PH eyes bilateral free trade with US

MANILA – The Philippines aims to further enhance i ts access to the United States – now, through a possible bilateral free trade agreement ( FTA) with the world’s biggest economy.

Trade undersecretary Ceferino Rodolfo t ol d r e p o r t e r s t h a t t h e Department of Trade and Industry ( DTI) is doing a study for a possible FTA with the US, looking at the benefits of having a trade deal with the US and the alignment of policies of the two countries.

This i s after t he US p u l l e d o u t o f Trans- Pacific Partnership ( TPP) Agreement, and will be pushing for bilateral trade deals than multilateral FTAs.

“The US trade policy will really be towards bilateral rather than multilateral or regional,” Rodolfo said.

“For us, we put forward t hat t he Philippines i s i nterested i n f urt her enhancing our market access to the US. That has always been a key objective of the Philippines whether we attain i t through the TPP or enhancement of the GSP (Generalized System of Preferences) or a bilateral FTA, we will pursue it,” he added.

T h e t r a d e o f f i c i a l mentioned that the US will base the future FTAs on a study determining which markets US have trade deficit. The study is expected to be released by the fourth quarter of the year.

Initially, the US identified markets which it has USD10- billion trade deficit. The list includes Canada, China, European Union, I ndia, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, S o ut h Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Apart from the trade deficit study, the US will also consider the market size of a country and its policy gap with the US.

Rodolfo noted that the Philippines is an attractive market for the US with its over 100 million population.

Moreover, Rodolfo mentioned that the policies of the Philippines and the US are not difficult to align as the two countries have been collaborating to improve trade ties through the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA).

“What we are saying is that, under the TIFA, we have closed the gap in most of the issues,” he said in Filipino.

He mentioned that among t he major policy i ssues between the Philippines and t he US i nclude t he intellectual property issues which applies to public health; f oreign equity restrictions, particularly in public services; sensitivity on geographic indications; and government procurement.

“We are doing internal study at DTI taking off from the gap analysis that we did when we wanted to join the TPP,” Rodolfo said noting that the two countries had technical consultations since the Philippines eyes to join the TPP.

The Obama administration t hen committed t o t he Philippines to conduct technical

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