English
Philippines: Online trading platform to boost business growth
The Philippines should prepare local exporters to participate in an online trading platform to help their businesses grow as they work together to achieve an export target of between $122 billion and $131 billion by 2022, a Trade official said.
Department of Trade and Industry-Export Marketing Bureau Director Senen Perlada is encouraging exporters to innovate more and collaborate with the government in seizing opportunities and dealing with the challenges posed by the digital economy.
“How are they going to participate in a so-called electronic world trade platform where SMEs (small and medium enterprises) will be able to actually trade between and among themselves? It’s going to be a consumer-to-consumer platform,” Perlada said.
According to him, innovation is important in light of the growing digital economy and urbanization.
“So what are we going to do now? Innovate or evaporate… We have to embrace that digital economy. We have to find our place in a digital economy,” Perlada said.
“The other challenge [for]us is urbanization. A lot of populations are going to be more highly urbanized. Therefore, our approach to [the]market has to be really, really [precise, like a rifle]; we cannot use a shotgun approach anymore,” he added.
The Trade official also said the country’s merchandise and services exports have been growing, especially with the growth of various overseas markets.
“Services grew to 42 percent of total exports, [while]goods made up 58 percent. By the end of 2022, services and merchandise exports are going to be just about the same. It’s very important for us to consider [these],” he added.
Perlada said growth is expected, particularly in the United States, China and the European Union.
Source: http://www.manilatimes.net/online-trading-platform-boost-business-growth/369281/