The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
By Riza Lozada
Local business groups wanted their voices heard in the crafting of trade strategies as they reiterated that government-private sector collaboration is now more critical than ever in formulating policies, especially those concerning foreign trade negotiations, to ensure Philippine interests are promoted.
“Business should be involved in trade-policy formulation… and have a strong voice in terms of the trade agenda of the country…because business is impacted by the outcomes of trade negotiations,” Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) Secretary General Cris Frianeza said.
Frianeza, who spoke at a recent government-private sector dialogue on consulting with stakeholders on trade negotiations, said business participation is now even more imperative since the trade agenda has become “politically sensitive,” linked to domestic regulations and altering the playing field for businesses.
By partnering with government, he added, industry hopes to help in creating policies that provide an enabling environment that allows the economy to capitalize on trade and investment opportunities.
“So basically all this involvement of business is [designed] to work with government in effecting a sound policy environment and to counteract any adverse implications of our trade negotiating posture,” he added.
To deepen the partnership, Frianeza said PCCI formed a few years ago the think tank called the Universal Access to Competitiveness and Trade (U-ACT), whose key tasks include arriving at a consensus among members of the business community.
He said the think tank’s concern is not so much to convince government to consult with business not just “at times” but as a standard practice; it is more to facilitate coordination among the private sector for effective trade policy action.
There are many viewpoints in the private sector “and we took up the cudgels of consolidating all of these positions to be submitted to government later on,” Frianeza said.
The Philippine Exporters Confederation Inc. (Philexport) agreed that the administration’s trade policies and trade negotiation initiatives should rest on a bedrock of government-private sector cooperation.
“Consultations between our government negotiators and industry are critical to ensure that we are indeed promoting the national interest,” Philexport Assistant Vice President for Advocacy Ma. Flordeliza Leong said.
“In our various industry workshops and consultations in this area, we found out that government has a very difficult balancing act to hurdle. But political will, anchored on a national development plan, can help push the Philippine agenda forward,” she added.
She reaffirmed the export community’s support for government’s continued broad-based consultation and called for intensified information dissemination and training, saying such processes need to be institutionalized.
Leong also stated that Philexport is working with U-ACT in organizing information dissemination, advocacy, and capacity- and consensus-building activities with various stakeholders “as part of the continuing engagement of the private sector in the globalization process.”
The Department of Trade and Industry, through the Bureau of International Trade Relations and together with the European Union- Trade Related Technical Assistance 3, organized the three-day consultation in order to enhance the capability of agencies to address issues in trade negotiations.