Sunday, May 06, 2007 Sultan Kudarat offers tilapia for export
ISULAN, Sultan Kudarat -- Local officials and business leaders in Sultan Kudarat urged the National Government and exporters to look at the province's tilapia industry amid the country's goal to penetrate the United States with tilapia fillet.
Elena U. Haw, the Sultan Kudarat-based chairman of the Federation of Business Chambers Mindanao Foundation, said the province's tilapia industry, based in Lutayan town, is capable of supplying part of the demand.
"Our tilapia industry has been there for a long time. It is a stable industry. The edge of Sultan Kudarat's tilapia is that they're grown naturally (without commercial feeds)," she said.
Sultan Kudarat Representative Suharto Mangudadatu, whose family owns significant portions of tilapia fish cages grown at Lake Buluan, said the local tilapia product has yet to land in the export market.
He told reporters recently their buyers are mostly from Mindanao who may have been shipping the tilapia to other parts of the country like Manila.
Haw said the possibility of sending local tilapia abroad would boost the local economy and may cut poverty incidence in the area as the prospects may lead more local people to embark in tilapia farming.
Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (Bfar) director Malcolm I. Sarmiento earlier said the bureau is now gearing to increase tilapia production, particularly to produce tilapia fillet to supply the US market by next year, as US demand for the product rose to 24,000 tons in 2005 from only 4,000 tons in 2002.
"The biggest market now for tilapia is the US," said Sarmiento.
He said the Philippines is already capable of producing the needed export volume since it ranks second in world tilapia production, next only to China.
But, despite the high production rate, the Philippines is not even one of the top 15 suppliers of the US.
Since Filipinos are tilapia eaters, he said, most of the tilapia produced in the country is consumed domestically, leaving very little for export.
Bfar recently allocated P10 million for a tilapia fillet plant in Cagayan de Oro within the year, with a targeted production of at least 50 tons a month.
Sarmiento said Bfar plans to convert Northern Mindanao into a tilapia-growing center and a fillet-production area for the fillets eyed for export.
Don Fresco, a fish sales monitoring officer of a company engaged in tilapia production in Lutayan town, said they have been supplying tilapia to Northern Mindanao through Cagayan de Oro City wholesale buyers.
His company, Lutayan Fish Farm, rakes is an estimated two million pesos from Lake Buluan, an estimated 17,000-hectare inland body of water straddling Lutayan town and Buluan in Maguindanao, due to vast harvests at least twice a week of tilapia and also bangus.
Bfar is still trying to increase tilapia production areas to 250 hectares, the hectarage needed to produce 150 to 200 tons of raw materials a month to support the planned export venture.
Today, 60 percent of the Philippines' tilapia production comes from Central Luzon.
Sarmiento said that region's production can focus on meeting the domestic demand, while Northern Mindanao's production can focus on exports. (BSS)
