AEC Boosts Consumer Protection in ASEAN

Manila– As part of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), the ASEAN Committee on Consumer Protection (ACCP) is now intensifying its efforts on initiatives for consumer protection.

ACCP members met Wednesday in Makati City to continue discussions on measures that will assist consumers in coping with the effects of the AEC in 2015.

The ACCP targets that the ASEAN integration all member-states must have consumer protection law.

”In general in all ASEAN, we achieved almost 90 percent,” Department of Trade and Industry-Consumer Protection Group (DTI-CPG) Undersecretary Victorio Mario Dimagiba said in the sidelines of 9th ACCP Meeting.

To date, eight ASEAN members already have consumer protection law except Myanmar and Cambodia which are now working on this area.

To further hasten consumer protection, ACCP will be working on advocacies and crafting policy digest which will be “quick and easy to understand tools for consumers,” according to Dimagiba.

The Committee also targets to simplify procedures on cross-border mechanism.

”In consumer protection, we are fine tuning our cross-border mechanism. In simple term, in the Philippines we have 3Rs; repair, replace and refund. We are simplifying the procedures on how that could be also applied across the ten ASEAN member states,” Dimagiba explained.

The ACCP also pushes for harmonization of consumer protection law.

In this case, Dimagiba said the DTI will be submitting draft to amend the national consumer protection law to Senator Paolo Benigno Aquino IV who chairs the Senate Committee on Trade, Commerce and Entrepreneurship.

He noted that amendments to the law will include increasing administrative and criminal penalties.

Lastly, the ACCP has set up website in which ASEAN consumers can file complaints on-line.

”We have website already– aseanconsumer.org where any citizens of ASEAN, any citizen that have complaint in any consumer transaction when they are visiting ASEAN, can just log in to that website and file the complaints,” Dimagiba said.

”The group is doing well in terms of achieving the deliverables for the target before 2015. The next step is to think the post 2015 agenda; post 2015 work plan. This time, we have to go beyond advocacy and is more on implementation stage,” Brunei Darussalam ASEAN Chairperson Hjh May Fa’ezah Hj Ahmad Ariffin said.

Meanwhile, the country is now hosting the four-day 9th ACCP Meeting which is attended by delegates from ASEAN members such as Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and Philippines. (PNA)FPV/KMC