ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand FTA
Subscriber Update
Update 18 – March 2008
Thirteenth Round of Negotiations
The 13th meeting of the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement (FTA) trade negotiating committee took place in Jakarta from 3 – 7 March 2008.
Negotiations are now approaching the final phase. All parties demonstrated serious commitment to engage at the round and good progress was made in finalising the text of the Agreement. However, it is still proving difficult to agree to satisfactory outcomes on market access commitments.
On goods, an intensive bilateral market access negotiating process is underway aimed at unblocking obstacles to reaching agreement on tariff modalities (the principles that will guide the preparation of detailed tariff offers). Parties agreed to exchange prioritised market access requests lists and revised indicative offers before the next round to assist movement in this area. Significant progress was made in finalising the draft Chapter on Trade in Goods.
The working group on rules of origin (ROO) made some progress towards completion of the chapter text and associated schedules, but significant detailed work remains. However, parties now appear ready to devote more resources and adopt a more flexible approach to getting outcomes on the product-specific rules. Good progress was made on the ROO for clothing and fabrics, but some concerns remain over chemicals.
Negotiations on services made good progress with increased engagement on our draft texts on financial services, telecommunications and movement of natural persons. Further progress was made on the draft text on Trade in Services. A workshop on Telecommunications which involved experts from most negotiating parties helped clarify the regulatory issues and increased engagement in this area. ASEAN is yet to respond on our electronic commerce text.
Negotiations on investment made useful progress on the draft chapter text, with movement on several key definitional issues and articles, including the draft Investor-State Dispute Settlement article. Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Burma and Vietnam are still working on their initial offers.
The Experts Group on Intellectual Property (IP) met for the second time and made progress in reducing the points of difference in the draft text with only a few issues outstanding.
Economic cooperation (EC) negotiations are now focussed on operationalising the draft EC chapter. A number of new EC project proposals were put forward following consultations with the Design Support Team. Guidelines for prioritisation of components and activities in the EC Work Program were also agreed.
Considerable progress was made on a range of legal and institutional issues, with the dispute settlement mechanism now largely finalised. Detailed work has now commenced on a range of institutional and framework texts.
The next meeting is scheduled to be held in Brisbane from 20 - 24 April 2008.
More information on the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand FTA