After a 15-year absence, canned pineapples from the Philippines will once again enter Australia.
This after the Australian government lifted its ban on Philippine canned pineapples, paving the way for the duty-free entry of the export product into the large Australian market once the anti-dumping measure expires on Oct. 17 for consumer canned pineapples and on Nov. 13 for food service industrial canned pineapples.
“Our trading relationship with Australia has been a healthy one, except for this kind of impediment that had blocked the entry of Philippine agriculture exports to the country,” Agriculture Secretary William Dar said in a statement.
“Pineapples is the next fruit, following banana, that could capture a big slice of the export market given the country’s comparative advantage in producing the said commodity. This is a most propitious opportunity for the Philippine pineapple sector, given its dramatic growth performance this past couple of years,” Dar added.
The Australian government first imposed the antidumping measure for five years in 2006 after Golden Circle Limited, the sole producer of canned pineapples in Australia, requested the ban on the entry of canned pineapples from the Philippines.
It was extended by five more years in 2011 and yet another five years in 2016.
According to reports from Australia’s Anti-Dumping Commission, the decision to lift the ban was based on findings that the expiration of the anti-dumping measure will neither lead to the dumping of canned pineapples nor cause material injury to Australia’s domestic industry.
The Philippine Statistics Authority recently reported that pineapples were the most lucrative agricultural commodity last year after recording a 526-percent return on investment—the highest across 27 agricultural products covered by the report.
This means farmers who invested P124,881 per hectare earned a gross revenue of P782,978 or a net income of P658,097 per ha.
The country is the second-largest producer of pineapples next to Costa Rica. The tropical fruit is famous for its health benefits as it contains Vitamin C, antioxidants and enzymes that ease digestion.