Philippine coco oil exports down by 44% in first 8 months

MANILA, Philippines—Coconut oil  exports, one of the Philippines’ major dollar earners, dropped by almost half in the first eight months of the year, as copra supply continued to tighten, industry group United Coconut Association of the Philippines (UCAP) said.

UCAP executive director Yvonne Agustin said that preliminary estimates indicated that coconut oil exports fell by 43.6 percent to 561,725 metric tons in the first eight months of 2011 from 996,618 tons in the same period last year.

In August alone, CNO [coconut oil] exports reached 54,199 tons, down by 57.8 percent from the 128,507 tons reported a year ago. Month on month, the August figure was also lower than the July 2011 level of 77,738 tons.

UCAP noted that dried coconut meat, or copra, the raw material in making CNO, tightened after three years of good production that stressed the coconut trees.

Agustin said that last year’s El Niño phenomenon also severely affected coconut plantations across the country, resulting in lower supply of copra for this year.

“We are still hoping that we will meet our targets for this year. By October or November, we may come up with a revised target, but as of to date, we have not changed our forecast,” Agustin said.

The industry group expects coconut oil exports to reach 900,000 tons this year, lower by almost a third from last year’s 1.32 million tons.

Earlier, Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA) Administrator Euclides Forbes said the Philippines would have a hard time meeting its CNO export targets for 2011 despite the strong world market prices of the commodity.

“It is very hard to meet the target because of the dive in production due to the biological stresses on coconut trees and the negative effects of the El Niño phenomenon,” Forbes said.

The Philippines, which ships out about 80 percent of its production, is the world’s top CNO exporter.