PH trade deficit declined 6% in Feb 2024

The Philippines' balance of trade in goods deficit stood at US$3.647 billion in February, which was a 6% decrease from $3.88 billion in February 2023.

Data released by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) on Thursday showed that the balance of trade in goods in February 2024 amounted to $-3.65 billion, which indicates a trade deficit with an annual decrease of 6.0%.

The PSA said that in January 2024 and February 2023, the trade deficit recorded annual decrements of 21.0% and 1.4%, respectively.

A deficit indicates that the value of a country's imports exceeded export receipts, while a surplus indicates more export shipments than imports.

The PSA also said that in February of this year, the country’s total external trade in goods amounted to US$ 15.46 billion, which indicates an annual increase of 9.7% from the US$ 14.09 billion total external trade in the same period of the previous year.

On the other hand, in January 2024 and February 2023, total external trade in goods registered annual decreases of 1.1% and 14.3%, respectively.

The data also indicated that the year-to-date annual total value of exports, that is from January to February 2024, amounted to US$ 11.84 billion.

According to the PSA, this represents an annual increase of 12.3% from the year-to-date annual total export value of US$ 10.55 billion in January to February 2023.

So far, exports to the United States of America comprised the highest export value amounting to $947.83 million or a share of 16.0% to the country’s total exports in February 2024.

Completing the top five major export trading partners for this month with their export values and percent shares to the total exports were the following:

• Japan - $849.17 million (14.4%)
• Hong Kong - $774.03 million (13.1%)
• People’s Republic of China - $695.25 million (11.8%)
• Thailand - $282.01 million (4.8%)