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Manila: Shipments of coconut oil from the Philippines, the world’s biggest exporter of the product, should drop 0.7% to 835,000 tonne in 2009 on increased domestic demand, an industry group said on Friday. The 2009 estimate by the United Coconut Associations of the Philippines (UCAP) is lower than the 1 million tonne coconut oil exports, the government had forecast in November.
For 2008, UCAP said that coconut oil exports were estimated to have reached 840,547 tonne, down 5.2% from 2007 and below its 1 million tonne target.
UCAP said that higher demand for coconut oil for use as feedstock by local biodiesel producers and a need to boost domestic stocks were the reasons behind its forecast of slower exports in 2009. But, with better weather conditions, the group said that coconut production in terms of copra should rise 5.4% to 2.516 million tonne in 2009 from 2.386 million tonne in 2008.
“This (the better weather) strongly suggests a second consecutive year of growth, following a recovery from production shortfall in 2007,” UCAP said in its weekly report. The state Philippine Coconut Authority had projected copra output at a higher 2.77 million tonne for 2009. Copra production reached a record 2.8 million tonne in 2001.
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