LAHORE: The Pak business community is thankful to WTO member countries for their support in special trade waiver to help stabilise country’s economy that suffered irreparable loss in the wake of floods devastation. Founder Chairman Pak US Business Council Iftikhar Ali Malik said under this package, almost 900 million euros in import value or 27 percent of imports from Pakistan for a 2 years period from January 2012 to December 2013, would be allowed.

According to the Director of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in Singapore, Fong Ngai, Hong Kong will continue to make the most of its "China advantage" and global connectivity to foster economic ties with Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries in 2012. In a speech in Indonesia, Fong said that "Hong Kong is well placed to benefit from Asia's resilience (in a world where the economic outlook is still fairly uncertain), with Mainland China and ASEAN being Hong Kong's first and second largest trading partners".

VNEconomyNews.com - Though local fruit exports to the US have been rising thanks to surging demands, Vietnamese exporters are yet to break the formidable barriers on food safety to this market. A large number of industry players asserted that the appetite of European-American and African-and Asian-American people had paved the way for a sharp rise in tropical fruit and vegetables consumption in the US.

An updated free trade pact between Peru and Mexico, which extends preferences to 12,000 tariff lines, entered into force on February 1, 2012. The agreement, signed on April 6, 2011, supersedes the existing 8th Economic Complementation Agreement, signed in the 1980s, which provided preferential tariffs on just 700 items. Bilateral trade has grown four-fold in the last ten years, amounting to USD1.4bn in 2010. However, trade is expected to grow by 40% in the first year following the pact's entry into force.

JAKARTA, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia's Trade Minister and Ambassador of Pakistan Sanaullah on Friday signed the Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) between both countries, a press statement from the Pakistani Embassy said here. Wirjawan said that going beyond bilateral gains, stronger relations between Indonesia and Pakistan will allow both countries to benefit from overall market optimism of the Asian region.

High-level political contacts between India and Japan since the year 2000 have produced a multitude of political documents.

TOKYO (Kyodo) — Japan and the United States are arranging to begin preliminary talks at an early date on Japan’s future participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade negotiations, Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura said Wednesday. Tokyo is planning to start the talks as early as next Tuesday, the results of which could hold the key to whether Japan can join the rule-making discussions for the U.S.-led tariff-cutting pact, government sources said.

China is ready to respond to possible complaints over its rare earth export restrictions at the World Trade Organization, a Ministry of Commerce (MOC) official said Wednesday. The remarks followed a WTO decision on Monday to uphold a ruling against China's export duties and export quotas on nine raw materials, which do not include rare earths. However, concerns were raised that the latest ruling might lead to a similar case against the country's rare earth export policies, which have triggered contention between China and some of its trade partners.

The statement issued at the end of the 18th summit of the African Union (AU) has confirmed that African countries will target the establishment of a continental free trade area (CFTA) by 2017. The AU has produced a three-step plan in preparation for the CFTA, with the first move being finalization of the tripartite agreement between the East African Community, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa and the Southern African Development Community by 2014.

Feb 1 (Reuters) - A World Trade Organisation committee meeting on Wednesday approved a European Union waiver on duties for 75 products from Pakistan, a scheme intended to boost textile exports to help Pakistan recover from massive floods in 2010. "I'm very happy. It was a long drawn out exercise, and something of a success for diplomacy," Pakistan's ambassador to the WTO, Shahid Bashir, told Reuters.