PHILIPPINE COCONUT CHIEF TO LOBBY AGAINST EC TAX
Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA)
chairman Jose Romero said he would visit Brussels later this
month to lobby against a proposed 100 pct European Community
(EC) levy on vegetable oil imports.
    "I intend to visit Brussels and talk to whoever is putting
up this devilish scheme to impoverish third world countries
like the Philippines," Romero said in an interview.
    He said he did not know how much support the levy had
within the EC but he said he believed those originally opposed
to the tax were under pressure to change their position.
    Romero said a group of EC members led by West Germany, the
Netherlands, Denmark and Norway were opposed to the tax. But
there was a danger some of them would be persuaded to change
sides, and if that happened opposition could crumble.
    Romero said another threat to exports lay in an EC warning
that copra meal cake used in livestock feeds contained
dangerous levels of aflatoxin, a carcinogenic chemical.
    He said the EC standard of 0.02 parts of aflatoxin per
million parts of meal, which EC countries had been asked to
apply by October 1988, was too rigid. He said Philippine copra
cake contained much higher levels of aflatoxin.
    Aflatoxin comes from moulds which develop in copra when it
is not properly dried or ground.
    Romero said he would tell big buyers of copra meal in
London that the Philippines was doing its best to meet EC
standards. It was also trying to eliminate aflatoxin totally,
but this was likely to take several years of research.
    Copra meal exports were 817,641 tonnes or 35 pct of total
coconut exports in 1986. The meal was worth 73.5 mln dlrs.
    Romero said he would also visit Oxford University's
department of agricultural economics to discuss ways of
avoiding the copra process altogether.
    "There are ways of producing coconut products outside of
copra," Romero said. "We can process fresh coconut without drying
the meat in the sun. Through the wet process we can process
coconuts into other food or non-food products, or we can go to
the chemical root."
    He said there was a tendency for agricultural countries to
become more protectionist and he expected export prices of
coconut products to drop.
    "In the long term we will be getting less and less for more
and more production, and I'm not comfortable with that," he
said.
    With countries like Indonesia and Malaysia stepping up
production of palm oil, a coconut oil substitute, palm oil
output had risen nearly 70 pct since 1971, Romero said.
    "To add to that the U.S. Soybean Association is spending
billions of dollars to discredit palm oil and coconut oil by
saying that they are polysaturated fats and bad for the heart,"
he said.
    Romero said he expected coconut product export prices to
stay up for the rest of the year. They would probably touch a
high of 20 cents/pound from the current level of 18.59 cents,
and a sharp rise from year-ago levels of 10.50 cents.
    Romero said the Philippines was at the end of a five-year
coconut production cycle which showed production tended to fall
after two successive years of good harvests.
    He said 1985 and 1986 were good harvests and this year, to
add to the production fall, drought had affected output.
    "Traders are stocking up and when they have overbought the
prices will start declining again. The only sure way to keep
prices stable is by processing, adding more value," he said.
    Coconut farmers were being encouraged to intercrop by
planting other cash crops between coconut trees, he said.
    "A typical farm may have from 100 to 150 trees sitting on
10,000 square metres of land. That's a lot of space," Romero
said. He said the government's proposed land reform program
would exclude about 75 pct of the coconut farmers because they
had less than the proposed seven-hectares of land.
    "If the idea of land reform is to increase income levels,
production and employment then it won't happen," he said.
    PCA figures show about one-third of the country's
population is dependent on the coconut industry.
    Coconuts are planted on about 3.2 mln hectares or
one-fourth of total agricultural land.
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