Trade and Industry Secretary Afredo E. Pascual said he would shift real focus of his agency towards industrialization stressing that manufacturing is the only way to be sustainable and become an inclusive economy.

At the briefing by the DTI for the Senate committee on trade, commerce and entrepreneurship chaired by Senator Mark Villar, Pascual highlighted his thrust to shift real efforts towards industrialization because the current reliance on imports and dollar remittances from overseas Filipino workers is not sustainable.

“I would like to shift the focus of the department to real efforts towards industrializing the country, that is the only way we can sustain an economy to build a sustainable and inclusive economy,” Pascual pointed out in response to the question by Senator Sonny Angara on whether or not the country’s direction is sustainable or there is a need to reverse given the widening trade deficit while neighboring countries such as Vietnam and Indonesia are registering trade surpluses.

Angara noted that the country’s trade deficit was only at $7 billion in 2010 but it climbed to $40 billion at present. DTI officials said the trade deficit ballooned because of huge imports, particularly automobile imports, among others. They also noted of the country’s reliance on OFW dollar remittances.

Angara was asking the DTI if they could track the per capita income of workers in the export industry because that is a good economic indicator. He noted that some of the economic managers when asked if where the high paying and high quality jobs come from, these managers would say these jobs come from the construction sector.

While the DTI has no data on the per capita income of workers in the export industry, Pascual said the electronics sector offers good salary rate to their workers.

“Only from manufacturing that our people can get stable jobs, better quality jobs and higher paying jobs. Unless we do that we are just beholden to these inflows from OFWs and we will be sending more people abroad to send dollars that is not sustainable,” he pointed out.

The other effort of the DTI towards industrialization, Pascual said is to encourage enterprises to produce consumer goods like processed products that are currently imported but which raw materials are sourced locally to manufacture them locally to be competitive.

“We need to have that focus on industrialization. It is not import substitution, it is really industrialization,” he added.

Pascual explained that manufacturing starts from home, especially for agricultural products that need further processing.

That is why, he said, the DTI has created industry clusters, like cacao and coffee. At present, only 20 percent of the country’s coffee requirements are supplied by local production and the rest are imported. The DTI chief was looking at establishing a single value chain for coffee production.

To do that, Pascual said he would like to have an arrangement with the Department of Agriculture that they be given the responsibility to develop some crops, except rice and corn, for further processing into high value added products to meet local demand and for export.

“It’s either we coordinate with the Department of Agriculture or go ahead and take partners in improving agricultural products,” Pascual said.