(Bloomberg) — Philippine exports fell for a third straight month in July as demand for electronics products weakened, adding to signs of a faltering global recovery that’s hurting Asian economic expansion.
Shipments abroad dropped 1.7 percent from a year earlier to $4.43 billion after falling a revised 9.4 percent in June, the National Statistics Office said in Manila today. The median of five estimates in a Bloomberg News survey was for a 6.8 percent decline.
“Waning demand from Western markets and peso gains as an added burden” are damping exports, Radhika Rao, an economist at Forecast Pte in Singapore, said before the report. Philippine shipments overseas may “remain weak” for the remainder of the year and will be the “main drag” to economic growth, Rao said.
A weakening U.S. recovery and the debt crisis in Europe have trimmed demand for Asian goods and diverted the region’s attention from containing inflation to protecting economic growth. The Philippines’ $200 billion economy grew 3.4 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier, the weakest expansion since the end of 2009.
The Philippine peso fell a fourth day today to 42.85 a dollar, according to Tullett Prebon Plc. It is Southeast Asia’s best-performing currency this quarter after the Thai baht.
Overseas sales account for about 30 percent of the Southeast Asian nation’s economy.
Electronics exports, which account for about half of Philippine products sold overseas, fell 21 percent in July from a year earlier, the statistics agency said. Rao said the nation’s main export item is dependent on “discretionary spending” and is usually the first to experience lower demand in an economic slowdown.
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By: with assistance from Clarissa Batino and Karl Lester M. Yap in Manila. Editors: Stephanie Phang, Sunil Jagtiani
Source: The San Francisco Chronicle, Sept.12, 2011
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