THE 2024 trade-in-goods deficit was revised to $54.33 billion from the $54.21 billion reported in January, the Philippine Statistics Authority said on Thursday.
As such, the full-year trade balance — the difference between the values of exports and imports — rose 3.3% to a $54.33-billion deficit in 2024, against the $52.59-billion deficit reported a year earlier.
The 2024 reading was the lowest trade deficit since the $57.65 billion posted in 2022.
The value of merchandise exports in 2024 was revised to $73.27 billion from the initially reported $73.21 billion, down 0.5% from a year earlier.
The top commodity export was electronics products, which accounted for more than half of total exports, though the category declined 6.7% to $39.09 billion in 2023.
Other manufactured goods declined 17.8% to $4.68 billion, mineral products fell 3.7% to $3.01 billion and machinery and transport equipment grew 10.2% to $2.64 billion.
Ignition Wiring Set and Other Wiring Sets Used in Vehicles, Aircraft and Ships slid by 7.8% to $2.45 billion.
Last year, the United States remained the top destination for Philippine-made goods, with exports valued at $12.14 billion or 16.6% of total export sales.
This was followed by Japan with $10.33 billion, Hong Kong with $9.61 billion, China with $9.44 billion, and South Korea with $3.57 billion.
Meanwhile, imports were also revised to $127.60 billion in 2024, up from the previous tally of $127.43 billion in January.
The revised total represents a 1.1% increase compared with the year-earlier $126.21 billion.
Last year’s export and import performance missed the 4% and 2% full-year growth target set by the Development Budget Coordination Committee. — Aubrey Rose A. Inosante