The Philippines is hoping that a bill that would give preferential duty treatment to Philippine garment exports to the United States pending before the US Congress will be passed.

Citing the government’s financial need to respond to the damages brought about by a series of typhoons and storms, President Arroyo pushed for the immediate passage of the House Resolution 3039 or Save Our Industries Act of  2009, which is expected to be passed in the middle of next year, the Office of the Press Secretary (OPS) said in a statement.

The cost of rehabilitation and reconstruction amounts at between P30 billion and P50 billion, it said.

The signing of the law would mean that the Philippines’ export of garments to the US will grow from last year’s US$1.2 billion to between $3 billion and $3.5 billion in the first three years. It would also triple jobs from 200,000 to 600,000 in the industry.

The bill now pending before the US House Committee on Ways and Means is authored by Rep. James McDermott (D-Washington). This is also in response to the near death of the US textile industry following the influx of cheap garments from China at the start of the year.

Under the bill, the Philippines can manufacture clothes and apparels out of the US-made textiles and export the finished products back to the US at zero tariff instead of the standard 30 percent to 40 percent tariff, the OPS said.

The garment sector is currently a poor second to electronics among the country’s top dollar-earners. The garment sector generated only $771 million in the first semester of the year, 22.2 percent less than the year ago level. As in previous years, the United States was the country’s biggest market for garments, easily accounting for 60 percent of the total market.

Leading the industry lobby is the Garments and Textile Development Board GTDO, which was created in 2008 by the President, a former executive director of GTDO’s predecessor, the Garments and Textile Export Board (GTEB), before she entered politics.

GTEB, the regulatory body for garment manufacturers in the utilization of garment quotas, was shut down in 2005 with the phasing out of quotas under the Agreement of Clothing and Textiles (ACT) of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

In its place, GTDO has come up with a quota-less road map for the industry, which is centered on securing a preferential trading arrangement with the United States and eventually with other major markets such as the European Union.