France to convene joint commission to boost Philippine trade, investment
FRANCE and the Philippines will convene a joint economic committee to boost trade and investment, the French embassy said.
The embassy’s economic counsellor, Laurent Estrade, said during the French Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s (CCI) first business awards night at Dusit Thani Manila that the economic committee will look into attracting French companies to participate in the Philippines’ infrastructure projects.
Mr. Estrade added that the committee will conduct “high level bilateral economic dialogue” to tackle previouslyidentified areas for “closer cooperation where we can have more (French) companies participating in development of a specific economic sector in the Philippines.”
“We want this joint economic committee to be accompanied by highlevel business delegations, so it will make it more concrete to have the same time a dialogue between both our administration and French companies coming to the Philippines to concretely promote their expertise and concretely present their activeness to be part of Philippine economy and for some of them to explore areas of investments,” he added.
CCI France Managing Director Vanessa Laura Hans said that a delegation of representatives from various industries in France will be arriving in the Philippines in March to take part in the discussions.
Aside from seeing potential in the country’s agriculture sector, the French delegation sees possible foreign investor growth as well due to recent policy changes.
“We’re very happy to note the discussions to open up the market especially in the talks in regard to the Foreign Negative List because […] one of the first questions we get from potential investors when they arrive, why so many restrictions, why is foreign capital so limited? So those are positive signs to us,” she added.
The embassy also announced during the ceremony that the French Ministry for Agriculture and Food and the Philippine Department of Agriculture have signed a bilateral cooperation agreement, which provides for knowledge and technology transfer.
“This cooperation agreement may identify different areas where France can bring its expertise, also propose innovation and technologies to participate in strengthening and developing the agriculture sector and also to participate in supporting Filipino agriculture products being more present in international markets,” Mr. Estrade added.
“We see a lot of companies coming in linked to food processing in the Philippines […] and we also have technologies coming from Europe that can be applied to the local markets. It’s not necessarily direct transactions but it’s more like machinery and kind of technical expertise that can be shared.” Ms. Hans said.
CCI France also launched the Trusted Partner Program to speed up the process of financial and legal services and due diligence services for French businesses who want to enter the Philippine market.
CCI France director Julien Agosta said that the project was launched to “minimize extensive accreditation processes in meeting government legal requirements.”
“This program will be beneficial for not only our members who are looking for outsourcing solutions but also for any company who wants to connect to this new market under the umbrella of the trusted partner program,” he added. —