Supplemental agreement will not lessen JPEPA’s inherent

In a last-ditch attempt to save the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA), government negotiators are in talks with the Japanese ambassador on a supplemental agreement to address its unconstitutional provisions.

But No Deal! spokesperson Arnold Padilla said that although JPEPA’s unconstitutional provisions is a legitimate concern, the issue is beyond constitutionality. “The ratification or rejection of JPEPA should depend on what concrete gains we will get from it and how will it affect our industries and sectors,” he said.

So far, the executive has failed to answer these fundamental questions as shown in the in the past Senate hearings, Padilla added. “In fact, the Senate hearings have exposed how grossly one-sided JPEPA is in favor of Japan , and how government negotiators have incompetently negotiated the deal,” he said.

“The Senate must pursue this and not limit JPEPA into an issue of constitutionality, because the impact on development and livelihoods are the more important issues as far as JPEPA is concerned,” he added.

Because of the different levels of development of highly industrialized Japan and backward agrarian Philippines , the country would naturally be put in a subordinate position with regard to any free-trade agreements. Thus, any liberalization agreement would put the country at a disadvantage sans strict provisions to protect the Philippine domestic economy, which the JPEPA does not have.

Padilla said that it is vital for domestic producers to be protected from foreign competition through trade barriers, in order to allow them to gradually build up their capacity to produce. Trade liberalization and eventual zero tariffs under the JPEPA would deny producers this chance.

The glaring inequity of JPEPA becomes more apparent if the actual conditions of the two economies are compared. Agriculture directly accounts for 15% of the Philippines ‘ gross domestic product, but only 1.7% of Japan ’s, making the sector more important to the Philippines . And yet there are no protections for the country’s agriculture sector from unhampered liberalization in the JPEPA. In fact, under the Agreement, Japan excludes 239 items from immediate or future commitments to reduce tariffs, while the Philippines protects only two items – rice and salt – from tariff reductions.

In fact, the real intent of JPEPA is to ensure that Japanese monopoly capital has as total access to the markets, labor and natural resources of the Philippines, even as it ensures that protections to the Japanese economy are maintained, and this is something a mere side agreement will not address, according to Padilla.

“The JPEPA’s inherent unfairness means it is not amenable to any sort of improvement or fine-tuning,” Padilla said. “The free-trade pact must be rejected by the Senate, not just because it is unconstitutional, but because it threatens the country’s economic sovereignty and its future prospects for economic development.”