Free trade deals undermined PHL food security, says group
AGRICULTURAL groups, including the Samahang Industriya ng Agrikultura (SINAG), are pinning their hopes on an “independent” Senate that will assess the merits of the country’s membership to the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).
“This time, we are confident that the Senate, under the leadership of Senator Imee Marcos, as chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, will uphold the legacy of the upper chamber as an independent and pro-local agriculture institution,” SINAG said in a statement on Tuesday.
Currently, the issues related to the regional trade pact are being threshed out at the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
The group said “it’s now time to change the narrative”, noting that all previous Philippine governments from former President Fidel Ramos to former President Rodrigo Duterte have all echoed the “neo-liberal dogma” of imports at all cost and let the so-called “market forces” decide.
“The very people that pushed for the country’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) some 30 years ago, are the same cast of characters pushing for our accession to RCEP,” said SINAG Executive Director Jayson Cainglet.
The group noted that after 30 years, there is no promised “remarkable” growth under a liberalized trading regime. He said the supposed gains in trade, production output and employment “never materialized.”
“The promised market access in developed countries did not materialize as the liberalized trade regime was really intended to expand the market opportunities for the big players such as the United States and the European Union, and lately China and other members of the G8.”
It said the neo-liberal policy turned the Philippines into a net food importing country, which “destroyed the country’s decades-old capacity” to produce its own food. “Such free trade thinking has undermined our food security, much more our food sovereignty where we decide our own agriculture and food policy.”
Citing data from the Philippine Statistics Authority, the group said the balance of trade in agricultural goods in US$ millions was at -7,023.39; -6,854.72 in 2019; -6,375.63 in 2020 and -8,920.08 in 2021. This means the cost of the country’s imports exceeded the value of its exports in those years.
Prior to the free trade regime, the group noted that the share of agriculture in the country’s GDP fell to 8-10 percent, from 25 percent, in the last three years.