RP assails U.S. import barrier

RP assails U.S. import barrier

MANILA (AFP): The United States has unfairly banned imports of shrimps and prawns from the Philippines for violating environmental standards on harvesting them, a trade official said here.

Trade Undersecretary Cesar Bautista said the Philippines had been included in a list of Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN) members banned from exporting shrimps and prawns to the United States because their harvesting methods also kill endangered sea-turtles.

Bautista said the Philippines should not be covered by the ban since the its shrimps and prawns were raised in aquaculture farms, not harvested from the sea.

He noted that Brunei and Indonesia had already been exempted from the ban because they did not use fishing methods that kill sea-turtles and added that the Philippines should also be exempted "since in the first place, the rule does not apply to us."

Bautista said he had raised the concern in recent meetings with U.S. trade officials in Washington.

Philippine exports of shrimps and prawns to the United States hit US$20 million last year.

Bautista also said the Philippines could finally be removed from the U.S. watchlist of countries that do not adequately enforce intellectual property rights (IPR) if the Philippine congress were to pass a stronger copyright law.

He told reporters that the International Intellectual Property Alliance, a U.S. group that works for IPR enforcement, said U.S. companies lost at least $112 million from IPR violations in the Philippines last year.

This included $70 million from piracy of books, $26 million from movies and $3 million from audio recordings.

The Philippines was downgraded last year from the U.S. "priority watchlist" of IPR violators who faced possible trade sanctions but it still remains on the secondary watchlist.

ASEAN members are Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.