ASEAN officials make progress on farm talks

ASEAN officials make progress on farm talks

SINGAPORE (Reuter): ASEAN officials said yesterday that they had made some headway in ending a deadlock over the inclusion of agricultural products in the group's free trade agreement.

"I think there has been a lot of progress made in issues which we thought would be the main stumbling block at this meeting," Ridzwan Dzafir, Director-General of Singapore's Trade Development Board (TDB) said.

He was speaking to reporters at the one-day meeting of senior ASEAN economic officials ahead of an ASEAN Economic Ministers meeting later this week.

"For instance, on the extension of the CEPT (Common Effective Preferential Tariffs) concession to unprocessed agricultural products, there has been an agreement on broad areas as to how we should proceed with the implementation of the scheme," he said.

Ridzwan said the meeting agreed on how to incorporate sensitive agricultural products such as rice into the ASEAN Free Trade Area. "We will decide on the question of when is the starting and when is the end-date for the exemptions and what is the kind of product list we need to produce," he said.

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

Ridzwan also said that ASEAN would like Mexico and Canada to take part in the next discussions held between the Asian grouping and the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR).

ASEAN economic ministers (AEM) were due to meet the U.S. Trade Representative in May but the meeting has been postponed, probably until June, because of the departure of former USTR Mickey Kantor, officials said.

Kantor was named U.S. Commerce Secretary earlier this month replacing the late Ron Brown.

"We want to encourage the USTR to invite (its) other partners in NAFTA, Mexico and Canada, to be also present at the forthcoming AEM-USTR meeting," Ridzwan said.

"I think it is a good beginning for a linkage between ASEAN and NAFTA," Ridzwan said.