Senate wraps up RCEP debates

By Butch Fernandez @butchfBM, Cai U. Ordinario @caiordinario & Jovee Marie N. dela Cruz @joveemarie

Senators need to muster at least 16 votes to ratify the treaty that had been signed in the previous administration, but which was not ratified in the 18th Congress for lack of time to tackle serious concerns that it would permanently, substantially damage key sectors, especially agriculture.

Senators stood up one after the other late Tuesday to interpellate the treaty’s main endorsers in the chamber—Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri and Senate President Pro Tempore Loren Legarda— as well as grill the country’s top negotiator, Assistant Secretary Allan B. Gepty of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).

Gepty was earlier grilled at length by Sen. Chiz Escudero, who was not impressed by the argument that only a little over a dozen agricultural commodity groups will have tariff rates lower than were set under existing freetrade agreements among Asean countries.

Escudero said the exclusions list—of so-called “sensitive items”

See “RCEP,” A2