RP, Brunei team up for halal sardine venture

MANILA, Philippines - The Philippines and Brunei are teaming up for a sardine canning project with Middle East countries as the intended market.

The joint venture is under the BIMP-EAGA (Brunei-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines-East Asia Growth Area).

According to Benjamin F.S. Tabios Jr., assistant director for administrative services of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, the sardine project is an offshoot of a visit in June last year by BFAR Director Malcolm Sarmiento to Brunei to discuss possible fisheries cooperation.

Brunei’s fisheries officials had sought possible cooperation on utilizing its abundant sardine harvest.

Tabios said BFAR indicated its willingness to assist Brunei and was pleasantly surprised that by December last year, Brunei had fast-tracked the construction of a sardine processing and cold storage facility even while the nitty-gritty of the joint venture had not yet been fully worked out.

The Philippines, through the assistance of the BFAR and the BIMP-EAGA Business Council (BBC) are now trying to gather possible project partners for Brunei.

The Philippine private sector representatives are being led by Mike Casis and Vic Lao.

According to Tabios, several schemes are being eyed for the joint venture. One is for the Filipino proponents to form a joint venture with partners from Brunei and then lease/or rent the sardine processing and cold storage facilities and export their production to the Middle East.

The joint venture would be beneficial to the Philippines sardine sector since at present, the Philippines still does not have halal certification for its sardine products.

Brunei, which is already halal-certified, stands to gain from the expertise of Filipino sardine manufacturers who already meet US and European manufacturing standards, Tabios said.

The Philippines and Brunei are expected to finalize further details of the joint venture by April.