Despite the postponement of the 12th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Philippines vowed to continue to engage in domestic and international work towards the attainment of its national objectives.
Due to the emergence of the new Omicron variant and the latest Swiss government’s travel restrictions, the highly anticipated meeting scheduled on November 30 to December 3 in Geneva, Switzerland was indefinitely postponed.
Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez, who leads the Philippine delegation, said among the issues the country will be pushing are decisions on trade and health initiative which would make vaccines and therapeutics more inclusive, and the conclusion of fisheries subsidies negotiation.
Together with Agriculture Secretary William Dar, Lopez also intends to push for the conclusion of the fisheries subsidies negotiations where the Philippines’ main objective is to ensure that no geographic area is carved out just because a territorial issue is raised by a member-state.
One of the expected outcomes of the conference would have been the conclusion of the fisheries subsidies negotiation.
Ministerial decisions or statements were also supposed to be released on trade and public health including access to vaccines and medicines, e-commerce, investment facilitation, and services domestic regulations.
“Access to safe, effective affordable and high-quality diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines has been a consistent policy (by the Philippines) across all fora… and a concrete decision at the WTO forum on trade and health would have been a milestone in addressing this objective,” said Lopez.
Lopez said the DTI had been working closely with the private sector to encourage investments not only in the manufacturing of vaccines and medicines but even in research and development and clinical trial test.
