BusinessWorld
May 20, 2021 | 12:36 am
By
Reporter
PHILIPPINE EXPORT performance continues to lag behind a global rebound led by East Asia, a United Nations (UN) report said.
The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) global trade update released on Tuesday said global trade in goods have surpassed pre-pandemic levels, although services trade continues to lag.
“Global trade is expected to further rebound in Q2. For 2021, global trade is projected to grow by 16 percent, but the outlook remains uncertain,” the report said.
Much of trade resilience last year was due to East Asian pandemic mitigation, UNCTAD said.
“The positive trends from the last few months of 2020 grew stronger in early 2021. In Q1 2021, the value of global trade in goods and services grew by about 4 percent quarter-over-quarter and by about 10 percent year-over-year,” UNCTAD said.
US feedlot finishers will see surge in feed costs if grain price increases are sustained.
In Ireland we think of grass as the staple feed of our livestock and dairy sectors, with grain the feed used in the intensive pig and poultry meat sectors.
However, grain is an essential feed for beef produced in both the US and Australia, two of the top three global beef exporters, each trading over 1m tonnes. The same applies to Canada, which exported 409,000t of beef in 2019.
Grain-fed beef is premium product
Grain-fed beef is regarded as the premium beef product in global markets outside South America and Europe.
Published May 12, 2021, 5:00 AM
The leader of the Philippine exporters’ organization called on the government anew to reinvest in micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), which represent 98% of total enterprises and are considered the backbone of the economy.
Philippine Exporters Confederation, Inc. (Philexport) president Sergio Ortiz-Luis, Jr. said in a recent e-forum that despite comprising the overwhelming majority of businesses and accounting for up to 65% of total employment and 30% of GDP, “the Philippine MSME sector is the most ‘under-banked’ sector in the whole of Asia.”
Philexport president Sergio Ortiz Luis Jr.
Ortiz-Luis decried that empowering MSMEs is still not taken seriously, with development programs, legislature and laws initiated over the years to assist small enterprises being mostly “token” efforts that have not “even scratched the surface” in terms of MSME development.