MANILA, 21 September 2007 — OFWs who intend to invest in agriculture have something to cheer in the past seven months.
Export of the country’s top agricultural products such as coconuts, pineapples, tuna, abaca and other high value crops rose to 1.23 percent or a total of 14.8 million pesos in the first seven months of 2007. Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap said the country has something to look forward to in the coming months as more increase in exports is expected to reach record high before the year ends.
To sustain the growth of other export winners such as bananas and mangoes, Agriculture Undersecretary Berna Romulo-Puyat said that the Agriculture Department is undertaking a series of intervention measures to meet the supply demand for these products.
Romulo-Puyat said in a press statement that for coconut products, dessicated coconut and copra meal cake are the top performers in terms of growth as it increased by 15.2 percent and 44.5 percent respectively.
In her report to Secretary Yap, Undersecretary Romulo-Puyat said that for pineapple products, canned pineapple rose by 29.86 percent, pineapple juice by 75.80 percent and pineapple concentrate by 16.14 percent.
The top gain for fishery exports was tuna which grew by 42 percent. Seaweeds and carageenan, on the other hand, increased by 68.2 percent.
Abaca product exports of disaster-stricken Bicol rose by 18.36 percent, a testimony that the region is slowly rising economically. Bicol boasts of its abaca fiber despite the storms and volcano eruption.
Unmanufactured tobacco exports also rose by 36 percent, Romulo-Puyat added.