The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) kicked off a series of private- and public-sector consultations on Wednesday to raise awareness on two regional trade partnerships—the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and the Asean-Hong Kong Free Trade Agreement (AHKFTA).
“Our goal is to help our country maintain its competitive advantage among Asean member-states. One way to do this is to raise awareness on our trade engagements and engage our stakeholders to take full advantage of the vast opportunities arising from further regional integration in the Asia-Pacific region,” Trade Undersecretary Ceferino S. Rodolfo said in a news statement.
The proposed RCEP is composed of the 10 Asean members. The six countries that Asean already has a free-trade agreement with are Australia, New Zealand, India, Korea, Japan and China.
Taken together, members of the RCEP accounts for nearly 30 percent of the world’s trade, and is projected to have a combined gross domestic product of about $21.2 trillion.
On the other hand, AHKFTA is the free-trade pact being sought by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region with Asean to balance the increasing export flow from China directly to Asean instead of being coursed through the port city. This shift was instigated by the gradual reduction of tariffs provided for under the Asean-China FTA. To maintain its position as a transit hub for trade, Hong Kong sought for inclusion in the Asean-China free-trade network.
The RCEP and AHKFTA consultations fall under the One Country, One Voice (OCOV) platform of the DTI, representing the single, consultative mechanism for stakeholder participation in trade policy formulation.
OCOV, launched by the DTI in 2010, engages stakeholders to identify policy gaps and interventions, and support the development of the government’s positions and strategies for negotiating current and possible future trade engagements.
Rodolfo said that, while the country is generally making progress in increasing country competitiveness, the consultation is necessary to communicate both the opportunities and challenges of our trade engagements in Asean.
“Our role is to further guide businesses, government agencies, and civil society in analyzing and strategizing their business directions and initiatives in Asean,” he added.