THE Philippines’s export earnings fell by 13.5 percent to $5.23 billion in January, from the previous year’s $6.045 billion, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority .
“The balance of trade in goods [BoT-G] is the difference between the value of export and import. The BoT-G in January 2023 amounted to $-5.74 billion, indicating a trade deficit with an annual increase of 27.2 percent,” the PSA said in a report. By commodity group, the agency said electronic products continued to be the country’s top export in January 2023 with total earnings of $2.83 billion, which accounted for 54.2 percent of the total exports during the period.
Japan was the top destination of Philippine exports in January, accounting for $866.25 million or 16.6 percent of the receipts during the period.As for the increase in the country’s import payments in January, the PSA attributed this to seven of the top 10 major commodity groups. It noted that metalliferous ores and metal scrap recorded the fastest annual increase of 333.5 percent.