North Cotabato banana growers losing P4-7M a week

BANANAS are stocked and packed by workers at the Nasipit port. In North Cotabato, bananas are rotting in ports because of the lack of ships to transport the produce to ports in Cebu and Manila. INQUIRER PHOTO

KIDAPAWAN CITY—Banana growers in North Cotabato are losing between P4-7 million each week because of the shortage of cargo vessels that they can use to deliver their produce to various ports of the country, an industry official said.

Eclesiastes Roque, regional chair of a group of banana industry players in Central Mindanao, said as of Friday, at least 20 cargo containers loaded with bananas from the province are “now stranded in the sea ports of Cagayan de Oro, Davao City and General Santos City.”

Roque said the banana contents of these cargo containers weigh about 1,000 tons and are now rotting. These were supposed to be delivered to Cebu and Manila, he said.

“We transport our cavendish banana twice a week but the limited number of ships has been causing port congestion. Our produce are being stuck in these ports,” Roque said.

He said when the bananas are finally transported to their ports of destinations, these are instantly thrown away instead of being delivered to markets because they had rot because they were stranded at ports of origin for so long.

Roque said he saw cargo containers loaded with rotten bananas himself.

“I was surprised to see rotten bananas in the port of Manila. The port management told me that these produce came from the province of North Cotabato,” Roque said.

He said to avoid further losses, banana growers in North Cotabato had started limiting their harvest pending the result of their dialogue with officials of the Department of Agriculture on how to address the problem on shortage of cargo ships.

“We are hoping that the Department of Agriculture will heed our demand,” Roque said, adding that his group wanted agency officials to help them contract a cargo ship for exclusive use of North Cotabato banana growers.

The Philippines is one of the world’s top banana exporters, its produce going to Japan and the United States.  Williamor A. Magbanua, Inquirer Mindanao