วันพฤหัสบดีที่ 7 มกราคม พ.ศ. 2553

Tensions over rice stymie Asean tariff hopes

January 7 2010
By Kevin Brown in Singapore and Tim Johnston in Jakarta
Financial Times (UK)

South-east Asia’s hopes of completing its emerging tariff-free trade area were dealt a blow on Thursday by a flare-up in long-standing tensions over rice between Thailand and the Philippines.

Six members of the 10-country Association of South-East Asian Nations achieved tariff-free trade for 99.1 per cent of goods from January 1, with the remaining countries due to achieve zero tariffs by 2015.

Asean, which has a population of 580m and an economy bigger than India’s, sidelined the rice dispute by agreeing to come back to the issue after the implementation of zero tariffs for the bulk of tradeable goods.

But the prospects for a deal receded on Thursday when Manila announced that it would maintain a 35 per cent tariff on rice imports, while providing Thailand with a tariff-free allowance of 360,000 tonnes a year.

Manila’s action is not a breach of the trade agreement, which lets rice be treated as a “highly sensitive” product until a deal is reached on a tariff cap.

The Philippines is the world’s largest importer of rice, but Thailand’s attempts last year to sell rice to Manila consistently lost out to government-to-government deals between the Philippine and Vietnamese governments.

Analysts said the tariff-free quota was unlikely to be completely taken up by open market purchases because Thai prices were considerably higher than those of Vietnam.

Separately, Thailand, the world’s biggest rice exporter, said it would restrict imports to low-quality “broken” rice used as a raw material, and insisted that imports would have to pass through six specified “checkpoints”.

The commerce ministry said imports would be allowed only within two three-month periods at times when Thai production was low, and would be subject to licensing, quality inspections and checks on origin.

The Thai government is having trouble shifting the 6m tonnes of rice it has stockpiled as a result of an intervention-buying scheme designed to protect the agricultural sector, and is wary of allowing in large quantities of cheap imports.

Thailand switched from such buying last year to a direct support scheme for smaller farmers, and the stockpiles are set to fall in coming months.

Thailand’s intervention pricing scheme made it an attractive destination for smugglers from surrounding lower-cost producers such as Vietnam and Cambodia. But Kiat Sittheeamorn, Thailand’s chief trade representative, said the switch to direct payments six months ago had cut illegal imports.

In spite of its export trade, Thailand is regarded as vulnerable to imports of cheap rice because of its high production costs, which are partly a reflection of the high quality product that constitutes most of its output. The administrative measures announced on Thursday do not affect tariff rates and are therefore not a breach of the trade agreement.

But they do illustrate the depth of antagonism to rice trading that exists in the region, and the difficulty of negotiating a compromise on a common tariff regime.

Additional reporting by Roel Landingin in Manila.

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