The local director of the Coordinating Office for Trade Agreements, Julio Ortega Tous has told El Caribe that the country has resumed consultations for the signing of a free trade agreement with Canada and has plans to start conversations for another one with Mexico, as both would complement the DR-CAFTA agreement with the US and the Central American nations. DR-CAFTA has already been passed but the government has postponed its implementation until July 2006. Ortega Tous explains that this then would make for a complete Central America-US-Mexico-Canada trading block. He highlights the fact that DR-CAFTA stipulates that Central America and the DR will have a three-year period, which began on 1 January 2004, for the parties to reach an agreement with Canada and Mexico. Ortega pointed out that the DR is behind in these negotiations, compared to Central American countries. He explained that reaching these treaties is important because of the rules of origin. That is raw materials, goods and services produced by those countries can be accepted as inputs in production for export to the US market.
Regarding Europe, under the Cotonou Agreement, he explained that the so-called reciprocal Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) will replace the current non-reciprocal tariff preferences that are to be maintained until 31 December 2007. This is in the same way CBI has become DR-CAFTA, he explained.
On the question of preparations for the DR to implement DR-CAFTA, he said that the postponing of the implementation was over the board, including the United States that admitted that not even they were ready. “I have always said that the DR-CAFTA is an agreement of equal parts, that foresees disputes and mechanisms for solving them. DR’s point of view on the issue of intellectual property differs from that of the US in the pharmaceutical area, for example,” he stated. He pointed out that the DR intellectual property law is modeled on the World Trade Organization where there are obligatory licenses for producing drugs that are considered essential for public health. However, the US does not recognize this, and is therefore ignoring a WTO resolution. He explained that in the same way Honduras took the DR to a panel for the resolution of a dispute on cigarette imports affected by the exchange surcharge, we can take the US to a dispute panel regarding pharmaceuticals. “We have to become accustomed that the agreement provides mechanisms to defend one’s point of view, that it is not like the CBI where we had to accept what was being offered, or lose it,” he commented.