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SHIPMENTS of various farm exports, including coconut oil
(CNO), pineapples, fresh bananas and mangoes, for
January to November 2007 went up by 13.8 percent to
$3.63 billion, the Department of Agriculture (DA) said.
Agriculture Undersecretary Berna Romulo-Puyat said
export volumes also went up by almost 28 percent to 8.43
million metric tons during the period.
Data
from the DA show that the United States and Japan
remained the top export markets for Philippine
agricultural products.
American
importers bought a total of $604.4 million worth of farm
products from the January-to-November period.
Japan,
meanwhile, bought a total of $386.3 million of farm
goods from the Philippines. Other top buyers of local
farm products are the
Netherlands,
South Korea and Thailand.
The DA
reported that CNO was the country’s top export, followed
by fresh bananas, pineapple and pineapple products, tuna
and desiccated coconut.
Other
top farm exports for the January-to-November 2007 period
were processed tropical fruits, seaweeds and carageenan,
sugar, prawns and shrimps, and copra oil cake.
The DA’s
Export Development Team, led by Puyat, disclosed that it
was able to book a total of $749 million worth of sales
and orders for Philippine fresh and processed food items
through its participation in trade shows and missions in
the United Arab Emirates, Australia, Belgium, Hong Kong,
Taiwan, China, South Korea, Japan, Germany, Thailand,
the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Russia.
This
year the DA said it is targeting to increase the
shipments of farm products to foreign markets by 10
percent through aggressive marketing efforts. |
