Local industries are asking the government to oppose the new draft text for the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) nonagricultural market-access (Nama) negotiations in which developing countries are being made to trim down their sensitive lists if they want to have smaller cuts in their bound tariff rates.

Mario Jose Sereno, chairman of the international trade policy committee of the Federation of Philippine Industries (FPI), said the country’s trade negotiators should stick to the Philippines’ original position that the flexibility of developing countries to protect a certain percentage of locally made products should not be tied to the modalities that will determine the tariff cuts for the other products.

“There should be no tradeoffs for our flexibility. That is our original position and we should stick to that,” Sereno told the BusinessMirror.

Since the Hong Kong Ministerial Conference in 2005 for the WTO Doha Round, developing countries have been pushing for a flexibility of identifying at least 5 percent of their products that will be included in the sensitive list, which will not be covered by the reductions in the bound tariff rates.

Also, for the formula in determining the amount of tariff cuts, developing countries are demanding that their coefficients should be higher than the rich countries. In this way, the tariff cuts of the developed countries will be deeper than those of the developing economies.

Now, the proposed text by the chairman of the WTO Nama committee is deviating from this, Sereno said.

For example, Sereno said if the Philippines would opt to include 7 percent of its locally made products in the sensitive list, its coefficient will be 21. If the flexibility is 5 percent, the coefficient will be 24. And if the Philippines will have a zero-percent flexibility, its coefficient will become 27.

Sereno said this kind of tradeoffs would not really support the cause of developing countries.

“The flexibility issue should be separated from the determination of the new bound rates,” he said.

Currently, the FPI is consulting its members on which locally made products should be included in the sensitive list.

Sereno said they are preparing a list both for the 5-percent and 7-percent flexibility. The Philippines has more than 4,900 Nama lines.

In the current sensitive lists that they are preparing for submission to the Department of Trade and Industry, a majority are iron and steel products, resins and plastics, and fisheries.

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Local industries are asking the government to oppose the new draft text for the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) nonagricultural market-access (Nama) negotiations in which developing countries are being made to trim down their sensitive lists if they want to have smaller cuts in their bound tariff rates.

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