THE Export Marketing Bureau (EMB) under the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) is on pace to meet its 2015 target of 175 information sessions before year-end. During the first seven months of the year, the EMB had successfully conducted 168 sessions for 4,732 companies and 14,568 participants.
This means the EMB is just eight sessions short of its target for the rest of the year.
Session participants represented exporters, business groups, academe, individual companies, local government units (LGUs), and government line agencies nationwide.
EMB resource teams including their partners from the Bureau of Customs, Bureau of Internal Revenue, Tariff Commission, and other government agencies and private organizations had conducted sessions in Cebu, Davao, General Santos, Cagayan de Oro, Angeles City, Tarlac, Butuan, Baler, Surigao del Norte, Surigao del Sur, Zamboanga City, Dumaguete City, Ormoc, Cavite City, Tacloban, Laguna, Baguio, Quezon Province, Albay, Camarines Sur, Rizal Province, Iloilo, Tagaytay, Dinagat Islands, Batangas, Zambales, Pangasinan, Nueva Ecija, Bataan, Bohol, Pampanga, Tuguegarao, Nueva Viscaya, Agusan del Sur, Bulacan, Guimaras, Romblon, Laoag City, Bacolod City, and the National Capital Region.
The EMB also held an outbound mission to Manado and Jakarta, Indonesia, in April this year.
Senen M. Perlada, EMB director, expressed elation at the number of sessions and participants the EMB advocacy continues to generate.
“The attendance and participation of companies—including exporters and would-be exporters, individuals, business groups, LGUs—to these sessions, and the questions and clarifications they seek from the resource speakers are a testimonial to the tremendous interest our public-awareness campaign regarding export opportunities abroad generates,” he said.
Since the Doing Business in Free Trade Areas (DBFTA) program started in 2010, the EMB has conducted 708 sessions participated in by 81,209 people representing 24,407 companies.
The EMB conducts these information sessions at the request of its regional offices, private business groups, schools and individual companies, with the end goal of making existing and potential exporters aware of the rules and regulations of trade and the government programs and services that local manufacturers can avail themselves.
Currently, the EMB’s public-awareness campaign on its export development advocacy is anchored on its programs called DBFTA,Trade with the European Union under the Generalized Scheme of Preferences Plus (EU GSP+), and the integration of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) 10 member-countries into a single economy called the Asean Economic Community starting this year.
To facilitate trade, the country has signed free-trade agreements with other Asean member-nations and with Asean partner-economies, Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.
Sessions concerning these trading partners focus on particular products that can be exported to each country, trade rules and regulations in effect that need to be followed, and the competitive advantage Philippine exporters can exploit vis-à-vis these trading partners. In the case of Muslim countries, the EMB also conducts sessions on halal foods and products.
The Philippines started to enjoy the GSP+ preferential status effective December 25, 2014. This gave the country, along with 12 other countries, the privilege of exporting to the EU’s member-countries at zero or vastly reduced tariffs for more than 6,000 product lines.
The EMB’s information sessions on EU GSP+ discuss specific EU standards on exports, rules of origin, tariffs, Customs regulations, and other trade-related topics.
Sessions on Asean economic integration focus on doing business with the Asean as a group or as individual countries and their specific export requirements.
The EMB will continue with its DBFTA and EU GSP+ information sessions every last Thursday of the month.