Philippines still keen on economic partnership accord with EU

MANILA, Philippines – The Philippines is still keen on pursuing an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) said.

Trade Secretary Gregory L. Domingo said that he has met with the representative of the EU and they both agreed that they will pursue the EPA.

However, the EU has warned that if the Philippines continues to drag its feet on a possible Free Trade Agreement (FTA), the EU might not be able to accommodate the Philippines anymore because it is processing several agreements with other Asian countries.

This comes at a time when even Vietnam has already overtaken the Philippines in terms of exports of manufactured goods to the EU.

“We can only process a certain number of FTAs at a time,” EU Ambassador Alistair MacDonald said.

According to MacDonald, they are already in the process of negotiating FTAs with Korea and Malaysia. Vietnam, for its part, recently started the negotiations.

Trade Undersecretary Adrian S. Cristobal Jr. has already said that the FTA with the EU may take between four and six years to complete. “It entails a lot of work for all of us.”

He explained that FTAs should not be entered into lightly. In fact, the current FTAs of the Philippines has been underutilized. “Our own business sector has not been taking advantage of the opportunities with FTA,” he noted. –Ma. Elisa P. Osorio (The Philippine Star)