Going bananas: Philippine exports to UAE jump 87% in 2013

Dubai: Banana exports to the UAE from the Philippines jumped 87 per cent in 2013 despite major supply disruptions caused by a string of tropical storms that battered the archipelago.

The far-east Asian country shipped $79 million worth bananas to the UAE in 2013, from $42.2 million in 2012, according to a senior trade official.

“This is a very encouraging trend,” said Paisal Abdullah, Philippine Commercial Counsellor for the Middle East and Africa, who is based in Dubai.

The figures only represent banana exports to the UAE and exclude other Gulf markets such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, he said.

“The Middle East is a huge market for our bananas and has the capacity to absorb far more Philippine exports ... but there's also certain supply-side factors,” said Abdullah, who was earlier posted as Philippine trade attaché in Jeddah.

Abdullah recently moved to Dubai from Saudi Arabia to help further boost Manila’s push to expand export markets in the region.

He said that Bopha, a deadly typhoon that flattened over 42,000 hectares of banana plantations in southern Philippines in December 2012, had briefly disrupted banana supplies from Southern Philippines to the Middle East.

But other sources in Mindanao that were not as badly affected by the storm kicked in.

In November, super-typhoon Haiyan left 6,000 people dead in the Philippines, the world’s third-largest banana producer after India and China. Manila routes much of its Gulf exports through Dubai.

Meanwhile, global demand for Philippine bananas has been on the rise, with importers in neighbouring Asian countries such as Japan and China paying between $7 to $10 per box.

Trade imbalance

Bananas, however, don't have much weight in the two-way trade between the UAE and the Philippines, which stood at $1.4 billion in 2013.

UAE exports accounted for the biggest part of the trade balance, amounting to $1.1 billion, owing to huge oil imports by the Philippines.

In 2012, UAE exports to the Philippines amounted to $1.9 billion out of a total bilateral trade of $2.1 billion.

“We have a chronic history of trade imbalance in favour of the UAE, due to the high crude oil imports of the Philippines. But we’re narrowing the gap,” said Abdullah.