PH trade hopes high at China Int’l Exhibition

When China hosted the China International Import Exhibition (CIIE) in Shanghai in November, 2018, the Philippines exceeded its target of $50 million, with $108 million in signed orders for agricultural products such as bananas, avocados, and oranges. China closed a total of $57 billion in deals with various countries in the five days of the exhibition.

This November, China is holding the second CIIE and said it expects to outdo its record purchases last year. President Xi Jinping has announced that China expects to close $30 trillion in goods and $10 trillion in services in the next 15 years.

The Philippines is again participating in this year’s exhibition, Secretary of Trade and Industry Ramon M. Lopez said. It has set up two pavilions – the Food and Agricultural Products Hall and the Quality of Life Hall. The first will display Philippine dairy products, snack foods, condiments, sweets, and other agricultural products. The second will feature personal care products – coconut oils and soaps, along with accessories, toys, gifts, fashion, and furniture. Some 500,000 buying agents from all over China will be at the international exhibition to look at the expected 3,000 exhibitions from various countries.

The China International Import Exhibition comes at a time when China is in the middle of a “trade war” with the United States, which President Donald Trump began 15 months ago in an effort to get China to import more from the US so as to help correct a trade imbalance between the two countries. Both have suffered from the trade war, along with the rest of the world, as China and the US are today the world’s two largest economies and deal extensively with so many countries, including the Philippines.

President Trump recently announced he was due to sign with China President Xi Jinping an agreement to end the trade war at a meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Chile on November 16-17. But Chile unexpectedly cancelled its hosting of the APEC summit due to internal troubles and Trump has yet to find a new site for the signing rites.

China is evidently ready to sign the agreement. It has agreed to import up to $50 billion worth of US farm products, President Trump said. It is, in fact, looking for trillions of dollars worth of goods and services in the next 15 years, and the 2nd China International Import Exhibition this month in Shanghai is aimed at doing just this.

The trade war has not isolated China economically and Western leaders like France President Emmanuel Macron have visited the CIIE in Shanghai. In the coming years, China will be importing goods according to the following priorities – industrial goods, agricultural and food products, and consumer goods and services.

The Philippines will have much to offer by way of agricultural and food products as well as other consumer goods and services. Our business and industry leaders will do well to focus a great deal of attention on the annual exhibit in Shanghai which is an invitation to the world to come and sell its products which a fast-growing China needs.