Banana exporters lose Millions weekly

Banana exporters lose P174M weekly

Thursday, May 10, 2012

DAVAO CITY -- The banana exporting industry has been losing P174 million a week, or a total of P1.44 billion, since March 5 when China started to impose stricter regulations on the shipment of bananas from the Philippines.

In fact, as of Thursday afternoon, there are at least 1,500 container vans still being held for inspection in major ports in China, the Philippine Banana Growers and Exporters Association (PBGEA) said.
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PBGEA president Stephen Antig said this is a result of the stricter quality measures recently imposed by the Chinese government.

He said under the new quality measures, if a single insect/mealy bug is found in a box, the whole container will be rejected and will be sent back to its origin or the Chinese government will dispose them.
Mindanao exporters, including small banana farmers, have been shipping more than 600 40-footer container vans containing a total of 924,000 boxes per week. Each container van has around 1,540 boxes.
Antig said Beijing Customs Inspection and Quarantine has already banned the entry of container vans of 41 exporters from Mindanao into China ports, including Dalian, Shanghai, Tianjin, Beijing, and Qingdao, after finding insects in a box of bananas.

China, Antig said, has given Philippine exporters until June 1 to comply with the new stricter requirements, including the improvement of the packing facilities.


In Mindanao, there are around 300 small and medium packing facilities.
"Kailangan sementado na ang floor, flowing ang tubig, ug butangan ug kural (The floor must be cemented. There should be a water supply, and must install a fence)," he said.
Jimmy Estimada, consultant Federation of ARB Banana-based Cooperatives (Fedco), said Thursday that even as they will be given until July, they still cannot comply with the requirements because of financial constraints.

Antig said China's move of not accepting banana produce from the Philippines will greatly affect the small banana farmers, and not so much about the big players of the industry.
Banana is the second largest export product of the Philippines, next to coconut.

PBGEA records showed that 70 percent of the country's banana production is sold to China. Of the 70 percent, 35 percent are the produce of small banana growers.
If China would push through with the ban, around 35,000 workers with more than 100,000 families would be affected, Antig said.

Earlier, Malacañang said that China has been pressuring the Philippines because of its defiance to surrender the Scarborough shoal in the West Philippine Sea.
"We are being bullied," Antig said.

Antig requested representatives from Department of Agriculture, Department of Foreign Affairs and Department of Finance, among others, to meet with their counterparts in China and discuss the problem.
He said there is no other country to which they can sell as much bananas as China need, not even Japan.
"Japan is already a mature market," he said. "If the Korean government would reduce the cost of its tariff, maybe they will buy more."

Last year, banana exporters here shipped a total of 158 million boxes to China.

Source: Here