One year on — the free trade agreement grows
18th January 2011 by Andrew Matheson, Manila | No Comments
The trade agreement with the unwieldy name has just had its first birthday. The ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement (AANZFTA) entered into force on New Year’s Day 2010.
This month saw two more members of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) — Cambodia and Laos — become able to take advantage of the agreement. This brings to 11 the number of countries that have ratified it.
AANZFTA is a major achievement — it’s the first comprehensive trade agreement that ASEAN has been a party to. By comprehensive I mean that as well as covering traditional trade in goods and services, it deals with investment and other tricky areas like competition policy and intellectual property. It’s also a ‘living agreement’ that will be built on to make sure that businesses and consumers in all participating countries get as much benefit as possible.
A real highlight of 2010 for me was going to different Philippine cities to spread the word about AANZFTA’s benefits. It was a privilege to work with colleagues from Philippine government departments such as the Department of Trade and Industry, the Australian embassy, and our close collaborators in the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
In 2011 we at the embassy will focus on maximising the benefits of this trade agreement. We will also keep working to implement the separate agreements between New Zealand and the Philippines that were reached during the AANZFTA negotiations. These cover development of the Philippine dairy sector, and cooperation on environment and labour.
During the AANZFTA negotiations, New Zealand and the Philippines also agreed to start negotiating a reciprocal working holiday scheme. I’m a great fan of working holiday schemes, because they are a real investment in people-to-people links over the next generation.
The schemes give young people the chance to take long holidays of up to a year in the other country, and to work incidentally as a way of supporting the extended vacation. The aim of the schemes is to build up a group of people with knowledge of the other country and contacts there.
New Zealand has 34 working holiday schemes with countries around the world. We know from experience that they result in closer political and business ties for the long-term future. A working holiday scheme between New Zealand and the Philippines would be another strand in the strong ties that are developing between the two countries.
