The Philippines is joining another free trade pact. Like before, farmers, fishers, poultry and hog raisers foresee fearsome floods of cheap imports. Government is again promising to help them cope.
But won’t history just repeat itself? Will officials plunder billions anew in the name of agricultural competitiveness?
Watch this Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. President Duterte signed RCEP in September 2021. Senators are to ratify it this month. It supposedly will boost commerce among the ten ASEAN states and neighbors China, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand. More than a hundred groups have expressed misgivings. Food growers are unprepared to contend with fully mechanized, high-tech foreign rivals.
“But when will they ever be ready,” RCEP proponents will insist to win in the end.
That already happened 28 years ago. Manila in 1995 became one of the World Trade Organization’s 128 founders. Countries forcibly lowered import tariffs. Mostly industrialized countries benefitted. Philippine copra, sugar, salt, rice and abaca, among other industries, plunged.
Only after five years did government react. Debates ensued on how to prop up domestic food producers. A plan was devised to support with remnant import duties the many sectors crippled by free trade. Namely, onion, garlic, ginger, vegetables, fruits, corn, mills, fertilizers, pesticides, poultry, piggery, cattle, fishing and aquaculture.
An Agricultural Competitiveness Enhancement Fund was put up in 2000. Duties from food imports starting 1990 were plunked into it. ACEF accumulated P10.73 billion by 2010.
The fun began in 2004. ACEF was assigned to a Department of Agriculture undersecretary. His task: lend the money to agribusinesses and farm cooperatives.
The Philippines is joining another free trade pact. Like before, farmers, fishers, poultry and hog raisers foresee fearsome floods of cheap imports. Government is again promising to help them cope.
But won’t history just repeat itself? Will officials plunder billions anew in the name of agricultural competitiveness?
Watch this Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. President Duterte signed RCEP in September 2021. Senators are to ratify it this month. It supposedly will boost commerce among the ten ASEAN states and neighbors China, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand. More than a hundred groups have expressed misgivings. Food growers are unprepared to contend with fully mechanized, high-tech foreign rivals.
“But when will they ever be ready,” RCEP proponents will insist to win in the end.
That already happened 28 years ago. Manila in 1995 became one of the World Trade Organization’s 128 founders. Countries forcibly lowered import tariffs. Mostly industrialized countries benefitted. Philippine copra, sugar, salt, rice and abaca, among other industries, plunged.
Only after five years did government react. Debates ensued on how to prop up domestic food producers. A plan was devised to support with remnant import duties the many sectors crippled by free trade. Namely, onion, garlic, ginger, vegetables, fruits, corn, mills, fertilizers, pesticides, poultry, piggery, cattle, fishing and aquaculture.
An Agricultural Competitiveness Enhancement Fund was put up in 2000. Duties from food imports starting 1990 were plunked into it. ACEF accumulated P10.73 billion by 2010.
The fun began in 2004. ACEF was assigned to a Department of Agriculture undersecretary. His task: lend the money to agribusinesses and farm cooperatives.
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