US softens stand on trade issues — Purisima

The US has agreed to back down on linking the resolution of agriculture issues with the so-called Singapore Ministerial Conference (SMC) issues.

This was indicated recently by US Trade Representative Robert Zoelick to Trade and Industry Secretary Cesar V. Purisima.

Zoelick had recently met with trade ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to encourage them to restart the stalled World Trade Orgaization (WTO) negotiations.

According to Purisima, Zoelick had indicated that the US would not push for early discussion on the so-called SMC issues which the Philippines and some other developing countries had opposed during the 5th WTO Ministerial Meeting in Cancun, Mexico last year.

The softening of the US stand would hopefully convince WTO members to finally return to the negotiating table and come to an agreement at least by 2005.

The SMC issues involve liberalization policies in the area of investment, government procurement, transparency and trade facilitation.

Of the four issues, the most critical, at least for the Philippines, is investment.

Liberalization of investment policies would essentially mean that sovereign countries would no longer be able to discriminate or prioritize the entry of investments.

This means that any foreign investor that wants to come in would no longer have to go through the Board of Investments (BOI) which currently screens investors and prioritizes which investment it wants to allow as part of the government’s development plan.

But aside from the SMC issues, there was also disagreement about non-agricultural market access or NAMA issues.

Under the draft Cancun Ministerial text on NAMA, WTO members would again have been subjected to a new round of tariff cuts.