Seaweed industry looks to China for expansion

Members of the Seaweed Industry, Association of the Philippines (SIAP)hope to expand their market for carrageenan products ( a eucheuma-based food additive) in China after the creation of the ASEAN-China Free Trade Area (FTA).

Benson U. Dakay, president of STAP and Shemberg Marketing Corp. CEO announced this bright prospect after he learned the Department of Agriculture (DA) was ready to submit DA’s first batch of the "Early Harvest Agricultural Products" package.

The first agricultural products of the DA include carrageenan, tuna, canned pineapple and breeding animals, Dakay disclosed.

Other agricultural products such as mangoes, desiccated coconuts, bananas and others would be included in the "Early Harvest List" after the DA and representatives of the agricultural producers would have solved various issues affecting the viability of their products

The Philippines may send Trade and Industry Secretary Mar A. Roxas of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) as head of the country’s delegation to the ASEAN-6 and China ministerial conference scheduled in early November 2002 in Laos, Cambodia, Dakay’s DA sources hinted.

The same sources pointed out that once the ASEAN 6 and China finally approves the FTA agricultural products from China and the ASEAN 6 countries would then enter their respective shores at zero level.

Implementation of the ASEAN 6 and China FTA is scheduled January 2004, Dakay’s sources added.

Dakay said China has imposed a 15-perdcent tariff on all finished carageenan when she joined last December 2001 the World Trade Organization (WTO). Consequently, China lowered its tariff against carrageenan from a high of 25 percent to 15 percent last January 2002.

Dakay foresees a 10-percent increase in exports of carrageenan to China and the ASEAN countries, adding that exports to these markets stand at almost 15 percent of the total industry exports of $131,624,523 to the world.

He added that China is a large carrageenan market although there is too much competition in the Chinese market since there are too many semi-processors of carrageenan and their local price "is too low that Filipino-made carrageenan would have to meet frontally."