Saturday, August 04, 2007 High-value crops post export growth
HIGH-value crops namely coconuts, pineapples, mangoes, and bananas remain as the country's top agricultural export commodities.
These crops show an impressive growth of 15.84 percent to $1.041 billion for the first four months of 2007 alone says the Department of Agriculture (DA).
Total merchandise exports reached $1,041,860,741 from January to April this year as against $899,385,011 for the same period in 2006.
DA Secretary Arthur Yap said the United States, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong remain the country's top markets for the first four months of the year.
He said among coconut products, exports of desiccated coconuts grew by 17 percent during the January-April period while raw coir also grew by 17 percent.
On the other hand, dried pineapple exports grew by as much as 200 percent in the first four months of the year while fresh bananas grew by as much as $1.1 million or 0.8 percent.
For coconut meat, the US continued being one of the top importers of the Philippines although it was displaced by The Netherlands as the top export destination in the first quarter of the year.
Yap noted that new markets for coconut meat included Korea and Hawaii, but Japan, the No. 2 export market for the first quarter of 2006, did not import any coconut meat for the same period in 2007.
For fresh bananas, Japan remained as the No. 1 destination, growing by $628,954. Although Korea dropped to No. 3 in terms of share of exports, the value of sales increased by $1,205,535 or 7 percent.
Exports of dried mangoes grew by 158 percent while a number of fisheries products also increased sales.
"Dried mangoes found a number of new markets for the first quarter of this year compared to the same period of the previous year," Yap said. These new markets include Thailand, The Netherlands, and Switzerland.
This can be attributed to a new phytosanitary protocol approved by Washington last December, sales to the US increased by 5.8 percent or $1.37 million in the January-April period.
The DA's aggressive efforts to strengthen existing export markets and tap new ones for agricultural products are part of its current campaign to build the environment for farmers' profitability.
