Many investors are looking for farm lands around Mindanao with the increasing demand of fresh bananas especially in Japan.
Gil Dureza, Board of Investment (BOI) head for Regions IX, XI and XII said the demand of foreigners on (Cavendish) bananas is a great advantage to us.
He cited for instance that with the "morning banana diet" that is popular in Japan, there is an indication that demand for the bananas would increase even as he said that many people now are getting conscious of their health and shifted to eating more bananas.
"Investors for banana production continue to come and this has been going on for years now," he said.In fact he said a new investor for banana production is the biggest among this year's investment leads.
The investor would need some 3,400 hectares either in Davao Oriental or Davao del Sur.
Meanwhile Dureza said that In 2007 banana production was also among the registered investments as Upland Banana Corporation opened new areas in Davao, Cotabato and South Cotabato and was able to employ 10,000 workers.
Data from the Department of Agricultre showed that in 2007 the production area was at 436,783 hectares with volume of production of 7,484,074 MT. The Davao Region attained the highest production area and volume of the same year of 78,647 hectares and 3,180,331 MT.
Other top producing regions include SOCCKSARGEN with 935,565 MT, Northern Mindanao 933,114 MT, Cagayan Valley 386,929 MT and the Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) 372,676 MT.
On the other hand, banana remained as the leading export commidity where in 2008 it showed an increase of 13.49 percent as against 2007 figure.
The Bureau of Agricultural Statistics comparative data for the last three years from 2006 to 2008 on production volume for the period January to September showed that banana export in 2006 accounted to only 2,197,894 MT, 2007 had 2,377,424 while in 2008 it registered some 2,698,255 MT.
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