ASEAN meet to liberalize farm trade, boost supplies

ASEAN meet to liberalize farm trade, boost supplies

SINGAPORE (Reuter): ASEAN agriculture ministers opened talks here yesterday to include farm products in the region's free trade plan and design ways to ensure a stable food supply for the region's 500 million people.

Delegates said the ministers would push for minimal tariffs for at least 60 percent for the commodities traded in the region from 1996 but keep out those so-called sensitive ones such as rice, sugar and coconut oil.

The reductions would be part of the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) plan targeted to be implemented by 2003. Under the scheme, which kicked off in 1993 starting with manufactured items, tariffs will be cut to between zero and five percent by 2003.

ASEAN members other than Singapore and Brunei are major rice, sugar and coconut growers, and some are major exporters as well. ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, groups Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and newcomer Vietnam.

Delegates said governments feared that opening up doors to rice or sugar imports would hurt small farmers and jeopardize fledgling agro-based industries.

The August 24-26 meeting is expected to confirm the list of agricultural products to be included in AFTA's Common Effective Preferential Tariff (CEPT) regime, delegates said.

Inclusion

Malaysia's Agriculture Minister Sulaiman Daud told the meeting that Kuala Lumpur backed the inclusion of unprocessed agricultural products in the CEPT scheme to bolster intra-ASEAN trade but said more time should be given to items as such as tobacco which it considered as "sensitive".

Malaysia has offered a total of 511 items for immediate inclusion into the scheme, he said.

Sulaiman said the inclusion of sensitive products would "affect the livelihood of our farmers and our efforts towards downstream processing of agricultural commodities as well as development of resource-based industries in member countries".

He said member states should be allowed to decide on their inclusion on the basis of affordability.

Indonesian officials said they would propose that ASEAN set a five-year target from 1998 to allow commodities temporarily sheltered from tariff cuts to graduate into the CEPT regime.

Indonesia has said it plans to exclude 26 products from tariff reductions to shield small farmers from cheaper imports.

Singapore's National Development Minister Lim Nhg Kiang said at the opening ceremony that the meeting was expected to find ways to cut the number of commodities being excluded from the tariff reductions.

He also said urgent measures must be taken to raise the region's food supplies to feed growing populations in view of shrinking farmland.

"We must quickly find ways to improve productivity and increase output in the agriculture sector," he said.