International Business Opportunities

Times of Oman Sep 23 2008 6:13PM GMT

A EU-Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) summit will beginon Tuesday May 8, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The summit could lead to a free trade deal between EU and the GCC - which includes Saudi Arabia, Bahrein, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Omand and Qatar.

The two blocs had started to negotiate a free trade agreement in 2002, however they failed to agree on a commons set of rules regarding investments and market access.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) plans to sign a free trade pact with Japan in November. Ong Keng Yong, secretary-general of the ASEAN, said the bloc’s economic ministers and their Japanese counterpart would discuss ways to free trade in goods during talks Friday.

The two sides will spell out the percentage of total trade that will be tariff-free by an agreed date, the amount that will be subject to a gradual tariff reduction, and sensitive items that will be excluded altogether because of domestic concerns, he said.

Ong Keng Yong, secretary-general of ASEAN, said the bloc’s economic ministers and their Japanese counterpart would discuss ways to free trade in goods during talks Friday. […]
Ong said Japan has proposed that 1 percent of its trade with ASEAN be excluded from tariff reductions but didn’t specify the items to be excluded. Tariffs on 88 percent to 92 percent of total trade are expected to be fully cut and the rest to beremoved gradually, he said.
(source)

Disappointed by the failure of the Doha round, the latest round of talks in the World Trade Organization, the Asian countries increasingly are signing bilateral and regional free trade agreements.

According to the Asian Development Bank, 150 bilateral free trade agreements had either been signed or were under negotiation last year in Asia.
And more than 40 trade deals were either signed or negotiated by groupings of more than two countries.  The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, for example, aims to abolish tariffs by 2015 under a regional trade deal, and is negotiating agreements with China, Japan, and South Korea.

The mushrooming of free trade pacts in the past few years is partly a defensive response to regional trading blocs elsewhere in the world, such as the European Union or the North American Free Trade Agreement. (source)

The European Commission has today welcomed the formal adoption by European Member States of negotiating mandates for a new generation of Free Trade Agreements with India, South Korea and ASEAN.

New independent research released by the European Commission today suggests that the agreements could add more than 40 billion euros to EU exports annually and provide wide new trade opportunities for all sides.

The European Commission, which will negotiate on behalf of EU Member states, expects to launch negotiations in the months to come.
(source: europa.eu)

Australian and Japanese officials will meet in Canberra Monday for the first round of negotiations on a bilateral free trade agreement.

A senior Australian trade official Friday said on the government condition of anonymity that the two days of talks would focus on setting a framework for future negotiations.

[…] A joint feasibility study commissioned in April 2005, found a comprehensive agreement could boost Australia’s gross domestic product by 39 billion Australian dollars (US$33 billion) and Japan’s by A$27 billion (US$23 billion) over a 20-year period.
[…] Australia has FTAs in place with the United States, Singapore, Thailand and New Zealand and is in negotiations on an agreement with the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Chile, China and Malaysia.
Japan has signed FTAs with Mexico, Malaysia and Singapore and is in talks with several other nations on similar agreements.
(source)

Japan and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) agreed on Wednesday to work together to reach a free trade agreement which would liberalize more than 90 percent of bilateral trade by value.

The prospective free trade agreement, which will be Japan’s first such deal with a regional bloc, is expected to be signed early next month, when economic and trade affairs ministers from Japan and ASEAN members meet in Brunei, Japanese officials were quoted as saying. (Source)

After signing a free trade pact with the United States, South Korea is to start talks with the European Union on forging a free trade agreement.

“The two sides are now taking their final steps … and I think talks will begin during the first 10 days of next month,” Kim Han-Soo, head of the free trade bureau at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, told a radio program.

Kim said a deal with the EU may be easier since both sides are likely to propose “many exceptions” in agricultural goods. Seoul managed to exclude its politically sensitive rice crop from the US deal.
(Source).

Industry lobbies in U.S. are working towards activist’ agenda to eventually lead up to a free trade agreement between US and India, potentially the largest ever such deal.

The US India Business Council is working out plans to prepare and execute a roadmap to create a US-India free trade agreement. […] As a first step, the council has invited a phalanx of high-end Washington-based consultants, to create the research, prepare and define, and then execute the roadmap to chart a logical progression towards deeper, more robust US-India trade and investment climate.[…] Trade expert professionals are being solicited to join the initiative… (Source).

The United States reached its biggest free trade agreement since NAFTA on Monday, clinching a last-minute deal with South Korea that it hopes will bolster bilateral ties and re-energize the Doha Round of global trade talks. […]

The deal, which requires approval by lawmakers in both countries, is the biggest for Washington since the North American Free Trade Agreement signed in 1993, and is expected to lead to more than 90% of U.S. exports to South Korea being duty free within three years.

It is the biggest trade deal ever for South Korea, which in nearly 50 years has grown from one of the world’s poorest countries to become its 10th-largest economy. […] South Korea and the U.S. agreed to eliminate and lower tariffs and other trade barriers in a wide range of industrial goods and services, including automobiles, agricultural products and financial services.
The agreement also covered sectors such as e-commerce. (source: usatoday.com)