APTA member states now plan to turn the trade pact into a comprehensive regional agreement covering trade in goods, services, investment and trade facilitation, officials said.
The move is likely to be endorsed at a ministerial conference of APTA (Asia-Pacific Trade Agreement) to be held in July next, they said, adding that the timeframe for fifth round negotiations will also be announced at the conference.
The 53rd session of the standing committee meeting of APTA, held in South Korea in mid-September, took the decision to transform the pact into a productive one.
Presently, the agreement only covers goods and the member countries offer tariff concessions each other for intra-group trade. The member states --Bangladesh, China, India, South Korea, Laos and Sri Lanka -- so far offered tariff concessions on 10,677 products as the fourth round negotiations concluded.
However, services, investment and trade facilitation are still out of the purview of the regional trade pact, which now they are planning to include.
A senior official who attended the meeting in Seoul told the FE that if services, investment and trade facilitation were included in the APTA, the pact will be more effective in boosting intra-group trade.
He said the product coverage will also widen after completion of the next round of negotiations.
The official said the APTA secretariat was considering bringing about changes in tariff preference concept by introducing a 'negative list' instead of the existing 'positive list'.
However, the Seoul meeting took decision to continue with the existing one, he said.
According to him, the APTA Working Groups have finalised the work plan for next round of negotiations but they are yet to finalise the implementation strategy.
The Working Groups will sit in January next again to finalise the implementation strategy and place it before the next standing committee meet in May next in Bangkok.
Officials said the Seoul meeting decided to increase the number of members of the APTA.
There are some 53 countries in the Asia-Pacific region and only six countries are the members of APTA.
An APTA secretariat study mentioned that some pacific island states can be included in the regional pact.
Additional Secretary of the Ministry of Commerce (MoC) Shafiqul Islam, who attended the meeting, told the FE that after finalisation of the implementation method, the APTA ministerial meeting in next July will officially announce the commencement of fifth round negations.
He said the meeting will also fix a tentative timeline for completion of the fifth round negotiations.
According to officials, the objectives of the fifth round negotiations under APTA will be to reduce and eliminate tariff and non-tariff barriers substantially among the participating states within a fixed timeframe.
Besides, it will aim to strengthen the APTA keeping in view of new developments in the international trading system to provide momentum to the process of regional economic cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region.
The fifth round negotiations are likely to set target to reduce and eliminate tariffs on substantially all trade covering at least 80 per cent of total national tariff lines and bilateral import value for the base years 2014-2016. It may also consider adopting zero-for-zero tariff for selected products.
As one of the oldest preferential trade agreements between the countries in the Asia-Pacific region, the APTA pact occupies market for 2.921 billion people. The size of APTA market accounted for US$ 14,616 billion in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) in the fiscal year 2015-2016.
The main objective of APTA is to hasten economic development among the six states opting for trade-and investment-liberalisation measures which will contribute to the intra-regional trade.
© 2024 - All Rights with The Financial Express
