The Australia - ASEAN - New Zealand Free Trade Agreement
Fast Facts about ASEAN - Australia - New Zealand FTA
- The AANZFTA Parties comprise the ten ASEAN members (Burma, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, The Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam) together with Australia and New Zealand
- By including provisions covering trade in goods and services, together with investment, intellectual property, competition policy and economic cooperation, AANZFTA becomes the most comprehensive FTA that ASEAN has negotiated.
- AANZFTA provides for the progressive reduction or elimination of tariffs over specified periods and the scheduling of market access commitments for services by each of the parties.
- AANZFTA allows for greater certainty and transparency for those trading and investing in the region.
- First time for Australia in an FTA that economic cooperation has been included to help AANZFTA Parties implement their obligations. A work program will be carried out over five years with an estimated cost of $20-25 million. Australia is prepared to make an appropriate funding contribution to this cost.
- The level of development of ASEAN members is reflected in differential time frames for implementing certain FTA commitments.
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- Australia and New Zealand will typically have the shortest implementation time frames and the three Least Developed Country members (Burma, Cambodia and Laos) the longest.
- Australia has existing FTAs with Singapore and Thailand. Australia has commenced FTA negotiations with Malaysia, and has a long-standing comprehensive FTA with New Zealand (ANZCERTA). The provisions of AANZFTA ensure that it can have no impact on those existing FTAs.
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