Urban Pest control or household pest control is a growing area of business for chemical manufacturers in South Eastern Asia. Over the last decade significant overall business growth has been reported from this region. The fastest growing segment in this sector is termite control, insecticide baits and electric light traps. The growth and interest have made a number of international exhibitions to become major events in the pest management industry calendar.

The growth has prompted many new companies into the region. A number of mid-level companies which have become successful in Europe and America have established business. However it is noticeable that major multi-national corporations have lost their market shares to smaller manufacturers over the last few years. This is partly accelerated by a number of developments, such as newer active ingredients coming out of patent and allowing smaller manufacturers to have access to them. Another reason is the cooperation of registration agencies to encourage new entrants into the market. Today practically few or no active ingredient in SE Asian market remains under patent except imidacloprid in the Philippines. This makes the market very open and competitive.

Philippine is one of the fastest growing urban pest control market. It would rank next to Thailand and Malaysia in annual chemical sales. There is no survey or consolidated data available in the Philippines to gain an estimate on the volume of present business. However consolidating numbers from various industry sources it could be estimated that the annual market size is around 5 to 8 million US Dollars. This figure indicates the business done at the client level. The client includes pest control operators, private institutions and government and semi government bodies. From the manufacturer’s point the annual business would be little over 2 million US Dollars (Table 1). In fact a large amount of chemical from agrochemical industry enters the urban pest control market, thus bringing down the overall estimate.

Table 1: Estimated annual business for chemical manufacturers in Philippines

The usage pattern of various categories of urban pesticides is shown in Table 2. Chlorpyrifos and DDVP based formulations are the two most dominant in usage by pest control operators. Both formulations are cheapest in the market compared to pyrethroids. The most notable growth in the last decade had been the popularity of insect baits. Both termite and insect baits are becoming popular and showing over 15% annual growth. It is estimated that currently 15% of the termiticide market and 5% of the insecticide market is served by baits.

Table 2: Classification of various pesticides by usage

The growth of the industry is hampered by lack of technical training and availability of independent resource personnel for urban pest control practitioners. This is further aggregated by lack of federal regulation on practicing pest control. These factors have made the industry weaker and open to misuse. With expanding cities and growth of suburban areas urban pest control market in Philippine is poised to grow at a steady rate.

Presently Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) a body under the department of Health regulates the registration of products. It takes 6 -10 months to register a product provided the documentation is complete. A local bio efficacy trial by an accredited laboratory is required to gain full registration.