QUEZON
CITY, Jan. 7 (PIA) - The Philippines notched among the highest usage of ASEAN
trade deals in the region, according to experts, urging Asian neighbors to
adopt the country’s outreach campaigns to help more businesses reap integration
gains.
Efforts
to help entrepreneurs meet requirements for obtaining lower tariffs--such as
programs implemented by the Philippines--could bridge the gap between Southeast
Asian firms’ current preference for using bilateral instead of regional deals,
the experts said.
“ASEAN-led
FTAs have been generally underused,” Alexander C. Chandra, TKN Southeast
Asia Coordinator for the International Institute for Sustainable Development
and Ruben Hattari, executive director of the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) Business Advisory Council, said in a report published last
month in Indonesia.
“Notably,
in many instances, the utilization rates of bilateral FTAs pursued by an
individual ASEAN member state are generally higher in comparison to those
carried out under the ASEAN framework,” they added.
This,
as the experts recalled findings from an ASEAN-Business Advisory Council survey
in 2012 stating that firms in the region were generally hindered by the lack of
information on ASEAN initiatives.
The
Philippines, however, is said to have fared better in terms of ASEAN trade deal
usage on the back of deliberate efforts to inform firms and facilitate
documentary compliance.
Messrs.
Chandra and Hattari pointed to findings from the ASEAN Secretariat in 2010 that
the Philippines was “rated the highest user of FTAs (free trade agreements)
among Southeast Asian countries.”
They
also cited previous reports pegging Philippine usage of the ASEAN-Australia-New
Zealand trade deal at 76.1% in 2012 as compared against Thailand (24.6% in
2011), Vietnam (15.9% in 2011), and Indonesia (1% in 2012).
Other
countries like Indonesia, which has had a poor showing in usage rates would
thus do well to “learn from its neighbor, the Philippines, in its attempt to
improve the awareness and utilization of the country’s FTAs,” the two experts
said.
