Thailand wants the Philippines to buy 600,000 metric tons of rice if it
wants Bangkok to support Manila in talks on quantitative restrictions (QR) on
the commodity under the auspices of Word Trade Organization.
The Thais want this deal done
under a government-to-government agreement, Philippine officials said
Wednesday.
"They keep on changing their
figures,” National Food Authority (NFA) legal counsel and special assistant to
the administrator Gilbert Lauengco told reporters at the sidelines of NFA’s
40th founding anniversary at Food Terminal Inc. in Taguig City.
“Maybe because they have so much
disposable production,” Lauengco added.
Philippines is talking to several
WTO member countries, including Thailand, to further extend the QR on rice to
2015 as a way of protecting Filipino farmers in the run up to the
implementation of free trade under the ASEAN single market in 2015.
ASEAN groups Brunei Darussalam,
Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore,
Thailand, and Vietnam.
QR is a policy on protecting
countries by limiting the volume of imported rice. The policy is sanctioned
under existing WTO rules.
“Nevertheless, we are still to
assess the merits of the deal,” Lauengco said, noting, “If we give in to their
demand, then it's like we already agreed to lift the QR."
Thailand is the world's biggest
rice producer with a yearly average output of 90 million MT. It has, in its
possession, excess output of more than 11 million MT rice.
"This could possibly be the
reason why Thailand is looking for a government-to-government transaction,”
outgoing NFA administrator Lito Banayo told reporters in a separate briefing
Wednesday.
“They are asking for a bigger
quota since it will be difficult for them to sell, except for their high-value
rice,” Banayo said, adding, “Some of their stocks are more than two years
old."
Other WTO members – US, Canada
and Australian – are also driving hard bargains on non-rice concessions (meat,
poultry, vegetables and fruits) "that are not within the scope of authority
of the NFA," said Banayo.
Washington, Ottawa, and Canberra
earlier told Manila they let the QR on rice continue – as requested by the
Philippines – if Manila would agree to reduce the restrictions on other
commodities they ship to the Southeast Asian country.
Banayo cautioned that it is not
viable for Philippines to get into a well-defined supply agreement on rice with
another country, given that NFA has an ongoing buying program with the Filipino
farmers under the Procurement Law.
In earlier WTO negotiations,
Bangkok asked Manila to increase the volume of imported Thai rice from 350,000
MT to 500,000 MT.
China, Vietnam, India, El
Salvador, and Pakistan similarly asked for a higher volume of rice shipment to
the Philippines – though nowhere near as high as what Thailand wants.
Last November, the Philippines
asked the Geneva-based WTO to extend the QR on rice for three more years until
2012.
In its request, Manila cited the
need to get Filipinos farmers ready for regional trade and achieve rice
self-sufficiency by 2013.
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