On the other hand, Benedicto said they anticipate that due to the present global economic crisis, some delegates may tend to defeat the strides at trade liberalization that have been put in place, particularly during the Doha rounds of negotiations.
The most contentious issues, they explained, were on agriculture which has put to a deadlock the positions of the developing and the developed countries. These issues are not expected to be tackled, but other side issues may be raised by delegates from the developed world.
One concern is the initiative of the United States for the negotiations to cover specific sectors or industries which have been opposed in the past by developing countries, unless the development component of the talks are tackled first. -- Abe P. Belena, PHILEXPORT News and Features <--back
2. Exporters shift to high gear towards recovery
Smarting from 12 straight months of declining sales, Filipino exporters are celebrating their annual exporters' week this first week of December by scheduling nationwide activities meant to ride on the crest of the global economic recovery that has just started.
This was announced by Philippine Exporters Confederation, Inc. (PHILEXPORT) President Sergio R. Ortiz-Luis, Jr., as he said that the first salvo will be the holding of the pre-Christmas Buy Pinoy Exporters Fair at the SM Megamall from November 22 to 30.
The fair, he said, has been one of the defensive tactics of local export industries in selling world-class goods to domestic distributors and end-users since they took monthly blows of reduced export sales in October last year.
On sale are the best of Philippine manufactures from natural-fiber based textile products, to Christmas decors, furniture, processed and fresh food, and the best of Philippine-made fine jewelry.
Ortiz-Luis, who also sits as private sector vice chairman of the Export Development Council (EDC), also announced that the EDC board and key industry leaders will go back to the drawing board to review the three-year export development plan that expires in December, and formulate a new one that takes into full consideration international and local conditions.
An early review and updating of the plan, he said, will take into consideration the possible impact of climate change spawned disasters that may undermine the sustainability of raw materials in most of the indigenous exports, particularly food and natural-resource based enterprises.
It will likewise look closely at the long-term implications of the emerging trend in global trade and investments that have devastated most of the highly developed countries like the United States, Europe and Japan, while only slowing down most of the big economies in Asia, particularly China, India and Indonesia.
Regional chapters and industry associations affiliated with PHILEXPORT, he added, have also scheduled their own activities during the exporters' week. The activities include seminars for productivity and capacity building; business matching; trade fairs and bazaars and policy fora and consultations. -- Abe P. Belena, PHILEXPORT News and Features <--back
3. Experts confirm that RP had not reneged on its IP commitments
The recently enacted Intellectual Property Code of the Philippines and the Quality and Affordable Medicine Act (QAMA) passed into law late last year are compliant with the country's commitments to the WTO.
This summarizes the stand put forward by Epifanio M. Evasco, chief of the Intellectual Property-Philippines, an attached agency of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), in a dialogue with a delegation of Geneva-based WTO secretariat held in Makati the other day.
"When the prices of medicine, particularly the patented drugs made by multi-nationals made them beyond the reach of 98 percent of our people, we have to adopt laws to be able take full advantage of the flexibilities allowed by the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement”, he told the WTO delegation led by Roger Kampf.
He said that a situation had arisen when only the very rich or the A or B segments of the Philippine population could afford the prices of patented prescription drugs which prompted the government to amend the IP law as it applies to the pharmaceutical industry.
"We need to balance our obligation to protect intellectual property rights with the need to take care of public health," he said.
The TRIPS agreement of 1995 allows host countries to avoid IP violation penalties in importing patented drugs through compulsory licensing and during national emergencies like in the case of epidemics.
Defending the recent amendment of an old patent law that he considered "more than compliant to the TRIPS agreement, patent law expert Eugenio Perez III told the WTO delegates that there is nothing in the new IP Code that runs smack against the TRIPS agreement.
He explained that the new code almost copied verbatim the most critical IP protection provisions of the TRIPS agreement.
It has, however, made a more clear-cut definition of what are patentable inventions that do not include discoveries of new uses of known substances or the discovery of new formulae.
Meanwhile, on the application of the TRIPS exemptions as applied to national emergencies and public health protection, he argued that the provision is not a question of law, but of actual situations prevailing in a country at any given time.
An Indian member of the WTO team supported the Philippine stand by citing several examples when companies in the west had secured patents for old Indian formulae or medicines. The patents, he said, were later cancelled. -- Abe P. Belena, PHILEXPORT News and Features <--back
4. IP Philippines now becoming a growth-driving agency
Apart from just being a regulatory agency, the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines is also becoming a “growth-driving agency”, as it undertakes programs that help businessmen effectively use intellectual property (IP) be more business-relevant to them.
In an interview at the sidelines of the workshop on the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement, IP Philippines deputy director general Atty. Andrew Michael Ong said the Philippines should really use IP for business similar to that done by Taiwan, China and India.
“We are using IP not just as a registration system but as business, economic and development tool to also create value for our products and services,” he said.
Ong cited for example African coffee that is now sold at a higher price by branding this product.
He pointed out that businesses can also increase the added-value of their goods through patenting and technology transfer so they can access global technologies for research and development (R&D) purposes.
To this end, Ong said IP Philippines is partnering with other government agencies as well as non-governmental organizations and business groups to make IP become business-relevant.
“It has to be an inter-government cooperation. We work with DENR for traditional knowledge, we have to work with DA for agricultural products and with the NCCA (National Commission for Culture and the Arts) for our tribal, cultural expressions,” he explained.
Ong said they will particularly work on the One-Town, One-Product (OTOP) program with the Department of Trade and Industry, and the Filipinnovation program with the Department of Science and Technology (DOST).
“We are starting our dialogues with NCCA for our indigenous people’s creations. We will have lots of specific programs we need to roll out next year. This is a five-year program,” he bared.
With these efforts, Ong expressed optimism that intellectual property registrations in the country will increase in the coming years.
“We have increased registrations, but we have not met our target yet. In trademarks, we are hovering around 6,000 to 7,000 applications a year. We should reach 300,000 because we have over 300,000 business name registrations every year. That’s really our market if you look at it, because these are not IP protected,” he said.
Ong recognized that it takes time and extra measures for the agency to achieve this goal.
“We have always been a registering agency only. Now, we are becoming an ambassador already. So it needs retooling of our people, restructuring of our organization in fact and amending the law so that our mandate is increased,” he said. -- Danielle Venz, PHILEXPORT News and Features <--back
5. BoC accreditation process reduced to 20 working days
Business activities of the jewelry and other exporting sectors are expected to be boosted as the Bureau of Customs (BoC) has moved to fast track the accreditation process.
Peter Zuñiga, president of the Confederation of Philippine Jewelers, Inc., said that before, it took the bureau several months to release a certificate of accreditation. This, as some of their agents appear to be asking for “facilitation fees” to speed up the accreditation which some of them were not amenable to.
He said there were some exporters who were forced to give in, but their accreditation papers were still not released.
“Our problem with the BoC has been remedied already by Commissioner (Napoleon) Morales. It was properly addressed. We have an agreement with CAS (BoC’s Customs Accreditation Secretariat) that once papers are complete, the accreditation will come out of their office within 20 working days,” Zuñiga said in an interview.
He said this problem was tackled and addressed in a meeting in Malacanang, together with Export Development Council (EDC) and PHILEXPORT trustee Luis S. Sicat.
Zuñiga said the certificate of accreditation is a requirement to import raw materials and export finished goods.
“Right now, if you are accredited with Republic Act 8502, all you have to pay is the 12-percent VAT if the jewelry will be sold to the local market. But for exports, jewelry gets tax and duty-free. But exporters have to present their RA 8502 and BOI accreditation to get these incentives,” he said.
RA 8502, otherwise known as the Jewelry Industry Development Act (JIDA), promotes the development of the jewelry manufacturing industry, including adopting appropriate tax incentives and programs.
Sicat, the PHILEXPORT trustee for fine jewelry and fashion accessories, said that PHILEXPORT, the EDC and the fine jewelry associations lobbied successfully for the retention of the JIDA incentives which otherwise were being nullified in the original version of the Rationalization of Fiscal Incentives bill in the House of Representatives. -- Danielle Venz, PHILEXPORT News and Features <--back
6. Exporters urged to implement branding programs
Exporters are encouraged to initiate branding programs to improve their international competitiveness.
Dodjie Fabian, director of the Department of Trade and Industry's Bureau of Export Trade Promotion (BETP), in a forum said each sector should start developing a branding concept which stakeholders can look into.
“We need to get our acts together to come up with our branding program. There is no common branding for the Philippines,” he said.
Fabian cited El Corte Ingles, Spain’s largest department store chain, which still knows the Philippines for its capiz products.
“Our image to them is still capiz. That is why, what we sold to them during the Southeast Asia promotions were everything made of capiz. They were even asking for a capiz carver. That is still our branding to them, since this is all they know about the Philippines. That is our challenge,” he said.
The country’s image abroad should be improved, Fabian added, as he expressed concern on the major and more long-term benefits of the P1 billion export support fund.
Export branding, which differentiates products and services from what competitors offer, is among the key strategies to raise the country’s export revenues identified under the Philippine Export Development Plan for 2008-2010.
Others include accelerating market diversification, enhancing market positioning and strengthening the export capacities of enterprises. -- Danielle Venz, PHILEXPORT News and Features <--back
7. Business groups balk at free trade minus crucial non-tariff policies
Business and civil society groups urged the Philippine government to explore various policy measures to safeguard the interests of local industries as the country enters into a virtually tariff-free regime as prescribed by the ASEAN Free Trade Area – Common Effective Preferential Tariff (AFTA-CEPT) Agreement.
According to Ernesto Ordoñez, Chairman of Alyansa Agrikultura and President of Cement Manufacturers of the Philippines, said the dismantling of tariff barriers will push many domestic industries to the brink of extinction if the government will not act aggressively on issues like smuggling and the proliferation of substandard products that have been weighing down local businesses. There is a palpable need to enact the Anti-Smuggling Bill into law expeditiously, Mr. Ordoñez added.
The Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) cites that the Philippines loses an estimated P56 to P100 billion in taxes from smuggled oil alone. This amount is equivalent to nearly half of the P184 billion actual revenue collections of the Bureau of Customs (BOC) for the first ten months of 2009.
While most of the necessary policy measures to remedy these problems have yet to be instituted, Alyansa Agrikultura and Fair Trade Alliance (FTA) call for a five-year suspension of the full implementation of tariff cuts scheduled next year under the AFTA-CEPT. Said civil society groups maintained that such suspension is warranted as the domestic economy is still reeling from the double onslaught of the recent typhoons and the weakened global economy.
Based on the CEPT scheme, the main implementing mechanism of AFTA, duties on products within the region should fall within the 0 to 5 percent range by January 2010 for Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam are prescribed to do the same come 2015.
To assuage concerns of the local industries, Trade Assistant Secretary and negotiator Ramon Vicente T. Kabigting said that the government is seeking assistance from ASEAN member-states to combat smuggling and control the spread of substandard and unsafe products.
The Philippine government acknowledges that while there is a need to protect local industries, it also has to carefully ascertain the compensation that will have to be made in suspending its concessions.
Under the CEPT-AFTA Agreement, the Philippines will have to provide compensatory adjustment as agreed upon if it suspends its concessions as allowed under the Protocol on the Implementation of the CEPT scheme Temporary Exclusion. If the concerned parties fail to agree on the compensation, member-states with substantial export interest are entitled to withdraw substantially equivalent concessions.
The Protocol on the Implementation of the CEPT scheme Temporary Exclusion allows a member state to temporarily delay the transfer of a product from its Temporary Exclusion List (TEL) into the Inclusion List (IL) or to temporarily suspend its concession on a product already transferred into the IL if such a transfer or concession would cause or have caused serious problems, by reasons which are not covered by Article 6 (Emergency Measures) of the Agreement.
Article 6 provides for the suspension of concessions as an emergency measure. In invoking Article 6, the importing member state shall prove that the surge in imports was brought by unforeseen developments and the grant of concessions and that it causes serious injury or threat to its local sectors producing like or directly competitive products.
In the event that no satisfactory compensation has been agreed upon, the country affected by the emergency action may retaliate by withdrawing substantially equivalent concessions or any other obligation under the AFTA-CEPT Agreement as set out in Article XIX of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).
In 2007, the country's exports to ASEAN were valued at $8 billion or 16 percent of the total exports, while its imports from the region amounted to $12.9 billion or 23 percent of the total imports, resulting in a trade deficit of $4.9 billion or 98 percent of the overall trade deficit.
Singapore supplied nearly half of the country's ASEAN imports and absorbed 39 percent of its ASEAN exports. The Philippines incurred the largest trade deficit with Singapore at $3 billion, followed by Thailand at $800 million.
Should the country invoke the AFTA-CEPT protocol, it will have to enter into discussions with these countries. -- Ritchie Alburo, PHILEXPORT News and Features <--back
8. Northern Mindanao SMEs apply EBESE for competitiveness
The first batch of owners and senior managers of 12 members of the PHILEXPORT Region 10A (Northern Mindanao Chapter) have officially enrolled their respective companies to the ECOP Big Enterprise Small Enterprise (EBESE) Productivity Improvement Program as part of preparing their companies in the economic recovery.
Another batch of 12 to 15 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are expected to enroll by end of this month.
EBESE is a productivity-based customer (big enterprise) and supplier (small enterprise) partnering program designed to develop and sustain long-term mutually profitable working relationships, as well as partnerships where big enterprises can mobilize resources for SMEs to learn and undertake productivity improvement strategies.
Launched on November 5 in the region, the EBESE is being implemented in partnership with the Employers’ Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP) Institute for Productivity and Competitiveness (EIPC) Foundation and PHILEXPORT.
The EBESE program is part of the activities that have been lined up in the first week of December in line with the National Exporter's Week. Technical sessions for managers and workers on 5S (a Japanese productivity system), plant layout, productivity circles and other tools for efficiency are also being conducted to empower SMEs in Northern Mindanao.
To fully implement the program, EIPC has tapped the talents of both Manila-based and home-grown experts, especially those from the Mindanao Association for Quality (MAQ), Inc., a quality assurance circle of large enterprises operating in Mindanao.
Further, talks of expanding the number of SME beneficiaries to be included in the program are being ironed out, starting off with the SMEs who have enrolled with DTI's Export Pathways Program (EPP). -- Mike Ignacio, PHILEXPORT News and Features <--back
