DTI steps up RCEP awareness campaign

MANILA  -The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) said it will conduct an information campaign to raise awareness about the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement, seeing it as crucial in increasing the utilization rate of what is touted as the world’s largest free trade agreement by local businesses.

Trade Assistant Secretary Glenn Peñaranda of the DTI’s Foreign Trade Service Corps (FTSC) told reporters last week that the government aims to optimize the benefits of RCEP by partnering with the private sector towards their goal.

“RCEP is a really big [free trade agreement]. One of the things we should do, not just the DTI but also the private sector, is really to help our stakeholders and enterprises to be aware of it, prepare for it, and take advantage of it,” Peñaranda on the sidelines of the launch of DTI’s Go Lokal in-line store in Intramuros, Manila.

Peñaranda said the campaign would be similar to what was done for the Philippines-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement (PJEPA), the Southeast Asian country’s first bilateral free trade agreement which was signed in 2006 during the term of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

The RCEP is a free trade agreement between member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), as well as six of the regional bloc’s trade partners including Australia, China, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand.

RCEP was formed to provide preferential trade arrangements among signatory economies by lowering or eliminating import duties, as well as widening their market access. INQ

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