THERE’S a lobby for the Philippines to “clone” its former colonizer, the United States, to hopefully consolidate the country’s trade negotiations with other countries.

Former senator Wigberto Tañada of the Fair Trade Alliance said the current system of trade policy formulation and conduct of trade negotiations is in shambles, risking the country’s trade competitiveness and future.

Tañada scored the current system as inefficient and prone to institutional failures. “Without identifying the country’s offensive and defensive interests causes us to lose opportunities and means sustaining poverty.”

Supporting him in this view is the Congressional Planning and Budget Department  (CPBD) of the House of Representatives that helped formulate House Bill 5971, proposing the creation of a Philippine Trade Representative Office (PTRO).

The bill, according to CPBD director Rodolfo Vicerra, was approved without opposition by lawmakers in March.

Tañada said, when negotiating at the World Trade Organization, countries like the US, Japan and the European Union had trade representatives.

“The current system of negotiation births a turf mentality, preventing the creation of an encompassing, unified and cross-industry trade policy.”

A paper by the Philippine Legislators’ Committee on Population (PLCPDI) and Development Foundation Inc. said the current trade negotiations system is handled by the Tariff and Related Matters Committee (TRMC), the Philippine Coordinating Committee (for the country’s trade negotiations with Japan) and the Department of Foreign Affairs.

“The absence of a clear-cut hierarchy, mandate and delineation of authority has often led to confusion,” the PLCPDI said in its paper.

The group explained that in the policymaking stage, “there is no unequivocal rule on deciding how a matter is to be resolved.”

Tañada told a forum on the PTRO’s creation in Makati City this week that negotiators go to the table without “credible set of data.”

He noted that during the trade negotiations at the Asean level on farm interests, agricultural officials said they were not informed or consulted.

“Negotiators are inexplicably unmindful [even] of the needs of farmers.”

The PLCPDI said the absence of a central trade negotiating unit also hobbles negotiators who end up “agreeing to terms and conditions that may put the country at a disadvantage.”

In their paper four years ago, Gloria Pasadilla and Christine Marie Liao of the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) said “trade officials sometimes go to trade negotiations without a clear strategy or specific objectives.”

Titled “Does the Philippines Need a Trade Representative Office?” the PIDS authors proposed the creation of an independent agency for trade negotiation, something akin to the US Trade Representative Office.

“Or, considering fiscal realities in the short run, at least, the strengthening of the existing Bureau of International Trade Relations [BITR] position within the TRMC structure.”

“A stronger, centralized body, principally or primarily in charge of trade policy negotiations, would be able to curb the turf battles among different agencies, or, at a minimum, prevent them from stalling the realization of trade mandates for negotiators,” Pasadilla and Liao wrote.