South Korean lawmakers on Thursday agreed to pass free trade deals with Australia and Canada at a plenary session in early December, silencing worries that ratification of the treaties would be pushed to next year.


Legislators from the governing Saenuri Party and the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy have been conducting talks over the trade deals for weeks. Concerns that the trade pacts would disadvantage Korean livestock and dairy farmers had stalled the treaties’ ratification.

But the rival parties earlier in the day agreed to pass the deals on Dec. 2, after promising farmers more government subsidies along with lower interest rates on government loans to them.

“The lawmakers’ promises to lower the interest rates on our loans have convinced us to support the FTAs, although we are going to go over the details,” said Lee Gang-heoun, a spokesman for the four dairy and livestock farmers’ associations that were opposed to the free trade pacts.

Farmers had called for drops in the interest on government farm loans as a condition for supporting the free trade agreements. Australian and Canadian farm products in Korea are expected to financially strain Korean farmers after the deals come into force, according to researchers at the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy.

The pacts are likely to come into force in December, initiating the first round of tariff cuts. The second round of cuts will begin days later on New Year’s Day.

The two successive cuts will benefit Canadian and Australian beef exporters facing U.S. competitors in the Korean market. South Korean manufacturers contending with their Japanese counterparts in the Australian market are also expected to rejoice for similar reasons. Japan is nearing ratification of a free trade deal of its own with Australia, expected to take force sometime early next year.

Exporters had worried that prolonged negotiations in the South Korean parliament would push the accords’ approvals to next year. Tariff cuts would have been delayed in such a scenario by as long as 11 months, with the first round of cuts beginning whenever the deal was passed, and the second round not coming into effect until Jan. 1, 2016.

The free trade pact with Australia, also known as KAFTA, is projected to increase South Korea’s economy by 0.14 percent in 10 years after ratification, according to KIEP. The treaty with Canada will increase the gross domestic product by 0.04 percent during the same period, KIEP predicted.

Farmers in South Korea appear to be resigned to the inevitability of more FTAs with larger economies that enjoy comparative advantages in farming.

“We know they’re coming, but we want some kind of minimum assistance from the government to help us continue our lives,” said Son Jeong-ryul, chairman of the Korea Dairy and Beef Farmers Association, earlier this month.

By Jeong Hunny (hj257@heraldcorp.com)