Despite challenging global developments, the Philippine electronics and semiconductor industry is now seeing a ray of silver lining in its exports this year from flat to a modest growth for this year.
Dan Lachica, president of the Semiconductor and Electronics Industries in the Philippines Foundation Inc. (SEIPI), said during a press conference Thursday, October 2, for the upcoming 20th Philippine Semiconductor & Electronics Convention and Exhibition on October 28-30, said the Philippines is still getting a lot of interest from foreign investors while growth in exports in the January-August this year looked encouraging.
Originally, SEIPI projected a flat five percent growth this year from 2024 exports of USD42.7 billion.
Official data showed that the country’s electronic products exports were valued at USD 3.57 billion in August 2025. This represents an 8.5 percent increase compared with August 2024, and a 1.3 percent decrease from July 2025.
“So far, we’re optimistic that we would exceed the flat growth that we projected, that were projected at the start of the year,” he stressed.
For 2025, the SEIPI board projected a flat growth. “However, we’ve seen some movements, and it looks like we might see some. In fact, if you look at the year-to-date numbers through August, we were seeing, modest growth,” said Lachica.
While he cautioned against raising hopes too much, he also said that if growth in the past few months had to be linearized to the end of the year, growth may even go up by maybe 5 percent.
But the industry continues to be guarded in their growth projections because of prevailing geopolitical factors, specifically the tariffs.
“But hopefully, we’ve had enough momentum through August that we will sustain that modest growth for the year,” he said.
According to Lachica. SEIPI members have been told “Don’t lose sleep over what could have, what would have, but just work on the existing demand that you’re working on, the production plan that you’re working on.”
“So far, like I said, we’re optimistic that we would exceed the flat growth that we projected, that were projected at the start of the year,” he stressed.
The highest exports level the industry attained was USD49.5 billion in 2022. And since then, exports suffered an 8 percent contraction in 2023, and 6 percent contraction in 2024.
If the year to date growth pattern will continue, Lachica said trend the domestic industry “may even reach, if not exceed, the 2023 numbers.”
He said the SEIPI Board will meet for the last quarter meeting where they are expected to have a clearer picture and be able to come up with their forecast for the year.
Interest
In terms of investor interest, Lachica also said that the domestic industry continues to get very promising inquiries from from a lot of the countries that arr still very interested in investing in the Philippines, because of reforms that have been put in place over the past three years. “Even our tariff situation, we’re we’re still in a good place compared to where we’re actually in the low tariff regime. So, they are still looking at us. We haven’t had any concerns,” he added.
The semiconductor sector also enjoys zero U.S. reciprocal tariff will definitely boost the industry’s performance. The U.S. has imposed 19 percent on other Philippine exports, but is still lower than Vietnam’s 20
percent.
“We’re not losing sleep right now. The negotiating team is still working on how we can improve our situation by way of the tariffs,” he said.
Roadmap
Meantime, Lachica said the USD70 billion exports target by 2030 under the recently launched five-year workforce development plan by the Semiconductor and Electronics Industry Advisory Council (SEIAC) is expected to further boost the competitiveness of the industry, which is projected to employ 128,000 highly workforce over the five year period.
SEIAC’s Technical Working Group has laid out a five-year action plan to develop a skilled Filipino workforce and boost the country’s semiconductor and electronics sector.
The plan calls for the development of a strong school-to-industry pipeline through closer collaboration among the Department of Education (DepEd), Commission on Higher Education (CHED), Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), and industry partners.
The Council proposed flexible learning pathways—including ladderized programs and micro-credentials—aimed at equipping Filipinos with high-value technical skills that meet global industry standards.
