The RCEP Agreement was successfully signed, and the liberalization of trade in goods achieved fruitful results
On November 15, 2020, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (RCEP) was officially signed.
RCEP member countries include 10 ASEAN countries and China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. RCEP is the world’s largest free trade agreement. The total population, economic volume, and total trade volume of the 15 member states account for about 30% of the global total.
As a modern, comprehensive, high-level and reciprocal agreement, the RCEP agreement consists of a preamble, 20 chapters (mainly including trade in goods, rules of origin, trade relief, service trade, investment, e-commerce, government procurement, etc.) and trade in goods , Service trade, investment, and temporary movement of natural persons.
RCEP has achieved fruitful results in the liberalization of trade in goods. Tariff reductions among members are mainly based on the commitment to immediately reduce tariffs to zero tariffs and reduce tariffs to zero tariffs within ten years. The free trade zone is expected to achieve significant phased construction results in a relatively short period of time. For the first time, China and Japan reached a bilateral tariff reduction arrangement, achieving a historic breakthrough. The agreement will help promote the realization of a high level of trade liberalization in the region.
The successful signing of RCEP plays an extremely important role in enhancing the economic recovery of countries after the epidemic and promoting long-term prosperity and development. The further acceleration of the process of trade liberalization will bring greater promotion to regional economic and trade prosperity. The preferential results of the agreement directly benefit consumers and industry enterprises, and will play an important role in enriching consumer market choices and reducing enterprise trade costs.
The Ministry of Finance conscientiously implements the decisions and deployments of the Party Central Committee and the State Council, actively participates in and promotes the RCEP agreement, and has carried out a lot of meticulous work on tariff concessions in goods trade. In the next step, the Ministry of Finance will actively do a good job related to the tariff reduction of the agreement.
