BEIJING - China and
the 10 members of the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN) are speeding up the
tariff-reduction process to facilitate the
establishment of a free-trade area (FTA), said a
senior foreign-trade official in Beijing.
China's average tariff on ASEAN countries'
goods was slashed from 9.9% to 8.1% last year,
while the ratio will drop to 6.6% next year, said
Yin Zonghua, deputy director of the Ministry of
Commerce's Department of International Trade and
Economic
Affairs.
The average
tariff level will continue to drop to 2.4% in
2009, and finally in 2010, which is the scheduled
time for the establishment of the China-ASEAN FTA,
93% of products from ASEAN countries will be
tariff-free, said Yin.
Yin disclosed the
tariff-reduction plan at the third China-ASEAN FTA
Seminar, which was organized by the ASEAN
Committee in Beijing and the China-ASEAN Business
Council.
ASEAN countries have also made
similar arrangements, said Yin, citing Thailand as
an example. Thailand reduced its average tariff
for Chinese products from 12.9% to 10.7% last
year, while it plans to lower it further to 2.8%
in 2009.
"The practice shows that tariff
reduction has remarkably boosted trade between
China and ASEAN," said Yin.
China now
records trade deficits with ASEAN. Official
statistics show that China's trade with ASEAN
totaled US$130.4 billion last year, with imports
valued at $75 billion and exports at $55.4
billion. In the first eight months of this year,
China imported $56 billion of products from ASEAN
and exported goods worth $44.9 billion to ASEAN
countries.
And China's total trade with
ASEAN this year is expected to surpass $150
billion, said Yin.
Both China and ASEAN
benefit from the tariff-reduction practice and
they will achieve win-win results from the FTA, he
said.
In November 2000, China's
then-premier, Zhu Rongji, proposed the
establishment of the China-ASEAN FTA and it was
approved by leaders of the countries concerned the
following year.
In November 2002, the
leaders signed the Framework Agreement on
China-ASEAN Comprehensive Economic Cooperation,
setting the ball rolling on the FTA.
By
2010, China will establish FTAs with Brunei,
Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore
and Thailand, while Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and
Myanmar will have five more years in transition.
Besides pushing the development of goods
trade, China and ASEAN will also speed up
negotiations on service trade and investment so as
to construct the FTA in a comprehensive way, said
Yin.
Bambang Khaeroni, trade attache with
the Indonesian Embassy in China, said cooperation
between China and ASEAN "has been working
dynamically".
Indonesia has long been
involved in regional cooperation initiatives such
as ASEAN and APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation), said Khaeroni.
"These
experiences can be implemented to promote
strategic cooperation between China and ASEAN
through China-Indonesia bilateral cooperation," he
noted, showing great enthusiasm toward pushing for
the establishment of the FTA.
