A group of electronics manufacturers and exporters upgraded their 2021 growth forecast to 10 percent from an earlier estimate of 7 percent on strong overseas demand.
The Semiconductor and Electronics Industry in the Philippines Inc. expressed optimism its members would end 2021 with at least 10 percent growth, following a 15.6-percent expansion in shipments in the first three quarters.
Data from the Philippine Statistics Authority showed that export sales of electronic products reached $31.5 billion in the first three quarters, up from $27.2 billion a year ago. Electronics accounted for more than 60 percent of total exports by value.
SEIPI chairman Glenn Everett said Tuesday the global and local trends and the continuing recovery of the economy prompted the SEIPI board of trustees to revise its 2021 export growth forecast to 10 percent from 7 percent earlier in the year.
”Growth in 2022 depends very much on improvements to inbound and outbound logistics flows and to the ongoing opening of the country,” Everett said Tuesday at SEIPI’s 4th general membership ,eeting.
SEIPI president Danilo Lachica was equally optimistic that the industry’s export revenues would exceed $45 billion in 2021, given the continuing support of the government to ease business and mobility restrictions for a more relaxed economic recovery.
“This is actually higher than the $43 billion we recorded during pre-pandemic times,” he said.
Everett said new technologies continued to develop with remarkable speed as advances continued to expand Internet of Things applications with a compound annual growth rate of 25 percent.
This is estimated to become a massive market estimated to be at $1.8 trillion by 2028, he said.
“The same is being applied to vaccine development, banking fraud detection and many other data crunching tasks. These new capabilities are driving annual growth rates of more than 25 percent through 2023,” Everett said.
“The growth and opportunities for semicon electronics companies is amazing to consider and it will be wonderful to experience in next years,” he said.
The semiconductor industry continues to be a major contributor to economic growth and recovery despite the general impact of the pandemic to other manufacturing industries.
The industry employs about 3 million direct and indirect workers. The industry accounts for 37 percent of all investments in economic zones.
Electronic exports fell 7.6 percent in 2020 to $36.98 billion, contributing to a 10.1-percent decline in total exports to $63.77 billion from $70.93 billion.