Wto and Its Negative Impact to the Philippine Economy

World Trace Organization deals with the global rules of trade between nations. Its benefits are most commonly categorized to 10 aspects, namely: peace, disputes, rules, cost of living, choice, incomes, growth and jobs, efficiency, lobbying, and good government. The Philippines has been a WTO member since January 1995, and the issue of whether this country has derived the supposed-to-be benefits by joining this organization has been has been existing. Walder Bello, a political analyst, described the Philippine's membership with WTO as “a multilateral punishment”. As for me, I firmly believe as well that the Philippines is better off not joining WTO. The most important agreement of the Philippines in WTO is the Agreement on Agriculture (AOA). As one paper asserts, when “all economic activities related to agro-processing and supply of non-farm agricultural inputs are included, the agricultural sector broadly defined accounts for about two-thirds of the labor force and 40 per cent of GDP.” Therefore, the agricultural sector plays a major role in the development of the country's economy. The main source of the negative consequences of the AOA for the Philippines is its being a highly inequitable agreement that institutionalizes high levels of domestic support, subsidization, and tariffs for the United States and the European Union. Such high levels of support have encouraged overproduction and the consequent export dumping that has posed damage on the agricultural sectors of the Philippines. That is to say that due to the Philippines' agreement with WTO, the displacement of local production and large number of producers has taken place. In conclusion, the Philippines' collaboration with WTO entails a big loss for its economy, being said that it is mainly dependent on the agricultural sector. The Philippines' membership to this multilateral organization is definitely a disaster for the