Phl, Korea eyes FTA info portal launch in Q4
The FTA information portal will be ‘user-friendly’ where exporters can login, input their product and then determine the best country to target and which FTA to utilize.
Daily TribuneThe FTA information portal will be ‘user-friendly’ where exporters can login, input their product and then determine the best country to target and which FTA to utilize.
President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol witness the signing of the historic Philippine-Korea Free Trade Agreement by the Philippines' Trade and Industry Secretary Alfredo Pascual and Trade Minister Ahn Duk Geun of South Korea on the sidelines of the 43rd ASEAN Summit in Jakarta, Indonesia last 7 September 2023.
Photograph courtesy of DTI
The Philippines and Korea are aiming to launch a free trade agreement (FTA) information portal in the fourth quarter of this year as part of a project being developed by both countries to optimize their FTA and other FTAs of the country.
InterCommerce Network Services Inc. president and CEO Francis Lopez said another component of the Philippines-Korea FTA project is the origin management system for exporters.
Lopez said the FTA information portal will be “user-friendly” where exporters can login, input their product and then determine the best country to target and which FTA to utilize.
“There may be two or more FTAs that would be applicable and the exporters would be able to check which one would be more advantageous for the exporter to use in terms of FTA,” he said during the recent general membership meeting of the Philippine Exporters Confederation Inc.
Lopez said the origin management system for exporters, on the other hand, is targeted to be implemented or launched by the third or fourth quarter of 2025.
“This will be together with the automated processes for the product evaluation report (PER) of the BoC (Bureau of Customs) and also the enhancements of the electronic certificate of origin issuance. Currently, as you know, the PER is manually processed by the BoC and it takes about 20 days for the processing of the PER,” he said.
Five minutes
Lopez said that under this project, the certificates of origin are targeted to be issued in five minutes similar to what Korea is doing.
“In Korea, it takes them about 20 minutes to do the origin determination and just another five minutes for the issuance of the certificate of origin. This is possible mainly because they have an automated system on the issuance of certificate of origin,” he added.
He said there will be a module that will be provided to the exporters so they can integrate their system to the origin management system, and this will facilitate the process.
Lopez said a version called FTA Korea Plus is being developed, which currently has more than 32,000 exporters as subscribers, generating 7.8 million origin determination and leading to issuance of 60,000 certificates of origin.
Philippines-Korea FTA project
He said the Philippines-Korea FTA project aims to enhance the competitiveness of Philippine export products to target markets where the country has FTAs, reduce the time and cost of preparation and submission of documents for PER and certificate of origin, and facilitate the conduct of origin determination.
