By means of Justine Irish D. Table, Reporter
CANADA and the Philippines will start exploratory talks on bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) in the first half of 2025, officials said.
Mary Ng, Canada’s minister of export promotion, international trade and economic development, said a free trade agreement is important not only for Canadian companies but also for Philippine companies.
“The reason it’s important is because companies are always looking for predictability. Free trade agreements give us the rules of engagement, and I very much look forward to those negotiations, and we are launching exploratory discussions immediately,” she said during the Team Canada Trade Mission plenary session.
“I believe the teams will meet at the very beginning of the new year. We are already in December, so the new year is just a month away,” she added.
In a joint statement on Thursday, Canada and the Philippines said they aim to meet in the first half of 2025 for a first round of exploratory talks on a comprehensive Canada-Philippines Free Trade Agreement.
When asked how long negotiations on bilateral free trade agreements usually take, Ms. Ng said Canada recently completed negotiations for a Comprehensive Economic Partnership with Indonesia, which took just over three years.
She said Canada and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have also been working on negotiating a free trade agreement.
“The Philippines is part of it, so I actually think there has already been some very good work done through the Canada-ASEAN table that we can build on, I hope quite quickly and quite easily,” Ms Ng said.
Ms Ng also discussed the proposed ASEAN-Canada Free Trade Agreement (ACAFTA) during a meeting with Special Assistant to the President for Investment and Economic Affairs Frederick D. Go and Minister of Trade and Industry Ma. Cristina A. Roque on Wednesday.
Launched in November 2021, the ACAFTA covers market access for goods, services and investments, e-commerce, intellectual property rights and support for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises.
Guy Boileau, senior trade commissioner at the Canadian Embassy, previously said the ACAFTA negotiations would be completed next year.
“Currently, Canada is an important trading partner of the Philippines. Canada currently ranks 20the among the many countries, and we need to pump this up,” Mr Go said.
“And I am confident that this number will only increase with your visit to the Philippines. And I hope that perhaps before the end of this administration we will meet again and you will be our tene trading partner,” he added.
According to Ms. Ng, bilateral trade between the Philippines and Canada is currently estimated at about $5.6 billion – $3 billion in goods trade and $2.6 billion in services.
TRADE MISSION
Ms. Ng is in the Philippines to lead the Team Canada Trade Mission, which consists of 300 individual delegates from 200 Canadian companies and business groups.
“We have a strong delegation of more than 300 Canadian participants, and they are joined by 400 Filipino business leaders, and together they want to forge new relationships and new partnerships,” she said.
Among the deals made during the trade mission is Kickstart Ventures’ investment in a Canadian artificial intelligence (AI) company called Lydia AI, which aims to increase insurance accessibility in Southeast Asia.
The Philippine Department of Budget and Management also signed a major contract with Canada’s FreeBalance to improve the department’s financial management systems.
Export Development Canada also opened an office in the Philippines, making it the first foreign export credit agency of a group of seven country to establish a presence in the Philippines.
An administrative agreement under the Canadian nuclear cooperation agreement with the Philippines will also be signed on Thursday.
“This will build on our work in the region through the Trade Gateway for Nuclear Development for the Indo-Pacific that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently announced,” Ms Ng said. “As a Tier 1 nuclear country, Canada is positioned to support the Philippines’ energy security objectives with our expertise across the nuclear supply chain.”
She also said other companies have also expressed plans to have one center or an office in the Philippines, such as OpenText, Ostrom Climate and Maple Leaf Foods.