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Official Links to Information on Member Economies' FTAs/RTAs

RTAs/FTAs: a Cross-Cutting Issue for APEC

APEC Economic Leaders and Ministers have given increasing recognition to the important role Regional Trading Agreements (RTAs) and Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) can play in trade liberalisation in the APEC region. In November 2005, APEC Leaders declared the promotion of high-quality RTAs and FTAs as an element of the Busan Roadmap towards the Bogor Goals. Leaders committed APEC to developing model measures for as many commonly accepted FTA chapters as possible by 2008. This initiative will build upon the APEC Best Practices for RTAs/FTAs, which currently serve as a useful guide for APEC members when undertaking RTA/FTA negotiations.

Achievements

In 2007, work on promoting high quality RTAs/FTAs continued under the guidance of the APEC Committee on Trade and Investment (CTI) to develop additional Model Measures for RTAs/FTAs, building on the seven sets of model measures endorsed in 2005 and 2006. The business community and APEC Senior Officials share the conclusion that while the measures will be non-binding, the Model Measures exercise can help address the "noodle bowl" problem of a mixture of FTA/RTA provisions making the process of trade liberalization and the conduct of business across the APEC region more complicated than it needs to be.

Work continued on 11 draft chapters covering texts carried over from 2006 (electronic commerce; rules of origin and origin procedures; safeguards; investment; sanitary and phyto-sanitary measures; anti-dumping; and subsidies and countervailing duties) and new drafts in the areas of the environment, competition policy and temporary entry of business persons. Substantial progress was made on all sets of model measures and 3 sets of model measures were endorsed at the 2007 APEC Ministers Meeting in September 2007: Electronic Commerce, Rules of Origin and Origin Procedures and Sanitary & Phyto-sanitary measures.

A Senior Official-level Policy Dialogue on RTAs and FTAs, an annual event, was held on 22 April 2007 to exchange views on the possible content of chapters 2 (implications for APEC) and chapter 3 (options for promoting greater regional economic integration). By the time Senior Officials met in Cairns in June 2007, good progress was made in identifying key conclusions and recommendations, building on APEC's current work program. Ministers Responsible for Trade also provided guidance to Senior Officials to finalize the draft report for Annual Ministers' Meeting in September 2007.

Capacity building workshops or policy dialogues or symposia were also conducted at the CTI sub-forum level, allowing exchanges between government officials and FTA negotiators on best practice and strengthening FTAs in the region. These include GOS-IEG Workshop on Services and Investment Provisions in Regional Trade Arrangements (RTAs) and Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) on 18 April 2007 in Adelaide. The workshop provided useful insignts on MFN in RTAs and differences between GATS- and NAFTA-based approaches.

Current Activities

In Sydney, September 2007, APEC Economic Leaders welcomed and endorsed a report from APEC Ministers on ways to promote further economic integration in the Asia-Pacific region. This report was prepared in response to Leaders' instructions in Ha Noi last November to "undertake further studies on ways and means to promote regional economic integration, including a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific as along term prospect and to report to the 2007 APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in Australia."

APEC Leaders have asked Ministers and officials to carry forward this work and report back to the AELM in 2008 with a summary of steps taken to promote regional economic integration. The key APEC Committees and fora, including the CTI will be supporting the SOM in this effort.

The report outlines a wide range of actions aimed at strengthening work towards regional economic integration among APEC economies. Specifically, APEC economies have committed to strengthen APEC's work promoting high-quality, comprehensive RTAs and FTAs that open markets and promote economic integration while seeking to promote consistency among agreements and maximise their trade and economic benefits. In this regard, they will:

complete by 2008 the program of comprehensive and high quality model measures of commonly accepted chapters for RTAs and FTAs and identify ways to facilitate their use as a guide to negotiating agreements;
examine the various types of preferential rules of origin used in the APEC region;
explore in close cooperation with the business sector how rules of origin used in economies' RTAs and FTAs might be rationalized;
expand dialogue on examining ways to achieve greater consistency in key provisions of RTAs and FTAs in the region; and
undertake a study of bilateral investment agreements and core investment-related elements of existing free trade agreements; and
explore the possibility of building on the model measures for trade facilitation to provide more specificity and content.