H.E. Mr. Manuel A. J. Teehankee
Ambassador Teehankee has been the Philippines’ distinguished permanent representative to the World Trade Organization since May 2004. Immediately prior to this, he served in Manila as undersecretary in the Department of Justice, and among others supervised the Office of the Government Corporate Counsel, with special responsibilities in respect of privatization in the energy sector. He has also led government efforts in important pursuits involving, among others, UNCITRAL and ICSID-based arbitration and litigation. In 1987, Ambassador Teehankee was admitted to practice law in New York and practiced with the law firms Baker and McKenzie, and LeBoeuf Lamb Green and MacRae. Ambassador Teehankee graduated from the Ateneo de Manila University in 1979 with a degree in economics and, later, a degree in law and as valedictorian of his class. He placed first in the Philippine bar examinations for admission to the legal profession. Ambassador Teehankee obtained his masters of laws degrees from the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor, with specialization in GATT law, and from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Ambassador Teehankee presently chairs the Working Group on Trade and Transfer of Technology in the WTO, and serves as coordinator of the Core Group of Developing Countries in the Negotiating Group on Trade Facilitation.
Jose Antonio Buencamino
Mr. Buencamino is the special trade representative in Geneva of the Philippines’ Department of Trade and Industry. He has had extensive experience in the functioning of the multilateral trading system, having been first assigned in Geneva in 1988 in the midst of the Uruguay Round negotiations. He has served as chair of various committees in the WTO, as member and chair of dispute settlement panels, as discussant in trade policy reviews, and as moderator of workshops and conferences organized by the WTO and other international organizations. In between stints in Geneva, he assumed posts in Manila as director of the Bureau of International Trade Relations (1994-1995), and then as assistant secretary for international trade (2000-2002) in DTI. Mr. Buencamino has also served as the Philippines’ senior economic official in ASEAN, senior official for trade and investment in the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), and deputy senior official in APEC. He also served as the executive director of the WTO-AFTA Advisory Commission under the Office of the President. Before joining government, Mr. Buencamino was an economist at the Center for Research and Communication in Manila, where he also earned his masters of science degree in industrial economics in 1980. Mr. Buencamino graduated from the Ateneo de Manila University in 1977 with a degree in economics.
Maria-Fe A. Chau Huu
Mrs. Chau Huu has been the agricultural attaché in Geneva since 1996. She began her government career in 1983 starting out as an agricultural development specialist in the International Development Cooperation Coordinating Office of the Department of Agriculture. In 1990, Mrs. Chau Huu then joined the foreign agricultural service and was assigned to Brussels, Belgium as agricultural analyst. An expert in the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union, she subsequently moved on to Geneva and, as agricultural attaché, has been the main officer in charge of agriculture and sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) issues in the WTO. She has also chaired the Committee on SPS, and a resource person on trade and environment issues. Mrs. Chau Huu obtained her bachelor of arts degree in economics from the University of the Philippines in 1983.
Jose Victor V. Chan-Gonzaga
Mr. Chan-Gonzaga is second secretary at the Permanent Mission to the WTO. Before assuming this post in December 2004, he was director for social development matters at the Office of United Nations and International Organizations (UNIO) of the Department of Foreign Affairs, and had earlier also served as director for human rights and humanitarian affairs, director for trade, economic and finance matters, and concurrently legal officer in UNIO. He has been a member of various delegations to international conferences, and has written extensively on international law and issues of legal policy, including on WTO law. Mr. Chan-Gonzaga went to Columbia University as a Fulbright Scholar and a Bretzfelder International Law Fellow and, in 2003, earned his masters degree in law, graduating with the Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar Award and with a Certificate of Merit in International and Comparative Law from the Columbia University Parker School of International and Comparative Law. Mr. Chan-Gonzaga joined the foreign services in 1997 after earning a Juris Doctor degree from the Ateneo de Manila School of Law, and was admitted to the Philippine Bar the following year. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the Ateneo de Manila University in interdisciplinary studies with specialization in political science and socio-anthropology.
Lupiño Javier Lazaro, Jr.
As assistant agricultural attaché in Geneva, Mr. Lazaro has brought with him solid experience from his work at the Philippines’ Department of Agriculture. In 1987, he began government service at the National Food Authority, a major agency of the DA, first as an analyst, then a development management officer. Mr. Lazaro moved on in 1990 to the DA’s Policy Analysis Division where he remained until 1993 when he became a special assistant to the Secretary of Agriculture. He then proceeded into the foreign agriculture service and was assigned as agricultural analyst in Washington, D.C. and, since 1999, as assistant agricultural attaché in Geneva. Mr. Lazaro graduated from the Polytechnic University of the Philippines in Manila in 1987 with a degree in applied economics (magna cum laude).
Raymond H. Batac
Mr. Batac is the latest addition to the team, having taken up his post as commercial attaché in August 2006. He is also a graduate of the Ateneo de Manila University where he majored in development studies (1996), and earned his masters degree in business management from the Asian Institute of Management in 2002. Mr. Batac began his professional career in the banking industry in credit finance and, eventually, became a business development manager at Citibank N.A. specializing in personal banking. In 2004, he joined the Foreign Trade Service Corps of the Department of Trade and Industry, was assigned as special assistant to the Secretary of Trade and Industry and, subsequently, as chief officer to the Senior Undersecretary of Trade and Industry dealing mainly with bilateral and regional trade negotiations.
Lourdes A. Berrig
Since 1989, Mrs. Berrig has served as trade policy adviser at the Permanent Mission, mainly responsible for market access issues and trade facilitation in the WTO. A veteran of the GATT/WTO, Mrs. Berrig has served as chairperson of various committees of the GATT and WTO, a member of the Textile Monitoring Body, and continues to render valuable policy advise to both the Permanent Mission and the DTI in Manila. Mrs. Berrig also served in DTI in Manila from 1975 to 1983 doing work, among others, on ASEAN industrial integration. She has been a member of numerous Philippine delegations to international conferences and meetings, was a consultant of UNCTAD, and earlier on in her career, a teacher at the St. Scholastica’s College in Manila. Mrs. Berrig has a post-graduate diploma in international relations and development from the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, Netherlands, a masters of arts in economics education from the Center for Research and Communication (now the University of Asia and the Pacific), and a bachelor of science in education from the St. Theresa’s College in the Philippines.
Melagina A. Go
Ms. Go, an attaché and the administrative officer of the Permanent Mission, joined the foreign service in 1993 and has worked in consular affairs and in administration. She took up her post in Geneva in September 2004. Ms. Go was a college scholar and graduated from the Lyceum of the Philippines with a bachelor’s degree in foreign service (cum laude). In 1999, she completed her master’s degree in international relations from the University of the Philippines (Foreign Service Institute Scholar), and from Sophia University in Tokyo (Monbukagakuso Scholar) with a master’s degree in comparative culture in 2003. Ms. Go speaks Japanese (having also studied at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies), as well as French.
