EU, Singapore FTA Talks To Be Completed This Year

In a joint statement issued after their recent meeting in Singapore, the Minister for Trade and Industry Lim Hng Kiang and the European Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht said that they were pleased with the progress being made in negotiations for the proposed Singapore-European Union (EU) free trade agreement (FTA).

Discussions at this month’s meeting were said to have focussed on further improving access to each other’s markets for goods and service providers, as well as on strengthening trade rules on issues such as intellectual property protection and rules of origin. Both sides agreed to intensify work on the outstanding issues.

The EU had, until they were suspended in 2009, pursued talks on a region-to-region FTA with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The EU member states then, instead, decided to pursue negotiations towards FTAs with the individual ten countries within ASEAN.

Negotiations on an FTA with Singapore, the first such country and the EU’s largest trading partner in ASEAN, started in March 2010. Seven rounds of negotiations have been held since the talks began, and both Singapore and the EU now expect to complete them later this year.

The agreement aims to double trade between the EU and Singapore within the next five years. Singapore is already the EU’s twelfth largest trading partner, while the EU is the second largest export market for Singapore. The EU has also provided around 30% of all foreign direct investment into Singapore, almost three times as large as investment from the US.

July 20, 2011

Source: Tax News