Phl trade ties with China expanding

NANNING – The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) believes that tensions between China and the Philippines over territories in the West Philippine Sea will not affect trade relations between the two countries.

“I’m not going to say that (the dispute) is going to affect (trade relations), because the world will continue to do business,” DTI Undersecretary Nora Terrado told reporters here.

Terrado heads a Philippine delegation composed of more than 60 government officials and private individuals in the 11th China-ASEAN Expo and China-ASEAN Business and Investment Summit that officially started yesterday.

The DTI undersecretary met yesterday with a Chinese delegation led by Guanxi Autonomous Region vice chairman Liu Zhiyong, who expressed interest in expanding cooperation areas between the Chinese region and the Philippines and other ASEAN nations.

Terrado, for her part, said the Philippines is looking into increasing trade ties with China, particularly the city of Nanning and the Guanxi region.

“Aside from agriculture, we can enhance bilateral relationships by doing e-business (electronic-business),” Terrado told Liu.

The DTI executive also said the Philippines is ready to join the world as it increasingly shifts toward e-business.

“We cannot avoid using technology in business. That is part of how we do business in this day and age and in the future,” said Terrado. “We will compete in e-business, particularly in the fact that we have the people in the Philippines to do business using technology.”

“As far as the IT-BPM workforce is concerned, we have already exceeded one million,” she added, noting the advantage of having a young population who are digitally savvy.

The China-ASEAN Expo and China-ASEAN Business and Investments Summit bring together government leaders and representatives from various industries in a bid to advance opportunities of cooperation and development between China and ASEAN nations.

In addition to business conferences and exhibitions, the event will also feature an e-commerce forum as well as the China-ASEAN cyberspace forum, which will center on the development of the Internet economy and international cooperation, Internet security governance and infrastructure construction.