Businesses, particularly exporters, have another online tool at their disposal for easier access to needed world trade statistics, according to the Department of Trade and Industry’s Export Marketing Bureau (EMB).

Tradeline Philippines is the business intelligence platform of the EMB that “aims to deliver timely and relevant information and assistance to existing and potential exporters to enhance their capabilities and competitiveness as suppliers of quality goods and services to global markets.”

The EMB in a briefing at the Usapang Exports on December 4 gave attendees an overview of how to generate interactive trade statistics from the platform. It added that the Tradeline portal provides actual trade statistics purchased from the Philippine Statistics Authority to be able to provide this service.

To use the tool, visitors should click the Trade Statistics button on the home page and this will show the Export, Import, and Total Trade box on the left side of the screen.

By clicking Export then applying filters as needed, visitors can get relevant trade data, such as if they need to find out the export volume and value of fresh bananas over a certain period. The same procedure can also work for the Import and Total Trade portions.

According to EMB, the interactive trade statistics can be useful to enterprises in many ways. For exporters, they can use the portal to check how certain export products are faring in the world market.

“The practical use of this is to lessen the risk,” said EMB. “So before entering into actual exporting you get to know first ano yung mga products na may potential.”

“Nung una kailangan n’yo pang mag-antay, susulat kayo sa amin. Ngayon anytime na kailangan n’yo [for] decision making, you can use the actual data. Ang iba ginagamit nila ito just to have projection,” said EMB.

Domestic suppliers can also find the portal valuable for their research. For instance, they can identify which global products are imported by the Philippines and they can look for these importers and “they try to offer their own products.”

The EMB urged businesses to visit and explore Tradeline Philippines, saying it has many other features that they can benefit from.

According to the portal, Tradeline is positioned as EMB’s main ICT tool in providing its stakeholders with “an integrated export information system that will provide regular trade statistics reports, market and product information, supplier and buyer databases, and other trade-related information to its valued stakeholders through the web.”

Tradeline Philippines may be accessed at http://tradelinephilippines.dti.gov.ph/