Press Release
March 25, 2007

MODERNIZE COCONUT INDUSTRY -- ANGARA

LUCENA CITY - Senator Edgardo J. Angara today asked the Department of Agriculture and the Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA) to carry out a crash program to modernize the coconut industry, starting with the full implementation of a 50,000 hectare a-year replanting program.

Angara said that today is the proper environment to carry out the modernization of the coconut industry which has been pushed into the global limelight anew by the intense search for bio-diesel and other alternatives to fossil fuel.

Angara said that the global developments have transformed the coconut industry from a sunset industry into a sunshine sector anew as it has been identified as a major source of bio-fuels.

Quezon is the biggest producer of coconut in the country with a yearly production of close to one million metric tons a year. Horticulturists have also identified Quezon as the area most suitable for raising coconuts.

Angara, who started his public career as a young constitutional delegate representing Quezon province, said that the coconut industry cannot meet its usual export targets and is not ready to produce bio-diesel in substantial volumes because of the low productivity of the more than 3 million hectares planted to coconut.

Angara said that the average age of the countrys coconut trees is 60 years and on top of the senile population, vast swaths of coconut plantations have been wiped out to feed the steady demand for coco lumber.

Angara said that the successful implementation of the PCA-set target to replant 50,000 hectares a year within the medium term will be the first major step toward the sectors modernization.

This modernization program needs full government support, said Angara .

Angara said that in the 90s, the Philippines supplied 63 per cent of the coconut oil requirements of the world.

Now, the share has been dropping because of low production, he said.

Angara said that bio-fuels is an industry on the rise and the coconut sector will immensely benefit from this.

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