As forest areas shrink, cities expand rapidly and infrastructure projects involving the use of timber are rolled out, US timber deliveries to the Philippines are rising sharply, making the country one of the fastest-growing markets for imported timber in Asia.
Major construction projects, including the award-winning Terminal 2 of Mactan-Cebu International Airport, are making increasing use of both light timber frame construction and mass timber systems, helping the Philippines become one of the fastest-growing users of timber technology in Asia. The latest figures from the US Department of Agriculture show that North American timber exports to the Philippines will increase by 30% this year, reaching 28 million US dollars. The Philippines is working actively to secure sufficient volumes of timber for the delivery of its various projects.
The Philippines has long been a net importer of saw logs and sawn timber. Filipinos are relying more and more on foreign suppliers, because domestic forest areas are shrinking and harvestable timber volumes are falling, while large construction projects are being delivered at an ever faster pace. In its latest assessment, the US Department of Agriculture also noted that the Philippines “remains an importer of logs and sawn timber in order to meet growing domestic demand, driven by construction, furniture manufacturing and infrastructure development”. The assessment also highlights the widening gap between supply and demand.
Softwood sawn timber is the backbone of the Philippine construction and furniture manufacturing industries, accounting for more than half of all US timber imports into the Philippines. Demand is being driven by the rapid growth in high-end apartment and hotel construction in the Metro Manila region. These homes are aimed at well-off retirees and wealthy expatriates returning to the Philippines. A range of public infrastructure facilities is also being built, including new airport terminals, which increasingly use sustainably sourced timber. Light mass timber systems were used, for example, in the 32-storey Rainbow Tree high-rise designed in 2020.
Although the Philippines has around 30 million hectares of forest land, only seven million hectares are currently available for forestry. This is the result of decades of deforestation and land degradation. The shortfall has forced construction developers and manufacturers to rely more heavily on imports, which is why the USA has become the leading supplier of pine and oak sawn timber, plywood and other wood products. Last year the USA ranked seventh among timber exporters. The US Department of Agriculture forecasts that deliveries of hardwood and glue-laminated timber will continue to grow as the Philippine construction and premium housing markets keep expanding rapidly. The department points to growing interest in engineered wood. Admittedly, its use is still limited, as such wood products are not yet sufficiently familiar in the Philippines and their transport costs are higher than those of ASEAN suppliers. Even so, the US Department of Agriculture's assessment rates the Philippines as a market with “considerable untapped potential” for North American wood products. The Philippines is a market where rising demand, shrinking forest areas and a fast-growing construction industry are increasing the country's dependence on imported timber.
The Republic of the Philippines is an island nation in eastern Asia, in the Pacific Ocean, between Indonesia and Taiwan. The Luzon Strait separates the Philippines from Taiwan, and to the west, across the South China Sea, lies Vietnam. The archipelago consists of more than 7,640 islands, together covering an area of almost 300,000 km². The Philippines has a population of around 116 million. In 2020 the Philippines had 13 million hectares of natural forest, covering more than 45% of the country's territory. In 2024 it lost 44 thousand hectares of natural forest, equivalent to 24 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions. Between 2001 and 2022, 1.42 million hectares of forest disappeared in the Philippines. This is mainly linked to urbanisation.
Metro Manila is the country's capital region; informally the Manila metropolitan area is one of the regions of the Philippines, located in the central part of the country in the south-west of the island of Luzon, and it comprises 16 separate cities, including the national capital Manila, and one municipality.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN (an abbreviation from English: Association of Southeast Asian Nations), is a regional intergovernmental organisation bringing together 11 Southeast Asian countries. It is the political, economic and cultural organisation of the Southeast Asian states. ASEAN was founded in 1967, and its aim is to promote mutual cooperation and development among its member states, as well as to ensure peace and stability in the region.