THE Philippines must spend at least P3.65 billion over the next three years to improve the competitiveness of the banana industry and maintain its stature as the world’s second-top producer of the tropical fruit, according to an industry road map.
Under the Philippine Banana Industry Roadmap 2019-2022, the government must invest at least P1.215 billion annually to help local producers become competitive against their Latin American and Southeast Asian counterparts. The road map was drawn up by the Department of Agriculture and the banana sector.
The funds will be used to fight pests, particularly Fusarium wilt, roll out international and local marketing campaigns, produce high-quality seedlings and create a reliable industry database.
Bulk of the proposed support, or nearly P1 billion annually, will go to pest management programs, with interventions to fight Fusarium wilt being the top priority.
The proposed budget will also be used to establish two new entities to assist the sector: the Banana Industry Development Council (BIDC) and the Banana Research Institute (BRI). The road map stipulated that the government must spend a total of P75 million yearly for the creation of the two entities.
“The banana industry is one of our top dollar earners which employs thousands. [The] government must focus on it,” Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol told the BusinessMirror via SMS.
Targets, challenges
FROM 2020 to 2022, the government is aiming to hike the productivity of Cavendish growers by 4 percent annually. The government also wants to improve productivity of Lakatan and Cardaba planters by 2 percent.
The road map calls for hiking Cavendish yield to 62.24 metric ton per hectare, from the baseline of 53.2 MT/ha. For Cardaba and Lakatan varieties, the target is to attain a productivity level of 15.15 MT/ha and 18.18 MT/ha, respectively.
The government plans to achieve these goals by expanding production areas for Cavendish by at least 3 percent annually and 2 percent for the Lakatan and Cardaba varieties.
The road map sets a production area target of 96,236 hectares for Cavendish, from 85,505 hectares. Plantations dedicated to Cardaba and Lakatan varieties must reach 60,276 hectares and 198,214 hectares by 2022.
The expansion of production area is expected to increase the annual output of Cavendish banana by 7 percent annually until 2022, when production is expected to reach nearly 6 million metric tons, from the current 4.548 MMT.
The production of Cardaba and Lakatan by 2022 is expected to hit 913,426 MT and 3.604 MMT, respectively.
Aside from hiking output, the government and planters want to address other problems plaguing the industry, such as unserved markets, inadequate cold chain facilities, low-quality planting materials and trade barriers.
Data discrepancies
ONE of the top priorities of the BIDC and BRI is to address discrepancies in the country’s production and export figures, which are inconsistent with the statistics of the Philippines’s trade partners.
Under the road map, some P30 million will have to be set aside to establish a banana database over the next three years.
Industry stakeholders and economists have been lobbying for better industry statistics, saying “unrealistic” figures will hurt the country’s status as one of the world’s leading banana producers.
“The existing monitoring structure is a mix of government and private institutions/agencies mostly operating independently of each other,” the road map read.
“Not all the data is openly shared; thus, sometimes the statistics do not tally from one agency to the other, and sometimes even within the same agency,” it added.
The BRI will serve as a consolidator of data gathered by different government and private stakeholders in line with its mandate for research and development of the banana industry and technology.
The BIDC will be the repository and clearinghouse of all the data and information gathered pursuant to its role of developing and advocating policies to govern the banana industry.
The BRI is a government entity that will be supported by the private sector while the BIDC will consist of representatives from the government and the private sector. These institutions would gather, organize, analyze and evaluate banana industry statistics on a quarterly basis.