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The largest free trade agreement in history was signed over the weekend, and 15 countries in the Asia Pacific region agreed to be signatories. In total, the agreement will cover 30% of the world’s GDP and population to out-scale the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
The signatories involved are Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, and all 10 ASEAN members, including Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.
The leaders of the signatories agreed to the terms of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Bangkok last year, and the agreement was officially signed on Sunday. In a joint statement, the signatories said the trade agreement would play an important role in plans to recover from the pandemic and help build the region’s resilience through an “inclusive and sustainable post-pandemic economic recovery process.”
“In light of the adverse impact of the pandemic on our economies and the livelihoods and well-being of our people, the signing of the RCEP Agreement demonstrates our firm commitment to supporting economic recovery, inclusive development, job creation, and strengthening of regional supply chains, “the signatories said in the joint statement.
RCEP will primarily focus on standardizing business rules across countries in an attempt to make it easier for people to do business. For example, RCEP will enforce a unique new set of rules to access preferential rates in any of the 15 RCEP markets.
The RCEP countries will also create a new framework of rules for telecommunications that will build on existing ASEAN free trade agreements that focus on improving access and use of public telecommunications systems and access to facilities. essential telecommunications. The new framework will also ensure that RCEP countries do not discriminate against each other when providing access to submarine cable systems.
In terms of cybersecurity, the RCEP countries are committed to collaborating and sharing information on best practices to deal with cybersecurity incidents and to develop the capacity of authorities to respond. When drafting the RCEP, the signatory countries said that they recognized that cooperation between them was crucial to prevent cybersecurity attacks.
The RCEP also includes commitments to ensure that signatories do not prevent business data and information from being transferred across borders. In addition, the RCEP includes commitments to prevent countries from imposing measures that require computing facilities to be located within their own territories. However, these commitments will not apply to the financial services sector and also include exceptions for measures implemented for reasons of national security or other public policy reasons.
The signatory countries will also work together on a variety of issues, including helping small and medium-sized enterprises to overcome obstacles in the use of electronic commerce, encouraging the development of practices that improve consumer confidence and specific cooperation in research, training, capacity building and technical assistance. . To address this, Australia will commit AU $ 46 million to provide technical assistance and capacity building to help eligible ASEAN countries implement their RCEP commitments.
Other changes include a new scope for trade in services throughout the region, including telecommunications, professional and financial services; improved mechanisms to address non-tariff barriers, including in areas such as customs procedures, quarantine, and technical standards; greater investment certainty for companies; new rules on electronic commerce to make it easier for businesses to trade online; a common set of rules on intellectual property; and agreed rules of origin that aim to increase the competitiveness of signatory markets within regional production chains.
The RCEP, which took eight years to negotiate, was previously intended to include India as well. However, India pulled out of the negotiations last year due to concerns about how the deal would affect its agricultural sector. Despite India’s withdrawal, the joint statement from the signatories said it was welcome to enter the RCEP agreement.
