Industry Entry & Upgrading

USAID, through the STRIDE and USAID Advancing Philippine Competitiveness Project (COMPETE) financed a research project with Duke GVCC to support the Philippines new industry development policies. The Philippine Board of Investments (BOI), the industry development and investment promotion arm of the Department of Trade & Industry (DTI) was our local partner. I was in the Philippines four times: November 2015 and January 2016 (electronics & auto interviews), February 2017 (Manila and Cebu for 10 shipbuilding interviews) and July 2017 (Manila-final presentation). I analyzed three proprietary firm-level datasets within the scope of the project: Customs data – imports & exports (2007-2014), DTI-BOI firm registrations (1974-2015), and PEZA firm and activity registration (1974-2015).

My research on the textile industry began with conducting the first ever in-depth mapping of the NC textile industry (2006). This entailed developing a database of over 1,000 companies, providing a detailed analysis of NC’s position in the chain and identifying geographic clusters. The second phase (2007) was the creation of Textile Connect, a website that provides the results of the initial mapping that serves as a resource to find local textile suppliers. The third project (2008) improved the initial version of the website by adding enhanced visual features and in-depth company profiles. The final project (2009) was developing a strategy for the NC textile industry. I also completed the first two phases for South Carolina’s textile industry. I interviewed and visited over 100 textile companies in North and South Carolina and conducted phone interviews with every company in the database (1,000+). This is the most comprehensive analysis ever conducted on the textile industry in the Carolinas and continues to serve as a primary data source for domestic stakeholders. The following news articles provide short project descriptions:

Fibre2Fashion.com (Aug, 2008)

Textile World article (January 24, 2008)