Patricia Cornish said the fisheries sector was a key resource in the Pacific Islands region which could increase Pacific exports to the Europe.
Cornish said: “Positive and encouraging gains could be accrued as a result of economic partnership agreements among Pacific island nations.”
Cornish was referring to the recent interim economic partnership deal signed by Papua New Guinea and Fiji with EU.
She is the senior planning and policy advisor and acting head of strategic engineering and planning for the Secretariat of the Pacific community.
Speaking on the first day of the African, Caribbean and Pacific, or ACP, joint fisheries and trade official meeting in Port Moresby, Cornish said the deal was a major achievement for the Pacific region, particularly for PNG and Fiji.
“Indeed, PNG had shown the tangible benefits of global sourcing rules of origin in becoming a genuine hub in the Pacific for processed tuna with the projected setting up of its marine zone in Madang,” she said, referring to the Pacific Industrial Marine Zone project.
Cornish said the ACP region was pushing for the global sourcing rules of origin to be extended to products of HS headings 0304/0305.
These referred to fresh/chilled fish catch which would particularly benefit those Pacific ACP states without infrastructure to produce canned fish or cooked tuna loins.
HS headings refer to the “harmonized commodity description and coding system” of tariff nomenclature which is an internationally standardized system of names and numbers for classifying traded products developed and maintained by the World Customs Organization.
