The European Union parliament will likely retain the trade incentives accorded to the Philippines under the EU Generalized System of Preferences Plus program, EU Ambassador to the Philippines Franz Jessen said Wednesday.
“I do not want to preempt the report, but I guess the report will not be a surprise to the Philippines,” Jessen said in a pre-event briefing for the upcoming EU-Philippine Business Summit on Oct. 17, 2017.
The EU parliament conducts an annual review of the beneficiary countries’ availment of the trade program to validate these countries’ compliance to conditions set by EU.
The report will be released in 2018, following a three-month evaluation of the nine countries that qualified under the program.
Jessen said the EU was monitoring the Philippines compliance with international agreements on labor and human rights.
“There were mistakes that happened, but what is important here is that the [Philippine] government has taken proper steps to resolve these problems,” he said.
He said the Philippines was working closely with the EU, continually updating the world’s biggest trading bloc of the developments on human rights and labor situation in the Philippines.
The Philippines is also poised to seek the EU’s consent to further expand the list of tariff lines under the GSP+, on top of the over 2,000 tariff lines approved by the EU earlier.
Philippine exports to the EU via the GSP+ hit 1.71 billion euros in 2016, or 10 percent higher than 1.55 billion euros in 2015.
Meanwhile, the European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines asked the national government to scrap the minimum paid up capital on the retail sector to give interested European micro, small and medium enterprises the opportunity to invest in the Philippines.
“The way I look at it, we should outlive protectionism. In an ideal market there shouldn’t be a cap on investments. An investor should be allowed to invest even if it is just a small coffee shop he may want to put up,” said ECCP president Guenther Taus.
The National Economic Development Authority has a pending proposal to bring down the minimum retail paid-up capital to $200,000 from $2.5 million.
Based on data from the European Chamber, the EU became the fastest and biggest market for Philippine goods making up 15.5 percent of total exports with a growth of 48.3 percent in 2016.
The EU-Philippine Business Summit is a trade forum and venue for facilitating dialog between key industry players and the Philippine government.
Over 350 delegates from Europe, Asia and the Philippines are expected to attend the event to be held at Solaire Resort and Casino in Parañaque City.
The summit is organized by the EU Philippine Business Network, co-funded by the EU in cooperation with the different European chambers of commerce.