US commissaries to buy PHL bananas
"(This is) the latest information I received via email from the US Department of Agriculture,” Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI) director Clarita Barron said in an interview with reporters Wednesday
“They are already in the process of finalization of the comments that were raised during the consultation [on banana export]," Barron added.
The USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) in the Philippines assured Philippine bananas will be allowed access to the Defense Commissary Agencies (DeCa) of the United States, the Philippine official noted.
The US Department of Defense operates more than 250 DeCa worldwide, serving US military and civilian employees.
Philippine exporters will also start shipments to Hawaii, the Marianas Group of Islands, Okinawa, Saipan, and Guam.
A bilateral agreement on exporting Philippine bananas to the US is also in the offing, said Barron.
The deal calls for Philippine traders to increase the volume of orders of temperate vegetable from the US.
As this developed, the Plant Bureau announced that China has started relaxing the strict pythosanitary measure it imposed on Philippine bananas.
As of Aug. 14, 2012, the Chinese quarantine office approved up to 17,787 container vans of bananas to enter China. The volume was equivalent to 356,092 metric tons (MT) bananas valued at $71 million.
"This is good development. I see progress about this, that China has started easing their restrictions on our bananas. There will be still interception, but the incidents like that have significantly went down," said Barron.
Philippine Plant Quarantine data showed that rejected shipments as of August 14 was around 659 container vans, equivalent to 13,799 MT valued at $2.6 million.
Bananas are the second largest cash-crop exports of the Philippines after coconut, with earnings of from fresh Cavendish
Philippine bananas is the county’s 2nd biggest cash-crop export next to coconut. In 2010, total export earnings from fresh Cavendish banana reached $720 million or P30.2 billion.
The country’s principal market for bananas are China, Russia, South Korea, New Zealand and Japan, as well as the Middle East.
Source: www.gmanetwork.com