Japan and the Philippines on Saturday formally clinched a free trade agreement, featuring not only trade of goods and services but unprecedented steps to open the door for Philippine nurses to work in Japan.
The agreement was signed by Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in Helsinki on the sidelines of a two-day Asia-Europe summit opening on Sunday.
The free trade pact, referred to as an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) by government officials, would cover industry, agriculture and the services sector as well as government procurements. Under the deal, Philippine nurses and care providers would be given chances to win qualifications to work in Japan and vice versa.
About a tenth of the Philippines's 85 million citizens work overseas in jobs such as nurses, musicians, care-givers, engineers, domestic helpers, seafarers, labourers and information technology professionals. Japanese officials said Tokyo had yet to decide how many Philippine nurses it would accept.
"We have never accepted nurses from abroad. The Philippines will be the only country to benefit from the agreement," said a Japanese government official.
A rapidly ageing population and low birth rate mean there is demand for foreign workers, including health workers, in Japan but authorities had been reluctant to open the door due to fears about the impact on wages and worries about crime by foreigners.
For Manila, Saturday's "comprehensive" deal with Japan was its first economic partnership agreement. "The agreement will strengthen the economic collaboration between our two countries by increasing the cross-border flows of goods, persons, investments and services," Koizumi and Arroyo said in a joint statement.