Government OKs early harvest accord with China

The government agreed yesterday to enter into an early harvest agreement with China, offering 82 product lines under the Tariff Code’s Harmonized System chapter one to eight which include unprocessed agricultural products.

The Cabinet-level Trade and Related Matters (TRM) committee’s decision to enter into an accord with China was a reversal of Trade and Industry Secretary Manuel Roxas’ earlier rejection of the agreement because it would allegedly favor China and flood the local market with cheap vegetables.

Roxas has been trying to push for some reciprocity under an early harvest agreement by convincing China to also agree to include some industrial products.

The Philippines earlier indicated that it is not going to agree to enter into an early harvest agreement with China.

China, however, has deemed it necessary to bring the Philippines into an early harvest agreement to be able to convince the world that it is ready to compete openly in the free, global market.

But sources said the Philippines is adopting a position similar to that taken by Malaysia, Laos and Indonesia wherein they only agreed to a limited number of product lines.

In the case of Malaysia, it has refused to accept a multilateralized approach.

In a multilateralized approach, any tariff offer to one country should apply to all other countries.

According to the ASEAN Secretariat website, Malaysia’s early harvest arrangement with China would be limited only to China and would not apply to its ASEAN neighbors.

Malaysia argues that under the ASEAN Free Trade Arrangement-Common Effective Preferential Tariff (AFTA-CEPT) scheme, there is an exclusion list wherein some products will not be liberalized until 2010.