If trend continues, price projected to reach P40/kg
TACLOBAN CITY- Eastern Visayas’ more than 371,000 coconut farmers have something to smile about: the price of copra in the region is on the upswing for almost three months now.
And this trend is expected to continue due to the increase of copra in the world market, says the regional office of the Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA).
Based on the monitoring of the PCA, the copra price in the region is now at levels of more than P20. As of Monday (Jan.13), the price of copra stand at P27.81.
The price of copra in the region plummeted to as low as P16.98 kilogram in 2019 year but started to recover November, also of last year, at the average price of P18.00.
“We hope that the high price of copra will continue. In fact, oil millers are projecting that price of copra could reach up to P40 per kilogram due to high demand in the world market,” Benjamin Yu, PCA-8 regulatory officer, said.
And this bit of good news are sure to benefit the region’s 371,054 coconut farmers.
Of the region’s average copra production of 320,000 metric tons, over 250,000 metric tons are shipped to international market with the rest goes to domestic market.
Of the six provinces of the region, based on the 2018 record of the PCA-8, 2019 record not being available yet, Leyte has the biggest production at 1.50 million followed by Samar (272,617.48); Northern Samar (269.848.10); Eastern Samar (168,856.80); Biliran (144,081) and Southern Leyte (127,617.48).
When the region was pummeled by Super Typhoon ‘Yolanda’ among the sectors that was hard-hit was the coconut industry with more than 33 billion of coconut trees were destroyed.(JOEY A. GABIETA)
