THE country’s farm trade deficit widened by 41.15 percent to $1.828 billion in the first quarter, from $1.295 billion recorded a year ago, due to the double-digit cut in the country’s export revenue during the period.
The agricultural trade deficit recorded in the January-to-March period was the biggest since the second quarter of 2016, when it expanded by 55 percent. The biggest deficit was posted in the first quarter of 2014, when it widened by 605.41 percent.
Data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showed that total agricultural trade value in the January-to-March period dropped by 6.6 percent to $4.16 billion, from last year’s $4.45 billion.
The PSA said the country’s farm export bill during the three-month period sank by 26.2 percent to $1.17 billion, from $1.58 billion recorded last year, on lower shipments of animal or vegetable oils.
“Moreover, the share of agricultural export to total export dropped by 7.4 percent from 9.4 percent in the first quarter of 2017,” the PSA said.
The country’s total export bill in the January-to-March period reached $15.84 billion, 5.5 percent lower than the $16.756 billion recorded a year ago.
Animal or vegetable fats and oils, which includes coconut oil, remained the top farm export of the Philippines during the first quarter and accounted for 26.62 percent of the country’s export bill.
The country’s shipments of animal or vegetable fats and oils reached 214,470 metric tons
valued at $310.18 million, which was 36.77 percent and 42.43 percent lower than last year’s records, respectively.
Philippine farm import bill in the three-month period rose by 4.16 percent year-on-year to $2.993 billion, as cereal imports became more expensive.
The country’s purchases of imported cereal, which accounted for almost 20 percent of its total farm imports, reached 2.079 million metric tons valued at $568.76 million. The volume declined slightly by 1.07 percent, from 2.102 MMT a year ago but the value increased by 1.77 percent, from $558.87 percent recorded in the first quarter of 2017.