CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY (MindaNews/19 May) –With the uncertainty of the China market brought about by the dispute over Scarborough shoal, Mindanao businessmen are looking into a newer and bigger market: the Asean integrated market.
Ricardo Juliano, Mindanao vice president of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industries, said businessmen from the boardrooms to the farms are looking forward for the opening of the ASEAN market in 2015.
Juliano said 2015 “can be the sunshine year for Mindanao business” as there is
“so much potential when the integrated single market of ASEAN countries opens.”
He said economic ministers from ASEAN countries expressed their determination to open the single market in the region by 2015, during the 42nd annual meeting in Vietnam in August last year.
Reaffirming their resolve, Juliano said the ministers announced that 99.65 percent of all tariff lines under the Common Effective preferential tariff scheme would be eliminated starting last January.
“Because of Mindanao’s proximity to the ASEAN market, we can flourish if we plan ahead. Besides, we are closer to Indonesia culturally than the rest of the country,” Juliano said.
According to the ASEAN website, a single integrated market among their member countries would allow the free flow of goods and services; and will theoretically have one price for all the products after transport cost adjustments.
Member countries of Asean are Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Laos, Burma, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Brunei Darussalam and Vietnam.
In the boardroom of A Brown Company in Opol, MisamisOriental, executives are busy planning to expand their oil palm tree plantations to meet the expected demand of the open market.
Arturo Perlas, A Brown Company vice president for administration said they are planning to expand production from the present1,000 metric tons of palm oil to 10 thousand tons by 2015.
He said they already have a mill plant capable of processing ten thousand tons in Impasug-ong, Bukidnon province.
“When the market opens by 2015, we are capable of sustaining our production to meet any demand,” Perlas said.
Perlas said they are also keen on looking into partnerships or alliances with oil palm growers from the region.
Still, Perlas said opening the country to the ASEAN integrated market is fraught with danger for the local palm oil industry.
Perlas said the palm oil industry in the country is still at its infancy compared to neighboring countries of Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.
“We are far off in production technology compared tot hese countries,” he said.
According to a study by Dr. Pablito Pamplona, a retired professor from the University of Mindanao, who is a consultant on palm oil production, the best yield in the Philippines averages less than 20 tons a year compared to 40 tons in Malaysia.
The study also revealed that Philippines imported 500,000 metric tons of palm oil worth P23 billion a year from Malaysia.
Pamplona said inadequate application of high-yielding technologies among small farmers as the reason why local palm oil industry could not improve its production.
Perlas said the government should step-in to support the industry by providing small farmers easy-to-plant crops.
He said they estimated that with adequate government support, Philippine palm oil production can hit one million metric tons by 2022 and generate employment for 660,000 Mindanao residents.
“Oil palm growers in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand are heavily supported by their governments. This is the business environment we will be facing in 2015,” Perlas said. (Froilan Gallardo/MindaNews)