Manila, Philippines

In a hope to secure better market access, Philippine Senate on Tuesday ratified the nation's entry into the world’s biggest free trade bloc, Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). 

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RCEP is a regional free trade agreement which entered into force on 1 January 2022 originally with 10 parties, namely, Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, China, Japan, Laos, New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The grouping then entered into force for the Republic of Korea on 1 February 2022, for Malaysia on 18 March 2022 and for Indonesia on 2 January 2023. 

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The RCEP member countries accounts for around 30 per cent of global gross domestic product.

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Arsenio Balisacan, Secretary in Philippine's National Economic and Development Authority welcomed the ratification and tweeted that the agreement will provide "another engine for growing the economy and making it part of rapidly rising Asia." "We thank the Senate’s honorable members for taking this bold and game-changing move," he added. 

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Balisacan while speaking with reporters said, “Foreign investors look for places to go where there are clear rules, particularly trade facilitation, investment policies, and which are followed and not subject to change at any time." 

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The resolution to ratify the treaty was passed in Senate late Tuesday by a vote of 20-1, with one abstention.

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The agreement is supposed to lower costs for companies by letting them export products anywhere within the bloc. It provides benefit for countries and frees them of separate requirements for each country while trading. 

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Even as Philippine has ratified the agreement, the country has seen dissenting voices of farmers, other organizations and country's private sector who have expressed their strong opposition on the agreement ratified by Duterte government. Meanwhile, after long discussion, India had exited the agreement in 2019 saying that the proposed agreement was unacceptable. 

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