Part Three
To support its services, it provides export assistance, business matching, coffee accreditation and export documentation; handles trade complaints through its Export Trade Complaints Committee; and provides market and product consultancy, and export and import statistics.
Its four major programs are the Philippine Export Competitiveness Program, Doing Business in Free Trade Areas/Doing Business with the EU Using GSP+, the Regional Interactive Platform for Philippine Exporters (Ripples), and the Halal Export Industry Development and Promotion Program.
Regional interactive platform for Philippine exporters
RIPPLES is designed for would-be Philippine exporters to make them export-ready. Ripples is under the 2015-2017 Philippine Export Development Plan (PEDP). Memorandum Circular 91, or the PEDP, was signed by former President Benigno S. Aquino III directing 14 executive departments to review all relevant policies to ensure its implementation. These agencies are the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the departments of Trade and Industry, Finance, Agriculture, Environment and Natural Resources, Public Works and Highways, Energy, Transportation and Communications, Interior and Local Government, Health, Labor and Employment, Science and Technology and Foreign Affairs, and the National Economic Development Authority. The 2015 to 2017 PEDP is targeting $100 billion in export revenue at the end of 2017.
The PEDP is supported by eight strategies that each agency has a role to implement: 1) Design comprehensive package of support to selected sector; 2) Remove unnecessary regulatory impediments to the movement of goods and delivery of services; 3) Raise the productivity and competitiveness of Philippine enterprise; 4) Upgrade the quality of standards of export; 5) Improve exporters’ access to trade finance; 6) Exploit opportunities presented by regional and preferential trading arrangements to expand market access within existing trade partners, explore new trade partners and develop new export products; 7) Launch a well coordinated, harmonized and sufficiently funded export and investment promotion campaign; and 8) Enhance the innovative capacity of the export sector to an efficient system of national innovation.
To be concluded •