CFZ’s exports, imports up in August.
So crowed the Clark Development Corporation, praise releasing last Monday what it called its August surge in exports and imports as its “highest performance in eight months.”
Exports growth reached $437 million – higher by $104 million or 31 percent over last year’s $333 million for the same month. There is likewise a nine percent increase in exports registered in August over the previous month’s $400 million.
Imports on the other hand rose by 24 percent or $351 million over the $282 million in August last year. A 15 percent spike was also noted over the volume of imports in July that totalled to $305 million.
Wow, all those hundreds of millions – in American dollars yet – boggle the mind. Pointedly this one which highest level of economics it reached in college would hardly merit to run a tiangge, maybe not even a barrio sari-sari store.
Hence, I beg the overindulgence of the CDC’s economics and financial whiz kids to bear with my uninformed, if not totally ignorant, inquiries over their report. One rudiment of economics I managed to retain after all these years is that the difference between exports and imports defines either profit or loss.
Clark Freeport’s August exports total of $437 million ranged against its imports of $351 million leaves $86 million on the plus side. Unimpressed? The CDC PR story furthered: “…(T)he surged (sic) on (sic) both exports and imports brought a record high performance yet to beat in eight months at $2.958 billion and $2.378-billion, respectively with exports over by $0.6 billion vs imports.” Unspectacular?
Be convinced, with the figures at least, and believe. Given that for the period January- August last year, “profits… from exports were pegged at $2.430 billion while imports totalled to $1.8 billion.”
Ay, there’s the rub. The export-import difference for the period in review last year was $0.63 billion. That of this year was exactly $0.58 billion. (Rounded to $0.6 billion in the CDC story. So, what’s $0.02 billion, between friends, eh?)
So where’s the “record high performance yet to beat in eight months” there? When last year’s net difference is even higher than this year’s by $0.05 billion. I don’t know if there is an application here of the so-called economy of scale, being familiar only with the bathroom scale calibrated to register poundage heavier than my actual weight.
Anyways, CDC said it achieved its “highest performance in eight months” in exports and imports. And we join in its rejoicing. The dollar signs enough cause for celebration. And what accrued to CDC from all these?
“…August exports and imports generated total revenue of P3.94 million or an earning of P1.13 million from last July’s P2.81-million.” Gloating: “The high revenue was credited to the amount of processing fees collected on transshipment of goods of industrial locators/ warehousing trading companies, bring-in and bring-out permit application fees, IRR volume shares based on leased area/space and the revised computation on processing fee based on the value of importation…’’
That’s P3.93 million all-in, for one month. Lesser than the four-day revenues of the Pampanga provincial government from the quarry industry. So comparisons are odious. So they become even more obnoxious in this CDC exportimport wise, when translated to the common denominator of the Philippine peso.
At the exchange rate of $1:P44, the August exports of $437 million convert to P19.228 billion. The imports of $351 million to P15.444 billion. The difference of plus-$86 million to P3.784 billion.
And all the CDC got in revenues was P3.93 million? A small, aye, a minuscule thousandth, that is 0.001 percent, of that difference. I hope my elementary math still serves right there. So I’ve heard of that book Small is Beautiful:
A Study of Economics as if People Mattered. But I don’t think that applies here. There’s nothing small, but everything monumentally wrong here. It could be me, for all I know, being at best a tiangge theorist and sari-sari store economist.
