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THE
European Union (EU) is making available another
P390-million funding assistance to the Philippines to
help strengthen the trade-facilitating capabilities of
key government agencies, the Philippine Exporters
Confederation (Philexport) announced over the weekend.
Philexport said its members were
informed of the development by Ambassador Alistair
MacDonald, head of the European Community delegation to
the Philippines, in a seminar on EU’s new system in the
processing of its imports and exports.
The additional P390-million
(€6.5-million) grant will be used to implement the
second phase of
its Trade-Related Technical Assistance (TRTA) Programme
with the country.
“I hope in the next few weeks to sign
the financing agreement for our second TRTA Programme,
which will run from 2008 to 2012, with an EC grant of
€6.5 million,” said McDonald at the seminar.
The program’s second phase will continue
to help build institutional capacity of main
trade-related agencies—the Department of Trade and
Industry, Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Customs
and National Economic and Development Authority.
“It will also prepare for the
implementation of the Customs Single Window and address
the range of TBT [technical barriers to trade] and SPS
[sanitary and phytosanitary] problems which can hinder
Philippine access to EU and other international
markets,” he added.
The Customs Single Window is the
agency’s interconnectivity project with 10 government
agencies where import and export documentations are
processed to consolidate them in just one agency. It is
a prelude to the imposition of the Asean Single-Window
Transaction being pilot-tested in Thailand.
MacDonald said the new funding is on top
of the €3.5 (P210 million) the EU already granted for
the first TRTA program which began in 2006.
The ambassador said the program is among
the ongoing initiatives of the EU to increase trade with
the Philippines.
“This partnership is one with much
unfulfilled potential. In the past five years,
Philippine exports to the EU have declined by some 6
percent per year. And in 2007 alone, Philippine exports
declined by 14 percent to €5.5 billion,” he said.
He said much can be done to reverse the
decline, and building the trade facilitation capacity of
Philippine government agencies is part of this. --M. V. de Leon |
