The Pilipino Banana Growers and Exporters Association (PBGEA) said revenues from banana exports could go down this year, as other foreign producers have increased their shipments to the Philippines’s traditional markets for bananas.
PBGEA Executive Director Stephen Antig told the BusinessMirror that the volume of bananas shipped from January to May this year reached 634,191 metric tons (MT), 8 percent higher than the 588,085 MT recorded a year ago.
Despite the increase in terms of volume, data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showed that export receipts from bananas during the five-month period declined slightly to $236.122 million, from $237.3 million last year.
“We hope that volume will normalize this year and will be bigger than last year. [The possible increase] is due to better weather conditions,” Antig said.
“We are not certain, though, if total revenues this year will be higher than that of 2016, because other countries flooded some of our [traditional] markets with bananas, which will bring down prices,” he added.
PBGEA said, however, it is still finding it hard to fulfill the additional demand of other countries for Philippine bananas because local growers could not expand their plantations.
“The pronouncement of other countries, such as South Korea, to buy more bananas from us is definitely a big boost to the industry,” he said.
“But to meet the demand, there is a need to expand the production areas. However, this is a problem because of the seemingly conflicting policies of different government agencies,” Antig added.
He noted the contrasting views of the Department of Agriculture (DA) and Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) with regard to the use and expansion of Philippine agricultural lands.
“While the DA is encouraging the expansion of [banana] plantations to meet the demand from importing countries, the DAR has other ideas,” Antig said. “Several bills have been proposed that intend to control the lease arrangement between investors and landowners. This will definitely dampen investors’ interest.”
Antig said the productivity of the banana sector is also being stunted by “perennial problems”, such as attacks staged by the New People’s Army.
“The problems confronting the industry production are still the same. These are peace and order, pests and diseases, and climate change,” he said.
Antig added that the industry has yet to fully recover from Panama disease, which struck major banana plantations in Mindanao two years ago.
“However, we have been able to contain the spread of the disease by instituting control measures and testing other varieties that are resistant to Panama,” he said.
In March Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol said South Korea will import more Cavendish bananas from the Philippines this year to satisfy the increasing demand of Korean consumers for it.
Piñol said South Korea needs about 35 million boxes more of Cavendish bananas valued at $280 million (P14 billion). The 35 million boxes of bananas—with an average weight of 13 kilograms—would be equivalent to 455,000 metric tons (MT).
He said the DA will open banana plantations in former conflict-torn areas in Mindanao to increase production.
The Philippines accounts for more than 90 percent of bananas being imported by South Korea annually. Exporters shipped a total of 238,496 MT of bananas to South Korea, valued at $114.54 million in 2016, according to data from the PSA.