Letter to the editor on Lamy's visit

December 2006

The column of WTO's Pascal Lamy published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on December 8, 2006 is disturbing as he exercises immense pressure on the Philippines to move the stalled negotiations in the Doha Round of the WTO.

Lamy was scheduled to talk to the Philippines and Indonesia, as leading members of G33, group of developing countries had the ASEAN summit happened this week, to convince the two countries to soften their position on the Special Products (SSP) and Special Safeguard Mechanism (SSM) under the WTO's Agreement on Agriculture.

A lot of discussions during the WTO General Council meeting on October 10, 2006 pointed to increasing pressure on developing countries to be more “flexible” on the SP/SSM proposal.  The World Bank recently published its report on the implications of special products on poverty in low-income countries that is obviously a campaign strategy against the SP/SSM proposal of developing countries in the WTO. All these lead to possible blame-shifting from the US/EU to developing countries in the ongoing efforts to resume the WTO negotiations.

We believe that the G33 and other alliances of developing and least developed countries should stand its ground under current circumstances when the SP and SSM proposals are being attacked particularly by developed countries.

Our government's agriculture negotiators in the WTO should remain firm in advocating for food security, livelihood security and rural development and hold their fort on the maximum position on SP/SSM. The Philippines' tariff rates are very low compared to developed countries and even some developing countries. We can not afford massive tariff cuts in agriculture and have no other recourse but to maximize these flexibilities.

Aggressive market access proposals will lead to sweeping tariff cuts across all tariff lines leaving very little room for the protection of our highly vulnerable agricultural sub-sectors. Agriculture remains a major source of employment for many Filipinos. The sector provides jobs for 35 out of every 100 employed Filipinos.

Lamy cited the impressive increase of Philippine exports since WTO's creation in 1995. Here's a dose of reality for Lamy. We opened our market to ASEAN more than under the WTO system with our government flaunting on our competitive advantage with our ASEAN neighbors. Look at what happened.

Our agriculture trade with the ASEAN member countries has consistently posted a negative balance, even with Singapore that is not an agricultural country at all. The government figures showed our agricultural trade deficit with the ASEAN countries in 2004 was US$ 377M, slightly lower than US$381M in 2002. Our tariffs on agricultural products coming from ASEAN countries will fall to as low as 0-5 percent by 2015 because of the Philippines' accession to the Asean Free Trade Agreement-Common Economic Preferential Treatment.

The government will give our small farmers a favor by reviewing the existing agreement with ASEAN. We fought long and hard in the WTO to give our agricultural sector a reprieve from uncontrolled liberalization through the SP/SSM yet, the government preferred to throw this away in the ASEAN trade agreement.

Its time to show consistency in the country's negotiating position and the government should rethink its position in the ASEAN, bilaterals and other regional trade agreements. The government should stand for food and livelihood security and rural development in all the trade negotiations. On behalf of the Filipino small farmers and fishers, the government should be able to rise to the challenge posed by Lamy and developed countries to open up our market to trade liberalization.

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