Mindanao to export mangoes to Malaysia and Indonesia

DAVAO CITY – Farmers from Mindanao will soon export mangoes and other agricultural produce to Malaysia and Indonesia after the senior officials and ministers of these countries recently agreed to intensify trade beginning early next year.

MinDA executive director Janet M. Lopoz said during Wednesday’s Habi at Kape that senior officials and ministers from Malaysia and Indonesia agreed to import agricultural produce from Mindanao, opening another opportunity for the Mindanao mango growers in Kuching,

Sarawak in Malaysia last week.

She said Mindanao may also supply these countries with chicken and bananas.

“For those agreements, we are seeing a lot of promise. Mindanao is very much into it,” she said.

She said they encourage the fragmented mango organizations here to organize themselves to easily enter and gain a firm footing once they enter these new international markets in the Brunei Darussalam Indonesia Malaysia and Philippines-East Asian Growth Area (BIMP-EAGA).

The BIMP-EAGA is a 25-yearold sub-regional economic cooperation initiative in Southeast Asia designed to spur economic development in the lagging subeconomies.

She said one of the issues that the government is fixing with its Malaysian and Indonesian counterparts include the phyto-sanitary standards, which bar the mango exporters to enter new international market for failing to meet the required minimum residual level.

According to the Philippine Statistics Authority, mango production in the country from April to June 2019 stood at 556,000 metric tons, higher by 5.4 percent, compared to 528,000 metric tons recorded in the same period of 2017.

It said the highest producer of mango during the period was Ilocos Region, contributing 22.6 percent to the total national production. Zamboanga Peninsula and Central Visayas followed with 10.5 percent and 9.7 percent, respectively.

She said Japan has closed its doors to mango exports from the Philippines as it failed to satisfy the minimum residual level.

“They need some help to penetrate the market because there is a problem on the standards kay hindi makapasa, level ng chemicals (because they cannot pass the level of