The Philippines had aspired for access to the Australian market for bananas in 1995-the same year it joined the World Trade Organization, which was created by the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The creation of the WTO signaled the willingness of most nations to open up their markets by cutting tariffs and implementing more enforceable trade rules. A book published by the International Monetary Fund pointed out that agriculture has been integrated into the multilateral trading system through new rules of general application to market access, export subsidies and domestic support.
Three decades after it first sought market access, the Philippines has not given up hope based on the request it filed with Canberra. Last March, Manila requested the consideration of an additional Cavendish cultivar and an additional export province that were not considered in its 2008 assessment. The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) of Australia said it will consider this request at the same time as the assessment of the Philippines’s alternative measures to manage Moko, black Sigatoka and banana freckle, which Manila submitted in 2018.
Australia’s import risk analysis (IRA) in 2008, which became law the following year, allowed the Philippines to export bananas under stringent conditions. The recommended quarantine measures contained in the IRA report include allowing exports only from areas that demonstrate low pest prevalence; stringent measures that involve Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service inspectors being present even in the field and packing houses here in the Philippines; and detailed data and documentation to be provided by the Philippines for consideration by Australia prior to any exports to verify and validate quarantine measures underpinned by laboratory and field experiments and commercial trials.
In a statement it issued in February 2009, the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI) under the Department of Agriculture said these measures are trade restrictive and expensive. The agency also noted that Australia has continuously postponed the issuance of an IRA for Philippine bananas ‘on the flimsiest of reasons.’
Prior to the IRA issued in 2009, Manila filed a dispute case against Canberra before the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body in October 2002 in the hope of finally getting a resolution. The DSB has agreed to create a panel in 2003 but the panelists have not yet been chosen and the case remains pending. It is, however, doubtful that this WTO case would still see a final resolution as its Appellate Body, considered the supreme court of global trade, is inactive since 2019.
It is therefore no longer surprising if local banana growers are no longer optimistic about gaining access to the Australian market. This despite the fact that rich nations, such as Japan and South Korea, have been buying local bananas in huge quantities. Agricultural trade relationship between the two nations is also far from balanced based on data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), which showed that Australia enjoyed a trade surplus of $1.06 billion with the Philippines last year.
PSA figures showed that the value of Australian food exports to the Philippines reached $1.153 billion in 2024. In contrast, Philippine food items shipped to Australia amounted to only $89.27 million. It is the hope of Filipino farmers and their families that this latest move of DAFF will finally open Australia’s doors to more produce from the Philippines and reduce the huge agricultural trade gap between the two nations.