Gov’t to push pro-small business policies in WTO meet

THE PHILIPPINES has been appointed as vice chair for the World Trade Organization’s 10th Ministerial Conference, where Trade Secretary Gregory L. Domingo will push for a stronger commitment among members to pursue trade policies that will benefit the micro, small and medium sized enterprises (MSMEs).

Domingo said on the sidelines of the Procter & Gamble workshop yesterday that he will be flying to Geneva, Switzerland, by the end of the month to meet with the committees involved for the preparations of the WTO Ministerial Conference 2015, which will be held in Kenya in December this year.

This is also where the trade chief intends to put forward his proposal to put the MSME agenda at the front and center as what he is currently doing in the ongoing meetings of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) group.

Domingo, who is set to retire as trade chief at the end of December this year, explained that the country’s goal will be to push forward the Boracay Action Agenda to Globalize MSMEs, which was adopted by the Apec trade ministers last May, in the hopes that WTO members, in turn, will craft a similar trade agreement containing policies that will enable MSMEs’ participation in international trade and global value chains.

“I’m hoping we can interest them in having something similar to the Boracay Action Agenda,” Domingo said.

“We want to push this agenda, which will serve the interests of small business seeking to be part of the international trade. We are pushing towards adoption but with WTO, it will take time. But this will get them started. Because this is the right thing to do, it will be easy to sell this agenda to members,” he added.

The Boracay Agenda is an action-oriented initiative supported ongoing work to address the barriers faced by MSMEs in international trade. The priority areas for cooperation and action were identified as trade facilitation, e-commerce, financing and institutional support. This agenda, which seeks to put MSMEs at the front and center of the region’s trade cooperation work, was deemed crucial considering that more than 90 percent of the establishments in Apec member states are MSMEs. Amy R. Remo