Philippine banana industry requires government to increase investment

According to the Philippine business mirror, the Philippine banana industry requires the government to invest at least 4.088 billion pesos (about 500 million yuan) in four years to increase local banana production and maintain the market position of the Philippines as the world’s leading banana grower.

At a recent industry conference, Philippine banana industry and experts put forward a road map of banana industry from 2022 to 2025. The road map developed interventions for three banana varieties in an attempt to restore plantations affected by Fusarium Wilt and expand planting scale, improve banana yield and quality and reduce waste.

According to the first draft of the road map, the government must set aside 2.541 billion pesos for the Cavendish banana action plan and allocate 741 million pesos and 806 million pesos for lakatan and Saba Saba varieties, respectively. Finally, the annual output of Cavendish bananas will reach 55 tons / ha, and the annual output of lakatan and Saba will increase by 2% per ha.

In addition, the road map also requires the planting area of Cavendish to increase by at least 1% per year, from 86191 hectares in 2020 to 89690.7 hectares in 2025, and the output will increase from 4.743 million tons to 4.935 million tons. The planting area of lakartan varieties will increase by at least 1% every year, from 60962 hectares in 2020 to 63437.3 hectares in 2025, and the output will increase from 925400 tons to 1.002 million tons. The planting area of Saba varieties will increase by at least 0.5% every year, from 186147 hectares in 2020 to 189897.96 hectares, and the output will increase from 2.555 million tons to 2.659 million tons.

In recent years, Philippine banana production and export have been declining continuously. Earlier this year, Philippine Banana Exporters warned that the market share of Philippine bananas in China, Japan and South Korea had been shrinking, and a large amount of market share went to Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia and banana producing countries in Latin America. In 2007, the market share of Philippine bananas in China was once as high as 91.52%, and by 2020, this figure has decreased to 45.5%.

According to the Philippine Bureau of Statistics (PSA), the total export volume of bananas in the Philippines in 2020 was 3 million tons, a year-on-year decrease of 15.61%. Banana export revenue was US $1.377 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 16.2%.

Source: international fruit and vegetable Report


Post time: Oct-11-2021