A few months back, Chinese quarantine authorities informed their Filipino counterparts that only vapor heat treated (VHT) fresh mango exports will be allowed entry into their ports. They claimed that in 2005, six shipments of fresh mango exports from the Philippines were rejected because of fruit fly infestation.
This caught our exporters off guard since China is not perceived as meticulous in imposing sanitary and phytosanitary quarantine measures. This prompted our exporters to ask China’s Department of Supervision on Animal and Plant Quarantine to reconsider this new rule.
Our government bureaucrats argued that the required quarantine measure is not supported by an import risk analysis. In fact, the Bureau of Plant Industry asked for a full-blown investigation because the so-called Bactrocera Dorsalis fruit fly supposedly no longer exists in the Philippines.
Mango exporters to date are not keen on investing in a new VHT facility which costs about P32 million. They say this will raise the cost of mangoes shipped to China by about P40 per kilo. The existing VHT facilities cannot be used because these are used solely for exports to Korea and Japan.
Surely, exporters need to exhaust all means to convince China to reconsider its position. But beyond appealing for reconsideration, or at the most some reasonable lead time in implementing the new rules, Philippine mango exporters should take a long hard look at themselves and face their problems head-on.
China is now the Philippines’ biggest market for fresh and processed mangoes, accounting for 75 percent of all mango exports. Exporters have to ensure that they keep the Chinese market by approaching the issues squarely and focusing on enhancing competitiveness, instead of constantly squirming and whining.
Efforts also to expand fresh mango exports to the US mainland is being stymied by the US Department of Agriculture ruling that only fresh mango from the mango pulp and pulp seed weevil-free Guimaras Island in the Visayas can enter the mainland.
Clearly, our mango farmers need to be re-trained to enable them to comprehend the demands of markets becoming more quality conscious and sophisticated. Government agencies like the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI) should be more aggressive in information dissemination and conduct extensive training on international standards and modern agricultural practices.
So often, poorly-trained mango farmers indiscriminately use pesticides to treat mango diseases, resulting in several rejections by quarantine authorities in Japan and other countries. This includes not only the fresh exports but also the processed mangoes.
However, Filipino mango exporters to the US are waging a pitiful effort in establishing their presence in a market that is dominated by Mexico, which, through sheer cunning, was able to "steal" and label their Mexico-grown mangoes as "Manila Mango." The Philippines lost its patent war with Mexico because it did not move fast enough to prevent such outright poaching.
Aside from working on bringing export costs down, the government should intensify current research and development efforts, particularly in extending the shelf life of fresh mango so that it maintains its quality by the time it reaches not only the US market but other equally profitable markets such as the European Union and the Middle East.
One particularly promising R&D undertaking is the series of experiments on controlled atmosphere technology for mangoes conducted by the Central Luzon State University. The results have shown that the technology can assure our mangoes will reach US markets in excellent condition even after 28 days of shipping.
We also need more interventions like the USDA-funded RP Mango Export Competitiveness Study. If completed and implemented, this will allow mangoes coming from all production areas in the Philippines except Palawan to enter Hawaii and Guam, and subsequently other US territories and mainland states.
Both exporters and the government should not lose sight of the tremendous opportunities these efforts could generate if they concentrate on the bottom-line issue amid all the other clear and present export barriers. It is not just an issue of compliance with the rigid import rules of buyers, but more importantly, it is preserving and nurturing whatever competitive edge remaining that would really turn things around for the Philippine mango industry.
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