Free-trade pact with South Korea seen this year
The Philippine is still targeting to finish its free-trade agreement (FTA) with South Korea this year despite the uncertainty brought about by the pandemic, a top official of the Department of Trade and Industry said.
Trade and Industry Undersecretary Ceferino Rodolfo said in a recent online interview that there have been practical difficulties such as South Korea changing its lead negotiator and being unable to fly out and negotiate face-to-face.
“Although we’ve been doing zoom meetings, [the FTA talks] are still slightly delayed,” he said when asked for an update of the FTA talks.
“The target is still to finish the FTA with [South] Korea this year,” he said, noting they would talk again this September.
Back in April 2019, both sides announced that they would be pursuing an FTA that they promised to sign in November at an international summit in South Korea. However, the FTA talks took longer than either side had anticipated.
In October last year, Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez told reporters that he was still confident when the start of the negotiations was announced. If they were successful, they would have finished an FTA in a matter of months.
But a lot changed on the negotiating table such as South Korea’s refusal to bring down the tariff on Philippine bananas within a five-year timeframe.
Philippine bananas currently have to pay a 30-percent tariff to enter South Korea. While the Philippines is South Korea’s biggest supplier of bananas, its 85-percent market share is under threat as Central American countries, which enjoy zero tariff, begin to increase their share.
Last year, when a pandemic-stricken 2020 was still unimaginable, the DTI said the deal would be finished in the first half of 2020 instead.
FTAs—which involve sensitive issues such as further opening a local industry to foreign competition— usually take years to make. INQ
