This article entitled “Has Manila’s Rebalancing Towards Beijing Started to Bear Economic Fruit?” was published in Business World last February 14, 2018. Economists said that rebalancing relations with regional and world powers benefit the Philippines as it strengthens economic ties with China. BusinessWorld research has tracked trade, investment and tourism data since 2014 to check if the Philippines’ “pivot” has begun to yield economic benefits.

Highlighted are data on trade with and investments and tourist arrivals from China, Hong Kong and Macau.
Trade data from 2014 to 2017 showed an increasing value of trade with China from $18.3 million to $23.74 million. This was mostly due to increasing imports while exports remain at almost constant from 2015 to 2017. On the other hand, trade with Hong Kong provided a better picture as it showed increasing value of trade from $7.2 million in 2014 to $11.3 million in 2017 and with higher exports than imports or an annual positive balance of trade.

On FDIs, the value of investments from China increased substantially from $ 0.4 million in 2015 to $ 27.56 million in 2017 while investments from Hong Kong was valued at $429.7 million in 2016 but decreased to $103.6 million in 2017. Macau investments also started with $0.79 million in 2015, $0.28 million the following year and rose to $2.68 million or 848% increase in 2017.

In terms of tourist arrivals, the trend showed rising in number of tourists coming from China, Hong Kong and Macau with growths registering to 20.5%. 28.6% and 35% annually from 2015 to 2017, or from 517,161 tourists in 2014 doubling to 1,088,693 in 2017. (Source: Has Manila’s Rebalancing Towards Beijing Started to Bear Economic Fruit?, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, Department of Tourism, Philippine Statistics Authority; Business World).