ASEAN to discuss stalled farm row

ASEAN to discuss stalled farm row

SINGAPORE (Reuter): ASEAN economic ministers will meet in Singapore this week to try to end a protracted row over the inclusion of farm goods in the group's free trade plan, diplomats said.

The ministers of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), at a meeting in Thailand in December, postponed the debate over farm trade for discussion at the April 26-28 meeting.

Singapore's Ministry of Trade and Industry said in a statement the ministers would discuss the implementation of the ASEAN free trade area (AFTA) at a meeting of the AFTA council on April 26. It would be followed by two days of what the ministry called a ministers' retreat.

There would be no formal agenda for the retreat, but the ministers were expected to prepare for the World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial meeting in Singapore in December, the ministry said.

The ministry statement said during the retreat, the ministers would sign a new pact to step up ASEAN industrial cooperation.

A previous agreement allowed a maximum tariff of 5.0 percent on automotive parts produced within ASEAN. The new pact will extend the tariff limit to all industrial products.

The statement did not elaborate on the AFTA issues, but diplomats said the ASEAN ministers would try to deal with Indonesia's refusal to remove tariffs on 15 key farm products.

Under the AFTA scheme, tariffs on thousands of products would be cut to a maximum of 5.0 percent by the year 2003. ASEAN groups Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Indonesia backed out of the deal to open up its farm markets by the year 2003 ahead of the Bangkok summit in December, a move that threatened to scuttle AFTA.