The European Union has strongly urged the Philippines to fully implement the economic reform measures to end its long-held image as a mere secondary market in ASEAN for EU investors.
In a presentation at the virtual presscon for the launch of the European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippine (ECCP) Doing Business in the Philippines Guidebook, Maurizio Cellini, head of Trade and Economic Affairs, First Counsellor of the EU Delegation to the Philippines, noted that the latest available data showed that European investments in the Philippines grew by 8 percent in 2019 to 14 billion euros.
While this is good, he reminded the Philippines that the European investment in the country is only roughly 4 percent of the total EU stock investments in the Southeast Asian region.
“The Philippine is an important for us ... but the fact remains that for too long, European Union investors/entrepreneurs have seen the Philippines a secondary market compared to other ASEAN countries,” said Cellini.
With clear economic recovery underway, Cellini emphasized, that the commercial relationship with the Philippines needs a lot more to be done and make the Philippines an attractive business destination for EU entrepreneurs.
“It's opportune time for the Philippines to adopt the reforms and policies that will lead the country towards a resilient and sustainable recovery,” said Cellini as he cited the importance to business and investments the full implementation of economic reforms recently passed by the legislative branch of the government.
“In particular, we hope to see the amendments of the Public Services Act and the Foreign Investment Act come to fruition now and we enact it to actual laws,” he said.
The ECCP, likewise, pushed for the full implementation of other laws including the Customs Modernization, Ease of Doing Business, CREATE Act, and the amendment to the Retail Trade Liberalization act.
In terms of trade, Cellini said that the EU Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) Plus is expected to account in 2021 for around 25 percent of total Philippine exports to the EU or approximately 2 billion euros with agriculture and food products benefiting from this zero-duty privilege.
EU share of the total exports of the Philippines was 11 percent, equivalent to $8.5 billion in value in 2021.
According to Eurostat data, for the first 11 months of 2021 the EU imported worth 7.2 billion euros from the Philippines while EU exports to the Philippines 6.1 billion euros.
“This figure shows that the Philippines in 2021 enjoyed in approximately 1 billion euro trade surplus against the EU,” noted Cellini.
In addition, he said, Filipino products enjoy preferential access to the European market under the GSP plus trade preference with the GSP utilization rate in the range of 70 percent.
Eurostat figures also show that EU agricultural imports from the Philippines recorded 35 percent growth while industrial products, including machinery mechanical appliances as well as electronic products remaining the larger as a product of the Philippine to the EU recorded a 20 percent increase year on year.