PH, Korea to launch FTA portal

The Philippines and Korea aim to launch a free trade agreement (FTA) information portal in the fourth quarter of the year, which is part of a project they are developing to optimize their FTA and other FTAs of the country.

Francis Lopez, president and chief executive officer of InterCommerce Network Services, Inc., said another component of the Philippines-Korea FTA project is the origin management system for exporters.

Lopez said the FTA information portal is “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, it takes about 20 days for the processing of the PER,” he said.

Lopez said that under this project, the certificates of origin are targeted to be issued in five minutes similar to what Korea is doing.

Source:Malaysa