RP mulls WTO suit vs Australia

The Department of Agriculture (DA) is planning to file with the World Trade Organization (WTO) an unfair trade suit against Australia for refusing the entry of Philippine fresh bananas.

"I have directed Undersecretary Segfredo Serrano to discuss these with our WTO representatives in Geneva. Australia has been giving us the impression it will work on our request to finally allow exports of fresh bananas, but they have failed to deliver," said Agriculture Secretary Domingo F. Panganiban. Serrano is the country’s chief negotiator for the agriculture sector in the ongoing WTO talks in Geneva.

The Philippine government is pushing for Biosecurity Australia (BA) to release its revised import risk analysis under a renewed bilateral negotiation.

Filipino banana exporters want to take advantage of the devastating cyclones that hit Australia’s banana plantations earlier this year and a trade agreement will benefit both countries, especially Austalian consumers since banan prices have been steadily rising – an aftermath of the cyclones.

The Australian Banana Growers Council (ABGC) which has been so far successful in blocking the entry of bananas from the Philippines, continues to exert pressure on BA and influence its legislators into sidetracking the IRA issue.

"It seems that we have to seriously consider bringing up the matter with the WTO, although it may be difficult for the Philippine government considering our lack of financial resources for litigation. Still, this issue has to be resolved once and for all," said Panganiban.

The DA is consulting with the Advocacy Center on WTO Law (ACWL) to determine the best approach in reviving the fruit trade case with Australia before the WTO.

ACWL is a trust fund created by developed countries to help developing countries thresh out their unfair trade complaints before the WTO. ACWL makes its recommendations on trade issues and endorse these to the agriculture secretary who will in turn refer it to the Cabinet level for the final decision.

BA, the Australian government agency that assesses the risk of disease from imported farm products, reversed two years ago its IRA report that should have finally allowed the importation of bananas from the Philippines following the aggressive lobbying of ABGC. The BA is supposed to issue later this year an IRA on bananas.

It has been almost four years since, when Australia issued the draft import risk assessment (IRA) blocking the entry of Philippine banana due to reports of a banana disease that could destroy Australia’s banana industry. This has since then been refuted by both plant experts of the Bureau of Plant Industry and Philippine banana exporting companies.

Local banana exporters have been contesting ABGC’s claims, citing the Philippines is already the second largest producer and exporter of Cavendish banana in the world, shipping to Japan and the US which have very rigid sanitary and phytosanitary rules. The industry exported $350 million worth of fresh bananas to various foreign markets in 2005.

The bulk of production is in the Davao region in Mindanao which accounts for 90 percent of bananas produced for the export market with a land area of more than 30,000 hectares.