Welcoming a delegation from the Filipino Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii and leaders of the US Philippine Business Club in the chamber’s first public forum of the year, PCCI president Donald G. Dee told the Filipino-American businessmen that results of the World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial meeting in Hongkong last December show that the integration of divergent Asian economies may arrive much earlier than the forging of global trade rules under WTO.

"In this light, it is only practical for the United States and the Philippines to speed up the holding of bilateral talks on a US-Philippine Free Trade Agreement, and agreement that would certainly be easier to arrive at considering the long historical and sentimental ties of the two nations," Dee said.

Dee further suggested that the RP-US trade pact may be made broader to include development aid in support of trade plus investments.

Other US companies should follow the lead taken by automotive giant Ford Corporation, of deciding to return its manufacturing facilities to the Philippines to get a bigger slice of the rapidly growing Asian car market.

Ford recently announced it is expanding its car manufacturing plant in the Philippines.

Dee cited several trends that make investing in the Philippines more interesting for US manufacturing to use the islands as launching platform for exports to a fast emerging Asian common market.

"Labor costs in the industrial coastal provinces of China," he pointed out, "have levelled with labor costs in the Philippines. At the high rate the Chinese economy is growing, labor costs there are bound to surpass that in the Philippines soon the same way this happened in Taiwan, Hongkong, Singapore, Korea and Malaysia."

And with India and Korea joining China in pursuing free trade agreements with the ASEAN trade bloc, the prospects for an Asian common market are excellent, seen as the biggest in the world.

The Philippines and the United States must team up to take full advantage of the inevitable integration, said Dee.

US industries run the risk of getting difficulty penetrating the Asian region as outsiders if they do not link up to the regional supply chain through facilities based in the region.

Dee said that the country has developed several special economic zones for light and heavy industries that may host new locators.

The local climate for investments is also getting better. Dee told the Fil-Am businessmen that of all the proposed amendments to the Philippine constitution, those that liberalize ownership of businesses in sectors presently reserved to Filipinos and Filipinoowned companies have gotten majority support.

These include residential, commercial and industrial land, media, advertising, exploitation of natural resources, utilities, telecommunications, tourism and other services.(Edu Lopez)