THE Department of Trade and Industry said that the Philippine exports of goods and services just push itself to grow by 40 percent for 2024.

That is if it aims to catch up with the over P 140-billion export revenues target for 2024 under the Philippine Export Development Program (PEDP).

According to DTI-Export Marketing Bureau (EMB) director Bianca Sykimte, based on their records, the country’s export performance in 2023 is expected to fall short of target due to the uncertainties in the global market.

She explained that under the PEDP, the export revenues target for 2023 was set at USD126.8 billion and at USD143.4 billion in 2024.

But the data from government had revealed that the January to November 2023 merchandise exports had gone down by 8.4 percent to USD67.03 billion from USD73.18 billion in the same period in 2022.

Meanwhile, the services exports from January to September 2023 jumped 28.4 percent to USD13.53 billion from USD10.53 billion in the first three quarters of 2022.

“We're still looking at 5 percent for total exports. I think it's about less than the target of PEDP of USD127 billion. But it's still higher in terms of growth rate. In previous PEDPs, I think in our last PEDP, our average growth rate for exports, it's about 4 percent only. So this year, despite the uncertainty in the global market, we still managed to outperform the last six years of the PEDP,” she said.