ASEAN to regulate trademarks
ASEAN to regulate trademarks
PHUKET, Thailand (Reuter): Southeast Asian economic ministers said yesterday they had reached agreement on creating a patent and trademark system and had also endorsed measures to simplify trading rules in their region.
Thai Deputy Prime Minister Supachai Panitchpakdi said a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) economic ministers had agreed on measures to further free up the trade regime in the area.
"This (patent and trademark system) will be a novelty to help secure the protection of ASEAN citizens," Supachai told reporters after day-long talks on this resort island.
The ministers agreed to eliminate a regionwide joint investment program and breaks in tax incentives originally aimed at boosting intra-regional trade in favor of a single tariff scheme which would lower tariffs on a wide variety of products to a maximum of five percent by 2003, he said.
"We are in agreement that this incentive scheme is incentive enough for investors," Supachai said, referring to a tariff plan conceived under the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA).
The ASEAN joint investment program, he said, has become too bureaucratic and distorted the trading regime in the region.
"We intend to learn from the failure of these programs to enhance industrial cooperation in ASEAN," He said.
Top ASEAN economic officials likewise expressed reservations about tax and incentive regulations in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.
"ASEAN should adopt a more unified stand towards APEC," Supachai said, adding the issue will be discussed more thoroughly in the group's ministerial meeting in Brunei in September.
All ASEAN members belong to the 18-member APEC, which is committed to implementing a free-trade area in the Asia-Pacific region by 2020.
ASEAN links Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore and the Philippines.
Problems
The ministers may also discuss problems in reaching agreement on putting together a list of unprocessed agricultural products where tariff barriers may be reduced along with liberalized rules for service industries, officials said.
Supachai reported no further progress on discussions over a list of products where tariff barriers should be removed. ASEAN officials have called the products a sensitive list of mainly unprocessed agricultural commodities.
"The sensitive list is very sensitive so we have to be sensitive about it," a light-hearted Chaiyot Sasomsub, Thai deputy commerce minister, told reporters before the start of the first round of talks yesterday morning.
Supachai said they would also pursue further talks to liberalize rules in the service industry and that tourism may be the first area to be opened up.
ASEAN officials said they are currently working to remove more than 2,500 products currently covered by tariff barriers.
Under AFTA, each country will submit a list of industrial products where tariff barriers will be lowered to a maximum of five percent by 2003.
Malaysia has submitted a list of more than 100 goods, the largest in ASEAN, on which it does not want tariffs removed. Indonesia has the smallest list with just 27 products.