BAGUIO CITY – The Cordillera office of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA-CAR) disclosed that the region’s export volume drastically declined by 26 percent at 403,664,110 kilos in March this year compared to the previous month.
Among the export commodities, natural or cultured pearls, precious or semi-precious stones, precious metals, metals clad with precious metals and articles, limitation jewelry and coin were largely produced for the first quarter of this year accounting for 99.9 percent of export goods in February and 98.5 percent in March this year. The said exports were valued at $2,291,869 and $2,789,043 in February and March 2017, respectively.
On the other hand, machinery and mechanical appliances, electrical equipment, parts thereof, sound recorders and reproducers, and parts and accessories of such articles shared 1.5 percent in the total exports of the region in March 2017 with a total value of $41,164 in export sales.
The PSA-CAR reported that the region only exported its produce to only 2 countries in March this year, namely, HongKong and the Netherlands with HongKong having the biggest share of the region’s exports at 98.5 percent with a total value of $2,789,042 followed by the Netherlands at 1.5 percent or equivalent to $41,164.
The PSA-CAR explained free on board value is the value of the goods free on board the carrier at the frontier of the exporting country and it includes inland freight, export duty and other necessary expenses while ocean freight, insurance and consular fees are excluded.
Further, the PSA-CAR added country of destination refers to the country of ultimate destination of the shipment but it is not necessarily the country where the commodity or shipment is to be unloaded as in the case of the shipment unloaded from one ocean liner but is destined to a country that is landlocked and in which case, the country of destination is the landlocked country while the country of origin refers to the country where the commodity is mined, grown, or manufactured and that processing or materials added to it in another country must bring about a material transformation to render such country as the country of origin.
The PSA-CAR asserted the country of origin remains unchanged if the commodity is subjected to mere sorting, grading, cleaning, packaging or similar processing.
The PSA-CAR stipulated that the Philippine Standard Commodity Classification is used to classify the imported commodities at the most detailed level for statiscal purposes considering that foreign trade statistics are compiled by the National Statistics office (NSO) now the PSA from copies of import and export documents submitted by importers and exporters or their authorized representatives to the Bureau of Customs as required by law.
Moreover, foreign trade is the system by which countries exchange goods and services and that countries trade with each other to obtain things that are of better quality, less expensive or simply different from goods and services produced at home and that the goods and services that are sold to other countries are called exports considering that foreign trade has a significant share of the region’s gross regional domestic product and the country’s gross domestic product.
By HENT
