2010 abaca exports rose 52% to $104.5M – FIDA

The Agriculture Department’s Fiber Industry Development Authority (FIDA) on Monday reported that exports of abaca products rose 52 percent to $104.51 million from $68.5 million in 2009. The top abaca export item by value is abaca pulp, according to FIDA. Pulp shipments totaled $71.24 million last year, up 69 percent from $42.17 million. The shipment volume of abaca pulp meanwhile rose 76.3 percent to 20,879 metric tons (MT) from 11,840 MT, with Germany and Japan as the top markets for the commodity. The second top abaca product, abaca cordage, totaled $14.75 million, up 31.5 percent from $11.224 million. Shipments of abaca cordage reached 6,947.4 MT, 30.1-percent higher from 5,340.9 MT in 2010. The United States and Singapore were the top destinations of the product. Valued at $13.42 million, raw fiber exports meanwhile rose by almost 37 percent from 2009 levels. Exports of abaca fiber reached 10,242.6 MT, up 38.5 percent in the same comparable period. 2011 projections FIDA administrator Cecilia Gloria Soriano had earlier projected a 3-percent rise to $107.3 million in export revenues from abaca. Soriano, however, came up with her estimate before a Friday's deadly earthquake and devastating tsunami hit Japan, one of the Philippines’ major markets for abaca products. The agency expected abaca fiber exports to rise more than 10 percent to 12,300 MT this year. Shipments of abaca pulp and cordage were projected to reach 22,000 MT and 7,700 MT, respectively. The agency also said China continues to post higher demand for Philippine abaca pulp to boost its tea-bag manufacturing. China has one of the biggest tea-drinking populations in the world. Abaca pulp also serves as a raw material for specialty paper products for coffee filters, meat and sausage casings, currency papers, cigarette papers, filters, hi-tech capacitor papers, and other non-wovens and disposables, according to the agency. Cordage, ropes, and twines, meanwhile, fill the requirements for oil well and gas drilling, and fishing, among other things. — PE/VS, GMA News