Philippine Daily Inquirer

Top Filipino, US businessmen to lobby for PH inclusion in TPP

By Ben O. de Vera

7 April 2014

MANILA, Philippines—A group composed of top Filipino and American business leaders would help lobby for the Philippines’ inclusion in the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, on top of initiatives to attract more American investors into the country, the Philippine envoy to Washington said.

Philippine Ambassador to the US Jose L. Cuisia Jr. told the Inquirer last week that the US-Philippines Society (USPS) was working on bringing into the country a delegation of American businessmen for a trade and investment mission within the year. Cuisia is an ex-officio board member of the USPS.

Formed in 2012, the USPS is “a private sector initiative organized to broaden and expand interaction and understanding through basic research and/or applied research in the areas of security, trade, investments, tourism, the environment, history, education and culture between the United States and the Philippines which would benefit the American public and the people of the Philippines,” according to its website. It is co-chaired by former US envoy to the Philippines John D. Negroponte and Filipino business tycoon Manuel V. Pangilinan.

In January last year, a high-level, USPS-led American delegation visited the Philippines and met with President Aquino to explore trade and investment opportunities here.

Cuisia said that last year’s business mission brought new American investments into the Philippines, citing for instance that of USPS honorary co-chair and former AIG chief executive Maurice Greenberg, whose Starr Companies put up a nonlife insurance unit here.

Besides Greenberg’s company, some agribusiness and electronics firms have also set up shop in the country following the USPS mission, Cuisia said, without elaborating.

“Definitely, interest in the Philippines as an investment site among US companies is still growing,” Cuisia said.