Group seeks tariff relief on agri products

The Fair Trade Alliance (FairTrade) is pushing for the government to suspend further tariff cuts on commodities such as corn, poultry, rice, sugar and swine and to review trade policies to keep local agricultural industry from being eroded.

“These are the most sensitive agricultural products, and in the name of food and livelihood security, surely they should be given the highest trade flexibility,” FairTrade said in a statement on Tuesday.

Instead, the group said, the government should continue efforts to combat smuggling and bring down the cost of doing business in the country.

In addition, the government must review the country’s trade policies—specifically the outcomes of economic liberalization efforts—as “the erosion of the country’s agro-industrial base is due to the accelerated and reckless manner by which our technocrats, in the past and in the present, have embraced and implemented a one-sided program of trade and economic liberalization,” FairTrade said.

The group said the policies that should be revisited include the country’s commitments under the Asean Free Trade Area—Common Effective Preferential Tariff (AFTA-CEPT), World Trade Organization (WTO) and other bilateral agreements.

This “should lead to the adoption of bold but necessary adjustment measures to help shape a fair and balanced integration of the national economy with the global market,” FairTrade said.

The group also cited the various bailout and stimulus packages released by China and Indonesia, and India’s continuous opposition to the WTO’s liberalization proposals for Non-agricultural Market Access (NAMA) and Agreement on Agriculture (AoA), saying these were done in a bid to protect their domestic industries and agriculture.

“In the case of the Philippines, we are shocked to see how the Department of Trade and Industry and other government agencies are going about their usual business oblivious or unmindful of the earth-shaking adjustments the big countries, both developed and developing, are adopting to preserve and strengthen their domestic industry and agriculture through various bailout and assistance schemes,” FairTrade said.

“Most in fact have openly abandoned the policy of untrammeled free-trade neo-liberalism in favor of outright support to critical industries as what the US, Europe, China and other countries are now doing,” it added. — Ben Arnold O. de Vera, Manila Times