PHL shoving TPP into the back burner — DOF

The Philippines is likely to put prospects of joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) in the back burner and take a closer look at the possibilities surrounding the China-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the Department of Finance (DOF) said Monday.

"I personally would like to look at RCEP more closely because that's the ten ASEAN countries, I think. That one, we are more open to," Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III said in a statement on Monday.

The Cabinet official noted the TPP is being reviewed all over again, including by the US. "So maybe we'll put that in the back burner."

Envisioned to account for 40 percent of the global economy, the TPP was signed by 12 member countries in February – Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam.

Initiated by the US, the TPP is a free-trade agreement (FTA) that is supposed to expand economic ties and slash tariff barriers among its members.

It will see ratification if at least six countries which comprise 85 percent of the total gross domestic production approve to implement the final text of the deal within the next two years.

The Philippines was interested in joining the trade agreement and did some consultations under the administration of former President Benigno Aquino III.

US President-elect Donald Trump, however, made it one of his campaign promises to pull out of the TPP and impose steeper tariffs on goods from China and Mexico.

On the other hand, the RCEP is a separate FTA that comprises the ASEAN member states and six partners Australia, China, India, Japan, Republic of Korea, and New Zealand.

Its members account for almost half of the world's population, almost 30 percent of the global gross domestic product and over a quarter of the world's exports, the DOF noted.

"President Duterte's early moves on the foreign policy front makes him the right person to chair the ASEAN as it turns 50 next year against the backdrop of fresh challenges attending the advent of an apparently new global order shaped in large part by the new relations of the US and China with the rest of the world," Dominguez said.

The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) said in October the Philippines is moving strongly and swiftly towards regional economic rebalancing for closer integration in Asia.

"This is why the President prioritized foreign trips to the ASEAN and Asia. As a result, the Philippines has now opened more widely its opportunities for trade and investment to a market of 1.8 billion people across the region," it said.

Trade and Industry Secretary Ramon Lopez told a business forum in Beijing last month that Duterte's state visit to China would reap $13.5 billion in deals. — Jon Viktor Cabuenas/VDS, GMA News