BANANA growers have a lot to celebrate as a long-standing policy limiting hectarage has just been repealed by Malacañang, a Mindanao development council head said on Thursday.

Vicente Lao, chair of the Regional Development Committee-Mindanao Area (RDCom-Mindanao), said President Gloria Arroyo’s cancellation of Letter of Instruction (LoI) 58 resulted from the appeal made by all RDCs in the island to cancel all circular or orders deemed detrimental to the business climate of Mindanao.

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LoI 58 limited the hectarage that could be planted with export-quality banana to 26,250 hectares nationwide.

Lao said President Arroyo’s Executive Order (EO) 807 repealed LoI 58, issued by President Ferdinand Marcos in 1973.

"The Philippine export banana industry has gained global market strength over the years, producing one of the country's major export products and source of jobs,” he said.

Increasing global demand, he said, makes the expansion of banana areas imperative, adding the limit becoming economically impractical over the years.

Lao said RDCs in Mindanao are elated with EO 807 because "it would strengthen the island's position in the global banana export industry."
"This EO has been the result of our recommendation that we submitted to the president since banana plantation had been overcrowding some places. Now, we can plant bananas for export, theoretically anywhere in the country," he said.

This, he said, would effectively reduce production cost, resulting in the country’s higher competitive edge against other emerging banana exporting countries in Asia. (CBC)