Tariff review to provide relief for local goods

Trade and Industry Secretary Manuel Roxas II assured yesterday that the government’s ongoing tariff review would provide relief to locally-produced finished products.

The comprehensive tariff review would start with 200 out of 1,350 locally-produced finished product lines.

"The goal of the review is to make the tariff adjustments at levels right for the Philippine economy," Roxas said.

The general direction the government wants to achieve is to take the tariffs to levels favoring the items in the domestic industry and consequently strengthen their competitive advantage," he added.

The Philippines, in line with its trade liberalization plans, had adopted a gradual tariff reduction program in the early 1990s.

But the tariff reduction plan had not factored in the Asian financial crisis and the global slowdown following the rise in terrorist activities.

Thus, by the late 1990s, government decided to slow down on this earlier tariff reduction schedule after realizing that local industries are beginning to suffer the seemingly headlong rush to liberalization.

In fact, the government decided to freeze tariffs at their 2001 level while undertaking a more comprehensive review that would allow the government to go back to the 1998 tariff levels and come up with a new tariff reduction scale.

Roxas pointed out that based on the World Trade Report of 2003, the Philippines has much lower applied rates compared to other countries in all products.

The Philippines’ applied rates averages 5.7 percent while its bound rates averages 25.6 percent.

Average applied rates for non-agricultural products are at 5.2 percent compared to its bound rates that averaged at 23.4 percent.