Korea-Philippines FTA Officially Signed

• Liberalization of trade with the Philippines, one of Korea’s top three export destinations in ASEAN
• Tariff-free export of Korean cars and eco-friendly cars
• Completion of FTA network with major ASEAN trading partners

Korea and the Philippines recently officially signed a free trade agreement (hereinafter referred to as ‘FTA’).

For the Korea-Philippines FTA, the two nations declared an agreement in principle on the basic framework focusing on the concession level in October 2021. Thereafter, several rounds of intensive negotiations were held between the two sides on the detailed schedule for tariffelimination and reduction, agricultural product safeguard implementation procedures, and regulations on the operation of the product committee. In June 2022, a final agreement on all aspects of the Korea-Philippines FTA was reached.
With this signing, Korea has concluded 22 FTAs with 59 countries around the world. The Philippines is a contracting party to multilateral FTAs such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and the ASEAN Free Trade Area, and Korea is the second bilateral FTA after the Philippines-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), which came into effect in 2008.

Korea has been expanding its FTA network with ASEAN’s major individual trading partners along with multilateral FTAs in which all ASEAN countries participate, such as the Korea-ASEAN FTA and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).
In addition to Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Indonesia, Korea’s FTA agreement with the Philippines thus recorded a total of five FTA relationships with ASEAN countries. Korea’s trade volume with these five countries amounts to 91% of the total trade volume with ASEAN as of 2022.

 
 
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