With American multinational investment banking firm, Goldman Sachs listing the Philippines as one of the N-11 economies, experts see a bright future ahead for the country as a lucrative food business destination, the Center for International Trade Expositions and Missions (CITEM), export promotion arm of the Philippines’ Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), said.
Citing a February 2016 report by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), CITEM, in a report, said the country’s processed foods and non-alcoholic beverage exports grew at an average rate of 14.5 percent from 2006 to 2014. Such being the case, the country is fast becoming recognized as a regional springboard to penetrate the East and Southeast Asian markets for processed foods, officials said.
Moreover, the Philippines is also gifted with a large and talented workforce with the ability to manufacture high-quality, differentiated or niche-market, and high-value products that use both domestic and duty-free imported raw materials, the report said.
“In Asia, a region known to lead the market in global food production, the Philippines stands out as the most exciting and lucrative food business destination,” stated the CITEM report.
The Philippines is currently one of the world’s top exporters of fresh fruits and marine goods and a major supplier of raw ingredients to the USA, Japan, Canada, South Korea, and the Netherlands, accounting for US$307.87 million of agro-based export products in the world, it added.
The Philippines’ food processing sector contributes 50 percent to the country’s total manufacturing output with an annual growth of 10 percent, the report said, even as it also noted that the Philippine government has positioned its food manufacturing industry as a main source for ingredients, raw materials, machinery and packaging.
The Goldman Sachs list on the Philippines as among the N-11 economies was based on macroeconomic stability, political maturity, the openness of trade and investment policies, and the quality of education, the CITEM report stated.
The agency also cited the following as promising indicators of the Philippines’ growth:
• By 2030, the Philippines is expected to become a $1 trillion economy, according to Washington-based analytics firm, IHS Global Insight based on its latest “Sovereign Risk Review.” The country is the only sovereign in Asia that got a positive action from IHS.
• The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) Holdings also forecasts that by 2050, the Philippines will become the 16th largest economy in the world, the fifth largest in Asia, and the largest in Southeast Asia.
• The latest “World in 2050” report by multinational accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) also sees a leap from the Philippines’ 28th place in 2014 to 26th in 2030 and will further go up as the 21st in 2050 in terms of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) and gross domestic product (GDP).
N-11, are Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Turkey, South Korea and Vietnam that Goldman Sachs has listed as having a high potential of being among the world’s largest economies in the 21st century, along with Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. (Jojo Dass)
