Joining the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) will be advantageous for the Philippines as it opens up more trade markets including non-traditional economies for the country’s products and supply needs, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said on Sunday.
The President, in an interview while en route back to Manila from his official visit in Japan, dismissed criticisms that the RCEP — a free trade agreement (FTA) between the 10 member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and its five FTA partners: Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand and the Republic of Korea — will be injurious to the country’s local industries and go against the government’s self-sufficiency goal.
Marcos said he does not see the logic of such a conclusion, adding that it is even contrary because without RCEP the Philippines will not have access to other markets or supply chains that are available to the other Asean nations.
“All our markets that are mentioned in RCEP are already open. Nothing new will be opened.
For me, it is to the advantage of the Philippines because the supply chains, the different non-traditional suppliers of agricultural inputs, of agricultural commodities, we can then access. Without RCEP, we cannot do that,” he said.
The President said as the Philippines continues to increase its investment in the agricultural value chain to make it more competitive, having access to RCEP will allow the country to further strengthen its agricultural value chain.
Marcos reiterated that he always believed that no country becomes rich without being involved in trade and the Philippines would need to do that.
At present, the Philippines remains as the only country in Southeast Asia that has yet to ratify the RCEP.
“So, we are leaving ourselves out there, isolating ourselves from the free trade zone that Asean is. So it is a shame to miss the opportunity. That’s why I think RCEP will be a good thing,” the President said.
Marcos, however, said Malacanang is not lobbying for RCEP to be ratified in Congress but will just wait for the lawmakers to decide on their own.
Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri and Senator Loren Legarda, during the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council’s (LEDAC) meeting in Malacanang yesterday, committed to push and defend the ratification of RCEP on the Senate floor.
Zubiri, who was part of the President’s delegation in Japan, said RCEP was the “talk of the town” during the Philippine delegation’s meetings with government and business leaders in Tokyo. – Jocelyn Montemayor
