EU provides P42M to improve RP access to foreign trade markets

THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) Delegation launched last week a P42-million trade-related project that will provide short-term technical assistance to the Philippines to improve its access to foreign markets.

In a statement released last week, the EU Delegation said the Rapid Response Facility (RRF) is a component of the EU’s Trade Related Technical Assistance (TRTA) Project that aims to support the Philippines “in efficiently and quickly responding to emerging international trade issues of its concern and interest.”

The RRF will provide technical assistance in the form of training, workshop, seminar, advisory or mentoring services to agencies, academic and research institutions and civil society organizations, the EU said.

“…[T]his facility will prove to be a useful, responsive and flexible instrument that really helps the Philippines in its quest for further integrating the country into the global economy and to successfully access foreign markets,” Andrea Fennesz, head of the Political, Economic and Trade Section of the EU Delegation to the Philippines, was quoted as saying in her opening remarks during the project’s launch in the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) in Makati.

“Apart from RRF, the project has three main components through which it provides assistance for the development of trade policies including export, support for the harmonization of standards, and for food safety compliance, as well as for trade facilitation,” the EU said.

The technical assistance, which was launched in January 2006, has five goals: help the Philippines in building an enabling economic environment, improve the conditions for international trade and investment, further the flow of Philippine exports to the EU, increase the EU’s confidence in the quality and safety of Philippine exports, and develop the knowledge and capacity of government and non-state actors in dealing with the World Trade Organization and other trade-related issues in the international arena.

“The overall objective of the project is sustainable poverty reduction through further trade integration,” Director Brenda R. Mendoza of NEDA’s Trade, Industry and Utilities Staff, told BusinessWorld in a phone interview.

She added that the technical assistance will help industries in the country, like the fisheries sector, access markets within EU.

Ms. Mendoza said the project will run until August 2012. — Jo Javan A. Cerda, Businessworld