fully operational in January 1, 2010, created a free trade area with 1.9 billion consumers and a total trade volume of $4.5 trillion.
Economist and research fellow of the Social Weather Stations and former director at the National Economic and Development Authority Dennis Arroyo echoed the same optimism for China and also for Brazil, Russia and India at the most recent PortCalls Cargo Economics Conference.
China, he said, has become the biggest importer of intermediate goods from its neighbors in Asia as it aggressively expands its exports of finished goods to the rest of the world. As its domestic labor costs rise, it will be pushed to move higher in the industrial value chain and integrate its industries with those in the ASEAN region.
”Developing Asia will continue to grow at over eight percent a year, twice as fast as the projected growth elsewhere in the world at four percent,” Arroyo noted. This growth will be led by the robust growth of the Chinese and Indian economies.
India is another very promising market in succeeding years. Although it still grapples with poverty, it has been growing at an average of 7% since 1997 and by the year 2025, it will become the world’s largest consumer market.
Between the two most populous countries, their cities will be host to over 500 million newly prospering urban residents, a huge market for consumer and capital goods from the rest of Asia.
Brazil, on the other hand, has built an economy in South America much bigger than all of the economies of its neighbors combined. In the coming years, that industrializing nation will be needing automotive parts, electronics products, electrical and transport equipment and chemicals, products which are some of the biggest exports of the Philippines.
Working on these findings, Philippine exporters have pinned their hopes on these emerging markets amid an export growth slowdown last year and as they increase their export offensive campaign this year. Government and private sector have maintained the aggregate export target of $120 billion by 2016.
Hong Kong Pagoda And Skyscrapers by Stuart Miles http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=2664ind_3
