Trade Secretary Alfredo Pascual yesterday said the Philippines aims to further enhance trade with Europe through various preferential arrangements.
“The Philippines actively pursues opportunities in existing preferential trading arrangements with partner countries, and exploring new trade agreements. This way, we can expand market access for Philippine exports of goods and services,” Pascual said in his speech at the European-Philippine Business Dialogue in Makati City.
The Philippines has enjoyed trade concessions from the European Union via the Generalised System of Preferences Plus (GSP+).
But Pascual said to further attract investments from the EU, “one of our goals is a more binding mechanism via the Philippines-European Union Free Trade Agreement (PH-EU FTA).”
“This FTA will provide secure and additional duty-free market access beyond those covered by GSP+. It will also provide a conducive framework for attracting greater investments from the EU,” he added.
Pascual also welcomed the implementation this year of the United Kingdom’s new Developing Countries Trading Scheme (DCTS), which targets to lower or remove tariffs on additional 156 products for developing countries, including the Philippines, in addition to more than 6,000 tariff lines covered by the EU GSP+.
“We have been working closely with the UK government for the past years to ensure that not only do we maintain the same level of access to the UK market, similar to the EU GSP+, but also pose improvements through simpler rules and procedures, including the rules of origin,” he said.
The Philippines is waiting for the UK’s full regulation for the implementation of the DCTS, which will set out the complete details on the final product coverage, rules of origin, eligibility criteria and monitoring procedures, among others.
The EU GSP+, meanwhile, extended to Philippine exports in 2014 resulted in substantial export growth. In 2021, total exports to the EU reached 7.7 billion euros, with 2.7 billion euros eligible for GSP+.
The EU GSP+ will expire at the end of 2023 and is already the subject of discussions for renewal.
According to Pascual, the Philippine-European Free Trade Association (PH-EFTA) FTA, the country’s second bilateral, has led to notable trade improvements with the EFTA region, especially with Switzerland and Norway.
Compared to prior trade deficits, Philippine exports to EFTA grew by 46 percent from 2018 to 2021. This resulted in trade surpluses after the FTA’s implementation.
