RP panel urged to defend agricultural sector at WTO meet

MANILA, Philippines - Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap and other senior trade officials attending the ongoing Ministerial Meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in India are being urged to remain firm in defending the Philippine agricultural sector against unfair trade deals that may be detrimental to Filipino farmers.

According to Jessica Reyes-Cantos, lead convenor of the Rice Watch and Action Network (R1), “the burden to break the impasse (in the WTO-Doha Round negotiation) lies on the United States and other G7 countries.”

She urged Yap and the other trade negotiators to “remain steadfast in defending the flexibilities afforded to the Philippines and other developing countries under the Doha Development Round.”

The Philippines, Cantos said, should lead other developing countries in securing significant remedy structure for the Special Safeguard Mechanisms (SSM) for agricultural products.

“The Philippines’ current tariff bound rate for rice is very low at 40 percent and that leaves us very vulnerable to import surges unless we seek higher tariff rate protection beyond the current bound rates,” Cantos said.

The SSM is a flexibility measure for developing countries under the WTO which will allow the imposition of additional duty on applied tariffs when the volume of imports shoot up or the prices of imported products abnormally go down, unfairly competing with local agricultural products.

Cantos said the industrialized G7 countries are expected to consolidate their position to block the demand for greater protection of developing countries.

“We are calling on the Philippines and other G33 countries to hold their ground as they have proven to be a force to contend with when it comes to defending and pushing the developing economies’ interests,” Cantos said.

She added that no sensible trade agreement is possible if the United States, European Union and other WTO members “continue to be adamant against substantial reduction, if not total elimination of trade distorting domestic support and subsidies.”

“Equally important in upholding our development interests in this round of negotiations is to resist the efforts of developed countries to preserve their subsidies on agriculture,” Cantos said.

She added that the Philippine negotiators should not agree to any farm deal that would abandon the agriculture flexibilities for the Philippines and other developing countries, while developed countries are unfairly enjoying domestic support and subsidies for their agricultural exports.