THE largest trade agreement in the world, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), could play a major role in reducing food costs amid the spike in oil prices and other commodities brought by the war in Eastern Europe.
Packaging Institute of the Philippines (PIP) President Stefano Paolo Buñag said regional integration needed by regional and global supply chains through the RCEP can help reduce commodity prices.
RCEP, Buñag said, helps in harmonizing the utilization of modern technology, packaging, processing and logistics for more effective and efficient global trade.
“The RCEP of Asean’s focus is aligned with that of WPO [World Packaging Organization] on the crucial aspect of population as a development factor, this time, covering a market of around 2.2 billion people, which is about 30 percent of the world’s population and roughly producing $26.2 trillion worth of global output,” added Buñag.
WPO President Pierre Pienaar earlier said that as long as the war in Eastern Europe persists and embargoes on Russia’s oil supply are in effect, commodity prices will keep rising.
Pienaar said prices of practically all soft commodities in agricultural, livestock and meat, to hard commodities like energy and metal products, have increased and disturbed the supply and demand balance as well as packaging to logistics correlation.
“Food requirement is directly proportional to need, and the need is equal to the global population and as population is increasing, the overall cost of living is increasing too at a rate directly proportional to pandemics, wars, adversities in countries and regions across the globe,” Pienaar said.
Buñag, echoing Pienaar’s concern, stressed that global economic disruptions will continue to make it difficult to meet the UN 2030 forecast of the world needing 50 percent more food.
He added that RCEP will help reduce poverty to address what Pienaar observes as “the poor getting poorer and the rich richer and with inflation simply put as too much money chasing too few goods.”
“Poverty, as WPO’s advocacy targets, is also a result of food loss and wastes. The global food packaging industry has much to contribute to addressing these issues on food losses and wastes,” according to FAO’s Dr. Nerlita Manalili.
WPO is a global federation of 62 member-countries predominantly belonging to national packaging institutes, associations and regional packaging federations.
It has a 52-year track record in the development of packaging and logistics technologies, science, access and engineering as well as in the development of international trade.