Value-adding in coconut industry is new PCA tack

In an attempt to save what is left of the country's struggling coconut industry, Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol is now pushing for value-adding in the sector, a move that has long been part of the Philippine Coconut Authority's (PCA) plan but never really materialized.

"The coconut industry, which was once the top dollar earner among the agricultural products of the Philippines, is now in the doldrums," Piñol earlier said.

PCA, which has just been transferred to the supervision of the Department of Agriculture (DA), is yet to address issues hounding the coconut sector, which has been suffering from low copra prices and infestation.

As he took over the agency, Piñol is now seriously planning about what needs to be done in the sector. He said the industry should not just be about copra being processed into cooking oil.

He said the commodity should be used to make syrup, pastries, sugar, flour, and many more.

"The Philippine coconut industry is a perfect example of a sector with vast potentials, which missed the train of development simply because it failed to adjust and respond to the demands of the market," Piñol said.

He then compared the country's coconut sector, which has an area of 3.3 million hectares, to that of Thailand's, which only covers 216,000 hectares of land. Yet, in United States and Europe, high value coconut products like coconut water from Thailand dominates the market.

"While Thailand focused on producing coconut varieties which produced aromatic coco water and other high value products, the Philippine coconut industry was stuck in its obsession with the copra, the coconut meat which is the source of cooking oil," Piñol said.

"Today, as the world market prices of copra plummeted, coconut farmers, who are among the poorest members of the agriculture sector, are hit hard and could hardly survive," he added.

Regarding the plummeting prices, he said there is nothing much that government could do because copra prices are dictated by world market demands and that the only other option to boost its demand — which is for the government to require that all diesel fuels sold in the domestic market be blended with five percent Coco Methyl Ester (CME) — has already been thumbed down by the country's economic managers amid rising cost of fuel.

To address some of these issues, Piñol recently met with the PCA Governing Board, which he now chairs.

During the meeting, PCA was told to gather stakeholders and draft a fiveyear roadmap to set the direction in rehabilitating and reviving the coconut industry.

The PCA was then given a budget of 110 million for the drafting of the Coconut Industry Road Map alone.

PCA Administrator Romulo de la Rosa said in an earlier interview that the problem is that the agency, like any other government office, lacks manpower and needs "massive" reorganization.

He said this while he revealed the fact that the PCA may not yet be ready to absorb the controversial coco levy funds, which is estimated to have grown to around more than 1100 billion.

It was in August when the Bicameral Conference Committee, chaired by Senator Cynthia Villar, passed a bill that would facilitate the highly anticipated release of the coco levy fund.