Ormoc City to ship ‘Queen Pineapples’ to South Korea

ORMOC CITY, June 16 -- South Koreans will soon get a taste of Ormoc City’s "Queen Pineapples", the local government here confirmed. 

Mayor Richard Gomez said the city government was working to set up a quarantine office for efficient and faster check of pineapples for shipment to South Korea.

Currently, quarantine officers tasked to inspect goods coming in and out of Ormoc are based in Tacloban, the regional capital, which is more than 120 kilometers away from this city.

“Ormoc will be exporting about three container vans of pineapple every two weeks or every month. The sooner we put up the quarantine facility, the better,” Gomez said.

South Korea is just one of the many countries interested of importing pineapples from Ormoc, according to the mayor.

The trade will help not only the city government and pine

pple farm owners, but also the residents as this will generate more jobs, Gomez said.

“If you are producing that big volume of pineapple for export, you will need more personnel to do that, and the city will generate more taxes,” Gomez told reporters Thursday afternoon.

South Korea is the second top importer of Philippine pineapples next to Japan. 

Ormoc City is known as the pineapple capital of Eastern Visayas producing the "Queen Pineapple", a small but sweet variety. (Roel T. Amazona/PNA)