The House of Representatives adopted on Tuesday afternoon, Feb. 21 a resolution expressing the chamber's full support for the immediate ratification of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) deal.

House Resolution (HR) No.728, principally filed by House Speaker Martin Romualdez, was adopted via simple voice vote (ayes vs. nayes) during plenary session Tuesday.

Senior Deputy Majority Leader and Ilocos Norte 1st district Rep. Sandro Marcos, an author of the measure, delivered a sponsorship speech in the floor prior to its adoption.

The measure's adoption was pushed even as the Senate was in the process of ratifying the RCEP agreement during its own plenary session Tuesday--something that the presidential son alluded to in his speech.

"My dear colleagues, now is the best time to take on the challenge and consider . The world's trade impetus towards globalization, digitalization, and board-less trade will stop nor regress for us," he said.

"As a preview to the beneficial and favorable prospect of our formal accession to the RCEP is the recent successful and productive State visits to Singapore, Indonesia, and China of President Ferdinand Romauldez Marcos Jr. The local business leaders in these ASEAN countries have pledged several Investments totaling to billion pesos worth of foreign direct investments.

"These foreign direct investments will surely expand the economic opportunities of the Philippines by reinforcing our foreign ties, and will prop job opportunities that can counter the country's unemployment and poverty problems," the Ilocano said.

A minor typo was amended in the text of HR No.728 before the majority moved for its adoption.

The authors believe that ratification of the RCEP agreement would hasten benefits such as job opportunities to trickle down to Filipinos.

The measure noted that, on Nov. 15, 2020, the Philippines has signed the RCEP agreement, a trade agreement that covers trade areas for goods, services and investments, sustainable growth, and business environment involving the 10 member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and its five other free trade agreement (FTA) partners, namely Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand and Republic of Korea;

"Due to various FTAs that the Philippines entered into in the Asia-Pacific Region, there is overlapping of the numerous bilateral FTAs involving different sectors, with varying levels of commitment for tariff reduction and conflicting technical trade rules," the resolution read.

The RCEP is expected to address this debacle.

"The complex set of overlapping FTAs negatively impacts economies by unnecessarily imposing transaction costs on business operations and can even potentially create competing trade blocs," Romualdez, Leyte’s 1st district representative, said.

Romualdez and the other authors reckoned that the benefits RCEP will bring to the Philippines "far outweigh the risk, as it will promote greater openness, create a more business-friendly environment, encourage closer integration of economies, and provide a more stable and predictable rules-based system of trade".