News From : DagangHalal.com (10 Feb 2010)
THE GOVERNMENTS of the Philippines and of Brunei are working on a tie-up that will see Brunei availing of Philippine expertise in sardine processing and the latter riding on the former’s halal brand to penetrate the lucrative Middle East market.
Benjamin F. S. Tabios, Jr., assistant director for administrative services of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR), said in a phone interview yesterday that his office expects the deal to be finalized by April. “We need to finalize the details within the next four months because Brunei is already way ahead of setting up the factory, but the partnership arrangement between has yet to be finalized.”
The project is one of many cooperation thrusts being undertaken under the Brunei-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines East ASEAN Growth Area (BIMP-EAGA) framework, Mr. Tabios said.
The role of Philippine companies that will participate in the integrated processing and cold storage facility is to provide technical and manpower assistance to their Brunei counterparts.
In exchange, the Philippines can learn from Brunei’s expertise in halal standards, procedures and marketing.
There is currently a National Halal Accreditation Board of the Philippines, which has been pressing the country’s several local halal certifiers to register with it in a bid to ensure that quality standards are kept.
But none of these halal certifiers is recognized abroad and a national set of halal standards is still being formulated.
The factory is currently being built at Muara Port in Brunei and will likely start operating in April, Mr. Tabios said.
The agreement will spell out details like the form and terms of partnership, as well as investment required of the parties, Mr. Tabios said.
“We may link Brunei and Philippine companies together to create a consortium, although Brunei has no problem with having a fully Filipino company leasing its facility and using its sardines as raw material. That is also a possible scenario,” Mr. Tabios said.
Vicente T. Lao, BIMP-EAGA Business Council (BEBC) director for the Philippines and chairman of the Mindanao Business Council, said in a separate phone interview that the Philippines could even be allowed to use Brunei’s halal brand — which has already gained acceptance in predominantly Muslim markets — while the former has not yet established such widely accepted brand.
The Brunei government, Mr. Lao said, has also expressed willingness to give the local companies a 70% stake in the processing and cold storage plant.
He added that Philippine fishing and fish processing firms could also source sardines from Brunei when these are not in season in the former’s waters.
“We got interested in their project because their [fishing] cycle is different from ours. There are certain times of the year when we do not have sardines anymore and [this can be addressed by Brunei]… both countries’ operations are complementary,” Mr. Lao said.
BFAR’s Mr. Tabios said sardine producers in Dipolog City in Zamboanga del Norte are potential candidates for the consortium as it hosts numerous sardine processing facilities.
But Mr. Lao said there are still a number of things that need to be resolved before the partnership can proceed, starting with the different species of sardines the two countries harvest.
“We need to resolve the issue of the raw material because Brunei’s sardines are different from our sardines. Although there are still a lot of things that we can do with their species of sardines, that is still something that needs to be discussed,” he said.
BFAR Director Malcolm I. Sarmiento, Jr. said this project could help the Philippines increase its presence in the Middle East’s halal food market by as much as 50% from being “negligible.” — K. J. R. Liu