PH rejects P382-M EU technical assistance

Flag of the Philippines (WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, PUBLIC DOMAIN)

MANILA— European Union (EU) Ambassador to the Philippines Franz Jessen on Wednesday confirmed that the Philippine government has formally rejected the fourth phase of EU-Trade Related Technical Assistance (TRTA).

In an interview with reporters, the envoy said the aid amounting to EUR6.1 million (PHP382.4 million) “was rejected at the end of this past year.”

The first TRTA was formalized between the two parties in 2005, with the EU initially providing EUR3.5 million (PHP219.5 million) to the country. After its conclusion in the third quarter of 2008, it was succeeded with the TRTA 2, which ended in 2012.

TRTA 3, which ran from 2013 to 2016, amounted to EUR3.5 million (PHP219.5 million) for a project that aims to support the Philippines’ integration into the international and regional trading and investment system through an integrated approach encompassing policy and legislative reforms, procedural and technical improvements, and capacity development.

Asked if there’s a possibility for the renewal of TRTA 4, Jessen responded in the negative.

“No, that has disappeared,” he said. “The budget that we used for that was an annual budget that now has gone. We’re now in 2018, we cannot spend 2017 money, so it’s gone,” he said.

“It was formalized in the sense that we had, for example, the TRTA, a document that actually had to be signed by the end of the year.

And that has been reserved for some time,” he added.

The diplomat bared that in the coming days, another project focused on sustainable energy is up for decision on whether it will be postponed or not.

He said: “The problem is that it’s a little bit technical, but the reason is that we have a financial agreement that runs for four years, and that means that currently, we cannot do something that extends into the fifth and the sixth year, and we need the government to agree on that, that we can do the fifth year and sixth year, and so far they don’t want to do it.”

He said the project was worth EUR39 million (PHP2.4 billion).