THE Philippines has been cleared to resume abaca fiber exports to India after New Delhi lifted an import ban, the Department of Agriculture’s (DA) fiber industry regulator said Monday.
“We are very happy to announce that the import ban on the Philippine abaca fibers by India due to the alleged Moko disease contamination in the abaca fibers has finally been resolved and lifted in less than a year of high-level bilateral meetings,” the Philippine Fiber Industry Development Authority (PhilFIDA) said in a social media post yesterday.
A letter from Rajesh Malik, director of the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare of India, said its pest risk analysis failed to detect the bacterium Ralstonia Solanacearum Race-2, which causes Moko disease.
“The Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare avails itself of the opportunity to renew to the Embassy of the Philippines its highest consideration,” it read.
PhilFIDA Executive Director Kennedy T. Costales earlier said the trade of abaca between the Philippines and India is worth an average of 99.7 metric tons per year.
The trade was halted in October 2017 due to an Indian Plant Quarantine Order, which required that imported abaca fibers undergo a pest risk analysis.
In a statement earlier this month, Mr. Costales said there have been three bilateral meetings to discuss the issue.
“The abaca fiber is already a semi-processed/finished product extracted or stripped from the leaf sheaths of matured abaca stalks, then sun-dried, hanked, cleaned of its foreign matters, sorted, classified, tipcut, weighed, baled and stored ready for shipment. Moko disease will not survive these processes,” he said then.
Mr. Costales noted that as the world’s largest abaca fiber supplier, the Philippines views Indian claims that the shipments might harbor Moko disease as a threat to the industry, and as a result the DA requested that India conduct a new pest risk analysis. — Denise A. Valdez
