By Othel V. Campos

AN AUSTRALIAN supermarket chain will ban bananas from the Philippines despite Canberra?s order allowing the imports, the Australian Associated Press reported Wednesday.

A growers? group has also warned the Queensland government it would have to ramp up its own spending on bio-security if it wanted to avoid the importation of pests and diseases with the bananas, the agency said.

In Manila, an official said Biosecurity Australia?s clearance of Philippine bananas was almost useless because of the stringent conditions attached to it.

?The announcement means nothing,? said Joel Rudinas, head of the Bureau of Plant Industry.

?The stringent conditions recommended in the import risk analysis will be put in place.?

Larry Lacson, head of the bureau?s quarantine section, said Australia?s risk-assessment measures were ?very stringent, expensive and trade restrictive.

?The measures appear to be strategies to delay the [start] of banana exports to Australia,? Lacson said.

The IGA chain of 1,270 supermarkets said it would not stock bananas from the Philippines while local supplies were available.

IGA chairman Mick Daly said it would lobby the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service to knock back the recommendation that opened the door to future imports of bananas.

Farmers claim the imports risk introducing several pests and diseases that are endemic to the Philippines but are not present in Australia.

Mark Panitz, chief advocate for the horticulture lobby group Growcom, said the industry was not confident that AQIS could adequately protect the industry from diseases such as Moko, black Sigatoka and Freckle.

?The risks that black Sigatoka and other major diseases present to our industry mean there is no margin for error,? he said.

?If not picked up, disease outbreaks would drastically impact on the incomes and livelihoods of banana growers with flow-on effects to their communities.?

But Rudinas said those diseases could be eradicated with proper phytosanitary procedures.

The conditions set by Australia before Philippine bananas could be allowed would put Manila at a great disadvantage, he said.

Last year, the Philippine government said Canberra?s protocols against Philippine bananas were a protectionist move to ban their entry.

Australia produces 270,000 metric tons of bananas annually against the Philippines? 7.5 million metric tons.

Some 120 million boxes of bananas, the Philippines? top fruit export, are shipped to Japan, the United States, South Korea and the Middle East every year.