The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) has released the first P200 million out of the P1 billion export promotions fund to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).

PHILEXPORT president Sergio R. Ortiz-Luis, Jr., told exporters at a general membership meeting that the first released grant must be spent soonest.

The different committees of the Export Development Council (EDC) are now reviewing the viability and importance of pre-screened proposals from PHILEXPORT affiliates and field chapters.

Ortiz-Luis said the final approving committee that includes him, are expected to approve the first specific projects before the end of the week. Trustees of PHILEXPORT are members of the different evaluation committees.

Seventy percent of the whole grant will be channeled to the SME sector which makes up a vast majority of the exporting community. The remaining 30 percent was allocated for a high-profile investment promotions offensive by the electronics, BPO and IT industries for new locators in their fields of businesses.

Ortiz-Luis sits as vice chairman of the EDC, the private-public overseer to export development which administers the P1 billion grant which has to be used this year.

“We expect that direct government grants for the export support fund will continue to come for as long as President Arroyo is in Malacanang, although we have advocated for a more sustainable government support to the export sector."

He explained that the new funding has supplanted the P280 million export promotions fund (EPF) that the EDC was able to put together at the start of the crisis in 2007 and spent for the most urgent projects of export groups across the country last year.

Part of the first direct funding to export groups that was used in direct export promotions had resulted in sales of about P1.5 billion. The more lasting projects included the fish quality laboratory facilities for the tuna industry in Gen. Santos city, and institutionalizing furniture design training in Cebu and Davao.

During the same conference, Ortiz-Luis admitted that exporters have been the hardest hit segment of the Philippine economy by the lingering global recession. He said that the EDC has revised its projection for this year to a minus 16 percent decline in commodity exports, last experienced in 2001.