UN, gov’t to pursue export standards system

TO further raise the country’s exports to world market standards, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) said it will implement the Philippine Traceability System project in partnership with different government agencies.

“UNIDO will help fund the project. We  initially set a target of $5 million to be sourced from the Debt for Development Swap between the Italian government and the Philippines,” said Suresh Chandra Raj, UNIDO representative.

Raj, who met with Cebu exporters last week, said they are working with the Departments of Trade and Industry, Science and Technology and Agriculture to implement the three-year project.

Among those who attended last week’s meeting were Virgie dela Fuente of the Philippine Mango Exporters Foundation and Efren dela Cruz of RAFSI.

Raj said the Philippine government owed Italy over $5 million.

Instead of paying it back, the Italian government agreed through the Debt for Development agreement to let the country repay them by using the funds to finance development in the country.

“Among the areas that we thought would need support for development is the export industry and we will be benchmarking the success of Egypt in their Traceability system for the establishment of the P-Trace System,” Raj said.

Raj said a core group called the P-Trace Technical Working Group is doing gap analysis to identify priority industries.

Based on the last meeting in August, the group identified five specific products, which include banana, tuna, mango, okra, and cacao, he said.

The UNIDO representative said they are also visiting top exporting cities and provinces to get  feedback on which areas  of the whole supply-chain process needs to be prioritized.

“Since the P-Trace system will help organize a structure to document all stages of production, processing and distribution, we also need to get specific suggestions from the exporters themselves,”  Raj said.

With the P-Trace System established, Raj said they believe the Philippines would have chances of competing with other countries in exports.

“Cebu is known for export of processed mangoes. With this  system we can further assure quality of these products and pass stringent standards set by important markets like Japan,” he said.

Raj said they hope to start the project within the year.

While we have set three years for the project, we believe that this is a continuous process and the initial systems established for specific sectors or products will just be duplicated in other export products along the way,” Raj said.