ASEAN, Australia, NZ agree trade cooperation

ASEAN, Australia, NZ agree trade cooperation

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Brunei (Reuter): ASEAN economic ministers said on Saturday the seven-member grouping will cooperate on trade issues with Australia and New Zealand but stopped short of discussing trade liberalization measures between their two free trade areas, officials said.

Australia and New Zealand are joined under the Closer Economic Relation (CER) free trade agreement while the seven-member ASEAN is separately linked under the ASEAN Free Trade Areas (AFTA).

ASEAN ministers on Friday concluded a two-day meeting at which they agreed to expand the number of items to be included under the AFTA agreement and to speed the start-up date for a fully realized AFTA to the year 2000 from 2003.

A joint statement released after Saturday's CER-ASEAN meeting said the ministers had "agreed to establish region to region linkages between the free trade areas, reflecting the open regionalism" concept of AFTA and the CER.

It said initial activities for cooperation between the two groupings were in areas such as information exchange, human resource development, customs matters and trade and investment facilitation.

Two-way trade between the regions approached US$12.5 billion in 1994 and both Australia and New Zealand are keen to build closer economic and trade ties with the dynamic ASEAN region.

ASEAN group Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam.

Australia's Trade Minister Bob McMullan told a news conference the regional trading links stopped short of trade liberalization measures.

"Liberalization in terms of tariffs is far away, is not in the agenda," McMullan said. "Liberalization in the sense of making it easier to trade and invest is possible."