Saturday, December 15, 2007 Cebu exporters eye EU market
A 42-MEMBER delegation, most of them exporters from Cebu, is leaving for The Netherlands in February 2008 as part of efforts to understand and attract European buyers, amid weak demand from traditional trade partners Japan and the United States.
While in Rotterdam, these local experts-in-training will present their marketing plans for six export sectors—furniture, fashion accessories, home décor, garments, food, and health and wellness—before proceeding to Frankfurt am Main, Germany to observe a trade show.
“You cannot stand on one leg. That is what’s happening with the global economic potential of the Philippines for now,” said Klaas de Boer, a consultant of the Dutch govern-ment’s CBI or the Center for the Promotion of Imports from Developing Countries. For a long time, he added, a lack of commitment to the European market has been one of the challenges of Filipino exporters, “who are too US-focused.”
Modules
The Rotterdam sessions will wrap up the first module on export marketing and management, for which the CBI invested 250,000 Euros (about P15.2 million).
Talks are ongoing with the Confederation of Philippine Exporters (Philexport) Cebu for the rollout of the second module, this time on export diversification.
Two other modules focus on market information and the strengthening of institutions, such as industry associations.
“The quality of the participants is very, very high,” de Boer said yesterday, during a break in the training course. “We are working with colleagues here, not students, and our focus now is to move from the strategic level of thinking that we have worked on for the past three weeks, to the operational level,” he added. He cited the need to make sure that Philippine exporters can create and guarantee a reliable supply of goods demanded by European buyers.
A peso that has been rising for about two years has compounded other problems faced by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the export industry, said Philexport Cebu president Jay Yuvallos in a separate interview.
“In general, the future of SME exporters in this country is really a big question mark,” he said. “We can’t survive the competition in the international market if the cost of raw materials keeps on rising, the labor cost keeps rising, the price of oil keeps rising, the electricity cost is the second most expensive in Asia next to Japan, and our labor productivity remains low.”
The peso has gained P5.7 or about 11.6 percent against the US dollar from January to November this year, and averaged P43.21 last month. It averaged P48.91 to the dollar in November 2006.
Apart from the exporters and the Philexport Cebu staff, the delegation will include Talisay City Vice Mayor Lani Abar-quez, Dr. Inoray Osop of the Mindanao State University in General Santos and some human resource training consultants. The rest of the training will address the lack of market information for Philippine exporters, as well as strategies to meet the European market’s rigorous standards. (IDA)
