The actual shipment happened after a series of farm inspections in Davao City and business-to-business negotiations since December 2022.
Durian producers in the region are optimistic that China will buy more of their crop, as the Chinese are known to be fond of the pungent fruit. The first shipment is just a fraction of the estimated 40,000 metric tons of durians that Davao City produces annually, so in terms of the capacity of the region to supply the requirements of the Chinese market, it is more than capable of doing so.
The opening of the Chinese market for durians is certainly good news for a country that continues to struggle to diversify its agricultural exports. Based on a report published by the Philippine Statistics Authority in September 2022, bananas remained as the major fresh fruit export of the Philippines based on data from 2017 to 2021. However, its share in terms of export earnings in 2021 fell by nearly a third as total volume shipped declined by 36.1 percent to 2.
Durian producers and local officials would do well to remember the experience of banana exporters. After years of dominating certain markets, Philippine bananas are now competing with Latin American countries, such as Guatemala, which stripped the Philippines of its status as the world’s second-largest exporter of the fruit.
In the case of Philippine durian, one of its closest competitors is its neighbor in Southeast Asia. Vietnamese farmers are again ramping up their durian production to take advantage of the appetite of the Chinese market for the fruit.