Much progress has been made in pursuing liberalization of agricultural trade in the Philippines. However, some significant tariff and non-tariff barriers remain. This study evaluates the economic impacts of completing the agenda of policy reform by removal of these remaining trade barriers....

The study identifies outstanding issues and bottlenecks and provides recommendations to facilitate the Philippines' full compliance to its commitments to the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC). Various in-depth interviews and surveys were conducted with concerned stakeholders from government...

To understand the design of JPEPA and EFTA, notably the similarities with other FTAs of Japan and EFTA-member countries, respectively, and how these similarities affect Philippine trade, the study proposes the use of text-of-trade-analysis, that is, text analysis employing textas-data. The paper...

The Rice Liberalization Act (RA 11203), signed last February 2019, reverses decades-long placing quantitative restrictions on rice importation administered by the National Food Authority. The Act goes further by dismantling interventionist policy in the rice industry by divesting the Authority...

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has been working toward the free movement of goods in the region. Although significant progress has been made in the opening up of markets through tariff elimination, addressing the issues on nontariff measures (NTMs) remain. With the reduction...

As several countries have reduced tariff rates, other forms of regulatory measures that impact on trade have proliferated. These regulations, collectively known as Non-Tariff Measures (NTMs), can be imposed on both imports and exports. Using descriptive indicators, NTMs could be measured with...

Rules of Origin (ROO) set the criteria in determining the nationality of a product and where a product was made. The importance of ROO has increased in the past years as more countries engage in Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and begun treating goods differently according to where the product was...

One of the objectives of the evolving ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) is to promote free investment flows and freer capital flows. By deepening economic integration among them, ASEAN Member Countries can establish a region-wide production base that will attract more foreign direct investment and...