TO easily convert their inventories into cash, around 70 Cebu exporters of fashion accessories, furniture, gift items and marine food products will gather together in a four-day Exporters’ Expo this week.
Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) 7 Director Aster Caberte said the event is meant to give exporters an opportunity to move their current stocks in a venue where they can tap the domestic market. Aside from individual consumers, the domestic market is composed of multi-branch institutional buyers like hotels, resorts, real estate developers and interior designers.
“This is meant to stop the bleeding (caused by the global financial crisis in the export sector),” said Caberte in a press conference Monday.
The DTI has allocated around P1.3 million for the Exporters’ Expo that will open on Aug. 27 at the Atrium of SM City Cebu Northwing.
Organized by the DTI-Bureau of Export Trade Promotion, Center for International Trade Expositions and Missions, Export Development Council, and DTI Central Visayas, the expo is designed to be the “biggest retail and wholesale selling event of export products that are not commercially available locally and produced by Cebu’s direct and indirect exporters.”
Caberte observed that the export sector did not consider domestic buyers as potential market before.
“But now, domestic spending is very robust,” she said.
She assured the domestic market that the prices of products during the expo will be at bargain levels or lower than their regular export prices.
A support component under the Comprehensive Livelihood and Emergency Employment Program, the Exporters’ Expo aims to support the export sector—recognized as an important contributor to Cebu’s economy—as exporters deal with the effects of the global financial crisis.
Caberte said the expo is like a government subsidy to the exporters since they will only be paying P500 to P1,000 a day, depending on the size of their exhibit area.
Source: The Sunstar Daily Cebu
