RP to boost agriculture ahead of ASEAN trade bloc

The Philippine government is moving to boost the sugar sector by raising production levels within the five years to 2015 when the zero tariff regime takes full effect in the ASEAN region. “I believe we now have the confidence of small farmers. They’re willing to work and cooperate with the plan of the government to strengthen the sector and increase productivity to be more competitive in the face of a unified tariff system by 2015," Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala told reporters in an interview Tuesday. A meeting among stakeholders was scheduled for Aug. 5 “to tackle the problem of sugar next year. We want to see to it that we will not encounter the same problems we had this year," Alcala said. The government has adopted the position that major tariff cuts on hog and poultry products would benefit the Philippine economy. The full implementation Jan. 1 of the Common Effective Preferential Tariff (CEPT) scheme in the ASEAN Free Trade Area or AFTA is expected to set the stage for the 2015 regional trade bloc called ASEAN Economic Community (AEC). AFTA is a potent free trade area covering the Philippines and nine more countries in five years’ time, encompassing a potential market close to 600 million people — the world’s largest market next to China and India. The Philippines is a major source of pork meat in the region, and the AEC augurs well for pork producers, especially those in Mindanao, which is not only geographically closer to the rest of Southeast Asia but has long been declared free of the dreaded foot-and-mouth disease (FMD). The CEPT scheme is the main implementing agreement among ASEAN member-states on the staggered reduction in intra-regional tariffs and the dropping of non-tariff barriers in Southeast Asia over 10 years from 1993. Under the CEPT, the tariffs on ASEAN-manufactured goods and agricultural products are slowly reduced to zero to 5 percent, clearing the way for the regional conversion into a single free trade area or AEC by 2015. ASEAN or Association of Southeast Asian Nations is a geo-political and economic organization of 10 countries established Aug. 8, 1967 by Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. The membership has since been expanded to include Brunei, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. The region encompasses 4.46 million square kilometers and a population of about 580 million people or 8.7 percent of the world’s population. Its combined nominal gross domestic product grew to more than US$1.5 trillion in 2009. —VS, GMANews.TV