The Chief Trade Advisor for the Pacific Island countries is defending the planned PACER-Plus agreement, saying it represents an important opportunity for the region.
Transcript
The Chief Trade Advisor for the Pacific Island countries is defending the planned PACER-Plus agreement, saying it represents an important opportunity for the region.
PACER-Plus negotiations between Australia, New Zealand and 14 Pacific Island nations, include region-wide agreements on trade in goods and services, investment, labour mobility and development, are expected to be finalised at the end of this year.
Mary Baines reports.
The Fiji government says the Pacific trade agreement PACER-Plus is unbalanced and needs to be tailored to better serve the region. Fiji TV reports the Minister for Industry, Trade and Tourism, Faiyaz Koya, as saying the potential for growth is massive if all parties agree on the principle of equal partnership.
FAIYAZ KOYA: Fiji's main objective is to ensure that PACER-Plus lives up to its purpose as a development agreement, and not as an unbalanced agreement that provides New Zealand and Australia unprecedented access to the Pacific markets without giving anything tangible and binding in return.
The Cook Islands Trade Officer Danny Williams says the challenge is in working out how to ensure a development friendly agreement that takes into account the uniqueness of the Pacific region, and its difficulties in integrating into the global trading system. Mr Williams says there has been positive progress made on some priority issues, while others, such as development assistance, still need work or stronger commitments made. The Pacific Network on Globalisation, or PANG, has launched a campaign against the PACER-Plus agreement, asking Pacific governments to walk away from the trade negotiations. Its trade justice campaigner, Adam Wolfenden, says the agreement would lock communities into a model of development that has no relevance to the Pacific reality.
ADAM WOLFENDEN: Why are we having PACER-Plus? An agreement based on a set of ideas that doesn't reflect the Pacific. And what we are arguing is that instead we should be having a whole new discussion about what development means in the Pacific, what the economic future could be of the Pacific that actually really looks to its strengths, doesn't look to things like customary control of land as a barrier to trade.
Mr Wolfenden says PANG is very concerned about negotiations being made in secret.
ADAM WOLFENDEN: Given the fact that it's like a standard free trade agreement, everything is secret, excluding people from actually having an informed discussion about what is on the table really stokes a lot of those fears and from the texts we have seen validates a lot of those fears about what this really is.
But the Chief Trade Advisor for the Pacific Island countries, Edwini Kessie, says PANG is misguided. Dr Kessie says claims countries will not have an ability to regulate, and that Australia and New Zealand will have unfettered access to Pacific markets, are simply not true. He says PACER-Plus will mean improved market access for Pacific products, more development assistance to address supply-side constraints, and increased labour mobility allowing more workers to go to New Zealand and Australia. He says the islands are fragile, and without a dynamic trade agreement, they cannot grow economically.
EDWINI KESSIE: What we need is to have an agreement which will truly take into account their circumstances, and would help them to enhance their trade. I think this is what we should all work towards, rather than give the view that well the agreement will not help the countries when obviously they do not know what we have agreed thus far. We haven't yet completed negotiations so it is kind of premature for anybody to assess at this stage that the agreement will not be balanced.
Trade negotiators from around the Pacific will next month meet with their counterparts from Australia and New Zealand in Port Vila to discuss the agreement. Dr Kessie says issues including investment and development assistance will be on the table. Pacific Island countries have been given until December to finalise PACER-Plus negotiations.
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