MANILA - The Semiconductor and Electronics Industries in the Philippines Inc (SEIPI) has projected that the country's electronics industry could outpace its pre-pandemic level growth this year, an official said Wednesday.

SEIPI revised its growth outlook to 10 percent from the earlier forecast of 7 percent due to a "strong" global demand, its president Dan Lachica told ANC.

As of end-September, the industry is at $34 billion, which Lachica said could hit $45 billion for the year.

"We’ve recovered... We projected a 7 percent growth this year. We’re actually going to exceed that, we’ve upgraded our projection to 10 percent," he said.

"Things are looking better notwithstanding the difficulties that we continue to face. If we didn’t have that supply chain issue, it would have been higher because global demand is very strong," he added.

Lachica said the industry is about 61 percent of the country's total exports. Recovery was partly due to the government's vaccination program, he said.

The industry produces materials that are needed to build electronic components.

"Everything that you handle, everything that you touch has an electronic component and as such we’ve seen good recovery globally for our products," Lachica said

Globally, chip shortage had forced electronic giants to cut production targets.

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