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SEN.
Edgardo Angara moved for the creation of special
international tribunals to quickly settle lingering
disputes in agricultural trade.
In a
statement, Angara added these tribunals would also bring
relief to developing countries, such as the Philippines,
that have been pushed out of the global food trade and
made extremely vulnerable to food shortages by the
protectionist policies of wealthy countries.
“There
must be a system of international tribunals to move
deliberations out of the protectionist environment and
ascertain the weight of evidence. The current system,
where each of the country sets its own standards and
does its own assessment is unacceptable,”
Angara argued. He
first broached the idea of setting up international
trade tribunals at a United Nations forum on sustainable
development held in New York City last week.
According to Angara, the creation of “Nurembergs of Fair
Trade” is an urgent global imperative because every
country is now “prosecutor, judge and jury” of its trade
policies and the policies are often based on narrow and
prejudiced assessments. The Nuremberg Tribunals tried
the abuses of the Nazis and other war criminals after
the war.
The
senator explained that the World Trade Organization (WTO),
the global body on trade, cannot speedily settle the
disputes as the very same rules written by the WTO, all
put in place to enhance free trade, have even “abetted
inequities” in agricultural trade.
“The
protectionist policies of rich countries have
effectively led to the control of 70 percent of the
global food trade by these countries. Developing nations
have been left out by the trade barriers erected by the
rich nations through massive subsidies to their farmers
and tariff and nontariff barriers,” Angara added.
He
recalled that in 2005 alone, export and domestic
subsidies pumped by the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development countries into their farming
sectors totaled $385.2 billion, which is twice the gross
national product of the Philippines in 2007.
Angara
noted that despite the efforts of the WTO to reduce
tariffs to allow the easy entry of products from
developing countries into the rich ones, rich countries
have been employing schemes and tricks to make their
tariffs high and forbidding.
“Some
products are applied tariff rates as high as 900 percent
by applying tariff peaks. The practice to apply high
tariffs on processed goods is also another scheme
devised to force exporters from developing countries to
sell raw materials with no value added,” he said.
He
pointed out that the long-drawn battle being waged by
the Philippines to export tropical fruits to Australia
demonstrates the determination of rich nations to use
quarantine standards and technical, nontariff barriers
to restrict agricultural exports from the developing
world.
“The
current trade between the
Philippines
and Australia highlight this point clearly. For decades,
Australia
has effectively prevented Philippine export products,
particularly mangoes, bananas and pineapples, by
applying stringent and unreasonable quarantine and
phytosanitary standards,” he said.
In his
talk before the UN forum, the senator prodded delegates
from developed economies to reduce their domestic
subsidies and eliminate their export subsidies. He also
asked these countries to stop employing baseless
quarantine, health and phytosanitary standards to
restrict the entry of agricultural products from the
developing countries.
At the
same time, Angara insisted that the tricks and schemes
devised by developed countries to retain their tariff
walls on agricultural products should also be scrapped
to help ease the trade imbalances between the rich and
developing countries. |
