The trade deficit narrowed 22.5 percent in September to $3.12 billion from $4.02 billion a year ago, as imports dipped for the sixth month and exports snapped a five-month positive streak, the Philippine Statistics Authority said Wednesday.
Data showed that exports decreased by 2.6 percent in September to $5.898 billion from $6.053 billion a year ago while imports dropped 10.5 percent to $9.017 billion from $10.076 billion.
This brought the trade-in-goods deficit in the first nine months to $28.092 billion, down 9 percent from $30.874 billion in the same period last year.
ING Bank Manila senior economist Nicholas Mapa said the pullback in imports and the surprise string of five months of gains for exports meant that the trade deficit would likely not weigh on overall growth momentum in the third-quarter GDP. “Third-quarter 2019 saw a 24-percent improvement from the same period in 2018 and this development should help bolster the GDP print to a substantially better print,” Mapa said.