RP farmers should tap $8-billion world market for bamboo — DTI

09/06/2008

China will run out of bamboos in five years, thus opening a huge opportunity for Filipino farmers nationwide to tap the $8-billion global market for bamboo products.

Trade Undersecretary Merly Cruz said the export potentials for bamboo-based products like handicrafts, furniture and furnishings in global markets remain strong as ever in developed countries like the US and Europe, whose upscale markets are more inclined to go for exotic, Oriental-type products.

“That’s why we need to have a strong bamboo industry to meet the growing demand for bamboos to be used for handicrafts and furniture designed for the export markets,” Cruz said.

Philippine bamboo handicrafts earn about $368 million, and bamboo furniture about $2 million, in annual export earnings.

Edgardo Manda, general manager of the Laguna Lake Development Authority, told regional planners, stakeholders and traders in Davao City recently the Philippines can be the world’s second biggest bamboo exporter after China.

Manda has been going around the country since 2004, urging hundreds of farmers and big growers to start big plantations of bamboo, noting the country’s bamboo industry has hardly made a dent in the Philippine economy.

Despite the big dollar potentials for the stagnant industry, many farmers and private firms remain cool and unimpressed by the idea of investing so much time and money growing bamboos as a business venture, said Manda, who was also a former undersecretary and presidential assistant for Southern Tagalog.

“It’s really a pity. More can be done with bamboo — it’s the most available and abundant resource,” Manda said.

The Philippines has only about 52,000 hectares of land planted to bamboos today, which is hardly replanted, according to the Philippine Bamboo Foundation (PBF).

During the last four years, the PBF has been rallying many towns and provinces nationwide through Rotary Club meetings in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, to put up commercial bamboo forests or big bamboo plantations.

Manda assured full government support for financing and technical help if and when organized farmers’ groups and agro-industrial firms decide to invest in the commercial farm production of bamboos. PNA

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