China and another five Asian countries including India, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Laos have reduced duties on more than 10,000 import items since July 1, with the average reduction up to 33 percent.
It is a major part of the second revision to the First Agreement on Trade Negotiations among Developing Member Countries of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific. This was initially reached between the six countries in 1975, when they agreed to define the duty reduction based on the percentage of the Most-Favored-Nation duty rate. The latest revision was based on the fourth round of multilateral negotiations which had lasted more than nine years since September 2007.
Wang Shouwen, deputy minister of China’s Ministry of Commerce and China’s deputy representative for international trade negotiations said at a press conference on June 28 that since 2002, China has signed 16 free trade agreements with 24 countries and regions to further expand the country’s opening-up, and that the degree of duty reduction exceeded that defined in WTO agreements in all cases.
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