Monday, March 03, 2008 Ledesma: The costly price of banana piracy By Jun Ledesma Sunbursts
LAST week, I wrote about the unabated and abetted thievery that is threatening the major dollar earning banana industry in Davao.
Last Friday, in a major national daily, Dubai importers called the attention of Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap on the decline of the quality of bananas from the Philippines.
The threat of the Philippines losing the Middle East market is real. Unfortunately for us, when reference is made about Philippine bananas it actually meant Davao bananas and one can only estimate the impact of losing that market in the regional economy.
What I missed to point out in my previous column is that the reason why we can hardly penetrate the huge consumer market in China was on account of a delivery of several tons of cavendish bananas from Davao, which was rejected because this did not meet quality control. The shipment was made by "pole-vaulters" who bought stolen bananas from unsupervised farms and from polluted source.
That incident however did not stop the fly-by-night exporters from their clandestine operations and neither stirred the government from instituting measures to curb it. The poachers offer a much higher buying price, twice as much as what is prevailing in the industry which has a range of $2.50-$2.80 per 13-kilogram box. The Philippine Banana Growers and Exporters Association complained that the poachers do not have a single centavo investment in the development and maintenance of banana farms. They target landowners whose lands are leased by members of PBGEA and landowner-growers who are assisted but with marketing contracts with PBGEA members.
The contracts, many of which had a life span of 10 years, are binding but these are virtually violated. Landowners and growers are lured by poachers with a much higher price paid on the spot. It is qualified theft but nobody goes to jail.
The problem is that when the lease and marketing contracts are grossly violated and therefore untenable there is no other recourse left for PBGEA member but to stop providing agricultural inputs and technical farm supervision. When this happens diseases set in and the quality of the fruits deteriorates. Just the same poachers buy them unmindful of the consequence. Theirs is fly-by-night operations.
The alarm over the deterioration of Philippine bananas was raised by Khaled M. Alayyan, chairman of Fresh Fruit Company based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Fresh Fruits has plans of investing about $50-million to develop a 3,000 hectare-banana and pineapple farm in Mindanao even as he said that India and Sri Lanka are beginning to develop banana plantations, too. The Philippines he said is the No. 1 exporter of bananas to the Middle East and other Gulf countries.
But he warned Secretary Yap that the country might lose its hold if the present problems that plague the banana industry will not be checked.
Well, if it is of any consolation Secretary Yap who is hands on in his job promised to impose strict standard of quality on banana exports. Having said that, the secretary might begin cleaning up his own backyard starting with the Bureau of Plant Quarantine office that is extra-liberal with issuance of phyto-sanitary certificates.
He might also want to check on the operations of poachers, the biggest among which is from the Middle East that, ironically, covers up its shady operations by also complaining about the deteriorating quality of Philippine bananas.
If Secretary Yap meant his words he better do it quick.
