24 MAY 2022, Seoul - Philippine Ambassador to the Republic of Korea H.E. Maria Theresa Dizon-De Vega participated in the 2022 ASEAN-ROK Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Forum organized by Korea JoongAng Daily.

The forum was attended by National Assembly Speaker Park Byeong-Seug, Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy Deputy Minister Chun Yoon-joong, other ASEAN Ambassadors and CDA, and some 100 leading Korean and foreign companies with increasing portfolios in the ASEAN market. The RCEP is a free trade agreement (FTA) between the ten member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and its five FTA partners, Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand and the Republic of Korea. The agreement is also envisioned as a major medium for future-driven cooperation, especially between ASEAN and the Republic of Korea

During the panel discussion, Ambassador Dizon-De Vega welcomed RCEP's importance and how it helps balance the global economic ecosystem through rules-based order and integration and the value it adds to existing ASEAN FTAs by including commitments to micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), government procurement, electronic commerce, sourcing of raw materials, and intellectual property, among others.

The Philippines also underscored that such an agreement is advantageous as it makes business simpler and faster, through simplified rules of origin in trade. She likewise highlighted that as a "development-friendly" mega-FTA, such an agreement helps ASEAN MSMEs that need to be included in the global supply chain and allows for the fifteen member states to share and collectively work on concerns in sustainability, creating a more balanced global economic system. END