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By Katrina April Mennen A. Valdez, Researcher
THE Philippines is no longer keen on shipping
bananas to Australia, a Department of Agriculture official told The
Manila Times.
Agriculture Undersecretary Segfredo R. Serrano,
who heads the agency’s policy and planning staff, said negotiators
have become bearish about reopening the Australian market after five
years of talks with Canberra.
“Australia would always promise to release the
result of their study about our bananas for the past five years, but
unfortunately they have not. Nothing has happened,” Serrano said.
Manila filed a legal complaint before the World
Trade Organization on December 18, 2001, after Philippine bananas
were held by Australia for pest inspection. The findings of the
multilateral trade body have yet to come out.
“Our bananas have penetrated the South Korean,
Japanese and Chinese [and] even the Middle East market[s], so why
can’t we enter the Australian market? And there is no such thing
as zero risk,” he said.
Besides its bananas, Manila also fought
tooth-and-nail to open the Australian market to Philippine
pineapples.
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