Banana exports to Australia suffer another setback

The country’s chances of exporting locally-grown bananas to Australia sometime this year were dashed anew with the admission by quarantine agency Biosecurity Australia (BA) that it erred in endorsing the lifting of an existing ban on the commodity.

Philippine agriculture officials said BA’s owing of such a major bungle is extremely disappointing since it was a complete turnaround from its recommendation last February that Philippine bananas passed rigid quarantine standards and are safe to enter Australia.

"We are unhappy with this development. This means our bid to export our bananas to Australia have suffered another setback and the establishment of predictable timelines in this maze of a process just suddenly evaporated," Agriculture Secretary Luis Lorenzo said.

BA manager Mary Harwood issued a statement last week saying a statistical error was found out in estimating risks in the Import Risk Analysis (IRA) on banana, which meant some quarantine measures detailed in the IRA would need to be reassessed and strengthened.

Based on BA’s recomputation, Harwood told Maria Araceli Albarece, Manila’s agricultural attaché to Canberra during a meeting last Wednesday, that while there might be minor and insignificant changes in the quarantine measures, these could not be publicly announced until after the IRA panel has made the final reassessment.

"With the way things are going on at Biosecurity Australia, we are unsure of the full integrity of the process considering that such basic lapses could occur," Lorenzo said.

Albarece said BA released a memorandum explaining what the error was and alerted all stakeholders that as a result of the error in estimation, it will be issuing an addendum to the revised IRA in the coming weeks.

Once the addendum is released, the Philippines, like all other stakeholders, would be given a new 60-day period to comment on it.

For several years now, the Philippines has been trying to convince BA to allow it to export bananas to Australia,

The BA in February said it would likely allow the Philippines to export the commodity but subject to rigid quarantine conditions.

The move however, was vehemently opposed by the Australian Banana Growers Council, which was threatened by the possibility of cheaper-priced imported bananas giving them stiff competition.

The Philippines last year, asked the World Trade Organization (WTO) to create a dispute panel to settle its trade row with Australia.