OVER 70 agriculture industry groups and organizations renewed their call for senators to reject or at least delay the ratification of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which they reiterated would be detrimental to local food producers.
“We—the undersigned representatives of farmers, fishers, workers, civil society organizations and the private sector—reiterate our urgent plea to the Senate to reject, or at the very least defer any decision on, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership [RCEP] trade agreement,” the groups said in a joint statement issued on Sunday.
The groups pointed out that the “purported gains” from the RCEP are “insignificant.”
“While the country may have gained some concessions which are better than those under existing free trade agreements [FTAs] with RCEP countries, these involve a very small percentage of total agricultural tariff lines and trade value,” they said.
“For instance, the Japanese offer to drop tariffs on chocolates to zero applies to a single and obscure tariff line for ‘other’ chocolates, which we most probably do not export. Likewise, we need to wait 20 years before China’s tariff on our canned pineapples becomes zero, even as the current tariff is already very low at 5 percent,” they added.
The groups argued that RCEP proponents have “conveniently downplayed” or “deliberately concealed” a “crucial” caveat of the trade pact, which is that any tariff confession from our trading partners under RCEP will not be exclusive to the Philippines and “will actually be available to all other member-countries.”
“There is therefore no assurance, and only a small chance, that we can take advantage of these trade opportunities inasmuch as other RCEP countries are way ahead of us in terms of competitiveness, efficiency and dependability,” they said.
“Moreover, while RCEP may provide more incentives for foreign investors to come to the Philippines, they can just as easily decide to place their money in other countries where the environment for doing business is more attractive,” they added.
The groups maintained that there has been a “conscious effort to belittle the potential damage of RCEP and other trade agreements to many sectors in our economy, particularly agriculture.”
“Yet, these concerns are real and validated by experience. To cite a few: Almost all our tariffs on fishery, dairy, cacao and tobacco products will drop to zero on the very first year of RCEP,” they said.
“Import duties on high-fructose corn syrup and other substitutes to our cane sugar will also be eliminated. Our farmers in the Cordilleras and other areas will face a deluge of cheap vegetables from China,” they added.
“All this, with our local producers left with little or no protection because of stringent RCEP rules on the use of additional tariff safeguards during import surges.”
The groups urged senators to be skeptical about the “rosy projections” made by proponents of the RCEP, saying these calculations are “based on unrealistic assumptions and have historically been grossly off the mark.”
Citing the ratification of the GATT-Uruguay Round Agreement in 1995, the groups noted that the proponents’ promises of the trade pact —which include a $3.4-billion increase in agricultural exports, P60-billion increase in agricultural gross value added and 500,00 additional jobs—did not materialize.
“The Senate has been warned that ‘we will miss the [RCEP] bus’ if we don’t join now. This is again patently misleading. In the first place, are we sure the bus will not run over us? Where is that bus going, and is that where we want to go? And is the RCEP bus the best vehicle to bring us to our desired destination?” they said.
“RCEP will actually perpetuate, if not aggravate, the adverse impacts of these threats especially because of the non-implementation of laws and programs that were promised in the past and intended to improve the resiliency and competitiveness of our vulnerable sectors. To make matters worse, our government has gone on an import spree while unilaterally cutting tariff rates for sensitive products like rice and pork [and perhaps soon, corn and sugar], without getting any trade concession in return,” they added.
The statement was signed by groups such as Federation of Free Farmers, Agricultural Sector Alliance of the Philippines, Inc., Agro-Planters Association, Pampanga, Alyansa Agrikultura, Anakpawis Party-List, Centro Saka Inc., Confederation of Coconut Farmers Organizations of the Philippines, Confederation of Sugar Producers Associations, Inc., Council of the Laity of the Philippines, and IBON Foundation, among others.