AFTA Council meets on ending regional trade barriers
AFTA Council meets on ending regional trade barriers
CHIANG MAI, Thailand (AFP): The ASEAN Free Trade Council (AFTA) yesterday began considering a proposal to shorten its basic plan for reducing regional trade barriers from 15 to 10 years, while expanding the list of exclusions.
Officials from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) -- Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Brunei -- were joined in the half-day meeting in this northern Thai city by observers from Japan and Vietnam.
The meeting, however, fell badly behind schedule, apparently as a result of numerous "errors" in its agenda.
The AFTA gathering is a prelude to the annual ASEAN Economic Ministers meeting here today and tomorrow. On Saturday, they meet with the Japanese delegation on how to rebuild the economies of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and Sunday they meet with officials from Vietnam, which wants to join ASEAN.
The AFTA Council was to debate whether to shorten from 15 to 10 years the period under which member countries must reduce to uniform rates the tariffs on most items they trade with each.
Under the Common Effective Preferential Tariff (CEPT) scheme AFTA members signed in January 1992, the tariffs are to be reduced to a maximum of between 0 and 5 percent by Jan. 1, 2008. Excluded are agricultural goods and 14 items which individual countries feel should still be protected.
The CEPT countdown began Jan. 1, 1993, and has two programs for reducing tariffs, a "normal track" and a so-called "fast track" program.
Most items are on the normal track, which calls for reducing high tariffs to 20 percent within five to eight years and all tariffs except those on the exclusion list to between zero and five percent within the following seven years.
Shortening
But senior economic officials meeting here ahead of AFTA have agreed to recommend that the total period be shortened to 10 years, officials said.
The "fast track" program would reduce tariffs greater than 20 percent to below five percent within 10 years, and tariffs already less than 20 percent to below five percent within seven years.
The senior officials have agreed to recommend that these periods be cut to seven and five years, respectively.
The officials also agreed to weaken CEPT by allowing members to put more items on the exclusion list, but did not say what areas might be affected.
Deputy Prime Minister Supachai Panitchapakdi, the head of the Thai delegation, earlier told reporters in Bangkok that Thailand would move in the opposite direction and ask to have petrochemical products taken off the list of items excluded from tariff reductions and put on the normal track.
But he predicted other AFTA members would object to this because Thailand is strong in this field, and said Thai officials then would seek to have some sub-sectors of the industry taken off the list.