The Philippine Star

Southeast Asia economies urged to cut tariff barriers

- – Richmond Mercurio, Helen Flores, Iris Gonzales

New guidelines on trade of goods are being considered to be put in place within the Associatio­n of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as member economies are called to significan­tly slash existing nontariff measures and barriers to achieve the region’s economic potential.

Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez said yesterday cutting down non-tariff measures and barriers across the 10-member ASEAN will be on the agenda of the economic ministers for this year’s ASEAN summit.

“We’ll have to have some guidelines or parameters to test to be able to justify setting non-tariff measures. I have recommende­d that previously and maybe we’ll get deeper to that discussion. It’s time for us to assess certain guidelines that we will all accept as a basis for non-tariff measures and barriers,” Lopez, who is also the current ASEAN Economic Ministers chair, said.

The trade chief said all ASEAN member countries have agreed in principle on the need to bring down non-tariff measures and barriers in the region.

Non-tariff measures are policy tools outside ordinary customs tariffs that can potentiall­y have an economic effect on internatio­nal trade, changing

prices and quantities traded. Existence of such barriers hinder exporters’ access in markets where these measures abound.

In his keynote address during yesterday’s Prosperity for All Summit, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said non-tariff barriers in ASEAN rose from 1,634 measures to 5,975 between 2000 and 2015.

“This cannot be tolerated, it has to be checked and reversed. For ASEAN to reach that target economic total of $9.2 trillion (by 2050), NTBs and NTMs have to be reduced by at least 50 percent. There is no alternativ­e if we wish to be able to seize that prize. So huge, coordinate­d efforts are required to deal with this problem,” Razak said.

With most of its economies growing faster than most of the rest of the world, Razak said the ASEAN economy is expected to amount to over $9.2 trillion by 2050, making it the fourth largest in the world.

The Malaysian Prime Minster said a big challenge for ASEAN to become a significan­t world market, however, is in ensuring that the integratio­n of individual economies be driven through.

“We have to bring down further the trade tariffs which still exist. WTO figures show average tariffs in ASEAN were around four percent in 2015. The work to bring them down to zero must be pursued vigorously,” Razak said.

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