Domestic trade upbeat in 2018

CEBU, Philippines — Domestic trade data released yesterday by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showed upbeat transactions in 2018 with volume rising up by 10.2 percent and total value of commodities growing even higher at 12.3 percent.

Trade figures registered last year showed that local trade went up to 25.78 million tons from the previous year’s 23.40 million tons, while value of commodities went up to P859.67 billion in 2018 from P765.38 billion in 2017.

Volume and value

In terms of volume, food and live animals commodities topped with 6.39 million tons or 24.8% of all the traded commodities. Animal and vegetable oils, fats and waxes on the other hand posted the lowest with 0.08 million tons.

Meanwhile, machinery and transport equipment posted the highest value of P276.06 billion, while animal and vegetable oils, fats and waxes commodities registered the lowest value of P4.58 billion.

The PSA data further showed that 99.9 percent of the commodities were traded via sea transport, while the remaining 0.1 percent was traded through air transport in 2018.

The National Capital Region (NCR), which covers Metro Manila, accounted for 38.0 percent of the total trade value or the largest share amounting to P326.40 billion.

Eastern Visayas comes second with transactions amounting to P110.02 billion, followed closely by Western Visayas with value of P105.35 billion and Central Visayas with P97.96 billion.

Calabarzon had the lowest contribution among all the regions with P435.26 million.

Commodities

Food and live animals comprised the largest share of traded commodities in Luzon in 2018 accounting for P96.71 billion or 25.8 percent of the total.

It was followed by machinery and transport equipment and manufactured goods with total value of P64.80 billion or 17.3 percent and P60.27 billion or16.1 percent, respectively.

The top three commodity sections in terms of total trade value in Visayas comprised of food and live animals (P65.34 billion or 30.6 percent); machinery and transport equipment (P49.67 billion or 23.3 percent); and manufactured goods classified chiefly by material (P29.96 billion or 14.0 percent).

Machinery and transport equipment recorded the highest domestic traded commodities in Mindanao worth P161.60 billion. This was followed by food and live animals and manufactured goods amounting to P46.31 billion and P28.37 billion, respectively.

Passenger transport

The number of passengers transported via coastwise in 2018 dropped by 42.4 percent from 39.89 million in 2017 to 22.99 million passengers in 2018.

Central Visayas recorded the highest number of passengers of 5.80 million, while MIMAROPA Region and Western Visayas placed second and third, with 4.00 million and 3.84 million passengers, respectively.

SOCCSKSARGEN recorded the least number of passengers at 0.95 thousand.  (FREEMAN)