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China, Australia discuss free trade agreement
By Jiang Wei (China Daily)
Updated: 2005-11-05 06:18
China and Australia have concluded the third round of talks on a free trade
agreement (FTA), ending the first phase of bilateral negotiations. Meetings took
place in Beijing on Friday.
Ric Wells, chief negotiator for Australia, said that the two sides exchanged
information about their trade systems and answered detailed questions about
trade and investment.
"The information exchanges provided a base for the next phase of
negotiations," he said.
"We have achieved what we expected (in this round of talks)," said Zhang
Xiangchen, director with the World Trade Organization Department of China's
Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM), who headed the Chinese negotiating delegation.
The officials said they had not yet put forward their views on some essential
issues such as the opening up of the agricultural market, as they have not yet
entered the substantial negotiating phase.
Wells said he expected the two countries to start negotiating on more
substantial parts of the free trade agreement in the next round of talks,
expected to take place in Australia early next year.
Both sides are preparing for further negotiations on issues including market
access, tariffs and agricultural affairs.
Zhang said current FTA negotiations with Australia were some of the most
important for China because of the potential scale of trade compared with other
countries.
The Sino-Australian FTA talks were officially launched in April this year
after a joint feasibility study conducted by scholars from both sides.
It showed that if the two countries could eliminate barriers in trade and
investment by 2015, that could help to increase China's gross domestic product
by US$70 billion and Australia's by US$25 billion.
According to statistics from MOFCOM, bilateral trade between the two
countries rose by more than 50 per cent to 20.39 billion in 2004 from 2003.
China's exports to Australia stood at US$8.84 billion last year, reflecting
an increase of 41.1 per cent from the previous year. China's imports from
Australia reached US$11.6 billion, up 58.3 per cent year on year.
(China Daily 11/05/2005 page2)
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