Angara pushes for abolition of market access barriers

Agriculture Secretary Edgardo J. Angara said the credibility of the Cairns Group is at risk unless it successfully persuades its rich-nation members to immediately abolish market access barriers that make it almost impossible for developing countries to penetrate products of interest to their countries.

Angara who is still in Banff, Canada attending the Cairns Group ministerial meeting, said that while the markets of developing countries have remained open to products from other nations, markets of developed countries are still virtually frontier territories.

"There is a need to ensure that our own members comply with the principles of the Cairns Group, that is, eliminating trade-distorting measures and of fighting for special and differential treatment," Angara said.

He said that market barriers take many forms – excessively high tariffs, undue and overly strict quarantine procedures and import quotas.

Currently, there are 1,400 tariff lines for agriculture in all the agricultural countries and two-thirds of those tariff quotas belong to wealthy countries.

"Some wealthy countries use sanitary and phytosanitary requirements as disguised barriers to exclude products of developing countries from entering their market. They know too well that it requires substantial capital outlay for developing countries to comply with these requirements, which have become increasingly strict over the years," Angara said.

Angara cited the case of the Philippines which has fought for simultaneous processing of the import risk assessment (IRA) of its bananas and pineapples by another Cairns member, Australia.

"As a rule Australia conducts sequential, and not simultaneous processing of IRAs. And for over nine years, we waited for the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service (AQIS) to approve the IRA of our mangoes," Angara said.

As a result, the Philippines lost agricultural export revenues while nearly half of its global agricultural trade deficit was accounted for by trade with Australia.

Angara said AQIS only responded favorably last June when the Philippine government raised its concerns in various international fora such as the ASEAN ministers for agriculture and fisheries and the World Trade Organization in Geneva. The Philippines also solicited support from numerous countries and groups, including ASEAN and the United States.

He said, however, that even with the holding by the AQIS of a simultaneous IRA of Philippine bananas and pineapples, there is still no guarantee that these products will gain access to the elusive Australian market.