The world’s biggest free trade zone was launched in southeast Asia, the total trade will sum up at 4.5$ trillion a year. The free trade zone includes China and 6 other countries with a population of 1.9 billion people altogether.
The free trade agreement between China and six additional countries in southeast Asia was launched yesterday (Friday), thus creating the world’s biggest free trade zone in terms of population. Beside China, you can find amongst the members the six founding members of the ASEAN (The Association of Southeast Asian Nations) – Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, The Philippines, Thailand and Borneo.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations
The agreement will cancel 90% of customs duty on import-export between these countries. The average tax price of importing commodities from the ASEAN countries to China decreased from 9.8% to a mere 0.1% and on the contrary, the average price of exporting from China to the six ASEAN members decreased from 12.8% to 0.6%. The trade volume between all these countries had ascended from 39.5$ billion in the beginning of the decade to 192.5$ million at the end of 2008 and is expected to rise even more.
Four additional members of the ASEAN- Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar are expected to join the trade zone within five years. Some experts are already predicting a massive future expansion that might include Japan which is no surprise after China and Japan began talking about uniting, economic powerhouse India and even “offshore” Australia.
During the ASEAN summit the was held last October in Thailand, the members agreed to conduct a feasibility study on the formation of wide Asian free trade zone that will include South Korea too. “Two studies were conducted simultaneously”, explained an official from Thailand’s Foreign Ministry office. The first was for a free trade zone that will include the ASEAN countries along with China, Japan and South Korea and the second was for an alliance that will include India, Australia and New Zealand too.
The quick recovery of southeast- Asian economies from the financial crisis, in relative to the US and other Western countries, have increased the yearn to raise the integration of Asian economies. Japanese prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama who is leading the idea of forming an “East Asian Community” similar to the European Union, said in October that an “Asian economic bloc needs to aspire to lead the entire global economy”.
The CEO Game.
January 3rd, 2010 at 1:19 pm
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