Electronics still country’s top buy in July

SEMICONDUCTOR and electronic products remained the country’s top imports for July, accounting for 30.8 percent or $2 billion of the total import bill.

Dan Lachica, president of the Semiconductor and Electronics Industries of the Philippines Inc., reported the industry’s imports for July rose 71 percent compared to $1.17 billion recorded during the same month last year.

Lachica said the growth was brought about by increases in all nine product sectors under the industry. The office equipment segment posted the biggest growth of 178 percent to $17.94 million in July from the $6.46 million a year ago.

Other sectors also posted big jumps, namely telecommunications at 155.15 percent; automotive electronics, 93.67 percent; components/devices (semiconductors), 76.51 percent; consumer electronics at 39.64 percent; control and instrumentation, 36 percent; electronic data processing, 17.21 percent; communication/radar, 15.9 percent; and medical/industrial in- strumentation at 15.17 percent.

The July imports of semiconductor and electronic products reflected a slight increase of 2.42 percent from the $1.96 billion posted in June this year. Eight of the nine product sectors registered increases, led by automotive electronics, which posted a 235 percent jump to $3.79 million from $1.07 million in June.

Other sectors that recorded positive growth in July compared to the imports in June were office equipment at 98.49 percent; consumer electronics, 90.4 percent; control and instrumentation, 77.2 percent; medical/industrial instrumentation, 52.2 percent; telecommunication, 50.9 percent; electronic data processing, 45.35 percent; and communication/radar at 24.88 percent.

Meanwhile, the components/devices (semiconductor) segment was the only sector that registered a decline, at 6.7 percent, in July compared to the previous month.

On a cumulative basis, the local industry’s imports grew 27 percent to $10.53 billion in the first seven months of the year from $8.27 billion in the same period last year. Eight out of the nine product sectors showed increases.

Office equipment registered the biggest growth in imports at 51 percent to $70 million from January to July this year, from the $46.6 million recorded a year ago.

Other sectors that recorded increases were telecommunication at 49 percent; electronic data processing, 31.4 percent; components/devices (semiconductors), 26.9 percent; communication/radar, 17.8 percent; automotive electronics, 10.8 percent; medical/industrial instrumentation, 2.2 percent; and, control and instrumentation at 1.2 percent. Imports of consumer electronics meanwhile dipped by 2.1 percent.

For July, the United States accounted for 23.29 percent of the total imports. The US was followed by the People’s Republic of China (14.9 percent), Taiwan (13.67 percent), Singapore (9.63 percent) and Malaysia (8.49 percent).

Rounding up the top ten markets were Japan (8.4 percent), Hong Kong (5.1 percent), Germany (4.3 percent), Republic of Korea (4.2 percent) and Thailand (4.1 percent).