The Philippines has the highest logistics cost in the region, and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) wants an interagency team to find ways to cut it.
Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez, citing the World Bank, said the Philippines’ average logistics cost as a proportion of total sales stood at 27 percent, compared with 11.11 percent in Thailand, 16.3 percent in Vietnam and 21.4 percent in Indonesia.
Lopez said the DTI would propose to President Rodrigo Duterte an executive order to help bring down costs.
The DTI chief, during the 2nd Logistics Services Philippines Conference and Exhibition, said he had directed Undersecretary Rowel Barba to meet again with a technical working group and draw up a joint administrative order (JAO) as an initial measure to cut costs, by addressing shipping and port congestion.
The goal is to reduce the average cost of logistics as a percentage of sales from 27 percent to less than 20 percent by the end of 2019, or “a few months after that,” Lopez said.
Lopez said he wanted to avoid “overcharging, unnecessary charges or fees being imposed on the importers.”
“For now, our immediate response will be the JAO (maybe in a month’s time) and then to be followed by the EO,” he said. (Jojo Mangahis)