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Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Australian markets end ban for Cebu exports
By Aurelia l. Castro
Sun.Star Staff Reporter
Cebu-based exporters expect a good year ahead after a shipping company announced the resumption of its direct port calls to Australia after a ban last year.
Philippine Exporters Confederation (Philexport)-Cebu executive director Fred Escalona said, in an interview yesterday, that P&O Nedlloyd, an Anglo-Dutch shipping giant, had formally informed Philexport-Cebu, in a lunch meeting last Friday, of the resumption of its direct shipment from Cebu to Australia and vice versa.
“This is good news for our exporters and stakeholders of the Cebu International Port. Exporters are incurring additional costs for transshipping their goods via Manila,” he said.
Shipments from Cebu were banned from entering Austalian ports after the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (Aqis) found a giant African snail (GAS) in one of the shipments from Cebu last year.
Australia believes a GAS can harm its agriculture sector.
The ban resulted in a decline in the volume of direct exports to Australia from 1,500 twenty-footer equivalent units (TEUs) in 1999 to some 990 TEUs last year and “zero” this year, after international shipping companies stopped docking at Cebu ports, Escalona said.
TEU is a unit of measurement that refers to every 20-footer container.
Cebu-based exporters had to ship their products to Australia via Manila, incurring additional shipping costs of around P20,000 per container, he said.
“This is a major advocacy victory for Philexport-Cebu, which campaigned hard for the de-listing of Cebu as a GAS-risk area and the resumption of direct port calls for Cebu-Australia,” he told Sun.Star Cebu.
Cebu GAS Task Force, now known as the “Pest Free Cebu Exports” Task Force succeeded in its thrust of removing Cebu from Aqis’ list of ports that are possible origins of GAS.
More companies
He added that there are more shipping companies, like the American President Liner, that also showed interest in resuming their Cebu-Australia port calls.
Escalona said Cebu products mostly exported to Australia are carageenan, furniture, gifts, toys and house-wares (GTH).
A Cebu exporter from the GTH sector will start shipping its products to Australia with the P&O Nedlloyd next month, he revealed.
On the other hand, he added that the Oriental Port and Allied Services Corp. (Opascor) will also benefit from the resumption of direct Cebu-Australia port calls.
“Opascor lost at least 1,500 TEUs to the Manila port services but now will be able to regain it with the resumption of Cebu-Australia direct shipment,” he said.
Opascor expects P&O Nedlloyd to deliver 2,000 to 4,000 TEUs in two years.
“Now that we are already de-listed, we need to shape up and make our ports clean and free from pests and diseases to avoid future sanctions and blacklisting,” said Escalona.
The Pest-Free Cebu Exports Task Force is composed of various government agencies like the Department of Agriculture, Maritime Industry Authority, Bureau of Animal Industry, Department of Trade and Industry, and the private sector stakeholders like the Philexport, Cebu Furniture Industries Foundation, Opascor and Cebu Truckers Association.
(December 27, 2005 issue)
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