Private Sector need to get involved in free trade process, says Viliame [1]
Sunday, March 8, 2015 - 14:50
Although Free Trade Agreements with trading partners provide opportunities for market access for Pacific Islands products, generally businesses in Tonga lack awareness of the rules, says Viliame Rova who facilitated a workshop this week in Nuku'alofa.
“We have existing free trade agreements that have already been signed and still the Private Sector are not aware of the criteria or opportunities that are in the free trade agreements for them to benefit from,” he said.
Tonga's Chamber of Commerce and Industries organised the workshop on the technical aspects of the trade agreements in the first week of March. Viliame, a Senior customs officer, with Fiji Customs, Suva, Fiji, trained 15 participants, including producers, retailers, wholesalers, and customs agents,
“From a customs perspective it's important for us Customs to get our key stakeholders like the Private Sector to be aware of the technical requirements in the free trade agreements so we can increase compliance level,” he said.
Viliame said it was the “non-tariff” or technical barriers to trade that caused the most frustrations.
“With some commodities there are restrictions on the quota for export from here to our trading partners. Limited quotas, like for example kava, only 5 kg exports from here to our partners on every export.”
Added value
He stressed the importance of adding value to products that faced barriers so that they could be exported under a different classification and different rules.
“In the context of the Pacific, specifically for Tonga you have a lot of agricultural products, and there could be value added into these products,” he said.
“The opportunities are there that we have a lot of resources, raw materials, and we can look at opportunities of investing in putting value into our resources, our products for export. For us to meet market demand we can easily accumulate our resources with our neighbouring trading partners and produce manufactured goods that are exported to our trading partners. Those are the opportunities that are available to us,” he said.
The Pacific Islands Trade Agreement (PICTA) is one of the agreements, which covers 11 countries in the Pacific, excluding New Zealand and Australia.
Another, the Pacer Plus, has negotiations coming up, which includes Australia New Zealand and 14 Pacific islands countries.
“The issue that I find with Tongans is the consultation process. The Private Sector is not aware of what is happening in the free trade agreements and with the negotiations. So they need to get themselves involved because at the end of the day it's the Private Sector that is trading. They need to be aware,” he said.